The weekly wrap-up of the week’s top stories with James Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs, joining Martin Savidge to discuss the implications of the killing in Dubai and the NATO offensive in Afghanistan.
There was a major blow to the Taliban with the arrests of three senior leaders in Pakistan, including the number-two Afghan Taliban official. While this was a victory for U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, it was also a reminder of how the Taliban have used Pakistan as a base. Joining Daljit Dhaliwal to talk about the Marjah offensive and more are Gideon Rose and Susan Chira.
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in conversation with students at Carnegie Mellon University in Doha, Qatar. Hosted by Al Jazeera’s Abderrahim Foukara.
José Moya, a professor of Latin American history at Barnard College, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the impact of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. Moya explains what U.S. policy has meant for Cuban businesses and for American companies investing in Cuba. He also discusses the future of U.S.-Cuba economic relations.
Somalia’s spiralling instability has reached the capital, Mogadishu, as at least 17 people were killed and 61 injured in fighting between government forces and opposition fighters. But just who is fuelling the conflict this time around and is the country becoming a battleground in the fight against al-Qaeda?
Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Africa Growth Initiative of The Brookings Institution has an article worth a read: Fractionalized, Armed and Lethal: Why Somalia Matters.
For the last few years, Somalia has held strong onto the top spot in both the Index of Failed States and the Fragile States Index. And this country—if one can use that term—is likely to maintain its lead for the foreseeable future. But this is nothing to brag about.
By definition of a failed state, Somalia has no single legitimate governing authority and is divided among numerous constituent factions that are relatively strong and have control of some lucrative sources of revenue. These factions are well organized and function more or less as independent states. Yet no single faction has a monopoly on violence, which explains why Somalia has remained a failed state for so long. In essence, the various factions have no interest in a well organized sovereign state. As such, the failed state is in a precarious equilibrium, resulting in what may appear as paradoxically both a functional and stable, stateless society.
Probably because of its fragile nature and the fact that it is small and poor, the international community has grossly underestimated the capacity of this country to destabilize the region and to engage in extremely costly activities to the international community. At present, there are no well-coordinated international efforts to rebuild this state. Yet this country—or better, its various factions—possesses the potential to inflict major global damage and could be the next hotbed for international terrorism. Ignoring Somalia would be a huge political and humanitarian mistake. But the Somali state may also have degenerated beyond the stage where marginal interventions can be beneficial; thus the focus should shift to building a new state. As the events of the last two decades have shown, the Somali state was not consensual and focusing on reverting to the same structure is likely to be futile.
Fractionalized Society
A number of factors make Somalia an increasingly volatile country. The first of course is the presence of numerous factions that lay claim to a specific territory or strong mass of supporters. Some factions have established control of a sizeable part of the country while others consist of small warring groups. Of these factions, many have a claim to illegal enterprises and have established themselves as legitimate tax collectors or traders. With the vacuum created by the absence of a state sovereign, each faction has established its own organized “government” and possesses substantial capacity to impart violence. The factions include the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, both of which have been able to control a significant section of the country and are able to maintain some degree of peace. Other notable factions are the warring groups in the central region, including the Federal Transitional Government, Al-Shabab, Hizbul-Islam and Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Then of course there are other groups like the Islamic courts that control most of South-Central Somalia, and the infamous pirates, whose sole interest is monetary gain (and which may support some of the other insurgent groups).
With all of these groups competing for control, it is not surprising that some of these factions have connections or are sympathetic with terrorist groups. Some Somali factions have accepted financial support from terror organizations in order to settle clan disputes.
The absence of a central authority combined with its general lawlessness makes Somalia an ideal haven for terrorists.
Illegal Arms Market
Not only is Somalia heavily fractioned, but these factions are well-armed. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 placed an arms embargo on Somalia, reports indicate that the number and variety of small arms available in Somalia is greater than at any time since the early 1990s. Private businesses, nation states, arms dealers, Somalis in the Diaspora, and local clans/militia all contribute to the growing number of smuggled weapons in the country. In fact, small arms are so prolific in Somalia that they are a form of currency in most parts of the country.
The Somali arms market, based in Mogadishu, is a key hub for arms trading in East Africa and weapons are constantly being transported along its porous border to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the DRC. The Kenyan government estimates that thousands of small arms are smuggled across the border every year. In fact, the Kenyan government is finding it difficult to fight crime as a result of the large number of illegal arms smuggled from Somalia. The presence of such a high number of guns poses a threat to security in Northeast Africa and beyond.
Drug Economy
Where there are guns, there are often drugs; and in Somalia the trade is in khat—a narcotic leaf that is traditionally consumed in parts of Africa and in Arab countries for its stimulating properties. Although khat is considered legal in many countries, it is an addictive drug. Khat is the most common drug in Somalia and it is estimated that approximately 75 percent of all males in Somalia use it. The khat trade is fairly lucrative, with a significant proportion of the drug originating from the Kenyan highlands and exported freely to Somalia. Kenya exports about $250 million of khat annually, beating out tea as one of the county’s most lucrative exports, with a majority bound for Somalia. The Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse estimates that Kenya exports about $300,000 worth of khat to Somalia daily. Despite the negative consequences of a stateless Somalia that Kenya is experiencing, there has not been any attempt by the Kenyan government to curtail this trade, because local interests benefit a great deal.
With no central government to regulate the trade, warlords in Somalia have extended their power and now collect taxes and customs duties on khat. Many clans and regional administrations rely on import tax from the drug as their main source of revenue. In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on Somalia reported that many warlords now control the khat trade and use the proceeds to buy weapons needed to maintain control of their territory. This highly addictive substance even allows warlords to keep their troops loyal since otherwise troops suffer the consequences of withdrawal. Accordingly, khat is often included as part of troop salaries.
Diaspora Support of Factions
Evidence shows that civil wars are likely to last longer and be more intense in countries that have large populations outside of their own, due to support that members of the Diaspora provide to warring factions. Somalia is a case in point. Although the Diaspora can and has played a critical role in facilitating peace building and local reconciliation in some cases (especially in Somaliland and Puntland), in other cases the Diaspora has also provided financial support to warring clans facilitating conflict. Without financial support from the Somali Diaspora, many clans lack the resources to wage war against each other. Estimates show that at least 1 million Somalis—approximately 13 percent of the population—live abroad, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, the U.K., Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The UNDP estimates that annual remittances (or Hawala) from the Somali Diaspora are about $1 billion (about 18 percent of GDP). Although it is impossible to measure the exact amounts, the available data shows that the flow of remittances is substantial. On balance, the Diaspora is contributing to the further degeneration of the state.
On January 19th, Ambassador Carolina Barco of Colombia addressed an audience at NDN and the New Policy Institute about advancements in Colombia and progress in their relationship with the United States.
John Brennan, Assistant to the President For Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, speaks at “A Dialogue on Our Nation’s Security” held at NYU. This was a public forum co-hosted by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the Islamic Center at New York University on February 13, 2010.
In this week’s roundtable discussion, the panel focuses on Europe’s economic challenges, including the debt crisis in Greece that has many Europeans worried. They also focus on Iran and what the regime is trying to achieve by moving to a higher level of uranium enrichment. Carla Robbins and Garrick Utley join Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss these issues.
The spiraling drug-related violence in México has now claimed 1,015 lives in the first 34 days of 2010. It’s the fastest that dubious milestone has been achieved. In 2009, the 1000th death did not occur until February 24th, the 54th day of the year. It took 113 days to top that marker in 2008, 134 days in 2007, 181 days in 2006, and 254 in 2005. At the present rate, one Mexican is being killed every 48 minutes in drug-related violence.
Though the drug-related violence is an often internecine affair over control of a $10 billion dollar market in the United States, the number of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire is increasing rapidly and in horrific fashion. Last weekend, masked gunmen stormed a party in a working class neighborhood of cinderblock homes and killed 16 teenagers who had gathered to watch a boxing match on television. Some of the victims were shot as they tried to flee and their bodies were found near neighboring homes. The victims’ ages ranged from 15 to 20.
Authorities now believe that the attack was carried out by mistake after arresting a suspect who served as the lookout during the attack. The main Juárez-based drug cartel had targeted the party because it had received reports that members of a rival trafficking group were in attendance. The orders were to kill everyone in attendance.
The violence continued on Monday when in another attack also in Ciudad Juárez, armed men burst into a bar around dawn and killed four men and a woman. Elsewhere, gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 15 in a bar in Torreón, a city in the northern state of Coahuila. The death toll continues to rise even as México has scored some victories over the drug cartels with the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the so-called Boss of Bosses, who was killed in a shoot-out along with six bodyguards that also claimed the life of a Mexican marine in mid-December and with the mid-January capture of Teodoro “El Teo” García Simental who gained notoriety for dissolving the bodies of his victims in lye.
But vacuums at the top of drug cartels leave openings for ever-ambitious and evermore ruthless lieutenants to fill. The surge in violence we seeing is part of the climbing (killing) your way to the top in a drug cartel. El más macho gana. Still this should not be read that México is winning the war of drugs, that war cannot be won given human nature, the size of the market and the depths of poverty that exist on both sides of the Río Grande.
The war next door is far different from the war in Colombia. To begin with, Colombian cartels largely avoided fighting each other. In their heyday of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Medellín and Cali cartels carved out distinctive supply routes and markets rather than openly battle to monopolize the trade. They were more comfortable with their duopoly. Colombia did see a surge in drug cartel on drug cartel violence after the Colombian government managed to kill Pablo Escobar and capture the other drug kingpins. The two main cartels splintered into several smaller ones though eventually by the end of the 1990s the FARC emerged as the main drug trafficking organization in Colombia.
México has six major cartels: Sinaloa, Golfo, La Familia, Los Zetas, Tijuana and Juárez. In addition to these six, there are a host of smaller ones. And unlike in Colombia where the two cartels were each centered in different parts of the country, in México the cartels overlap in territory. And unlike the situation in Colombia where shipment took various routes (land, air and sea), drug shipments from México are almost exclusively by land thus setting the stage for control of the safest and most reliable routes. Thus most of the deaths are in the border areas.
This year so far about sixty percent of the drug-related fatalities have been in just four Mexican states: 24.3 percent in Chihuahua, 22.5 percent in Sinaloa on México’s Pacific coast, 11.5 percent in Baja California Norte across from San Diego and 8.2 percent in Durango.
All told since Felipe Calderón became President in December 2006 more than 17,000 people have been killed in México’s drug wars. By the end of this year that number could easily come close to 30,000 if the present rate of one murder every 48 minutes continues.
The UK Foreign Office has released video highlights from the London Conference on Afghanistan.
The London Conference on Afghanistan took place in London at Lancaster House on January 28 2010. The London Conference on Afghanistan brought together Foreign Ministers from International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) partners, Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours and key regional players as well as representatives from NATO, the United Nations, the EU and other international organisations such as the World Bank to fully align military and civilian resources behind an Afghan-led political strategy.