Avoid military option in Somalia, US urged

Some Somalia experts in the United States are urging the Obama administration to negotiate with Islamist insurgents instead of facilitating a looming military offensive by the country’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

One of the analysts, Bronwyn Bruton, calls for a new US policy of “constructive disengagement” from the TFG.

In a report for the non-governmental Council on Foreign Relations, she warns that negligible political support for the TFG inside Somalia indicates that a major counter-insurgency operation “is not the answer for the United States.”

But Washington appears committed to helping the TFG wrest control of Somalia’s capital from Al Shabaab, an Islamist force allied with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qa’ida network.

Gen William Ward, leader of the US Africa Command, told a Senate panel last week: “To the degree the transitional federal government can in fact re-exert control over Mogadishu, with the help of Amisom and others, I think is something that we would look to do in support.”

The New York Times had earlier reported that a TFG offensive could be launched in a few weeks.

Advocates of this military option argue that changed conditions inside Somalia enhance the possibility of success.

It is generally agreed, for example, that internal feuding as well as pressure from outsiders, including US Special Forces, have weakened Shabaab significantly.

The TFG’s forces have meanwhile been expanded and strengthened.

The United States has supplied the TFG with at least 80 tonnes of weaponry in the past year while also helping Kenya and other neighbouring countries train Somali recruits to fight the Islamists.

A 5,000-member African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) has also been upgraded.

The United States has simultaneously been focusing on the political dimensions of the Somalia stalemate, Obama administration officials say.

Washington has been pressing the TFG to engage with moderate Islamists in hopes of broadening the government’s base of support.

“There are limits to outside engagement,” US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson told the Times last week. “And there has to be an enormous amount of local buy-in for this work.”

Supporters of an offensive against Al Shabaab further contend that the status quo in Somalia poses unacceptable dangers to Western interests.