Publicly, the administration will not admit to any policy of aiding warlords. But officials with the Red Cross and other aid groups in Mogadishu report seeing “many Americans with thick necks and short haircuts moving around, carrying big suitcases,” says one aid official whose agency does not permit him to speak on the record. And in recent months a diplomat critical of U.S. policy in Somalia, Michael Zorick, apparently was removed from his post in Nairobi after writing cables complaining about the strategy. (Zorick, who was moved to the embassy in Chad, could not be reached for comment Friday.) A political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, Lisa Peterson, refused to comment on the reasons for Zorick’s departure. But she said that U.S. policy is under review, with State Counterterrorism chief Hank Crumpton currently on a visit to the Horn. Asked whether Zorick’s dissent, and the current debate, were mainly about whether Washington might be creating more Islamist radi-cals than it is killing or capturing, she said, “Those are certainly questions that have come up.”
At CIA stations in East Africa, some agency officials believe the United States is being “essentially defrauded,” says a retired CIA station chief who recently visited there and wanted to remain anonymous because he was discussing sensitive issues. “They think we should take a deep breath and settle down. We’re throwing money at anybody who will say they’re fighting terrorism.” Indeed, some suspects grabbed in recent years by friendly militia leaders have turned out to be mere drifters: in one case, a hapless Iraqi was snatched at a cybercafé in Mogadishu, only to be interrogated for a month and released.
U.S. officials say they’re in an impossible spot: either leave Somalia to be a terrorist haven or try to form relationships with friendlies, even untrustworthy ones. “Any time you have these areas that are ungovernable, you have to talk to somebody inside,” says Gary Berntsen, the former CIA team leader who allied with Afghan warlords to help defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. “There’s no choice.” But for an administration that professes to see building democracy as a solution to global terrorism, the warlord strategy may not advance U.S. goals.
Some intelligence experts say the key is to keep the U.S. “footprint” so small that it is undetectable. “In the case of countering Al Qaeda, the record seems to suggest that less is more,” says John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School. “A small investment can achieve very substantial results, like al-Para, whereas in the Horn of Africa a much greater investment has been made with much smaller results.” There may be worse results to come.
Source: Newsweek, May 28, 2006
