Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Now that the warlords are back in control in Somalia, it is probably not surprising that the country is devolving into chaos again. After America’s Ethiopian allies drove the Islamic Courts Union out of power a few months ago, the brief period of stability Somalia experienced after years of bloodshed abruptly collapsed. Now, the situation on the ground is ripe for profit.

As African Union peacekeepers take up positions in Mogadishu, under fire, they are being supported by contractors hired by the United States. The company that is the beneficiary of the contract is DynCorp International:

The State Department has hired a major military contractor to help equip and provide logistical support to international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role in the critical mission without assigning combat forces.

DynCorp International, which also has US contracts in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, will be paid $10 million to help the first peacekeeping mission in Somalia in more than 10 years.

DynCorp International has a long and illustrious history in government waste and unseemly activities overseas.

In January the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported on DynCorp’s activities in Iraq as part of a larger investigation into waste and fraud:

One of the reports released on Wednesday found that an American company, DynCorp, appeared to act almost independently of its contracting officers at the Department of State at times, billing the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and starting other jobs before they were requested.

The findings of misconduct against the company, on a $188 million job order to build living quarters and purchase weapons and equipment for the Iraqi police as part of a training program, were serious enough that the inspector general’s office began a fraud inquiry.

 The Washington Post provides more detail on DynCorp’s contracts in Iraq:

In its review of work under DynCorp’s $1.8 billion State Department contract, the special inspector general found that the department’s lax oversight led it to pay $43.8 million for a residential camp for DynCorp trainers that has never been used.

…

The State Department ordered work on the project stopped in September 2004, shortly after issuing the contract, because of concerns that the location was too dangerous for DynCorp’s trainers. DynCorp initially told the department that the camp had already been completed, but more than a year later said it wasn’t.

…

In 2005, a State Department official became concerned about "potential fraud" regarding DynCorp’s billing for 500 trailers that may have never been built. Yesterday’s report said the investigation is ongoing.

The department also can’t account for $36.4 million of weapons and equipment, including armored vehicles and body armor, because DynCorp’s invoices were vague, the report said. "DynCorp invoices were frequently ambiguous and lacked the level of detail necessary to identify what was procured," the report said.

With all this waste I can see how DynCorp’s contract to train Iraqi police might not have gone so well.

DynCorp has also spread good cheer in Afghanistan in a blow to Karen Hughes’ ill-fated public diplomacy mission. DynCorp’s heavy-handed mercenaries that protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai have managed to upset not only the Afghans but also America’s NATO allies. DynCorp’s behavior in Afghanistan earned a rebuke from the State Department:

The US State Department has rebuked a private security firm over the "aggressive behaviour" of guards hired to protect Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.

US State Department’s Richard Boucher said the issue was raised with DynCorp, the company that supplied the guards.

There have been several reported cases of apparently over-zealous and insensitive conduct on the part of Mr Karzai’s private security contractors.

A BBC correspondent recently saw one of the guards slap an Afghan minister.

Crispin Thorold reported seeing the Afghan transport minister receive a slap from one of Mr Karzai’s security guards on a visit to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

 To complete the waste and public diplomacy picture, DynCorp adds child prostitution:

DynCorp is the same company whose employees hired child prostitutes while working in Bosnia a few years ago, until some people started complaining. Rather than face local justice or courts-martial, the perpetrators were simply sent home.

One of the whistleblowers, a DynCorp employee named Ben Johnston, lost his job for speaking out. He later told Congress, ‘’DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.'’

Texas-based DynCorp’s parent, CSC, declined to comment on any of these incidents, saying that it is ‘’constrained'’ from doing so by its contracts with the State Department.

With a resume as illustrious as this, DynCorp appears poised to carry on the tradition of lawlessness into the already lawless Horn of Africa.

As the United States turns more and more to private contractors to support post-conflict operations, it must also extend the realm of accountability to include these contractors. As the story of DynCorp demonstrates, that much needed accountability is lacking. What exists today is government (tax payer) financed lawlessness that only serves to undermine any goodwill America hopes to engender in conflict regions such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The fact that firms like DynCorp are constantly rewarded with new contracts, in the face of their bad behavior, fits a pattern of behavior for the Bush Administration - where bad behavior is rewarded and calls for accountability are often punished harshly. It is up to the long comatose Congress to protect the funds we, the tax payers, have entrusted with the government - they must ensure accountability by punishing bad behavior. It is also up to the Congress to ensure that if the United States is going to outsource war fighting and post-conflict operations to mercenaries, these mercenaries must follow the same code of conduct that we expect of our soldiers.

However, a quick look at DynCorp’s donor list suggests that the bad behavior will continue, with government sanction. The hearts and minds will have to be won after the money runs out and the feeding trough is empty.

How do you define a war crime? Is the "War on Terror" a legitimate excuse to indiscriminately slaughter innocent civilians? Can everything be written off as "collateral damage"?

Here is Tony Snow exuding bravado after the AC-130 gunship attack on Somalia earlier in the week:

I think that, again, without talking about military issues, it is pretty clear that this administration continues to go after al Qaeda. We are interested in going after those who have perpetrated acts of violence against Americans, including bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and we will continue to conduct whatever operations we can to go after that. We’ve made it clear that this is a global war on terror, and this is a reiteration of the fact that people who think that they’re going to try to establish safe haven for al Qaeda anyplace need to realize that we’re going to fight them.

Kick ass, Tony.

Here is the reality on the ground:

The herdsmen had gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes. But lit up by the flames, they became latest victims of America’s war on terror.

It was their tragedy to be misidentified in a secret operation by special forces attempting to kill three top al-Qa’ida leaders in south-ern Somalia.

Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets wanted for their alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

These innocents were killed in the name of the United States of America.

I think it is time now for an accounting of how many "terrorists" the Bush Administration has killed in its "War on Terror". I want to know what the ratio is between combatants and innocents killed. I want to know whether anyone in the White House even cares what the ratio is.

How many in this country care that 70 poor herdsmen in Somalia have been slaughtered? Is it this indifference that Mr. Bush counts on? How do you define a terrorist?

Does anyone still wonder why they hate us?

When the Bush Administration began its attack on purported al Qaeda operatives in Somalia, I cautioned that the source of their intelligence was weak. After much speculation and reports that one of the persons responsible for the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been killed, we now find out that the Bush Administration missed. What a shocker!

The Washington Post reports tonight that the United States has boots on the ground in Somalia and those boots found no al Qaeda had been killed:

A small team of American military entered southern Somalia to try to determine exactly who was killed in a U.S. airstrike Monday that targeted suspected al-Qaeda figures thought to be hiding in swampy mangrove forests along the Indian Ocean, U.S. sources said Thursday.

So far, "no one can confirm a high-value target" among the dead, said one U.S. source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But items recovered at the strike site — a piece of bloody clothing and a document — indicated that Aden Ayrow, head of the military arm of the Islamic Courts movement and the de facto defense minister of the deposed Islamic government, had been at the scene.

There are two very important pieces of information in the above two paragraphs. First, no al Qaeda was killed. Second, and more importantly, the US is now involved in a civil war in Somalia. We have taken the side of warlords against the Islamic Courts Union. More bluntly, we have taken the side of chaos over stability.

There is now no doubt that the United States has been actively involved in the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The two countries are sharing information with each other and the warlords:

The U.S. military has worked closely with Ethiopian ground and air forces operating in Somalia and has shared intelligence and target lists. But American decision-makers have been cautious about sending U.S. personnel into Somalian territory. In the aftermath of the AC-130 attack, it was seen as a necessary risk in the effort to positively identify the casualties.

While the US claims that the attacks were "surgical" and "10 people suspected of terrorist links" had been killed, reports from the area suggest widespread destruction and loss of life. The weapon of choice, the AC-130 gunship, suggests that the attack was not surgical:

A day after widespread publicity over claims that a "surgical" attack had killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, allegedly involved with the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, it emerged that neither he, nor two other suspects, Abu Taiha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, were among the dead.

US officials insisted the 10 people who were killed in the raid in southern Somalia were Islamist allies of al-Qa’ida. But a local MP, Abdelgadir Haji, claimed there had been far larger scale civilian casualties inflicted by the Americans and their Ethiopian allies.

Mr Haji said: "The number of the dead we have confirmed until now is 150 dead. But, every day, new reports are coming in and that number is expected to rise.

"America strikes from the air. Ethiopian tanks are coming in over land and the Kenyan border is closed. The people have no escape. Hundreds of cattle were killed and no aid is being allowed over the border. It is a hellish situation."

Even official pronouncements from the Somali "government" suggest a large loss of life:

Government officials reported many died in the attack carried out on Monday by the gunship, an armed variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane, designed for close air support.

"Many people were killed and I think the terrorists were eliminated," Information Minister Ali Jama told AFP.

"Absolutely, a lot of people were killed," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. "So many dead people were lying in the area, we do not know who is who, but the raid was a success."

Since the initial attack, there have been reports of other aerial attacks in southern Somalia. The US government has denied that they carried out the attacks. However, regardless of whether it was the Ethiopians or the Americans, the local population will now see the two countries joined at the hip. Any atrocities carried out by the Ethiopians or the Bush Administration’s warlord allies will now be connected to the Americans as well. This is the price of our "close coordination":

U.S. officials repeatedly emphasized close coordination with the Ethiopian military, saying that continuing air attacks by the Ethiopians in the south were motivated by intelligence reports that one of the three embassy suspects, Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese, was in the area.

The U.S. military action in the southernmost tip of Somalia has been widely criticized by European diplomats, the U.N. secretary general and the chairman of the 53-member African Union, who are concerned that it will work against efforts to stabilize a country that has been without a central government since 1991.

In the chaotic capital, Mogadishu, the weak transitional government, backed by the United States and Ethiopia, is struggling to assert control in a city still full of Islamic Courts fighters, as well as militias of clans and sub-clans who feel marginalized by the new government and resentful of the presence of Ethiopian soldiers in the city.

The Bush Administration has taken its "War on Terror" road show to Somalia. It is now fighting an undeclared war in the Horn of Africa. The original excuse of a "surgical" strike against al Qaeda has been proven to be false. Instead the Bush Administration is now actively engaged in war against the widely popular Islamic Courts Union. This is a recipe for further instability in the war-torn country of Somalia.

It is time to consider wider ramifications of the Bush Administration’s one-dimensional "us" versus "them" foreign policy. The United States, under the Bush Administration, is quickly becoming the major force for global instability. While war still rages in Afghanistan, the Bush war bandwagon took the show to Iraq. It has now expanded the war into Africa. There are indications now that Iran and Syria are next to be attacked. This policy of rapidly expanding instability is making Mr. Bush perhaps the world’s most dangerous man.

We are now at the mercy of Mr. Bush’s war without end. It is time for the United States Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility and rescue this nation and the world from presidential war-making run amok.

There is news out of Somalia today that the United States has attacked suspected al Qaeda operatives. It remains to be seen whether we have indeed killed those responsible for the 1998 embassy bombing or not. I have my doubts.

I am not particularly encouraged by the source of the intelligence:

U.S. officials say that the United States received assurances from both the Ethiopian and Somalian governments in the last two weeks that, should they obtain intelligence concerning the whereabouts of the al-Qaida operatives, they would pass it on to the United States.

I guess the "Somalian government" passed on the intelligence. If so, I would not hold my breath.

The Bush Administration has long accused the recently defeated Islamic Courts Union (ICU) of harboring al Qaeda. However, tangible proof has been lacking. Seeing an opportunity, thugs and warlords in Somalia banded together to fight the "terrorists" in Somalia. They called themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, or ARPCT for short. The ARPCT fed off the Bush Administration’s one-dimensional anti-terrorism policy. We funded these thugs until they were routed by the ICU. I wrote the following back in June when Mogadishu fell to the ICU:

The ARPCT is a recently rebranded group of Somali warlords who were funded by the United States. They were just routed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu by Islamist militants. The ARPCT warlords are now on the run as the Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), establish control over war-torn Somalia. The United States claims that the ironically named ICU harbor al Qaeda members and therefore pose a danger to the civilized world. The ICU has thus been branded as "terrorists" for harboring al Qaeda. Seeing an opportunity to cash in, the always opportunistic Somali warlords refashioned themselves into a group of  "anti-terrorist" militias. In the "us" versus "them" world of George W Bush, these thugs became "us" and thus became worthy of our support.

Since February, with US financial backing, the ARPCT has engaged in fierce fighting with the ICU. But the ICU gained influence in Somalia by offering the people what they had been craving for decades - a sense of security and stability. When the warlords decided to stop fighting each other and rebrand themselves as the ARPCT they were now fighting against the stability provided or promised by the ICU. The people of Somalia were tired of the warlords and rejected the ARPCT in favor of the ICU. One by one, towns fell under the control of the ICU as they advanced on Mogadishu, until finally Mogadishu also fell a few days ago.

The talibanization of Somalia has begun. Just like in Afghanistan, the Somali people are unsurprisingly choosing security over constant violence and insecurity. With no functioning central government, the people have turned to the ICU for protection. In return, the people have accepted Islamist control over their lives. This is an essential concept that the Bush Administration repeatedly fails to understand. If given a choice between democracy without security and security without democracy, the people will overwhelmingly choose the latter. Failure to grasp this obvious fact and wallowing in an ideological soup that preaches "freedom is on the march" will have the opposite effect. In fact, in much of the world where the United States has engaged militarily in the GWOT, freedom is on the ropes. This is true for Afghanistan, this is true for Iraq, and this is true for Somalia.

Our Plan A in Somalia was supporting warlords - and it failed miserably. Incidentally, these warlords should seem familiar:

Somalia, like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a complex political landscape that does not lend itself to the simplistic "us" and "them" rhetoric. There are no good guys in Somalia. The very warlords who now claim to be "anti-terrorist" forces were fighting the United States and presumably harboring al Qaeda in 1993. These are some of the very people who fought the United States during the first Battle of Mogadishu, which led to the deaths of 18 American servicemen. The Bush Administration has now decided to break bread with these thugs in an ill-conceived attempt at counter terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

Plan A having failed, the Bush Administration threw its weight behind the weak transitional government in Baidoa that was rescued from annihilation by the Ethiopians. It is this transitional government that has now taken residence in Mogadishu courtesy of Ethiopia.

So, just who exactly are the new government of Somalia. It should come as no surprise that they are warlords. A number of them fought the United States in 1993. One of them has a very well-known pedigree. The new interior minister, Hussein Farah Aideed, is the son of Mohammad Farrah Aideed. Mohammad Farrah Aideed was the warlord responsible for the deaths of 18 American servicemen in the Battle of Mogadishu.

To add to the warlord homecoming, other famous warlords such as Musse Sudi Yalahow, formerly of the ARPCT, have also returned to Mogadishu. Unless these warlords are reigned in, Somalia is on its way back to the chaos of the past decades.

So, when the news media refers to the "government of Somalia", think "warlords". And treat with skepticism any intelligence that they might pass along.

What is the goal of the United States in the War on Terror? What is the plan to win the war? What is the strategy? And how do we measure success? Are we trying to win hearts and minds while defeating the terrorists militarily?

An article in the New York Times today argues that the U.S. effort of funding the Somali warlords has been counterproductive and has failed. There is a remarkable quote attributed to a senior Bush Administration official in the article that brings into focus the Bush foreign policy agenda:

"You’ve got to find and nullify enemy leadership," one senior Bush administration official said. "We are going to support any viable political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism." [Emphasis added by me.]

Isn’t that exactly what is wrong with the Bush foreign policy?

Foreign policy that is driven by a single-minded focus on killing the enemy regardless of the consequences seems to be the hallmark of this Administration’s machinations in the War on Terror thus far. This policy is susceptible to sabotage by unscrupulous foreign forces. In order to fight "terrorists" we lay in bed with some very unsavory characters who likely pose a more significant threat to U.S. interests. Warlords and two-bit Third World power brokers transform themselves into "anti-terrorist" forces and manipulate the United States to serve their own local agendas. The military and economic might of the United States is usurped by our "friends" to settle local scores. In short, the United States is getting played.

In the War on Terror the Bush Administration has paid lip service to diplomacy, to alliance building, to containment, and other proven tools to combat a hostile foe in the international arena. Instead the Bush Administration has focused primarily on military force either directly or by supporting proxies - the old rules apparently do not apply in the post 9/11 world. This focus on military means has so far proven to be a complete failure. The Bush Administration has allied itself with Afghan warlords, with Central Asian dictators, with Shia Islamists in Iraq, and Somali warlords because all of them promised to get the "terrorists". Instead what they have gotten is more instability and chaos.

There does not appear to be any broader policy goal in Somalia or the War on Terror other than killing the enemy. Apparently the lure of funding warlords was so strong that the Bush Administration has forsaken a broader policy for a narrower "capture dead or alive" philosophy:

Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy’s second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report.

 Around that time, the State Department’s political officer for Somalia, Michael Zorick, who had been based in Nairobi, was reassigned to Chad after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing Washington’s policy of paying Somali warlords.

One American government official who traveled to Nairobi this year said officials from various government agencies working in Somalia had expressed concern that American activities in the country were not being carried out in the context of a broader policy.

"They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic framework," the official said. "And they realized that there might be negative implications to what they are doing."

It is then not so surprising that this policy has contributed to failure in Somalia:

Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of high-level suspects.

Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes. The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital.

"This has blown up in our face, frankly," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive field experience in Somalia.

After the U.S. funded warlords were routed, the Bush Administration is now ready to talk to the Islamists in Somalia:

Senior American officials indicated this week that the United States might now be willing to hold discussions with the Islamic militias, known as the Islamic Courts Union. President Bush said Tuesday that the first priority for the United States was to keep Somalia from becoming a safe haven for terrorists.

The Administration has it backwards. First you try diplomacy and then you use the military option, not the other way around.

The Somalia experience is a benchmark for the more general war on terror. The ill concieved Bush Administration strategy of "fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here" is not working.  From Kabul to Mogadishu, from Tehran to Baghdad, we are in a more dangerous world now then we were on September 12th, 2001. Its time for some grown ups at the wheel.

Meet our newest best friends: the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, or, ARPCT for short. Our latest best friends are at the vanguard of President Bush’s Global War On Terror, or as those who know the lingo like to call it, the GWOT. So the ARPCT were our guys in the GWOT and so we bankrolled them. They were tasked with hunting down al Qaeda and eliminating them. The only problem was they did not have much support from the very people they were tasked to defend against the scourge of al Qaeda. To add insult to injury, when the people found out that the ARPCT was backed by GWB in the GWOT they actively turned on the ARPCT. So now the ARPCT is defeated and on the run. And with their defeat the Bush Administration has suffered an embarrassing setback in the GWOT.

The ARPCT is a recently rebranded group of Somali warlords who were funded by the United States. They were just routed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu by Islamist militants. The ARPCT warlords are now on the run as the Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), establish control over war-torn Somalia. The United States claims that the ironically named ICU harbor al Qaeda members and therefore pose a danger to the civilized world. The ICU has thus been branded as "terrorists" for harboring al Qaeda. Seeing an opportunity to cash in, the always opportunistic Somali warlords refashioned themselves into a group of  "anti-terrorist" militias. In the "us" versus "them" world of George W Bush, these thugs became "us" and thus became worthy of our support.

Since February, with US financial backing, the ARPCT has engaged in fierce fighting with the ICU. But the ICU gained influence in Somalia by offering the people what they had been craving for decades - a sense of security and stability. When the warlords decided to stop fighting each other and rebrand themselves as the ARPCT they were now fighting against the stability provided or promised by the ICU. The people of Somalia were tired of the warlords and rejected the ARPCT in favor of the ICU. One by one, towns fell under the control of the ICU as they advanced on Mogadishu, until finally Mogadishu also fell a few days ago.

The talibanization of Somalia has begun. Just like in Afghanistan, the Somali people are unsurprisingly choosing security over constant violence and insecurity. With no functioning central government, the people have turned to the ICU for protection. In return, the people have accepted Islamist control over their lives. This is an essential concept that the Bush Administration repeatedly fails to understand. If given a choice between democracy without security and security without democracy, the people will overwhelmingly choose the latter. Failure to grasp this obvious fact and wallowing in an ideological soup that preaches "freedom is on the march" will have the opposite effect. In fact, in much of the world where the United States has engaged militarily in the GWOT, freedom is on the ropes. This is true for Afghanistan, this is true for Iraq, and this is true for Somalia.

Somalia, like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a complex political landscape that does not lend itself to the simplistic "us" and "them" rhetoric. There are no good guys in Somalia. The very warlords who now claim to be "anti-terrorist" forces were fighting the United States and presumably harboring al Qaeda in 1993. These are some of the very people who fought the United States during the first Battle of Mogadishu, which led to the deaths of 18 American servicemen. The Bush Administration has now decided to break bread with these thugs in an ill-conceived attempt at counter terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

What the Somali people crave is stability and security. The United States, instead of backing warlords, should perhaps try a defter approach instead. If Iraq has taught us anything, it should be that killing people is not the best way to win hearts and minds.

In an article in the Washington Post, John Prendergast argues for a more balanced counter-terrorism strategy to salvage the situation in Somalia. He states in part:

A successful counterterrorism effort would require the United States to pull the political and military threads together into a coherent strategy of broader engagement. U.S. officials and those from other governments throughout the region uniformly have told me that long-term counterterrorism objectives can be achieved only by American investment in the Somali peace process. Yet the State Department has just one full-time political officer working on Somalia — from neighboring Kenya, and he was just transferred out of the region for dissenting from the policy on proxy warlords. Somalia’s ineffectual transitional government remains confined to the shaky central town of Baidoa, where it is still struggling to overcome internal divisions.

A functioning government that could ensure security would be a win-win scenario for Somalis and the United States, enabling the state apparatus to address the criminality and extremism that undermine progress in the country. This would provide a real partner for the war on terrorism in an area that has a track record for exporting trouble.

The continuation of Washington’s current approach in Somalia would ensure that U.S. interests and those of other countries in the region remain dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attacks from this collapsed state. Continued fighting between Islamist elements and the U.S.-backed warlord alliance will breed resentment, attract recruits to the extremist cause and provide a training ground for new militants. The United States can no longer afford not to engage more deeply and directly in state reconstruction efforts in Somalia. It is in our national security interest to do so. [Emphasis added by me.]

Support for Somalia does not mean boots on the ground. After the experience of the 1990s it would be foolhardy for the United States to return militarily to Somalia. But, the only way to prevent the slide into extremism that is occurring in Somalia is to offer the people a viable alternative to the ICU. This will require regional involvement as well as involvement from the major powers such as the United States and Western Europe.

We cannot afford to let Somalia continue as a failed state. The Somali people crave and need a stable civil society and international investment and engagement can and will lead to a secure Somalia. The war against extremism is a war for hearts and minds. What is required is a lot of butter. Leave the guns at home.