A Recipe for Somalia

As the Afghanistan strategy review dominates conversations in Washington, President Barack Obama's advisors appear split over whether to fully resource a counterinsurgency or scale back the effort to a more limited, counterterrorism approach. Vice President Joe Biden and others, fearing an open-ended engagement, have argued that a light footprint that features Predator drones and special operations forces would be the best way to counter al Qaeda and other Islamist groups. The reported strategy would take boots off the ground, lessening U.S. casualties even as airstrikes continue to target high-value targets, such as those responsible for the September 11 attacks. To some it may sound like the perfect casualty- and commitment-free plan.

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Unfortunately, we have seen such an approach before. Over the last 18 years, Somalia has become the poster child for the shortcomings of light engagement peppered with misguided attempts at counterterrorism intervention. If the United States pursues a similar strategy in Afghanistan, the result will be equally catastrophic. And this time, the new Somalia will be right in the heart of the world's most volatile region.

As in Afghanistan, the United States began its engagement in Somalia two decades ago with the deployment of troops. The Bill Clinton administration pulled out after just 19 months, when casualties mounted and there was no end in sight to the conflict. Today, 15 years of light footprint later, Somalia remains a breeding ground for a host of Islamists groups, many with connections to al Qaeda. The country is technically ruled by a weak Transitional Federal Government -- the 14th attempt at establishing authority in almost as many years. But the administration controls but a few neighborhoods of Mogadishu, holding the Islamist groups at bay only with the help of African Union troops who act as de facto bodyguards.

As Islamist insurgents have gained ground, the United States has tried to contain the damage with targeted strikes utilizing special operations forces. In January 2007, for instance, attacks by an AC-130 gunship and attack helicopters killed at least 31 people, many of them suspected Islamist militants. More recently, on Sept. 14, Navy SEALs swooped down in helicopters and shot up a vehicle carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al Qaeda leader thought to be responsible for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Despite these few successful raids, Islamist groups -- and other malign elements such as the pirates who terrorize ships off the Horn of Africa -- appear stronger than ever in Somalia. It has proven difficult to decapitate the Islamists with airstrikes alone, thanks to poor intelligence in such a chaotic climate. And far from crippling terrorist groups, U.S. strikes often cause enough collateral damage to drive more aggrieved people into the insurgent camp. These attacks have also had the unintended effect of bringing disparate insurgent elements closer together. The patchwork of Islamist groups have put aside their clan-based divisions and coalesced around a common cause, forming far more monolithic -- and more dangerous -- groups such as al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam.

Nor has halfhearted financial, military, and diplomatic support for the Somali government, whether it's from the African Union, Ethiopia, the United States, or the United Nations, done anything to curtail the Islamists. Instead, it has had the opposite effect. International backing has allowed Islamist groups to portray subsequent interim regimes as puppets of the West, further discrediting the weak bodies among the Somali people. A U.S.-backed Ethiopian intervention to install a transitional government in 2007 made matters even worse; Ethiopians were widely resented, giving the Islamist opposition a convenient enemy against which to fight. Ethiopia pulled out its forces in January, leaving Somalia as much of a mess as ever.

No wonder U.S. officials fear that Somalia is becoming a major al Qaeda safe haven -- with an ominous connection to the continental United States, home to many Somali refugees. Some of these U.S. citizens have gone back to fight for Islamist groups. And in the future, there is always the danger that other immigrants, radicalized by the U.S. attacks, will wage war directly on their adopted homeland.

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