Current talk of invading Somalia ignores our role in causing the chaos.
Before rushing into an invasion of Somalia, Americans would do well to try to understand the broader context in which the piracy problem has emerged—15 years of anarchy following the hasty collapse of a U.S.-led peacekeeping effort in the early 1990s. Pirates thrive in conditions of political fragmentation, a scenario that certainly describes contemporary Somalia and, importantly, a situation to which recent U.S. military intervention has contributed.
For the past 15 years, the closest Somalia got to a period of stable governance was a roughly six-month period in which an outfit calling itself the Islamic Courts Movement seemed on its way to consolidating control over the bulk of Somali territory. The ICM was not a particularly friendly or humane bunch, but nobody is in Somalia, and they offered the prospect of something resembling governance. Unfortunately, in a little-noticed decision, the Bush administration also decided that they represented a threat to American national security. Thus, while Americans were tuning out the news during the week between Christmas and New Year's in 2006, the administration chose to green-light an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, aimed at installing the powerless de jure government in Mogadishu as a puppet regime backed up by Ethiopian troops.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment