Toronto Star January 13, 2007
Suddenly, the war widens
While Iraq stole the headlines this week, U.S. stepped back into Somalia's chaos
By Lynda Hurst
Did a third front in the war on terror open up this week and nobody noticed?
A surprise U.S. air strike in Somalia barely had time to hit the headlines before it was swept aside in the furor over President George W. Bush's plan for a "new way forward" in Iraq.
Chaos-ridden Somalia, long known to be a haven for Al Qaeda terrorists, wasn't even mentioned in Bush's speech Wednesday night.
Yet, just two days earlier, an American air force gunship had swooped down in the south of the country to try to kill three Al Qaeda members wanted for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and other attacks in Kenya in 2002.
Whoever else was killed in the action – and the numbers are still unclear – the three targets weren't among them. But by the time that fact emerged, all attention was focused on the pent-up criticism of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
However, an aircraft supercarrier with 60 warplanes, shifted last weekend from the Persian Gulf and the Afghanistan war to the coastal waters off Somalia, is still in place. As are two other warships and an amphibious landing craft. Special operations forces are on the ground.
Which means that, despite widespread condemnation in the Middle East and Africa for the first attack, the Pentagon will try again, say analysts.
"I don't think we've seen the end of it in Somalia," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.
"Is it a third front in the war on terror? Yes, absolutely."
But a studiously low-profile one. If few Americans have a taste for sending more troops to the escalating civil war in Iraq – the latest polls say 70 per cent are against it – fewer still want them anywhere near Somalia.
In 1993, the last time the U.S. overtly attempted to counter Somali Islamists, 18 of its soldiers were killed in the disastrous "Black Hawk Down" incident. Horrific images of their bodies being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu still linger in too many minds.
But Somalia's place in the anti-terrorism scheme of things seems assured. The country has been in a state of anarchy virtually since it was formed out of an Italian colony and a British protectorate in 1960, certainly since the socialist regime of Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
Since then, the lack of a functioning central government has allowed weapons to be smuggled through its porous borders, unguarded ports and undefended airstrips.
Islamic fundamentalists, who held control of much of southern Somalia last year, have protected it as a major Al Qaeda staging ground.
This week's air attack may have been the opening salvo on a new front line, though the Pentagon denies any plan to send in large numbers of troops. Perhaps that's because it doesn't currently have the manpower, say analysts. In a standing army of 500,000, only 100,000 are active soldiers, and 40,000 of them are tied up in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan.
On Thursday, however, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced he intends to increase overall U.S. forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines over the next five years for the long-term fight against terrorism. And that now could include Somalia.
The American public would never accept a full-scale intervention, says Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, but a big operation wouldn't be necessary.
Except for the fact that it failed in its objective, this week's air attack was a textbook lesson on how the war on terror should be conducted, says Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration.
"We know these guys are Al Qaeda and a threat to the U.S. We had intelligence on their location and permission from the country to go in."
That was the original approach in Afghanistan, he adds: "In 2001, we asked the Taliban to turn over Al Qaeda and they refused. That's the only reason we went in. That wasn't the case in Iraq."
Before expanding the war on terror, the U.S. should return to where it started, says Korb.
Afghanistan was, and remains, the central front, but with its misguided emphasis on Iraq, the White House continues to downplay it: "It's like in WWII if we had decided to ignore Hitler and go after Mussolini," he says.
It's known that Bush's plan to dispatch 21,500 new troops to insurgent-ridden Baghdad and Anbar province means pulling an infantry brigade (up to 1,000 soldiers) out of eastern Afghanistan. The timing couldn't be worse, U.S. military officials have told U.S. reporters.
The reassignment will happen just as the Taliban and its coalition of fellow travellers – seasoned Al Qaeda terrorists, warlord militias, drug-trafficking fighters determined to protect their opium supply – are expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar.
"Once again, Bush is making a big mistake," says Justin Logan, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. "He's taking his eye off the ball in Afghanistan."
Regardless of the presence of 40,000 NATO troops, insurgent attacks more than tripled last year. And despite the usual hiatus in winter fighting, this week 29 Taliban militants were killed in air strikes near the ever-troublesome Pakistan border.
Yet the Afghan front is to be deprived of troops in order to bolster the failed mission in Iraq, says Logan: "There has always been an ambiguity of goals in Afghanistan."
Not so in Iraq. The goal of democratization was clear, if wildly unachievable, but the strategy was marred by misjudgments from the start, he says.
Historical precedent in successful stability and counter-insurgency operations suggests there should be 20 soldiers for every 1,000 citizens. That would mean 250,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 trustworthy Iraqi soldiers – but neither number can be mustered.
"Iraq is going to be worse off than it was regardless of when we get out, now or in five years," says Logan.
Democrats and a few rebellious Republicans have been heaping abuse on Bush for his planned troop increase, but "the realistic likelihood of stopping the president is almost nil. It goes into tactics and Congress can't tinker with things like that."
Congress could, however, cut off funding for a war that's costing $8 billion (U.S.) a month.
But that, too, could prove risky if the public thinks that the active military is being given short shrift.
Lost in the clamour over the troop "surge" announcement was a fleeting mention in Bush's speech to Patriot air-defence systems that are about to be deployed in Iraq "to reassure our friends and allies."
Alarm them, more like, says Pike at Global Security.org.
The only plausible reason for installing them is because the U.S. is planning to strike Iran in the next month or two, he says. "Or possibly they're pre-positioning them in case Saudi Arabia and Syria intervene in the situation.
"It makes no sense otherwise. Iraqi insurgents don't have missiles, Iran does."
A third front line in the war on terror? Or a fourth?
© Copyright 2007, Toronto Star
