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Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge    [

    Bush Hawks Down
    By Jim Lobe
    Inter Press Service

    Tuesday 06 June 2006

    The takeover of Mogadishu this week by Islamic militias marks a major defeat for the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which had secretly backed a coalition of warlords that has reportedly been routed from the Somali capital.

    While the victors, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), sought to assure the international community that they have no intention of setting up a Taliban-style fundamentalist state, U.S. officials have expressed strong concerns about their possible ties to al Qaeda associates believed to be in Mogadishu, including at least one individual who allegedly helped organize the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

    "We do have real concerns about the presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia and that informs an important aspect of our policy with regard to Somalia," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormick on Monday. U.S. officials say their biggest fear is that the UIC will offer safe haven to al Qaeda and other radical Islamists as the Taliban did after it took control of Afghanistan.

    Some independent analysts, on the other hand, said the outcome could actually contribute to Somalia's stabilization after 15 years of rule by rival warlords, and even make way for the transitional national government that has been based in Baidoa since its formation in 2004 as part of a national reconciliation process to set up shop in Mogadishu.

    "The so-called Islamists provided a sense of stability in Somalia, education and other social services, while the warlords maimed and killed innocent civilians," Ted Dagne, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, told The New York Times. He said radical Islamists within the UIC were unlikely to wrest control from more-moderate factions.

    "In the short term, this is good news in that the warlords in Mogadishu have been dealt with, but, in the long term, it depends on what the courts' agenda is," one knowledgeable foreign diplomat told IPS. "They're probably looking at least for stronger roles in the education and justice sectors within the transitional government, but what their specific terms of negotiation will be is at this point anyone's guess."

    The UIC's victory Monday capped two months of fighting against the forces of three Mogadishu warlords who called themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism. The violence, described as the worst since 1991 when starvation and anarchy provoked the dispatch of a U.S.-led U.N. peacekeeping operation to Somalia, is believed to have killed at least 300 people over the past several weeks.

    The warlords, who since the outset of the U.S. "global war on terror" have reportedly been paid by the U.S. to monitor and help "snatch" suspected terrorists in Somalia, began receiving more cash-100,000-150,000 dollars a month, according to the International Crisis Group-to challenge the UIC's militias that were expanding their control over the capital earlier this spring, just as the transitional government in Baidoa was to convene parliament for the first time.

    While the operation was reportedly organized by the CIA, the cash reportedly was funneled through the Pentagon's Joint Combined Task Force (JCTF), a 1,800-troop force based in neighbouring Djibouti since shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Defence Department. The JCTF is apparently charged with carrying out surveillance, "snatch", and related operations against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and the Horn.

    "Support for the warlords came at a really bad time and made a lot of people, particularly the Europeans who were trying to support the government, very angry," noted the diplomat, who asked not to be identified. "Convening the parliament was a big objective for everyone, but then it's overshadowed by the fighting in Mogadishu that followed the injection of money for the warlords."

    The U.S. move also provoked some controversy within the U.S. government, although at relatively low levels that did not gain the attention of senior policy-makers.

    In one case, a Kenya-based U.S. diplomat, Michael Zorick, reportedly submitted a dissent paper to both his State Department bosses and the Pentagon in which he complained that support for the warlords was counter-productive to U.S. aims in Somalia. He was subsequently transferred to the U.S. embassy in Chad.

    Indeed, State Department officials and independent analysts have long argued that Washington's single-minded focus on catching suspected terrorists in Somalia, combined with its failure to support efforts to rebuild state institutions and, most recently, to provide real support to the transitional government, would prove self-defeating. But they were overruled by hawks in the White House and the Pentagon.

    "The U.S. now has nothing to show for three years of investing in these warlords as the sole element of their counterterrorism strategy in Somalia," noted John Prendergast, a Horn expert at the International Crisis Group here. "It's a travesty that this has been the only strategy Washington has followed after 15 years of no government, no state, in Somalia."

    "There simply hasn't been a U.S. comprehensive policy on Somalia; just a counterterrorism policy that takes no account of the political context," noted the foreign diplomat. "Do you give priority to snatching individuals by any means necessary, including backing warlords, at the expense of a wider political process? That's essentially what the U.S. has done. One would hope that this could get them to broaden their thinking, but I think that may be a naïve."

    The current chairman of the African Union, Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, also criticized U.S. support for the warlord alliance during a White House visit Monday.

    "We think, and what we told President Bush, [is] that most important [goal] is to establish a government that must help the Somali people to have a real government. We think that if this effort is needed, we have to move in this direction, in order that the Somali government can truly be established in Mogadishu," he said.

    Ironically, some of the warlords who have benefited from U.S. backing fought its troops in 1993 when Washington was trying to crush resistance to U.N. efforts to pacify the country following the ouster in 1991 of President Siad Barre, a U.S. client during the Cold War, according to Dagne.

    A disastrous raid in October 1993 by U.S. forces against another Mogadishu warlord in which 18 soldiers-as well as hundreds of Somalis-were killed, the subject of the book and blockbuster movie, "Blackhawk Down," led to Washington's withdrawal from Somalia and its subsequent refusal to commit U.S. ground troops to peacekeeping operations in Africa.

    Regarding the warlords' recent ouster, Amb. Robert Oakley, who acted as special advisor on Somalia for the U.N. during the intervention in the early 1990s, told IPS, "That's a good riddance. If the provisional government can work out some kind of understanding with the Islamic courts, it does create the possibility of some stability."

    He also said the U.S. "should work with the African Union, the U.N., and the neighboring states" to promote such an understanding. "I wouldn't expect us to put a huge effort in there, but there's some possibility (of the U.S. doing so). I think it's worth exploring."

    To Prendergast, Washington's most recent misadventure in Somalia recalls earlier debacles. "During the Cold War, U.S. officials armed strongmen to carry out our perceived national interests, and the consequences for Africa were disastrous," he said.

    "It appears they've learned nothing since, as they're repeating the same strategy of arming strongmen and ignoring institutions. The consequences, predictably, are equally disastrous."

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    Jim Lobe is Washington bureau chief for Inter Press Service.

 

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    Go to Original

    Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge
    By Mark Mazzetti
    The New York Times

    Thursday 08 June 2006

    Washington - A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize.

    The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords' hold on the capital, Mogadishu.

    The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding there.

    Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American troops.

    The American effort of the last year has occasionally included trips to Somalia by Nairobi-based C.I.A. case officers, who landed on warlord-controlled airstrips in Mogadishu with large amounts of money for distribution to Somali militias, according to American officials involved in Africa policy making and to outside experts.

    Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report.

    Around that time, the State Department's political officer for Somalia, Michael Zorick, who had been based in Nairobi, was reassigned to Chad after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing Washington's policy of paying Somali warlords.

    One American government official who traveled to Nairobi this year said officials from various government agencies working in Somalia had expressed concern that American activities in the country were not being carried out in the context of a broader policy.

    "They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic framework," the official said. "And they realized that there might be negative implications to what they are doing."

    The details of the American effort in Somalia are classified, and American officials from several different agencies agreed to discuss them only after being assured of anonymity. The officials included supporters of the C.I.A.-led effort as well as critics. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the American Embassy in Kenya.

    Asked about the complaints made by embassy officials in Kenya, Thomas Casey, a State Department spokesman, said: "We're not going to discuss any internal policy discussions. The secretary certainly encourages individuals in the policy making process to express their views and opinions."

    Several news organizations have reported on the American payments to the Somali warlords. Reuters and Newsweek were the first to report about Mr. Zorick's cable and reassignment to Chad. The extent and location of the C.I.A.'s efforts, and the extent of the internal dissent about these activities, have not been previously disclosed.

    Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of high-level suspects.

    Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes. The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital.

    "This has blown up in our face, frankly," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive field experience in Somalia.

    "We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about," said Mr. Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton administration.

    The American activities in Somalia have been approved by top officials in Washington and were reaffirmed during a National Security Council meeting about Somalia in March, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the March meeting, at a time of fierce fighting in and around Mogadishu, a decision was made to make counterterrorism the top policy priority for Somalia.

    Porter J. Goss, who recently resigned as C.I.A. director, traveled to Kenya this year and met with case officers in the Nairobi station, according to one intelligence official. It is not clear whether the payments to Somali warlords were discussed during Mr. Goss's trip.

    The American ambassador in Kenya, William M. Bellamy, has disputed assertions that Washington is to blame for the surge in violence in Somalia. And some government officials this week defended the American counterterrorism efforts in the country.

    "You've got to find and nullify enemy leadership," one senior Bush administration official said. "We are going to support any viable political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism."

    In May, the United Nations Security Council issued a report detailing the competing efforts of several nations, including Ethiopia and Eritrea, to provide Somali militias and the transitional Somali government with money and arms - activities the report said violated the international arms embargo on Somalia.

    "Arms, military mat riel and financial support continue to flow like a river to these various actors," the report said.

    The United Nations report also cited what it called clandestine support for a so-called antiterrorist coalition, in what appeared to be a reference to the American policy. Somalia's interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf, first criticized American support for Mogadishu's warlords in early May during a trip to Sweden.

    "We really oppose American aid that goes outside the government," he said, arguing that the best way to hunt members of Al Qaeda in Somalia was to strengthen the country's government.

    Senior American officials indicated this week that the United States might now be willing to hold discussions with the Islamic militias, known as the Islamic Courts Union. President Bush said Tuesday that the first priority for the United States was to keep Somalia from becoming a safe haven for terrorists.

    The American payments to the warlords have been intended at least in part to help gain the capture of a number of suspected Qaeda operatives who are believed responsible for a number of deadly attacks throughout East Africa.

    Since the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, American officials have been tracking a Qaeda cell whose members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and parts of the Middle East.

    Shortly after an attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and the failed attempt to shoot down a plane bound for Israel that took off from the Mombasa airport, both in November 2002, the United States began informally reaching out to the Somali clans in the hopes that local forces might provide intelligence about suspected members of Al Qaeda in Somalia.

    This approach has brought occasional successes. According to an International Crisis Group report, militiamen loyal to warlord Mohammed Deere, a powerful figure in Mogadishu, caught a suspected Qaeda operative, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, in April 2003 and turned him over to American officials.

    According to Mr. Prendergast, who has met frequently with Somali clan leaders, the C.I.A. over the past year has increased its payments to the militias in the hopes of putting pressure on Al Qaeda.

    The operation, while blessed by officials in Washington, did not seem to be closely coordinated among various American national security agencies, he said.

    "I've talked to people inside the Defense Department and State Department who said that this was not a comprehensive policy," he said. "It was being conducted in a vacuum, and they were largely shut out."