(5)Is 'constructive disengagement' the solution in Somalia?
On Thursday, Joshua Foust published an article at PBS's Need to Know that, though avoiding the term "constructive disengagement," mirrors the arguments advanced by Bronwyn Bruton's report for CFR, and those made by Fareed Zakaria in the wake of the bombings al Shabaab executed in Uganda. Though constructive disengagement is often advanced as a minor-league panacea to Somalia's ills, I tend to have several issues with the way arguments for this solution are constructed, and Foust's article is no exception. Using Foust's piece as a basis for discussion, this entry will analyze some of the general problems with the advocacy of constructive disengagement.
I should say up front that I both like and respect Foust. He is smart, typically well-researched, and has little tolerance for sloppy, dishonest, or illogical argumentation. Thus, though I will argue at length that various oversimplifications in the way he frames aspects of the Somalia conflict unfairly shape his conclusion, I do not attribute this to dishonesty on his part. Rather, I think that his unfamiliarity with the Horn of Africa coupled with an over-reliance on the conclusions proffered by various secondary sources causes Foust's thinking to reflect some of the unwarranted conventional wisdom that can be found in a certain segment of the literature.
Were the Islamic Courts an Islamic bogeyman?
One of the presumptions common to all arguments for constructive disengagement is that the threats of Islamism or jihadism in Somalia have been massively overstated by Western analysts. As Foust writes: "[T]he West seems to obsess on the messy southern part of Somalia, a region almost settled in 2006 by a confederation of Islamist factions, but then disbanded and thrown back into chaos by a misguided U.S. policy that sees Islamic boogeymen [sic] around every corner." Thus, in Foust's view, the West's misperceptions extend back to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, when it intervened on behalf of the UN-recognized transitional federal government, and pushed the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) back from areas that it had come to control. This invasion was supported financially, and in other ways, by the US, and I know of no analyst who would argue that the invasion has gone well. Thus, several sources -- including Marc Lynch, Martin Fletcher, Matt Yglesias, and the Los Angeles Times editorial page -- have argued that the real threat was caused by the invasion itself. As the Los Angeles Times put it: "Al Shabab probably would not exist were it not for the disastrous failure of U.S. policies in Somalia."
But the fact that the Ethiopian invasion has been frankly disastrous does not prove that the ICU was in fact "relatively moderate" (Lynch's words), or that al Shabaab would have been marginalized within the ICU absent the invasion. I do not want to revisit the question of what the proper response to the ICU's rise would have been (a question beyond the scope of this already long entry), but instead challenge the view that the ICU should clearly be understood as a relatively moderate Islamist movement. (I should note that it's not clear this is precisely Foust's position, but it's an argumentative thread that tends to run through advocacy of constructive disengagement, and is suggested by his "Islamic bogeymen" remark.)
Bill Roggio, in a devastating response to one of Yglesias's contributions to this debate, has pointed out a number of reasons that the ICU was seen as a threat in 2006. Roggio's response is worth reading in full for those who are interested in this historical question, but I will highlight a few critical points. First, Roggio notes that known al Qaeda operatives served as leaders within the ICU; in fact, one reason I am deeply skeptical of the idea that Shabaab would have been marginalized absent the Ethiopian invasion is that Shabaab's founder, Aden Hashi 'Ayro, was the protégé of Hasan Dahir Aweys, who led the ICU's consultative council. Second, Roggio highlights the training camps within Somalia, and the fact that the ICU's island fortress of Ras Kamboni also served as "a major command, control, and communications hub for al Qaeda in East Africa." Third, Roggio points to the presence of foreign fighters in Somalia in 2005 and 2006 (something often associated with the growth of salafi jihadi movements) and the fact that the ICU used Arabic-language propaganda tapes that As Sahab helped to produce to appeal to possible recruits in the Middle East. Moreover, Osama bin Laden gave several rhetorical nods to the Islamic Courts during the course of 2006, after its capture of Mogadishu. And finally, Roggio notes that Shabaab's now-open lobbying to join al-Qaeda is not new, but "the result of years of links with the global terror organization."
Despite this, one can still reasonably argue that the perception of the threat emanating from the ICU was overstated. But the problem with virtually every argument I've seen that the ICU was an "Islamic bogeyman" is that they do not deal with these facts that give rise to legitimate threat perceptions: instead, such analyses tend to deliberately ignore them. And that is no basis for forming a legitimate threat assessment.
Assessing the threat of Shabaab
I have spent considerable space critiquing arguments that the ICU was not a real threat for two reasons. First, this is not a mere historical quibble: it is in fact an important part of arguments for constructive disengagement. After all, if the ICU was not a threat, that means that the current jihadist challenge in Somalia is a US creation. This provides a concrete reason to believe that disengagement now would yield better results. Second, looking at the various factors that might have made the ICU itself dangerous can help us assess the current threat posed by al Shabaab.
Foust argues that Shabaab itself should not be seen as a transnational danger. "It's only in the last 60 days," he writes, "that al-Shabaab has shown any interest in expanding its activities beyond Somalia proper. And that expansion seems to be purely reactionary-an immune response, of sorts, to foreign intervention in Somalia's violent power politics." But this argument, phrased so broadly, is simply untrue: key Shabaab leaders have in fact expressed their interest, repeatedly, in aligning with al Qaeda and striking outside of Somali territory.
One important document defining al Shabaab's outlook, written by Abu Mansoor al-Amriki (aka Omar Hammami), is entitled "A Message to the Mujaahideen in Particular and Muslims in General," issued in January 2008. It is by no means the only such ideological statement on Shabaab's part, but is particularly comprehensive. The document makes Shabaab's global jihadist outlook clear, and runs directly counter to the claim that the group lacks interests beyond Somalia proper: in fact, Amriki attacks the ICU for having "a goal limited to the boundaries placed by the Taghoot [the impure]," while "the Shabaab had a global goal including the establishment of the Islaamic Khilaafah [caliphate] in all parts of the world." Amriki also provides an extended discussion of Shabaab's manhaj, or religious methodology, writing that it "is the same manhaj repeatedly heard from the mouth of the mujaahid shaykh Usaamah Bin Laden the doctor Ayman ath-Thawaahiri and the hero, Abu Mus'ab az-Zarqaawi" (distinctively salafi transliterations were in the original).
Since then, other Shabaab leaders have made clear Shabaab's global jihadist outlook and allegiance with al-Qaeda. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, al Shabaab's now-deceased chief military strategist, formally reached out to al Qaeda's senior leadership in a 24-minute video entitled "March Forth," which circuited the jihadi web on Aug. 30, 2008. In it, Nabhan offers salutations to bin Laden and pledges allegiance to "the courageous commander and my honorable leader." In November 2009, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Shabaab's intelligence chief, was named al Qaeda's East African commander. Upon being appointed, he said: "After Somalia we will proceed to Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia" -- indicating ambitions beyond Somalia's borders. And in February 2010, Shabaab issued a statement saying it had agreed "to connect the Horn of Africa jihad to the one led by al Qaeda and its leader Sheikh Osama Bin Laden."
Moreover, al Qaeda leaders have not ignored Shabaab's overtures. As previously mentioned, the rhetorical nod from al Qaeda's senior leadership began when the ICU was the dominant Islamist movement in Somalia. But al Qaeda leaders have also lauded Shabaab specifically. On Nov. 19, 2008, Zawahiri responded to Nabhan's video with one in which he called al Shabaab "my brothers, the lions of Islam in Somalia." He urged them to "hold tightly to the truth for which you have given your lives, and don't put down your weapons before the mujahid state of Islam [has been established] and Tawheed has been set up in Somalia." Bin Laden himself issued a video devoted to al Shabaab in March 2009, entitled "Fight on, Champions of Somalia," where he addresses "my patient, persevering Muslim brothers in mujahid Somalia." He explicitly endorsed al Shabaab and denounced Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, comparing him to "Sayyaf, Rabbani, and Ahmed Shah Massoud, who were leaders of the Afghan mujahidin before they turned back on their heels." Bin Laden explained that Sharif "agreed to partner infidel positive law with Islamic sharia to set up a government of national unity," and in that way apostatized from Islam.
But perhaps Foust means his statement about Shabaab's lack of "interest in expanding its activities beyond Somalia proper" more narrowly. Zakaria, for example, downplays the statements emanating from Shabaab and al Qaeda by contending that "Al-Shabab's 'links' with Al Qaeda seem to be mostly rhetoric on both sides." At the outset, I think commentators like Zakaria are mistaken to brush these statements off so casually, particularly those coming from al Qaeda's senior leadership. After all, al Qaeda has been very conservative about endorsing other jihadi groups: one example is that, despite al Qaeda's rhetorical focus on the Israel, it has not endorsed any of the salafi jihadi groups that have emerged in Gaza.
Connections between Shabaab and al Qaeda are a bit less clear at an operational level, in part because much of the relevant information is not publicly available. But there is reason to think that commentators like Zakaria are understating the connection between the two. I have already alluded to interlocking al Qaeda/al Shabaab leadership (as exemplified by Fazul Abdullah Mohammed), and the way al Qaeda was able to gain a foothold in ICU-controlled Somalia, even before the rise of the more-radical al Shabaab (the example of Ras Kamboni). Moreover, earlier this month Kuwait Al-Siyasah Online (a leading independent Arabic-language daily) reported that "more than 200 armed Al-Qaeda elements," including Anwar al-Awlaki, escaped from fighting with the Yemeni government in the city of Lawdar in Abyan Governorate. Ahmad Ahmad Ali al-Qafish, director general of Lawdar District, told the newspaper "that Saudi, Pakistani, Egyptian, and Syrian nationals were among the al-Qaeda elements who fought in Lawdar, in addition to about eight Somalis from the pro-al-Qaeda al-Shabab al-Mujahidin Movement." Other counterterrorism analysts have similarly seen increased operational linkages between Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. What we do, and do not know, about operational linkages between Shabaab and al Qaeda merits a much more detailed treatment. But suffice it to say that, as with the ICU's linkages to transnational jihadism, some commentators unfairly give this short shrift.
From the available evidence, I predict that Shabaab will at some point officially merge with al Qaeda, similar to the trajectory that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) took. If one wishes to argue that Shabaab does not really have transnational ambitions, there is much more analysis and thought to undertake. Merely declaring that only recently did Shabaab show interest outside Somalia, and "that expansion seems to be purely reactionary," is too flip.
Evaluating constructive disengagement
This response to Foust does not prove that constructive disengagement is a bad idea. But he has not really made his case for it, just as other advocates have failed to do so. Foust's perception that Shabaab does not pose much of an external threat, just as the ICU did not, causes him to argue that the situation should work itself out with little US involvement. The key precondition for the hands-off approach is that a terrorist safe haven will not emerge that poses a threat to Somalia's neighbors and the United States, and Foust's argument falls short of demonstrating this.
Moreover, I have one substantial problem with the solution he offers: "The international community should instead take lessons from Puntland and Somaliland - Somalis are smart, industrious, and care deeply about improving their communities. Why not allow them to take charge of their own fate? With minimal help - providing basic security (which is to be contrasted from the partisan AMISOM approach), building some schools or limited infrastructure development - the rest of Somalia can begin to develop itself." I should note that I have questions about what "basic security" means, in contrast to the AMISOM approach. The AMISOM approach is clearly riddled with problems, as I have written about at length, but I'm not sure you can solve its ineffectiveness through simple "streamlining."
Foust is correct that Somaliland and Puntland are better governed and more stable than TFG-governed Somalia ("governed" being used very loosely here), and mentions that Somaliland "has tried to become a sovereign state." However, he does not mention why. The best case I have heard for Somaliland sovereignty was articulated in a conversation I had earlier this year with Saad Noor, the North American representative of the Republic of Somaliland, who argues that sovereignty is necessary for preventing Somaliland from being dragged down by the problems in the rest of the country. Currently Somaliland cannot enter international agreements and undertake other actions associated with sovereign actors. Noor's concern is that because of this, at some point the chaos that predominates in TFG Somalia will inevitably spread to Somaliland absent sovereignty.
I am neutral on the issue of Somaliland independence, but the concerns Noor expresses are valid. So this raises a final, critical question: Would constructive disengagement have the exact opposite effect that Foust intends? Rather than seeing order spread, might we see chaos spread to the parts of the country that are now stable? That is the danger of constructive disengagement, and thus the reason for much more careful analysis about Somalia than can be seen in some of the constructive disengagement advocates.
READER COMMENTS: "Is 'constructive disengagement' the solution in Somalia?"
Posted by Bronwyn Bruton at September 11, 2010 6:24 PM ET:
I very much appreciated this thoughtful analysis by Mr. Gartenstein-Ross. I'm not sure, however, why he considers this article a critique of "constructive disengagement" - that is, the strategy that I advanced in my report for the Council on Foreign Relations. Rather, Mr. Gertenstein-Ross is criticizing a series of articles in the popular press that I did not write. The failure of one (or several) independent journalists to make a good case for US disengagement from Somalia is disappointing, if it's true - but has nothing to do with my report or the strategy of "constructive disengagement."
For example, Mr. Gartenstein-Ross takes issue with Mr. Foust for not dismissing the dangers posed by the Union of Islamic Courts, and for claiming that "al Shabaab would have been marginalized within the UIC absent the [Ethiopian] invasion." I have never made the argument that al Shabaab would have been marginalized from the UIC absent the invasion. (For the record, I think that without the Ethiopian invasion, the UIC coalition would quickly have collapsed.) Implying that this argument is a consistent thread within "constructive disengagement" is a mischaracterization of my work that I (respectfully) wish to correct.
Mr. Gartenstein-Ross seems to imply that the UIC was an indigenous creation that rose out of nowhere - and that, as such, analysts can assess the UIC to determine whether or not Somalia does indeed pose an inherent risk to the United States. On the contrary, however, my CFR report makes very clear that the Union of Islamic Courts - whether it was dangerous or not - was itself the product of ill-advised international efforts to impose a central government on Somalia. But for the disastrous actions of the CIA in 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts - like al Shabaab - would NEVER HAVE EXISTED. That is the central argument of constructive disengagement - that virtually all manifestations of political Islam in Somalia, from the Mad Mullah onwards, have been triggered not by indigenous events, but by external threats to Somali sovereignty. Without the external meddling, there is no threat: evidenced by the fact that, during the period of international withdrawal from Somalia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the country stabilized and radical Islam disappeared.
I'm grateful indeed to Mr. Gartenstein-Ross for drawing attention to my report. If he'd really like to assess the merits of "constructive disengagement," however, I wish that he would critique my original report, rather than short articles written by others for the popular press!
Thanks,
Bronwyn Bruton
(Author, "Somalia: A New Approach," March 2010, Council on Foreign Relations)
Posted by Joshua Foust at September 12, 2010 8:46 AM ET:
Daveed,
Thank you for the thorough response! I'd just like to make a few points in my own defense. The first is that, while I appreciate the thrust of this post, which is deflating a bunch of commonly held beliefs on Somalia (I didn't know people HAD common beliefs on the country, hahaha), I think by making it about all arguments, instead of a specific one (mine, or the others mentioned here), the critique becomes unfocused. I'll address some of that below.:
1. I'm not aware of where I said in my piece that the ICU was moderate, or where I indicated there was evidence to think that it would have disbanded without an invasion. I merely pointed out that the ICU settled, however temporarily, much of the fighting in and around Mogadishu, and that the U.S.-based Ehtiopian invasion undid that settling (and the massive flow of refugees in the wake not of the ICU's victory, but the Ethiopian invasion, speaks to that, I think). I can see why people saying that would be criticized, and I think you made a strong case for why that would be the case, but as you correctly note I am not a specialist in Somalia, so I couldn't begin to make that argument.
2. This is probably a bigger discussion, but a few al Qaeda operatives and a training camp don't warrant an invasion. The AC-130 gunships that raked Ras Kamboni got their guys; I would assume that if the U.S. was really serious about killing off specific al Qaeda figures they could insert special operators, rather than funding a massive invasion by a neighbor most Somalis don't like. This gets back at the Islamic boogeyman comment I made-the U.S. policy community, even still under Obama, overreacts to the mere presence of a few terrorist figures, when something other than a massive military response might actually be more effective in getting the targets while also not wrecking the communities where they operate.
3. Lots of people "express interest" in aligning with al Qaeda and striking targets outside the country. But look, I never said AS is not a transnational danger-hell I jus wrote about their bombing Uganda!-I merely said that AS has only recently become a transnational threat. I'll cop to getting the exact date of AS's expansionist activity wrong. But I notice the dates on the documents you use as proof that AS is a nasty organization seeking regional jihad-they are all after the Ethiopian invasion. You note that the ICU is attacked for NOT having regional jihadist goals. Do you think the ICU would have developed a regional jihad focus had it been allowed to remain in power in 2006? Your evidence here doesn't support that - it all deals with AS, after it split from ICU post-invasion.
4. On the issue of whether we should incorporate lessons from Somaliland and Puntland, you answered one speculative with another. There's nothing wrong with that - I do it all the time - but if you're going to say that my idea will spread chaos, while complaining I don't provide evidence to support my idea, shouldn't you also provide evidence? In 2006, did the fighting that brought the ICU to power destabilize Somaliland and Puntland? I'm not sure it did. Would granting Somaliland independence somehow prevent it from becoming mired in southern Somalia's chaos? I'm not sure how - Ethiopia's sovereignty hasn't kept things in the Ogaden from turning violent.
I'm not sure how the war can be reasonably resolved without someone emerging victorious. Of course everyone would prefer to see the UN-backed kleptocracy do so, but it's been a resounding failure. Right now, we have evidence that the group that almost secured victory, that we destroyed because of a few al Qaeda figures in their midst, was in fact more moderate and less expansionist than its successor. So, when we look at the options we have, the military ones seem to have failed, miserably. That's why I'm casting about for alternatives.
Posted by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross at September 12, 2010 11:38 AM ET:
Both Foust and Bronwyn Bruton have offered thoughtful responses to this post. First, let me acknowledge Bruton's primary criticism: my article was in fact a critique of Foust's arguments (and those of a few other commentators) rather than a refutation of constructive disengagement on the whole. I meant to acknowledge that in my concluding section, where I wrote: "This response to Foust does not prove that constructive disengagement is a bad idea." Bruton is also surely right that his original report is the best place to begin in assessing the merits of constructive disengagement; my decision to weigh in on Foust's work was in large part influenced by the fact that he and I had been discussing Somalia via e-mail for several days before his contribution to Need to Know, and I wanted to challenge and sharpen his specific thinking on the issue (something he has acknowledged via Twitter that I did in fact accomplish).
Both Bruton and Foust allege that my article conflates too many different threads of commentators' arguments. While I attempted to take care not to do that, both men are intelligent and discerning, so I will accept that their criticism may be correct. In particular, Bruton is right that his own arguments should not be confused with those of the commentators who have contributed shorter analyses to the subject. I will be addressing Bruton's arguments later -- certainly in my book about the Somali war, if not prior to that. Nonetheless, I maintain that there are several threads of argument that run through much of the constructive disengagement literature (if not Bruton's work specifically); in my post, I cited to authors who make claims similar to Foust's, and explained where I think several of their claims are insufficiently considered. In that way, my post was meant to question some of the dominant thinking on the subject in general, and not just be about Foust's entry. Now, as to Foust's specific responses:
1. Foust is correct that he did not specifically say that the ICU was moderate (and, to be clear, we are all using "moderate" in a relative fashion: it probably would be more accurate to say that we are debating about whether it posed an external threat). But I don't think my inference that he was making an argument similar to Lynch's that the ICU was "relatively moderate" was unjustified -- both due to his use of the phrase "Islamic bogeyman" to describe the U.S.'s perceptions, and also his reliance on Nir Rosen's history of the Somali conflict. While Rosen also does not use the word "moderate," his description speaks for itself: "Thousands of men and women welcomed [the ICU], clapping and singing in joy as the ICU's victory convoy coursed through formerly warring neighborhoods. But the movement's Islamist colors, and the fact that the ICU was said to have given shelter to a handful of wanted al-Qaeda suspects, did not sit well with the U.S. State Department's sole Somalia analyst in the region at the time. And for Washington, the ICU became an intolerable alternative." (In reality, attributing the U.S.'s perception to a single State Department analyst overlooks a number of analysts, particularly in military intelligence, who were involved in observing the group's rise. Nor was the sole concern "a handful of wanted al-Qaeda suspects.")
2. Foust writes: "This is probably a bigger discussion, but a few al Qaeda operatives and a training camp don't warrant an invasion." He is correct that it's a bigger discussion, one that I specifically tried to sideline in my original entry. For the record, I am agnostic as to what the American and international response should have been in 2006. The point I was making was not that an invasion was warranted, but that the ICU's connections to al Qaeda and transnational jihadism more generally are often understated by some commentators. For one example, see this post I wrote at the Counterterrorism Blog in January 2007 in response to claims by Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman that the Bush administration only thought there were three terrorists in Somalia. (To be clear, Foust is not making the same arguments that Yglesias or Ackerman did; but my post, which borrows from ICG reports on Somalia, provides a bit more of a granular look at militants in Somalia than I have provided thus far in this discussion.)
3. Foust writes that he never said Shabaab is not a transnational danger, but his original writing suggests the opposite: "It's only in the last 60 days that al-Shabaab has shown any interest in expanding its activities beyond Somalia proper. And that expansion seems to be purely reactionary." If their bombing of Uganda were purely reactionary, then eliminating the occupation should eliminate Shabaab's transnational ambitions. So I stand by my original interpretation.
Foust adds: "But I notice the dates on the documents you use as proof that AS is a nasty organization seeking regional jihad-they are all after the Ethiopian invasion. You note that the ICU is attacked for NOT having regional jihadist goals. Do you think the ICU would have developed a regional jihad focus had it been allowed to remain in power in 2006? Your evidence here doesn't support that - it all deals with AS, after it split from ICU post-invasion." Three points on this. First, the reason that the documents I reference about Shabaab are all post-invasion is because before its split with the ICU, Shabaab was considered a "wing" of the Islamic Courts; I was not until the split looking for statements from Shabaab as distinct from ICU messaging. Given that Aden Hashi 'Ayro, Shabaab's founder, reportedly received training in Afghanistan as the U.S. was preparing to attack the Taliban in 2001, my assumption is that Shabaab's transnational jihadism can be traced to the period before the invasion. Second, Shabaab's accusation that the ICU was limited to Somalia's geographic borders is not precisely correct: among other things, it overlooks the ICU's "Greater Somalia" ambitions. But third, Foust's question is fair about what kind of focus the ICU would have developed had it been allowed to remain in power in 2006. I will note that commentators disagree on this point, and for brevity's sake will delay my own answer for another day.
4. Foust writes: "On the issue of whether we should incorporate lessons from Somaliland and Puntland, you answered one speculative with another." That's precisely correct. I'm not saying that his idea will spread chaos, only that it could -- and given the problems with several other layers of analysis in his post, I don't think we can make a predictive assessment based on what he wrote. He writes: "Would granting Somaliland independence somehow prevent it from becoming mired in southern Somalia's chaos?" Perhaps, though I mentioned before that I'm agnostic on the independence point. The argument for independence is that this would allow it to continue on the path to stability because Somaliland could then enter into commercial agreements and do other things that it is prevented from at present. There may be costs to independence that outweigh the benefits, but the arguments of Saad Noor and others about the potential for chaos absent sovereignty are well taken.
Finally, I agree with Fosut's desire to cast about for alternatives to the status quo. But as he wrote in a brilliant response to the atrocious Afghanistan Study Group report, "it is a conversation that must be held from a position of knowledge."
Posted by Dagmawi at September 12, 2010 1:26 PM ET:
From the Bruton article:
"During the 1990s, an al-Qaeda-linked group called al-Ittihad controlled a significant portion of southern Somalia, but quickly faced resistance and became defunct- without any intervention by the United States."
In fact, al-Ittihad morphed into the ICU. Aweys was a leader of Ittihad and emerged as a key figure of the ICU. Ittihad was defeated by an earlier Ethiopian invasion which destroyed its training grounds in Gedo.
Both facts undermine the central idea of constructive disengagement.
Without the 2006 Ethiopian invasion, the ICU would "likely" have swept into Puntland and Somaliland.
Constructive disengagement by the USA in Afghanistan facilitated Taliban control and would "likely" do the same for Shabab in Somalia.
Posted by I.S. at September 13, 2010 1:26 AM ET:
The composition of the UIC was not limited to Ittihad, it also included a number of Sufi (or, perhaps more accurately, non-Salafi) groups.