By Cathy Nugent
At the end of last year the Islamist group which had been in control of much of Somalia since June 2006 — the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) — was driven out of the capital Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops, acting on behalf of the Somalia’s “official” government. The US probably gave the Ethiopian troops technical support.
On Sunday 7 January US forces made air raids in the south of the country, ostensibly to attack an al-Qaeda cell which they hold responsible for lethal 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Further air raids have been made by Ethiopian forces.
The US’s “good reason” for the air raids aren’t credible: they are after all hunting down just three al-Qaeda suspects! For sure they and their Ethiopian allies want to “mop up” a potential Islamist resistance in the south.
The Ethiopian troops will not be welcomed by many Somalis. UK-based Somali groups say — credibly — that the troops will drive many Somalis into supporting an Islamist insurgency, when they would otherwise not do so. Many Somalis know Ethiopia is just taking care of its long-term regional imperialist interests.
All of the nearby African states — Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda — want to see the western-backed Transitional Government of Somalia safely installed in Mogadishu. Whether the latest developments will bring the regional stability they want and without further bloodshed remains to be seen. The Transitional Government is an unelected entity, put together in 2004 and created out of negotiations between some of Somalia’s warlords.
The Ethiopian government have said they will withdraw their troops soon, but like the US in Iraq, may get bogged down in Somalia. The UN is also set to send in a “peace keeping” force made up of African troops. Another chapter in the tragic post-colonial history of Somalia has begun.
Somalia has not had a functioning central government or state apparatus since a military dictatorship was overthrown in 1991. Parts of the country have since that time split away, declaring their independence or autonomy.
The country has become a patchwork of regional administrations, city-states, milita-controlled areas and facilities. Much of this is also based on Somalia’s complex clan system. The Transitional Government is also a clan-based political entity.
Where does Somali Islamism fit in? And are the Somali Islamists like al-Qaeda or the Taliban as much of the US political class and the Ethiopian government would have it?
According to the International Crisis Group political Islam has never had strong support in Somalia. The salafist religious teaching which often accompanies modern political Islam is seen as foreign dogma in a country where a sufi-type Islam is widespread. Somalia’s clan system also works against the unifying tendency of such ideology. That said, the Union of Islamic Courts as a movement with an Islamist drive was likely to grow more radical and therefore more repressive.
Some groupings of political Islamists were established in Somalia in the 1960s, inspired by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. These were repressed after the 1969 military coup of General Mohamed Siyaad Barre.
Political Islamist thinking was largely developed by people sent into exile after the coup. Some became attached to the jihadist campaign in Afghanistan. In Somalia the Islamist movement continued underground, sporadic and fragmented. It was small and, in fact, not very political. For Somalis the radical Islam of the time was more about “purifying the faith”. Out of the underground movement the Islamist al-Itihaad al-Islaami was founded at the end of the 1980s. This is the group which the US and the Ethiopians link to al-Qaeda.
At the end of the 80s a civil war broke out in north-west Somalia, so bad that most of the population of the area were displaced. In southern Somalia other rebel factions were established.
By the end of 1990, in the context of civil war, and under the influence of veterans from Afghanistan, al-Itihaad decided to take up arms. On 30 December 1990 Barre abandoned Mogadishu and the government collapsed.
The southern rebels, the United Somali Congress took over the capital and attacked the clans associated with the former regime. Al-Itihaad, now based in the south, went to war with the USC. At the southern port of Kismaayo (which is where the UIC have now retreated to) they were defeated, their forces were scattered, with some moving north. The movement turned decisively to jihadist struggle, was able to build up strength, and was financed by Saudis. By 1992 they had fallen out with their local allies, were killed and driven out of the area into the mountains of the west. The movement was driven back to Gedo near the Ethiopian border, where it took control, in a lawless and chaotic environment, setting up reactionary sharia rule: compulsory veiling, the banning of qaat (a local leaf with narcotic properties) and Islamic schooling. These things were unpopular.
Al-Itihaad’s networks in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere were now causing global concern. In 1996 the Ethiopian government attacked al-Itihaad bases in Somalia and the movement was decisively routed.
The US and the Ethiopians maintain al-Itihaad still exists in some form. More likely, as part of the UIC movement, this form of “extreme” Islamism has taken on a different shape, building on the networks al-Itihaad once had. Even so, up until 2006 jihadist-Islamism was not a strong force in Somalia.
In the last 10 years a network of Islamic law courts have come into operation in the Somalia, as an outgrowth of political, social and economic collapse. After 1991 many services in the country were privatised, some were taken on by charities and businesses with an Islamic character. A network of such services was established and working with different clans they set up sharia courts. The courts tried established to establish general law and order, to create a framework in which normal economic activity. Each court generally had authority only over a given sub-clan. It was a form of governance — one that was at once organic and a new development in Somalia.
Islamists, even ex-members of the al-Itihaad movement were involved in the courts, but in the main the courts were set up according to the traditional religious belief of Somalia would not countenance more severe Islamic punishments and strictures. Undoubtedly the Islamists exploited the new system.
In 2004 a new umbrella organisation for Mogadishu’s sharia courts — the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts — was established. It created a central militia. The SCIC clashed with the Transitional Government. The government’s interim President, Abdillahi Yusuf, declared himself anti-Islamist. From the start he planned to bring African forces (including Ethiopian forces) into the country to prop up a projected state. The plan provoked a backlash and helped force an alliance between various moderate Islamic groups, charities and networks and the Islamists, who were seen to be the target.
At the start of 2006 the courts’s central militia began fighting with the militias in Mogadishu who were allied to the Transitional Government and backed by the US.
In June 2005 the courts took control of most of Mogadishu and established the rudiments of a new Government. Transitional Government controlled-areas were now a small part of the country.
Since June the US, Ethiopia and Somalia’s other African neighbours have been looking to reverse the situation. In the end they opted for a military offensive against the Islamists.
The troops of a repressive power such as the Ethiopian regime can only bring renewed conflict and death. They were not brought into to establish or even re-establish a democratically elected government. At the same time socialists have to acknowledge that the creeping authority and probable future repression of the Union of Islamic Courts would have been a disaster for the people of Somalia.
What solidarity socialists and the labour movement can offer the people of Somalia may be limited, but at the very least we ought to make links and offer our solidarity to the Somali refugee community in this country.