Counterterrorism Blog

After yesterday's revelation that the U.S. military has played an active role in Somalia since the Ethiopian intervention began in earnest, now is a good time to take stock of the factors that will determine whether the U.S. mission succeeds. This morning I have a new article at the Daily Standard that addresses the critical questions. An excerpt:

One factor that will determine whether the ICU successfully launches an insurgency in the near future is the scope of the losses it suffers on the battlefield now. Military intelligence analysts feel that the ICU will bounce back unless a significant portion of its fighters are killed or captured. There appears to be an important opportunity at present: a large number of ICU fighters are massed in Ras Kamboni, a coastal town near the Kenyan border where they appear to have gone to regroup.

Estimates of the number of ICU fighters in Ras Kamboni provided by intelligence analysts and sources within the TFG vary widely. The number of fighters has been placed as low as 600 and as high as 5,000. But clearly there is a significant contingent. ICU members in Ras Kamboni appear to be communicating with high-level al Qaeda leaders: according to a senior military intelligence officer, their calls for assistance motivated Ayman al-Zawahiri's January 5 tape which urged his followers to go to Somalia to fight alongside the ICU.

Ethiopian, TFG, and American forces are currently forming a cordon around Ras Kamboni in an effort to prevent ICU fighters from escaping. But there are signs that the ICU is also attempting to regroup in Kenya and Yemen, just as the Taliban regrouped in Pakistan after it was toppled from power in Afghanistan.

Beyond the question of how many ICU fighters can be taken out of action in the next few weeks, another critical military question is how long Ethiopia will continue its push. When Ethiopia intervened in Somalia in the mid-1990s to break up the radical al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya, it allowed the group's core leadership to escape intact. Those leaders went on to form the Islamic Courts. If Ethiopia does not finish the job this time, there will, again, be long-term consequences.

Read the whole article here.