View Point on Somalia:
Bush Administration May have Already Accepted
the Fate of the Islamic Courts
Faisal Roble
September 24, 2006
In June of this year, the Consultative Council of Islamic Courts (CCIC) easily chased out of Mogadishu, the war-ravaged Capital city of Somalia, several US-backed warlords who had kept the entire nation at bay under the misery of misrule. Besides publicly embarrassing the Bush administration, the CCIC’s decisive victory has played out in Somalia to show, in the words of Paul Kennedy, author of “The Rise and Fall of Empires,” the limits to American power.
In merely three months since its capture and pacification of Mogadishu, to the admiration of nationals and foreigners alike, the CCIC put under its control almost the whole southern portion of the country, except the administrative region of Puntland, where the president of the Transitional Federal Government hails from as well as south western regions of Bay, Bakool and Gedo. From Kismayo to Hobyo, CCIC reigns. According to Hassan Turki, CCIC could advance to Puntland and Somaliland in the near future.
It is widely reported that both Bosaaso in Puntalnd and Buroa in Somaliland are strongholds of CCIC cells. The Web-based “Somaliland Times” has quoted a high-ranking ICC official (Mr. Turki) saying that his militiamen can advance to any Somali region unstoppably like a roaring river.
So far, those who opposed or even raised concerns, some legitimate and some not-so-legitimate, about the CCICÂ’s fast paced advance to all corners of the country have tried to utilize two political resources. The most obvious and readily available card to the critics of the rule of the CCIC has been the frontÂ’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and its inclination to be another camouflage for clan power grapping.
Only commenting here on the first aspect, the CCIC is more often likened to Al-Qaida and the worldwide network of terror. Such a connection, which has yet to be proven, has gotten more scrutiny since the deadly suicide bombers in Baydhabo tried to assasinate Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, President of the UN backed Transitional Federal Government.
However, linking the CCIC to worldwide terror network is reinforced by the indisputable fact that several of the frontÂ’s leaders and officers have had military training and religious indoctrination in Afganistan. Luminary CCIC leaders such as Hassan D. Aways, Ayrow and many members of the Shabab organization in Mogadishu are some of those known to have spent some time in Afganistan in the 1980s.
Likening the CCIC with worldwide network of terror is meant to redirect the lukewarm Western attention against the advancement of the front and this tactic seems to appeal to the Bush administration, whose foreign policy since the advent of September 11, 2001 has been guided by combating what it termed “Islamic fundamentalism.” However, this has not so far worked in the Somalia context. To the contrary, US policy which could have used Somalia as a proxy nation in its overarching war against the “Islamic fundamentalist” network of terror has already failed for two reasons.
The CCICÂ’s handy defeat this June of US backed warlords have shown to the weary and desperate Somalis that the Bush administration does not have their interest at heart. Somalis often correctly criticize the Bush administration as a bully administration that does not give an iota of respect to human rights or humanity as it watched their nation systemically destroyed by US backed warlords and its client state in the region, Ethiopia. Neither does the US cared, they argue, about the looming danger caused by massive European mafia-managed-dumping of highly toxic industrial and pharmaceutical waste materials in their Indian and Red Sea Ocean shores.
With this backdrop, the Bush AdministrationÂ’s options are limited. It does not seem to have what it takes to stop the advancement of the CCIC, and it may have already decided to work with rather than against it. That is exactly what it appears the Bush Administration is doing.
Ms. Jandayi. Frazer, US Undersecretary for African Affairs has recently confirmed a meeting that took place between the US ambassador in Kenya, Nairobi, and representatives of the CCIC. Almost two days after the Secretary disclosed said talks to have taken place, the CCIC seized Kismanyo, the second largest strategic port city in southern Somalia. One wonders, therefore, whether the Bush administration gave the CCIC an implicit approval to march in to Kismayo, as did Secretary Cohen in the administration of Bush the senior in 1991, when neighboring Ethiopia was on the verge of collapsing in the hands of a Tigrian militiamen advancing to Addis Ababa.
How the unstoppable CCIC forces to capture the entire country city-by-city and region-by-region faces off with Baydhabo and possibly later on Puntland and Somaliland remains to be seen.
Faisal A. Roble
E-Mail: Fabroble@aol.com
