Militias and Insurgency in Somalia

By Michael Jacobson

This afternoon, the Washington Institute published part 1 of a 2 part series by Professor Andre Lesage at the National Defense University discussing trends in Somalia. The first part focuses on the country's growing insurgency, while the second part will address peacebuilding efforts and Somalia's ties to terrorism.

Here is an excerpt:

During her recent tour of Africa, U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton held a press conference with Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, president of Somalia's transitional federal government (TFG). Her statements mark a major public commitment by the Obama administration to support Sharif's flagging government against the country's armed opposition groups, some of which are tied to al-Qaeda and threaten security across the greater Horn of Africa.

Transitional Federal Government

The TFG was created by an internationally supported peace process in Kenya in 2004. Before the TFG could negotiate its arrival in Mogadishu, a civil society-supported amalgam of various Islamic and tribal interests united to form the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). After fifteen years of rule by unpopular, clan-based warlords, the ICU temporarily brought security and hope to the war-ravaged capital city. The ICU, however, was an unwieldy creation. Under the influence of hardline Islamists, ICU militia extended control over most of southern Somalia, surrounded the TFG's rear base in Baidoa, and threatened to extend its holy war to Ethiopia. In response, Ethiopian forces invaded southern Somalia in December 2006, defeated the ICU, and installed the TFG in Mogadishu. This dispersed, but did not destroy, ICU forces across southern Somalia. They reemerged in many forms, notably the Hizb al-Islamiyah and Harakat al-Shabab groups, which slowly reinfiltrated Mogadishu in piecemeal fashion. The militias engaged in classic guerilla tactics to intimidate, harass, and wear down their opponents. Over time, they imported sophisticated attack methods into Somalia, including the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombings.

Even with Ethiopia's military support, the TFG was unable to defeat the insurgents and became hampered by leadership conflicts and clan-based schisms over power-sharing. In January 2009, the first TFG president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, was replaced by Sheikh Sharif -- a more moderate Islamist leader of the ICU -- in a move to split opposition forces and dilute the armed opposition. Nonetheless, the TFG remains a paper tiger. The parliament rarely meets, and many of its members have fled Mogadishu out of fear for personal security. TFG is unable to deliver desperately needed social services and has no civil service to speak of -- cabinet ministers are often the only TFG ministry staff. Force protection for the TFG is provided primarily by 5,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops that are in Mogadishu as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

The TFG was almost pushed out of Mogadishu in June 2009 by a concerted insurgent offensive. The TFG controls only a fraction of the capital and has influence in other parts of southern Somalia through loose alliances with clan-based political leaders and militias. Even in Mogadishu, the TFG has extremely weak command and control over the militia forces that support it, including strongmen in the security services and Ahlu Sunna wa Jamaah, a Sufist movement that recently spawned several armed militias. These groups function with almost complete independence, are constituted by different and competing sub-clans, and control their own patches of Somali territory -- much as the country's warlord-based factions did in the 1990s.

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