Somalia Still Sinking as Eritrea Entertains Enemies

September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen years since the dictator Muhammad Siyad Barre fled town in January 1991. The month opened with the adjournment in abject failure of the internationally-financed “national reconciliation congress” packed with cronies of the country's self-appointed “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG). Five days later, in further proof that the TFG, despite the backing of an estimated 15,000 Ethiopian soldiers, cannot even claim to control its putative capital, a running gun battle between security forces and insurgents near the famed open-air Bakara market in the southern part of Mogadishu left eight people dead and two dozen others gravely wounded. Four days later, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists warned in a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that while “violence in the country has been escalating” in general, the “pace of attacks on media has been rising rapidly” in particular. One day after that, mortars fired the insurgents at the former presidential palace, Villa Somalia, fell short, killing a mother and three of her children. On September 14, insurgents hit a government base in the northeast Mogadishu neighborhood of Huriwa, killing six while a police captain was assassinated elsewhere in a separate attack. The next day, for want of anyone else to take their frustrations out on, security forces detained sixteen journalists for several hours, accusing them of having tossed grenades at police. At the time of this writing, rocket propelled grenades were flying around the Bakara market. With this level of insecurity it is no wonder that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that some 400,000 people, almost quarter of Mogadishu's population, has fled the city in the last four months.

The root of the conflict is, of course, the unrepresentative nature of the TFG, originally set up in late 2004 as the fourteenth attempt at an interim Somali authority in as many years. As I have previously noted, “The TFG is, at best, a notional entity whose day-to-day physical survival is due to the continuing presence of the Ethiopian intervention force which rescued it last December from certain collapse in the face of an assault by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which at the time controlled Mogadishu and majority of the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic and were threatening to overrun the provincial outback of Baidoa, the only Somali town which the interim 'government' even had the pretense of running.” If it were not bad enough the TFG is dominated by fellow members of “President” Abdullahi Yusuf's Majeerteen subclan of the Darod clan from northeastern Puntland – a make-up that renders the would-be regime utterly unpalatable to the powerful Hawiye clan which predominates in Mogadishu – its ham-fisted style has driven potential constituents en masse into the arms of the insurgents, who are increasingly embracing a broad spectrum ranging from ICU Islamists with foreign ties to alienated members of marginalized clans. (The fact that the TFG congress ended with no agreement didn't stop some of the participants – critics of the regime were excluded – from carrying the farce a step further by flying to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last Sunday at King Abdallah's expense to sign a “reconciliation accord” whose text they declined to release at the time.)

Not surprisingly, the TFG, its Ethiopian defenders, and the woefully undermanned African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) – the last-named consisting of a sole Ugandan contingent, the promised Nigerian, Ghanaian, Burundian, and other units being “no shows” – continue to face a burgeoning armed resistance which, as I predicted in a column nearly seven months ago, is “repeating almost step-by-step the tactical and strategic evolution of the Iraqi insurgency” – complete with suicide bombings, a tactic unknown in Somalia until last year. Leading the insurgency is al-Shabaab (“the Youth”), an extremist group originally led by Adan Hashi 'Ayro, an al-Qaeda-trained kinsman and protégé of ICU shura council head Hassan Dahir 'Aweys, I profiled last year, but which may have splintered since. Recent reports indicate that intelligence work for some Shabaab elements is being done by none other than Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, a long-time member of al-Qaeda in East Africa who figures on the FBI's “Most Wanted Terrorists” list with a $5 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.

Of course, irrespective of the motivations for their insurgency, the opponents of the TFG, Islamists and clan loyalists alike, are only able to carry on their fight thanks to outside support. A June 27, 2007, report to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee by the Monitoring Group on Somalia placed the blame directly at door one of Somalia's neighbors: “Huge quantities of arms have been provided to the Shabaab by and through Eritrea.” The report went on to state that:

The Monitoring Group has observed a clear pattern of involvement by the Government of Eritrea in arms embargo violations. The Monitoring Group also concludes that the Government of Eritrea has made deliberate attempts to hide its activities and mislead the international community about its involvement.

Last month, citing diplomatic and intelligence sources, I reported that “while it was arming the fighters on the ground, Eritrea was also busy playing host to a number of Somali dissidents.” While the report was vehemently denied at the time, the Eritrean government itself has since confirmed the account, its Ministry of Information heralding a meeting of the TFG opponents which opened in Asmara on September 6 under the banner headline: “Victory to the Congress for Somali Liberation and Reconciliation!” Among the 350 or so individuals attending the confab was none other than Hassan Dahir 'Aweys, who had not been seen publicly since the armed forces of the ICU were driven from Mogadishu at the beginning of the year. While most Americans may not be familiar with the prison guard-turned-“religious” leader, 'Aweys has long been a significant player in the world of Islamist terrorists, a big enough fish to make the cut onto the list of 189 terrorist individuals and organizations specially designated by the U.S. government under Executive Order 13224 in the wake of 9/11 (for background on 'Aweys, see my profile of man and my report on the violent record of his al-Itihaad al-Islamiya movement).

It should be noted that not all the members of the Somali opposition alliance coalescing in Eritrea are Islamists, much less Islamist terrorists, although it appears that militant Islamists form the core of the movement. In addition to hard line Islamist ideologues like 'Aweys, the new umbrella group calling itself the “Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia” (ALS) includes clan chieftains like Husayn Mohamed Farah, a.k.a. “Aydiid Jr.,” a onetime U.S. Marine who is the son of General Mohamed Farah Aydiid of Black Hawk Down infamy; political opponents of the TFG like its deposed parliamentary speaker Shaykh Sharif Hasan Adan; as well as more moderate Islamists like Shaykh Sharif Shaykh Ahmad, who was chairman of the ICU during its rule in Mogadishu and who was named executive head of the ALS. However, this disparate group seems to have little in common other a desire to drive the TFG from Mogadishu: one indication of its ramshackle nature was that the congress's conclusion, it elected no fewer than 191 members to the “central council” to be chaired by former TFG speaker Sharif Hasan Adan.

The real problem is that the conflict the ALS will foment creates an ideal operating space in for Islamist terrorists like 'Ayro and Fazul Abdullah Muhammad as well as Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki, a veteran of the ICU's pan-Somali precursor group, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya as well as the ICU council who has been sanctioned under both Executive Order 13224 and UN Security Council Resolution 1267 for his links to al-Qaeda, whose East Africa cell he is reputed to currently lead; Muhktar Robow, a.k.a., Abu Mansur, the former deputy defense minister of the ICU who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan; Issa Osman Issa, another al-Qaeda member wanted for his role in the East Africa embassy bombings; Ahmad Abdi Godane, an al-Shabaab leader trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan wanted for his role in the murders of Western aid workers in the Republic of Somaliland; and Ibrahim Haji Jama, a.k.a. “al-Afghani,” another al-Shabaab leader who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and is a veteran of terrorist campaigns there as well as in Kashmir and in Somaliland. While the Ethiopian intervention last year disrupted al-Qaeda's effort to establish a base of operations in Somalia, renewed conflict could give the terrorists another go-around – just last week, al-Jazeera broadcast a report from al-Turki's camp near the Kenyan-Somali border showing masked gunmen, including foreign fighters, shooting at targets labeled “Bush” and detonating explosives.

Thus by hosting the Somali opposition, including al-Qaeda-linked factions, Eritrea has moved beyond its already destabilizing role as the regional spoiler and further into the category of state sponsor of terrorism, a step that Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazier has indicated is currently being considered. Needless to say, Dr. Frazier's warning won her few fans in Asmara, where a piece entitled “Jendayi E. Frazier's Incompetence and Sour Grapes Compromise U.S.-Eritrea Relations” was posted on an official government website, accusing the assistant secretary, an African-American woman, of being, among other things a “racist” (!). The personal attack came in the heels of the publication of an official thirty-five-point document from the Asmara regime condemning U.S. policy in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for allegedly consisting of nothing but “unprovoked acts of harassment and hostility” towards Eritrea. The white paper, in turn, was inspired by a lengthy diatribe on Eritrean state media by the country's despotic ruler, Isaias Afewerki, who accused the United States of a “strategy of monopoly and dominance” and conspiring against his regime. Faithfully parroting the line of its Eritrean patrons – no one has ever said that Isaias did not take careful notes while receiving political and military training in Maoist China during the height of the Cultural Revolution – the Somali dissidents' congress duly issued a statement accusing Dr. Frazier of a “naked act of defamation” and dispatching copies to the U.S. State Department, the African Union, the UN Security Council, the Arab League, and the European Union.

While this column has had its differences with Dr. Frazier and continues to question the efficacy of her stubborn support for the TFG (see “Peacekeepers with No Peace to Keep,” April 12), it applauds the resolution with which she responded to the Eritrean provocations. Last week, after visiting Ethiopia, including its eastern Somali kilil (Ogaden), the assistant secretary lashed out against Eritrean adventurism across the region: “Eritrea's destabilization includes rebels in Darfur, includes rebels in Eastern Sudan, it includes ONLF [the Ogaden National Liberation Front], OLF [Oromo Liberation Front] and others, destabilizing the region.” Later in the week, at a meeting in Rome of the International Contact Group on Somalia, Dr. Frazier affirmed:

We need to address the fact that there are still extremists and terrorists, many of them sitting in Asmara, who are undermining a process by road-side bombs, targeted assassinations of moderates. And so we've got to deal with cutting of the supply for what I would call the spoilers, the extremists and the insurgents.

The problem is how do we deal with the rogue regime in Asmara once the interagency process plays itself out and, as already manifestly evident, Isaias Afewerki's despotic band of misfits is designated a “state sponsor of terrorism”? Under U.S. law, regimes determined to support international terrorism – currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria are the sole occupants of this unenviable category – are subject to sanctions under section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Cumulatively, the law bans the designated countries from buying American arms as well dual-use exports; restricts economic assistance to them, including committing the U.S. to oppose loans from the World Bank and other multilateral institutions to them; and bars U.S. citizens from engaging in financial transactions with their governments.

Since Eritrea does not currently purchase U.S. weapons systems and threw out the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last year, the only sanction left is to ban the Eritrean diaspora from paying the tax that the Asmara regime collects on its expatriates. The financial squeeze will, of course, hurt, but the regime's mismanagement has already destroyed the country's economy: in terms of gross domestic product per capita, Eritrea comes in at 170th place among the 179 countries and territories monitored by the International Monetary Fund and 181st place among the 194 tracked by the CIA's World Fact Book. Given both the unresponsive, despotic nature of his rule as well as the intensive level of personal animosity that he has for his Ethiopian counterpart, Meles Zenawi, it is unlikely that stigmatizing the Eritrean regime or increasing the misery of the statelet's population – much less Dr. Frazier's public embrace of the Meles government last week – will do anything to dissuade Isaias from his support of violence and instability across the Horn of Africa, much less strengthen our leverage as tensions increase.

The Eritrean regime's rogue behavior actually has a rational basis behind it: the tiny country with a population of under 5 million is locked in a border dispute with its much larger neighbor, Ethiopia, with its 76 million people. Between 1998 and 2000, the two countries fought a conventional war that claimed over 100,000 lives over a near-worthless strip of desert around the town of Badme (pre-war population, 1,500). Tensions between the two countries continue to run high with Ethiopia rejecting the decision of the international arbitrators on the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) to award the ruined town to Eritrea, even as the EEBC announced at The Hague two weeks ago that it would nonetheless finalize the border coordinates by November, notwithstanding the deadlock. Thus Eritrea funnels arms to Somali insurgents attacking Ethiopians in as a way to weaken its foe and potentially open a yet another front (as I noted in congressional testimony in May, the ethnic Somali rebels in Ethiopia's Ogaden region are already a problem for the government in Addis Ababa) as the two countries edge closer to open warfare along their 912-kilometer armistice lines.

Meanwhile, the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when many adherents of the faith believe their actions have even greater merit than during the rest of the year, will likely mean that attacks by the Islamist-led insurgents in Somalia will increase. Between these currents, sacred and profane, the Horn of Africa is quickly becoming a maelstrom – the question for U.S. policymakers is the extent to which America's real interests in the region will be caught in the whirl.

J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a Research Fellow of the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.