The Crisis in Somalia: Tragedy in Five Acts

Abstract

Somalia's catastrophic humanitarian crisis of 2007, in which up to 300,000 Mogadishu residents were displaced in fighting pitting Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces against a complex insurgency of clan and Islamist opposition, was the culmination of a series of political miscalculations and misjudgements on the part of Somali and external actors since 2004. They resulted in a cascading sequence of political crises which plunged Somalia into increasingly intractable conflicts. This ‘tragedy in five acts’ includes the flawed creation of the TFG in late 2004, which emerged as a narrow coalition rather than a government of national unity; the failure of a promising civic movement in Mogadishu in summer of 2005 to challenge the power base of warlords and Islamists in the capital; the disastrous decision by the US government to encourage an alliance between its local counter-terrorism partners in Mogadishu, producing a war which led to the victory of the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) in June 2006; the radicalization of the CIC over the course of 2006, which guaranteed a war with Ethiopia; and the Ethiopian offensive against the CIC in late 2006, leading to its occupation of the capital, a complex insurgency against Ethiopian forces and armed violence which produced what the UN described as a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’. In virtually every instance, key actors took decisions that produced unintended outcomes which harmed rather than advanced their interests, and at a cost in human lives and destruction of property that continues to mount.

Full text

THE CRISIS IN SOMALIA: TRAGEDY IN
FIVE ACTS
KEN MENKHAUS
ABSTRACT
Somalia’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis of 2007, in which up to
300,000 Mogadishu residents were displaced in fighting pitting
Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces against a
complex insurgency of clan and Islamist opposition, was the culmination
of a series of political miscalculations and misjudgements on the part of
Somali and external actors since 2004. They resulted in a cascading
sequence of political crises which plunged Somalia into increasingly
intractable conflicts. This ‘tragedy in five acts’ includes the flawed crea-
tion of the TFG in late 2004, which emerged as a narrow coalition rather
than a government of national unity; the failure of a promising civic
movement in Mogadishu in summer of 2005 to challenge the power base
of warlords and Islamists in the capital; the disastrous decision by the US
government to encourage an alliance between its local counter-terrorism
partners in Mogadishu, producing a war which led to the victory of the
Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) in June 2006; the radicalization of the
CIC over the course of 2006, which guaranteed a war with Ethiopia; and
the Ethiopian offensive against the CIC in late 2006, leading to its occu-
pation of the capital, a complex insurgency against Ethiopian forces and
armed violence which produced what the UN described as a ‘humanitar-
ian catastrophe’. In virtually every instance, key actors took decisions that
produced unintended outcomes which harmed rather than advanced
their interests, and at a cost in human lives and destruction of property
that continues to mount.
After 15 years of paralysis and protracted state collapse, Somalia experi-
enced an extraordinary sequence of political shocks in 2006 and 2007.
Some of those developments had the potential to deliver Somalia out of
its prolonged crisis. Instead, each has plunged Somalia into new and more
dangerous conflict dynamics.
As of June 2007, the capital Mogadishu has been beset by months of
sporadically heavy fighting pitting Ethiopian occupying forces and their
Somali allies in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) against a
complex insurgency of clan militias, warlords and regrouping Somali
Ken Menkhaus (kemenkhaus@davidson.edu) is Professor of Political Science at Davidson
College, USA
African Affairs, 106/204, 357–390 doi:10.1093/afraf/adm040
#The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved.
357

Islamists. Whole neighbourhoods have been destroyed, hospitals are over-
flowing with casualties and 200,000– 300,000 of the city’s estimated one
million people are displaced. Many of the displaced have fled to the river-
ine hinterland outside of Mogadishu, where heavy rains, floods and lack
of basic sanitation have produced outbreaks of cholera and other diseases,
and scenes which The Economist described as ‘medieval’.
1
Neighbouring
states of Kenya and Yemen have already received tens of thousands of
refugees since early 2006 and are bracing for more. Both states have taken
measures to block the flow, sometimes with lethal results to refugees.
Humanitarian access to Mogadishu and surrounding areas is severely
limited due to insecurity and because of the TFG’s controversial policy of
restricting relief flows into areas of the capital where the uprising is con-
centrated, producing what the UN Resident Coordinator has called a
‘humanitarian catastrophe’.
2
Attempts to promote reconciliation between
the Ethiopian-backed TFG and the Mogadishu-based opposition have
gone nowhere. Efforts to insert an African Union peacekeeping force
to replace Ethiopian forces have only resulted in the deployment of
1400 besieged Ugandan soldiers into the fray. Scenes from the fighting—
bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers being dragged through the streets of
Mogadishu by angry mobs, an Ethiopian helicopter brought down by
ground fire—are eerily reminiscent of the ‘Black Hawk Down’ disaster of
October 1993 in Somalia, and suggest that Ethiopia remains dangerously
close to being caught in a quagmire, despite its success in inflicting heavy
losses on the insurgents. A major terrorist attack inside Ethiopia by the
Somali Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) on an oil field, result-
ing in 74 deaths, hints at the possibility that the Somali crisis could spill
across borders. And al Qa‘ida leadership is attempting to exploit the con-
flict, calling for jihad against Ethiopia, exhorting Somalis to use
‘ambushes, mines and martyrdom-seeking raids to devour [the
Ethiopians] as the lions devour their prey’.
3
Profound crises like Somalia’s push analysts into one of two broad
camps. One emphasizes the broad structural factors driving political cata-
strophes, and seeks to explain why a disaster on this scale is a predictable
if not inevitable product of forces majeures—environmental degradation,
demographic pressures, warlordism, ethnic mobilization, external spoilers.
A second school of thought stresses the avoidability of the crisis—the
1. ‘Somalia: It just gets worse,’ The Economist, 26 April 2007, http://www.economist.com/
world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9090247 [accessed 27 April 2007].
2. ‘UN warns humanitarian catastrophe looms in Somalia,’ The Reporter, reprinted by
AllAfrica, Inc., 21 April 2007 [accessed via LexisNexis 27 April 2007].
3. Ayman al-Zawahiri audio tape, 5 January 2007. Translation in ‘What the terrorists are
saying,’ US Central Command website http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/
shared%20documents/exposing%20the%20enemy.aspx [accessed 26 April 2007].
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missed opportunities and miscalculations of leaders. This latter camp
views the disaster not as fate, but as tragedy.
For much of the past 15 years, Somalia’s unprecedented crisis of com-
plete state collapse could plausibly be explained in broad structural terms.
Though by no means inevitable, the country’s protracted state of collapse
was both likely and understandable given the confluence of internal and
external interests and pressures working against the revival of a central
government.
4
But the extraordinary events in Somalia since 2005, culmi-
nating in three major armed conflicts, the rise and fall of a powerful
Islamist movement, Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu, a major humani-
tarian crisis in the capital and the possibility that Somalia’s essentially
local and regional conflict will be globalized as part of al Qa‘ida’s call for
jihad and America’s Global War on Terror, were by no means preor-
dained. The current crisis in Somalia was eminently avoidable, the result
of a series of bad or cynical decisions and occasionally horrific misjudge-
ments by Somali and foreign leaders who should have known better.
More than a few of those miscalculations were the product of hubris.
That qualifies Somalia’s current crisis as a tragedy—in this case, a tragedy
in five acts.
Act I: the flawed creation of the TFG
Over the course of 16 years of state collapse, Somalia has been the
subject of 14 failed reconciliation conferences. In 2000, the Transitional
National Government (TNG) emerged from peace talks in Arta, Djibouti
and for a short time appeared promising. But the TNG was dominated by
Mogadishu-based clans, especially the Hawiye/Haber Gedir/Ayr sub-clan,
and fell short of serving as a government of national unity. It was opposed
by a loose coalition of clans and factions called the Somali Reconciliation
and Rehabilitation Council (SRRC), backed by Ethiopia and led by
Abdullahi Yusuf, president of the autonomous state of Puntland in north-
east Somalia. The split between the SRRC and what became known as
the ‘Mogadishu Group’ has increasingly defined, and polarized, Somali
national politics. It is a complex division with multiple faultlines. The old
SRRC coalition is backed by Ethiopia, fiercely anti-Islamist, dominated
by some lineages of the Darood clan-family, based mainly in regions
outside Mogadishu and federalist. The Mogadishu-based coalition enjoys
support from the Arab world and is staunchly anti-Ethiopian, includes
Islamists in its alliance, is dominated by certain lineages from the Hawiye
4. See for instance Ken Menkhaus, Somalia: State collapse and the threat of terrorism,
Adelphi Paper 364 (Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, Oxford, 2004).
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 359

clan-family and embraces a vision of a strong central government rather
than a federal or decentralized state. The Mogadishu Group dominated
the TNG of 2000– 2002; the SRRC controls the TFG, declared in 2004.
Both are anchored in core constituencies, but many other clans, factions
and individuals opportunistically float between the two. This has been
especially the case with a collection of Hawiye warlords based in
Mogadishu, who have temporarily forged alliances of convenience with
both sides, and who are trusted by neither.
With the failure of the TNG to become operational over the course of
its three-year mandate, the regional organization IGAD (Intergovernmental
Authority for Development, comprising the seven states of the Horn of
Africa) led yet another effort to broker a Somali peace in 2002. Those
talks were held over a two-year period in Kenya, and were structured by
the external mediators (Kenyan government officials, with close support
from IGAD, the UN and the European Commission) as a three-phased
process—declaration of cease-fire; resolution of key conflict issues; and
power-sharing in a revived central government. This constituted a major
improvement over past peace processes in Somalia, which were rarely
about reconciliation at all but which devolved into crude cake-cutting
exercises over which clans and leaders laid claim to positions in a transi-
tional government. Invariably, the result was a government of national
unity which neither governed nor was unified. The hope in Kenya was
that this time the Somali leadership would be induced to address under-
lying sources of conflict in the country.
Those hopes were misplaced. The assembled Somali delegates made
little progress—and demonstrated little interest—in addressing conflict
issues, and routinely violated the cease-fire they had signed. After nearly
18 months, the talks appeared dead in the water. In desperation, IGAD
mediators declared phase two of the talks completed and moved to power-
sharing. Not surprisingly, the attention of the political and militia leaders
was rekindled. Thanks to sustained pressure from key IGAD member-
states, especially Ethiopia, the delegates succeeded in naming a 275
person parliament in August and September 2004. The selection process
was framed by the ‘4.5 formula’, a Somali variation on the Lebanese
consociational democratic model in which each of the four major clan-
families are equally represented, so negotiations over representation occur
within rather between the clan-families, each of which selects 61 MPs
from their lineage.
5
In October 2004, the transitional parliament elected a
5. According to the 4.5 formula, a residual category of ‘minority groups’ receives one-half
of the seats accorded to each of the major clan-families—hence the ‘.5’. The 4.5 formula was
first conceived in the 2000 Arta talks in Djibouti by the Somali delegates as a way to reduce
conflict between clan-families over allocation of seats.
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president, Abdullahi Yusuf, in a surprise result. Yusuf, a member of the
Mijerteen/Darood clan, president of the autonomous state of Puntland in
northeast Somalia, and a close ally of Ethiopia, won 189 of 270 votes
cast, while his two rivals, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan and Mohamed
Addow, split the Hawiye clan vote. Yusuf in turn selected as prime
minister Mohamed Ghedi, who was also known to be very close to
Ethiopia. The 82 person cabinet which Ghedi formed was nominally a
reflection of the 4.5 formula, but in reality concentrated power over key
government positions in the hands of the President’s clan, and more gen-
erally in the hands of the Ethiopian-backed SRRC alliance. The leader-
ship and sub-clans most closely identified with the old TNG were
conspicuously marginalized in the new government. What was intended
to be a government of national unity was, yet again, a government based
on one of the country’s two main coalitions at the expense of its rival.
6
Worse, allegations immediately arose that the votes of parliamentarians
had been purchased with Ethiopian government money. The going rate
for an MP’s vote was said to range from $3,000 to $5,000.
7
This cast
doubt on the legitimacy of the vote for Yusuf. Somalis unhappy with the
results also raised questions about the legitimacy of the leaders selected to
represent Somalia in the peace process, claiming that the IGAD mediators
had convened and empowered warlords in the talks. Even without these
complications, Yusuf was considered a ‘divisive’ choice, in the words of
International Crisis Group; his close links to Ethiopia, his staunch
anti-Islamist positions and his heavy-handed tactics against political
opponents in his own clan earned him a reputation as a leader who
tended to polarize rather than unite Somalis.
8
Yusuf ’s first decision as
president—appointing Mohamed Ghedi as prime minister rather than a
figure from the Mogadishu Group—only reinforced this perception. Had
Yusuf named a prime minister from the Mogadishu Group, it would have
gone a long way towards establishing a true government of national unity
and earning the confidence of the Mogadishu community.
The selection of Ghedi was not only a missed opportunity to create a
unity government and reduce the possibility of spoilers; it reflected a wor-
risome indifference on the part of the president towards the transitional
charter. According to the charter, members of the cabinet had to be
drawn from the 275 person parliament. Yet Ghedi was not an MP. When
6. Matt Bryden, ‘Starting over in Somalia: Breaking the cycle of failure,’ Daily Nation
(Kenya) (24 February 2006) reprinted in The Somaliland Times Issue 214, http://www.
somalilandtimes.net/sl/2005/214/28.shtml [accessed 27 April 2007].
7. Interviews by author, Nairobi, Kenya, October 2004.
8. International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia: Continuation of war by other means?’ African
Report no. 88 (ICG, Brussels/Nairobi, 21 December 2004), i. The ICG report went so far
as to conclude that Yusuf is ‘an archetypal warlord.’
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 361

Mogadishu-based MPs raised objections, Yusuf simply cut a deal with a
warlord from Ghedi’s Hawiye/Abgal/Warsengeli clan, Mohamed Dhere;
Dhere relinquished his seat in Parliament and ‘gave it’ to Ghedi to allow
Ghedi to become eligible to serve as Prime Minister. The precedent this
established—of seat-banking and seat-swapping in the Parliament in
exchange for political favours—was not reassuring.
9
Despite this inauspicious start, the Mogadishu-based MPs did not
reject the TFG outright, and continued to attend parliamentary sessions
in Nairobi Kenya. But parliament was immediately divided over two
flashpoint issues—first, a proposed deployment of foreign peacekeepers,
including Ethiopians, to ‘pacify’ Mogadishu; and second, the proposal
to locate the seat of government in a provisional capital (Baidoa or
Jowhar) on the grounds that Mogadishu was too insecure. Both propo-
sals were advanced by President Yusuf; both were vehemently rejected
by the emerging Mogadishu-based opposition. The reasons for the
disagreement were not hard to comprehend. Without protection from
his Ethiopian patrons, Yusuf would be completely outgunned in
Mogadishu and could govern only as a ‘guest’ of the Mogadishu opposi-
tion. This was the leverage that the Mogadishu Group was not about to
concede. For them, discussion of ‘pacification’ of Mogadishu by the
TFG and Ethiopian forces sounded more like a declaration of war than
a rule of law initiative. The debate over the peacekeepers and the
location of a provisional capital culminated in a televised chair-throwing
brawl in parliament in March 2005. Thereafter, the Mogadishu-based
MPs refused to attend parliamentary sessions in Nairobi; they relocated
to Mogadishu and insisted that parliament convene in the Somali
capital. External mediators and donors shared their desire to see the
TFG relocate from Kenya back to Somalia, but recognized that Yusuf,
Ghedi and their supporters would be in mortal danger if forced to
govern from Mogadishu, and urged the Mogadishu-based opposition to
return to Nairobi. They did not, and their absence prevented the transi-
tional parliament from mustering a quorum. The parliament was not to
meet for nearly a year, and key members of the cabinet also failed to
attend government meetings. The ‘Yusuf wing’ of the TFG eventually
relocated to the small town of Jowhar, Somali and then Baidoa, but
demonstrated virtually no capacity to govern even those towns where
the provisional capital was located. Tensions grew so high between the
two camps that they nearly engaged in armed conflict outside
Mogadishu in September 2005, when Yusuf deployed several thousand
9. This was not the only instance in which the government and parliament willfully ignored
its own transitional charter. The stipulation that at least 12 percent of MPs be female was
simply disregarded in the selection by clans of their representatives.
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troops south of Jowhar. By mid-2005, the TFG looked likely to join the
long line of stillborn transitional governments in Somalia.
What went wrong with the Kenyan peace process and the establishment
of the TFG? First, the peace talks themselves never got Somali delegates
to seriously engage on key conflict issues. The task of reconciliation was
instead handed to a parliamentary committee, where it has languished.
Attempts to revive the failed state in Somalia without addressing the
causes of that failure have proven again and again to be a recipe for
failure. That the error has been repeated so often since 1991 is an indict-
ment both of the myopic Somali political leadership and of the uninspired
international mediation in the Somali crisis. Some of the militia leaders
named to the TFG cabinet refused even to sit in the same room with the
TFG leadership, begging the question of how they were supposed to
govern as a group.
Second, the practice of forming a cabinet which superficially appears to
be a government of national unity, but which is actually a narrow coalition
guarantees a stillborn government. By now this should be amply clear to
Somali leaders, but the impulse to try to marginalize rather than integrate
the opposition in a transitional government appears to be irresistible to
Somalia’s political class. President Yusuf, like TNG President Abdiqassim
before him, believed he could impose a victor’s peace on his adversaries,
by relying on Ethiopian ‘peacekeepers’ to outgun them. But a victor’s
peace in contemporary Somalia is a fantasy. Opposition groups are more
than capable of playing the role of spoiler, and need only play for a stale-
mate to block their rival from governing. Part of the problem is with the
4.5 formula itself, which on paper sounds like a matrix for a government
of national unity. In reality the 4.5 formula is nothing of the sort, since
clan identity is only one dimension of the much more complex split
between the SRRC and Mogadishu Group coalitions. Somali leaders con-
trolling a transitional government have had no difficulty attracting
members from all the clans while marginalizing their rivals from those
same clans. Foreign donors and mediators have been slow to recognize
this weakness of the 4.5 formula.
While most of the blame for the TFG’s false start in late 2004 and
early 2005 can be laid at the feet of the TFG leadership, the opposition in
Mogadishu played a part as well. Its adamant refusal to consider a tem-
porary provisional capital outside Mogadishu was a transparent attempt to
use its militia dominance of Mogadishu to hold the TFG hostage. Hawiye
clan dominance over the capital is one of a number of critical conflict
issues which must be addressed. That clan’s leadership has for 15 years
acted on the unspoken assumption that its capture of the capital gives it
the right to rule over the entire country—one reason why the Mogadishu
group is so allergic to federal and confederal models for Somalia.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 363

In addition, some of the Mogadishu Group members took actions which
appeared designed to sabotage the TFG from within. For instance, the
capture of the town of Baidoa by two Mogadishu Group militia leaders was
clearly intended to block relocation of the capital to Baidoa. This recourse
to armed conflict to counter a Yusuf policy they rejected was a serious
breach of the Cessation of Hostilities agreement and a sign of bad faith.
Foreign actors are also partly to blame for the disastrous outcome of
the Kenya peace process. Ethiopia was very much behind the TFG’s
hardline stance vis-a
`-vis the Mogadishu opposition, and by all accounts a
party to the vote-buying in parliament. And donor and lead aid agencies,
particularly the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the European
Commission (driven by forceful Italian diplomacy) and the World Bank
were far too quick to commit uncritically to support the Yusuf wing of
the TFG, entering into questionable arrangements with TFG officials to
pay salaries of parliamentarians and other expenses. Because the Yusuf
wing was very much a party to the schism which emerged in the TFG,
this amounted to choosing sides in an increasingly dangerous split. The
UN was viewed as having forfeited its neutrality in the conflict, a percep-
tion that became the source of tension between humanitarian-oriented
UN agencies and the UN agencies engaged in support of governance.
Publicly, these external donors and development agencies claimed that
they were only working with the recognized transitional government.
Some claimed that they were not supporting the transitional government,
but only the transitional federal institutions (such as the parliament
and commissions established in the Charter), a distinction that eventually
became meaningless as the government purged the parliament of oppo-
sition figures, including the speaker of the parliament. Privately, many
acknowledged that their unconditional support to the TFG was about insti-
tutional imperatives to expand governance and rule of law programmes
regardless of the political conditions.
10
Calls to make recognition of the
TFG as a sovereign transitional body contingent on its performance as a
government of national unity thus went unheeded.
The false start of the TFG in late 2004 and early 2005 was not merely a
missed opportunity to forge a real government of national unity. Placing
Abdullahi Yusuf and a very pro-Ethiopian, anti-Islamist government in
power, was a godsend for Mogadishu’s struggling Islamist movement. For
a variety of reasons, the Islamist movement—organized in a sharia court
umbrella movement in the capital—had been facing declining legitimacy
and local support in 2003. (This was after a brief period in 1999–2000
when it had accrued significant local support.) The threat of a Yusuf-led
10. Interviews by author, Nairobi, Kenya, September 2005.
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government was the ideal foil for hardline Islamists to mobilize their base
of support. ‘From a jihadi perspective’, noted a Crisis Group report in
mid-2005, ‘Yusuf ’s rash appeal for foreign troops—especially from neigh-
bouring Ethiopia—and the furore it unleashed must have seemed like an
answer to their prayers’.
11
Throughout 2004 and 2005, a dangerous jihadi
militia, the shabaab (‘youth’), was engaged in a ‘dirty war’ of political
assassinations in Mogadishu against Somalis suspected of collaboration
with the TFG, Ethiopia or the US in counter-terrorist operations.
12
The
shabaab made at least three and possibly four assassination attempts on
both Prime Minister Ghedi and President Yusuf in 2005, including a
suicide car bomb attack in Baidoa that narrowly missed killing the latter.
By mid-2005, the Islamists organized in the Supreme Council of Islamic
Courts (SCIC) were arguably the strongest political and militia force in
Mogadishu, and while the movement constituted a very broad umbrella
for moderate and hardline elements, the violence and extremism of the
shabaab would cast a long shadow over the movement.
Act II: the Mogadishu stabilization and security plan
The second missed opportunity was the civic movement which
emerged out of the Mogadishu Security and Stabilization Plan (MSSP) in
the spring and summer of 2005. The movement ultimately failed, but at
that time constituted the best hope in 15 years for a grass-roots mobiliz-
ation against the entire class of failed political leaders in Somalia. Had it
succeeded, Somalia’s political trajectory might have been very different.
The Mogadishu Group which began to crystallize in March 2005 was a
loose alliance of convenience composed of some but not all major Hawiye
clan political figures, especially from the Ayr sub-clan; an ascendant
Islamist movement; Hawiye warlords, including some in the TFG cabinet
(the so-called ‘armed ministers’); many leading business interests in the
city; and civil society groups. They had little in common except a shared
opposition to the TFG’s composition and agenda. Most of the
Mogadishu Group leadership were members of the transitional federal
parliament. Some of the militia leaders in the coalition were long-standing
rivals and had fought one another in the past. It was a testimony to the
threat which Ethiopia and the TFG posed that they came together in
common cause to oppose Yusuf.
13
11. International Crisis Group, ‘Counter-terrorism in Somalia: Losing hearts and minds?’
Africa Report no. 95 (11 July 2005), p. 3, http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/terrorwar/
analysis/2005/0711somalia.pdf.
12. Ibid.,p.5–7.
13. International Crisis Group, ‘Can the Somalia crisis be contained?’ Africa Report
no. 116 (10 August 2006), pp. 5 –6, www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4333.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 365

In late March, the Mogadishu group issued a 29 point statement which
formed the basis for the Mogadishu Stabilization and Security Plan,
a proposal to improve security and basic municipal governance in
Mogadishu in 90 days. The MSSP was based on three key pillars: (i) a
pre-demobilization cantonment of militia; (ii) improvement of public
security through removal of the 40-plus militia roadblocks in the city; and
(iii) formation of district councils and a municipal council and adminis-
tration for Mogadishu. The proposal was initially rejected by Yusuf and
Ghedi, but later grudgingly accepted—Yusuf and Ghedi probably calcu-
lated that the MSSG was just a ploy and could not be implemented. If so,
they miscalculated.
For the political leadership in the Mogadishu Group, the MSSP was
the perfect trap. If they could improve security in Mogadishu, it would
force Yusuf to relocate the TFG to the capital—where Mogadishu militias
would enjoy veto power over the TFG. In addition, their cantonment of
the militias appeared suspiciously indistinguishable from a forward deploy-
ment of forces in two strategic locations at the outskirts of Mogadishu.
Somali militia leaders have used ‘demobilization’ tactics in the past to
dupe international donors into providing support to the camps (arguing
that the demobilization will fail unless foreign assistance can help pay for
the initiative), freeing up militia leaders from the burden of paying
and feeding their militias until such time as they need to call them into
fighting again.
While the MSSP was a cynical ploy for militia and political leaders, for
the residents of Mogadishu it held the promise of real public order for the
first time in years. Back in Mogadishu, civil society leaders pressed the
Mogadishu Group leaders to implement the MSSG. They made a persua-
sive appeal to the Speaker of the House, who convinced the militia
leaders of the benefits of following through on the MSSP. The result was
an unexpected and in some ways remarkable development in Mogadishu
beginning in May. Several of the militia leaders (including Mohamed
Qanyare Afrah and Musa Sudi) agreed to canton a total of 1,400 militia-
men and 60 battlewagons in two sites outside Mogadishu, at Hilwayne
(northeast of Mogadishu) and Lantabur (west of Mogadishu).
14
Civil
society groups supported the initiative, with businessmen donating over
$300,000 to provide salaries to the militia ($65 per month), while
women’s groups took responsibility for feeding them. Eventually, some of
the business security forces and even a small section of the sharia court
militias joined the camps.
14. Ibid.
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Next came the removal of militia roadblocks in and around Mogadishu.
MPs and civic leaders succeeded in removing 10 of 43 roadblocks in the
city, agreeing to pay the freelance militia operating them $70 per month
in compensation. Militia who refused to abandon their roadblocks in
some instances were confronted by angry crowds who shouted at them
and diverted traffic away to deny them revenue. Finally, the Mogadishu
Group selected a Mogadishu city council, key city administrators and dis-
trict councils for the city’s 16 districts.
The result of the Mogadishu initiative was not only a marked improve-
ment in public security, but more significantly a popular mobilization
referred to by the Somalis as kadoon or uprising.
15
Civic leaders achieved
a mass mobilization which in some ways outmanoeuvred the militia
leaders and temporarily emboldened the media, women’s groups and
others. The kadoon took militia, political and Islamist leaders by surprise
and at least for the short term introduced into Mogadishu politics an
element of ‘people power’ which had largely been absent or muted over
the previous 15 years. Women’s groups were emboldened to surround
militia checkpoints and shout at armed youth to dismantle the roadblocks.
Popular radio talk shows in Mogadishu were jammed with callers voicing
fierce criticism of militia leaders and others who were part of the architec-
ture of insecurity in the capital.
16
Though they agreed on virtually nothing else, the Islamists, militia
leaders and political elite shared a common fear of this grass-roots
response to the MSSP, and worked to ensure it was neutralized. This was
not difficult—the civic movement was spontaneous and unorganized, and
in due course lost momentum. Jihadi elements in the shabaab militia sent
a chill through civil society with the assassination of a leading peace acti-
vist, Abdulkadir Yahya, in July 2005. By July, many of the achievements
of the MSSP had been reversed—militia roadblocks reappeared, and
demobilized militiamen came trickling back into the capital. By the end of
summer, the MSSG had failed. Realistically, odds that a grass-roots move-
ment could reshape Somali politics were always a long-shot. But the
MSSP did serve as a reminder of how disconnected Somalia’s quarrelling
political leadership is from the communities they pretend to represent.
And it sent a clear political message to anyone caring to listen that a pol-
itical movement which could deliver public security would enjoy broad
and even passionate public support. It turned out that only the Islamists
absorbed this lesson.
15. Interview by author, Nairobi, Kenya, July 2005.
16. Interview by author, Nairobi, Kenya, July 2005.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 367

Act III: the Alliance – Islamist war in Mogadishu, February – June 2006
Of all of the armed conflicts to afflict southern Somalia since 2006, the
four-month war between Mogadishu’s Islamists and the US-backed
Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism was the most
unexpected and unnecessary. It also produced political outcomes that
pushed Somalia into an entirely new and generally unwelcome political
trajectory, one which would bring additional armed conflict and heavy
civilian casualties to Mogadishu.
By October 2005, the conditions which prompted a marriage of con-
venience between Mogadishu’s Islamists and its warlords had ended. The
TFG appeared increasingly irrelevant and less and less a threat to the
Mogadishu Group. Most Somali and foreign observers had concluded
that the TFG was another stillborn administration; its opponents needed
only to play for a draw and then run out the clock on the TFG’s five-year
mandate. The TFG’s weakness removed the glue which had held the
Mogadishu Group together; a feud between the Islamists and a major
Hawiye warlord, Musa Sude, over control of a municipal administration
in Mogadishu, created an open rift between the militia leaders and the
Islamists.
17
The United States government had long been concerned that lawless
Somalia might serve as a safe haven for al Qa‘ida operatives, a worry that
grew following the terrorist bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi,
Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in August 1998 and which spiked fol-
lowing the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Without a functioning central govern-
ment to work with in Somalia, the US opted to forge partnerships with
non-state actors on counter-terrorism monitoring and rendition. These
local partners included businessmen and militia leaders, including a few
figures who arguably could be considered warlords. That collection of
local allies proved incapable of reaching into Mogadishu neighbourhoods
where the US believed a small number of ‘high value targets’—three to
five foreign al Qa‘ida operatives implicated in the 1998 Embassy
bombings—had found save haven with hardline Somali Islamists since
2002.
18
Making matters worse, the various American allies were local
rivals and their militias frequently clashed, so there was little collaboration
among them. US agents pressed their local partners to work together.
In February 2006, a group of nine Hawiye clan militia leaders and
businessmen—including figures such as Bashir Raghe, Musa Sude,
Mohamed Qanyare—announced the formation of the Alliance for
17. International Crisis Group, ‘Can the Somalia crisis be contained?’ p. 7.
18. Ibid., p. 11.
AFRICAN AFFAIRS368

Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.
19
The Islamists were
alarmed, viewing the move as a US-backed move targeting them.
Within weeks, armed clashes between Islamist militias and the Alliance
broke out. Ironically, the initial set of armed clashes had nothing to do
with the Alliance – Islamist rivalry, but were rather the result of a pre-
existing feud over property and control over a private seaport between two
businessmen on opposite sides of the emerging divide. What began as a
series of clashes in January and February 2007 between the militias of
Alliance member Bashir Raghe and Islamic Court patron Abukor Omar
Adane quickly turned into a wider war.
20
In the three-month war in
Mogadishu which ensued, the Islamist militias won almost every battle,
and proved to possess a far better trained, equipped, motivated and led
militia than the rag-tag group of militiamen in the Alliance. By early June,
the Islamists had won a stunning victory, taking control of the entire
capital. Most of the Alliance militia surrendered and joined the Islamists,
and their leaders were forced to flee to Ethiopia and Kenya. It was the
first time Mogadishu had fallen under a unified administration in 16
years. For the US government, it was the exact opposite result it had
intended in encouraging the formation of the Alliance.
21
The Islamists, who reorganized themselves as the CIC, quickly extended
their territorial control across most of south-central Somalia. By early
September they controlled land from the border areas with Puntland to the
north to the Kenyan border to the south. The TFG maintained a tenuous
hold on the provisional capital Baidoa and surrounding areas, thanks in
part to Ethiopian military protection, as well as Puntland. But the TFG was
in a severely weakened position, and was no match for the ascendant CIC.
The formation and rapid defeat of the Alliance was not in itself a disas-
ter for Somalia. On the contrary, while it was an embarrassing setback for
the US, the outcome of the war appeared to many to be a welcome devel-
opment which rid Mogadishu of an entire category of spoilers. But the
Alliance– Islamist war of 2006 did have the effect of rapidly accelerating
the rise to national power of the Islamists, a loose coalition which was
unprepared to assume power so suddenly. Some of the mistakes which the
CIC made in the second half of 2006 may have reflected a lack of readi-
ness on the part of the Islamist leadership.
22
Meanwhile, the government
19. The alliance expanded to eleven members shortly after its announcement, drawing in
Mohamed Dhere and Abdi Hassan Awale ‘Qaybdiid.’
20. Cedric Barnes and Harum Hassan, ‘The Rise and Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts,’
Chatham House Africa Program, Briefing Paper 07/02 (April 2007), p. 4; and International
Crisis Group, ‘Can the Somalia Crisis Be Contained?’ p. 12.
21. Chris Tomlinson, ‘Somalia’s Islamic Extremists Set U.S. Back,’ Associated Press
(6 June 2006) [accessed via Lexis-Nexis, April 27 2007].
22. Interview by author, Washington DC, January 2007.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 369

of Ethiopia was alarmed at the rapid rise of the Islamists. The CIC leader-
ship included some hardline elements believed to be linked to a spate of
terrorist attacks inside Ethiopia in the mid-1990s, and the CIC drew
heavily on support from a collection of Hawiye sub-clans and political
figures with strongly anti-Ethiopian views.
23
The rise of the CIC made a
conflict with Ethiopia likely, though not inevitable. It would take a series
of additional political misjudgements to ensure that a war pitting Ethiopia
and the CIC would take place.
Act IV: the radicalization of the CIC
In its first few months in power, the CIC enjoyed success after success.
It rapidly expanded control over most of south-central Somalia; emerged
as the strongest political and militia force in the country; earned the broad
and sometimes passionate support of Somalis both in country and in the
large Somali diaspora; accrued money and weapons; provided strong and
effective administration over Mogadishu; and won over most of the inter-
national community, which pressed the TFG to engage in dialogue with
the CIC in order to form a government of national unity. Political entities
which remained opposed to the CIC—the TFG, Puntland and Somaliland—
were demoralized. Throughout Somalia, there was a widespread sense of
inevitability about Islamist ascendance and expansion across the rest of
the country.
In short, the CIC appeared to have everything going for it, and
appeared to be the springboard to a new era of state revival and public
order for Somalia. Only two enemies stood between the CIC and its con-
solidation of power over all of Somalia. The external spoiler was neigh-
bouring Ethiopia; the enemy within was the CIC’s radical wing. Had the
CIC leadership succeeded in containing the movement’s hardliners and
jihadists, it might have assuaged Ethiopia and, possibly with American
assistance, come to a modus vivendi with its neighbour. In what is arguably
the most disappointing of Somalia’s many missed opportunities and fail-
ures of leadership in 2006, moderate Islamists were unable to gain control
over the hardliners, who pushed the CIC into increasingly radicalized pos-
itions, culminating in a disastrous confrontation with Ethiopia.
23. The extent to which the Somali Islamists in Al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya (AIAI)—the group
responsible for several bombings and assassination attempts in Ethiopia in 1994–1995—
were actually involved in those attacks is not clear. Though the governments of Ethiopia
and the US have tended to treat AIAI as a monolithic Islamist group (the US has
designated AIAI as a terrorist group)—recently declassified al Qa‘ida documents provide
evidence that AIAI was split in the early 1990s over the use of armed violence, with the
Ethiopian Somali AIAI cell committed to jihadi tactics, while the Somali AIAI leader
Hassan Dahir Aweys argued that ‘the time is not right to start conducting jihad.’ Quoted in
‘Al Qa‘ida’s (mis)Adventures in the Horn of Afr ica,’ Harmony Project (Combating Terrorism
Center, West Point, NY, May 2007), http://www.ctc.usma.edu/aqII.asp.
AFRICAN AFFAIRS370

A review of the CIC’s accomplishments in its six months in power is
essential in order to fully appreciate the tragedy of the CIC’s collapse in
the face of a December 2006 Ethiopian offensive. The CIC’s greatest
success in 2006 was not its impressive military victory over the Alliance in
Mogadishu, but rather the widespread public support it enjoyed as an
administration. No other Somali faction or coalition had come close to
mobilizing and uniting so many Somalis since 1990. This support was
strongest in Mogadishu and within the Hawiye clan (its core source of
support), but clearly reached across a broad spectrum of Somali society,
including portions of the Somaliland population. The CIC generated this
public support in several ways. First, many Somalis embraced the Courts
for having rid Mogadishu of warlords and criminal militia gangs, and for
restoring a much greater level of law and order to the city than it had seen
in 15 years. This ‘performance legitimacy’ stood in stark contract to the
woeful governance record of most other regional and factional adminis-
trations in Somalia—including the TFG. For many Somalis, the Courts
appeared to be the long-sought solution to years of state collapse, reason
enough to support the Islamists. This factor appears to have been
especially important among the large Somali diaspora, most of which was
fiercely supportive of the CIC.
The CIC’s popularity was due to other factors as well. For some
Somalis, the appeal to Islamism was an attractive alternative to clannism.
The CIC’s conflation of Islamist rhetoric with pan-Somali nationalism and
anti-Ethiopianism added to its appeal. Somalis from the Haber Gedir clan
were especially supportive of the CIC as a vehicle which advanced the
clan’s political interests, albeit under the guise of Islamism. The CIC’s
dramatic success as a military and political movement also attracted many
supporters seeking to ensure that they were on the winning side.
The ability of the CIC to present itself as a ‘big tent’ movement encom-
passing a range of moderate and hardliner Islamists also helped it win
supporters, especially among more secular Somalis who could point to
moderate leaders like CIC Executive Committee Chairman Sheikh Sharif
Sheikh Ahmed to justify support for a movement that otherwise might
have provoked unease. The CIC was unquestionably a very broad,
loose coalition in that regard, ranging from traditional sufi figures like
Sheikh Sharif to hardline salafists
24
like Aweys to committed jihadists in
the shabaab militia.
25
24. A term connoting identification with the Wahhabi branch of Islam.
25. A more detailed account of the small but dangerous jihadi wing of the Islamist
movement in Somalia is provided in International Crisis Group, ‘Counter-terrorism in
Somalia: losing hearts and minds?’ pp. 5 –7.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 371

The CIC’s capacity to appeal to Somalis on so many different, and in
some ways contradictory, levels allowed it to tap into strong emotions
among Somalis at home and abroad. While a portion of Somalis rejected
or had reservations about the Courts, most Somalis were supportive of
the CIC and were either unwilling or unable to entertain criticisms of the
Courts. That popular support was broad but not deep, however. Lurking
beneath the public support for the Courts was a bundle of anxieties, mis-
trust, latent rivalries, clan divisions and alliances of expediency which
quickly resurfaced the moment the Courts suffered losses against the
Ethiopians in December 2006.
Not all of the Courts’ success in concentrating power was positive.
While much of the CIC’s public support was earned by its rhetorical
appeal and provision of public order in Mogadishu, it also consolidated
power by intimidating potential critics and working to eliminate any
potential platform that an opposition movement could use against it. This
revealed in the movement a worrisome authoritarian tendency, notwith-
standing its many moderate public statements about promoting peace and
democracy. Clan militias were disarmed and brought under the control of
the Courts and autonomous regional authorities such as Sheikh
Indha’adde’s fiefdom in Lower Shabelle were brought under direct CIC
control (when another warlord, Barre Hirale of the Jubba Valley Alliance,
tried to broker a separate peace with the CIC his forces were attacked and
pushed out of Kismayo). Businessmen were requested to turn over their
battlewagons; the media was pressured not to present stories which could
‘create confusion’ in the public; and edicts were passed forbidding
unauthorized gatherings at which political matters were discussed. The
violent history of the shabaab militia—the jihadist unit within the CIC
responsible for dozens of political assassinations in Mogadishu since
2004—also had a chilling effect on critics and opponents of the CIC in
Mogadishu. Though presenting itself to the outside world as a movement
committed to democracy and the will of the people, some of the CIC’s
actions reflected those of an authoritarian movement seeking to mono-
polize military and political power. Even more disconcerting was the fact
that this concentration of power was accruing to the hardliners within the
movement, not the moderates. Most of the weaponry and financial
support flowing to the courts were controlled by Hassan Dahir Aweys.
One of the most effective ways the Courts’ hardliners consolidated
power was by failing to institutionalize authority within the CIC. When
the Courts first took control of Mogadishu in June 2006, they appeared
intent on creating a routinized, representative decision-making body. An
initial reorganization in the summer of 2006 created an executive commit-
tee, comprising moderate Chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and a
cabinet of about 10 members; and a shura or consultative committee,
AFRICAN AFFAIRS372

headed by Aweys, to be composed of 91 members drawn from a dozen
Islamist constituencies, militias and business groups. The main opera-
tional branch of the CIC continued to be the independent sharia courts,
which expanded in number from 11 to over 30, and which provided basic
policing and judicial services to towns and neighbourhoods. The most
powerful wing of the CIC was the military, which was believed to be
under the control of Aweys—though some questions existed as to whether
he fully controlled the radical shabaab militia.
The creation of the executive and shura committees was not, however,
followed by a complete slate of appointments to the shura, so that the
shura never operated as an institutionalized legislative and guardianship
body. This allowed Aweys to operate with an unfettered hand and stream-
lined decision-making among top figures in the movement, but at a cost
of eroding some of the legitimacy and representativeness of the CIC.
26
The CIC appeared on paper to be a structured government, but consisted
of a small collection of Islamist leaders whose decisions may or may not
have reflected a broader consensus within the movement.
There is some debate over why the CIC delayed appointing individuals
to the shura; several explanations seem plausible. Some local observers
suggest that radical elements in the movement, concentrated in the
shabaab militia, were resistant, as a fully functional shura was likely to con-
strain the powerful shabaab’s autonomy. The negotiated formula for seat
allocation in the shura allocated only nine of the 91 seats to the shabaab.
Observers are divided in their views over whether Aweys shared the
shabaab’s interests in delaying institutionalizing decision-making in the
shura or actually opposed them. Another explanation for the delay is that
the appointment of specific individuals to the shura would be inherently
divisive and a politically dangerous move at a moment requiring
maximum unity. Appointments to the shura would have forced the CIC to
leave out key personalities who would have felt marginalized and might
have left the movement. It would also have forced the CIC’s hand with
regard to the potentially explosive issue of clan representation within the
movement. Postponing appointments to the shura allowed the CIC to
temporarily evade these difficult and potentially divisive political issues. In
that sense, the threat of war with Ethiopia was politically useful to Aweys
in that it allowed him to rally support to the CIC cause and to put off
looming, hard political dilemmas faced by the movement.
The lack of institutionalization of authority in the CIC was a major
challenge for external actors. It produced a situation in which different
26. Matt Bryden, ‘Profile of the Council of Somali Islamic Courts,’ paper presented at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC (24 October 2006), p. 8.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 373

leaders and groups within the CIC made very different statements (often
reflecting the ‘moderate versus hardliner’ divisions in the movement); in
the absence of any formalization of authority it was difficult to discern
which statements constituted actual CIC policy and which were merely
the personal views of an individual. To some extent, the movement actu-
ally derived benefits from its ability to intersperse hardline statements and
actions with moderate reassurances, thereby keeping the external commu-
nity divided and confused about its intentions.
Clan dynamics within the CIC were a critical dimension to the broader
political crisis in Somalia. Like previous Islamist movements in Somalia,
the CIC was very much national and cross-clan in scope. The CIC could
point to a number of leaders in its executive committee and its military
from the Rahanweyn, Isaaq and Darood clan families, and its Islamist
network clearly extended into Puntland, Somaliland, eastern Ethiopia and
northern Kenya, as well as throughout the Somali diaspora. Having said
that, it is also the case that the CIC’s main support base was unquestion-
ably the Hawiye clan-family. The Hawiye, one of Somalia’s four major
clan-families (along with the Darood, Digil-Rahanweyn and Dir) consti-
tute roughly 20–25 percent of the total population of ethnic Somalis in
the eastern Horn of Africa, and since 1991 have emerged as the most
powerful clan in Somalia. The clan controls Mogadishu, and some of its
sub-clans (mainly the Haber Gedir Ayr) have militarily occupied and
settled ( probably permanently) in valuable riverine territory southward in
the Lower Shabelle and Lower and Middle Jubba regions. Somalia’s
increasingly powerful and wealthy business community is dominated by
Hawiye (especially the Haber Gedir Ayr subclan), and the Hawiye possess
the largest militias in the country. For years, the clan’s power was diluted
by chronic internal fights for control of political and economic privileges
in Mogadishu, including the devastating 1992 war between the factions of
General Aideed and Ali Mahdi which destroyed much of Mogadishu. The
February – June 2006 war between the Islamists and the ARPCT was the
latest of a long series of intra-Hawiye struggles. The decisive victory by
the Islamists in Mogadishu in 2006 gave the Hawiye a more or less united
political front, albeit one taking on an Islamist, not clannish, orientation.
Some detractors of the CIC argued that the movement was simply a
Hawiye front; supporters of the CIC argued vigorously that the Islamist
movement transcended clannism. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Specifically, the CIC was a movement that drew mainly on the Hawiye
(especially but not exclusively Haber Gedir Ayr) for its financial support,
its leadership and its militia firepower, but which unquestionably pos-
sessed a national network transcending clan. Moreover, some of its top
leadership, including Aweys, attempted to broaden the CIC into a truly
pan-Somali movement, though that effort faced resistance from Hawiye
AFRICAN AFFAIRS374

supporters who felt they shouldered the costs of the CIC’s victories and
hence should enjoy the lion’s share of the spoils. The challenge for Aweys
and others trying to remake the CIC into a truly pan-Somali movement
was that they risked alienating the core (Hawiye) power base upon which
the CIC’s success was built.
A review of the composition of the CIC executive committee and shura
prior to its loss to Ethiopian forces in December 2006 underscores the
point about Hawiye dominance of the movement. Of the nine known
executive committee members as of August 2006, at least six were
Hawiye. All four of the appointees named to lead the shura, including
Hassan Dahir Aweys, were Hawiye. Though only 18 of the 91-man shura
were named, the formula for allocating seats by organization appeared to
provide only 20 percent of the seats to non-Hawiye clans.
27
For many
Somalis accustomed to doing the ‘clan math’ in assessing factions and
transitional governments, this was all the evidence they needed to con-
clude that the CIC was just an Islamist cover for a Hawiye (or, Hawiye/
Haber Gedir Ayr) movement to counter the Darood/Mijerteen-
dominated TFG.
But the CIC’s clan dynamics were a bit more complicated than that.
First, the clan-based sharia courts (almost all Hawiye in identity) which
served as the main governance arm of the CIC were gradually shifting
towards a more neighbourhood-based, rather than lineage based, jurisdic-
tion. Had war not led to the dissolution of the sharia courts, this would
have constituted an important evolution in the CIC’s policing and judicial
function, potentially allowing it to evolve into an administration which
could have provided full and equal (for males, not females) protection
before the law to all clans, not just the Hawiye clan. With the absence
of such an evolution, the movement would have remained susceptible
to charges that it was only reinforcing a Hawiye ‘victor’s peace’
over Mogadishu, in which non-Hawiye could reside only as second class
citizens.
Second, the real power within the CIC—the shabaab militia—was
drawn from a wide range of clans, and though its top leadership was
Haber Gedir Ayr, it was arguably the most cosmopolitan of the various
wings of the CIC. The ‘cosmopolitan versus clannist’ power struggle
within the CIC was one of several fault-lines in the movement, and was
arguably more important in the long term than the somewhat overstated
‘hardliner versus moderate’ cleavages. For the Hawiye businesspeople
whose support to the CIC was critical in its success and who expected a
27. These calculations are derived from Andre Le Sage, ‘Somali Council of Islamic Courts
Update’ (3 August 2006) (unpublished paper).
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 375

victor’s share of power and contracts, the prospect of having created a
force they could no longer control, with interests at variance with their
own, was an unwelcome scenario.
From June to December 2006, the main international debate over the
CIC revolved around whether the movement was led by moderates or
driven by radicals. This debate was embodied in the CIC leadership itself,
an uneasy partnership of Sheikh Sharif (the ‘moderate’) and Hassan
Dahir Aweys (the ‘hardliner’). A more subtle variation on this theme
recognized the moderate– hardliner split within the CIC and debated
instead whether moderates could successfully marginalize hardliners, and
what, if anything, the international community could do to promote that
outcome. An even more subtle variation on the debate is whether certain
individuals—particularly Aweys—had subtly shifted positions and could
be considered a more centrist force trying to control and moderate the
jihadist radicals in the shabaab. ‘[M]any Court supporters’, notes Matt
Bryden, ‘assert that Aweys has abandoned his jihadist agenda and is now a
political moderate’.
28
The hope in international diplomatic circles was that the moderate wing
of the Islamists could be brought into dialogue with the TFG with the
aim of negotiating a more inclusive TFG cabinet. Several rounds of talks
were attempted in Khartoum, but went nowhere. The TFG leadership
was reluctant to negotiate from a position of weakness, fearing they would
have to give up valuable posts in order to convince the Islamists to join
the government. Prime Minister Ghedi was especially vulnerable, as it
was believed nothing less than the Prime Minster’s post would satisfy the
CIC. The TFG’s patron Ethiopia was equally resistant to a serious power-
sharing accord in the TFG, fearing the TFG would then be used as a
Trojan horse—and a sovereign one at that—for an Islamist take-over of
the government. For their part, many of the Islamists, especially the hard-
liners, saw little value in negotiating to share power with a government it
viewed as an illegitimate puppet of Ethiopia, and so weak that it would
soon collapse. With the prospect of a complete victory seemingly so near,
why negotiate at all? To ensure that talks went nowhere, hardliners made
provocative moves to undercut talks in Khartoum that were attended, at
any rate, mainly by the moderate Islamists.
Meanwhile, signs were evident as early as July that hardliners in the
CIC were driving policy and creating facts on the ground on four critical
policy issues—negotiations with the TFG (noted above), social policies,
the issue of safe haven of al Qa‘ida operatives in Mogadishu and foreign
policy orientation. Of the four, the CIC’s imposition of harsh sharia law
28. Bryden, ‘Profile,’ p. 6.
AFRICAN AFFAIRS376

received the most media attention, though it was in fact the least conse-
quential. What sealed the CIC’s fate were its foreign policies, which
reflected a combination of serious miscalculation and recklessness.
The draconian salafist social policies imposed in some neighbourhoods
by local clerics were more a reflection of the CIC’s lack of organizational
capacity than a reflection of the actual policy leanings of its leadership.
Zealous local clerics and morality police essentially began to take the law
into their own hands, and where those Islamists were most extreme, the
results were at times alarming. This forced CIC advocates into the
uncomfortable position of arguing that the policies were not representative
of the CIC as a whole, an implicit admission that the CIC exercised less
control over local courts than they claimed. The policies included closure
of cinemas, the outlawing of the popular mild stimulant qaat, and the
banning of mixed sex social gatherings. There was not, however, wide-
spread recourse to the harshest sharia punishments, as was witnessed in
Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power in Kabul in 1998. While
some of the restrictions came across as merely silly (such as the banning
of films of World Cup soccer) or a nuisance, others—such as the sharp
restrictions imposed on females in policy fora—were more worrisome.
For the US government, the pivotal issue was the alleged safe haven in
Mogadishu for a small number of foreign al Qa‘ida suspects. In the after-
math of the debacle with the Alliance in the first half of 2006, the
Department of State began to assert a more robust role in US foreign
policy in Somalia, away from the Central Intelligence Agency. State
department officials—in particular Assistant Secretary for African Affairs
Jendayi Frazer—made Somalia a top priority, pressed for a diplomatic sol-
ution to the TFG–CIC stand-off, and sought to forge working relations
with moderate Islamists. But while peacebuilding and statebuilding took
on a higher visibility in American foreign policy towards Somalia,
counter-terrorism still dominated US concerns. US officials repeatedly
pressed the CIC leadership over the issue of al Qa‘ida figures enjoying
safe haven in Mogadishu; CIC leaders repeatedly dismissed those con-
cerns. American officials were adamant that they possessed strong intelli-
gence that a small number of al Qa‘ida suspects from the 1998 Embassy
bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were under the protection of
some hardliners in the shabaab militia, possibly with the complicity of
Aweys himself. The unwillingness of the CIC leadership to take these
concerns seriously—the tone used by Aweys in particular was consistently
dismissive, even derisive—was a serious misreading of the current
American administration. Whatever benefits accrued to shabaab leaders
allegedly housing the foreign al Qa‘ida figures were more than offset by
the cost of antagonizing a superpower. Even if, as some Somalis still
insist, there was never any safe haven provided to foreign al Qa‘ida
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 377

operatives in Mogadishu, and US intelligence was simply wrong, leader-
ship with a better honed sense of survival skills would have gone out of its
way to reassure the US and provide whatever information it could.
By stonewalling the US on the issue of safe haven for al Qa‘ida, the
CIC undercut State Department efforts to promote dialogue and restrain
Ethiopia. By late 2006, US officials had ominously shifted tone on
Somalia; in a controversial press conference on 14 December, Assistant
Secretary Frazer characterized the leadership of CIC as ‘extremists to the
core’ and ‘controlled by al Qa‘ida cell individuals, East Africa al Qa‘ida
cell individuals’.
29
That policy shift away from earlier emphasis on the
need to engage moderates in the CIC and promote dialogue with the
TFG, constituted what some observers described as an American ‘green
light’ for Ethiopia to attack. The US also pushed through a UN Security
Council Resolution lifting the UN arms embargo on Somalia, a move
which had the net effect of protecting the government of Ethiopia from
charges it was violating the embargo as its forces crossed into Somalia.
30
Some media analysts subsequently misread the Ethiopian offensive as
reflecting the US ‘subcontracting’ of the war on terror to a regional ally,
a misperception fuelled in part by US defense officials presenting the
Ethiopian offensive as part of a counter-terrorism ‘success story’ involving
close US – Ethiopian cooperation.
31
While the US and Ethiopian mili-
taries and intelligence agencies unquestionably collaborated closely,
Ethiopia’s offensive would likely have occurred with or without US tacit
approval.
Finally, the hardliners in the CIC embarked on an increasingly strident
and systematic campaign seemingly designed to provoke tensions with
Ethiopia. This included repeated calls for jihad against Ethiopia; irreden-
tist claims on Somali-inhabited territory of Ethiopia; appeals to the
people of Ethiopia to rise up against the Meles government; the forging of
close links (including receipt of arms and military advisors) with Eritrea,
Ethiopia’s regional enemy; and the provision of logistical support and
bases to two armed insurgencies opposing the Ethiopian government, the
Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front. CIC
29. Niall Ferguson, ‘Promoting disorder in Somalia,’ Los Angeles Times (8 January 2007);
Jonathan Landey and Shashank Bengali, ‘US Policy in the Horn may aid al-Qaida, experts
warn,’ McClatchy Newspapers (22 December 2006) [accessed via Lexis-Nexis, 27 April
2007]. In January, Frazer backed away from this position, returning to her earlier position
that moderate Islamists—those renouncing armed violence, terrorism and support to
al Qa‘ida—should be part of the political process.
30. ‘Lifting of Arms Embargo Dangerous, UIC Says,’ Integrated Regional Information
Network (IRIN) (7 December 2006), http://www.irinnews.org/Africa-Country.aspx?
Country=SO [accessed 27 April 2007].
31. Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzeti, ‘US used base in Ethiopia to hunt al Qaeda,’
New York Times (22 February 2007).
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advocates argue that the calls for jihad constituted a legitimate form of
‘defensive jihad,’ as Ethiopian forces were stationed on Somali territory.
This claim was partially undercut because the Ethiopian ‘advisors’ were
present on Somali soil at the invitation of the TFG; CIC advocates coun-
tered that the TFG was illegitimate. Even if one accepts the CIC’s posi-
tion on the TFG, however, the premise of its call for jihad—that Ethiopia
is violating Somali sovereignty by placing its troops inside Somalia—was
undermined by the CIC’s own irredentist claims on Ethiopian territory.
On the issue of sovereignty, the CIC was trying to have its cake and eat it
too.
Even had the CIC gone out of its way to reassure Ethiopia that it posed
no threat, the Meles government might have sought to undermine and
attack the Islamists anyway. The Somali people will never know, because
the CIC leadership made no effort to embrace a policy of de
´tente and
reassurance of Ethiopia, which under the circumstances would have been
the prudent and realistic policy choice.
What remains unclear is whether the CIC hardliners such as Aweys
actually sought a war with Ethiopia, or only desired to create the threat of
a war which they believed would never materialize. Both interpretations
are plausible. The school of thought which believes Aweys and his suppor-
ters only wanted the threat of war argue that the entire call for jihad was
for domestic consumption. By fuelling anti-Ethiopian sentiment and
mobilizing for war against a powerful neighbour, the hardliners succeeded
in rallying support from a wide array of Somali society, silencing critics
and marginalizing moderates. The strategy of conflating Somali national-
ism and anti-Ethiopianism with Islamism was, in the short term, very suc-
cessful in mobilizing support. The aim of the hardliners tactic, in short,
was to consolidate power domestically, not start an actual war. There were
reasons to believe that Ethiopia would not risk attacking. According to
this interpretation, the hardline Islamists believed Ethiopia feared a quag-
mire in Somalia and an uprising at home if it dared attack the CIC. If this
was the political calculation of the CIC leaders, they were not alone.
Many if not most regional analysts were convinced both sides were bluff-
ing.
32
The risks of war were too high for both, it was believed. The hunch
that both Ethiopia and the CIC were reluctant to risk all out war was
reinforced in October and November, when the two sides engaged in a
series of limited forays and clashes that did not escalate into wider war.
The prospect of a protracted stand-off interspersed with minor clashes
was not an ideal outcome for either the Islamists or Ethiopia, but concei-
vably could have been a ‘good enough’ outcome for both. For the CIC, it
32. Personal communications, November– December 2006.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 379

could afford to ‘play for a draw’, working simply to ensure that the TFG
never became operational. For Ethiopia, a protracted stand-off would at
least have prevented the CIC from consolidating control over south-
central Somalia and perhaps into Puntland as well. Both sides had
reasons to opt for risk-averse choices, and both had some reason to
believe that time was on their side.
The alternative explanation holds that the hardliners in the CIC actu-
ally sought war with Ethiopia. On the surface this would appear to be a
gross miscalculation, as Ethiopia possesses one of sub-Saharan Africa’s
largest and most seasoned armies, and enjoys support from the US. But
the hardliners may have been overconfident in their own war-fighting
prowess in the aftermath of their impressive victory over the Alliance, and
may have shared with their external patron Eritrea a belief that Ethiopia is
afflicted by deep, serious internal fault-lines and dissent, and that if pro-
voked into war is likely to collapse from within. Though this belief that
Ethiopia is vulnerable to internal break-up might seem delusional, some
leading experts on Ethiopia have expressed similar fears.
Whether the CIC hardliners wanted a war with Ethiopia or only the
threat of war, their increasingly radical positions helped to make armed
conflict inevitable. That war not only spelled the end of the CIC but led
to an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu and the subsequent descent of
the capital into some of the worst fighting, displacement and human suf-
fering the capital had experienced in 15 years. For a movement that had
prided itself on the safety and public order it had briefly provided the
citizens of Mogadishu, this had to constitute a nightmarish outcome for
all but the most hardened jihadists.
Act V: the Ethiopian occupation and the Mogadishu ‘complex insurgency’
The last week of 2006 produced some of the most stunning and unex-
pected developments in Somalia’s 56-year history as an independent state,
propelling southern Somalia onto an entirely new and ominous trajectory.
On 24 December, after months of military build up and a series of
brief skirmishes, a full scale battle erupted between the Ethiopian military
and the CIC forces. Though the CIC had pledged to evict Ethiopian
forces from Somali territory, it was the Ethiopian military which launched
the offensive, attacking CIC positions simultaneously in Central Somalia
(Galgaduud and Muduq Regions), at Beled Weyn (Hiran Region) and in
Bay Region near Baidoa. Inexplicably, the CIC military commanders
had deployed forces in open countryside, giving the Ethiopian military a
decisive advantage. The result was a rout in which the Islamists lost an
estimated 1000 militiamen.
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The CIC forces retreated to Mogadishu, where, it was universally
expected, they would fight the war on their terms—as an asymmetrical,
urban guerilla war which would prove unwinnable for the Ethiopian forces.
Observers were not convinced that Ethiopia would even attempt to take
Mogadishu, anticipating instead that it would be content to bottle the CIC
up in the capital. Ethiopia was never put in a position to make that decision.
Instead, in another shocking decision, the CIC leadership declared the dis-
solution of the CIC, returning most of its weapons and militia units to clan
authorities and fleeing south towards the port city of Kismayo, where they
vowed to take a stand against advancing Ethiopian and TFG forces. The
residents of Kismayo refused to allow them to use the city as a battleground.
The residual Islamist forces—now composed of an admixture of CIC
leaders, shabaab units, Somali diaspora members, and a small number of
foreigners who had joined the CIC as mujahideen—appeared more inter-
ested in trying to cross the Kenyan border or disappearing into the dense
bush of the coastal border areas with Kenya than in putting up a serious
fight. After losing one clash with advancing Ethiopian forces in the Jubba
river valley, the Islamists scattered towards the Kenyan border.
This sudden debacle for the Islamists provided a target of opportunity
for the US military, which had been providing unspecified support to the
Ethiopian forces. The US believed it had ‘actionable intelligence’ that
several ‘high value targets’—namely, the foreign al Qa‘ida operatives it
had long sought in Mogadishu—were present in two convoys of vehicles
near the Kenyan border. This prompted the next controversial and unex-
pected decision, when the US military command approved two aerial
attacks on the suspected convoys. The attack, which killed eight shabaab
militia but no foreign al Qa‘ida operatives, tethered the US directly to the
Ethiopian offensive in the eyes of Somalis.
33
The Kenyan government, meanwhile, sealed its border, refusing to
allow any traffic in either direction. Some of the Islamists sought to cross
nonetheless, and were arrested along with hundreds of refugees seeking
shelter in Kenya. In yet another controversial move, Kenyan authorities
took part in a secret detention and rendition operation with Ethiopian
and US officials in which at least 85 people were returned to the TFG’s
custody in Somalia, who turned them over to Ethiopian authorities.
34
33. The figures of eight killed, and the acknowledgement that no al Qa‘ida figures were
among the dead, was confirmed by US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies conference ‘Somalia’s Future: Options
for Diplomacy, Assistance and Peace Operations,’ Washington DC, 17 January 2007.
34. Human Rights Watch, ‘People fleeing Somalia war secretly detained,’ (New York, 30
March 2007), http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/03/30/kenya15624.htm [accessed 27 April
2007]; Amnesty International, Kenya: Denied refuge, AI AFR 32.002.2007 (Amnesty
International, London, 2 May 2007).
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 381

The Kenyan border closure had even more immediate humanitarian
implications, stranding thousands of Somali refugees on the Somali side
of the border and hindering the flow of cross-border humanitarian relief.
Back in Mogadishu, the final episode in a week of stunning develop-
ments occurred when Ethiopian forces rolled into the capital and occu-
pied the city uncontested. Residents were shocked and sullen, but put up
no resistance. Scenes of Ethiopian tanks patrolling the streets of
Mogadishu would have been unthinkable only weeks earlier. On the coat-
tails of the Ethiopian forces rode the TFG, which assumed control over
key government buildings under heavy Ethiopian protection.
Why the CIC leadership dissolved itself and fled the city instead of
putting up a fight in Mogadishu, where it stood excellent chances of
bogging the Ethiopians down in an urban guerilla war, remains the single
most important puzzle in this chapter of the Somali crisis. At present, we
have only fragmentary evidence. For now, the most persuasive explanation
is that the CIC appears to have been forced to disband itself in the face of
strong pushback from the CIC’s moderate wing, clan leaders and business
leaders in Mogadishu, all of whom were furious that the hardliners had
pushed them into a costly war with Ethiopia. According to this interpret-
ation, the mobilization for war with Ethiopia had created a deep rift
within the CIC in the weeks and months prior to the actual clashes. The
extent of the rift was evident in the departure of a number of top CIC
figures such as Sheikh Indha’adde (the CIC Chief of Security) who left
the country entirely prior to the outbreak of fighting—in Indha’adde’s
case, to make the hajj to Mecca. In the months leading up to the war,
organized opposition to the hardliners was difficult and dangerous,
muting potential internal critics. This was evident in last minute talks
between the CIC and the government of Ethiopia, in which a deal
which the moderates were eager to accept was scuttled by the hardliners.
When the Ethiopian offensive resulted in a bloodbath for the Islamists,
however, the hardliners were vulnerable, and internal opponents wasted
no time. According to some Somali sources, the CIC leaders had no
choice but to dissolve the movement and return weapons and militia to
clan leaders—their decision was made for them by clan and business
leaders.
35
Some argue further that the businessmen in particular were
adamantly opposed to a prolonged urban insurgency against the
Ethiopian military, which would risk damaging the many millions of
dollars of fixed investment in real estate and business. In this sense,
Mogadishu of 2006 was a very different context than Mogadishu of 1993,
when the city was largely rubble and there was little of value to protect
35. Interviews by author, by phone, Mogadishu, January 2007.
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from warfare. But if some in the business community were hoping to
avoid an urban insurgency against Ethiopia, their hopes were misplaced.
They ended up exchanging an Islamist-led insurgency for a clan-based
resistance, but with equally destructive results for the city.
There are additional explanations for the CIC’s dissolution which may
also have merit. One stresses the fact that in the immediate aftermath of
the devastating losses to the Ethiopians the CIC leaders lost the support
and confidence of many of the fighters, and thus had little choice but to
disband. The Los Angeles Times reported from Mogadishu the sense of
betrayal and disappointment on the part of deserting fighters who had
shed their uniforms and shaved their beards. ‘I joined them because
I thought they wanted to install an Islamic government in Somalia,’ one
ex-soldier explained, ‘but they had different ambitions. They wanted to
fight against Ethiopia and get back Somalian territory. They misled me.’
36
The CIC leadership had a different explanation, arguing they disbanded
the organization in order to protect Mogadishu from a destructive war
with Ethiopia.
Faced with a radically new political dispensation in Somalia, inter-
national diplomats, led by the United States, proclaimed that the
Ethiopian victory and CIC defeat created a unique ‘window of opportu-
nity’ to promote reconciliation and revive a functioning central govern-
ment in Somalia. ‘The Somali people ... have a historic opportunity to
begin to move beyond two decades of warlordism, extreme violence and
humanitarian suffering,’ declared US Secretary of State, Condoleeza
Rice.
37
Norway’s Foreign Minister agreed, claiming that ‘it is a window of
opportunity to take the process of national reconciliation in Somalia
forward’.
38
In reality this was at best a long-shot; Somalia was more
deeply polarized than ever. Indeed, prospects for peace and a revived
central government were more elusive in the aftermath of the Ethiopian
offensive than at any time in 2006.
For the TFG to be rendered a viable government, three conditions had
to be met—security, reconciliation and capacity. These become the pillars
of US-led policy in the first months of 2007. The first, security, was a par-
ticular concern given Ethiopia’s stated intent to withdraw its force speedily
from Mogadishu. The entire international community concurred that
Ethiopian forces were a lightning rod for armed insurgency and needed to
be withdrawn as quickly as possible, lest Ethiopia get bogged down in
36. Edmund Sanders and Abukar Abadri, ‘Somalian troops take their capital,’ Los Angeles
Times (29 December 2006).
37. Niall Ferguson, ‘Promoting disorder in Somalia,’ Los Angeles Times (8 January 2007).
38. ‘EU Nations, Norway call on Somali government, Islamic militants to start peace
talks,’ Associated Press (3 January 2007).
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 383

Mogadishu. But it was clear that the TFG was unable to protect itself in
a largely hostile city, and would collapse without an alternative temporary
source of protection. To that end, international diplomats pressed for the
deployment of an African Union peacekeeping force, dubbed the African
Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). A force of 8,000 peacekeeepers
was proposed and authorized by the African Union, but only Uganda was
willing to deploy a contingent (this totalled 1,400 soldiers). As the secur-
ity situation in Mogadishu rapidly deteriorated, other African govern-
ments were increasingly unwilling to send troops. The Ugandan forces
were in no position to provide adequate security for the TFG and key
installations in the capital. As some observers have pointed out, even a
full deployment of 8,000 AMISOM troops would not be able to contain
the violence in Mogadishu.
39
As a result Ethiopian forces have stayed
longer in Mogadishu than the Meles government would have wanted, but
their presence fans the flames of the insurgency and is a decidedly mixed
blessing for the TFG. If and when the Ethiopian forces withdraw, the
TFG will be left very vulnerable. They may not be able to remain in
the capital. An April 2007 report of the UN Secretary-General to the
Security Council on Somalia proposed a possible UN peacekeeping force
to supersede the AMISOM force, but this will not be easy to muster given
the UN’s disastrous history with peacekeeping in Somalia in 1993–
1995.
40
Security would be less of a problem if the TFG were more widely
accepted by the Mogadishu population; hence a second pillar of diplo-
matic efforts in early 2007 was promotion of political dialogue with the
aim of making the TFG a more inclusive government. The TFG at first
resisted, preferring instead to pursue a victor’s peace against its rivals.
Under growing external pressure, the TFG leadership relented and
announced plans for a 3,000 person, clan-based reconciliation process in
Mogadishu for April 2007. The spiralling violence in Mogadishu elimi-
nated any chance at dialogue, and the reconciliation conference had to be
repeatedly postponed. All sides in the conflict have taken positions vir-
tually ensuring that no progress will be made in the peace talks. The TFG
leaders rejected any dialogue with Islamists, labelling them all extremists
and made a series of moves designed to purge the TFG of opposition
voices rather than make the government more inclusive. It has also
insisted that the talks focus on a ‘social peace’ between clans rather than a
39. David Shinn, ‘Remarks by Dr. David Shinn to the Somali Conference in Columbus
Ohio,’ (21 April 2007). Reprinted in AllAfrica.com, http://allafrica.com/stories/
200704280093.html [accessed 27 April 2007].
40. United Nations Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in
Somalia pursuant to paragraphs 3 and 9 of Security Council Resolution 1744 (2007)’ S/
2007/204 (13 April 2007) para 53–65.
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political peace engaging the TFG and its opponents. The Mogadishu
opposition, meanwhile, refused to engage in talks until Ethiopian forces
left the country. By June 2007, it was difficult to imagine a scenario in
which the TFG and its Mogadishu opposition would engage in serious
dialogue, despite concerted efforts by international diplomats to move the
talks forward.
Finally, international diplomats pushed an initiative to improve the
TFG’s capacity to govern, which, after two and a half years of existence,
remained nominal. The most immediate challenge was improving the
TFG’s ability to provide public security and rule of law in the country.
With the collapse of the CIC, lawlessness and crime quickly returned to
plague Mogadishu, and TFG security forces were ineffective. In addition,
the TFG’s many ministries remained hollow shells, with virtually no civil
service to speak of. The TFG’s extraordinarily weak performance as a
government stood in sharp contrast to the accomplishments of the CIC
during its six month administration of Mogadishu. Efforts to build up the
TFG’s governance capacity will necessarily constitute a long-term project,
and are not likely to yield quick results, even if promised international aid
is disbursed in a timely manner. A US pledge of $100 million in support
of the TFG was welcome, but likely to arrive too late to help with the
immediate crisis. In short, the three pillars of international strategy to
support the TFG were all in a state of crisis in the first months of 2007.
The combination of Ethiopian forces occupying Mogadishu and a deeply
unpopular TFG claiming to govern from the capital guaranteed an armed
resistance from the population of Mogadishu. Within two weeks, the attacks
began. Over the course of the first four months of the Ethiopian occu-
pation, a ‘complex insurgency’ mounted increasingly deadly attacks against
Ethiopian convoys and military installations, TFG buildings (including
hotels where TFG members were residing) and vital infrastructure like the
international airport. Most of the attacks employed the same tactics and
small arms that proved so successful in General Aideed’s resistance to UN
forces in 1993—ambushes using AK-47s, as well as use of mortars and
rocket-propelled grenades. Much of the shelling conducted by the insur-
gents was poorly aimed and resulted in civilian casualties when landing in
residential areas. In addition, some new techniques were employed to
devastating effect, including remote detonated landmines, improvised
explosive devices and a suicide bombing. Political assassinations of TFG
members and supporters rose as well. Some of the attacks inflicted signifi-
cant casualties on Ethiopian forces. In late March angry mobs dragged the
burned corpses of Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu and
later an Ethiopian helicopter was taken down by ground fire.
The TFG and Ethiopian officials claimed that the resistance consisted
of al Qa‘ida terrorists and Somali Islamic radicals, but in reality the
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 385

uprising against the Ethiopian occupation and the TFG brought together
an admixture of very different groups. In this sense the armed opposition
in Mogadishu is best characterized as a ‘complex insurgency’. The princi-
pal source of armed attacks against the TFG and Ethiopians was clan
militias. Most of the Hawiye clans and sub-clans in Mogadishu felt mar-
ginalized in the TFG and occupied by Ethiopia, and fought in order to
oust Ethiopia from the capital and block the TFG from becoming oper-
ational. Though Somali clan fighting units are responsive to the orders of
clan elders, they are not as a rule under close command and control, and
tend to operate as decentralized, opportunistic guerilla fighters. A second
major source of resistance to the Ethiopians and TFG were the warlord
militias, which opposed any effort to impose government in the capital,
whether by the TFG or the Islamists. Some business interests, especially
those dealing in illicit trade, had a strong interest in preventing the rise of
a government which could regulate, tax and/or abolish them. ‘Taxes are
annoying’, summarized one businessman involved in purchasing missiles
to support the resistance against the TFG.
41
Finally, regrouping Islamist
militias played a role in the fighting, especially attacks with more sophisti-
cated remote detonated explosions. But clan leaders strove to reduce the
visibility and role of Islamist hardliners in the resistance in order to avoid
being portrayed as an extremist group, and there was no evidence in the
first months of the fighting to suggest that Islamists are playing a lead role
in the resistance. Ethiopian diplomacy confirmed this—several cease-fires
were brokered between Ethiopian military commanders and Hawiye clan
leaders to enable both sides to collect bodies.
42
The Ethiopian and TFG response to these attacks was ferocious. Whole
neighbourhoods were shelled, producing civilian casualties estimated to
exceed 1,000 in the first months of fighting. Between 200,000 and
300,000 thousand residents were displaced in fighting that the TFG
leadership inaccurately described as a ‘mopping up’ operation.
43
In some
neighbourhoods in north Mogadishu, eye-witnesses estimate that as many
as one in three structures have been damaged or destroyed.
44
The indis-
criminate shelling of heavily populated civilian areas prompted warnings
from the European Commission that international humanitarian law was
41. Jeffrey Gettlemen, ‘In Somalia, those who feed off anarchy fuel it,’ New York Times
(25 April 2007).
42. United Nations, Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ‘Somalia situation
Report no. 36,’ Nairobi (19 April 2007).
43. These broad estimates of total displacement between January and late April are derived
from UNHCR field reports, which were themselves somewhat inconsistent with one another
from week to week. See United Nations, Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
‘Somalia situation Report no. 36,’ Nairobi (19 April 2007).
44. Personal communication, April 2007.
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being violated, and led political observer Salim Lone to reach the stark
conclusion that ‘[t]his is the most lawless war of our generation... This is
a relentless drive to terrify and intimidate civilians belonging to clans from
whose ranks fighters are challenging the occupation’.
45
Because the
European Union and other external donors were providing direct assis-
tance to the TFG, charges that the TFG was implicated in possible war
crimes had immediate political impact in Europe.
46
Worse, TFG officials
began imposing a series of regulatory restrictions on the flow of inter-
national humanitarian aid into Mogadishu—insisting, for instance, that it
had to inspect all shipments of food aid to ensure no expired food was
being brought into the country, though it lacked inspectors to carry out
the task—which had the net effect of blocking emergency relief into the
greater Mogadishu area. For many, this looked suspiciously like an
attempt to starve out the TFG’s opposition. With a catastrophic humani-
tarian crisis looming in Mogadishu and surrounding riverine areas, where
displaced persons faced flooding and outbreaks of cholera, the UN and
international aid agencies mounted a strong and public campaign to
pressure all sides to respect humanitarian law and allow aid to flow unim-
peded to those in need. Increasingly embarrassed external supporters of
the TFG, including the US government, began to shift from voicing con-
cerns to the TFG quietly to engaging in public diplomacy to pressure the
government on matters of humanitarian access.
Ethiopian forces inflicted heavy losses on the insurgents and their clans,
and won the battle of April 2007. But the protracted insurgency took a
toll on Ethiopia. This included reports of low troop morale, frustration
with the unwillingness of the African Union to provide peacekeepers and
open discussions inside Ethiopia over whether it had become stuck in a
quagmire. A major armed attack inside Ethiopia by the Ogaden National
Liberation Front, a Somali Ethiopian insurgency that vowed retaliation
against the government for its offensive in Somalia, produced 74 deaths at
a Chinese-operated oil exploration site, and raised fears that the insur-
gency in Mogadishu could become a wider war in the region.
47
Even so, the heavier toll was unquestionably shouldered by the clans
associated with the resistance. Insurgents and civilians in the areas they
used as a base suffered heavy losses in the first four months of the fight-
ing. In late April, Ethiopian and TFG forces pushed into and occupied
most of the neighbourhoods held by the insurgents. The TFG leadership
45. Salim Lone, ‘Africa’s Guantanamo,’ The Guardian (London) (28 April 2007).
46. Xan Rice, ‘EU given war crime warning over Somalia aid,’ The Guardian (London)
(7 April 2007).
47. The harsh response of the Ethiopian Defense Forces in the wake of a series of ONLF
attacks in Somali region of Ethiopia has created an entirely new political and humanitarian
crisis in eastern Ethiopia.
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 387

went so far as to declare victory, and some Hawiye leaders conceded
they had been beaten. The heavy loss of life, displacement and property
damage suffered by the Hawiye clan suggested that yet again the clan lea-
dership had miscalculated in opting to wage a full-scale urban insurgency
against Ethiopia and the TFG. In retrospect, they might have been able to
accomplish their two main objectives—ensuring the withdrawal of
Ethiopian forces, and blocking the TFG as currently constituted from
becoming operational—via more subtle political manoeuvring rather than
at the barrel of the gun. Still, few observers believe that the insurgency is
over in Mogadishu; unless and until the TFG is reconstituted to become
a more inclusive administration, spoilers will continue to seek ways to
block the TFG and political violence will continue to factor in as one of
their weapons of choice.
The Somali crisis is in essence a national conflict with important
regional dimensions, including a Ethiopia-Eritrea proxy war which has
helped to enflame and perpetuate the Somali conflict.
48
But the longer
the crisis festers, the more likely it is to attract a wider circle of external
actors, including al Qa‘ida. Statements issued by al Qa‘ida leaders such as
Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi have called for jihad against Ethiopia not only
by Somali Muslims but by all Muslims worldwide.
49
To date, those calls
have not prompted widespread mobilization. If and when they do, the
Somali crisis could become globalized.
Conclusion
Each episode in Somalia’s serial disasters since 2005 has plunged the
country into more intractable and dangerous levels of crisis and conflict,
adding new layers of grievances, hardening divisions in the country,
increasing mistrust and fostering radicalization. As a result, the challenges
of promoting reconciliation and reviving a central government in 2007 are
considerably greater than was the case in 2004. The fact that most of the
setbacks since 2004 have been the product of miscalculations, misreadings
or malfeasance on the part of the principal internal and external actors on
the Somali scene only adds to the frustration of Somali citizens trapped in
the country’s spiralling violence.
Paradoxically, the heightened costs inflicted by the worsening crisis
could create political openings for a negotiated settlement. These
48. The external dimensions of the current Somali crisis, including the Ethiopian-Eritrean
proxy war there, are considered in detail in Ken Menkhaus, ‘The Somali catastrophe: bigger
than the horn – and not over yet,’ Cur rent History, 106, 700 (2007), pp. 195– 201.
49. Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, ‘To the army of difficulty in Somalia,’ As-Sahab Media
(February 2006), translated at http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom2/Misc/
GMP20070328031003001.pdf [accessed 27 April 2007].
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openings should not be overstated—far too often diplomats have oversold
the existence of ‘windows of opportunity’ in Somalia. But the actual
losses absorbed by the insurgents and Ethiopia, as well as the growing
risks that both sides face in the context of ongoing warfare, could create
conditions akin to a ‘hurting stalemate’. For Ethiopia, the war has been a
financial drain, has been costly diplomatically and poses ever-higher risks
of expanding across Ethiopia’s border or attracting more direct al Qa‘ida
involvement. Staying longer in Mogadishu also risks becoming bogged
down in a quagmire, producing the precise outcome that its regional rival
Eritrea intended when it backed the Islamists in 2006. For the Hawiye
clan’s political and commercial leadership, a continued insurgency risks
damage or destruction of millions of dollars of fixed assets invested in the
city since the mid-1990s, unacceptable loss of lives in the clan, the weak-
ening of the clan in national politics and in a worst-case outcome could
result in an ethnic cleansing of portions of the capital. As for the TFG,
though its leaders appear committed to an elusive victor’s peace in
Mogadishu, more thoughtful members of the government understand that
the administration can function in Mogadishu only if the TFG is made
more inclusive and wins the acceptance of most of the population in the
city. Continued TFG intransigence runs the very strong risk of the loss of
donor support and diplomatic isolation. In sum, most parties to the conflict
in Somalia are facing both real costs and growing risks if fighting continues.
In theory, these are conditions that meet the definition of a hurting stale-
mate and as such could provide opportunities for a mediated settlement.
There are counterveiling pressures working against a negotiated settle-
ment, however. The first is the continued presence of hardliners and spoi-
lers on both sides of the conflict—TFG officials fearful that power-sharing
will result in them losing their positions in the government; Ethiopian offi-
cials unwilling to contemplate any government which includes Islamists;
jihadists and warlords fearful that a government of national unity will mar-
ginalize them and possibly lead to their arrest; businesspeople fearful that
state revival will lead to unwanted taxes and regulations; and clan leaders
among the Hawiye who prefer to prevent the TFG from becoming
operational and ‘run out the clock’ on the transitional government, the
mandate of which expires in 2009. A second obstacle is the enduring
perception by many Somali political elites that they can achieve a victor’s
peace over their rivals rather than broker a power-sharing accord with
them. This has proven to be one of the most destructive and consistent
political impulses among Somalia’s leaders for decades. Third, Somalia
continues to be vulnerable to proxy war machinations by regional rivals,
which can easily unravel a fragile peace accord.
The most promising platform to advance reconciliation and attract
wider Somali support for the TFG may be to de-emphasize the TFG’s
CRISIS IN SOMALIA 389

role as a government and focus instead on its task as the vessel within
which key transitional tasks are executed. A focus on political transition—
drafting of a permanent constitution, training and development of an
effective and respected National Electoral Commission, and other essen-
tial tasks leading up to elections in 2009—could engage Somali political
energies in constructive rather than destructive directions, requiring sus-
tained dialogue on matters of political representation and rights, reconci-
liation and land. For donors, this would require a redirection of funds to
support critical ‘clusters of competence’ in the TFG where the most
important tasks of the transition are carried out, even if the rest of the
transitional federal institutions remain weak or dysfunctional. None of this
can happen without a TFG which is viewed by most Somalis as a legiti-
mate government of national unity, however. That will require successful
power-sharing negotiations between the TFG and its opponents, an
outcome which will only occur if sustained and serious external pressure
is applied to all parties.
AFRICAN AFFAIRS390