Somalia:The failings of war on terror

ANDRE LE SAGE: Al-Shabab is a very diverse movement, and I don't think we can talk about it as a single, hierarchical organization.

Since the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, al-Shabab and the insurgency itself has splintered. And it really covers much of southern Somalia at this point. It operates in various pockets where it's able to find support and it's able to find refuge. And it is providing protection for the al-Qaida East Africa cell.

I think we need to recognize the importance of this. Al-Shabab on its own is a major threat in the Somali context. It becomes an international threat, a threat to international peace and neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia, by providing succor to al-Qaida's East Africa cell.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Samatar, back to the situation -- oh, go ahead, you wanted to comment.

AHMED SAMATAR: Well, Margaret, I think I want to get in here and disagree to a certain extent. I think the issue in Somalia, really, in the fundamental sense, is not about al-Shabab or a particular militant group. That's really the top soil.

Deep underneath, the real question is the reclamation of Somali national identity, and history, and institutions. There's a national resistance movement going on in Somalia. And the focus of that national resistance movement is that Somali transitional federal government, which was created by the Ethiopian government, that really has no legitimacy, nor does it have any competence, and then, of course, the Ethiopian invasion.

Invasion by itself is a very violent business, and the Somali people are responding to that in a variety of ways, and al-Shabab are one of those responses.

Potential for increased extremism
MARGARET WARNER: But are you saying that his removal from the scene then will have no impact, that all this -- the resistance will go on, and the chaotic situation we saw will go on?
AHMED SAMATAR: Right. In fact, worse. My argument is that -- and I think this is what you can hear from the Somali people around both inside and outside of the country.

And that is target assassinations, in the final analysis, might be successful in taking out the individual or the individuals that one is hunting for, but the consequences of that is to make people who are now in the middle and who really are peaceful people and who are not interested in violence to be increasingly pushed to become more militant and, therefore, dare to take violence as an instrument to liberate their country from the invasion of the Ethiopians and this transitional government, which the Ethiopians have imposed on the Somali people.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Le Sage?

ANDRE LE SAGE: Definitely, there is a political issue at the heart of the Somali conflict. And short-term counterterrorism security measures, while they might improve the situation for immediate security in the Horn of Africa and in Somalia, neighboring countries such as Kenya or Tanzania, where the al-Qaida East Africa cell has struck and in 1998 targeted the U.S. embassies in both of those countries, came back and targeted Western tourists and an Israeli jet liner in 2002, short-term security could be improved by some of these targeted counterterrorism actions.

At the same time, we definitely need a much longer-term peace effort to get the transitional federal government to reach out to opposition elements, not necessarily the hard-line Islamists.

Desperate humanitarian situation
MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, but, Professor Samatar, I want to save a couple minutes here for the desperate humanitarian situation. Give us a picture of how bad it is on the ground. Is aid able to get in at all? Are people getting fed? What is that situation?
AHMED SAMATAR: I will do so, but just quickly, Margaret, I think the policy of trying to use violence to destroy Somali national resistance movement is a folly and it's an inept American foreign policy that in the end is going to trigger more danger for all of us.

But the humanitarian question is a serious one. Nearly 10,000 people now are dead. Many, many more thousands and thousands, tens of thousands are injured. And, of course, more than a million, maybe even 1.5 million are now huddled together in variety of refugee camps inside the country.

And, therefore, the international aid cannot come in, in a context in which violence is everywhere. And the people responsible for this violence are the Ethiopian military troops, who have invaded the country, and the transitional federal government, that doesn't have any credibility and therefore any legitimacy in the country.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your assessment of the humanitarian situation? I know you've been involved in aid efforts yourself.

ANDRE LE SAGE: Definitely the humanitarian situation in Somalia is serious and dire. We have a recurring humanitarian crisis there with a combination of internal displacement, as Professor Samatar mentioned, as well as the ongoing conflict, which prevents international assistance from arriving.

And until we have a transitional government that is able to reach out to its political opposition, establish a functioning civil service and ministries that can deliver health care, education and other essential services, we're going to continue to have problems when conflict is combined with food shortages, with droughts, with flooding.

And then we have a situation where only relief agencies can help to pick up the pieces.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Professor Samatar, we also now have a global food crisis, or certainly one of price. Is that affecting Somalia?

AHMED SAMATAR: Well, yes. When you do this archaeology of this problem, I think the most immediate one now you can see, of course, is the fact that the prices of basic commodities, like maize and rice and oil and things like that, milk, really are increasingly becoming very expensive.

So when you have a national decomposition, where the institution is no more, a foreign invasion, and an inept so-called transitional federal government, then it compounds the immediate problems of the cost of prices for immediate food and other things that people need. That becomes even a major problem.

But underneath that, I want to underscore, is really a national Somali resistance movement that wants to reclaim its history, its national identity, and therefore its national institutions.

Somalis love their country like everybody loves their country, and they want to liberate it. That's the basic story here.

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