US seeks delicate balance on Somali

The Obama administration may soon increase its already sizable military commitment to Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government even as political factors compel the Pentagon to maintain a mainly invisible role in combating an Islamist insurgency.This delicate balance reflects competing calculations.On one hand, the United States wants to cripple Al Shabaab militants who it says are linked to US arch-enemy Osama bin Laden and who have threatened to attack Kenya.That’s the factor driving possible use of US drones in Somali airspace to target Al Shabaab leaders.On the other hand, Washington worries that high-profile military involvement would serve to strengthen grassroots Somali support for Islamist fighters.The militants drew on nationalist sentiment in their successful 2008 campaign to evict US-backed Ethiopian occupiers.Reluctance to intervene directly also stems from what some US officials refer to as “the Somalia syndrome.”The previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, quickly withdrew US troops from Somalia in 1993 in the face of a political firestorm at home that followed the killing of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu.Already at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration clearly has no stomach to dispatch US forces to a third front of the “global war on terror.”Johnnie Carson, Obama’s top Africa official, was at pains last month to reject suggestions of direct US military action inside Somalia.“The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not co-ordinate the military operations of the TFG and we have not and will not be providing direct support for any potential military offensives,” Mr Carson declared at a press briefing.Americanise conflict“Further, we are not providing or paying for military advisers for the TFG. There is no desire to Americanise the conflict in Somalia.”At the same time, however, the US reserves the option to conduct commando raids inside Somalia when prime targets come into the Pentagon’s sights.US Special Forces used helicopter gunships to kill a prime Al Qaida suspect in southern Somalia last September.

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