Through Murky Waters: America chooses terrorism over stability in war-torn Somalia
Xenophobia is not a foregin policy
By Alex Sirney, senior writer
Posted on September 5, 2006

While the horror of the real-life Black Hawk Down incident has passed into a dim memory for most Americans, the horror of daily life in Somalia has not escaped the attention of those who have to live through it.

The horror may be passing, however — the ineffectual transitional government is being challenged by a popular movement that has managed to unite, govern and keep peaceful a large section of the country around the capital of Mogadishu.

This stabilizing force, however, is not popular with the Western world, especially the United States, for one reason — its roots are in Islam, and America fears the rise of another Islamist state, even one that will finally be able to feed and protect its people after 15 years of chaos.

Somalia, a country of roughly 8.6 million people, has seen nothing but civil disorder since dictator Mohammad Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In 1993, United Nations forces, including U.S. troops, entered the country to attempt to provide food to a starving population. What they found was a country torn apart by fighting dominated by rival warlords who terrorized the population and, after two years of casualties, terrorized the United Nations into fleeing the country.

This is when America turned its eyes elsewhere — Bosnia and Kosovo, an Oval Office scandal, and the war on terrorism captured its attention during the last decade. Now, the war on terror has brought Somalia back into focus.

The transitional Somali government, a body elected in 2004 that governed from Kenya until it finally managed to muster the support needed to safely return to Somalia last year, has never been able to secure or occupy Mogadishu or even a majority of the country. The Union of Islamic Courts, however, has secured the city and controls or influences most of the southern half of the country and ended extortion by militia soldiers, decreased crime, taken a strong stance against drug use and generally stabilized the city and region.

Unsurprisingly, the people welcome these changes. While the transitional government is supported by foreign troops and the recognition of the international community the UIC is supported by the Somali people. While the United States does not confirm or deny it, it is widely believed to have supported warlords opposed to the UIC despite the stability and relative peace it has brought to the southern half of Somalia, much as the U.S. government backed dictators in Central and South America during the Cold War because they opposed communism. They favored brutal repression and corruption instead, much as the warlords in Somalia do today.

The UIC has disavowed any ties to al-Qaida and, according to the BBC, there are no terrorist training camps in Somalia. The only reason to suspect that an Islamist state in Somalia would be more threatening to global peace is because it would be a functioning state rather than a chaotic meat grinder and therefore be capable of having a foreign policy — an important step in a place that saw the first cargo ship come to port in Mogadishu just in the past week.

U.S. foreign policy, then, would seem to favor disarray and internal terrorism in other countries in order to preserve its own conception of what the world should look like, a conception that is quickly being disproved in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon as conducive to peace anywhere. This must shift, both for the sake of the people of the countries being torn apart by the alleged war on terrorism and for the sake of U.S. security. If a people are fed, clothed, employed and happy, they are far less likely to want to blow themselves up. The ideology of terrorism can’t be defeated any other way.

Alex Sirney is a senior anthropology/SMAD major who welcomes feedback at sirneyac.