Two Generations,Two Interventions in One of the World’s Most-Failed States: The United States,Kenya and Ethiopia in Somalia

Introduction

Why did the United States intervene in Somalia in 1992? Why did Kenya and Ethiopia do likewise in 2011? And what connection can be made, if any, between the deployment of US forces to Somalia in the last century and the deployment of Kenyan and Ethiopian forces to Somalia in the present one?

In seeking to answer the questions posed above, this article is organized into seven subsections. After this ‘Introduction’ is the subsection entitled ‘Pax Americana, with others’. The subsection explores the conflicting impulses of the George HW Bush administration in seeking to minimize the amount of US resources dedicated to Africa, but the need to experiment with how and where American power could be exercised in the post-Cold War world. Themes of idealism, realism and multilateralism animate this part of the article. In ‘Somalia as a foreign policy laboratory’, Somalia’s rise as a foreign policy priority within the George HW Bush White House is charted. Of note is that key US foreign policymakers begin making humanitarian and normative arguments to justify an American military intervention in the Horn of Africa. ‘Pluralist means, solidarist goals, ambiguous results’ explains how US foreign policymakers came to view Somalia as an example of future threats – namely how a country in which the US had little direct interest could transmit misery and chaos through, say, the exportation of terrorism. This section then lays out the moral and legal developments preceding America’s deployment of more than 25,000 troops to Somalia in 1992.

In ‘Existential, not theoretical: the history behind modern Somali threats’, focus shifts to Kenya and Ethiopia, and another generation of soldiers. In this subsection, context is provided for the Kenyan and Ethiopian military interventions into Somalia in late 2011. In particular the subsection addresses how the rise of al-Shabaab, the Somali-based, al-Qaeda-aligned organization became an overriding concern for Kenyan and Ethiopian foreign policymakers. The next subsection, ‘Yesteryear’s threats, today’, examines Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s initial deployment of 8000+ troops to Somalia, and the complex landscape they faced in terms of Somali customs, clan structures and religious beliefs. Then, in ‘Serving the national interest, with others’, the article explains why, in the pursuit of self-interested security objectives, Kenyan and Ethiopian leaders opted to ‘re-hat’ their forces and to become part of the UN Security Council-sanctioned African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM, whose first troops arrived in Somalia in 2007). Securitization theory especially provides a unifying theme in this subsection. Collectively, the above-noted sections provide context for the interventions of the United States, Kenya and Ethiopia in Somalia.

In the concluding subsection of the article, ‘Another generation, another intervention’, a public goods theory is employed to address the question ‘What connection can be made, if any, between the deployment of US forces to Somalia in the last century and the deployment of Kenyan and Ethiopian forces to Somalia in the present one?’ In sum, the article contends that military interventions that are ostensibly peacekeeping in nature can be inherently inadequate because ‘self-interest works against the interests of the collective’ (Bobrow and Boyer, 1997: 726). Accordingly, America’s intervention in Somalia between 1992 and 1994 failed to remedy the circumstances and concerns which spawned the perceived need for Kenyan and Ethiopian forces to intervene in Somalia a generation later, in 2011. Unfortunately for Kenyan and Ethiopian soldiers, Somalia’s politicians and political processes might relegate them to realizing little more success than their American predecessors.

Pax Americana, with others

In 1992, more than 25,000 US forces landed in Somalia as part of a 37,000-strong United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) operation. These forces were meant to ensure the safe delivery of food aid and humanitarian assistance through a parallel United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I) (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2014). The size of the US commitment is surprising, given US foreign policymakers’ rhetoric and actions with regard to the African continent prior to the troops’ arrival. From January 1990, for example, US President George HW Bush had articulated what can be called a type of ‘foreign policy triage’. ¹ It was then, during a budget address to Congress, that he explained how his administration intended to reduce aid to Africa specifically to free up larger amounts for Poland (Schraeder, 1994: 252). It was a statement confirming that, while the administration might not view Africa as totally unimportant, Poland, as a part of eastern Europe, was clearly higher on the foreign policy priority list. As such, it was justified to reallocate finite resources away from what was viewed as an ailing continent to an area of potential.

But undertaking a sustained form of foreign policy triage did not become an overwhelming necessity for the Bush administration until nearly a year and a half later, in mid-1991. Faced with the rapid implosion of the Soviet Union, administration officials were struggling to keep pace with the growing number of newly-independent republics emerging from the rubble of the crumbling empire. Nonetheless, US foreign policy makers thought it imperative to be active participants in consolidating the trend toward democracy. This, of course, required resources. Because administration officials were unwilling and unable to create a bigger pie, it was only logical, they reasoned, that the means would have to be carved from existing pieces. ² There was little doubt as to which piece would be targeted. As Chester Crocker, the former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, remarked: ‘Africans could end up paying for the expanding frontiers of freedom everywhere else…’ (Newsweek, 1990: 27)

Crocker’s words were to prove prophetic. In order to staff the growing number of consulates and embassies in eastern Europe, the State Department was ordered to trim seventy positions from its Bureau of African Affairs, and to close consulates and embassies in four African countries (Schraeder, 1994: 251). Similarly, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was forced to cut a variety of programs and staff positions related to Africa, and there were inquiries in to the feasibility of merging the subcommittees on African and Latin American affairs as a way to decrease costs (Schraeder, 1994: 251). Collectively, these moves were the capstone on a trend that had already seen US military aid to Africa (minus the roughly US$2 billion given annually to Egypt) plummet from US$279.2 million to US$11.39 million, economic support funds plunge from US$452.8 million to US$58.9 million and US foreign assistance decline from roughly 10.3 per cent of an overall budget of US$18.13 billion in 1985, to approximately 7.5 per cent of the US$15.73 billion budget in 1990 (United States Agency for International Development, 1992).

Commenting on the realignment of resources, some analysts observed that once ‘America was free to pursue its own interests in Africa’ – meaning once US foreign policy makers were able to move beyond, say, trying to contain communism – ‘it found it didn’t have any’ (Michaels, 1993: 93). A widely-held assumption was that the triage strategy underway, at Africa’s expense, would continue undeterred as the United States pursued a more regionally-focused foreign policy based on a narrower definition of self-interest. The opposite proved true, at least with regard to Somalia.

Early in his time in office George HW Bush announced the concept of a ‘new world order’. To him, the new world order ‘struggling to be born’ was one ‘… quite different from the one we have known, a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle, a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice, a world where the strong respect the weak’ (Bush, 1991b: 1219).

Far from being a new idea, Bush’s new world order concept built upon principles that had long found support in US foreign policy. Specifically, there was a continued emphasis on the rule of law and the maintenance of order as a way of promoting freedom. Freedom was best achieved, it was held, if nations as a whole were secure in pursuing and/or achieving self-determination, and if individual citizens within nations could implement their wishes through democratic institutions. In US history, these were the principles which had encouraged Woodrow Wilson to seek to establish the League of Nations, what Franklin Roosevelt felt necessitated America’s involvement in World War Two, and to which Harry Truman subscribed in forming his Truman Doctrine when he said: ‘I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation… I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way’ (Truman, 1950: 1256). Even the Reagan Doctrine’s ‘disorder’, resulting from the arming of avowed anti-communist rebel movements, was couched in similar terms: a season of disorder could be justified if it ultimately led to the banishment of totalitarianism. Thus, while the principles of the rule of law and the maintenance of order as prerequisites for freedom continued to form the basis of Bush’s new world order, in no way were they new concepts. What was new, in Bush’s view, was that in a post-Cold War world with only one truly global superpower, there was a historically unprecedented opportunity to raise these ideals to a level of virtual universal acceptance. ³ The challenge lay in defining to the American people and the international community what role the United States could play in making the new world order a reality.

To these ends, Bush described how he thought that the world had been made safe for democracy as a concept, though the world itself was far from democratic (Tucker and Hendrickson, 1992: 66). In other words, the foundation for a lasting structure of peace and security had been laid, but it needed to be built upon. Peace and security, Bush noted, would take American leadership; the United States, he said, was ‘the only nation on this earth that could assemble the forces of peace’ (Bush, 1991c: 91–94) in order to foster a ‘peaceful settlement of disputes, solidarity against aggression… and the just treatment of all peoples’ (Nye, 1994: 50). However, Bush warned, there would be those who opposed the principles on which the new world order were to stand, if not American involvement in promoting and protecting them. About this Bush commented: ‘The new world order cannot guarantee an era of perpetual peace, but enduring peace must be our mission’ (Bush, 1991a: 162).

Bush had no illusions that the new global mission to which he was hoping to commit the United States would incur costs. Most immediately, there was the likelihood that the new world order might require the use of force to counter aggression. ⁴ In this regard, Bush’s vision was an uneasy blending of Wilsonian ideals with Cold War realism. However, as a shrewd politician, Bush knew full well that the use of force would push the outer limits of what would be tolerated in pursuing and sustaining it.

Most immediately, the use of force would be the surest way to arouse criticism within the American electorate and Congress about the financial costs to the country, and whether American lives were worth giving in pursuit of a new vision. In a broader sense, administration officials recognized that the use of America’s military might could cause many in the international community to accuse the US of pursuing a form of imperialism. Indeed, in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War (‘Operation Desert Storm’ in US military parlance), many editorialists around the world were accusing the US of using the new world order as a philosophical cover for building ‘a world of uncontested US power, in the process subordinating the ambitions of (others) to American interest’ (Petras and Morley, 1995: 21). Others went so far as to talk of a ‘colonial revival’ in which the United States, like some late-twentieth-century Cecil Rhodes, was leading the advanced industrial countries back into the heart of the underdeveloped world (Cox, 1995: 108; Petras and Vieux, 1994: 29–33).

At the beginning of 1992, then, US foreign policy makers had a considerable dilemma: how best to achieve the new world order, but to do so with minimal resources, as the Bush administration’s foreign policy triage strategy demanded. The solution to which US foreign policy makers turned was multilateralism. Multilateralism was to be a compromise between the two extremes of the United States acting as a ‘globocop’ or retreating into a new isolationism, and therefore expending vast amounts of resources or very few. America’s new dispensation was to be one that moved away from being the defender of freedom, as foreign policy makers had claimed during the Cold War, to being a custodian. A major prerequisite for being a responsible custodian was that US foreign policy makers had to accept that the United States could not, nor should it, hold absolute and undisputed sway. In the new world order, the United States could achieve Pax Americana – that is, order through the peaceful adjudication of disputes according to international law, and the advancement and maintenance of liberal democracy and economics – if it sought collective action (albeit Bush maintained that in extreme matters of national interest, when collective action was unachievable, the United States would still be willing to act unilaterally).

By advocating the notion of a multilateral future, US foreign policy makers, at least theoretically, had resolved the inherent contradictions of wanting to downgrade Africa, pursuing a form of foreign policy triage confirming as much, and yet still committing the United States to helping make the new world order a reality for all. Nonetheless, the Bush administration hoped that they would not have to apply this merger of strategies and ideals in Africa, and to keep the continent on America’s ‘back burner’ (Schraeder, 1994: 250). In mid-1992, however, the Horn of Africa was incapable of being so relegated.

Somalia as a foreign policy laboratory

Due to a combination of drought, civil war and an overabundance of weaponry, Somalia, on the Horn of Africa, was in chaos in 1992. The major cities were in ruins. Over 300,000 had died from war and starvation. More than one million were displaced and living as refugees. Another two million were on the brink of famine (Ihonvbere, 1994: 7). Relief agencies were the first to relay information regarding the humanitarian disaster to the media, who then broadcast the plight of Somalis to the larger world. Ultimately, members of the US Congress were moved to call for Presidential action; Senator Nancy Kassebaum, for example, one of Congress’s most respected leaders, urged President Bush to establish a force ‘to ensure that food gets to those in need’ (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1992: 535). By early August, both the US House of Representatives and the Senate had passed resolutions requiring that the President take action (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1992: 535).

Against this background of heightened media and Congressional interest, yet contrary to the administration’s preferences, the White House was obliged to ‘do something’. Initially, the ‘leading role’ to which US foreign policy makers committed centred around an international airlift aimed at distributing 17,000 tons of food and other supplies. By late October 1992, though, it was clear that most of the supplies were not reaching those who so desperately needed them, but instead ending up in the hands of the militiamen who were exacerbating Somalia’s human tragedy. Calling up memories of the 1985 Ethiopian crisis, the US Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff Chairman Colin Powell noted the evidence was obvious regarding the inadequacies of the airlift; one had only to turn on the evening news, he observed, to see ‘night after night… images of people starving to death before our eyes’ (Powell, 1995: 564). Still, the administration remained hesitant of increasing American involvement.

The single-most important event that initiated a change in the Bush administration’s position occurred when, in early November 1992, Bush lost the presidential election to former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Despite having lost the election, Bush was still president of the sole remaining superpower until January 1993, and therefore, still capable of influencing the direction of US foreign policy even after his departure from the White House. Moreover, as a ‘lame-duck’ president, he was now unconstrained by domestic considerations associated with seeking re-election. Somalia, while far from being an ideal locale, was an immediate, real-world ‘laboratory’ (Adebayo, 1995: 1714) in which to experiment.

Reflecting the Bush administration’s reprioritization, by mid-November 1992 key foreign policy makers like Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci and Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger began making public statements in favour of forceful US action under UN authorization. During 20–24 November, a flurry of meetings was held in the White House to discuss options. By 25 November, the White House became committed to a proposed Operation ‘Restore Hope’ which, as presented by the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff Chairman Powell, was to be a major multilateral ‘mercy mission’ led by US ground forces. Soon after, and with no public announcement, Bush contacted UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali with the offer of US forces.

On 3 December 1992, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 794 authorizing the dispatch of an international military force to conduct relief operations in Somalia. The resolution gave the Secretary-General some control over the force’s command structure, set up a fund to compensate poorer nations joining the force, and provided for Security Council consultation regarding the duration of the operation. Nevertheless, it was widely recognized that the force would be under US command – a fact supported by Boutros-Ghali’s inability to approve American soldiers wearing blue helmets (Mayall, 1996: 111), and one that led several African states in the General Assembly to protest of another abdication of UN authority to the United States (Akinrinade, 1998: 175–178). On 4 December, a mere four days before the first contingent of US forces landed in Somalia, Bush made a televised address announcing the deployment of up to 28,000 troops as America’s contribution to a multinational force. ‘Every American has seen the shocking images from Somalia’, he stated. ‘The United States alone cannot right the world’s wrongs… (but) we also know that some crises in the world cannot be resolved without American involvement, that American involvement is often necessary as a catalyst for broader involvement of the community of nations’ (Bush, 1993: 2174–2175).

Pluralist means, solidarist goals, ambiguous results

As the above quote attests, Bush’s rhetoric in defining the new world order was often pluralistic in terms of means, but solidarist in terms of goals. Broadly speaking, pluralists believe in an international society comprised of sovereign states whose activities are regulated by laws of coexistence. Laws of coexistence maintain that state governments have the right to pursue their own interests, but they must do so in a way that adheres to international law, which includes the minimal rule of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states. By contrast, solidarists believe that state sovereignty is conditional, and that the international community should, in principle, be committed to a universally-accepted set of obligations. In forgoing state, national and/or individual interests in pursuit of a ‘community of humankind’ or a ‘security of the whole’, so the solidarist argument goes, the interests of all will be served (for a more thorough discussion of the pluralist and solidarist paradigms and their implications in the post-Cold War era, see Mayall, 1996: Chapter 1). In the new international order emerging in the 1990s, Bush had made his solidarist aspirations known (i.e. a Pax Americana where the new world order consisted of the peaceful adjudication of disputes according to international law, and the advancement and maintenance of liberal democracy and economics), yet showed that he also favoured pluralist means when necessary (as demonstrated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War). Somalia, however, was an enigma.

In many ways, Somalia fit the challenges US foreign policy makers envisioned in the new world order (Hirsch and Oakley, 1995; Stevenson, 1995). That is, in a world where the United States was the only superpower, threats would come from middle and small powers, like Somalia, and not from politically and ideologically hostile adversaries of comparable strength. Nevertheless, these middle and small powers did pose a threat through their ability to transmit misery and chaos – for example, in the mass movements of refugees resulting from civil war. But a more ominous scenario was that such states, tired of being on the periphery of the international system, might be inclined to pursue aggressive ends like terrorism. This was a frightening thought for US foreign policy makers, particularly since it was not unreasonable to think that even states with the most modest means might be able to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Thus, if America could impose order in Somalia, it might just serve as a useful precedent for the future.

However, for every aspect of the Somalia crisis which confirmed the anticipated challenges US foreign policy makers might face in the new world order, there were countless others which defied a clear place in it. Foremost among these was that Somalia was a country without a government, and therefore, was a state only in name. Added to this was the reality that unlike Iraq, which had violated an internationally-recognized boundary by invading Kuwait and then unilaterally annexed it, the violence in Somalia was being wrought by Somalis in Somalia; moreover, none of the warring clans had made an appeal to the international community to intercede. Accordingly, once the White House had made the decision to intervene, the relevant question ceased to be whether Somalia’s continuing tragedy could justify intervention (Mayall, 1996: 5), but rather, how could intervention be justified?

Initially, US and UN officials turned to Chapters VI and VII of the United Nations Charter to justify intervention. As originally envisioned, Chapter VI was to facilitate, short of enforcement, the pacific settlement of disputes; Chapter VII was meant to provide for international action to repel or deter aggression. Peacekeeping, it has generally been assumed, falls under Chapter VI and requires the Security Council to pass a mandate. In turn, a mandate depends on the consent of conflicting parties and is to occur under circumstances where a cease-fire has been agreed upon (i.e. where there is a peace to keep). For reasons noted above, the Somalia case failed to fall neatly under either Chapter. As a result, those in favour of intervention began to talk of a Chapter Six-and-a-half directive, one that fell halfway between Chapter VI and Chapter VII (Mayall, 1996: 7). While US foreign policy makers and UN officials might have technically been able to act under such terms, they strengthened their case by employing the solidarist ideal of human rights.

US foreign policy makers were quick to point out that they had consistently maintained that democracy and international order were two sides of the same coin. States which adhere to representative governance based on the rule of law, they asserted, were more likely to contribute to international affairs at best, and at worst not to detract willingly from them. The most basic element in the complex equation of democracy and order, they claimed, was a respect for human rights. In this regard, US foreign policy makers’ views were extremely close to those articulated by the UN Secretary-General. Indeed, in his Agenda for Peace, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali sounded remarkably like US President George HW Bush when he argued that ‘democracy within nations requires respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as set forth in the (United Nations) Charter’, and when he stated: ‘Democracy at all levels is essential to attain peace for a new era of prosperity and justice’ (Mayall, 1996: 19).

Building on the theme of human rights as the moral justification for intervention, the case was then made that they also provided the legal reasons for doing so. As of December 1992, virtually all states had signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the majority had also ratified two supporting conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. As such, there was ‘community of humankind’ obligated to upholding the right to life, nationality, political participation, freedom of movement, freedom of residence, and numerous other fundamental ‘birth rights’ – birth rights clearly being ignored and/or violated in Somalia (Donnelly, 1993).

Having cleared some of the larger moral and legal obstacles for intervention, on 8 December 1992 the first US forces landed in Somalia as the advance guard of a force of 25,400 personnel. Early on, particularly between the months of December 1992 and April 1993, the intervention proved to be a success in the sense that it provided at least a degree of safety for relief work to be carried out. However, in spite of his public statements commending Bush ‘for taking the lead in this important humanitarian effort’ (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1992: 536), from his inauguration as President in January 1993, Bill Clinton was uneasy with his Somali inheritance. Clinton, after all, had run a campaign against a ‘foreign policy President’, centring his campaign on the mantra ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ – a reference to the sluggishness of the American economy through much of Bush’s presidency. Clinton had picked up on the American electorate’s sentiment that foreign policy left them cold in the world without a threat comparable to the former Soviet Union (Economist, 1994), and though the public understood that the United States was the only superpower, the feeling was that priority had to be given to pressing problems at home. A Time/CNN poll at the end of August 1992 had confirmed as much when it asked: ‘Which of these is the main problem the candidates should be addressing?’ Of the suggested answers, 2 per cent opted for foreign policy while 60 per cent said the economy (Mueller, 1994: 336).

In order to minimize Clinton’s vulnerability in a foreign commitment inherited from his predecessor, the new administration quickly set about trying to distance itself from the Somalia operation. To these ends, a transition to UN command, organization, and leadership was begun in April 1993 and completed only a month later, by the end of May. ⁵ Following this, events swung out of control. Encouraged by US Ambassador Madeline Albright, the Security Council adopted a ‘nation-building’ resolution, with Clinton himself speaking of the need for ‘patience in nation-building.’ In June 1993, though, twenty-three Pakistani peacekeepers were killed. The ambush was blamed on Mohamed Farah Aideed, and US forces were set the difficult task of arresting him. By August, eight US soldiers had been killed. Then, in October 1993, US forces lost eighteen men in a large, multi-day battle in Mogadishu. For most Americans, the images of dead US soldiers being dragged naked through the streets of the city and of Somalis looting the UN headquarters was too much to handle. Under intense pressure at home, Clinton announced the imminent end of direct US involvement in Somalia.

On 26 March 1994 the last US troops boarded helicopters and amphibious vehicles and left Somali soil. 100,000 US soldiers had rotated through the country over the course of 15 months. 30 had died, with 26 having been killed in combat. 175 had been seriously wounded (Lorch, 1994). US taxpayers had invested no less than US$2.3 billion in the mission (Washington Office on Africa, 1995). And while good had been accomplished – because of the US troops’ presence, for example, the largest relief organization in Somalia at the time, UNICEF, claimed it had been able to vaccinate 753,000+ children, build 3700 wells and enrol 62,000+ in school (Lorch, 1994) – much was left undone. Indeed, so much was left undone that almost two decades later Kenyan and Ethiopian forces were deployed to Somalia, in October and November 2011, respectively. The past as prelude played a part in pulling these troops in.

Existential, not theoretical: the history behind modern Somali threats

To understand Kenyan and Ethiopian reasons for sending troops into Somalia in 2011, one has to understand the country’s founding, evolution and current status as one of the world’s ‘most-failed’ states. ‘Somalia’ as a number-seven-shaped country on the north-eastern horn of the African continent has long been a contested concept, even amongst Somalis. For example, at independence in 1960 when British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland united to form The Republic of Somalia, some Somalis agitated for a much larger version of a country. Their country, a ‘Greater Somalia’, would have included Somali brethren in what is today Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Indeed, it was in part with an eye to expand the contours of Somalia that the Mogadishu-based dictator General Mohamed Siyaad Barre invaded the Ethiopian Ogaden in 1977–1978. After suffering some 25,000 casualties in less than a year and losing the war, an array of opposition forces rose up, all intent on overthrowing the Barre regime. It ultimately fell after many bloody years, in January 1991. Resulting chaos and humanitarian distress provided the backdrop for America’s 1992 intervention. The context of the intervention then, as with Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s 2011 interventions, can best be summarized through ‘the Humpty Dumpty Principle’ (Messner, 2013), as articulated as part of the Fund for Peace’s annual ‘Fragile States Index’ (FSI):

The case of Somalia demonstrates an important facet of recovery from conflict and development. The Fund for Peace’s Nate Haken has noted the political metaphor implicit in the nursery rhyme, ‘Humpty Dumpty’, as illustrative of the long- and short-term performance of countries on the FSI: Humpty Dumpty – a fragile egg-based character – had a great fall, leading to a rapid loss of structural integrity – or, in technical parlance, a splattering. Subsequently, despite the best efforts of all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, they were unable to put Humpty back together again. The ‘Humpty Dumpty Principle’ thus follows that when countries fall significantly, they can do so rapidly and catastrophically and it takes significant resources to reconstruct them (Messner, 2013).

In the long-term, it is arguably in Kenya and Ethiopia’s interest to have their neighbouring ‘Humpty Dumpty’, Somalia, put back together. In the meantime, the two countries have to stave off the consequences of having a shattered neighbour with few functioning or effective state institutions, combined with a high degree of insecurity.

One tangible product of state failure and insecurity in Somalia is Kenya’s Dadaab camp, the world’s largest for refugees. The camp has been in existence in Kenya since 1992 and accommodates some 336,495 registered Somali refugees (and many more unregistered ones) (United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 2014). In an effort to do its part to re-establish governance in Somalia, and in so doing, perhaps facilitate conditions which would allow refugees to leave Kenya for Somalia, Kenya hosted a two-year ‘reconciliation process.’ This process resulted in the formation of a Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004 – the fifteenth attempt since 1991 to restore central governance in Somalia. A hallmark of these negotiations was that Kenya steeped itself in a process meant to accommodate Somalis’ complex realities. Reflecting the influence of clans, a ‘4.5 Formula’ was negotiated for the TFG where representation in a proto-parliament was evenly divided amongst four main clan groups – the Darod, Hawiye, Dir and Digle-Mirifle − plus five minority constituencies. The minority constituencies included ‘minor clans’, non-ethnic Somali groups, members of the Somali diaspora, citizens’ groups, and various Islamist organizations. Kenya then hosted the TFG into 2006, until February of that year when the TFG’s parliament finally met on Somali soil, convening in a converted grain warehouse in the western city of Baidoa, Somalia. Throughout, Kenyan policymakers expressed the hope that their efforts might facilitate an era of stability in Somalia. A major stumbling block to achieving such stability has been the radical Islamists of al-Shabaab which, according to UN reports, has recruited over half of its foreign fighters from Kenya (United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, 2010: 25–27). It is this last point which led Kenya to close the Somalia–Kenya border after Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in 2006. The Kenyan government was worried its nationals could return with radical ideologies and lethal skills acquired in Somalia.

The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, and resulting occupation until January 2009, can largely be explained through irredentist and existential concerns. In the first half of 2006 a broad umbrella group of moderate to fundamentalist Islamists and Somali nationalists known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) were racking up military victories over The Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) − in reality little more than a coalition of US-backed clan militias. A semblance of peace and stability had followed. For the first time in 16 years Mogadishu’s seaport and international airport reopened, large swathes of central and southern Somalia fell under a unified administration, commerce surged, and members of the Somali diaspora returned. But all the while, from their converted grain warehouse in Baidoa, TFG officials claimed it was they who should be governing.

Ethiopia, along with other regional actors, sought to reconcile elements of the TFG and UIC through Khartoum-based talks intended to forge a unity government. When the talks stalled, though, the UIC tried to impose a victor’s peace. UIC forces pushed westwards, towards Baidoa. In so doing, the UIC came in to increasing contact with Ethiopian forces – officially in Somalia as ‘trainers’ for the nascent TFG national military. As clashes escalated some of the more radical leaders within the UIC began to call for a ‘holy war against Christian Ethiopia’ (Agence France-Presse, 2007) Ethiopian leaders in turn articulated their own radical claims, saying the UIC had extensive links with al-Qaeda and that there was a real danger of a Taliban-like regime appearing in the Horn of Africa. ⁶ Moreover, Ethiopian policymakers were aware of a United Nations report noting that other forces were at work in Somalia intent on destabilizing the Ethiopian state. Specifically, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, in its 2006 Report Pursuant to Resolution #1676 pointed out evidence that Eritrea, Ethiopia’s nemesis in the Horn, was training, arming and hosting armed Ethiopian opposition forces, from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) (United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, 2006: 22–30). The report alluded to the probability that Eritrean proxies could use UIC-controlled territories in Somalia to launch attacks into Ethiopia.

When a full Ethiopian military invasion came, it pushed the Union of Islamic Courts out of power. In January 2007, then, this paved the way for the TFG to set foot in Mogadishu for the first time since its inception – but only under the protection of upwards of 8000 Ethiopian forces. Subsequently, Ethiopian forces withdrew westward and the first remnants of the UN- and AU-blessed African Union force, AMISOM, stepped into the breach.

Since the arrival of African Union forces in Somalia their main enemy has been al-Shabaab. Originally the militia for the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), al-Shabaab has now morphed into a force of its own whose leaders have variously called for: a ‘Greater Somalia’ incorporating into Somalia parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti where large numbers of ethnic Somalis reside (109th Congress, 2014); pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda (Lister, 2013); endorsed global jihad (Lister, 2013); and praised terrorist attacks both inside Somalia and beyond. A partial list of some of al-Shabaab’s more high-profile terror attacks includes:

All of the above speak to al-Shabaab’s aspirations and abilities and are a significant source of regional concern.

Yesteryear’s concerns, today

When Kenyan Defence Forces commenced Operation Linda Nchi (Operation Defend the Country) and crossed into Somalia in October 2011, Kenya’s government invoked the country’s right to self-defence under Article #51 of the United Nations Charter. ⁷ The invocation had echoes of US foreign policymakers’ statements from 1992 when, as noted earlier in this article, Bush administration officials concluded it was not unreasonable to think threats can emanate from middle and small powers, yet alone the world’s most-failed state. Indeed, such concerns from yesteryear proved prescient – as demonstrated when, in an October 2011 letter sent to the Security Council, Kenya’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Macharia Kamau, stated:

I write to inform you that Kenya, with the concurrence of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, has been compelled to take robust, targeted measures to protect and preserve the integrity of Kenya and the efficacy of the national economy and to secure peace and security in the face of the al-Shabaab terrorist militia attacks emanating from Somalia.

Kenya has been facing serious challenges emanating from the collapse of the State of Somalia over the past two decades. The situation has worsened of late, following the unprecedented escalation of threats to the country’s national security.

Kenya has suffered dozens of incursions that were repulsed by its military and police forces. Scores of Kenyans have lost their lives over the past 36 months in border towns and communities owing to terrorist actions and incursions from Al-Shabaab militants.

The violent and incessant infringement and violation of Kenya’s territory, which has been reported over a long period of time by the international media, can no longer go unchecked.

In the light of the foregoing, Kenya, in direct consultations and liaison with the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, has, after the latest direct attacks on Kenyan territory and the accompanying loss of life and kidnappings of Kenyans and foreign nationals by the al-Shabaab terrorists, decided to undertake remedial and pre-emptive action…(United Nations Security Council, 2011)

The Kenyan Defence Forces’ ability to engage in their first-ever foreign military venture came after a period of diverging trends. From the end of the Cold War to the mid-2000s, Kenya was one of the top 10 troop-contributing countries to UN peace missions (United Nations Peacekeeping Data Dashboard, 2014). On average up to 2000 Kenyan personnel were deployed globally at any given time (United Nations Peacekeeping Data Dashboard, 2014). Since 2005, however, Kenya’s contributions to UN peacekeeping missions have steadily declined (United Nations Peacekeeping, Data Dashboard, 2014). At the same time, Kenya has become one of the largest recipients of ‘hard’ security assistance, emerging as one of the top six beneficiaries of US anti-terrorism assistance alongside Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Jordan and Iraq (USAID/US Department of State, 2009: 63–64). Consequently, with unprecedented military ability, forces associated with Operation Linda Nchi pushed north and east into Somalia to the port city of Kismayo. The objective was purportedly to deprive al-Shabaab of tax revenue associated with port commerce, as well as to deny the organization’s ability to import weaponry. Other objectives likely included the creation of a southern Somalia ‘buffer zone’ in the expanses between Kismayo and the Kenyan border – a distance of some 200 kilometres (124 miles) – to safeguard Kenya from the flow of refugees, contraband and possible terrorists into Kenya. More conspiratorial claims go so far to note that such a military buffer zone could economically benefit Kenya as well; for example, Kenya’s largest development project, the US$24.7 billion Lamu Port Southern Sudan Ethiopia Transport corridor (LAPSSET), seeks to link Kenya’s coastal town of Lamu to oilfields in South Sudan and to provide Ethiopia, with its 80-plus million citizens, access to the Indian Ocean’s maritime trading lanes (Kabukuru, 2012).

Having invaded and occupied parts of Somalia from 2006 to 2009, Ethiopia opted to do so again in November 2011, in the wake of Kenya’s October invasion. While Ethiopia’s motivations were similar to before – to engage existential threats head-on – policymakers in Addis Ababa this time opted to send ‘mere hundreds’ of troops rather than thousands (Gettleman, 2011). What is more, the Ethiopian troops seemed intent on working with, if not through, proxies. Tactically, this denied al-Shabaab’s leaders the claim that Somalis were suffering a ‘massive Christian invasion’ orchestrated from Addis Ababa (Agence France-Presse, 2007). More importantly, working through proxies allowed Ethiopia to take on al-Shabaab without having to contend fully with all the complexities of Somali society, from cultural practices to clan and religious dynamics.

With regard to the intersection of cultural practices and clan dynamics, historically Somalis have organized themselves into social insurance cooperatives called diya-groups (diya meaning ‘blood payment’). Diya-groups can consist of clans, subclans and/or sub-subclans, but members are always contractually bound to pay or receive damages collectively. Within this framework there is no concept of individuality. So, in the case of murder, a killer is expected to have his diya-group deliver just compensation to the victim’s diya-group. Should compensation not be received then the victim’s kin are expected to exact blood revenge not only on the perpetrator, but also on any member of the perpetrator’s lineage – which often touches off even more claims and counter-claims for diya payments or revenge. During Ethiopia’s 2006–2009 invasion of Somalia, it was reported that Ethiopian forces would often respond indiscriminately to attacks. Human Rights Watch, for example, recorded multiple instances of Ethiopian troops responding to an attack on them with retaliatory bombardments of highly-populated areas (Albin-Lackey, 2008: 3). Such Ethiopian responses most certainly resulted in Somali casualties and, almost certainly, a diya response levelled at Ethiopian troops. Again, Ethiopia hoped to avert being caught in such a spirals of violence its second time into Somalia; hence the interest in working with, and through, proxies. One proxy Ethiopia opted to partner with in its 2011 re-invasion was Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a.

Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a (ASWJ), a then ally of the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, occupies a unique place in Somalia’s complicated clan and religious landscape. ASWJ, just like al-Shabaab, purports to be an Islamist organization. Yet in contrast to al-Shabaab’s Saudi-inspired version of salafist Islam, members of Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a embrace a version of Sufi Islam – which historically is much more tolerant and less focused on dogma. Moreover, ASWJ’s fighters in central Somalia are mostly an alliance of: (1) the Dir clan; (2) the Harehaan (a Darod subclan); and (3) the Habar Gidir, Ayr and Hawaadle (the first a subclan of the Hawiye clan, the last two sub-subclans of the Hawiye clan). By contrast, al-Shabaab’s fighters in central Somalia are mostly an alliance of Murosade, Duduble, Gaalje’el and Gugundhaab (all Hawiye sub-subclans). Religious differences aside, the arrayed clans associated with ASWJ and al-Shabaab have long feuded over grazing and agriculture rights around the Shabelle River, one of only two permanent rivers in all of Somalia. This has led to diya cycles of cross-clan fighting and shifting alliances. Given such history and social complexities, it is perhaps understandable why Ethiopian forces opted, tactically, to approach their 2011 invasion differently than their 2006 invasion, even if strategically the goal remained the same: to defeat the perceived threat al-Shabaab posed to the security of the Ethiopian state.

Serving the national interest, with others

Benjamin Buzan and Ole Waever (2003), and Benjamin Miller (2005: 241), for example, have demonstrated that most states worry more about immediate neighbours rather than distant ones. This stems from the fact that most states are far from being superpowers, and what power they can project tends to suffer a punishing ‘loss of strength gradient’ over distance (Lemke, 2002). In the words of one scholar, ‘Power projection is a luxury of great powers’ (Kelly, 2007: 200). Of course failing or failed states can ‘project’ in their own ways, too, say through the movements of refugees or suicide bombers. Yet even here a loss of strength gradient tends to apply; there is a reason Dadaab refugee camp is near the Kenyan–Somali border rather than in South Africa, or why al-Shabaab has been able to strike Uganda and Kenya rather than the United States. In this light, Somalia has presented a particular ‘security externality’ ⁸ to Kenya and Ethiopia since both physically adjoin Somalia.

David Lake has proposed that if and when a ‘local externality emanates from a particular geographic area’, and if and when ‘the local externality poses an actual or potential threat to the physical safety of individuals or governments in other states’, a regional security system is highly possible (Lake, 1997: 48–49). One could point to Ethiopia and Kenya’s 1964 defence pact, made in response to the irredentist claims of some Somalis of that era, to support Lake’s hypothesis. More recently, one could look to the multiple renewals of the defence pact, as well as the coordination on display when Kenyan troops went into Somalia in October 2011, followed by Ethiopian troops mere weeks later. Then there is the ‘regional security system’ (to paraphrase Lake’s words) associated with AMISOM.

At the start of 2014, AMISON was a relatively-robust military operation, at least when compared to how it looked with the arrival of soldiers in March 2007. Then, Ugandan peacekeepers comprised the entire UN- and AU-sanctioned force and were a mere 1700 in number (BBC News, 2007). Ugandan troops maintained a lonely vigil until December 2007. That is when the first contingent of non-Ugandan peacekeepers arrived, from Burundi, pushing AMISOM force levels to 6000 personnel (African Union Mission in Somalia, 2014a). Contributions of forces have grown in fits and starts since. As of June 2014, six African countries have contributed a total of 21,564 soldiers to AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia, 2014b). Their mandate is encapsulated in United Nations Security Council Resolutions stipulating that AMISOM is authorized to take ‘all necessary measures…(to) support dialogue and reconciliation’ in Somalia (UN Security Council Resolution #1772, from 2007) (Department of Public Information, 2007), and to reduce the threat posed by ‘armed opposition groups in order to establish conditions for effective and legitimate governance across Somalia’ (UN Security Council Resolution #2036, from 2012) (Department of Public Information, 2012).

It is important to note that two of the six troop-contributing African countries referenced immediately above are Kenya and Ethiopia: Kenya has contributed 3664 soldiers to AMISOM (17 per cent of all AMISOM military personnel), and Ethiopia has contributed 4395 soldiers (20 per cent of all AMISOM military personnel) (African Union Mission in Somalia, 2014b). Kenyan leaders opted to ‘re-hat’ their soldiers under the AMISOM command structure in June 2012. Ethiopian forces waited over two years to do so (until January 2014). Kenyan and Ethiopian leaders, at least initially, thought joining AMISOM would ‘stand in the way of our command control, and of course it would stand in the way of our operational freedom’ (eNCA, 2013). Eventually, though, leaders in Nairobi and Addis Ababa came round to seeing benefits in joining AMISOM – two of the most important being that some of the financial and material costs of intervention could be shifted to the AU, UN and donors, and that working within AMISOM provided UN Security Council and AU legal cover for their forces’ operations (Joselow, 2014; Thomas, 2013). More importantly, the AMISOM ‘security system’ actually works to meet Kenya and Ethiopia’s national security considerations with regard to Somalia.

AMISOM exists because of a set of interacting, interdependent components. UN Security Council and African Union mandates provide legal justifications. Policymakers and bureaucrats in the United Nations, the African Union and individual countries provide financial, material, logistical and moral support. And with four other African countries with troops in Somalia, the system has, in practical terms, somewhat mitigated Kenyan and Ethiopian loss of strength gradients. As but one example of this, AMISOM’s commander, as of June 2014, had ‘dispatched’ the bulk of Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s contingents to the very sectors in which their troops were present and focused before joining AMISOM: most Kenyan forces to Sector 2, the ‘Kismayo sector’ (Kismayo being the third-largest city in Somalia, located in the south, halfway between Mogadishu and Kenyan border) (AMISOM, 2014a); most Ethiopian forces to Sector 3, the ‘Baidoa sector’ (Baidoa being a major centre for food and livestock trade, located in south-central Somalia, approximately halfway between Mogadishu and the Ethiopian border) (AMISOM, 2014b). The other contributors to AMISOM are responsible for their own sectors – which means neither Kenya nor Ethiopia have to be. Working within the AMISOM ‘security system’, then, has allowed Kenya and Ethiopia at once to consolidate and broaden efforts against the threats each country has identified emanating from Somalia.

Another generation, another intervention

In 1993, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, wrote:

…(In Somalia) the Security Council, pursuant to Resolution 794 of December 3, 1992, authorized me and certain Member States to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in the country. This was to allow the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) to fulfil its mandate. We accomplished this by creating the Unified Command (UNITAF), with the United States as the major participant. UNITAF has, to some extent, restored order and provided for the distribution of food to the Somali people (Boutros-Ghali, 1993: 7-8).

Echoing these sentiments, in AMISOM’s most-recent AMISOM Review magazine, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia (SRCC), Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif, wrote:

…(In 2013) the African Union mark(ed) its golden jubilee… It is a point of pride that the first country in which the jubilee celebrations were held was Somalia. For Somalia is a premier example of what the ideals of Pan-Africanism can achieve put into action. Here, the African Union Mission in Somalia, which is composed of individuals, teams and contingents from across the entire continent, is helping the Somali people restore peace and stability to their nation and confronting those that would keep a fellow African country from a future of stability and prosperity (Annadif, 2013: 2).

Such pronouncements meld well with the views of the English school of international relations theory which stress that ideals and norms associated with humanitarian interventions matter just as much as, if not more than, states’ self-serving calculations (see Finnemore, 1996, 2003; Wheeler, 2000, 2001). Yet, as this article has shown, the United States, Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s interventions in Somalia possessed a healthy degree of self-interest familiar to realist and neo-realist scholars (Gilpin, 1981; Keohane and Nye, 1971, 1977; Morgenthau, 1978; Waltz, 1979, 1995). The two realities are not necessarily contradictory, especially when placed in a public goods framework (Holcombe, 1997).

Air is often used as the ultimate example of a public good because, in the vocabulary of economists, once ‘produced’ it is difficult to keep another person from ‘consuming’ it. Similarly, security that is imposed or maintained can be a public good, too. At a most basic level, an absence of armed conflict – a public good produced, say, in the wake of a military intervention – provides equal opportunity for all not to suffer an attendant violent death or wound from ongoing hostilities.

As far back as the 1970s scholars noted that in public goods theory the pursuit of self-interest (e.g. American, Ethiopian and Kenyan foreign policymakers each pursuing their own country’s national security objectives) is not necessarily at odds with the pursuit of collective or idealistic outcomes (e.g. those ideals noted above in the two respective quotes from Secretary General Boutros-Ghali and Ambassador Annadif) (see Russett, 1970). Accordingly, if foreign policymakers choose to intervene in Somalia’s ongoing tragedy because they hope to accrue ‘private’ benefits for their respective countries (i.e. in the jargon of public goods theory, to be able to consume a produced good at the exclusion of others), then this should not detract from the fact that, quite plausibly, higher amounts of public benefit can be realized in Somalia than otherwise might have been the case. Such public benefit might come in the form of the delivery of some humanitarian relief, through the return of some refugees and displaced persons, through the defeat of some militants, and/or through the creation of conditions under which some security is realized and some popular governance can take place, if only in limited areas. In other words, a military intervention could result in a public good, albeit an impure one ⁹ – because not all will have a chance to ‘consume’ the good, and not necessarily in equal measure (Sandler, 1977). And herein is the major connection between America’s 1992 military intervention in Somalia and Kenya and Ethiopia’s 2011 Somalia interventions.

America’s intervention in Somalia from 1992–1994, and Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia from 2011, were supposed to produce a type of ‘public good’ through the imposition of conditions conducive for security. A classic take on public goods theory, as put forward by, say, Paul Samuelson (1954: 387–389) or Mancur Olson (1965), is that countries which follow their own self-interest with regard to military operations that are ostensibly peacekeeping in nature ‘will either not produce the public good desired’ (e.g. choose not to engage in an operation), or ‘under produce the amount desired of the public good’ (i.e. fail to find or dedicate enough time, treasure and/or blood to make peace a reality) because ‘self-interest works against the interests of the collective’ (Bobrow and Boyer, 1997: 726). In this light, it becomes clear that America’s intervention in Somalia, though it did achieve some good, failed to remedy the circumstances and concerns which spawned the perceived need for Kenyan and Ethiopian forces to intervene in Somalia a generation later. Unfortunately for Kenyan and Ethiopian troops, their efforts in Somalia today are likely to be hampered not only by what public goods theory might indicate, but also by Somalia’s internal political realities.

Somalia’s first formal parliament in almost two decades was inaugurated in August 2012. Just before parliamentarians were sworn into their seats, though, the UN Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea produced a report for the United Nations Security Council noting that fully 70 per cent of all money which had made its way to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government in 2009 and 2010 had been lost to corruption, theft or waste. The report further highlighted that in 2011 almost a quarter of total government expenditure was, in the euphemistic language of the report, ‘absorbed’ by the offices of the president, prime minister and speaker, a sum nearly equal to what ‘the government spend(t) on security in a time of conflict’ (Sabahi Online, 2012). The Monitoring Group accordingly recommended that the UN Security Council sanction relevant Somali government officials. Instead, nearly a third of those officials who had been part of the Transitional Federal Government were seated in the 2012 parliament. Some of these individuals, it was later reported, purportedly paid up to US$25,000 for the honour (The Economist, 2012).

More-recent reports indicate that corruption and incompetence continue to thrive in Mogadishu. No less than 80 per cent of withdrawals from Somalia’s Central Bank are made for ‘private purposes’ consisting of a ‘patronage system and a set of social relations that defy the institutionalization of the state’ (United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, 2012: 24). Then there are the diversions of funds well before they reach the Central Bank. Consider the issuance of Somalia passports. Up until 2013 no money from fees and taxes associated with obtaining Somalia passports reached the Central Bank (United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, 2012: 24). In the first three months of 2013, though, after foreign donors began asking questions, some passport-related deposits began to be made; however, these deposits came with no documentation and constituted ‘only four per cent of the estimated revenue from the issuance of passports’ (United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, 2012: 24). Similarly, in the case of the Mogadishu port – the port constituting the largest internal revenue stream for Somalia’s central government outside of bilateral donations from foreign governments – the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia estimated the monthly revenue potential from import customs alone was likely in excess of US$ 3.8 million per month. Still, the average monthly deposit to the Central Bank from the port between August 2012 and March 2013 – almost an eight-month period – was US$2.7 million in total. Moreover, the Monitoring Group noted, ‘though deposits of port revenues into the Central Bank increased generally (during this period), they (were) proportionally less than the increase in shipping at Mogadishu port, possibly indicating a higher rate of diversion’ (United Nations Monitoring Group, 2012: 25).

If ‘self-interest works against the interests of the collective’ (Bobrow and Boyer, 1997: 726) with regard to military interventions, the same claim can be made with regard to Somalia’s politicians and political processes. Even if Kenyan and Ethiopian forces, in conjunction with AMISOM forces, supress jihadists and warlords in the near-term, and therefore can claim a degree of success as to their mission, a long-term solution to Somalia’s manifold challenges requires Somali politicians to exercise effective and legitimate governance. Given the degree of documented corruption, theft or waste Somalia’s leaders have demonstrated, this possibility seems a long way off indeed. Consequently, the second generation of soldiers to intervene in Somalia – this generation of Kenyan and Ethiopian soldiers – might realize little more than their American predecessors in one of the world’s most-failed states.