WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS COULD KILL YOU #27
“What You Don’t Know About International Affairs Could Kill You” spotlights current issues in international affairs from the unique perspectives of GPIA faculty. This post is by Peter J. Hoffman.
Somalia: Back to Square One
A fractured society, vexed by colonialism, rampant war, famine and humanitarian need, and United States forces deployed to bring stability. That story from Somalia in the early 1990s did not end well for anyone; the US would withdraw in 1993 following the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode that featured 18 American troops killed and more than 70 wounded in a firefight in the capital, Mogadishu, and Somalia continued to be torn apart by clan factionalism. Almost 30 years later, Somalia remains in crisis as the US is once again sending in soldiers—will a tragic cycle replay in 2022?
Consider the current context. First, the main justification given for US forces to be in Somalia is the threat posed by Al Shabab, a militant Islamic Somali group that has been fighting since 2007. Al Shabab emerged as an alternative governance system, to try to unite the country in the face of divisions based on clans. Initially Al Shabab operated entirely in the southern and central parts of Somalia—the north (Puntland) and far northwestern (Somaliland) parts of the country have operated mostly independent from the federal government of Somalia since the 1990s. But Al Shabab has developed regional ambitions, particularly in the wake of interventions into Somalia by Kenya and Ethiopia. Moreover, in 2012 the group pledged to work with Al Qaeda. Over the past decade Al Shabab has executed significant attacks in Kenya—in 2013, militants killed 67 in a Nairobi shopping mall, in 2015 150 were killed at Garissa University, and in 2020 a strike against a US base in Manda Bay killed 3 Americans. At the same time, Al Shabab has continued to carry out its violent campaign in Somalia, including a 2017 truck bomb that killed nearly 600 in Mogadishu. The African Union operation in Somalia (AMISOM) began in 2007 to fight against Al Shabab, and currently has about 22,000 troops, but it has not been effective, suffers from too few resources and is to be winding down, concentrating on training armed forces of the Somali government, and completing handover by 2024. In 2021, attacks by Al Shabab increased by 17% and thus far in 2022, Al Shabab has massacred at least 113 Somalis, and just this month also killed 10 Burundian peacekeepers—mostly through suicide attacks. Fifteen years since it first appeared, Al Shabab is a potent threat, and likely a growing one; it presently has armed forces numbering between 5,000 and 7,000, and extorts around $130 million a year to fund its activities.
Second, the United States is directly re-entering the fray. As mentioned above, the US had left in the early 1990s but returned in 2007 as part of the “Global War on Terrorism” through which it viewed Al Shabab. Under the Obama administration, the US launched occasional strikes against Al Shabab leadership and supported AMISOM, but with attention focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, and later Syria, minimal resources were devoted to defeating Al Shabab, building a strong and capable state, and consolidating peace. During the Trump administration, the US turned to an extensive use of airstrikes—Trump ordered 203 airstrikes during his four-year term, including two the day before he left office. However, after US forces incurred casualties at the hand of Al Shabab in Manda Bay, Kenya in 2020, Trump withdrew US forces from Somalia (about 750 soldiers) in early 2021. For the first year of the Biden administration, US forces had only minor engagement in Somalia; only 5 airstrikes were conducted. But, earlier this month, Biden announced that “under 500” troops would be returning to Somalia.
Third, Somalia is still a very divided country, not just in terms of breakaway regions and the long running insurgency fueled by Al Shabab, but also because of clan rivalries and issues of federalism. In 2012, after years of chaos and fighting among many parties, elections were held to consolidate a new Somali government, and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected president. From the large and powerful Hawiye clan, he was seen as having the potential to harness his position to build support for a new federal government, and international donors backed him. However, by 2017 Mohamud was seen as too beholden to the clan structure and corrupt, and he was voted out of office. Succeeding him was Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (“Farmajo”), from a relatively small clan, the Darod, he was viewed by many Somalis as an antidote to clan politics. As part of Farmajo’s attempt to move away from domination by clans, he pushed for much stronger central federal authority, yet he was unable to tame this influence, nor defeat Al Shabab and bring stability. Furthermore, he tried to cling to power by delaying elections and extending his term. On May 15, Mohamud, his predecessor, was re-elected—though the election was a year late and via an indirect vote (the power of the clans obviously persists).
Lastly, beyond politics, war, and interventions, the circumstances for most Somalis remain dire. About 70% of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day. Additionally, a drought has been plaguing and continues to afflict the Horn of Africa, causing severe hunger. Out of a population of under 16 million, it is estimated that over 6 million are soon to be in need of humanitarian assistance.
So, where does the aggregation of these elements leave Somalia? While it is hoped that domestic political actors can forge a compromise and transcend clan divisions, there is little incentive for governing elites to work with any opposition parties as donors are unlikely to withdraw support for fear that the situation will deteriorate further, causing destabilizing refugee flows or political and security vacuums. International attention is primarily concerned about the dangers of Al Shabab, and really about its potential for violence to spillover from Somalia to other parts of the region or potentially host terrorist actors looking to strike in the West. Moreover, with Western powers perceiving other global security challenges as far more acute, there is not the interest or resources necessary to achieve a fundamental change in Somalia—containment is the only strategy. As such, 2022 looks eerily familiar; US forces will return but Somalis will be hungry, poor, and caught in the crossfire while factions vie to control resources. In short, its back to square one.
What recently caught my eye:
- Uyghur Imprisonment in China
As part of China’s crackdown that began in 2017 against the Uyghur, a Turkic ethnic population in Xinjiang in the northwestern part of the country, the central government has put substantial numbers in prison. Although China’s rate of imprisonment is only about a third of the United States—China has imprisoned 122 per 100,000 as opposed to the US, which has a ratio of 364 to 100,000—this measure is distorted by the size of population and concentration. In Konashehr county, Xinjiang, 3,789 per 100,000 or nearly 4% of the population is imprisoned.
- Carbon Bombs
A “carbon bomb” is a large fossil project that would produce at least a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions—equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. The fossil fuel industry has plans for at least 195 carbon bombs, and, in fact, 60% are already producing energy. To finance these carbon bombs the dozen largest oil companies—Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, PetroChina, ExxonMobil, Shell, Rosneft, Chevron, Total Energies, Petrobras, BP, ConocoPhillips, Eni—will spend approximately $103 million a day through 2030 on new fields of oil and gas. At the same time, to keep global temperatures below a 1.5 degree Celsius increase, 60% of oil and gas, and 90% of coal must stay in the ground. The global carbon budget to maintain only a 1.5 degree Celsius increase is 500 billion tonnes; these 195 carbon bombs will produce 646 billion tonnes.
- Droughts
From 1970 to 2019, droughts represented only 15% of natural disasters but of such crises, it caused the greatest number of human deaths, 650,000. From 1998 to 2017, droughts caused global economic losses of approximately $124 billion. And the problem of droughts is intensifying, with a 29% increase in the number and duration of droughts since 2000. Presently over 3.6 billion face water scarcity, but this is estimated to grow by 2050 to between 4.8 billion and 5.7 billion. Additionally, the percentage of plants impacted by drought has more than doubled in the last 40 years, with around 12 million hectares of land lost each year as a result of drought and desertification.
- Food
Ten crops—barley, cassava, maize (corn), oil palm, rapeseed (canola), rice, sorghum, soybean, sugar cane and wheat—account for more than 80% of all calories from harvested foods. Increasingly, however, these crops are being used for industrial purposes (such as biofuels, bioplastics and pharmaceuticals) or as animal feed. For example, only 1% of corn grown in the United States is eaten. If present trends continue, by 2030, 70% of all harvest calories will go to uses other than feeding hungry people.
- Pollution
Since the onset of COVID in 2019, a total of around 6.7 million have died due to the disease. By comparison, since 2015, at least 9 million die each year from environmental contamination—about one of every six deaths globally. These deaths from heavy metals, agrochemical, fossil fuel emissions, and other modern pollutants are up 66% since 2000. But it should be noted that while this data is aggregate, a deeper look shows that the Global South, and particularly Africa, are most greatly impacted—the ten countries most affected by pollution-related deaths are: Chad, Central Africa Republic, Niger, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, North Korea, Lesotho, Bulgaria, and Burkina Faso.