Why the US Isn't Making New Friends in Somalia
| 12:11 UK time, Wednesday, 27 December 2006
We have heard a lot on World Update from visitors to Mogadishu about the stability brought to Somalia by the Islamic Courts Union.
Supported by businessmen who wanted someone to enforce contracts and punish thieves, the Union quickly established Islamic law and removed the warlords' barricades at which wild-eyed men with guns had extracted bribes from anyone trying to move around. They started to take territory around the country.
To understand why the US, which keenly wants stability in Somalia (in order to deny Islamic extremists another failed state in which to operate) is unwilling to accept the Islamic Courts Union as progress, it's worth reading some declassified documents chronicling US relations with the Taliban in the 1990s.
Comments here, please, once you have read below.
The once-confidential State Department telexes show U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Thomas W. Simons Jr. dealing with the increasingly powerful Islamist movement in 1996.
In September of that year, Washington the Ambassador to establish contacts with the Taliban:, to "demonstrate US government willingness to deal with them as the new authorities in Kabul".
In November, the Ambassador the Taliban's "Acting Foreign Minister," Mullah Ghaus, warmly reminding him that Americans are "the most religious people in the western world". He called on the Taliban to recognise that peace would not come through a military solution.
In a for a visit to Pakistan by Assistant Secretary of State Robin Lynn Raphel, the US Embassy in Islamabad gives details of the calm the Taliban have brought to Kandahar. Under the heading "All's Well in Taliban Land" the document describes full markets, pharmacies opening and rebuilding of public buildings including the airport (paid for by the US and destroyed in earlier fighting against the Soviets).
"In short, life is not so bad and the people of Kandahar would be crazy not to prefer Taliban theocracy to factional warfare and rule by brigands..."
It's obvious, I suppose, that in view of what followed in Afghanistan, the US is reluctant to follow a similar path in Somalia.
