The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean shore where the culture developed nearly two millennia ago.

Its ornate stone and coral towns hugged 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of the coast, and its merchants played a linchpin role in the lucrative trade between Africa and lands across the ocean: Arabia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and China.

By the turn of the second millennium, Swahili people embraced Islam, and some of their grand mosques still stand at the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Lamu in Kenya and Kilwa in Tanzania.

Self-governance ended following Portuguese colonization in the 1500s, with control later shifting to the Omanis (1730-1964), Germans in Tanganyika (1884-1918) and British in Kenya and Uganda (1884-1963). Following independence, coastal peoples were absorbed into the modern nation-states of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

So who were the Swahili people, and where did their ancestors originally come from?

Ironically, the story of Swahili origins has been molded almost entirely by non-Swahili people, a challenge shared with many other marginalized and colonized peoples who are the modern descendants of cultures of the past with extraordinary achievements.

Working with a team of 42 colleagues, including 17 African scholars and multiple members of the Swahili community, we’ve now published the first ancient DNA sequences from peoples of the Swahili civilization. Our results do not provide simple validation for the narratives previously advanced in archaeological, historical or political circles. Instead, they contradict and complicate all of them.

Colonization affected how the story was told

Western archaeologists in the mid-20th century emphasized the connections of the medieval Swahili to Persia and Arabia, sometimes suggesting that their impressive achievements could not have been attained by Africans.

Post-colonial scholars, including one of us (Kusimba), pushed back against that view. Earlier researchers had inflated the importance of non-African influences by focusing on imported objects at Swahili sites. They minimized the vast majority of locally made materials and what they revealed about African industry and innovation.

But viewing Swahili heritage as primarily African or non-African is too simplistic; In fact, both perspectives are byproducts of colonialist biases.

The truth is that colonization of the East African coast did not end with the departure of the British in the middle of the 20th century. Many colonial institutions were inherited and perpetuated by Africans. As modern nation-states formed, with governments controlled by inland peoples, Swahili people continued to be undermined politically and economically, in some cases as much as they had been under foreign rule.

Decades of archaeological research in consultation with local people aimed to address the marginalization of communities of Swahili descent. Our team consulted oral traditions and used ethnoarchaeology and systematic surveys, along with targeted excavations of residential, industrial and cemetery locations. Working with local scholars and elders, we unearthed materials such as pottery, metal and beads; food, house and industrial remains; and imported objects such as porcelain, glass, glass beads and more. Together they revealed the complexity of Swahili everyday life and the peoples’ cosmopolitan Indian Ocean heritage.

Ancient DNA analysis was always one of the most exciting prospects. It offered the hope of using scientific methods to obtain answers to the question of how medieval people are related to earlier groups and to people today, providing a counterweight to narratives imposed from outside. Until a few years ago, this kind of analysis was a dream. But because of a technological revolution in 2010, the number of ancient humans with published genome-scale data has risen from nothing to more than 10,000 today.

Surprises in the ancient DNA

We worked with local communities to determine the best practices for treating human remains in line with traditional Muslim religious sensitivities. Cemetery excavations, sampling and reburial of human remains were carried out in one season, rather than dragging on indefinitely.

Our team generated data from more than 80 people, mostly elite individuals buried in the rich centers of the stone towns. We will need to wait for future work to understand whether their genetic inheritance differed from people without their high status.

Contradicting what we had expected, the ancestry of the people we analyzed was not largely African or Asian. Instead, these backgrounds were intertwined, each contributing about half of the DNA of the people we analyzed.

We found that Asian ancestry in the medieval individuals came largely from Persia (modern-day Iran), and that Asians and African ancestors began mixing at least 1,000 years ago. This picture is almost a perfect match to the Kilwa Chronicle, the oldest narrative told by the Swahili people themselves, and one almost all earlier scholars had dismissed as a kind of fairy tale.

Another surprise was that, mixed in with the Persians, Indians were a significant proportion of the earliest migrants. Patterns in the DNA also suggest that, after the transition to Omani control in the 18th century, Asian immigrants became increasingly Arabian. Later, there was intermarriage with people whose DNA was similar to others in Africa. As a result, some modern people who identify as Swahili have inherited relatively little DNA from medieval peoples like those we analyzed, while others have more.

One of the most revealing patterns our genetic analysis identified was that the overwhelming majority of male-line ancestors came from Asia, while female-line ancestors came from Africa. This finding must reflect a history of Persian males traveling to the coast and having children with local women.

One of us (Reich) initially hypothesized that these patterns might reflect Asian men forcibly marrying African women because similar genetic signatures in other populations are known to reflect such violent histories. But this theory does not account for what is known about the culture, and there is a more likely explanation.

Traditional Swahili society is similar to many other East African Bantu cultures in being substantially matriarchal – it places much economic and social power in the hands of women. In traditional Swahili societies even today, ownership of stone houses often passes down the female line. And there is a long recorded history of female rulers, beginning with Mwana Mkisi, ruler of Mombasa, as recorded by the Portuguese as early as the 1500s, down to Sabani binti Ngumi, ruler of Mikindani in Tanzania as late as 1886.

Our best guess is that Persian men allied with and married into elite families and adopted local customs to enable them to be more successful traders. The fact that their children passed down the language of their mothers, and that encounters with traditionally patriarchal Persians and Arabians and conversion to Islam did not change the coast’s African matriarchal traditions, confirms that this was not a simple history of African women being exploited. African women retained critical aspects of their culture and passed it down for many generations.

How do these results gleaned from ancient DNA restore heritage for the Swahili? Objective knowledge about the past has great potential to help marginalized peoples. By making it possible to challenge and overturn narratives imposed from the outside for political or economic ends, scientific research provides a meaningful and underappreciated tool for righting colonial wrongs.

Chapurukha Kusimba, Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida and David Reich, Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Horn of Africa is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Scientists suspect that a multi-year La Niña cycle has been amplified by climate change to prolong dry and hot conditions.

After multiple failed harvests and amid high global food prices, the Horn is confronted with a severe food security crisis. Some 37 million people face acute hunger in the region, which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

In Somalia alone, 40% of the population is facing food insecurity: about 6.7 million people. In neighbouring Ethiopia, the proportion is lower – 20% – but the absolute numbers are higher at 20.4 million.

It was not too long ago that drought led to highly divergent impacts between Somalia and Ethiopia. In 2010-2011, a devastating drought led to more than 260,000 deaths beyond normal levels of expected mortality in Somalia. Yet almost no one died in Ethiopia after a severe drought in 2015.

Why did so many people die in Somalia but so few in Ethiopia? I explore these and related questions in my recent book, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security.

Using the cases of the two countries, among others, the book shows why Somalia had a famine in the early 2010s while Ethiopia did not, despite both being exposed to severe droughts.

The biggest differences were that, compared with Somalia, Ethiopia enjoyed a state with more capacity and more political inclusion, and made good use of foreign aid. These are factors that I identify in the book as contributing to how climate change is affecting the security of states. I include famine as a form of insecurity.

Better outcomes are expected in states with high capacity to deliver services, high political inclusion where all social groups are represented in government, and where international assistance is welcomed and shared broadly.

Two sets of conditions, two different outcomes

So how did Somalia and Ethiopia stack up on the three factors that contribute to a bad situation being made worse?

In the lead-up to Somalia’s famine in 2011, the country faced persistent problems of a weak national government that was being challenged by Al-Shabaab, a violent Islamist militia that controlled significant territory in the south of the country. The Somali government had limited ability to deliver services in the areas it controlled, let alone areas under Al-Shabaab.

For its part, the Ethiopian government invested in social safety net programmes to feed people in the midst of the drought through cash transfers, employment programmes and food assistance.

The issue of sections of the society being excluded was also in greater evidence in Somalia than in Ethiopia. A number of marginalised groups, notably the Bantu Somalis and the Rahanweyn clan, were among the most affected by the drought. Better connected groups diverted aid that otherwise would have benefited these communities.

Finally, Somalia was in much worse shape when it came to aid. Al-Shabaab militants were blocking aid into the country, which led to a number of humanitarian groups withdrawing from Somalia. In addition, the US, through the Patriot Act, discouraged NGOs from providing aid for fear it would end up in Al-Shabaab’s hands. Together, this meant that little humanitarian assistance came into Somalia precisely at the time when the country needed it most. Hundreds of thousands died.

Ethiopia was a favourite of the international community for foreign assistance. It received funds that supported its social safety net programmes, which helped it prepare for the drought and administer emergency aid supplies.

The current food security crisis in the Horn of Africa, however, reveals persistent vulnerability in both countries.

As Ethiopia’s case shows, progress can be undone. Rising political exclusion is leading to huge food security risks, particularly in the Tigray region where aid is currently largely blocked amid the ongoing violent conflict.

Equally worrisome is Somalia’s situation, where both local and external actors have struggled to build state capacity or inclusion in the face of a long-running violent insurgency.

What can work

My book provides some hopeful insights, as well as caution. It shows that for countries like Ethiopia and Bangladesh, international assistance can help address weak state capacity. Donors worked with local officials to address specific climate hazards, like drought and cyclones.

Such international assistance helped compensate for weak state capacity through discrete investments in early warning systems, targeted social services, such as food assistance or cash transfers, and hazard-specific protective infrastructure, such as cyclone shelters.

Those examples suggest that climate adaptation can save lives and contribute to economic prosperity.

However, as the unfolding dynamic in Ethiopia shows, progress can be reversed. Moreover, it’s far more challenging for external actors to build inclusive political institutions if local actors are not so inclined.

With climate change intensifying extreme weather events around the world, it is incumbent upon policymakers to enhance the practice of environmental peacebuilding, both to resolve ongoing conflicts through better natural resource management and to prevent future emergencies.

Joshua Busby, Professor, University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change effects such as droughts, flash floods, erratic rainfall, disruption to the monsoon seasons, strong winds, cyclones, sandstorms, dust storms and increased temperature are being experienced across Somalia. These effects are affecting livelihoods, and contributing to local grievances and community tensions.

Some of these insights and conclusions were reached based on a special report done by the Somali government in 2013. This report remains the best estimate of the impact of changing weather patterns in the country as no newer data are available.

According to the report the country experienced a gradual and continuous increase in median annual temperatures between 1991 and 2013. Median daily maximum temperatures range from 30°C to 40°C. The report estimates that temperatures will increase by between 3.2°C and 4.3°C by the end of the 21st Century.

Climatic changes such as drought fuel herder–farmer conflicts because settled communities and livestock herders must compete for fewer resources. In 2019, 53,000 people were forced from their homes due to crop failure and reduced livestock profitability due to drought.

They joined an estimated 2.6 million Somalis already displaced by other factors like conflict. There were also disastrous droughts between 2000 and 2011; resulting in famine, food insecurity, water scarcity and loss of livelihoods.

These factors combined increase the risks of violent conflict. Many affected believe that they have less to lose from joining armed groups to survive when their livelihoods are threatened.

Studies have not found a direct causal link between climate change and conflict. Rather, researchers argue that climate change may exert an indirect and conditional effect on conflict risk.

Our fact sheet on Somalia identifies multiple pathways through which climate-related change interacts with political, social and environmental stresses to worsen existing vulnerabilities and tensions.

These tensions could potentially undermine development gains, impact ongoing conflict dynamics, and disrupt fragile peace processes. Additional pressures, such as COVID-19, compound the risk of climate-related conflict. This makes a country like Somalia even more vulnerable to shocks and setbacks.

For example, it’s current constitutional crisis arose because elections were postponed due to the pandemic. President Mohamed Abdullahi ‘Farmajo’ Mohamed is now in office without an electoral mandate after his term expired on 8 February 2021.

Thus, our research, which was compiled by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, examines the intersection between climate, peace and security in Somalia. It is part of an ongoing project which aims to generate actionable information and analysis on climate-related peace and security risks for selected countries and regions.

Conflict over resources

In Somalia, only 1.6% of the total land area is cultivated, and 69% is permanent pasture. For Somali farmers, livelihoods and labour cycles are closely linked to harvest seasons. For herders, calving is tied to specific months. And livestock migration is tied to grazing areas during wet seasons.

Thus, changing seasons and unpredictable shifts in the weather could have cascading effects on the livelihoods of herders, farmers and entire communities.

One such effect is the conflict between herders and farmers. Because of floods, heatwaves and droughts, farming and livestock outputs are diminishing. This means that settled communities and herders are competing for fewer resources like green grazing grounds and arable land. This could potentially fuel tensions.

And due to lack of government presence in parts of Somalia, pastoral communities sometimes resort to illicit trade and use of small arms and light weapons. They do this to protect themselves and their livestock from rustlers. Rustling has been a problem in Somalia for years but it is becoming an even bigger threat. This because more livestock are dying from the weather-related effects of climate change.

Political considerations

Climate change and environmental degradation are more likely to lead to local conflicts than to civil war. However, small-scale tensions can increase the risk of broader conflict when exploited by political elites and individuals or groups with more wealth, privilege, power or influence.

Those with power can use the disruptions of rapid-onset disasters like drought, floods, or the recent locust infestations, to augment their control over critical resources. In Somalia there are cases where minority communities were targets of looting and violence by more powerful majority clan militias where livestock and food stores were beseiged.

Political factions can exploit populations who have climate-change related grievances. These grievances include weather-related losses and resource scarcity due to extreme weather events. Those affected become susceptible to political agendas that promise to alleviate poverty.

Migration and terror

Climate-related migration can potentially exacerbate tensions between Somali communities. When clans migrate between regions the risk of violence from dominant groups in those regions increases. These groups are often seeking to maintain control of resources in their areas.

When violence does occur, ordinary Somalis are then displaced from their homes leaving them without clan and family protection. Those who find themselves in internally displaced person camps become vulnerable to recruitment from Al-Shabaab.

During the early 2000s, Al-Shabaab seized parts of southern Somalia where they occupied arable lands, extorted farmers and exploited their fertile soil to generate income. This allowed the terror group to consolidate its stronghold in the region.

And in 2017, Al-Shabaab capitalised on floods and droughts to establish its dominance. The terror group provided services and relief to regions of the country that were out of government control. They set up drought committees to coordinate relief operations in several administrative regions in different parts of the country.

Thus the effects of climate change have provided Al-Shabaab with an opportunity to capitalise on insecurity and the state’s weakness.

Way forward

The Somali federal government and federal states must integrate climate risks into their security planning. This will enhance their ability to prevent climate-related violence. It will also prevent Al-Shabaab and other armed groups from taking advantage of climate impacts.

In addition, the United Nations and international partners must support the federal government to integrate responses to climate-related security risks across government.

This should be done in coordination with regional institutions such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union. Also, the African Union Mission in Somalia should increase its preparedness to support Somalia to respond to slow and rapid-onset climate-related impacts.

And finally, the United Nations Security Council should support the federal government to mainstream climate security into its peace processes.

Additional research was done by Anab Ovidie Grand. She is a junior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs where she works on climate-related peace and security risks, the effectiveness of peace support operations, the African Union, and stabilisation.

Andrew E. Yaw Tchie, Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Visiting Professor University of Buckingham, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Drylandsolutions: “Climate Change in Somalia – Understanding Our Problems and Finding Hope – WATCH THIS!”

That isn’t enough. Congress needs to legislate explicitly so that if a Trump wanna-be becomes president in 2025, he can’t just impose such a measure again. The Democrats can do this now, for about 18 months before they likely lose the House of Representatives in 2022 and should put a rush order on it.

Moreover, the Arab press is pointing out that the visa ban could nevertheless have a long arm and harm its victims even after abolition, and that the Biden administration must prevent ongoing harm. For instance, when you apply for a visa, you are asked if you were ever denied a visa before. Obviously, a previous denial could look suspicious and be grounds for being turned down now! You’ve got millions who could be affected.

Trump’s Muslim visa ban wrought enormous harm to innocent Americans. It kept grandchildren from visiting their grandparents. Some died alone and far away. It separated not only families but close friends. It separated colleagues. It broke up research teams. It ruined careers and businesses. It had no basis in fact. Immigrants from the countries singled out were not responsible for any acts of terrorism in the US. All the while, Trump was coddling the real terrorist threat, of white supremacists.

The Executive Order was clearly discriminatory and a violation of the First Amendment (see below). The Republican Supreme Court that prides itself on upholding religious liberty against Democratic Party secularism gave in to the most hateful attack on freedom of religion in decades.

It is worth reviewing what judges said about the first two attempts at a Muslim ban, which failed in the lower courts because they were so egregious. Trump won on the third try by including a few officials in Venezuela and North Korea, while mainly targeting Muslim-majority countries, and SCOTUS let Trump get by with this sleight of hand. What judges said about versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the executive order was also true of 3.0, whatever Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (two of the worst justices in history) might say. Thomas is inexplicably married to a white nationalist who cheered on the Capitol insurrection.

I wrote in February, 2017, when the first of the three Muslim visa bans was issued by Executive Order (EO) in February, 2017, about the first time it was struck down:

“US District Judge James Robart of Seattle, a Bush appointee, issued a judgment suspending the Executive Order on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and places an undue burden on the state of Washington and on its 25,000 residents from the 7 countries that Trump singled out…

Robart wrote, according to the Seattle Times:

“The executive order adversely affects the state’s residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,” Robart wrote, adding that the order also harmed the state’s public universities and tax base. “These harms are significant and ongoing.”

Robart stood up for the residents of Washington state who were unconstitutionally deprived of basic rights by the EO. He also stood up for the economy of Washington state and its “tax base,” playing turnabout with Trump by arguing that what he did is bad for the economy!

He even mentioned the harm to the state’s great universities, a point I have made in the past.

Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, the Neofascists who wrote the EO, were hoping that immigrants would be treated by the US courts as foreigners with no rights or standing.

Robart is saying that residents of a state in the US have rights that the president cannot simply erase by fiat. He is further saying that institutions of the state itself, including universities, have a right to pursue their work unmolested by discriminatory policies . . . The court also accepted the state’s argument that the EO has “inflicted upon the operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning, as well as injury to the States’ operations, tax bases, and public funds. These harms are significant and ongoing.”

Then the fascist racists came back with a revised version of the visa ban, which was struck down by Judge Derek Watson in Honolulu. I wrote,

“It is delicious that Hawaii stepped up here, as the most ethnically diverse state in the nation, where the quarter of the population that is Japanese-Americans well remembers the internment camps to which their families were consigned during WW II. Hawaii has a lot of immigrants, and those immigrants found companies and act as entrepreneurs, adding enormous value to the Hawaii economy. 1 in 6 residents of Hawaii is foreign-born, and 20% of business revenue is generated by 16,000 new immigrant businesses. Trump’s white nationalism is completely out of place in Hawaii. And by the way, Hawaii and California, the diverse states, are the future of America. Trumpism can only slow that down, not stop it…

Judge Watson notes, “The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982). To determine whether the Executive Order runs afoul of that command, the Court is guided by the three-part test for Establishment Clause claims set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971). According to Lemon, government action (1) must have a primary secular purpose, (2) may not have the principal effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and (3) may not foster excessive entanglement with religion. Id. “Failure to satisfy any one of the three prongs of the Lemon test is sufficient to invalidate the challenged law or practice.” Newdow v. Rio Linda Union Sch. Dist., 597 F.3d 1007, 1076–77 (9th Cir. 2010)….

The Establishment Clause says that Congress shall make no law affecting the establishment of religion, which is 18th century English for “Congress shall make no law designating a particular religion as the state religion of the Federal Government.” The Clause mandates that the Government be neutral as between religions. Obviously, a Muslim ban is not religiously neutral.

Watson finds that the EO targets six countries with a Muslim population of between 90% and 97% and so obviously primarily targets Muslims…

Judge Watson notes that the State of Hawaii alleged two major harms of the EO. The first is the University of Hawaii system, which is an “arm of the state.” The University, which has 55,756 students, pointed out that it “recruits students, permanent faculty, and visiting faculty from the targeted countries.” The EO harms the whole state of Hawaii “by debasing its culture and tradition of ethnic diversity and inclusion.”

The Iranian, Syrian, Libyan, Somali, Yemeni and Sudanese students who are excluded from the country “are deterred from studying or teaching at the University, now and in the future, irrevocably damaging their personal and professional lives and harming the educational institutions themselves.” …

Not only would some of these persons, and others, be dissuaded from continuing their search for knowledge in the US, “The State argues that the University will also suffer non-monetary losses, including damage to the collaborative exchange of ideas among people of different religions and national backgrounds on which the State’s educational institutions depend.” The EO is interfering not just in finances but in the very purpose of the University, which is the free exchange of ideas.

The EO also interferes with the University’s ability freely to recruit the most qualified faculty and students and with its commitment to being “one of the most diverse institutions of higher education” in the world. Moreover, the university envisages it as difficult to run its Persian Language and culture program without the ability to have visitors from Iran.

The State’s summary of the harm to the University of Hawaii includes educational and intellectual harms (and ethnic diversity is itself an intellectual advantage) as well as financial and monetary ones. In the Lockean tradition, property harms are typically the ones taken most seriously.

Hawaii’s second argument is that the EO will harm its tourism industry, a central component of its economy. The chaotic and arbitrary way the first EO was rolled out, and the uncertainties attending the second one will “depress tourism, business travel, and financial investments in Hawaii.”). Middle East visitors in the month after the first EO fell by 1/5. Tourism brings in $15 billion a year to the Hawaii economy (it is a small state of 1.5 million people).

Hawaii has a point, and Judge Watson recognized it.”

——-

Bonus Video:

Justice for All: “Struggles of Muslim Ban”

The US is an active participant in the war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, efforts that have increased in the last few years under the Trump Administration.

The strategy involves using airstrikes to assist Somali ground forces in recapturing territory controlled by Al-Shabaab. In addition, there have been attempts to take out Al-Shabaab leadership, destroy training facilities, and eliminate rank-and-file members.

The US argues that military action is necessary for two main reasons: to counter the influence of Al-Shabaab locally; and to prevent the group from reaching out to members of the Somali diaspora community to inspire tragic terror attacks. Examples include the Westgate Mall attack in Kenya that killed 67 people, and the attack on a university in Garissa that killed 147. Earlier this year there was an attack on a hotel in Nairobi that killed 14 people.

From the perspective of the US, this terror threat is compounded by the inability of the US-backed Somali Federal Government to consolidate power in the shadow of Al-Shabaab’s influence. This has created a roadblock to much-needed regional stability.

The resilience of Al-Shabaab raises questions about the effectiveness of the current strategy. In addition, civilians being killed as a consequence of US strikes should not be taken lightly. Understanding when and why these targeted civilian killings occur as a consequence of US action is vital for US policymakers as well as those on the ground seeking to address the prolonged humanitarian crisis.

We examined the hidden costs of US strikes in Somalia in a recently published paper. Our research shows that US strikes do have hidden costs in Somalia, with civilians becoming victims in the aftermath of strikes targeting military assets. This implies that efforts by the US to undermine Al-Shabaab’s war-making capabilities put innocent life at risk. And do little to combat the group’s influence in the region.

What we found

In a bid to understand the impact of attacks, we hand coded data collected by the Armed Location and Event Data Project. The project uses news sources to capture information on events associated with the onset, evolution, and escalation of political violence in much of the world. We examined the content of the media-generated events to identify incidents of Al-Shabaab murdering innocent civilians.

For targeted civilian killings, we only kept those instances in which Al-Shabaab purposefully executed or assassinated civilians. Examples included civilians executed by firing squad after being accused of being spies. In another case a group of civilians were called before a court only to be put to death in public.

We also did the same for data related to US strikes. We coded them based on the intended target, such as leadership, rank-and-file members, or military assets. We consulted the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to ensure the strikes we captured were valid and complete.

Because the data were geo-referenced, we investigated whether the locations where US strikes occurred were associated with subsequent targeted civilian killings.

We found that US strikes made it 5.5 times more likely that civilians were murdered by Al-Shabaab. But when looking at the three different types of targets, we found important differences.

Strikes that targeted military assets made it five times more likely that civilians were murdered, whereas the killing of rank-and-file members reduced the likelihood of targeted civilian killings by 99%. We didn’t find any statistically significant relationship between attempts to assassinate leadership by the US and patterns of targeted civilian killings at the hands of Al-Shabaab.

Importantly, killing rank-and-file members reduced the probability of targeted civilian killings. This shows that, while significant blowback does result from some strikes, others may actually reduce civilian victimisation by Al-Shabaab.

The effectiveness of killing Al-Shabaab leaders remains open to debate. Previous research on the effectiveness of this strategy came to different conclusions. It certainly appears that the outcomes are usually based on the characteristics of the group being targeted and nature of the conflict.

And, while some evidence exists that killing leaders reduces violence, there is also evidence that such strikes can lead to the onset of revenge killings. This can put targets like civilians in harm’s way.

Implications for US strategy

Our study speaks only to US strategy in Somalia.

The influence of US strikes on armed non-state groups varies depending on the characteristics of that group and the conflict itself. Though a great deal of progress has been made in developing expectations that can be generalised, there’s still a great deal of work to be done. This is particularly true when it comes to examining the long-term implications of airstrikes.

Our findings challenge the simplistic argument that airstrikes, such as those used in Somalia, are “good” and “just” because they have the potential to prevent widespread war that would put innocent lives at risk.

Our findings point out that the issue for US policymakers is that strikes that destroy the war-making capabilities of Al-Shabaab lead to the brutal murder of civilians in retaliation. This unjust killing of innocent people, which would not occur in the absence of US strikes, should caution US policymakers. This is particularly true given given the apparent failure of the current strategy.

And, while the US may prevent murders by targeting rank-and-file members instead of military assets, these members can be replaced via new recruits, allowing Al-Shabaab to continue its reign of terror.

If civilians continue to suffer as part of this status-quo, both the utility and morality of airstrikes in the region need to be the subject of greater debate in the policy community.

Bryce W. Reeder, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Missouri-Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CBA TV English: “US conducts airstrikes targetting Al-Shabaab Militants”

(Informed Comment) – US Senator Rand Paul’s recent statements regarding Somalia are absurd on many levels. They are perhaps not worthy of further comment, but given that Paul a) sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and b) the US is fighting a war in Somalia, they shouldn’t be ignored.

Following on Trump’s racist “they can go back to where they came from” comments referring to the four US Congresswomen who especially anger him (including Somalia born Ilhan Oman from Minnesota), Paul in an interview with far right wing Breitbart said he would buy a ticket to Somalia for Omar. To quote him

“I think she (Omar) can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia — that has no capitalism, has no God-given rights guaranteed in a constitution, and has about seven different tribes that have been fighting each other for the last 40 years.”

Where to begin? First anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of Somalia knows that Somali society is organized around clans not “tribes.” Of course, ascribing Africa’s problems to tribalism has a long history in the West. In the case of Somalia the term tribe has no more meaning than saying that Belgium is divided among French, Flemish, and German speaking “tribes.” As for the number of seven (tribes), cited by Paul we can only guess that he has the Seven Kingdoms of Game of Thrones on the brain. The clan structure in Somalia is complex but understanding it and working with it is one of the keys to moving the country beyond seemingly intractable instability.

Seats in the current parliament are apportioned according to a “4.5 system” – which translates into the four major clans each getting about 22% of the seats and the rest divided among “minority clans.” This system, which grew out of peace negotiations to end clan warfare, was not envisioned as a permanent one but has yet to be replaced. Violent clan conflict continues to plague Somalia, but it overlaps and interplays with the broader conflict, now over ten years old, between the Somali government and AL-Shabab. The government relies on African Union forces supported by the United States.

Al-Shabab began as a local movement espousing an extreme form of Islam then later affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Al-Shabab continues to mount devastating attacks on civilian and military targets in Somalia as well as terrorist attacks in neighboring Kenya, which itself invaded Somalia in 2011 and still has troops there. A simplistic “the tribes are killing each other” narrative is especially off base when it comes to Somalia.

RE capitalism – no question Somalia has had a very tough time of it for a long time now, but Paul’s diagnosis is peculiar. Somalia is hardly a socialist state. Dictator Siad Barre claimed to be following some form of “scientific socialism” but his regime ended in 1991! What’s more he was a US Cold War ally against Soviet backed Ethiopia. The reality is that Somalia suffers from lack of effective government institutions. It more resembles some extreme libertarian fantasy of the kind espoused by Paul and his ilk then a socialist one.

Don’t like environmental regulations – go ahead and cut down your trees for charcoal and ship them to your gulf neighbors. Don’t like restrictions on fishing or dumping of toxic waste in your water – well foreign vessels have been doing both off the coast of Somalia for years. Don’t believe public schools are doing a good job and teachers unions a pain? No worries there either – religious schools have taken up the slack. Think the IRS is a bloated bureaucracy and taxes too high – not a problem in Somalia, although there is quite a bit of “freelance” tax collection going on by Al-Shabab. Perhaps, Paul meant that the state institutions that allow markets to function well are lacking in Somalia but who knows.

As for “no God given rights guaranteed in a constitution,” Somalia does in fact have a constitution albeit a provisional one. It has indeed struggled to fulfill the lofty principles contained in it, but that of course can be said of many nations. The Somalia Constitution in Article X says “Human dignity is given by God to every human being, and this is the basis for all human rights.” It’s actually the US Constitution that contains no reference to “God given rights” or God at all. Paul must be confusing the Constitution with the famous language of the Declaration of Independence about the endowment by the “Creator of inalienable rights.”

Given that US participation in Somalia’s civil war – largely in the form of drone strikes – is escalating, one would hope that someone in Paul’s position would have mastery of and be able to articulate basic information about the county even off the cuff. Paul has at times styled himself as an anti-interventionist critic of US foreign policy. If he wants his positions to have credibility he should refrain from spouting nonsense for political gain. Perhaps it is he who could benefit from a study mission to Somalia or if he wants to save taxpayers money simply do a little reading up.

David Pechefsky is a consultant on democratic governance and managed a US and British government funded program to provide training and technical assistance to the Federal Parliament of Somalia in 2013-2014. He is also a political activist and ran himself for the Democratic nomination in New York’s First Congressional District.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder: “Visibly Desperate Rand Paul Offers To Fly Ilhan Omar Back To Somalia”

60,000 armed Turkish soldiers will be deployed across four military bases abroad in accordance with a new 2022 plan, The New Khalij reported today.

The Turkish National Security Council finalised the plan yesterday, in order to meet Turkey’s military and commercial interests to support its allies.

Turkey already has 3,000 troops deployed near the Red Sea, in Somalia and a military base in Sudan’s Suakin Island, which is capable of holding some 20,000 military personnel for five years. 200 Turkish soldiers have been deployed in Somalia since October last year, training Somalia’s military.

In addition to some hundred soldiers currently based in Qatar’s Al-Udeid military base since shortly after the blockade on Qatar, Turkey plans to deploy more to fulfil its 2022 plan. The number has not publically been disclosed.

Qatar announced today that Turkish commercial firms will be given priority for business during the World Cup in 2022, to be held in the capital of Qatar, Doha.

Some 112 companies from a variety of sectors will be attending Expo Turkey by Qatar, co-organized with Turkey’s Independent Industrialists and Business people’s’ Association (MUSIAD). Turkish and Qatari commercial firms have already signed business agreements worth some 60 million dollars.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Related video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Why are so many countries expanding their presence in the Red Sea?”

“In our 10-year experience as first responders in Mogadishu, we haven’t seen anything like this,” the Aamin Ambulance service posted on Twitter.

Somali officials say the death toll from Saturday’s truck bombing in Mogadishu has risen to 276, with another 300 people injured. Medical personnel in the Somali capital have described horrific scenes of bodies burnt beyond recognition.

“In our 10 year experience as first responders in Mogadishu, we haven’t seen anything like this,” the Aamin Ambulance service posted on their Twitter account.

Security official Mohamed Adan told AFP that the blast resulted from “a truck loaded with explosives.” Police Captain Mohamed Hussein said the explosion appeared to target a hotel and destroyed several other buildings and vehicles.

Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has declared three days of mourning for the victims, calling on citizens to aid victims in any way they can.

“Today’s horrific attack proves our enemy would stop nothing to cause our people pain and suffering. Let’s unite against terror,” he tweeted.

“I call on our citizens to come out, extend help, donate blood and comfort the bereaved. Let’s get through this together,” Mohamed said.

A second attack took place in Madina district. “It was a car bomb. Two civilians were killed, ” Siyad Farah, a police official told Reuters. A gun battle between security forces and armed men followed the blast.

“The fighters first detonated a bomb outside the hotel’s gate, and then about four gunmen on foot gained entry into the hotel and started shooting at the patrons and also the security of the hotel,” Farah said, according to Al Jazeera.

“The hotel’s security staff, together with the police, are engaging in a gunfight inside and outside the hotel,” he added.

“It was a normal day. Very quiet and not much work to do,” Abdulkadir Abdirahman, director of Mogadishu’s ambulance service, told Al Jazeera.

“All of a sudden, I heard a very big blast. Everything shook. I have never heard anything that loud before. Within a few minutes, the sky was covered with very dark smoke that covered even the sunlight,” he said.

The blast occurred two days after the head of the U.S. Africa Command was in Mogadishu to meet with Somalia’s president. It also came 48 hours after both the defense minister and army chief left their posts without giving any reasons.

The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “sickened” by the attack, and tweeted that the world must show “unity in the face of terrorism.”

While the International Committee of the Red Cross posted, “We’re mourning the loss of 5 Somali Red Crescent volunteers, also killed in this attack.”

The U.S. military recently increased drone strikes targeting the al-Shabaab group, which have increased attacks on army bases across south and central Somalia.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the Islamist militant group al Shabaab, which is allied to al-Qaida, stages regular attacks in the capital and other parts of the country.

The group is waging an insurgency against the U.N.-backed government and its African Union allies in a bid to topple the weak administration and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam.

The militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have been steadily losing territory since then to the combined forces of African Union peacekeepers and Somali security forces.

But al Shabaab retains the ability to mount large, complex bomb attacks. Over the past three years, the number of civilians killed by insurgent bombings has steadily climbed as al Shabaab increases the size of its bombs.

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Al Jazeera English: “Somalia: Mogadishu rocked by twin bomb blasts, dozens killed”

Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts.  First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven.  Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. 

Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know.  True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient.  Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets.  Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week:

September 19: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

September 20: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive

September 21: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

September 22: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

September 23: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty

September 25: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

September 26: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq

Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth.  And those are just for starters.  To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press.  From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to disclose.  Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis.  Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective.

But here’s the truth of it.  None of it matters.

Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with.  In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. 

While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature.  Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality.

Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf?  Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive deleted]? 

Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. 

Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&!  Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative.  

Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: 

1. U.S. casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded.  In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 American soldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed.  (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000.) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned.  As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted).

2. The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated.  In a famous speech, dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt.  “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he continued.  “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron.  Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions.  As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars.  The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions.  Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure.  Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection. 

3. On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out.  Others have made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime.  Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms, ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part.  Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility.  In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense.  Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism.  What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability.

4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States.  Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans.  Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren?  The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.”  Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter.  To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all.

5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive.  William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God.  Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy.  Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich.  Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought.

6. Besides, we’re too busy.  Think of this as a corollary to point five.  Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright, who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques.  Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection.  We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory.  Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon.  The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago.  Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention.  As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end?  Why has it lasted almost 16 years?  Why doesn’t the finest fighting force in history actually win?  Can’t package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite?  Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say.

7. Anyway, the next president will save us.  At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well.  Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation.  Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again.  Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this seriously.  Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial.  One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right.  Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion!  Corruption!  Obstruction!  Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution.  The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice.

8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism.  As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars.  Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief?  Those days are long gone.  Culturally, the armed forces have moved left.  Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality.  So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back.  Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars.  Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire.  Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning.

A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America.  But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact.  Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author, most recently, of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Andrew J. Bacevich

Via Tomdispatch.com

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

AP: “Mattis, NATO pledge continuing support to Afghanistan”