Day: May 24, 2019
Droning on won’t do
On May 21 New America held a panel discussion on violence prevention in South Somalia and possible opportunities going forward featuring Isse Abdullahi, Director of the Social-Life and Agricultural Development Organization (SADO), Pauline Muchina, Public Education and Advocacy Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee’s Africa region, and Brittany Brown, Chief of Staff for the International Crisis Group.
The focus was on the drivers of violence: poverty, lack of education, and weak governance. Security initiatives in Somalia can only go so far without addressing these. The speakers critiqued the Somali President, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo,” for putting too much focus on security efforts and not enough on building up civil society and improving governance.
The main issue the government of Somalia faces is its lack of territorial control outside the capital, Mogadishu, and its lack of funding. Many of the militias, such as the Al-Shabaab, are better funded than the government, and thus can afford not only to sustain their operations and arm themselves, but also to pay locals to join them. Many of the locals, Muchina points out, join not out of commitment to the Al-Shabaab ideology, but rather out of poverty.
Ideology is another big issue in the fight against Al-Shabaab. Abdullahi stressed that Al-Shabaab is not only a militia movement, it is also an ideology that cannot be defeated purely through drone strikes, outside intervention, and military initiatives. He points to US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of how hard it is to defeat an ideology militarily.
Rather than using drone strikes, which both Abdullahi and Muchina say do little to defeat Al-Shabaab and even help their recruiting efforts, it would be wise to work more with local experts on the ground. They say initiatives focused youth, who make up 70% of the population, are effective in preventing violence and convincing the population to put aside rivalries and grievances and work together towards a united Somalia.
By contrast, Brown said that in her experience people on the ground in Somalia favor US airstrikes. What happens after airstrikes is especially important. Once Al-Shabaab is forced out of an area, it is of utmost importance to start rebuilding infrastructure and helping both government and civil society take root and grow.
Brown points out that the policy of drone strikes started under the Obama administration because of the lower cost and lessened risk to US personnel. Drone strikes have increased under President Trump and the strike policy has changed, allowing for longer strike durations and strikes in areas previously off-limits. In 2019 so far there have been 40 drone strikes in Somalia, close to the 45 all year in 2018 and more than the 35 in 2017. She asks why the US only has counter-terrorism missions in Africa instead of the more peaceful and cooperative missions seen elsewhere. The Executive Branch should be held more accountable.
Abdullahi recommends looking more into the effects of drone strikes and evaluating if they continue to be the best measure for fighting Al-Shabaab. He suggests looking at other options and working more with individuals on the ground. Most important is looking at the bigger picture of who is fighting whom in Somalia and who could possibly broker peace between rival factions.
Muchina agrees. She stresses the importance, and thus far unused opportunity, of using the women within the traditional Somali clan structure to help broker peace and promote talks between rival clans. Even though they are widely discriminated against, at the family level they carry a lot of influence and thus could be effective in engaging people .
The panelists agree the best way to move forward in preventing violence in Somalia is by reevaluating current foreign intervention methods and working with locals on the ground to broker peace talks. “Even if Al-Shabaab were gone tomorrow Somalia wouldn’t have peace” says Brown, highlighting the need for peacemaking efforts which go beyond just bombing militants.
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Pelosi and Iran
President Trump sandbagged Speak Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Schumer Wednesday. That’s when someone hits you from an unexpected direction. Trump invited the Democrats to the White House to discuss infrastructure, then stormed out in a premeditated fury to denounce her at a podium set up in advance for the purpose. He criticized Pelosi for claiming he was engaged in a “coverup” and then confirmed her claim by insisting the House couldn’t continue to investigate him and legislate at the same time.
That of course is not true. Congressional oversight does not get suspended in order to allow for legislation. Even during the impeachment proceedings against Presidents Nixon and Clinton legislation got passed and sent to them for signature. Trump, in his signature style, is denying what is evident to all: he is desperate to keep his tax returns and business affairs out of the public eye. It is hard to imagine he would go to the lengths he has if there weren’t something incriminating to hide.
We already know that in the 1990s he lost fabulous quantities of money in ill-conceived projects. We also know he paid little or no income taxes for many years. And we know that he lied about the value of his assets to banks and regulatory authorities and violated campaign finance laws by paying off mistresses. Whatever he is trying to hide, it is worse than all those things. My guess is that a) he is not as rich as he claims, b) he is a tax cheat on a grand scale, and c) he has laundered money for Russian oligarchs.
Whether any of this will make any difference to his supporters, who include virtually all Republican members of Congress and 90% of their loyal voters, is unclear. That’s why Pelosi, who only too clearly thinks Trump should be drummed out of office as soon as possible, wants to be sure before moving in that direction that it won’t hurt the Democrats’ chances in the 2020 election. The best guarantee of that would be a bipartisan impeachment proceeding, like the one against Nixon and unlike the one against Clinton. Failing Republican support for impeachment in the Senate, the election is crucial to getting Trump out of the White House.
Two Federal judges have now ordered that Trump financial records be turned over to Congressional committees. They rejected the Trump Administration’s arguments to the contrary as specious. That likely made the President even more anxious to end the Congressional investigations, which will now have red meat to pick on. Pelosi’s accusation of a “cover-up” was nowhere near provocative enough to rouse the President to the ire he demonstrated Wednesday.
Sandbagging is a cardinal sin in Washington. I remember when Pelosi excoriated former Secretary of State Baker and former Congressman Hamilton during a meeting to discuss the Iraq Study Group, which had been funded outside “regular order” and therefore without her knowledge. They were in no way responsible–the group had been funded many months before in a last-minute budget maneuver by former Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf. But she felt sandbagged and let them know it in no uncertain terms.
Trump is depending on being able to escalate the conflict with Pelosi more than she can. That is doubtful. Yesterday he said she is “a mess” and doesn’t know what she is doing. She suggested his staff and family mount “an intervention.” Today Trump tweeted a fake video of Pelosi slurring words. She will not respond in kind but will have a few choice words. She may not favor impeachment proceedings yet, but she is not going to back down on pursuing oversight that the Democrats think will prove even to Republicans that this president is a fraudster flim-flam man.
What does all this have to do with foreign policy? I hope nothing, but the temptation of a president under siege domestically to lash out against foreign adversaries is well-documented. Trump is no doubt looking for whatever will rally at least his base behind him and chase the Congressional investigations from the front pages. He has alread revved up an investigation of the court-authorized surveillance of some of his campaign workers and is charging Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange with espionage, a move intended to inhibit all media from publishing leaked material.
War with Iran could also help Trump protect himself . He has been more hat than cattle when it comes to military action, but even a small military incident could serve his current purposes well. There are certainly enough hot heads in Iran to provide Trump with just what he needs.
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