How to End the Stalemate in Somalia
With Al Shabaab and the TFG Both Weak, it is Time to Engage Locals
Article Summary and Author Biography
As the radical group al Shabaab has fled Mogadishu, an array of actors -- governmental entities, regional authorities, clans, and civil society organizations -- can help.
BRONWYN BRUTON and J. PETER PHAM are, respectively, deputy director and director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council.
Letter From
The president of Kenya argues that, despite the conflict and famine ravaging Somalia, there is an opportunity for East Africa to escape a regional mess.
Since 2007, al Shabab, an al Qaeda-linked militia, has been locked in a violent stalemate with Somalia's weak and dysfunctional Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Back in 2009, it was clear that this conflict was far from inevitable: today's tragedy is a result of a series of bad policy decisions by the United States, regional actors, and the United Nations. And it has been actively sustained by external forces -- al Qaeda provided al Shabab funding and tactical expertise while the United States and other countries bolstered the TGF, fueling an unproductive conflict. Somalis in Mogadishu have sometimes characterized the bloody saga as a "diaspora war," as both sides are at least partially proxies for foreign powers.
Until this summer, al Shabab fought unsuccessfully to rout the TFG from its strongholds in the presidential palace and ports, and the TFG was unable to reliably project its authority beyond a nominal presence in some of Mogadishu's neighborhoods. Al Shabab's human rights abuses and the peacekeepers' regular, indiscriminate mortar fire were brutal burdens for Mogadishu's residents. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes to other parts of Somalia, to Kenya and Yemen, and onward into the Middle East. The conflict devastated the Somali economy, drained the country's resources, weakened its population, and set the stage for the terrible famine that is obliterating the southern half of the country.
