Somalia and The Failed States Threat

The end of the cold war was a real tragedy to some countries, such as Afghanistan.  To be sure, it is ironic that we’re still dealing with the Cold War – even if indirectly.  But it makes sense, now that the world is not fighting over communism and the “free world”, what are we going to fight about?  Disgraced Political Scientist Samuel Huntington made his sensational, and surprisingly heralded, claim that the new world order would be based on the fighting amongst “civilizations” as opposed to ideology.  This was a subtle way of saying that the west would be battling the east.  (see Wikipedia article for a condensed version, as well as a lovely little map of the civs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations).  I don’t buy it.  I respectfully disagree with Mr. Huntington and will give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this is how the world looked in 1992.  Eighteen years later, it is evident to me that the clash is not between civilizations but between nations and non-nations.  In my view, the post cold war era has been marked by the rising power of the poor, disadvantaged, angry, unstable countries – the ones that were kept stable by the old world order of the Cold War.  Terrorism is nothing but the war instrument of the poor and it thrives in the most unstable and fractured nations.  It is no coincidence that Osama bin Laden launched his attack on the U.S from the wretched land that is Afghanistan.  Nowadays we don’t even fight countries anymore.  The world has changed a lot since Huntington’s piece and the greatest change has been communication.  Borders have been broken by that single change in our lifetime and now identity can be formed away from the state.  The fact that people can live in a state but in their minds live in another world (aided by enhanced communication), is exactly the consequence of our great technological discovery.  This is how our Times Square would-be bomber camouflaged himself as just-another-immigrant, but really was giving his allegiance to an organization that was more like a social club than a country.  But here he gets arrested and put in jail for the rest of his life… in Yemen, where he got trained, he runs free.    In the failed states is where we risk the most. 

Somalia is a security threat that nobody talks about (except probably Obama’s security team, of course).  Topping the charts as the number 1 failed state three years in a row is quite a sad accomplishment.  That poor country has seen itself unfold in a way no other country in the world has.  It even beats Zimbabwe and Myanmar if only for the fact that they have some semblance of order.  Somalia has lost it all and descended into pure chaos.  Mogadishu is real hell on earth.  But there are a lot of hells, why does this one matter?  A clue lies in last week’s events in Uganda.  A group of people were watching the glorious game in which Spain won the world cup for the first time and bam; a couple suicide bombers disrupted the festivities.  This event seems random, although it is reminiscent of the embassy bombings in Kenya.  But one thing is different, the target was not the west, it was Uganda.  Who would want to suicide-bomb Uganda?  Apparently, it was Somalia’s insurgency group Al-Shabab.   This may seem random too, but the truth is that much like in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over, the warfare in Somalia has brought a bunch of angry extremist men to rule in Mogadishu.  These angry extremist men were, much like in Afghanistan, flooded with weapons during the Cold War.  As is custom, the angry extremist men have committed atrocities across the city in their quest to take over the country; infamously executing people for watching the world cup (so lame).  A lawless land such as that is perfect breeding ground for extremist, clearly, but can also become the new home of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that may get tired of being harassed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The truth is that there are plenty of failed states where these people can go and that is precisely why failed states will become the security threat of the near future.  They technically already are, look at Yemen, Christmas pants-bomber and Times Square bomber were both trained there.  Yemen is not nearly as chaotic as Somalia, but it has proved nearly impossible for its government to control its territory or its citizens’ terrorist activities.  The same can be said about Pakistan, although the government there has a little bit more control and, well, America has a mandate to drone-bomb it.  That America is able to drone-bomb Pakistan is such a crucial step in the war on non-state actors (aka: war on terror).   Al-Qaida will never admit it, duh, but their operations have been severely weakened by America’s aggressive tactics in that lawless border. 

It’s funny how things change.  Surely Mr Huntington would be thinking that his theory is being proven given the fact that all the extremists in failed states happen to be Islamic, but I still don’t buy it.  Correlation does not mean causation Mr Huntington.  It is not a problem of Islam, it is a problem of weak states!  There just happen to be a lot of poor states that have Islam in it because, guess what! It’s a religion that happens to have a lot of people in it!  Somalia is not a failed state because of Islam, neither is Afghanistan.  The causal link here is far more complex than religion; it has to do with the particular state history, or more, a history of state weakness.  The issue here is not that Somalia is plagued by an evil group of extremists, but the fact that since Somalia failed at being a state, one of the consequences of such failure is the growth of extremists.  In short, extremists don’t cause the failure, the failure causes the extremists.

The case of Somalia is truly a tragedy.  Most of Africa is plagued with tragedy and it’s hard to even tell whose worse than who, but Somalia definitely tops the chart as one of the worst places on earth.  Foreign Policy ran a very short account describing what it's like to visit Mogadishu in this article with a very witty title: Mogadishu was a Blast.  Definitely worth reading.  Additionally, they also ran a story about how the administration is handling the matter, see article: Obama's Failed State Policy.  Sometimes, as a personal totally biased opinion, I feel like I wish America could just take over Somalia on the basis of terrorist activity and just rebuild it.  It seems like the best thing that could happen to it at this point!! but sadly, I cannot help to be reminded of Afghanistan.  We thought our invasion of it was the best that could happen to it... but has it been? many years later, Afghanistan is still pretty failed.