Q & A

by Matthew Chavez

Daily Lobo columnist

At the end of 2006, U.S.-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia to drive from power an Islamist movement called the Somalia Islamic Courts Council, which had seized large blocks of the fragmented country, establishing stability for the first time in decades and posing a direct challenge to the official government, the Transitional Federal Government.

As the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion drew to a close during the first week of 2007, the Bush administration ordered aerial strikes on suspected al-Qaida operatives in the southern tip of Somalia. None of the intended targets were hit, and an unknown number of civilians were killed. It was the first known U.S. military intervention in Somalia since the Clinton administration's botched operation more than a decade ago. I spoke to UNM African politics lecturer Admasu Shunkuri, an Ethiopian, about the dimensions and implications of U.S. involvement.

Daily Lobo: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was reserved in his comments about the U.S. attacks, saying only that he was "concerned about the possibility of an impact on civilians," and that he "fully understand(s) the necessity behind this attack." In contrast, Massimo D'Alema, Italy's foreign minister, warned that the U.S. attacks "could set off new tensions in an area already marked by high instability."

AS: Ki-moon had to play the U.N. diplomatic role. In this case, both the U.N. and the U.S. are between a rock and a hard place. All that the U.N. really has is moral suasion. But some rogue elements in the world do not listen to reasoning. That is why sometimes I say war is diplomacy by other means. As far as the U.S. is concerned, you're damned if you do it and damned if you don't, because the U.S. is endowed with so much power. But then again, you have to have the good will and good wishes of the world community on your side. In D'Alema's comments, I see some bias in his tone. Because there is this thing about Europeans looking at things going on in Iraq and bashing anything the U.S. does, rather than to ask, "What do you do with rouge elements, regimes, individuals whose frame of mind cannot accommodate reason and

morality?"

DL: Former National Security Council counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke characterized the U.S.-Ethiopian intervention as a "victory in the struggle against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism." But Salim Lone, former spokesman for the U.N. mission in Iraq, predicts the operation will generate a Somali insurgency that will "do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa." Will the U.S.-Ethiopian intervention bring security or insurgency to the Horn of Africa?

AS: In the short run, security. The transition government is reorganizing and taking hold. What happens in the long run is the question. Because unless something more concrete is done to stabilize the regime in Somalia and appease the warring factions, the insurgency will re-emerge, not only in Somalia but also in Ethiopia. We have an Islamic population in Ethiopia that could be sympathetic to Somali Muslims. If the notion of Islamic brotherhood gets a hold of majority opinion in Ethiopia, then it might create conflict within Ethiopia itself. There was also a stake for Ethiopia to say a regime that we have supported, the African Union supported and the U.N. supported must somehow survive. So, there was that stake of international law (and) A.U., U.N. integrity that pushed this to the forefront for Ethiopia and the U.S. (decision) to

intervene.

DL: Rep. Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat, noted the contrast of the "swiftness of our action" against suspected al-Qaida operatives in Somalia and the inaction of the Bush administration to establish the limited goal of a "no-fly zone to prevent the Sudanese from continually bombing and killing innocent people" in the Darfur region. Why has the Bush administration prioritized the assassination of a handful of Islamist militants over the lives of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians?

AS: I don't see it as a prioritization. Ethiopia and the U.S. had intervened in Somalia, so the Somali jihadists or Islamists were on the run. (The U.S. and Ethiopia) had to pursue. So, it's a different situation in that sense, because in Sudan, you have African Union forces already there - some 8,000 people. My sense is that the U.S. would have done something more (in Sudan) were it not for the obstacles of the U.N. system and China and Russia, who have an economic stake in the new oil resources in Khartoum. The way I read it is not that the U.S. prioritized pursuing a few Islamist Somalis versus so many janjaweed - it is just something that happened in the sequence of intervention. That's the way problems are solved. You take up the easy ones first - and Somalia was an easy thing for Ethiopia and the U.S. to cooperate on, collaborate efforts and take care of. But Sudan is not quite like that.

Matthew Chavez is a political science major with a focus on international relations and a minor in Middle Eastern studies.