The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Statesmen ought to have a special prize just for themselves, like fools have the Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards commemorate very stupid people who did a service to human evolution by accidentally removing themselves from the gene pool. The statesmanÕs equivalent could be called the Cheney-Zenawi Award. The shining stupidity of the US Vice-President and the Ethiopian Prime Minister were on special display last week, as the Ethiopian army prepared to withdraw from Somalia two years after its foredoomed invasion, leaving the country in the hands of precisely the people whom they wanted to eliminate. I canÕt actually prove that getting Ethiopia to invade Somalia was Dick CheneyÕs brainchild, but it smells exactly like a Cheney idea: crude, violent, and barking up entirely the wrong tree. Just like invading Iraq. As for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, he had already distinguished himself by becoming obsessed with the stupidest border war in modern African history. It wasnÕt his fault to start with: Ethiopia was attacked out of the blue in 1998 by the aggressive regime in Eritrea, but Ethiopian troops drove the Eritreans back. By the ceasefire in mid-2000, Ethiopia had recovered all the ground it lost at the start. An international commission found Eritrea guilty of aggression, and another one arbitrated all the disputed stretches of border, granting Ethiopia most of its claims. Both sides said they would accept the rulings and then Zenawi walked away from the deal. He has been getting ready for another war with Eritrea ever since. Going to war with Eritrea again would mean defying the United Nations ruling, so Zenawi needed the backing of some great power that could protect him from the UNÕs censure. Who better than the US, which has ignored and belittled the UN under the Bush administration? Now what could Ethiopia do for the Bush administration in return? Well, it could invade Somalia. Washington didnÕt want to put American troops into Somalia again, having had its nose bloodied in 1993, but it did want to overthrow the civilian regime that was restoring peace in southern Somalia and put its favourite warlord in power instead. Ethiopian troops would do the job just as well. Overthrow The job was to overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts, a mass movement funded by local merchants in Mogadishu who wanted to end the constant robberies and kidnaps that made life impossible in the Somali capital. The UIC mobilized the desire of ordinary Somalis for an end to the violence, and the peace they brought to Mogadishu soon spread over most of southern Somalia. Unfortunately the courts were ÒIslamicÓ and wanted to enforce sharia law, which in WashingtonÕs book made them practically terrorists. They did have a few unsavoury allies, notably the extremist militia al-Shebab, but they gave people in Mogadishu their first real hope of security and justice. They should not have been destroyed. The Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in December 2006, drove the Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu, and installed Abdullahi Yusuf, the president of the ÒTransitional Federal GovernmentÓ (TFG) of Somalia, in power. Well, not exactly in power, since the citizens and militias of Mogadishu immediately began attacking the hated Ethiopians, who only controlled whatever was in their gunsights. Yusuf was originally chosen as president of the TFG, with ample US support, at a conclave of Somali warlords dignified with the name of ÒparliamentÓ in Kenya in 2004. He would never have made it back to Mogadishu without the help of the Ethiopian army, and accepting that help made him deeply suspect in the eyes of most Somalis. The resistance has driven the Ethiopian army out of most of southern Somalia in the past two years, and now the Ethiopians are going home. Yusuf will have to leave too, since he has no supporters except the Ethiopians and the Americans. Which will leave Mogadishu in the hands not of the Union of Islamic Courts, alas, but rather of the extremist militias that have pushed the UIC aside during their struggle against the foreign troops. The world needs a Cheney-Zenawi Award for Gross Political Stupidity, and I know who the first nominees should be. Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His column appears Mondays.
