''Requiem for Somalia's Aborted Islamic Revolution''

[me]

''Requiem for Somalia's Aborted Islamic Revolution''

 

With the defeat and dissolution on December 27 of the Islamic Courts Council (I.C.C.), which had sought to unify Somalia in an Islamic state based on Shari'a law, at the hands of the country's clan-based and internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), propelled to victory by major Ethiopian military action, Somalia opens a new chapter of its chaotic political history.

 

From the I.C.C.'s takeover of Somalia's official capital Mogadishu from the warlord's who had divided it and then dispersed -- as the I.C.C. now has done -- until its recent expulsion from the city, the Courts movement had taken Somalia through an attempted Islamic revolution that extended through most of the country south of the breakaway sub-states of Somaliland and Puntland.

 

Now that the I.C.C. has disbanded its institutional structure and most of its fighters have returned to support their clans, the revolution is over. Even if the hard line elements of the I.C.C. regroup their forces -- estimated to number 3,000 -- in Somalia's deep south and mount a guerrilla war, they will be just another player in a decentered game; it will only add an Islamist insurgency to Somalia's myriad other conflicts. The I.C.C.'s majority of moderates have no taste for a guerrilla war and will recede into their respective sub-clans: Somalia will revert to its accustomed condition of political entropy.

 

Most comprehensively and essentially, the failure of the I.C.C.'s revolution marks another in a series of unsuccessful attempts -- including ultra-nationalism, socialism, military dictatorship and internationally mediated and imposed clan-based federations -- to create a unified Somali state and to find a political formula that could channel Somali nationalism effectively enough to transcend the country's clan-based society. Unless its constitution is revised from clan representation to some national formula, which at present appears unlikely, the T.F.G. will simply mirror extant conflicts rather than resolve them. There is no new unifying political formula and appealing ideology on the horizon, which means that Somalia has returned to its previous status of a failed state.

 

On December 30 in Mogadishu, Ethiopian forces were keeping a low profile and the T.F.G.'s prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, was working to install his government and promising that he would disarm clan militias. Addis Ababa would like to withdraw its troops and armor from Somalia as quickly as possible to avoid an armed backlash against its presence and to stop the drain on its resources; Gedi wants the Ethiopians to stay for at least a month longer to secure his position. Disarmament is unlikely to occur as the sub-clans adopt a self-protective posture, the warlords return to reclaim their former positions, and Ethiopia stays out of the picture, leaving insufficient T.F.G. forces to carry out the mission. After a day of calm in Mogadishu, gun fire has resumed, although there are no signs of insurrection.

 

With the appointment of Osman Boqore as the T.F.G.'s new parliamentary speaker, Gedi has eliminated his major rival Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who had attempted to broker a reconciliation agreement between the T.F.G. and I.C.C. Nonetheless, the rise of Gedi to a central position for the moment does not betoken the emergence of a strong central government in Somalia. The Ethiopians will withdraw and the T.F.G. will not have the power to prevent political fragmentation.

 

Addis Ababa has accomplished its own mission in Somalia, which was to eliminate the threat of an Islamic state on its eastern border, and is content to leave the country in a condition of political weakness. Having leagued with the warlords and Puntland militias, as well as the T.F.G., in its campaign against the I.C.C., and needing to mend its relations with Somaliland, which is resistant to unification with the T.F.G. and has serious border disputes with Puntland, Addis Ababa is unlikely to give whole-hearted support to Gedi. Since Somalia launched an unsuccessful irredentist war against Ethiopia in 1977 to gain control of the latter's ethnic-Somali ****** region, Addis Ababa has striven to keep Somalia fragmented and to play factions off against one another. Addis Ababa has not changed that strategy and should not be considered the T.F.G.'s reliable patron.

 

The Roots of the I.C.C.'s Failure

 

Understanding the I.C.C.'s aborted revolution is facilitated by the trenchant analysis of Somali intellectual Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar in his article, "A War of Miscalculation," published on the website Hiiraan Online. Commenting on the I.C.C.'s declaration of jihad against Ethiopia and its aggressive moves in mid-December to challenge Ethiopian forces based around the T.F.G.'s provisional capital Baidoa in the south-central Bay region, Jowhar writes: "They threatened Ethiopia and stirred the wasp's nest, but they have not bothered to prepare themselves with protective clothing. They had the guts, the belief, the belligerence but not the arms, the organization or the depth of pocket necessary for waging war (jihad) against Ethiopia. They believed their own rhetoric of god being on their side, of representing all Somalis, of having already taken over and centralized the whole power of the nation in their hands."

 

As Jowhar sees it, the I.C.C.'s leadership got carried away with itself and succumbed to a triumphalist illusion that led them to throw "young bodies armed with weapons not much better than spears and a prayer against the well oiled fully equipped Ethiopian meat grinder." As do many Somali intellectuals, Jowhar epitomizes his analysis in a Somali proverb: "The tree lamented that the axe with wooden handle would not have been able to cut it down if part of it was not in the axe."

 

Jowhar's understanding is an indispensable first step toward diagnosing the I.C.C.'s failure. There is little doubt that the Courts movement's leaders believed that they had unified Somalia, if not altogether territorially, then in terms of popular support and destiny. They also believed that the Somali people, at least the vast majority of them, embraced Islam as a political formula for national identity, and that they could count on religion-based nationalism to sustain them in a confrontation with Ethiopia.

 

Finally, they believed in the justice of their cause and in the goodness of their works in bringing order, services and Shari'a law to the broad swathes of Somalia that they controlled. The common mentality that evolved in the I.C.C. after its early and generally unopposed successes hardened after Addis Ababa sent forces into Somalia to protect the T.F.G. and pushed the Courts movement to overplay its hand.

 

As sound as it is, Jowhar's analysis does not tell the whole story. Although the I.C.C.'s takeover of the strategic southern port city of Kismayo in late September placed external actors opposed to the I.C.C. on alert, the Courts movement operated pragmatically -- taking just as much as it could without triggering a decisive military response against it. Until mid-December, the I.C.C. maintained an effective balance of strategy and tactics that gave it the upper hand in any bargain that it might reach with the T.F.G.

 

The I.C.C.'s change from a strategy based on pragmatic calculation to one inspired by ideology is what accounts for PINR's mistaken judgment in its December 11 report that "major armed conflict is surely possible, but not yet inevitable." PINR predicted correctly that Addis Ababa's "defensive posture" would "change only if the I.C.C. became more aggressive," but PINR did not expect the I.C.C. to overplay its hand.

 

In retrospect, the cause of the I.C.C.'s aggressive moves around Baidoa in mid-December, which were initially successful and emboldened its leadership, was the passage by the United Nations Security Council (U.N.S.C.) on December 6 of Resolution 1725 authorizing a partial lifting of the frequently flouted U.N. arms embargo on Somalia for the purpose of introducing an African Union (A.U.) peacekeeping mission that would protect the T.F.G. in Baidoa and train the transitional authority's armed forces. Sponsored by the United States and backed most strongly by Addis Ababa and the T.F.G., the Resolution was anathema to the I.C.C.

 

PINR's December 11 report on Somalia undervalued the impact that passage of the Resolution would have on the I.C.C.'s leadership and how it would strengthen the militant factions in the Courts to the disadvantage of its more conciliatory elements. PINR's judgment in early December was that the Resolution was too weak to damage the I.C.C.'s power position seriously. A compromise between Washington and European powers, the Resolution prohibited frontline states -- notably Ethiopia -- from contributing to the peacekeeping mission, leaving Uganda, which quickly backed out from rapid deployment, as the only state willing to contribute forces.

 

Considering the remoteness of the possibility that the peacekeeping mission would ever come into effect, PINR expected the I.C.C. to absorb the symbolic blow and continue consolidating its gains, engaging in testing actions with Ethiopian forces and seeking to expand cautiously into Puntland by encouraging its domestic supporters there. Instead, the I.C.C. took the passage of the Resolution as a sign that the Western powers under Washington's leadership had swung their support decisively to Addis Ababa, and that there was only a small window of opportunity to gain clear advantage over the T.F.G.

 

After Resolution 1725 was passed, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the moderate chair of the I.C.C.'s Executive Council, told a rally in Mogadishu that it was "shocking that foreign troops already in Somalia are not mentioned" in the Resolution and that the Resolution "legalizes war" against Somalia. At that time, PINR did not appreciate that the "shock" was genuinely severe and would have the effect of making the I.C.C. feel isolated and embattled, and threatened with subjection to Washington's will through its perceived proxy Addis Ababa.

 

From the perspective of power and interest, it is possible to make the case that the Courts movement's leadership calculated that -- in the medium term -- the effects of implementing the Resolution would disadvantage it, yet the "miscalculation" noted by Jowhar is too great to be explained on the basis of pragmatic calculation alone. Indeed, the passage of Resolution 1725 threw the I.C.C. into a panic and strengthened its hard line elements who had always insisted that the Western powers' appeals for negotiations could not be trusted and that military assertion was necessary to advance the revolution.

 

The turning point came on December 13 when the I.C.C. issued an ultimatum to Addis Ababa that if it did not withdraw its forces from Somalia, they would face intensified attacks from the I.C.C.'s militias. During the week that followed, the Courts' forces engaged in probing attacks around Baidoa, encircled the town, expanded into the Bakool region on the border with Ethiopia and met with resistance from their adversaries.

 

However, when the ultimatum's deadline came on December 20 without Ethiopian withdrawal, the I.C.C. backtracked, saying that it had not meant that it would mount its major offensive immediately and that the ultimatum was aimed at showing Addis Ababa the I.C.C.'s determination. Nonetheless, the probing attacks initiated by both sides escalated, resulting finally in Ethiopia's full-scale operation utilizing air power and heavy armor that crushed the Courts movement.

 

In making its move, Addis Ababa had the tacit backing of Washington, which announced that Ethiopia had genuine security concerns and derailed a nonbinding draft resolution at the U.N.S.C. presented by Qatar that called for immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Somalia. The other external actors -- regional states, the A.U. and the Arab League (A.L.) -- were reduced to espousing the Qatari position without being willing to exert any but rhetorical pressure.

 

Just as Washington had given diplomatic cover to Israel's incursion into Lebanon in the summer of 2006, it gave Addis Ababa its window of opportunity in Somalia, despite regional opposition and the misgivings of European powers, which fell into line at the U.N.S.C.: the I.C.C.'s response to Resolution 1725 amounted to a self-fulfilling prophecy about its opponents, a gross over-valuation of its own strength and a desperate measure.

 

Conclusion

 

As a result of the I.C.C.'s defeat, Somalia's political future is more uncertain than ever, as the country devolves back to its fractious clan structure, the warlords who fought with the Ethiopian forces and were supported by Addis Ababa reappear and attempt to reclaim their former turf, and the hard line I.C.C. elements prepare to mount a guerrilla war in the deep south as Ethiopian forces and their allies pursue them. Addis Ababa has succeeded in installing the T.F.G. in Mogadishu for the first time, but has made it clear that it is not prepared to superintend state building, leaving the divided, warlord riven and generally unpopular and militarily weak transitional institutions to fend for themselves after a brief occupation.

 

Three possible scenarios present themselves for the new chapter in Somalia's political history. The most unlikely is that the T.F.G. will unify Somalia south of Puntland in an effective central government; its clan-based constitution is an inherent weakness, and the many sub-clans are in a mode of self-protection. More likely is a return to the pre-I.C.C. period of extreme decentralization, warlordism and state failure, either with or without an Islamist insurgency -- the latter being the more probable outcome.

 

External actors will revert to their previous positions, with regional states playing off Somali factions against one another to their own perceived advantage and Western powers drawing back from the scene, unless an Islamist insurgency becomes a base for international Islamic revolutionaries. Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has said that massive humanitarian, reconstruction and development aid from Western powers is required for Somalia's stabilization, but that is unlikely to come in sufficient quantities.

 

Given Somalia's fragmented political situation, Washington, which has realized its strategic aim of eliminating the I.C.C., is unlikely to support the T.F.G. with direct financial and military contributions and will prefer to funnel any of its aid through Addis Ababa. Washington is eager to have Uganda lead a peacekeeping mission to bolster the T.F.G., but Kampala is still resisting and whether adequate funds for such a mission would be granted by donor powers and whether it would be accepted by major Somali factions is questionable. Everything from an Arab peacekeeping force to democratic elections is being suggested by external analysts and actors, but it is unlikely that any bold plans will gain sufficient support to overcome Somalia's political entropy, which is exacerbated by the ambitions and conflicts among the country's neighbors.

 

Somalia has received sustained attention from PINR because the now aborted Islamic revolution provided the possibility for the establishment of an Islamic political model in Africa and for the unification and consolidation of a Somali state. Those possibilities have at present been eliminated and Somalia is once again at the mercy of its constituent factions and the interests of external actors.

 

For six months, Somalia was the site of an attempt at significant political change that had importance beyond its borders; for that to happen again, a fresh attempt at national unification -- probably not based on Islamism -- will have to emerge; but should that occur, it will be in a matter of years, not months or days.

 

Report Drafted By:

Dr. Michael A. Weinstein

[Faarax-Brawn]

Given Somalia's fragmented political situation, Washington, which has realized its strategic aim of eliminating the I.C.C., is unlikely to support the T.F.G. with direct financial and military contributions and will prefer to funnel any of its aid through Addis Ababa

Of course,it was payday the other day for a job half done.

 

There wont be no AU/UN peacekeepers yaah? The only foreign troops will be Habashis,who of course will be met with resistance.

 

This is what happens when you let others fomulate & dictate your agenda for you. You have NO CONTROL. Right now,they are at the mercy of Bush & his doctrine. So what happens when these neo0cons are kicked out of power?