U.S. in Somalia: Compassion and aggression define Obama's policy
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U.S. policy toward Somalia contains a shameful contradiction between compassion for the famine its population is suffering and an aggressive, militarized approach to its contesting governments.
The country, on Africa's east coast, has an estimated 10 million people. Most of the land and an estimated 3.6 million of its population are victims of a drought, which has led to tens of thousands of deaths by famine and disease and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, many as refugees into neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, which are suffering from the same deadly conditions.
The world relief organizations and the United Nations are struggling to respond to the victims' needs. The United States has pledged $105 million to the task. Nonetheless, media have strived with only some success to call attention to what is happening, including with painful images of starving Somali children.
While this is happening, the United States is carrying out, through the CIA and Washington-based contractor Bancroft Global Development, a $7 million program to train African troops that fight on behalf of the so-called transitional government of Somalia. It controls Mogadishu, the capital, but not the rest of the country.
U.S. forces also directed drone missile strikes in June against al-Shabab, the militant group allied with al-Qaida that controls most of the country. In late 2006 the U.S. supported with air strikes and intelligence an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces designed to oust an Islamist government from Mogadishu, which was installing a successor government to the one displaced by fighting in 1991.
The Obama administration said it will not prosecute aid groups if any of their relief falls into the hands of al-Shabab. But it said nothing about future drone attacks on al-Shabab. The sharp conflict between U.S. humanitarian and military goals in drought-ridden Somalia is too much for a country of that size in that situation to bear. U.S. policy needs more oversight to resolve these contradictions promptly.
First Published August 12, 2011 12:00 am
