Somalia, if I recall
E. Ablorh-odjidja, Ghanadot

As the world awaits decision on Iraq, perhaps, it will be best to look at what is not happening in Somalia today.

Somalia’s self immolation started during the late 1980's. President Said Barre had seized power in 1969 and ruled with iron fist. In 1977, he started a war with Ethiopia and lost. The decision was to cause him the vital support of the Soviet Union.

In 1991, Said Barre was overthrown by a coalition force of Somalia clans led by Mohammed Farah Aidid. But the coalition did not last, as each of the three major clans went on a rampage for power, leading to civil war and famine.

The worsening condition of the populace in Somalia, because of the civil war, led the UN to send a mission to provide humanitarian relief. Under Resolution 794 in 1992, the US was brought in to protect the humanitarian mission. Bush the elder was the president of the U.S. then.

By December 1992, just before he left office, Bush had sent 25,000 US troops to Somalia. Clinton came to the presidency in 1993 and started drawing down US troop strength.

But after “Black Hawk Down,” a firefight in Mogadishu in October 1993 in which US Rangers tried to capture Aidid failed, Clinton had a change of heart. And a few days later at a press conference, Clinton ordered more troops to Somalia "to protect our troops and to complete our mission," reported the Los Angeles Times on October 8, 1993.

The LA Times report went on to say that Clinton’s objective for “the new deployment was to give the Somalis a reasonable prospect of survival in conditions of near-anarchy and factional warfare.” Regardless, he still vowed to withdraw US troops from Somalia within six months.

And he did. Clinton had what is now famously known as “exit strategy;” for Somalia; as opposed to Bush has no “exit strategy for Iraq because he had no plan before the invasion.”

Still, it has to be remembered that Clinton statement was made immediately after the “Black Hawk Down” debacle. Historians will have to decide whether this is a classic case of “cut and run” or not.

Whether Clinton, by his exit strategy, gave Somalia “a reasonable” chance for survival in this short time can be debated. But the clear issue here is that Somalia continued as a complete failed state after the Americans pulled out, and has been constantly at war with itself to this day; a fact which is completely at odds with Clinton’s promise.

 
Some 14 years after the initial US and UN combined intervention, the damage in Somalia still continues. Islamic warlords who recently pushed the interim government of Somalia out of the capital of Mogadishu have also been driven out. Now Ethiopia, a neighbor to the West, is caught up in the fray in an attempt to help loosen Islamic stranglehold on Somalia.

Even the AU, which is usually timid when it comes to internal politics of member countries, has been forced to support openly Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia; thus raising the possibility that the whole region, impoverished as it is already, may suffer further misery through a wider war.

Back in 1993, Clinton’s view on America’s involvement in any conflict, for the sake of America’s credibility as he said, was to reject all calls for "cut and run".

"Do we leave when the job gets tough or when the job is well done?” Clinton was to ask rhetorically; same as President Bush is doing for Iraq today.

“Do we invite the return of mass suffering or do we leave in a way that gives the Somalis a decent chance to survive?" Substitute Somalia for Iraq in this statement and you would hear the same “stay the course” promise that Bush was to make about Iraq.

Yet, Clinton quickly pulled out of Somalia. The war did not end and the conflict continued because there was no controlling authority. Somalia could have used a massive credible support from the world, if not from the US.

The sad part is the lesson that was not learned in Somalia has been repeated in Iraq. Who is to be blamed? Don’t blame the General Assembly of the UN, nor its Secretary General. Blame the Security Council with its veto power that constantly cripples the world’s resolve.

The mission in Iraq, indeed, was accomplished as Bush said. Saddam was removed from power. The much derided “Mission accomplished” statement by Bush detractors is just that. Bush policy opponents, emboldened by the aftermath of “mission accomplished”, are too smug with content to want to do anything else. Tragically, it is the withholding of their support at this crucial stage that is the cause of the ongoing fiasco in Iraq.

Nine years after “Black Hawk Down,” a US ranger who saw action in Somalia was to write about his experience in the Wall Street Journal: “I will always regret how, with the enemy on the run and at such terrible cost, we were prevented from re-arming, kitting up and finishing the task.”

Another writer, however, was not so charitable. Mark Bowden, the author of “Black Hawk Down” wrote that Clinton “lacked the kind of moral personal force that it took to persuade Congress and the American people that even though this (war) is not popular, we have to do it.”

It has been some 13 years since “the cut and run” policy was affected in Somalia. So what is in store for Iraq now?

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, December 28, 2006, Washington, DC

 

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