Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: In Somalia, a New Template for Fighting Terrorism, By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, New York Times, October 17, 2009

A quote:

One widely held misperception about Somalia is that it is rabidly anti-American. This may come from the indelible images of gleeful Somalis dragging the corpses of American soldiers through the streets after militiamen shot down the two Black Hawk helicopters and a heavily armed mob finished them off. Later American policies did little to curb antagonisms. In 2006, the C.I.A. shoveled a few million dollars to predacious warlords in an attempt to stymie a competing Islamist movement. When that didn't work, the American government supported Ethiopia, Somalia's historic enemy, when it invaded. What followed was a nasty guerilla war that ended only when the Ethiopians agreed to leave earlier this year and the Islamists were allowed back in. Essentially, the 2006 status quo was returned, minus 15,000 Somalis, now dead.

Still, "most Somalis are not anti-American," said Afyare Abdi Elmi, a Somali-Canadian political scientist at Qatar University's International Affairs Program. "Most Somalis are pragmatic and they do not inherently oppose America's involvement in Somalia per se. They reject when such involvement is associated with warlords or Ethiopians. Neither condition exists now."

This could spell an opportunity, as the Obama administration seems to think. The United States and other Western powers have provided the new Islamist government with weapons, money and diplomatic support. While terribly weak, the government has proven to be relatively moderate, vowing to repel terrorist groups, and seeking a middle path in its interpretation of political Islam.

The United States, for its part, is helping the government in a crucial way, with pinprick counterterrorism attacks like the commando raid that killed Mr. Nabhan; these presumably advance the mutual interest of eliminating Qaeda terrorists and weakening the Somali insurgency, while avoiding civilian casualties.

So a new template for fighting terrorism may be emerging as the United States shows less desire to get involved in the local intricacies of nation building and more interest in narrowing its focus to Al Qaeda. The focus so far has been precise, limited and often covert, with attacks carried out with a parallel diplomatic strategy.

Lesson? The SysAdmin's job need not be as resource-intensive as conventionally assumed. The "narrowing" focus is misleading though, as we're now in the habit of calling just about every extremist group "Al Qaeda."

But the larger point still holds: using the military is always a delaying action, the hope being that something better can emerge. In Africa, as elsewhere, that "better" will come in the form of Asian economic connectivity.

Will the more bare-bones approach work everywhere? No. But the radical Islamic attraction remains weak in sub-Saharan Africa, a point I made back in "The Americans Have Landed," so no reason to assume a large effort, if you're doing the 3D approach (blending defense, diplomacy and development) effectively.

Nagl's closer quote:

To Mr. Nagl, in fact, Somalia is a counterterrorism planner's dream, with its desert terrain, low population density and skinny shape along the sea; no place is more than a few minutes' chopper flight from American ships bobbing offshore. "It's far, far harder to do counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Somalia," he said.

What the two fronts have in common, he said, is that "you can't kill or capture your way out of this problem. You have to change the conditions on the ground."

So you tailor to the theater in question--a basic lesson of successful globalization in the business realm.