On Sunday, the L.A. Times revealed that the United States is equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to fight Al Shabab, the militant wing of the Islamist Somali government. For now, outsourcing the combat to African countries may appear to bring America minimal risk, but Washington’s renewal of its multidecade attachment to Somalia continues a cycle of deciding its winners and losers. Among an assortment of tribes, clans and African states fighting for self-serving ends, Washington has handcuffed itself to a hornet’s nest.
The hubris of policy makers who believe they can remedy Somalia’s problems could produce policies that draw more recruits to the cause of militant groups, much as similar policies have in the past. Policy makers have failed repeatedly to bring order to the destitute African state, such as when it descended into clan-based warfare in the early 1990s.
At the time, U.S. officials agreed to enforce a March 1993 U.N. resolution that pledged to rehabilitate Somalia’s economy and reestablish national and regional institutions. State Department official David Shinn spoke of “basically re-creating a country,” while then U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright said America’s mission in Somalia “aimed at nothing less than the restoration of an entire country as a proud, functioning and viable member of the community of nations.” The humanitarian mission eventually tasked America’s military with disarming Somali warlords and conducting house-to-house weapons searches. What began as U.S. leaders imbued with the best of intentions eventually ended with our brave military’s ignominious defeat.
