Instability in Somalia precipitated a new crisis with Ethiopia. In 1994, al-Itihaad established a military presence near the borders with Kenya and Ethiopia and launched numerous attacks inside Ethiopia, especially in the Somali-inhabited regions. By 1996, Ethiopia was making regular incursions into Somalia to challenge al-Itihaad and build alliances with Somali warlords. In 2000, a group of Ethiopian-backed warlords formed the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), led by Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who would become president of Somalia in 2004 as a member of the foreign-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and by Hussein Mohammed Aidid, who had succeeded his father, Mohammed Farah Aidid, as head of the powerful USC militia.
Instability in Somalia also inspired new US concerns. US counterterrorism experts warned that Somalia had become a haven for al-Qaeda—including operatives responsible for bombing the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. These fears escalated after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. In October 2001, the UN included al-Itihaad on a list of organizations associated with al-Qaeda, and in December the United States placed al-Itihaad on the 2001 USA Patriot Act’s “Terrorist Exclusion List.” Businesses with purported ties to al-Itihaad were also targeted. Among these was Somalia’s largest employer, al-Barakat, a money transfer company with telecommunications, internet, and other holdings that had assumed significant banking functions after the collapse of the country’s banking system in the early 1990s. Al-Barakat had operations in forty countries, transferred some $140 million annually, and served as a lifeline for many Somalis, who depended on remittances from family members abroad to sustain them. In November 2001, the George W. Bush administration, claiming that al-Barakat served as a conduit for funds to al-Qaeda, closed its offices, froze its US assets, and pressured the UN Security Council to impose sanctions.14 These actions effectively terminated al-Barakat’s operations, jeopardizing the well-being of Somali citizens and generating increased animosity toward the United States.15 Washington also sought common cause with Ethiopia, Somalia’s regional rival, which for centuries had been dominated by Christian elites. In 2006, the US government referred to Ethiopia as “the linchpin to stability in the Horn of Africa and the Global War on Terrorism.”16
Instability in Somalia also worried other external powers. The UN, the AU, the EU, the Arab League, and IGAD intensified their diplomatic involvement. In 2004, they helped broker an agreement to establish a central government in Somalia—the fourteenth attempt since Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. The resulting Transitional Federal Government was backed by these external entities, and by the United States and Ethiopia. However, the TFG had very little support inside Somalia. The negotiations had been deeply influenced by SRRC warlords who aspired to establish a clan-based federal system that would consolidate their own power. Although presented as a government of national unity, the TFG was dominated by the Mijerteen clan/Darod clan family of its president, SRRC warlord Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. It marginalized many of the Hawiye clans that had long controlled Mogadishu, and it purged the parliament of opposition members. Unable to enter Mogadishu’s hostile environs, the TFG established its capital in Baidoa, 150 miles away, where it was protected by Ethiopian troops. It controlled little territory outside that city. Rife with nepotism and cronyism, the TFG was incompetent and corrupt. The salaries of senior army, police, and intelligence officers, as well as government ministers and parliamentarians, were paid by foreign donors, and government officials were not accountable to the Somali people. President Yusuf, the SRRC men he appointed to top positions, and his prime minister, Ali Mohamed Ghedi, were all closely linked to Ethiopia. As a result, many Somalis considered the TFG to be an Ethiopian puppet regime.
Supported by the United States, President Yusuf opposed all forms of political Islam and resisted the inclusion of Islamists in his government. As a result, the powerful Islamic courts and their proponents refused to support the TFG. President Yusuf’s reliance on Ethiopian troops and his anti-Islamist actions helped rally support for the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had formed in 2000 to consolidate the power of the Islamic courts and improve their effectiveness. Courts affiliated with al-Itihaad promoted a strict, Salafist interpretation of Islamic law, while others interpreted the law according to the more tolerant Sufi traditions that most Somalis embraced.17
Disregarding popular support for the ICU, external powers were determined to undermine it. In early 2006, the CIA encouraged a group of clan militia leaders, businessmen, and warlords—including four TFG cabinet ministers—to join forces against the growing Islamist movement. The result was the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). Violating the 1992 UN arms embargo, the CIA provided the ARPCT with weapons and financed its militias. In return, the alliance became an accessory to the US war on terror—capturing and rendering to the United States suspected al-Qaeda operatives, specifically those believed to be involved in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and airliner in Kenya. Fighting between the ARPCT and the ICU broke out in February 2006. In May, warlord attacks on ICU militias in Mogadishu instigated some of the worst street fighting in the capital since Siad Barre’s government fell apart in 1991. The TFG appealed for foreign military assistance and the United States, Ethiopia, Italy, and Yemen complied, again violating the UN arms embargo. Eritrea, in turn, provided weapons to the ICU militias to counter the influence of Ethiopia, its regional nemesis. In early June, ICU militias seized control of Mogadishu and ousted the warlords who had controlled the capital for fifteen years.
Photo 4.3. Ethiopian troops participate in AMISOM patrol in Baidoa, Somalia, March 27, 2014. Photo by Abdi Dagane/AU UN IST.
By July 2006, ICU militias had gained ascendancy over most of southern and central Somalia, including the key ports and airfields. In Mogadishu, the courts began to rebuild basic government services, establishing committees on sanitation, reconstruction, education, and justice. They cracked down on criminals, armed youth, and warlord militias, bringing a semblance of security to the capital city. Mogadishu’s port and international airport, which had been closed for more than a decade, reopened. The ICU garnered immense popular support, even from secular Somalis who welcomed the implementation of Islamic law as way to stem crime and violence. François Lonseny Fall, at that time the UN special representative to Somalia, acknowledged that the ICU had “achieved great things in Mogadishu,” while other human rights groups claimed that with Islam as a unifying factor, the ICU had been more successful than any previous government in uniting and disarming Somali clans.18
The ICU victory was precisely the opposite of what the CIA had hoped for when it backed the warlord alliance. In fact, foreign meddling had triggered a backlash that strengthened radical factions. In June 2006, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Salafi and former al-Itihaad leader, was appointed chair of the ICU consultative council, challenging the leadership of the executive council chair, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Sufi cleric. A Somali national army colonel under Siad Barre and onetime member of Aidid’s militia, Aweys had joined the al-Itihaad militia in the early 1990s and helped establish Islamic courts in Mogadishu at the end of that decade. Although Aweys hoped to implement Islamic law throughout Somalia, some analysts considered him to be a mitigating influence vis-à-vis extremists in al-Shabaab, the ICU’s youth militia, which aspired to establish an Islamic state beyond Somalia’s borders.
External support for the warlords and the TFG strengthened the position of radicals in the ICU. In early July 2006, Osama bin Laden called on Muslims worldwide to wage jihad in Somalia and warned that Muslim fighters would challenge all foreign troops, including UN and AU peacekeepers, if they intervened to support the TFG. Three