Episode 16: Airstrikes in East Africa (from the archive)

Catherine Besteman and Amanda Sperber on U.S. Militarism in Somalia

This week we bring back a timely episode from Season 1 with journalist Amanda Sperber and anthropologist Catherine Besteman, who helped us understand an important, yet underreported topic: America’s military involvement in Somalia. Since we last spoke to Catherine and Amanda, The New York Times has reported that the terrorist organization, Al Shabab, is at its “strongest in years” and that the Biden administration may be debuting a new Somalia policy in the coming weeks. But will the administration, which has prided itself on ending “relentless war,” pursue a policy less reliant on drone strikes than its Republican and Democratic predecessors?

Airstrikes in July and the Biden administration’s touting of its “over-the-horizon capabilities” to attack a globally “metastasized” terrorist threat doesn’t augur much change. Catherine and Amanda explore the history of Al Shabab and America’s involvement in Somalia and argue that the human costs of current policy lay bare the strategic and moral failings of America’s global War on Terror.

Amanda Sperber is an award-winning investigative journalist, foreign correspondent, and multimedia storyteller. Her work focuses on East Africa, specifically on Somalia, and the consequences of U.S. airstrikes. She recently authored “US Airstrikes Have Torn Somali Families Apart. They’re Still Seeking Justice,” in Vice World News.

Catherine Besteman is Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College in Maine. Her work focuses on U.S. militarism in Somalia. She is the author of The Costs of War in Somalia from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, and the book Militarized Global Apartheid (2020).

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

May 28, 2020

AMANDA SPERBER: Somalia, more than almost any other country on Earth, has gotten a “bad reputation.” It's the byword for “failed state.” I think when people hear about Somalis getting killed, the assumption is either they were dangerous, or there is a more racist undertone that they didn't matter anyway.

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MARK HANNAH: Hello, and welcome to another episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah. I am your host. Today, we're discussing Somalia and America's decades-long military involvement in a country that suffers from mass poverty and violence. We're joined by two experts who have deep knowledge of that country, having spent considerable time there. Our first guest is Amanda Sperber, who speaks to us today from Nairobi, Kenya. Amanda is an award-winning investigative journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported on politics, youth, and armed conflict for lots of reputable and famous publications, including The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, and Vice. Amanda, very glad to have you with us.

SPERBER: Thanks so much for having me.

HANNAH: You recently came out with a story in The Daily Beast reporting on civilian casualties resulting from American military operations in East Africa. I think a lot of Americans listening who aren't foreign policy experts might even be surprised to learn we are conducting missions in East Africa, let alone that there are civilian casualties.

SPERBER: It was kind of an open secret that a lot of people were dying and a lot of people were getting displaced, even among, frankly, the Americans on the ground there as well as other international partners. And yet it was completely not getting noticed in the media. I wanted to flesh out whether or not it was true. Given that it was treated as such an open secret that this was happening, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit for me to pull on in terms of looking into what was going on. Really, the second I started asking around if I could talk to people about this, local Somalis, especially local Somali journalists, people, and NGO workers, would say, “Oh, yeah, I know these ten people were displaced.”

There was a case about a year ago in which I think three men were driving a car and were hit by an airstrike. The families in general were adamant that no one in the car was a member of al-Shabaab. But I was connected in particular to one family because the brother of the person who was killed spoke fluent English and worked for an international NGO. Since he spoke English, he was very much like, “I'll talk to anyone. I don't understand. I'll send you any information I have.” He was sending me his brother's I.D., which I understand can seem meaningless, but he was desperately sending pictures of him as a kid, just trying to show anything.

And so I said, “Would you be willing to talk to the military?”

And he said, “Of course. Absolutely. I want to explain to them what happened. I want to clear my brother's name.” I think it just feels so disrespectful, among other things. Beyond horrible and devastating. I think he felt so disrespected. So, he was quite keen to talk to them.

I emailed AFRICOM and said, “This guy is on WhatsApp. He speaks English. He says to just give him a call. He worked for an international organization, so he's quite comfortable talking to Westerners.”

And they said, “OK. Thank you.” And they never called him. And I followed up a few times, and they never called him. And then as I kept following up, I ended up finding other people that were willing to speak to them. I ended up emailing them a bunch of phone numbers, and none of them got called. AFRICOM admits that they don't talk to family or friends of people that they kill.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Why doesn't AFRICOM investigate?

SPERBER: Their contention is that they have their own sources who give them the information, and those sources can prove that this person is a member of al-Shabaab. But then you're put in this strange situation where the military is saying, “We won't talk to this person's brother because obviously this person's brother is going to say they're innocent, and we know more than them because we have this intelligence source. And we just know the family doesn't know about them.” That's not to suggest that sometimes might not be true, but it seems strange to not at least want to have a five-minute call with someone who's saying you killed their brother, especially since they are easily reachable. And also, it creates this weird cycle where the burden of proof is always on the person who was killed.

HANNAH: You also write that the civilian casualties have increased since the Trump administration gave AFRICOM commanders more flexibility to carry out these offensive strikes. Can you expand on that a little bit?

SPERBER: Sure. In 2017, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump had designated swathes of Somalia areas as “active hostilities,” which loosens restrictions on generals when they're going through the bureaucratic steps needed to authorize a strike, and also the military could be more offensive. Before that, airstrikes were intended to be in defense if someone appeared to be a threat to U.S. interests. They could now conduct an air strike if it appeared that someone was a member of al-Shabaab.

HANNAH: So how did Somalia get here? We spoke with the anthropologist Catherine Besteman about Somalia's more recent political history. Catherine is an anthropology professor at Colby College. Her work focuses on the history of the United States military involvement in Somalia. Catherine, so glad to have you with us.

BESTEMAN: Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here.

HANNAH: You've done a great deal of work on the study of militarism and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and on the history of Somalia. Specifically, your work argues that American intervention in Somalia has actually destabilized the country and created massive refugee outflows. Can you walk us through that a little bit? What's the big picture thrust of your work?

BESTEMAN: I think the big picture thrust of my work is, well, multifaceted. One is to try to understand what's happening in Somalia. I was living in Somalia in the late 1980s as Siad Barre, the then-president, was engaged in bombing communities in the north that were beginning to protest against his authoritarian rule. I left the country as the country was collapsing into civil war, and I spent much of the next decade trying to figure out—not to put too fine a point on it—what the hell happened and what my own country's involvement had been in sustaining Somalia and sustaining a dictator during the years of the 1980s, up to the final few years of the Cold War. And then what precipitated the collapse of the Somali government, and what role United States foreign policy had played in that horrific, horrific period of violence that engulfed Somalia in the early ‘90s. My interest very much stems from that particular seminal moment when Somalia fell apart, and then trying to track the effects of U.S. military involvement, which waxed and waned over the subsequent couple of decades, in contributing to or detracting from the ability of Somalis to find peace.

HANNAH: When did American involvement in Somalia begin and why? Was it a sort of flashpoint of the Cold War mentality that existed during that time?

BESTEMAN: Yes, it was. The contemporary history of U.S. involvement in Somalia really begins in 1977 when Siad Barre came to the United States to meet with Jimmy Carter to talk about developing an alliance. Siad Barre had been allied with the USSR up until that point, about the mid-‘70s, and then when the war between Somalia and Ethiopia began. Because of Barre’s irredentist interests—his interests in creating a greater Somalia and reclaiming for Somalia the Ogaden region of Ethiopia that was inhabited by Somalis but had been given to Ethiopia—the Soviets backed Ethiopia. And so Barre expelled his Soviet advisers and pivoted to the United States, and the United States, for various geopolitical reasons, was quite interested in having Somalia as an ally. That partnership then grew during the 1980s, maxing out at about a billion dollars of U.S. support, both economic, as you say, and military over the course of the 1980s to maintain connections with Somalia.

Some of that support took the form, for example, of attempting to introduce various forms of economic development into the Somali economy. A reorganizing of land tenure practices, privatization of national industries, the construction of dams and electrification projects, and roads and things that would enable the development of a more robust capitalist economy were certainly part of that U.S. investment in Somalia in the 1980s. In 2004, there was a transitional government that international powers had negotiated and tried to implement in Somalia. It didn't really have any popular legitimacy on the ground, and during that time, after the transitional government was put in place, the U.S. was also negotiating with various warlord-led militias to pursue its own geopolitical interests in the area.

HANNAH: What were those?

BESTEMAN: Part of the global war on terror. The U.S. was interested in trying to work with some of the warlords to get at al-Qaida militants. Over the course of 2006, a group known as the Islamic Courts Union was eventually able to fight its way to power. It was an Islamist group, and it did bring some stability to Somalia for the first time in the decade. But it was viewed as frightening by Ethiopia and by the United States. And so Ethiopia decided to invade to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union government, and it did so with U.S. support.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: And yet didn't American intervention help bring about, or at least exacerbate, the presence of violent extremism and al-Shabaab? Is the United States partly responsible for the rise of al-Shabaab?

BESTEMAN: Yes, I think there's no doubt. There is wide uniformity, wide agreement, among analysts that the U.S. participation in the Ethiopian invasion helped lead to the upsurge of al-Shabaab as an effective militia group in Somalia. Absolutely. Al-Shabaab formed as an anti-imperial, anti-foreign intervention militia. And so al-Shabaab’s initial popularity, if we can use that term, was fed by the outrage Somalis felt, that Ethiopia, in conjunction with the U.S., had the audacity to feel they had the right to invade the country and overthrow a government. I think any one of us can understand that feeling of outrage people had about foreign intervention—really, really massive destabilizing foreign intervention. Al-Shabaab had split off from the ICU when the ICU was thrown out of the country, and it regrouped as a militia to fight specifically against foreign intervention.

HANNAH: Can you talk a little bit more about the popular legitimacy they have, if any? Where are their pockets of support? Who is courting the ICU? Who is supporting al-Shabaab right now among Somali citizens?

BESTEMAN: My understanding of al-Shabaab, as with everybody, is a very complicated one. Al-Shabaab, on the one hand, operates as an authoritarian organization that survives by taxing, kidnaping, and making all sorts of demands on the civilian population living in its areas of control. On the other hand, al-Shabaab works in collusion with authorities, members of the Kenyan government, members of the Somali government, and commercial interests across Somalia to maintain an economy in Somalia that involves things as widespread as the international sugar trade through Somalia to Kenya, the charcoal trade from Somalia to the Horn, and the movement of goods around Somalia. Analysts who study al-Shabaab write very clearly about how al-Shabaab is a complicated organization that is not just a terrorist group. It's also a patronage group. It's also a mafia. It's also a protection racket. It's also a cog in the market economy of Somalia.

HANNAH: To what extent do you hold the Obama administration accountable, because the use of drones for these targeted killings, for these airstrikes, increased there? And in fact, we have essentially been in a kind of undeclared military conflict with Somalia throughout the duration of the Obama administration. What are your reflections on how responsible the Obama administration is for what's going on right now?

BESTEMAN: Well, absolutely. I think Obama was interested in pivoting from boots on the ground, which was unpopular to the American public, to different ways of waging war, and drone strikes was one of those ways. There were thirty-six drone strikes in Somalia between 2009 and 2016. Then, under Trump last year, that ramped up to sixty-three strikes just last year alone. Thirty-nine strikes so far just this year. So, it's quite a dramatic escalation. It's not something new. It comes out of the same playbook Obama was using but at a much more accelerated rate.

HANNAH: One wonders why the United States has ramped up its airstrikes on Somalia in recent years. It's unclear whether there's any kind of empirical evidence to suggest that al-Shabaab is threatening our interests in any acute way. Why do you think the Trump administration has escalated its strikes on Somalia if to some extent, as you mentioned, it's stirring up resentment among the public in the region?

BESTEMAN: I think this is the signature question. Why is the U.S. engaged in an unofficial war in Somalia right now through the medium of drone strikes—airstrikes—that have dramatically increased in number over the past two years. It's a question I sit with and think with all the time, because they do not seem to be having the intended effect, which is to reduce al-Shabaab power, reduce al-Shabaab scope, and enhance the ability of Somalis to lead more secure lives. In fact, the airstrikes seem to be doing just the opposite. They're pushing people out of their home areas and into internally displaced prison camps. They're compromising the ability of farmers to continue to produce food for the country. They're enhancing the outrage of ordinary Somalis against the United States because the airstrikes are killing people—in some cases, it seems, indiscriminately. And so one wonders: why persist with this? The only reason I can come up with is because it's something we know how to do—it's something that exists in our playbook. I sometimes think about Paul Krugman’s idea of zombie ideas in economics—those ideas economists keep pivoting to and applying over and over again despite the empirical fact that they don't work and may actually cause harm. And so I wonder if airstrikes—drone strikes, bombing campaigns—are zombie ideas, military zombie ideas that we pivot to over and over again because they're, so to speak, in our arsenal even though they don't seem to be producing the effects we hope they will.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Amanda, obviously when we're dealing with numbers and raw quantities, it can be kind of abstract. You have the benefit of either being on the ground, seeing some of the “collateral damage,” or hearing stories from survivors. What are some of the most moving stories that have been relayed to you about the civilian casualties you're reporting on?

SPERBER: When I first started reporting, I talked to one man who lost a family member in an airstrike, and after the airstrike happened, al-Shabaab returned and accused the man of being a spy for the Americans. He was then detained and tortured, and he had a really, really bad injury. He was shot in the leg a bunch of times, so he couldn't walk. Eventually, he was released from detention. Talking to him was really painful. He just seemed really bewildered about what had happened. He was upset about a family member, and then he'd gotten detained. So, he was caught between both sides. I reported on his story as part of my first article on U.S. airstrikes in Somalia for The Nation. His story—and a few others, but his story in particular, just because he was quite dignified but seemed so bewildered about everything that was happening—was partly what motivated me to do another investigation for the magazine in these times, which looked at the non-civilian casualty impact of American airstrikes.

HANNAH: Obviously, there are more and more reports coming out from your sources on the ground in Somalia, as well as from different NGOs, international NGOs, about civilian casualties. Is that right?

SPERBER: Yes. Amnesty International has done a tremendous amount of reporting on this as well and is continuing to follow this issue. More and more Somalis are starting to speak out on social media about this. There are also a lot of Somali analysts who are in Mogadishu who are speaking out about this on social media as well. So, it's becoming increasingly awkward that the picture that's been painted by so many different people is in stark disparity to the picture that's being painted by AFRICOM.

HANNAH: Do you think there is any appetite for elevating this as a political issue as we head into the 2020 presidential campaign? Do you think there are implications or political consequences, either positive or negative, for the Trump administration for ramping up its fight on al-Shabaab?

SPERBER: No, probably not. I think in the Middle East and in Somalia, Somalis are guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of most of the public. I think it would be a hard sell to get people excited about this. Also, in general, I think something I've felt as a reporter is that I will continue to keep reporting on what's happening in Somalia, but sometimes I sort of get the sense that the people who are going to know whether this is working or not already know. And it's understood in the foreign policy community, even among those that might be considered more hawkish and lean to the right. If you were to grab a drink with one of them, they would say that they know airstrikes don't work or that airstrikes kill civilians. So there are times it feels like this audience is kind of saturated in terms of: that’s understood; we're on autopilot and going to do it anyway.

HANNAH: Amanda, I want to ask you about policy. What could the United States do to ensure that they act toward being a more accountable presence in the region?

SPERBER: I think something Amnesty International has been pushing is for AFRICOM to set up a mechanism in Somalia for Somalis to report civilian casualties. The U.S. has a lot of language about how the military takes civilian casualties very seriously, but I think actions speak louder than words. Given that the military does not speak to families who say they've lost relatives, doesn't really have any sort of open door policy for receiving information about civilian casualties, and doesn't really appear to be very proactive about its concerns even though it says it is very concerned, I think setting up some mechanisms that demonstrate its proactive concern with civilian casualties and that would more directly engage Somalis would be quite welcomed.

HANNAH: I want to thank both of our guests, Amanda Sperber and Catherine Besteman, for joining us this week and for shedding light on what is going on in Somalia and how the United States could be more accountable in the region.

I am Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. This episode is our last of season one. I want to take a moment on this occasion to give a shout out to the None of the Above team. Thank you very much to our producer and EGF research associate, Caroline Gray, who really pulls all of this together and makes this podcast happen, and our fantastic editor, Luke Taylor, who is terrific, as is our sound engineer, Zubin Hensler. EGF intern Fida Hussain Yamani has also helped out with this show, and I thank him for that. If you've enjoyed what you've heard, I would appreciate you subscribing on Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Please, of course, rate and review us. If there is a topic you want us to cover, shoot us an email at info@egfound.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and we'll catch you next time when we pick up with season two in just a few weeks.

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