Why Somalia?

So someone has to explain this to me. Exactly why are U.S. operatives supporting operations in Ethiopia and Somalia? Is this payback for 1993 or just the blind "global war on terror" that drives the White House to madness? Lots of sources starting to come forth.

LA Times: In another incident, members of a [Special Forces] team in East Africa were arrested by the local government after their espionage activity was discovered.

"It was a compromised surveillance activity," said a former senior CIA official familiar with the incident. The official said members of the unit "got rolled up by locals and we got them out." The former official declined to name the country or provide other details.

He said it was an isolated example of an operation that was exposed, but that coordination problems were frequent.

USA Today: The United States has quietly poured weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia, whose recent invasion of Somalia opened a new front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

A Christian-led nation in sub-Saharan Africa, surrounded almost entirely by Muslim states, Ethiopia has received nearly $20 million in U.S. military aid since late 2002. That's more than any country in the region except Djibouti.
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The U.S. and Ethiopian militaries have "a close working relationship," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said. The ties include intelligence sharing, arms aid and training that gives the Ethiopians "the capacity to defend their borders and intercept terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Advisers from the Guam national guard have been training Ethiopians in basic infantry skills at two camps in Ethiopia, said Maj. Kelley Thibodeau, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in Djibouti.

There are about 100 U.S. military personnel currently working in Ethiopia, Carpenter said.

From NBC: A senior Pentagon official confirmed for NBC News Monday that a U.S. gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al-Qaida operatives in southern Somalia. It was not immediately known whether the mission was successful.

The U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, operated by the Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia, where the al-Qaida suspects were believed to have fled from the capital, Mogadishu, CBS News reported.

This isn't good. How many wars can the U.S. government be involved in before we completely bankrupt our good will in the world? This is almost as bad as the Cold War days, using proxy nations to do the dirty work. Or is that a good thing - using other nations to kill our terrorists so that we don't have to send in our military? I'm just not comfortable with this underhanded play, not when the subtext reads "Global War on Islam" to everyone else in the world. 

UPDATE: You'll have to excuse my lack of attention to Africa (other than noting the OSD idea for an "African Command"). Fortunately, Matt at MountainRunner has been watching Somalia for the past year. Check out his blog posts on Somalia. He notes the big U.S. interests as China's involvement, counterterrorism, and oil. You know, the usual stuff.

Comments

[James]

The "transitional government" in Somalia is always breathlessly described as "UN-recognized," and I'm sure it is, but that doesn't change the fact that it is basically self-appointed. A bunch of warlords got together in Kenya and handed out titles to each other in hopes of getting international recognition and, of course, aid. It worked like gangbusters, only one problem: no one in Somalia takes them seriously. But these days, governments are made legitimate by foreign recognition, not domestic support. See Iraq, for example.

Ethiopia is in violation of a UN-brokered peace treaty with Eritrea, which is something else that isn't often reported. A UN commission drew a new border after hearing both sides of the dispute, which Ethipoia promptly disregarded, touching off the last couple of rounds of fighting between the two countries. Realpolitik puts us in Ethiopia's camp, fine, but let's cut the pretense of righteousness, shall we?

Little Eritrea has been bullied constantly since it won its independence from Ethiopia right about the time the Baltic States got free of the Soviet Union. It's forced to spend most of its money on its military to stave off the Ethiopians, who have no real intention of letting Eritrea go: Eritrea, you see, was their only coastal province.