pretext—the conflict with the Russians—is gone, but it’s the same
as it’s always been.
What kind of impact will the injection of US armed forces into
Somalia have on the civil society? Somalia has been described by
one US military official as “Dodge City” and the Marines as “Wyatt
Earp.” What happens when the marshal leaves town?
First of all, that description has little to do with Somalia. One
striking aspect of this intervention is that there’s no concern for
Somalia. No one who knew anything about Somalia was involved in
planning it, and there’s no interaction with Somalis as far as we
know (so far, at least).
Since the Marines have gone in, the only people they’ve dealt
with are the so-called “warlords,” and they’re the biggest gangsters
in the country. But Somalia is a country. There are people who
know and care about it, but they don’t have much of a voice here.
One of the most knowledgeable is a Somali woman named Rakiya
Omaar, who was the executive director of Africa Watch. She did
most of the human rights work, writing, etc. up until the
intervention. She strongly opposed the intervention and was fired
from Africa Watch.
Another knowledgeable voice is her co-director, Alex de Waal,
who resigned from Africa Watch in protest after she was fired. In
addition to his human rights work, he’s an academic specialist on the
region. He’s written many articles and has published a major book
on the Sudan famine with Oxford University Press. He knows not
only Somalia but the region very well. And there are others. Their
picture is typically quite different from the one we get here.
Siad Barre’s main atrocities were in the northern part of Somalia,
which had been a British colony. They were recovering from his
US-backed attack and were pretty well organized (although they
could, no doubt, have used aid). Their own civil society was
emerging—a rather traditional one, with traditional elders, but with
lots of new groups. Women’s groups, for example, emerged in this
crisis.
The area of real crisis was one region in the south. In part, that’s
because of General Mohammed Hersi’s forces, which are supported
from Kenya. (Hersi, who’s known as Morgan, is Siad Barre’s son-in-
law.) His forces, as well as those of General Mohammed Farah Aidid
and Ali Mahdi, were carrying out some of the worst atrocities. This
led to a serious breakdown in which people just grabbed guns in
ann
(Ann)
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