[Marxism] The CIA is taking rap for US defeat in Somalis

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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June 8, 2006

Efforts by C.I.A. Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge 

By MARK
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazze
tti/index.html?inline=nyt-per> MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, June 7 ? A covert effort by the Central
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/cen
tral_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Intelligence Agency
to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American
government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism
efforts inside Somalia
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritorie
s/somalia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  and empowered the same Islamic
groups it was intended to marginalize. 

The criticism was expressed privately by United States government
officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared
even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the
country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke
the warlords' hold on the capital, Mogadishu. 

The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency's station in
Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the
past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other
things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_
qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Qaeda believed to be hiding there. 

Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part
from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to
counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States
hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed
Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American
troops. 

The American effort of the last year has occasionally included trips to
Somalia by Nairobi-based C.I.A. case officers, who landed on
warlord-controlled airstrips in Mogadishu with large amounts of money
for distribution to Somali militias, according to American officials
involved in Africa policy making and to outside experts.

Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted
have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy
in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking
official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters
that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American
efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the
report. 

Around that time, the State Department's political officer for Somalia,
Michael Zorick, who had been based in Nairobi, was reassigned to Chad
after he sent a cable to Washington criticizing Washington's policy of
paying Somali warlords. 

One American government official who traveled to Nairobi this year said
officials from various government agencies working in Somalia had
expressed concern that American activities in the country were not being
carried out in the context of a broader policy. 

"They were fully aware that they were doing so without any strategic
framework," the official said. "And they realized that there might be
negative implications to what they are doing." 

The details of the American effort in Somalia are classified, and
American officials from several different agencies agreed to discuss
them only after being assured of anonymity. The officials included
supporters of the C.I.A.-led effort as well as critics. A C.I.A.
spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the American
Embassy in Kenya. 

Asked about the complaints made by embassy officials in Kenya, Thomas
Casey, a State Department spokesman, said: "We're not going to discuss
any internal policy discussions. The secretary certainly encourages
individuals in the policy making process to express their views and
opinions."

Several news organizations have reported on the American payments to the
Somali warlords. Reuters and Newsweek were the first to report about Mr.
Zorick's cable and reassignment to Chad. The extent and location of the
C.I.A.'s efforts, and the extent of the internal dissent about these
activities, have not been previously disclosed.

Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on
how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by
putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of
high-level suspects. 

Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the
warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic
militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular
warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the
Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve
the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes.
The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they
claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital. 

"This has blown up in our face, frankly," said John Prendergast of the
International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with
extensive field experience in Somalia. 

"We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were
worried most about," said Mr. Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy
at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton
administration. 

The American activities in Somalia have been approved by top officials
in Washington and were reaffirmed during a National Security Council
meeting about Somalia in March, according to people familiar with the
meeting. During the March meeting, at a time of fierce fighting in and
around Mogadishu, a decision was made to make counterterrorism the top
policy priority for Somalia.

Porter
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/porter_j_g
oss/index.html?inline=nyt-per> J. Goss, who recently resigned as C.I.A.
director, traveled to Kenya this year and met with case officers in the
Nairobi station, according to one intelligence official. It is not clear
whether the payments to Somali warlords were discussed during Mr. Goss's
trip. 

The American ambassador in Kenya, William M. Bellamy, has disputed
assertions that Washington is to blame for the surge in violence in
Somalia. And some government officials this week defended the American
counterterrorism efforts in the country. 

"You've got to find and nullify enemy leadership," one senior Bush
administration official said. "We are going to support any viable
political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism." 

In May, the United
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/uni
ted_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Nations Security Council issued a
report detailing the competing efforts of several nations, including
Ethiopia and Eritrea, to provide Somali militias and the transitional
Somali government with money and arms ? activities the report said
violated the international arms embargo on Somalia. 

"Arms, military matériel and financial support continue to flow like a
river to these various actors," the report said. 

The United Nations report also cited what it called clandestine support
for a so-called antiterrorist coalition, in what appeared to be a
reference to the American policy. Somalia's interim president, Abdullahi
Yusuf, first criticized American support for Mogadishu's warlords in
early May during a trip to Sweden. 

"We really oppose American aid that goes outside the government," he
said, arguing that the best way to hunt members of Al Qaeda in Somalia
was to strengthen the country's government.

Senior American officials indicated this week that the United States
might now be willing to hold discussions with the Islamic militias,
known as the Islamic Courts Union. President Bush said Tuesday that the
first priority for the United States was to keep Somalia from becoming a
safe haven for terrorists. 

The American payments to the warlords have been intended at least in
part to help gain the capture of a number of suspected Qaeda operatives
who are believed responsible for a number of deadly attacks throughout
East Africa. 

Since the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, American officials have been tracking a Qaeda cell whose
members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia,
and parts of the Middle East. 

Shortly after an attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and the failed
attempt to shoot down a plane bound for Israel that took off from the
Mombasa airport, both in November 2002, the United States began
informally reaching out to the Somali clans in the hopes that local
forces might provide intelligence about suspected members of Al Qaeda in
Somalia. 

This approach has brought occasional successes. According to an
International Crisis Group report, militiamen loyal to warlord Mohammed
Deere, a powerful figure in Mogadishu, caught a suspected Qaeda
operative, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, in April 2003 and turned him
over to American officials.

According to Mr. Prendergast, who has met frequently with Somali clan
leaders, the C.I.A. over the past year has increased its payments to the
militias in the hopes of putting pressure on Al Qaeda. 

The operation, while blessed by officials in Washington, did not seem to
be closely coordinated among various American national security
agencies, he said. 

"I've talked to people inside the Defense Department and State
Department who said that this was not a comprehensive policy," he said.
"It was being conducted in a vacuum, and they were largely shut out."

Marc Lacey contributed reporting from Nairobi for this article, and
Helene Cooper from Washington.


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2006 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  
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