America's role in Somalia

Recent reports that terrorists and hard-line members of the Islamic Courts in Somalia are on the run are capturing headlines. But that is only a small part of Somalia's story, and it shouldn't take our focus off the bigger challenge: Unless the United States helps create stability in Somalia, that country will remain what it has been since the early 1990s – a haven for terrorists and warlords, and a source of instability in a critical region.

Somalia's weak transitional government is trying to reestablish itself as the representative government for the people of Somalia. By all accounts, however, Somalis have not yet rallied behind that government. In fact, gun prices in Mogadishu are reported to be at an all-time high because of steep demand. And many of the warlords who have long used Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia as their own personal and violent fiefdoms are moving freely around the country. The hard-line Islamic extremists have receded into the sandy landscape, but Somalia's anarchic tendencies still remain.

The US needs to move quickly to prevent a potential return to large-scale violence in Somalia. More than ever, Somalia's instability matters to the region and to our own national security.

Over the past several years, lawlessness in Somalia has spread into Kenya and Ethiopia and has been convenient for illicit and underground organizations that do business on the black market worldwide. Somalia has also long been a refuge for terrorists, including three individuals suspected in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. A Pentagon spokesperson has confirmed that these individuals were the targets of recent US airstrikes in Somalia.

Targeting terrorists is important, but it's not enough. What is needed is a broader effort to establish political stability in Somalia. Al Qaeda leaders have made clear that they see instability in Somalia as an opportunity to extend their influence. The US needs to address that instability so that Al Qaeda can't use Somalia as another staging ground from which to harm America.

The US now must move quickly to ensure that Ethiopia's military incursion isn't just another chapter in Somalia's tumultuous history. While Ethiopia may have won a tactical success in Somalia, it failed to deliver a strategic victory because no one – not the international community, or Ethiopia itself – was prepared for the consequences.

When I met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi a few weeks before the incursion, he told me that Ethiopia did not have the capacity for nation-building and would withdraw from Somalia within weeks. Assuming Ethiopia will want to withdraw at some point in the near future, we will still be left with the same dangerous power vacuum that perpetuated the interests of warlords and extremists in the first place.

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