“Whilst the situation in Somalia plunges into crisis, no-one in our region is interested in what is happening there. The US is using every means possible to increase its influence in the Horn of Africa, investing money and military resources within the framework of its strategies against terrorism. In the meantime, because Somalia does not offer any investment opportunities, due to the scarcity of natural resources and an institutional void, the Arab world does not deem it worthy of consideration.” These comments made by Abdullah Iskandar, published in the Libanese daily Al Hayat (‘Life’), neatly summarize the contrasting attitudes of the Arab world and of its press in relation to the Somali crisis.

A member of the Arab League since 1974, Somalia’s ‘uruba, its Arab identity, is nevertheless debatable, (the main language is not Arabic but Somali), certainly much weaker than its Islamic identity, and it has always been a country of little interest to the rest of the Arab world. And this despite the fact that, as Iskandar notes, regional interests in the Horn of Africa are tightly interwoven and condition the balances of power of other states – such as between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Eritrea and the Sudan – in an area that Egypt has traditionally seen as its own jurisdiction.

“The Arabs have failed to confront the Somali crisis, and have washed their hands of it, whilst Ethiopia has assumed for itself the role of stabilizing the situation, at least temporarily, using military force. This is yet one more confirmation of the evident weakness of the Arab regimes, and of their incapacity to manage a crisis in whichever country in the region. Now a non-Arab bordering power has decided to fill the void created by the absence of Arab governments – a void which began to emerge with the Palestinian question and which has become ever more obvious in the course of successive crises, such as that in Iraq.”

Sati‘ Nurruddìn, in the pages of the Lebanese daily paper Al-Safir (‘The Ambassador’) also laments the seeming inability of Arab governments to react to major events such as the American air raid on Somalia, which was justified by the pretext of the war against terrorism. “The Arabo-Islamic states have been much more silent this time than when the US entered Baghdad in the spring of 2003. And this is perhaps because they are hoping that this action will enable the Americans to combat terrorism and prevent the outbreak of conflict on a regional scale.” Yet what worries Nuruddìn is the fact that “from the south of Somalia comes the most obvious indication that this new American offensive has started in earnest, and will be greater and more dangerous than the previous one!”

For the Egyptian Muhammed ‘Ali Faqìh of Al-Ahram (‘The Pyramids’), this is a new US strategy which depends upon using its regional allies as ‘instruments of attack’. Thus, to avoid falling into the same mistakes as during time of the UN mission in the 1990s, which drained the lives of US Marines, the US is now exploiting the historical enmity between Somalia and Ethiopia (which has been occupying the area of Ogaden, with its Somali majority population, since 1889). “What America wants is to generate a state of anarchy and chaos, along the lines of what they have created in Iraq, thereby preventing the establishment of any strong Arab or Islamic element in the region, with the ultimate aim of transforming the area of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden into one great, American sea. The intervention of the Ethiopian army, the most powerful of the African armies, demonstrates that the US has decided to depend upon Ethiopia to police the Horn of Africa, because it is the only Christian state in the area.

US interest in Somalia goes far beyond a desire to quell the dangers represented by terrorism and the presence of Al Qaeda, however. According to Faqìh there are numerous other factors, including its vicinity to the Gulf and oil routes, and to the Sudan, to the presence of France in Djibouti, and to the fact that Somalia occupies a strategic inland position in relation to Egypt which could be exploited by the US should relations between the two deteriorate. In Egypt and the Lebanon, it is the English and French language newspapers, which tend to target foreign readers, which have offered the most coverage of the Somali question and published the most fiery comments regarding US policy.

Nicola Nasser, for example, in the Middle East Times, writes that “American foreign policy has orchestrated the recent Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim Arab League capital, generating a new hotbed of militant anti-Americanism in the already turbulent Horn of Africa. The message is clear: no Arab or Muslim metropolis will remain unpunished if it refuses to co-operate with US interests in the region. And so Mogadishu becomes the third capital, after Jerusalem and Baghdad, to fall under the blows of American imperialist aggression, which has been inflicted either directly, or indirectly, via Israel, Ethiopia or other neighboring countries. The American aim of creating an anti-Arab and anti-Islamic coalition amongst its regional allies is being implemented before our very eyes”. Jean Diab, in La Revue du Liban, warns however that “the military success of the latest operation risks obscuring dangers which are still very much present; the war lords have retaken Mogadiscio, but a corrupt government and a foreign occupying army does not seem the best remedy for confronting Islamic extremism.”

It is difficult, however, to make any predictions about the future of Somalia. Hassan Sati, expert of Al Sharq al-Aswat (The Middle East), writing about the conflict in Africa, maintains that “unless there are unpredictable developments, Somalia will remain a country branded a ‘failed state’, even if this has nothing to do with the people of a nation for which these verses of poetry seem strikingly apt:

“A crime was committed by fools /
and punishment befell all other than the offender”.

Translation by Liz Longden