What's Behind the U.S. Strike in Somalia?
Steve Inskeep talks to Ken Menkhaus, professor of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina. He analyzes the U.S. military strike in Somalia.
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STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's go to next to Ken Menkhaus. He's a Somalia expert at Davidson College in North Carolina and he has been following this story through the night. Mr. Menkhaus, good morning, sir.
Professor KEN MENKHAUS (Political Science, Davidson College): Good morning.
INSKEEP: Is this a big change for the United States?
Prof. MENKHAUS: This is. This is an unexpected escalation of U.S. involvement in what had been a strictly Ethiopian affair with, as the journalists have been putting it, tacit U.S. approval.
INSKEEP: Let's remember the details here. Somalia is a country that is obviously deeply fractured. There's a lot of fighting going on. Ethiopian troops have moved in. There's concerns about al-Qaida and now we have American gun ships overhead.
Prof. MENKHAUS: That's correct. What Ethiopia was hoping to do, and what it did beyond its wild expectations, was to drive the Union of Islamic Courts out of power. What has happened is we all expected the Union of Islamic Courts to fall back to Mogadishu and fight Ethiopian forces in an asymmetrical urban guerilla war such as what we saw in 1993 with Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu.
Instead, unexpectedly, the Islamists lost local support in Mogadishu and were forced to flee south into this very remote part of the Somali-Kenyan border area where these events are now happening.
INSKEEP: Why do you think the United States would act now?
Prof. MENKHAUS: I think this is opportunistic. It's an ad hoc strategy. When the situation presented itself with some of these foreign al-Qaida suspects fleeing into this area, U.S., Kenyan and Ethiopian authorities appear to have suddenly coordinated military policy very closely to seal the border off with Kenya so they didn't infiltrate Kenya and also to control of the seas.
INSKEEP: You mentioned sudden coordination. I do know that U.S. military officials have been active in other parts of that region. Is this something that the U.S. has been laying the groundwork for for a while even though they may have grabbed a quick opportunity?
Prof. MENKHAUS: Well, this is one of the stories that we'll have to see as evidence starts to present itself. What we think happened is that this was primarily an Ethiopian initiative the U.S. initially discouraged them from taking on the grounds that we believed it was likely to make Ethiopia less rather more secure. But once the Ethiopian intervention went as well as it did, that's where I think we started seeing much more coordination between the three states.
INSKEEP: What does the Somali government say about this foreign intervention?
Prof. MENKHAUS: The Transitional Federal Government is a very close ally, some would say a client, of Ethiopia. And its president as of this morning expressed approval of the American air strikes.
INSKEEP: OK. Now how does all this fit in with the broader U.S. concerns about East Africa and al-Qaida in East Africa?
Prof. MENKHAUS: Somalia, as a potential safe haven for a small number of foreign al-Qaida operatives, has always been at the top of U.S. concerns in East Africa. The concern is not so much what they do in Somalia, because there's really very little to target inside Somalia. The concern has always been that these foreign al-Qaida suspects could infiltrate and do infiltrate into Kenya and other parts of East Africa to attack Western and American targets. And one of the dangers now with the current situation is that we may have cells of residual Somali Shebab militia, the Islamist militia that could take matters into their own hands and launch some of these terrorist attacks.
INSKEEP: Let's talk about the dangers for the United States here. You mentioned the potential upside; it's a chance, perhaps an opportunistic chance, to hit some suspects that the U.S. has been looking at. Is there a danger for the United States in getting too involved in this convoluted situation?
Prof. MENKHAUS: Well, as long as the United States stays in the air, the danger of getting drawn into another Black Hawk Down is relatively remote. The bigger danger is that the U.S. is going to be held accountable by the population in Somalia and East Africa for a policy that, in pursuit of a small number of foreign al-Qaida suspects, resulted in widespread warfare and the collapse of an administration in Mogadishu.
It will appear to local populations as a disproportionate policy, and the United States government needs to make it very clear to the residents of East Africa that this was not in fact part of a grander strategy, they were going to pull down all of the governance in Mogadishu just to apprehend five people.
INSKEEP: And just very briefly, how far away is this country from anything that you would describe as stability?
Prof. MENKHAUS: It's very far away now, further away now than it was in November. I suspect that the outcome of all of this is going to be renewed state collapse in Somalia for several years to come at least.
INSKEEP: Mr. Menkhaus, thanks for talking with us this morning.
Prof. MENKHAUS: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: Ken Menkhaus is a political science professor at Davidson College in North Carolina.
And again the news we have is that an official and a witness say there have been at least two U.S. air strikes on different locations against terror targets inside Somalia.
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New Strikes Launched in Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Helicopter gunships attacked suspected l-Qaida fighters in the south Tuesday after U.S. forces staged airstrikes in the first offensive in the African country since 18 American soldiers were killed there in 1993, witnesses said.
Witnesses said 31 civilians, including two newlyweds, died in the assault by two helicopters near Afmadow, a town in an area of forested hills close to the Kenyan border 220 miles southwest of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. The report could not be independently verified.
A Somali Defense Ministry official described the helicopters as American, but the local witnesses told The Associated Press they could not make out identification markings on the craft. Washington officials had no comment.
On Monday, at least one U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked Islamic extremists in Hayi, 30 miles from Afmadow, and on a remote island 155 miles away believed to be an al-Qaida training camp at the southern tip of Somalia next to Kenya. Somali officials said they had reports of many deaths. The Pentagon confirmed the strike, but declined to comment on any details.
The U.S. is targeting Islamic extremists, said the Somali defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. Earlier, Somalia's president said the U.S. was hunting suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and had his support.
The Islamic extremists are believed to be sheltering suspects in the embassy bombings, and American officials also want to make sure the militants will not longer pose a threat to Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government.
The assault was based on intelligence "that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaida leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, without confirming any details. "We're going to remain committed to reducing terrorist capabilities where and when we find them."
Whitman said the U.S. conducts "all operations with the close cooperation of our allies in the region" but would not say if Somali officials gave permission for the raid. White House press secretary Tony Snow said he was not aware of any consultations with Congress before the assault.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington "has had concerns that there are terrorists, and al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, that were in Somalia." He added that "we have great interest in seeing that those individuals not be able to flee to other locations."
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia's coast and launched intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the U.S. military said. Three other U.S. warships were conducting anti-terror operations.
U.S. warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaida members thought to be fleeing Somalia after Ethiopia's military invaded Dec. 24 in support of the interim Somali government and drove the Islamic militia out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.
President Abdullahi Yusuf, head of Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government, told journalists in Mogadishu that the U.S. "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."
But others in the capital said the attacks would increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country, where people are already upset by the presence of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, reissued a terror warning Tuesday to Americans living in or visiting the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopian and Somali troops at a base in Mogadishu came under attack Tuesday night when gunmen in two pickup trucks fired rocket-propelled grenades at them, witnesses said. One Somali soldier was killed and two others and a bystander injured in the attack, said minibus driver Harun Ahmed who took the wounded to hospital.
Somalia's deputy defense minister described it as a "cowardly attack."
A U.S. government official said at least one AC-130 gunship was used Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity.
It was the first overt military action by the U.S. in Somalia since it led a U.N. force that intervened in the 1990s in an effort to fight famine. The mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including the "Black Hawk Down" battle that killed 18 U.S. soldiers.
Witnesses said at least four civilians were killed Monday evening in Hayi, including a small boy. The claims could not be independently verified.
Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said it was not known how many people were killed, "but we understand there were a lot of casualties. Most were Islamic fighters."
Another AC-130 attack occurred Monday afternoon on Badmadow island, in a group of six rocky islands known as Ras Kamboni that is suspected as a terrorist training base. Dense thicket provide excellent cover and the only road to the area is virtually impassable, locals said.
The main target on the island was thought to be Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people.
He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.
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