Six for Six

BOSTON -- If you're keeping score of George W. Bush's foreign military adventures, under "Somalia" you should probably chalk up another one for the Americans in the "loss" column. But the latest developments in Somalia are not only fascinating for what they tell us about the misconduct of American foreign policy in recent years. 

Somalia seems to offer more intriguing evidence about how governments often must come to terms with militias, insurgent forces and other such informal armed groups in countries around the Arab-Asian region -- and the roles these entities play where formal governments appears unable to deliver the basic requirements of statehood.

On October 26, in an agreement in Djibouti brokered by the United Nations, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) agreed that the Ethiopian troops who invaded the country two years ago with American support would start to withdraw from the capital of Mogadishu as a prelude to leaving all of Somalia. The two sides also agreed that insurgent troops and the official armed forces would jointly police this battered country which is on the brink of a massive humanitarian disaster.

This is a fragile agreement and could collapse if some of the insurgent groups do not adhere to its ceasefire provisions. Yet the mere fact that the agreement was reached represents another setback for American-backed efforts to use proxy forces to fight against indigenous Islamist forces that have gained strength in many parts of the Arab-Asian region. This seems to be the sixth country in the past two years where United States-supported and -armed governments have had to come to terms with local Islamists who have either challenged the government or built parallel governance systems alongside the official ones.

In Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine and Somalia -- to varying degrees, and in very different contexts -- we have witnessed US-backed governments fight back against Islamist groups, and in some cases -- due to defeat or merely fatigue and stalemate -- make overtures to the opposition to find a modus vivendi that formalizes the role of the insurgents in running the state.

- In Afghanistan, the government has merely broached the idea of talking with the Taliban and has not gone so far as to strike a deal.
- In Lebanon, the Hizbullah-led opposition shares power in the cabinet.
- In Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government bought off some Islamist and tribal insurgents in order to fight the more onerous Al-Qaeda killers.
- In Pakistan, the army fights some Taliban-friendly Islamists and tribalists, while most of the parliament prefers to talk and strike a deal that ends the domestic fighting and terror.
- In Palestine, Hamas defeated Fateh and now rules in Gaza until they return to a unity government soon, and Hamas also forced Israel to accept a cease-fire as a likely prelude to a prisoner exchange and a longer cease-fire.

Is there a pattern here, or just a string of bad luck for the Legions of Liberty of George Bush and Condi Rice? Perhaps, six instances in a row don't make a pattern, but neither can these instances be dismissed as unfortunate bad luck for Washington. 

A more reasonable assessment would suggest that indigenous forces fighting for what they believe to be their sovereignty and their liberation from foreign invaders or hegemons are more likely to succeed in the end because they tend to fight in their own communities and with greater intensity.

Some of these groups (the Taliban) are totalitarian thugs. Others are legitimate nationalists (Hamas and Hizbullah). And others fall in between. More interesting is the other half of the equation -- the US-backed government forces that fight them, and that ultimately have to change course and strike a deal. The deal-making process is intriguing, partly because in most of these cases it has not worked very well. Its significance is not in the successes, but in the attempts to achieve peace and security through political bargains.

It is too early to tell what will happen in any or all of these cases. All of them, though, confirm yet again the futility of distant powers using foreign armies and local proxies as an instrument of imposing their will on local populations who are usually more inclined to make a deal than to engage in perpetual war.

If the transitional government and the insurgents in Somalia succeed in implementing the cease-fire and working out power-sharing arrangements, they would provide a rare example of how to do this after driving out the foreign forces. 

Six consecutive examples of American-backed governments changing their policies and coming to terms with their insurgent foes may not be a pattern. We'll leave that for the academics. 

Let's just agree that it is a fascinating sequence of six consecutive American-backed governments changing their policies and coming to terms with their insurgent foes.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.