Those who survived in the little southern Somali village of Hayo, close to the Kenyan border, will not forget yesterday. In the early hours of yesterday, their world was blown apart by the devastating weaponry of a US AC-130 attack plane. First reports suggest that there were widespread casualties with the village littered with the corpses of people and animals.
The US, it appears, had intelligence that Hayo had become a refuge for a party of senior Al-Qaeda figures and attendant fighters. They had fled Mogadishu with the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts after the rapid advance of Ethiopian troops in support of the forces of the interim Somali government. Let us hope the American information was right. It seems clear that many villagers perished in the attack along, perhaps, with Al-Qaeda supporters. We have to ask, however, why if US spies had definite information on the terrorists, they did not wait until they were on the move again and then attack them. Laying waste a village made it inevitable that there would be innocent victims.
On a wider canvas, the open emergence of US involvement in Somalia indicates Washington now believes it has a golden opportunity to strike a major blow against international terror. Initial UIC protests that Somalia was not a haven for international terror were undermined when Al-Qaeda figures called on fighters to go to Somalia to support the UIC against the Ethiopian attack. With the US naval presence off the Somali coast now considerably enhanced by the carrier Eisenhower, the Americans will hope to interdict any attempt by Al-Qaeda to flee the country by sea. AWAC surveillance planes and constant patrolling by carrier-borne planes ought to lock the coast down.
However, once again, it has to be wondered if the Americans have really thought through their latest intervention. There have already been protests in Mogadishu at the presence of Ethiopian troops. While there were certainly UIC supporters among the demonstrators, many of the people who took to the streets were probably activated by long-standing antipathy toward the Ethiopians. Somalis still claim the Ogaden region, now held by Ethiopia after a bitter war ending in 1978 in which it was then assisted by Russian and Cuban forces.
Washington’s support of Ethiopia will therefore rankle with many Somalis. This in turn could undermine the interim president of the Somali government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed who welcomed the US attack on Al-Qaeda in Hayo. Most Somalis just want peace. They definitely fear the return of warlordism. In the last weeks of its rule, the UIC made itself increasingly unpopular by its administrative incompetence and a rising tide of arbitrary arrests. President Bush may be happy to turn Somalia into another shooting gallery for his war on terror. It will nonetheless be yet another woeful error. What Somalia needs now is international peacekeepers and a chance to rebuild, instead of a vengeful and destructive US military.
