ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 advances a critical understanding of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency interventions undertaken in Somalia by Ethiopia and the USA between 2001 and 2010. On the military side, the GWoT has been one of the most violent phases of foreign intervention in Somalia; where the war’s asymmetrical conduct of conflict, and in particular the Ethiopian occupation, galvanised further reaction from those groups that opposed their country’s occupation. On the diplomatic scale, the GWoT reduced cooperation spaces, as interveners promoted an exclusionary model of negotiation across the peace processes, leading to the estab-lishment and consolidation of a transitional government, where the isolation of key political actors accelerated the ideological polarisation of the insurgency towards an antagonist, intransigent position. Not only did conflict among Somali actors became malleable to regional and global interests, but also regional and global interests, narratives and interventionary infrastructures, were mobilised and instrumentalised by Somali actors to convey or reinvent their relationships. The criminalisation of the enemy, and the consequent militarisation of the conflict became counterproductive due to the killing of innocents, the hunger this war produced among the population and the impossibility of prioritising a more comprehensive peacebuilding strategy.
