Somalia: Courting Blowback in Africa

by Gerard Emershaw

On October 5,  a Navy SEAL team went ashore in Barawe, Somalia and attempted an unsuccessful raid on an the Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab’s compound. The raid was an attempt to capture al-Shabaab commander Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, a Kenyan national. Abdulkadir has been “linked” to deceased al-Qaeda members Fazul Abdullah Muhammed and Saleh Ali Saleh, who were involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. While Abdulkadir was not linked to last month’s deadly terrorist attack on the Nairobi shopping mall, it is claimed that he was planning similar attacks including attacks on Kenya's parliament building, the United Nations office in Nairobi, and an Ethiopian restaurant patronized by Somali government officials.

While a commando raid is far less likely to produce collateral damage than are drone attacks, this action is still potentially problematic. The question is whether the United States has any legal interest in capturing Abdulkadir. The attacks that he was allegedly planning had nothing to do with the United States. The Kenyan government and the United Nations should have dealt with Abdulkadir. While Abdulkadir has been linked to dead al-Qaeda terrorists and while al-Shabaab is closely associated with al-Qaeda, it is unclear how any of this is enough to make the Kenyan national a viable United States target. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi is also no legal concern of the United States. The attack itself was blowback for Kenyan military actions against al-Shabaab.

By continuing in this dubious role of policeman of the world, the United States risks courting similar blowback. Al-Shabaab had not been targeting the United States, but now there is every reason to believe that it will. The first area of potential blowback created is animosity among elements of the Somali government—such as it is. While Somali leadership claimed to have approved the raid, there were voices of dissent. Parliament member Dahir Amin said:

It was unfortunate that US special forces entered into Somali territory. This violates the diplomatic protection which every nation in the world has. No country would agree to foreign forces entering its soil without known permission. I am ashamed that our prime minister speaks about the attack 48 hours later.

The Somali government is a strange paradox. It is at once both tyrannical and nearly non-existent. In essence, Somalia is a failed state with just enough government to brutalize the people but not enough to protect the people. Actions such as the Navy SEAL raid on the al-Shabaab compound make it more likely that blowback will be produced which will further destabilize the country and make it even less possible for a functional government to evolve. The modern history of Somalia has been that of cruel secular warlords fighting against cruel Islamic fundamentalist warlords, and any military intervention on the part of the United States is likely to make a chaotic situation even worse.

Even more dangerous is courting blowback from terrorist groups in Somalia such as al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab controlled most of southern Somalia in 2006 but was ousted from power by combined Somali and Ethiopian government forces in 2007. Later, in 2012, the Kenyan government attacked al-Shabaab in retaliation for kidnappings of tourists and aid workers in Kenya. The Kenyan troops forced al-Shabaab fighters from their stronghold in the Somali port city of Kismayo. It was this crushing defeat which eventually caused al-Shabaab to carry out the deadly terrorist attack at the shopping mall in Nairobi.

Neither Somalia nor Kenya are strategically important to the United States. Somalia is a failed state, and the most recent American attempt at humanitarian nation building led to the infamous Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 where 18 American soldiers were killed and another 73 were wounded in heavy fighting against Somali militiamen loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid after two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down.

Minneapolis has a large Somali community. While this community—like any ethnic community within the United States—is peaceful and law abiding, al-Shabaab has recruited fighters from within that community. In a Twitter message, al-Shabaab claimed that three of the nine gunmen involved in the Nairobi attack were Americans. Al-Shabaab would be able to use the Somali Diaspora in Minnesota to camouflage any potential attack in the United States.

The United States simply has no reason to engage al-Shabaab in Somalia. While al-Shabaab is affiliated with al-Qaeda, so are the Libyan rebels that the United States aided with air support in 2011 and so are the Syrian rebels that the United States is presently arming. The United States has already created enough dangerous enemies in the Middle East and North Africa without going out of its way to create yet another in Somalia.