Somalia

Counter-Piracy Task Force: Strategic Approaches to the Piracy Challenge

Adrienne Chuck — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:58:41 -0600

On February 8, 2012, the International Security Program and the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center hosted a meeting of the Atlantic Council Maritime Piracy Task Force, chaired by Atlantic Council Board Director Franklin D. Miller. This is the third in a series of meetings looking into the challenge of piracy and possible strategic approaches. The first part of the discussion, led by Thomas Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, reviewed the US Government’s perspective on piracy and current efforts to combat it off the coast of Somalia. The second part of the discussion featured a presentation by Commander James Kraska, USN, Howard S. Levie Chair of Operational Law at the US Naval War College, who highlighted the various international and domestic legal issues surrounding maritime piracy. Taking part in the meeting were representatives of the US government, including military personnel, and the private sector.

As maritime piracy has emerged as a potential high profile challenge for the United States, its allies, trading partners, and global commerce, the Atlantic Council is leading a limited-duration, limited-scope project designed to produce actionable and policy-relevant analysis and recommendations on US approaches to the maritime piracy challenge in the complex international context. The Task Force consists of a series of meetings by a standing group of high-level strategic actors--former US administration officials, distinguished members of academia, international organizations, transportation/logistics industry executives, and occasional ad hoc expert invitees to define the problem and develop courses of action for the formation of US policy. The Task Force will make explicit, implementable recommendations to key policy groups: Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of State, the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Council, and other elements of the interagency policy community.

The Splintering of Al Shabaab

Bronwyn Bruton & Peter Pham — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:37:39 -0600

For the better part of five years, much of Somalia's long-suffering population has been caught in a deadly stalemate between al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group, and African Union peacekeepers, known as AMISOM. The peacekeepers are tasked with defending the country's weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which, despite years of backing from regional powers and the West, remains politically dysfunctional and incapable doing anything resembling governing. Fielding an army of its own remains a distant aspiration.

That is why quelling the insurgency has fallen entirely on AMISOM. Over the last 18 months or so the 12,000 strong force has honed its tactics and made gains, however stilting, against al Shabaab. Insistent that no American boots hit the ground in Somalia, Washington has backed the mission. (That is, of course, no American boots on the ground with the exception of last week, when a Navy Seal team rescued two aid workers in central Somalia, some 500 kilometers north of Mogadishu.) In return for their troop contributions to AMISOM, the United States has given Burundi and Uganda several hundred million dollars in salary, equipment, training, and logistical support. Perhaps more importantly, Washington now calls both countries allies.

But other powers are involved in the battle now, too. In November, around one thousand Ethiopian troops entered central Somalia in an effort to distract al Shabaab from the floundering Kenyan incursion of around 1,500 troops into the far south. Kenya's decision to invade seems to have been a long time in the making, but it was not coordinated with Washington or AMISOM; more, it proved ill-timed, since it coincided with Somalia's rainy season. For the first two months, Kenya's heavy military equipment was, literally, stuck in the mud just inside Somalia's border. As the Kenyan government helplessly watched its bills pile up, al Shabaab's fighters kept just out of rifle range. Since December, when the rains ended and the Ethiopians stepped in, Kenya has fared somewhat better. But Nairobi has yet to articulate a coherent strategy and, worse, it is belatedly asking for Western assistance to cover the cost of the occupation.

By some crude measures, the ad-hoc alliance between Kenya, Ethiopia, and AMISOM has strained al Shabaab, forcing the movement to contend with attacks on three separate fronts. Al Shabaab's decision to withdraw from Mogadishu last August might have been strategic, but its subsequent loss of Beletweyne and other towns along the Kenyan border has raised hopes that, although the group still controls large swathes of territory in southern Somalia, there may nevertheless be an end to the violence in sight.

Washington would cheer al Shabaab's defeat, but, as is often the case in the Horn of Africa, the United States should be careful what it wishes for. Al Shabaab's leadership is already divided among nationalist factions of clan-based militia leaders, who are mainly determined to oust the TFG and put their own clans in power. They count upwards of 7,000 in their ranks and make up the bulk of the group's members. In the wake of a military defeat, the nationalists, who enjoy the support of substantial constituencies on the ground, are likely to cast off the al Shabaab banner, but will retain their importance as clan-based militia leaders and clerics. They will continue to play politics, and, depending on the incentives they're offered, will act as influential spoilers or peacemakers in any emergent political order. Some of these leaders, including Mukhtar Robow and Hassan Dahir Aweys, have been linked to al Qaeda, but the United States would do well to tolerate them, because the Somali public generally perceives them as legitimate.

But there is a smaller group of hardliner al Shabaab radicals who, with their foreign supporters in the Gulf, have a transnational jihadist agenda and would prefer to target U.S. assets in the region. In a nightmare scenario, they might deploy a U.S.-passport holding Somali to attack inside the United States.

Until now, the nationalists and radicals have been held together by mutual benefit -- the radicals have gained a foothold in Somalia's slippery clan system and in return, the nationalists have received funds and technical training from abroad, including from the Middle East and South Asia. The nationalists, who are worried about keeping up the flow of remittances to the Somali public, have mostly prevented the radicals from striking beyond Somalia. A break between the two factions would liberate the radicals from that constraint, while making Somalia a less attractive haven.

The question then becomes whether al Shabaab's radicals would be able to re-implant themselves among the radicalized and disenfranchised youths in Kenya or the many frustrated opposition movements in East Africa -- for example, Uganda's militant Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Addis Ababa, Kampala, and Nairobi all present attractive targets, but the entire eastern seaboard of Africa, and even Johannesburg, would theoretically be vulnerable to attack. It would be a strange twist of counterterrorist fate: the successful battle against Islamist militants would catalyze al Shabaab's evolution into a regional terrorist organization.

Despite its areas of control, a majority of the Somali population actually despises al Shabaab. That is for a simple reason: the group is corrupt. Since gaining control of much of the Somali countryside in 2007, al Shabaab has invested tremendous time and energy in building up what is essentially a racket "taxing" businesses -- including on the proceeds of pirate operations, which are one of the most iconic, if not necessarily most lucrative of Somali enterprises -- in its areas of control. But while the militants fill their coffers, the population starves. And although al Shabaab controls the security situation in much of the country, it has never taken up the real responsibility of governing, preferring to leave the daily decisionmaking in the hands of the local clans.

A central tenet of counterinsurgency strategy is that an insurgency's final defeat requires a credible political alternative to step into the ensuing power vacuum. In Somalia, the problem is that the TFG is not up to the task. Corruption is rampant with the TFG, too: a confidential donor-supported audit showed that 96 percent of bilateral aid awarded between 2009-2010 simply disappeared. Without military protection from AMISOM, which has created a sort of "green zone" around the presidential palace, the transition government's hotels and offices would be overrun. The bottom line is that the TFG is, on its best day, little more than a drain down which international funds disappear.

The TFG's myriad failures is what made it possible -- or, as Addis Ababa and Nairobi saw it, necessary -- for Ethiopian and Kenyan troops to invade. Both countries have backed political and military proxies in Somalia to protect their interests. These proxies, including the Sufi militia Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama and regional administrations, such as those in Azania and Jubbaland, intend to compete rather than cooperate with the TFG for international resources and influence.

Some have tried to depict al Shabaab as a transnational terrorist organization, but that is largely a misconception. Recently, a group of senior leaders of the nationalist wing independently announced their intention to re-name al Shabaab the "Islamic Emirate of Somalia" and henceforth focus on local governance -- a direct challenge to those who would see the group move closer to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and other nearby terrorist networks. Indeed, over its seven-year history, al Shabaab's actions have largely been domestically oriented, invested more in the nationalist goal of removing AMISOM and the TFG from Mogadishu than in fighting a war with the rest of the world.

Yet, as al Shabaab splinters, the group's radical core will seek new allies. These will most likely be drawn from the growing cohort of politically disaffected youth throughout East Africa. They need not be Somali. One can already witness the early stages of this process in the rush by the Nairobi-based Muslim Youth Center (commonly known as the "Pumwani Muslim Youth") to become al Shabaab's mouthpiece in Kenya. But deeper networks are forming out of sight and further afield, as the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea documented last year in its report to the Security Council, which also noted that non-Somali Kenyan nationals already constitute the largest non-Somali group in al Shabaab. Al Shabaab could even reach across the Gulf of Aden to expand the links it already has with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which could provide new sources of funding and a renewed connection with al Qaeda core. Or it could seek to link up with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or with Nigeria's increasingly dangerous Boko Haram sect, with which it already has some interactions. Ultimately, the newly independent radicals could seek to be the official local franchise of al Qaeda, or worse -- they could eschew the Middle Eastern influence and weave regional grievances into their own new jihadist narrative.

Over the past six years, U.S. development and humanitarian assistance to Somalia has declined dramatically (even in the wake of the worst famine in decades), there have been uncountable civilian casualties resulting from indiscriminate fire, millions of people have been starved from their homes, and there have been no state-building efforts worth the name. Although there have been perfunctory nods to governance and peace building, U.S. policy has largely revolved around counterterrorism.

And true, beating the terrorists in Somalia might, in some sense, win the war. But it will not keep the peace. If the United States were to attempt some modest steps toward assisting the Somalis to resolve their conflicts and reconstitute their government -- as it certainly should -- the effort would more effectively be made in coordination with its existing partners among the Muslim countries. Turkey, for example, is an increasingly popular presence in Somalia and is one of the few countries to even dare open an embassy in Mogadishu. And even then, the effort should fall under the mantle of humanitarian and development assistance, not as a footnote in a global counterterrorism campaign.

It might not be possible to keep the radical elements of al Shabaab from scattering across the Horn of Africa. The group's vital networks already extend far beyond Somalia. Much of its funding, and all of its popular support, come from abroad. In that sense, al Shabaab's adventure in Somalia has served al Qaeda's purpose. It has provided an old and fairly tarnished group of foreign radicals with new prestige, allowing them to inspire and radicalize new cohorts of disaffected youth across East Africa, and particularly in Kenya. Somalia is not -- and never has been -- a hospitable haven for al Qaeda, and its utility is now clearly exhausted. The next and more dangerous stage of the jihad lies in Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

The best that Washington can do now is to close the book on its ill-fated war in Somalia. The easiest way to do this would be to signal a willingness to live with al Shabaab's disaffected nationalist branch, provided that they open the parts of Somalia that they control to humanitarian relief and make a break with the group's hardcore leadership and its ambitions of transnational jihad. This will not solve the problem of keeping hardliners from branching out and creating a regional terrorist threat -- that ship has already sailed. But it is the only way to end the conflict in Somalia.

Opening a path for parts of al Shabaab to participate in the political process may be distasteful to the West, but the White House should bear in mind that the basic outline of the Somali conflict has not changed. The population remains disaffected from the TFG. Heavily splintered, clan factions are quickly evolving into autonomous political entities. National reconciliation remains a fantasy, so there is no simple military solution to the crisis. In a sense, with the gains made in recent months, there are now two al Shabaabs, and if Washington and the UN ignore that, it will be at the cost of another decade of chaos, anguish, and death. Figuring out how to engage one, however, while declaring a new and separate war on the other, might actually start paving a path to peace that is more than just a fantasy.

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director of the Council's Michael S. Ansari Africa Center. Dr. J. Peter Pham is director of the Center. This essay was originally published with Foreign Affairs. Photo credit: UN/Flickr.

J. Peter Pham on PBS’s NewsHour to Discuss Hostage Rescue in Somalia

Adrienne Chuck — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:39:31 -0600

J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, was interviewed by Jeffrey Brown on PBS’s NewsHour program about the rescue by US Navy SEALs of an American aid worker and her Danish colleague who had been held hostage since October in north central Somalia. Also interviewed on the segment was NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.

Click here to access the program transcript

Watch "Who Was Behind Kidnapping, Rescue in Somalia?" on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Bronwyn Bruton on WAMU Radio to Discuss Hostages in Somalia

Adrienne Chuck — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:30:09 -0600

Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, was featured on WAMU Radio's Kojo Nnamdi Show on a segment entitled "Piracy in Somalia." On January 24, US Navy SEALs rescued a Danish and an American aid worker that had been held hostage by Somali pirates for months. Ms. Bruton discussed the story behind the story, describing who the pirates are, what they want, and what -- if any -- role the international community can play in helping Somalia overcome its 'failed state' status.

Click here to listen to the interview

Bronwyn Bruton on NPR to Discuss Ethopian and Kenyan Incursions Into Somalia

Adrienne Chuck — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:26:50 -0600

Michael S. Ansari Africa Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton joined the New York Times East Africa Bureau Chief, Jeffrey Gettleman, on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation. The 20-minute segment, entitled "Ethiopia Invades Somalia In Fight Against Al-Shabab" offers an update on the Ethiopian and Kenyan incursions into Somalia and debates what, if anything, the United States can do to end the crisis in the Horn.

Click here to listen to the interview

The Islamist Threat to Africa’s Rise in 2012

Peter Pham — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:34:05 -0600

The biggest story out of Africa last year did not occupy the headlines the way dramatic revolutions in the Maghreb, civil strife in West Africa, the independence of South Sudan, famine in the Horn of Africa, piracy off the Somali coast, fraud-ridden elections in the ironically-named Democratic Republic of the Congo, and various other developments each did in turn. Rather, as The Economist noted last month: “Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest-growing [economies] were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6 percent this year and nearly 6 percent in 2012, about the same as Asia.”

Higher prices for commodities were responsible for part of the growth spurt, but other factors were also involved, including wise choices made by African leaders and peoples regarding economic reform, the rule of law, as well as the use of new technologies—all of which encouraged significant investment in their economies. The signs of hope, however, are now threatened by the spread of violent extremism by Islamist groups along the Sahel belt across the continent and the increasing links between the militants.

Al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has been an unintended beneficiary of the fall of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Buoyed by the flow of arms and fighters out of Libya, the group has in recent months initiated skirmishes with government forces in Mauritania, Mali, and Niger. Last week, its fighters boldly attacked a military installation in the Kidal region of northeastern Mali that had just been constructed with funds from the European Union’s Special Program for Peace Security and Development and unveiled at the end of November during European Commissioner for Development Andris Pielbags’s visit to the country. AQIM and a new splinter group calling itself the “Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa” have also struck at the tourism and commercial sectors with a spate of kidnappings of Westerners, including in the last month the abduction of tourists in Timbuktu and an engineer and a technician at a cement factory near the northern Malian town of Gao.

More ominously, AQIM has also increased its linkages with the Polisario Front which contests Morocco’s title to its southern provinces. In late October, three aid workers—an Italian and two Spaniards—were seized by AQIM militants, aided by Polisario sympathizers, inside a camp administered by the separatists near the Algerian town of Tindouf. The connection comes as no surprise given that the large numbers of idle young fighters with no prospects in camps presents the terrorist group with a ready pool of potential recruits, both for its military operations as well as the criminal activities it is increasingly involved in.

Meanwhile, further south in Nigeria, the Boko Haram sect has proven to be more and more of a threat to the security of Africa’s most populous nation. In testimony at the end of November before the House Homeland Security Committee, I noted that the group, far from being destroyed after the bloody repression of its 2009 uprising, had undergone a dramatic transformation. The upgrade in its operational capabilities was witnessed by the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attacks it launched against Nigeria Police Force and United Nations headquarters in Abuja last June and August, respectively.

The extent to which Boko Haram will go to provoke sectarian strife in the country was underscored by the more recent assaults it carried out against churches across Nigeria’s “Middle Belt,” beginning with the bombing of a Catholic church in the Abuja suburb of Madalla as the congregation exited Christmas Mass, leaving more than three dozen people dead and scores injured. On Monday, a Boko Haram spokesman issued an ultimatum to Christians living in Nigeria’s traditionally Muslim northern states to leave within three days or face further violence.

The group was also responsible for a New Year’s Eve bombing of a bar adjacent to a military cantonment in Abuja’s Asokoro district, home of the presidential compound and generally viewed as one of the capital’s most secure areas. This latest attack, like the earlier ones carried out by Boko Haram, seemed to have been designed to show that the militants can strike anywhere and that they can make the country ungovernable for President Goodluck Jonathan just months after he won what I observed at the time were probably the most legitimate polls the Nigerian people have had in decades. In response, the government has declared a state of emergency in parts of the country hit by the insurgency and closed the northeastern borders with Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

In East Africa, al-Shabaab insurgents in Somalia are probably at their weakest point in years, thanks not only to their own strategic overreach and the consequences of the famine (which their policies exacerbated), but also the combined military pressure applied by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) force in Mogadishu, the clumsier Kenyan Operation Linda Ncha (“Protect the Country”) in southern Somalia, and the Ethiopian seizure over the weekend of Beledweyne, a key transit and trade hub near the border. However, as I noted after my trip to the bombed-out Somali capital last month, it is too soon to count al-Shabaab out. In fact, just like it did after the massive Ethiopian intervention five years ago, the group may well be shifting back to asymmetric tactics like roadside bombings and suicide attacks. Furthermore, the group potentially can tap into a large and restive potential ethnic Somali population, both indigenous and refugees, within Kenya itself.

Even more worrisome than the threat the various Islamist militant groups in Africa pose individually is the growing evidence of links between them and what the commander of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has characterized as a “significant threat.” Speaking to reporters in Washington in September, General Carter Ham noted that AQIM, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab “have very explicitly and publicly voiced an intent to target Westerners and the US specifically,” adding “if left unaddressed, you could have a network that ranges from East Africa through the center” and into the Sahel. AQIM’s emir, Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, a.k.a. Abdelmalek Droukdel, has boasted of weapons and training provided to Boko Haram, whose leader, Abubakar Shekau, has used the North African group’s media outlet to proclaim his adhesion to jihadist efforts globally. The man whom Nigerian officials hold responsible for the bombing of the UN building in Abuja, Mamman Nur, had previously been sheltered by al-Shabaab in Somalia. While there last month, I was briefed on two groups of Boko Haram operatives who had received training at camps as recently as three months ago.

Although it is unlikely that any of the current batch of Islamist militants operating across the middle of the continent is remotely capable of presenting an existential threat to any African states, much less regional powers like Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya, they are fully able to cause a great deal of mischief, especially in the coming months. Counterinsurgency campaigns are, at the very least, expensive affairs which divert resources from the investments in infrastructure, education, and health which Africa’s emerging economies need to make if they are position themselves to take advantage of the current growth opportunities. In many cases, the understandable reliance by governments on security measures to combat the threat posed by violent extremists brings with it the risk not only of further alienating minorities and other marginalized segments of the population, but of undermining, however unintentionally, that the fragile institutions of democracy in Africa. Moreover, even if violence can be kept far from commercial centers, it will nonetheless have a dampening effect on the confidence of investors for a region whose potential many are just beginning to discover.

J. Peter Pham is director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

A (Slightly) Merrier Christmas in Mogadishu

Peter Pham — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:01:00 -0600

While billions of people around the world join in Christmas celebrations this weekend, there will be few outward signs of holiday cheer, religious or otherwise, in the onetime Somali capital of Mogadishu.

The last bishop of Mogadishu, the Italian Franciscan friar Pietro Salvatore Colombo, was gunned down during Mass in the city’s cathedral in 1989 just as the dictatorship of Muhammad Siyad Barre, the last entity that could plausibly claim to be a central government of Somalia, was beginning to crumble. The scene of the murder itself, a masterpiece of Norman Gothic revival modeled after the cathedral of Cefalù in Sicily, was sacked two years later during the chaos surrounding the regime’s final denouement. The last nun remaining in all of Somalia, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, was killed five years ago while caring for children in the only pediatric hospital still open in the entire country; her killers were militants belonging to al-Shabaab, the militant group linked with al-Qaeda. In 2008, the ruins of the pillaged Mogadishu cathedral were completely razed by the same extremists, seeking to erase all evidence of Christianity from what they hoped would be their new Islamist state.

Any Somali Christians who might be left keep a very low profile since nowadays even the president of the internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is an Islamist who, as The Economist has noted, “promotes a version of sharia law whereby every citizen of Somalia is born a Muslim and anyone who converts to another religion is guilty of apostasy, which is punishable by death.” In fact, except from a pair of somber services which will be conducted by military chaplains for the benefit of the Ugandan and Burundian troops who make up the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), there will be no formal observance of Christmas in Mogadishu this year.

The lack of festivities, however, does not mean that there is no reason for at least some rejoicing in this season. The year that is drawing to a close saw remarkable progress in the security situation in Mogadishu. After being long pinned down to a narrow strip of land at the city’s edge along the coast, AMISOM, strengthened by assistance from the United States, the European Union, and NATO as well as the United Nations Support Office for AMISOM (UNSOA), began a methodical push through Mogadishu in late 2010, establishing more than two dozen forward combat positions by the end of that year.

This year, the African Union forces began an offensive designed to cut off al-Shabaab’s access to the Bakara Market, the commercial heart of Mogadishu and, indeed, of most of southern and central Somalia. In heavy fighting AMISOM forced captured the former Ministry of Defense building, which the insurgents had been using as one of their main operational bases, as well as several other key edifices which control access routes to the market. At the same time, AMISOM commanders adapted their tactics to the necessity of fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in an urban setting, not only issuing rules of engagement that established no-fire zones for artillery and mortars within the city, but also limiting the use of indirect fire weapons in order to reduce harm to civilians.

More importantly, recognizing that insurgencies cannot be defeated by military means alone, the African Union force has made a concerted effort to win over the Somali public. The former commander of AMISOM, Major General Nathan Mugisha of Uganda, planned operations that had a heavy humanitarian component and, in fact, created safe havens that Somalis have flocked to, drawn by slowly improving security as well as access to medical care and clean water. In contrast, as I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this past summer, the policies pursued by al-Shabaab exacerbated the consequences of severe drought in areas controlled by the extremists to the point where it became a full-blown famine. Given the traditional hostility of Somalis to foreign interlopers of any kind, it was quite telling when I was in Mogadishu earlier this month to see children running alongside the armored personnel carriers in my convoy and waving cheerfully at my AMISOM escorts.

Of course the peacekeepers still face some serious challenges.

First, AMISOM is woefully understrength. While the arrival earlier this week of the first of some 900 soldiers from Djibouti is a welcome addition to the nearly 10,000 Ugandans and Burundians, the force is still short of the 12,000 peacekeepers authorized by the United Nations Security Council. Moreover, as I argued in testimony before the House Africa Subcommittee earlier this year, it is beyond delusional to think that a force that size could succeed where the infinitely more robust and better trained and armed UNITAF and UNOSOM II forces, with their 37,000 and 28,000 personnel respectively, failed so miserably just a decade and a half ago against a far less capable opposition than the current Islamist insurgents. Without significant beefing up, the territory secured by the peacekeepers will not increase much beyond what they currently hold, which is somewhat less than the entirety of Mogadishu itself.

Second, AMISOM has no air capabilities, not even helicopters to evacuate soldiers wounded in combat.

Third, the force has no maritime capabilities. As the current force commander, Major General Fred Mugisha, told me, even when the peacekeepers receive actionable intelligence that, for example, al-Shabaab is about to receive a shipment of arms or even foreign fighters from abroad—both have a history of coming by sea from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and other such groups in nearby Yemen—they have no means to intercept or otherwise interdict the deadly flow.

While al-Shabaab has been weakened by a combination of the famine and its own ineptitude as well as the efforts of AMISOM, it is still too soon to count it out. As heavy fighting in Mogadishu’s Dayniile district earlier this week underscored, the group is still capable of going on the offensive. Moreover, there is evidence that it has increased, rather than lessened, its ties to foreign extremist networks. And it is increasingly shifting to vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) and other asymmetric tactics, as I had an opportunity to see during my recent visit to Somalia.

In the end, as I argued in a study for the current issue of the Journal of the Middle East and Africa, the biggest challenge confronting AMISOM and, indeed, the international community, is not military, but political. There has yet to be any evidence that the bickering politicians of the Somali TFG have any inclination to even begin rising to the occasion.

On Wednesday of this week, members of the country’s parliament, who have been squabbling over the attempt by one faction to dismiss the speaker of the legislature, wrestled with and threw chairs at each other with such force that they literally drew blood. Meanwhile the TFG cabinet is led by a Harvard-educated academic so out of touch with reality that last week—at the very moment when the UN was launching a campaign to raise $1.5 billion to feed his starving countrymen—he gave an interview to The Telegraph in which he denied there was even a famine. Despite receiving copious amounts of Western aid for precisely this purpose, Abdiweli Mohammed Ali has not paid some of its military and police personnel for months, with result being many whom I encountered have quit their units and hired themselves out—in full uniform—as security officers or even fighters in private militias.

With “leaders” like these as local partners, it is a wonder that the peacekeepers have managed to make any progress: many a counterinsurgency campaign has gone awry by being shackled to far less self-destructive regimes. That the African Union forces have accomplished what they have this year and thus opened up, however briefly, a window of hope, however narrow, for the people of Mogadishu is itself a remarkable achievement worth celebrating in this festal season even if there is still precious little “good will towards men”—to say nothing of “peace on earth”—to be found in poor Mogadishu.

J. Peter Pham is director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Martin Murphy’s RUSI Journal Article on Somali Piracy

Adrienne Chuck — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:23:13 -0600

Martin Murphy, resident senior fellow in the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, is the author of an article on “Somali Piracy: Why Should We Care?” in the current issue of the RUSI Journal. In his essay, Murphy contends that Somali piracy is the single biggest maritime threat since World War II, with consequences resonating far beyond the shores of Somalia that have political, geostrategic, naval, economic and human security aspects. He then argues that only a multi-layered approach, combining long-term political and economic incentives with a short-term clamp-down on pirate activities, can provide an effective and sustainable solution.

First published in 1857, the RUSI Journal is the flagship publication of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London.

Somalia

Counter-Piracy Task Force: Strategic Approaches to the Piracy Challenge

The Splintering of Al Shabaab

J. Peter Pham on PBS’s NewsHour to Discuss Hostage Rescue in Somalia

Click here to access the program transcript

Bronwyn Bruton on WAMU Radio to Discuss Hostages in Somalia

Click here to listen to the interview

Bronwyn Bruton on NPR to Discuss Ethopian and Kenyan Incursions Into Somalia

Click here to listen to the interview

The Islamist Threat to Africa’s Rise in 2012

A (Slightly) Merrier Christmas in Mogadishu

Martin Murphy’s RUSI Journal Article on Somali Piracy

Click here to download the article (pdf)