While the White House strategized, the ICU did indeed implement a radical agenda in Mogadishu—but one that virtually all Somalis viewed as being for the better. The Courts began dismantling the insane maze of roadblocks that separated one warlord’s kingdom from another’s, leading to a significant drop in food prices. They reopened the ports and the airport, facilitating a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid that was able to reach Mogadishu. Robbery and other crime dropped substantially, and many residents told journalists that they felt safer than they had at any point in sixteen years. The ICU “brought a modicum of stability that’s unprecedented in Mogadishu,” recalled Aynte. “You could drive in Mogadishu at midnight, no problem, [with] no guards.” US officials acknowledged the improvement in aid shipments and credited the ICU with reducing piracy around Somalia. Even officials within the US-backed Somali government in exile acknowledged that the ICU had achieved something important. “The Islamic Courts brought about some semblance of order and stability to Mogadishu,” conceded Buubaa, the former foreign minister, who had opposed the ICU. “A lot of people in Mogadishu appreciated that.”
That was not the case within the US Special Operations community.
After 9/11, JSOC had been tasked with hunting down the most wanted terrorists in the world as identified by the White House. The Islamic Courts’ social program would not change that fact. The CIA’s warlord adventure had been a categorical failure and had actually resulted in even greater protection for the al Qaeda figures on JSOC’s radar. The invasion of Iraq was, in many ways, an enormous distraction from JSOC’s core mission. “There’s no question about that. Iraq fucked everything up,” said Gartenstein-Ross. Somalia is a “country, which, relative to Iraq, would have been easier to stabilize. But resources were never devoted to that. The major problem is that no steps were taken to avert an insurgency—and indeed, very early on, you had an insurgency arise.” More to the point, Washington’s own policies had directly sparked the insurgency. Following the CIA’s failure in Somalia, the US military began preparing for a campaign to crush the Courts. But with Black Hawk Down still dominating the US view of boots on the ground in Somalia, the White House began considering using Somalia’s reviled neighbor, Ethiopia, as a proxy force that could provide cover for US hit teams, primarily from JSOC, to covertly enter Somalia and begin hunting “High Value Targets.”
A UN cable from June 2006, containing notes of a meeting with senior State Department and US military officials from the Horn of Africa task force, indicated that the United States was aware of the ICU’s diversity but would “not allow” it to rule Somalia. The United States, according to the notes, intended to “rally with Ethiopia if the ‘Jihadist[s]’ took over.” The cable concluded, “Any Ethiopian action in Somalia would have Washington’s blessing.” Some within the US government called for dialogue or reconciliation, but their voices were drowned out by hawks determined to overthrow the ICU.
US Special Operations teams had long been in Ethiopia, training its notorious Agazi commando units. The country also had US air assets and small pop-up military facilities where the United States had access. But, although Ethiopia would play a huge role in the events to come, another of Somalia’s neighbors would provide the launching pad for JSOC’s forces. The US military began building up Camp Simba in Manda Bay, Kenya, which was created shortly after the Black Hawk Down disaster. Although its original intent was to train and assist Kenyan maritime forces along the Somali coast, as the ICU rose to power and the United States began drawing up contingency plans, the base at Manda Bay took on a different role. JSOC teams, particularly members of DEVGRU/SEAL Team 6, began setting up shop. Their presence was thinly masked by the US military’s civil affairs units that mingled with the locals—rebuilding schools and creating water purification projects—and trained conventional Kenyan forces. It was from Manda Bay that elite US hit teams would stage any potential operations inside of Somalia. The men who would be tasked with this mission were classified as Task Force 88.
Almost from the moment the ICU took power, the Ethiopians were salivating over the possibility of intervening. Since the two countries had fought a nasty war in the 1970s, the Ethiopian military regularly crossed the border into Somalia, angering locals. Somali militants, who viewed the Ogaden region of Ethiopia as their own, conducted raids and attacks inside Ethiopia. After the ICU took power, Addis Ababa took the opportunity to ratchet up its rhetoric about the threat of Somali jihadists across the region. As Qanyare fled Mogadishu, he went on national radio to warn that the ICU’s victory would result in an Ethiopian invasion, saying that Somalis were making a huge mistake by supporting the Courts. “I never, ever supported Ethiopia to land in Somalia,” Qanyare recalled. “Over my dead body, I never accepted that. Because I know who they are, what they want, what they are looking for.” A month after the ICU took power, US diplomats began noting reports of “clandestine” Ethiopian “reconnaissance missions in Somalia in preparation for possible future operations.”
The United States “had already misread the events by aiding heinous warlords. And they misread it again,” Aynte told me. “They should have taken this as an opportunity to engage the ICU. Because out of the thirteen organizations that formed the Courts, twelve were Islamic courts, clan courts who had no global jihad [agenda] or anything. Most of them never left Somalia. These were local guys. Al Shabab was the only threat—that was it. And they could have been controlled. But again the situation was misread and Ethiopia was essentially being urged by the US to invade Somalia.” For al Qaeda, he said, “it was the break that they were looking for.”
Malcolm Nance, a twenty-five-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s Combating Terrorism Program, spent the bulk of his professional career working covert ops in the Middle East and Africa. He studied the rise of al Qaeda and al Shabab and was familiar with the leadership of both organizations. Nance told me he believed that the United States dramatically mishandled its counterterrorism approach in Somalia. Prior to the rumors of an Ethiopian intervention, he said, al “Shabab was a sideline organization, they were fringe.” Nance believed the United States should have tried to work with the ICU and work toward isolating the foreign al Qaeda operatives. “As an intelligence guy, here is what I would have done [with an al Qaeda figure]: Leave him there. Get as many assets as close to him as possible. Put resources on him and all of his lieutenants there. Find out as much as possible. Find out what the real depth of al Qaeda is there. Then he will have an unfortunate accident on the road—you know, a lorry hits him from the front.”
Nance believed that, given the clan-based power structure that ruled Somalia—and its repeated marginalization of foreign agents and widespread rejection of foreign occupation—the United States could have waged a propaganda war against the relatively small number of al Qaeda operatives around the Courts to “break their mindset, break their reason for being.” “Wouldn’t it be a lot more fun to brand al Qaeda as a non-Islamic cult? And to the point where people won’t sell them bread, to where when they go out in a battlefield, people will fight against them.” US intelligence, he asserted, should have run disinformation ops to portray them as “Satanists or people who are anti-Islam.” He added: “We should have gone after them that way, and that would have helped every dimension of breaking the organization.” The potential for any success from Nance’s proposed strategy is debatable, given the clan system in Somalia and the fierce opposition to outside influence. But it was never put to the test. He called the actual US strategy that followed, “absolutely mind-boggling.”
Like JSOC and the CIA, al Qaeda was closely monitoring events in Somalia. As rumors of outside intervention spread, Osama bin Laden released a statement that made clear al Qaeda had no illusions that Ethiopia was making its own military decisions. “We warn all the nations of the world not to agree to America’s request to send international forces to Somalia. We swear to Allah that we will fight its soldiers on Somali soil, and we reserve t
he right to punish on their own soil, or anywhere else, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner,” he declared. “Take care not to wait and tarry, as some of the Muslims did when they tarried in saving the Islamic government in Afghanistan. This is a golden opportunity and a personal obligation upon everyone who is capable, and you must not miss this opportunity to establish the nucleus of the Caliphate.”
THE ISLAMIC COURTS UNION—and the first period of relative peace to come to Mogadishu—lasted just six months. While US diplomats in the region privately warned their superiors of potentially dire consequences of an Ethiopian invasion and sought to identify paths to reconciliation between the ICU and the internationally recognized transitional government, the Bush administration’s national security team was gearing up for a war to take down the ICU. By late 2006, Ethiopian forces were massing along various points of the Somali border. Although US diplomats expressed concern over the buildup, they seemed unaware that the US military was deeply involved in it.
The ICU saw the writing on the wall. Both Sheikh Sharif, who just months earlier pledged to cooperate with the United States and the United Nations, and Aweys called on Somalis to wage a “jihad” against any invading Ethiopian forces. Dressed in combat fatigues, Sharif would sometimes hold an AK-47 as he made his public pronouncements. “I want to tell the Somali people that they have to protect their country, and their religion,” Sharif declared. “Somalia’s ancient enemy has returned, and therefore I give my order to Islamic Courts soldiers: We are calling you for Jihad in Allah’s way.” In November, as Ethiopia began pushing US officials to back an invasion to unseat the ICU, US officials obtained an “executive order” written in Arabic and purportedly issued by Aweys, who had recently taken on the role of chairman of the ICU. It called for the assassination of sixteen officials of the Somali government in exile, including the president, Mohammed Yusuf, and Prime Minister Mohamed Gedi. Specifically, it called for “martyrs” from al Shabab to “execute the operations using the most deadly suicide methods carried out by mujahidin fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other countries of the world.”
By December, the United States had developed a strategy to partner with the Ethiopian military and Somalia’s government in exile to drive the Courts from Mogadishu. The plan was to install the weak, but official, Somali government, which would be secured by Ethiopian-trained Somali forces and the Ethiopian military. As for the ICU leaders and foreign fighters, Task Force 88, based out of Manda Bay, would develop a plan to hunt them down and kill them.
On December 4, 2006, CENTCOM commander general John Abizaid touched down in Addis Ababa for a meeting with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Officially, it was a routine visit with a US ally. Behind the scenes, it was clear that war was imminent. “We saw what was happening as the chance of a lifetime,” a Pentagon officer told Time magazine, “a very rare opportunity for the U.S. to move directly against al-Qaeda and get these terrorists.”
Days after Abizaid’s meeting in Ethiopia, the US State Department significantly escalated its rhetoric and began publicly characterizing the ICU as an al Qaeda front. “The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals, East Africa Al-Qaeda cell individuals,” declared Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state for African affairs and the top US official on Africa. “The top layer of the courts are extremist to the core. They are terrorists and they are in control.” Much like the buildup to the 2003 Iraq invasion, major US media outlets began hyping the al Qaeda connection, printing the views of anonymous US officials as verified facts. Sensational headlines began appearing, warning of a “Growing Al-Qaeda Menace in Africa.” Corporate TV reporters breathlessly offered up revisionist history of the Somalia conflict, conveniently omitting the US role in creating the crisis. On CBS, veteran correspondent David Martin declared, “Somalia has been a safe haven for Al-Qaeda ever since the U.S. military pulled out of the country following the infamous Black Hawk Down firefight.” CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr practically sounded like a Bush administration spokesperson: “Today, here in East Africa, the concern remains that unless Somalia is shut down as a terrorist safe haven, the threat of another attack remains very real.”
While the Bush administration and some prominent media outlets hyped the Somali threat, not everyone was playing along. Even as the US military prepared for direct action, the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, expressed skepticism about claims the Courts were run by al Qaeda. “I don’t think there are hard and fast views,” Negroponte said. Somalia “has come back on the radar screen only fairly recently,” he observed, adding that the key question was whether the ICU “is the next Taliban.” He concluded, “I don’t think I’ve seen a good answer.” John Prendergast, who served as an Africa specialist in the Clinton administration’s NSC and State Department, labeled the Bush administration’s Somalia policy “idiotic,” charging that backing an Ethiopian invasion would make “our counterterrorism agenda nearly impossible to implement.”
Then-Senator Joe Biden, who at the time was preparing to take over the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, spoke out forcefully and displayed a keen historical knowledge of the timeline of events leading up to the ICU coming to power. “By making a bad bet on the warlords to do our bidding,” Biden charged, “the administration has managed to strengthen the Courts, weaken our position and leave no good options. This is one of the least-known but most dangerous developments in the world, and the administration lacks a credible strategy to deal with it.”
Credible strategy or not, the administration had committed itself to taking down the Courts.
On December 24, 2006, Ethiopian warplanes began bombing runs, as tanks rolled across the Somali border. It was a classic proxy war run by Washington and staffed by 40,000–50,000 troops from Somalia’s widely despised neighbor. The ICU’s defense minister, Indha Adde, held a press conference and publicly invited foreign Islamists to come fight. “Let them fight in Somalia and wage jihad, and, God willing, attack Addis Ababa,” he said.
As fighter jets bombarded Somalia and Ethiopian forces made their way toward Mogadishu, Frazer and other US officials denied Washington was behind the invasion. The claims were demonstrably false. “The US sponsored the Ethiopian invasion, paying for everything, including the gas that it had to expend, to undertake this. And you also had US forces on the ground, US Special Operations forces. You had CIA on the ground. US airpower was a part of the story as well. All of which gave massive military superiority to the Ethiopians,” said Gartenstein-Ross. “The Ethiopians were not able to come in without the support of the US Government,” recalled Gedi, who was then the prime minister in exile and worked with US intelligence and the Ethiopian government in planning the invasion. “American air forces were supporting us.”
Qanyare watched while the Ethiopians replaced his CIA-backed alliance as Washington’s newest proxy. To him, it was an incalculable disaster. The “international community brought [the Ethiopians], in the pretext of that they are fighting with al Qaeda,” Qanyare alleged. “They kill the people, because of a grudge of the 1977 war. They finish the people, and they kill the women and children. Elimination. Under the pretext that they are fighting al Qaeda. I should believe if America knew their character, they’d never call them.”
By New Year’s Day, exiled prime minister Gedi was installed in Mogadishu. “The warlord era in Somalia is now over,” he declared. In a sign of what was to come, demonstrations broke out against the forces that had installed him as people swiftly and angrily began to denounce the Ethiopian “occupation.” The events of 2007 would send Somalia on a trajectory toward more horror and chaos, leading to a stunning rise in strength and size of the very forces Washington sought to combat. “Ethiopia and Somalia were archenemies, historical enemies, and people felt that this was adding insult to the injury,” said Aynte. “An insurgency was born out of there.”
“If there’s one lesson in terms of military op
erations of the past ten years, it’s that the US is a very effective insurgent force,” said Gartenstein-Ross. “In areas where it’s seeking to overthrow a government, it’s good at doing that. What it’s not shown any luck in doing is establishing a viable government structure.” The US and Ethiopian actions, Buubaa, the former foreign minister, said, would end up “driving Somalia into the al Qaeda fold.”
Nance, the veteran intelligence operative, agreed that the US-backed Ethiopian invasion was a boon for al Shabab: “The Shabab existed in a very small warlord-like infrastructure, prior to that, but once Ethiopia went in there—it’s pretty obvious that they were acting as a [US] surrogate—al Qaeda said, ‘Great! New full-on Jihadi battlefront. We’ve got ’em here. We’ve got the Christian Ethiopians, we’ve got American advisers. Now we just create a new battlefront and we will reinvigorate East Africa’s al Qaeda organization.’ And that is exactly what happened.”
Prison Break
YEMEN, 2006 —While the CIA’s warlords were battling the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia and the Bush administration was almost singularly focused on the mounting insurgency in Iraq, a mass prison break in Sana’a occurred that would prove to be a seminal event in the reconstruction of al Qaeda in the region. Among those who escaped were several key figures who would go on to form the nexus of the leadership of a new organization, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), including Nasir al Wuhayshi, bin Laden’s former personal secretary. On February 3, 2006, Wuhayshi and twenty-two others escaped from their maximum security prison by tunneling out of a cell into a nearby mosque, though Wuhayshi later boasted that they performed morning prayers before literally walking out the front door. Wuhayshi would unite the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda under the regional banner of AQAP. Qasim al Rimi, who escaped in the same breakout, would go on to become AQAP’s military commander. “It is a serious problem,” Rumsfeld said a few days after the prison break. “They were individuals who were deeply involved in al Qaeda activities and directly connected to the attack on the USS Cole and the death of the sailors that were on board that ship.” But while Rumsfeld and other US officials focused almost exclusively on pressing Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh to recapture Jamal al Badawi, whom the United States wanted to be extradited, and other Cole bombing suspects, it would be Wuhayshi and Rimi who would become the most notorious and problematic of the escapees.
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