• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence

• Security Menu                     

• Systems
• Industry
• Operations
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Space

Analysis: Stalking Terrorists in Africa's Horn

Council on Foreign Relations

Updated: April 9, 2007
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

When President Bush proclaims that his counterterrorism strategy consists of “taking the fight to the enemy,” it conjures up images of U.S. forces patrolling the streets of Baghdad or the mountains of Afghanistan. But increasingly this battlefield includes the Horn of Africa, where U.S. counterterrorism efforts have noticeably picked up, raising charges of heavy-handed activities along the way.

The most notable front is Somalia, where U.S. forces aided Ethiopian and Somali troops in the fight against Somalia’s powerful Islamist militias, launching air strikes at suspected al-Qaeda militants in January. Months earlier, before hard-line Islamists seized control of much of the country, U.S. agents attempted to thwart them by providing support to a band of warlords who called themselves the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.” The alliance soon folded, but the Islamists were eventually routed by the Ethiopians, leaving a weak transitional government incapable of asserting control. Somalia has recently witnessed some of the worst fighting (CSMonitor) in sixteen years of anarchy, with rival clans, Ethiopian troops, and Somali forces trading offensives. A White House report to Congress in late March said Somalia remains a major security concern (AP) and the United States will continue to “take strong measures to deny terrorists safe haven within Somalia.”

Writing recently in Foreign Affairs, John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen of the International Crisis Group argue that Washington’s single-minded focus on combating terrorism in the Greater Horn of Africa “is overshadowing U.S. initiatives to resolve conflicts and promote good governance—with disastrous implications for regional stability and U.S. counterterrorism objectives themselves.” One case in point: As a result of Ethiopia’s assistance in Somalia, Bush administration officials looked the other way as Addis Ababa bought weapons from North Korea in January, despite UN sanctions (NYT).

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.