The US Role in Somalia's Calamity

Two years ago Somalia stood at a crossroads. After 16 anarchic years without a government, a coalition of Islamic courts had taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, bringing both ominously harsh rule and unprecedented stability. But Somalia's powerful neighbor Ethiopia saw the rise of the bellicose courts as a threat to its national security, and the Bush administration accused the Islamic courts leadership of harboring terrorism suspects -- including individuals suspected of plotting the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. When Ethiopia intervened militarily to crush the Islamic courts in December 2006, Washington supported its operation.

The last two years have been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Somalia. The conflict pits the Ethiopian forces and Somalia's ineffectual, internationally backed transitional government against a powerful but fragmented insurgency. All sides have routinely committed war crimes and serious human rights abuses. I have interviewed young girls raped by militiamen from the transitional government; mothers whose children were cut to pieces by indiscriminate Ethiopian bombardment; and common laborers shot in the streets by insurgent fighters who saw them as unsupportive of their cause.

Thousands of civilians have been killed, more than a million people are displaced from their homes, and millions of people teeter at the edge of famine. Aid workers, who had managed to assist Somali communities even during the most lawless periods before 2006, have been the targets of dozens of killings and kidnappings in 2008 and now watch helplessly from neighboring Kenya as the situation spirals out of control.

More