Fighting in Somalia is prompting large numbers of civilians to flee into Kenya. Photo: IRIN

Somalia’s president has declared a state of emergency following weeks of intense fighting between Islamic militants and pro-government forces. Over the weekend, the government requested foreign troops from neighboring countries to help stabilize the troubled nation.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has blamed al-Shabab, a radical Islamist group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, for the surge in violence. Control over the failed state is split between many groups.

The nation has had no effective government since 1991, and one third of the population requires food aid. Read more: Q&A: Answers to lawlessness in Somalia.

Michael Keating is the senior fellow and associate director at the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He writes at Worldfocus contributor World Politics Review about Kenya’s response to the Somali government’s request for intervention.

As the world was riveted to the events in Iran last week, the beleaguered government of Somalia put out an S.O.S. for international military support in its deteriorating fight against al Shabab guerrillas and other radical opposition forces. Thus far, only Kenyan government officials have publicly responded with threats of military intervention.

But there remains the possibility that troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and Uganda might be deployed in a combined warmaking/peacekeeping operation under the banner of the African Union and other international and regional organizations. More than 5,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are currently deployed to protect government operations in and around Mogadishu, but in recent days they have been targeted by anti-government militants who refuse to recognize their neutral status.

The response from Kenya seems to suggest that the profile of the intervention would shift from peacekeeping to combat operations against al Shabab. In response, a spokesman for al Shabab said that any foreign troops “would be sent home in coffins.”

Kenya has many reasons to try to deal with the chaos on its border. The primary one is al Shabab’s close ties with al-Qaida, which put Kenya in the crosshairs of international jihadists. Both the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998 as well as the subsequent Paradise Hotel bombing in Kikambala were coordinated by al-Qaida-backed operatives coming across Kenya’s long and virtually unpoliced border with Somalia. Kenya also has problems with its own homegrown militants, many of whom train and get both financing and weapons from Somali brethren.

Another reason for Kenyan concern is the rapid increase in recent weeks in the number of Internally Displaced Persons arriving at border towns along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. There are already 160,000 Somali refugees in the Dadaab camps on the Kenyan side of the border, most of whom have been living there since the early 1990s.

[...]This is a developing situation that the Europeans and Americans should pay careful attention to. The recent “World War” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which troops from multiple foreign countries ran riot for several years in the name of stabilization, led to millions of civilian deaths. Somalia has far fewer riches than the Congo to plunder, but no matter what happens, civilians are likely to bear the brunt of the fighting. And any survey of Somali history suggests that nothing radicalizes the population like an invasion of foreigners.

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The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

The World Food Programme provides humanitarian aid in Somalia.

As U.S. President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, some analysts have suggested that he will usher in an international policy rooted in “soft power” — with focus on dialogue rather than confrontation. 

David Axe is an independent correspondent contributing to From the Frontline and World Politics Review. He blogs at ”War is Boring” and writes about a new generation of war in Africa, one waged in courtrooms and through humanitarian aid. 

U.S. wages first battles in new generation of war

War has evolved rapidly in the last 100 years, prompting historians and strategists to come up with new terms for new ways of fighting. They call mechanized warfare, which originated in the early 20th century, the third “generation” of war, and ideological warfare waged by guerilla groups the fourth.

But what about guerilla-style warfare waged by non-ideological groups against traditional states — pirates, for instance, whose attacks can destabilize trade-dependent nations, but who don’t have strategic goals beyond just getting rich? Free-for-all violence, with indirect global effects, represents a fifth generation of war, according to some experts. And when it comes to defeating fifth-gen enemies, “the old rules of warfare do not apply,” declared Marine Lt. Col. Stanton Coerr, writing in Marine Corps Gazette, a professional journal.

So the U.S. military and its government partners are writing new rules, and putting them to the test on the first of the fifth-generation battlefields emerging in Africa.

Fifth-gen enemies do not have traditional “centers of gravity” — armies, governments, factories, charismatic leaders — that can be destroyed by military attacks. By their mere survival, these enemies undermine the notion that nation-states, their ideals and their economies are viable in the modern world.

Examples of emerging fifth-generation wars include: the escalating piracy campaign off the coast of Somalia which has threatened 10 percent of the world’s sea trade; the 18-year-old anarchy on land in Somalia, which has allowed that piracy to flourish; and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, Chad and Central African Republic that has exacerbated rebellions in all three countries and defied the efforts of scores of nations to resolve it.

The Pentagon is just beginning to write the new rulebook for addressing these conflicts. Already, one thing is clear: old-fashioned brute force is worse than useless when it comes to beating fifth-gen enemies. Physical attacks by military forces can actually be counterproductive.

“Precisely the same technology that wins conventional wars loses unconventional ones,” Coerr contended. Trying to wage a third-generation, firepower-heavy war against an elusive, sometimes hard-to-define fifth-generation enemy will only cost the United States its wealth, its domestic political unity and its good standing in the eyes of the world.

Instead, the Pentagon plans to use less-than-lethal means to defeat — gradually, and over long periods of time — the latest-generation threats. These means include economic and humanitarian assistance, legal action and communication. Their goal is to alleviate “the insecurities and the conditions of human beings that create these insecurities across state borders,” in the words of Maj. Shannon Beebe, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer for Africa. These plans have already been put into effect in all three of the fifth-generation wars listed above.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Peter Casier under a Creative Commons license.

A bomb site in Beirut, Lebanon, where Israel struck in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. Israeli military tactics have changed since that time.

Thousands of Israeli troops are massing on the Gaza border, and a ground invasion is now considered imminent. This seven-day Gaza conflict has so far seen Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip and Hamas rocket attacks in Israel. The Israeli cabinet approved a ground invasion of Gaza last week.

Hampton Stephens is the editor-in-chief and publisher of World Politics Review. He writes about prospects for an Israeli ground invasion and discusses Israel’s military improvements since its widely-criticized ground assault on Lebanon in 2006.

See his interview with Martin Savidge here: Israeli ground invasion of Gaza considered imminent. 

The war in Gaza: Can Israel have military success?

Much of the commentary surrounding the current Israel-Hamas war has been addressed to the question of whether Israel has any hope of achieving its goals militarily, given that Hamas, like Hezbollah in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, is a non-state actor that does not fight conventionally and is therefore difficult to defeat with conventional military means.

Israel’s goals: Short-term vs. long-term

When addressing this question, it’s important to be clear about what Israel’s goals are in this current operation. Israel’s short-term military objectives need to be distinguished from the long-term objective of security for the state of Israel, which ultimately means some sort of sustainable peace with its Palestinian neighbors.

As many commentators have pointed out, it is indeed hard to imagine how this war with Hamas will further that ultimate goal of peace, given that conflict of this sort could well strengthen Hamas politically in the region, and given that Israel’s bombing campaign, by killing civilians and inflaming the “Arab street,” makes it difficult even for those Arab governments that might well like to see Hamas be dealt a setback to support Israel’s actions.

However, in contrast to the 2006 Hezbollah war, Israel seems to have, at least initially, set rather modest military objectives. At the outset of the Hezbollah war, Israel announced that it wanted to achieve the return of Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah, cripple the group militarily, and prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its military capacity in Southern Lebanon. By confounding those very high expectations that Israel created, Hezbollah was able to claim victory, cement the perception of that victory among its constituents in Lebanon as well as internationally and gain politically as a result.

Having apparently learned those lessons from the Hezbollah war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials have been much more circumspect in their declarations about Israel’s intentions this time around. Far from seeking any kind of definitive victory over Hamas, their announced intention is merely to degrade Hamas’ ability to terrorize southern Israel with rocket attacks. In a statement at the outset of the current operation on Dec. 28, Olmert said the main objective would be “to restore normal life and quiet to residents of the south.”

While the asymmetrical nature of the fight against an organization like Hamas presents distinct challenges for a traditional military operation, Israel may well be able to achieve this rather modest goal.

Israel’s successes and challenges

Israel’s bombing campaign has sought to degrade Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel by targeting the group’s rocket installations, destroying its existing stock of weapons, killing members of its leadership, and destroying smuggling tunnels along the Israel-Egypt border that Hamas has used to import weapons into the Gaza strip.

There are indications that Israel is having some success on all of these fronts so far, although it remains to be seen whether a bombing campaign alone will sufficiently degrade Hamas’ rocket-attack capability.

It is very difficult to find reliable damage assessments in the midst of a war, but anecdotal evidence indicates that Israel has made significant progress in achieving its goals in the early part of a campaign that could last for many days. Israeli news reports indicate that the Israeli Air Force has been gathering intelligence on Hamas smuggling tunnels along the Israel-Egypt border for months, and that it has succeeded in destroying a significant number of those tunnels in the early days of the war. Meanwhile, other reports in the Israeli press indicate that Israel may have already destroyed approximately one-third of Hamas rocket stockpiles. In the campaign to target Hamas leadership, Israel reportedly scored a significant success on Jan. 1, killing Hamas official Nizar Rayan in his home.

Even this significant success, however, highlighted how Israel’s short-term military objectives are often in conflict with its long-term strategic interests. The strike that killed Rayan reportedly also killed four of his wives and nine of his children, providing more ammunition against Israel in the international information war that is such a significant part of this conflict and of the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a microcosm of the most significant dilemma facing Israel in its war against Hamas, the Israeli military has said that secondary explosions after the strike prove that Rayan’s home was being used to store weapons and ammunition. As of Dec. 31, a United Nations official estimated that of the approximate 400 people killed so far in the Gaza war, about 80 have been civilians, including more than 40 children.

Not all asymmetric conflicts are created equal

Beyond the dilemma that is at the heart of any asymmetric fight against a non-traditional force such as Hamas, it appears that Israel is in a better position to achieve its military objectives in this campaign against Hamas than it was vis-à-vis Hezbollah in the 2006 war to which the current conflict has so often been compared, for reasons that have to do with the nature of the battlefield on which the current campaign is being prosecuted.

In general, Hezbollah was much better able to conceal its fighters and weapons from the reach of Israeli bombs than Hamas has been, given the geography of the Gaza strip and the state of Israeli knowledge about Hamas operations there.

Whereas southern Lebanon is a mountainous region with complex geography that provides good defensive cover, one observer summed up the rather more featureless geography of the Gaza strip as “a cross between a beach, a desert and a slum.”

In addition, Gaza is an area of just 360 square kilometers, providing a circumscribed target for Israeli intelligence gathering. Having occupied the Gaza strip for almost 30 years, Israel has a robust base of knowledge about the area. Israeli intelligence gathering and military planning, it is now clear, did not cease during the six-month ceasefire with Hamas that ended last month. Citing sources in the Israeli defense establishment, Haaretz reported Dec. 31 that the Israeli military had been gathering information for months in preparation for the Gaza operation.

New weapons on both sides

In addition to gathering information, Israel appears also to have acquired in recent months a significant new weapon that it has first used in the Gaza conflict. While Israel’s fighter aircraft have typically carried 1,000- and 2,000-pound satellite-guided munitions, the Israel Air Force in September 2008 began acquiring from the United States up to 1,000 new Boeing-made 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs. The so-called GBU-29 gives the Israeli Air Force the ability to carry up to four bombs on each of its fighter planes, allowing them to make more bombing runs per sortie, and reduces collateral damage while remaining sufficiently destructive to be effective, according to the U.S. Air Force. In addition, the bomb has some capability to penetrate hardened structures, according to Boeing, a capability that has no doubt proven useful to Israel in its efforts to destroy Hamas infrastructure in Gaza.

Hamas, of course, also used the ceasefire to prepare for the day when it would end, and while Israel has a profound advantage when it comes to the weapons and technology available to it, this conflict has revealed that Hamas’ capabilities are also improving.

Previous Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel have employed two main types of rockets: homemade Qassam rockets that are wildly inaccurate and have a maximum range of less than 10 miles; and Iranian-made, Soviet-designed Grad rockets that can fly longer distances but are still inaccurate. However, the post-ceasefire period has seen the debut of new, more accurate and more deadly Chinese-made 122 millimeter rockets that can fly up to 25 miles. On Dec. 30, one such rocket hit an empty schoolhouse in the Negev Desert city of Beersheba, about 22 miles from the Gaza strip.

A ground offensive?

It remains to be seen whether the escalation of Hamas rocket attacks that has been seen since Israel began its bombing campaign will lead Israel to conclude that it must expand its operation from an air campaign to a full-scale ground assault. What is clear, however, is that Israel is preparing for such an invasion on the ground.

Another key lesson that came out of Israel’s troubled war against Hezbollah in 2006 is that Israel was not sufficiently prepared for the ground invasion that eventually came. The report of the Winograd Commission that examined Israel’s failures in the Hezbollah warconcluded that the Israeli Defense Forces “did not demand . . . early mobilization of the reserves so they could be equipped and trained in case a ground operation would be required.”

It is clear from the preparations that are being seen on the ground that Israel does not want to make the same mistake again. However, it is perhaps premature to conclude that these preparations for a ground invasion indicate that such an invasion is inevitable. Given the undesirable results of the ground war in Lebanon in 2006, and given the unpredictable consequences of a ground invasion with regard to both the difficulty of the fight and the international reaction to such a move, Israel has significant reason to be wary of expanding the war to the ground.

Three factors are likely to determine whether a ground invasion will come: whether Israel assesses that is making sufficient progress toward degrading Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel with an air campaign alone, whether those voices within Israel that are agitating for expanding the objectives of the war will win out, and whether Hamas will agree to a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.

While, as mentioned above, Israeli leaders have so far been determined to keep their objectives modest, some in the Israeli defense establishment have said that Israel should not pass up an opportunity to completely destroy Hamas in the Gaza strip and to topple the group from power.

Meanwhile, there are indications that Israel might forego a ground invasion and accept a ceasefire on its own terms, which Israeli officials have said would involve international monitors to ensure compliance with any truce.

The problem for Israel is not only that a ground invasion would require a relatively higher price in blood compared to a bombing campaign alone, but that keeping Hamas out of power after having deposed it would likely necessitate a re-occupation of the Gaza strip for an indeterminate period. Such a course would then risk further tension between Israel’s short-term objective of degrading Hamas’ ability to threaten southern Israel and the country’s long-term strategic objectives.

In a comprehensive analysis of the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war, military analyst William Arkin articulated a key strategic objective that Israel must also keep in mind in the current war. He wrote that that if Israel had prosecuted the 2006 Hezbollah war differently, it might have better achieved not only its short-term objectives, but also “the fundamental long-term objective of counterterrorism: not creating even more enemies tomorrow.” While Israel appears to be making progress toward achieving its immediate goals in Gaza, the conflict’s remaining days will tell whether it manages to avoid significantly undermining its long-term interests in the process.

Read this post on World Politics Review. 

Photo courtesy of Flickr user delayed gratification under a Creative Commons license.

Hampton Stephens, the editor-in-chief and publisher of World Politics Review, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Israeli response to Hamas rockets, likely tactics in a ground invasion and lessons learned from Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

Read his extended commentary about Israeli military capability here: Can Israel’s military succeed in Gaza?