The Lessons of 2006
By Douglas Farah
The primary lesson I take away from 2006 is that we often do not believe what we see in front of us, to our own detriment and danger.
The most obvious example is the Islamist triumph in Somalia, begun in the middle of the year, yet receiving virtually no serious policy attention until very recently. It is hard to fathom why a self-proclaimed Islamist-Salafist movement, clear it is aims, could be viewed as a secondary concern. While the bedrock support for the movements is clan-based and the Islamic Courts enjoy some popular support for restoring law and order, there appears to have been little creative thinking as to how to counter-balance the more radical elements.
Now we face a series of bad options. Ethiopia may drive the Islamist groups out of Mogadishu, but Somalia is already viewed by much of the Islamist community as another attempt to establish the beginnings of the Caliphate. Foreign fighters, along with the Somalis, will likely prolong the fight through guerrilla warfare long into the future. It sets up a clear (in the _jihadi_ mind, at least) conflict between Christian/Jewish Crusaders and Islam, a huge drawing card for the Islamist movement. This means the whole Horn of Africa is now in danger of a spreading war that can, in the end, only help those who profit from chaos and unaccountability.
By failing to see what was happening in Somalia, and failing to act once it was clear even from far outside, what was happening, we allowed the Islamist project to expand it ways it predicted it would, giving not only physical sanctuary to the enemy but a huge psychological victory as well. Hard to imagine how that happened, after the lessons Afghanistan supposedly taught us. My entire blog is here.