Recently declassified documents starkly illustrate the horse-trading and quid pro quos that were endemic to intelligence liaisons between the US and its African allies during the Cold War. To take one example, in 1976 the US Ambassador to Kenya sought authorisation from the Pentagon to provide Kenyan defence officials with secret intelligence ‘on Soviet military activity in Somalia as a quid [pro quo]’ that demonstrated the value of closer ties with Washington (US Embassy Nairobi to US Secretary of Defense 1976).1 More recent accounts of negotiations that lead to intelligence cooperation between the US and its African security partners remain largely classified. Insights can be gleaned, however, into the bargaining that ensues after these intelligence liaisons are in place.2
Despite formal intelligence sharing agreements between the US and its African allies, once the passing of secrets begins, disputes often arise that are addressed through improvisation and bargaining. Ethiopia, in particular, has deployed a range of tactics to assert its interests in the context of these disputes. For example, since the beginning of the US campaign against Al-Qaeda, Ethiopia has stalled US intelligence gathering initiatives within its borders, pulled Ethiopian liaison officers from joint intelligence operations with the US and used shared intelligence in ways contrary to US expectations. US officials have responded to these actions with a mixture of concessions, aimed at preserving the intelligence liaison, and threats, intended to constrain the more self-interested impulses of their Ethiopian ally. Examining this type of bargaining casts much needed light on the trajectories and outcomes of intelligence cooperation between the US and its African allies. Toward this end, using the analytical framework of compliance bargaining, this article investigates US and Ethiopian intelligence cooperation aimed at neutralising insurgents in Somalia during the first decade of the ‘War on Terror’.
Primarily used by scholars to examine trade agreements, using compliance bargaining as an analytical framework elucidates the process through which states bargain over the terms and obligations of an agreement that has already been established. I contend that the application of this framework to bargaining over intelligence cooperation helps to meaningfully revise our understanding of liaisons between the US and its African allies. Assessing these relationships through the lens of compliance bargaining calls into question prominent depictions of US–African security partnerships as rigidly hierarchical alliances in which the US calls the shots and its African allies have little choice but to comply. The application of this framework to disputes over intelligence cooperation between Ethiopia and the US will be guided by two central questions. How successful has Ethiopia been in compelling the US to comply with its reading of the terms of the intelligence liaison between these two states? And how effectively has Ethiopia used this liaison as a source of bargaining leverage to acquire political concessions from the US? I argue that despite the vast power asymmetries between these states Ethiopia has routinely dictated and policed the terms of its intelligence liaison with the US while consistently finding ways to leverage this liaison in pursuit of its regional objectives.
This case study underscores the increasingly prominent role intelligence cooperation plays within the rapidly expanding array of security partnerships the US has established with African states over the course of the last decade. Defence officials, particularly those associated with the United States Africa Command and the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, routinely highlight US efforts to work with and strengthen the intelligence services of their African security partners. However, scant scholarly attention has been paid to the implications of this form of cooperation, the dependencies and vulnerabilities it creates for both the US and African states, or the dangers it may pose to the security and civil liberties of civilians throughout Africa.
Liaison disputes and compliance bargaining
The most expansive and widely accepted use of the term intelligence liaison references a broad range of collaborative efforts between the military and civilian intelligence services of allied states. These efforts include sharing information, engaging in joint covert operations, providing or receiving access to intelligence collection infrastructure, and offering or receiving assistance in the form of funding, training and expertise (Westerfield 1996; see also Johnson and Freyberg 1997). While these activities bolster security cooperation between states, they also give rise to disputes over the terms, obligations and expectations that each state associates with the liaison. I argue that these disputes are often addressed through compliance or post-agreement bargaining processes.
Compliance bargaining, as a political phenomenon and an analytical framework that aims to explain this phenomenon, has been most clearly delineated in the work of Jönsson and Tallberg (1998; see also Jackson 2012). As a framework, compliance bargaining calls attention to the mechanisms of both management and enforcement that states mobilise when they share an interest in maintaining an agreement but have conflicting views on how the agreement should be implemented. It is a process-oriented line of inquiry that pays special attention to the ways states test the limits of compliance, respond to violations of agreements and use tactics to generate bargaining leverage.
While compliance bargaining as an analytical framework has been primarily applied to studies of international trade agreements, I contend that its explanatory power can be substantively extended to intelligence liaisons. Scholars have long suggested that bargaining is inherent in intelligence liaisons. Westerfield (1996) contends that the US largely applies a ‘bargaining style of management’ (524) to its liaisons with other states. As such, the US relies on intelligence agents from allied states to gather human intelligence in their respective regions and in exchange provides signals intelligence about shared targets and threats. Narrowing the definition of the term, Sims (2006) posits that at its core liaison is ‘subcontracted intelligence collection based on barter’ (196). Hence, any assistance that one liaison partner offers another is offered with the expectation that political or intelligence gains will result. My application of the compliance bargaining framework builds on these insights and underscores that political or intelligence gains do not spring fully formed from the texts of liaison agreements but are secured over time as states police the implementation of their cooperative intelligence initiatives and respond to suspected or actual violations by their liaison partners.
When the focus is shifted from the premise of intelligence cooperation to the actual practice of it, intelligence studies literature tends to overlook the significance of bargaining processes between allies as liaisons endure. Two strands of analysis largely dominate accounts of intelligence cooperation. One strand focuses on the benefits and costs of intelligence liaisons, the other on symmetry and asymmetry within these partnerships. To the extent that either of these approaches addresses bargaining, the focus tends to be negotiations that lead to intelligence cooperation, while disputes over compliance with the terms of this cooperation are rarely interrogated. This works to the detriment of our understanding of liaisons because bargaining processes over the course of liaisons can be of pivotal significance to the consequences of these partnerships for states, their shared enemies, and civilians in regions where covert operations are conducted.
The cost–benefit school of intelligence analysis generally concludes that states can shape the risks and rewards of intelligence liaisons by carefully negotiating the terms of these agreements, such as the type and degree of intelligence that will be shared, the status of personnel and facilities, and how intelligence will be used and protected once exchanged (Richelson 1990; Clough 2004).3 However, because intelligence liaisons are laced with both cooperative and competitive impulses, compliance with these terms can rarely be taken for granted. (For a discussion of the lack of trust that hinders intelligence cooperation between even the closest of allies, see Aldrich 2004.) As I illustrate, bargaining thus extends far beyond the establishment of liaisons.
The secrecy inherent in intelligence collection and the high stakes of many of these operations often offer strong incentives for non-compliance or for testing the limits of compliance. Compliance bargaining is thus an important process in which states not only consider their own security interests and the expectations of their intelligence partners, but also respond to changing international threats and conditions. Within this dynamic, risks and dependencies for one state in a liaison can be ready sources of leverage for the other.
Analysis that accounts for symmetry or asymmetry within liaisons tends to highlight the distribution of labour and power between partnering states. Hence, there is greater discussion of the competitive impulses and divergent interests that characterise alliances (Walsh 2007; see also Walsh 2010; Sims 2006).4 The propensity of states to establish hierarchies in intelligence cooperation and manipulate liaisons to gain influence is made clear in this research. However, because much of this analysis seeks to establish typologies of intelligence cooperation, liaisons are often depicted as rigidly adversarial or hierarchical. To the extent that the adversarial impulses within asymmetrical liaisons are noted, the emphasis is quite often on the ways that more powerful states consistently strong-arm their weaker partners.
The compliance bargaining framework, by contrast, is more carefully attuned to extended processes of persuasion and retaliation in which weaker states attempt to challenge the imposition of hierarchy by their stronger allies. Even in liaisons such as the one I examine between Ethiopia and the US which cannot be considered primarily adversarial, weaker states often deploy adversarial bargaining tactics, large and small, against their stronger partners. A focus on compliance bargaining highlights these tactics – such as the weaker partner suddenly pulling its operatives out of joint intelligence gathering operations – and examines the leverage that may be derived from their application.
Assessing intelligence cooperation through the analytical lens of compliance bargaining also helps to bridge the long-standing divide between international relations theory and intelligence studies literature. International relations research on why states comply with the terms of their agreements, most prominently the enforcement and management schools with their respective emphases on sanctions and ‘jawboning’,5 both find analytical purchase within studies of compliance bargaining (Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996; Chayes and Chayes 1993; see also Underdal 1998). These mechanisms for securing compliance are often noted in the literature on intelligence liaisons. Yet they have not been integrated into an analytical framework, anchored in international relations theory, that identifies their broader salience as tactics in extended bargaining processes that are pivotal to the trajectories of liaisons, security alliances and relations between allies as a whole. (For further discussion, see Svendsen 2009.)
The origins of US–Ethiopian intelligence liaison
In the immediate wake of the 2001 US intervention in Afghanistan, Bush administration officials began to identify the Horn of Africa, Somalia in particular, as a potential safe haven where Al-Qaeda could reconstitute itself, train fighters and plan attacks. At the time, US civil and military intelligence services confronted a paucity of human intelligence networks in Somalia. As the term suggests, human intelligence is information collected and provided by human sources, ranging from paid informants to foreign government officials (Joint Chiefs of Staff 2015). This intelligence aims to identify the ‘intentions, composition, strength, disposition, tactics, equipment, personnel and capabilities’ (Jones 2002, 29) of US adversaries.
Garrett Jones, former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Mogadishu, expressed little doubt that the Bush administration was forced to monitor Somalia through ‘second and third hand sources’ because the CIA had lacked a dedicated presence there for nearly a decade. Gayle Smith, Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, noted that US intelligence on Africa was generally ‘woefully weak and limited’. Intelligence gathering in Somalia, she suggested, was all the more constrained by the acute dearth of Somali speakers among US forces (Kelly 2005).
As the US began to turn its attention to the Horn of Africa, regional experts asserted that Ethiopia had been ‘fairly pivotal’ in providing the Pentagon with ‘exaggerated’ intelligence that identified Somalia as a haven for Al-Qaeda operatives (Cobb 2001; Menkhaus 2002). Ethiopia’s running conflict with Somalia and irredentist Somali insurgents in its Ogaden region dates to the founding of the Somali state and has been punctuated by three major wars. These tensions have provided Ethiopia with ongoing motive and opportunity to maintain an active intelligence gathering presence in Somalia (Bryden 2003; Tareke 2000; Mesfin 2010). Moreover, by helping to establish and sustain the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council, a warlord coalition founded in 2001, Ethiopia was able to keep a close watch on and play a hand in steering the course of events in Mogadishu (Dagne 2002). In short, Ethiopia’s human intelligence network in Somalia far surpassed that of the US in sophistication and entrenchment.
US officials, however, were determined to ‘get smarter’ (La Guardia 2001). Toward this end, in November 2002, the Pentagon established the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and by 2003 had based the majority of its personnel in Djibouti. The widely touted mission of the task force, according to Pentagon officials, was ‘waging peace’ by conducting humanitarian aid missions in the Horn of Africa and strengthening regional military forces (Mahnken 2005). However, from the very outset these were secondary goals for the commander of the task force, who declared upon its founding that his primary focus was to ‘detect, disorganize, and defeat’ terrorists groups in the region (Agence France Presse 2002). Indeed, the task force provided a headquarters and, intelligence officials suggest, a ‘blanket of cover’ for troops from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command who gathered intelligence and tracked down terrorist suspects, quite often in joint operations with Ethiopian soldiers (Naylor 2011b).
While they downplayed the more kinetic aims of the task force, US defence officials made no secret of their efforts to further consolidate ‘military and intelligence cooperation’ with Ethiopia (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 2003). Ethiopia, for its part, was receptive to these overtures and began to work closely with the Combined Joint Task Force, seconding a liaison officer to the task force’s intelligence sharing fusion cell.6 This rapidly evolving, tight-knit intelligence cooperation between Ethiopia and the United States would soon serve as a valuable source of leverage for the administration of the late Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi.
Conceding territory: the Ethiopia–Eritrea border dispute
From 1998 to 2000 Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a war that resulted in an estimated 50,000 casualties due to a long-running dispute regarding the delineation of the border between the two states (Iyob 2000; Lacina and Gleditsch 2005). As a provision of the Algiers Agreement that ended this bloody conflict, Eritrea and Ethiopia agreed to abide by the rulings of an independent boundary commission based in the Hague. In 2002, when the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) issued its findings, it largely sided with Eritrea’s view of where the border between the states lies. After refusing for two years to recognise the Commission’s ‘illegal and unjust’ findings, in 2004 the Meles administration agreed to accept the Commission’s ruling ‘in principle’ as part of a five-point plan Ethiopia proposed to bring peace to the region (Mitchell 2004). According to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, the five-point plan was based on a US proposal, but State Department officials insisted that the Meles administration should accept the Boundary Commission’s ruling without conditions, rather than ‘in principle’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007a).
As such, when Meles announced his five-point plan in 2004, while the African Union, the UN and several European states encouraged the prime minister’s initiative, US officials initially refused to publicly support the plan. The Ethiopians were outraged. According to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, in ‘retaliation’ as a clear ‘signal of dissatisfaction’, Meles temporarily withdrew Ethiopia’s liaison officers from the CJTF-HOA. These officers were a central link between the task force and the Ethiopian Ministry of Defence and facilitated the sharing of classified intelligence between the two agencies (US Embassy Addis Ababa to US CIA 2007a; for discussion of role of liaison officers see CJTF-HOA 2012 and CJTF-HOA 2015).
At the time, the US largely lacked what one Bush administration official termed ‘human intelligence on a fundamental level’ in Somalia, and the cooperation of the Ethiopians in this regard had been of significant assistance (Naylor 2011a). The CIA had been establishing contacts with Somali warlords since 2002, and in 2005 began channelling funds to these warlords in the hope that they would initiate a campaign to kill and capture Al-Qaeda operatives. This effort has been widely characterised as ill conceived and ineffective by both administration officials and regional analysts. Moreover, because of the relatively new and clearly mercenary nature of these ties, the information provided by these warlords could not be as trusted as the intelligence which Ethiopia had routinely shared. As such, Meles’ act of retaliation was particularly well timed. By manipulating US access to Ethiopia’s human intelligence, Meles intended to express his anger at the muted response the US had given his plan and influence the State Department’s decision making with regard to the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This bargaining tactic appears to have captured the attention of US officials.
By early 2005 Bush administration officials began to issue statements suggesting that their initial silence was not a refutation of Meles’ five-point plan. In a May 2005 Congressional hearing, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Donald Yamamoto, asserted that the State Department’s lack of comment was ‘not to say that the five point plan is bad or it lacks merit or positive issues’ (Federal News Service 2005). Rather, the silence was simply an attempt to encourage the leadership in Ethiopia and Eritrea to engage each other more directly. It is worth noting that in the same month when Yamamoto began to back-pedal before the US Congress, the Meles administration began to publicly declare to the international press that Ethiopia had evidence of a ‘very active al Qaeda cell’ in Somalia (Tomlinson 2005a). This view was almost immediately echoed by senior US defence officials interested in adding substance to often vague pronouncements about the use of Somalia as a terrorist safe haven (Tomlinson 2005b).
Eritrea’s growing intransigence on the border issue also strengthened Ethiopia’s hand. Much of the international community responded to Meles’ five-point plan as an avenue for dialogue between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Eritrea, however, refused to engage in any negotiations until Ethiopia committed to demarcating the border in precise accordance with the Boundary Commission’s initial ruling. In late 2005 Eritrea announced travel and flight restrictions on the UN border-monitoring force that had been established as part of the Algiers Agreement and demanded that all of the force’s North American and European staff be withdrawn. Eritrea’s president also condemned US efforts to mediate the conflict as ‘pro-Ethiopian’ (Healy and Plaut 2007, 6).
In many ways this was a fair assessment. By November 2005, intelligence cooperation between Ethiopia and the US had resumed. That month, in a meeting with Prime Minister Meles, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Yamamoto conveyed the Bush administration’s appreciation for ‘the successful intelligence sharing program between the US and Ethiopia on Somalia’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa 2005). At the same meeting, Meles asserted that the time was not right to move forward on negotiations with Eritrea over the border and refused to send an Ethiopian delegation to a mediation conference called by the Boundary Commission and strongly backed by the US. Moreover, Meles clung to the position that he only accepted the Commission’s ruling ‘in principle’.
In early 2006 Jendayi Frazer, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, after visiting the Ethiopian–Eritrean border alongside Ethiopian forces, began to lobby UN officials in support of Meles’ position. She claimed to understand the difficulties Ethiopia was having implementing the Boundary Commission’s ruling. The villages she had visited that had been ruled to be on Eritrean territory were populated by people who, Frazer claimed, strongly identified with Ethiopia. However, despite Meles’ belief that the president of the EEBC was ‘biased’ against Ethiopia, Frazer contended that the prime minister was showing increased flexibility and amenability to diplomacy (US Embassy Addis Ababa to US Embassy Eritrea 2006; for further discussion, see Bolton 2007).
In January 2006, Meles had submitted a memorandum to the UN Security Council that dispensed with the caveat ‘in principle’ with regard to Ethiopia’s decision to accept the EEBC ruling. However, in practice he was still demanding that the demarcation of the border not follow a strict reading of the Commission’s ruling and that implementation of the ruling be refined in accordance with Ethiopia’s interests.
In a cable to Washington the US Embassy in Addis Ababa claimed that by 2006 this ‘misunderstanding’ between the US and Ethiopia had been ‘resolved’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007a). Throughout the course of this bargaining episode, US officials consistently made it clear to their Ethiopian counterparts that the Bush administration saw Ethiopia as an anchor state and key security partner in the fight against terrorism in Somalia. The linchpin of this partnership was the intelligence liaison between the two states, and the US was determined to preserve it. However, new tensions were emerging that would threaten the liaison and give rise to a new round of bargaining.
‘Waging peace’ in the Ogaden
Since 2002 the CJTF-HOA has initiated a number of humanitarian projects in the Horn of Africa. Civil affairs teams have built and renovated schools, dug wells, vaccinated cattle and provided flood relief. Whether these projects have made a lasting contribution to the US hearts and minds campaign in the region is heavily disputed (United States Government Accountability Office 2010; Bradbury and Kleinman 2010; Bachman 2014). What is clear is that these humanitarian initiatives afford valuable intelligence gathering opportunities to US forces in areas that they deem vulnerable to extremism. These projects can be seen as part of a larger US attempt to map the terrain, establish local sources of human intelligence and prepare the battlespace in the Horn of Africa (Thomas 2004).
Civil affairs personnel are often accompanied by intelligence and force protection officers. These teams establish contact with local populations, observe the host government’s activities in the region, gain insights into potential threats to US national security and conduct counterintelligence to protect the task force’s personnel and operating locations. The CJTF-HOA Intelligence Section, one of the task force’s largest units, collects and interprets raw data throughout the region. Some of these data are gathered when the task force’s teams accompanied by soldiers of the Ethiopian National Defence Force establish ‘person to person contact’ with civilians in Ethiopia’s Somali Region. According to the Intelligence Section’s Analyst Chief, his unit provides intelligence to the task force’s leadership, ‘so they can come up with ways to deal with anything that needs attention, whether that be monitoring terrorist targets or doing some sort of humanitarian mission’ (Fitzgerald 2003).
CJTF-HOA civil affairs teams maintained a persistent presence in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region from 2003 to 2006. This provided US soldiers with the opportunity to come into contact with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), secessionist insurgents whom the Ethiopian government considers terrorists. The United States saw the Ogaden insurgency as a domestic issue and did not support Ethiopia’s attempts to quell the rebellion. Interactions between CJTF-HOA teams and the Ogadeni insurgents were an ongoing source of tension in the relations between Ethiopia and the US. In 2006 when the Ethiopian military initiated a crackdown on the ONLF, US civil affairs teams were expelled from the Ogaden. Ethiopian officials asserted that US troops were barred from the Ogaden due to concerns for their safety. Yet these restrictions were also the result of suspicions among Ethiopia’s military brass that CJTF-HOA teams were not randomly encountering Ogadeni fighters at roadblocks, but were actually reaching out to them as a matter of force protection and intelligence gathering (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2009).
These tensions within the liaison, due to Ethiopia’s suspicions of unsanctioned US intelligence gathering in the Ogaden, served to compromise both the humanitarian and information collection efforts of the CJTF-HOA civil affairs teams. The restrictions instituted by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Defence made explicit that this form of intelligence gathering was not in compliance with Ethiopia’s expectations of the liaison, particularly as Ethiopia was acting aggressively to dismantle the Ogadeni insurgency.
In 2006, even though Ethiopia demanded that US civil affairs teams leave the Ogaden, the towns of Gode and Kebri Dehar in particular, CJTF-HOA teams were allowed to remain in Ethiopia’s Somali Region at Hurso to train Ethiopian forces, and a US Special Operations team was authorised to remain at a cooperative security location in Bilate. Hence military and intelligence cooperation continued, but Ethiopia deployed the first of several tactics to serve notice that it would not idly tolerate US efforts to gather intelligence from the ONLF.
In May 2007 another incident in the Ogaden served to exemplify the tensions within the liaison between Ethiopia and the US. A Combined Joint Task Force human intelligence team operating ‘beyond the wire’ was apprehended in a restricted area of the Ogaden by Ethiopian troops. Whether this mission was fully authorised by the task force’s commanders remains unclear. Similarly, US officials disagree as to whether the human intelligence team was on a clandestine or overt mission. The human intelligence soldiers were, however, wearing civilian clothes and when Ethiopian forces initially stopped and questioned them, the US soldiers claimed to be Red Cross officials. When the Ethiopian troops discovered that their detainees were armed, which the Red Cross forbids, the US troops were forced to reveal their identities (Naylor 2011a; see also US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007b).
The Human Intelligence team was taken into Ethiopian custody and held for several days before appeals from high-level officials at the State Department and Pentagon secured their release. Nonetheless, this incident angered the Ethiopians and fuelled suspicions that, despite the ban on CJTF-HOA teams in the Ogaden, the US was making efforts to maintain contacts with the ONLF. Additionally, the Ethiopians were able to conduct some unsanctioned intelligence gathering of their own by seizing all of the documents the Human Intelligence team were carrying, which offered evidence of tightly guarded US intelligence collection techniques and objectives in the region. More broadly, this incident had a chilling effect on military intelligence cooperation between the two countries (Naylor 2011a).
The Ethiopian intervention in Somalia
In December 2006 Ethiopia sent a large military force into Somalia to dismantle the Islamic Courts Union, a coalition that had consolidated power in Somalia the previous year and brought stability to Mogadishu. Ethiopia’s stated aim was to provide support for the Western-backed Somali Transitional Federal Government by unseating the Muslim clerics. The Meles administration also saw the Islamic Courts Union as a proxy force of Ethiopia’s enemy to the north, Eritrea, which it accused of arming and funding Somali jihadists (Abbink 2003).
From the outset of the intervention the US provided Ethiopian troops with intelligence support, primarily in the form of satellite imagery, and US Special Operations teams were deployed to Somalia on covert missions alongside Ethiopian Special Forces (Stevenson 2007). Ethiopia, in return, provided the US with information about the movements of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia, many of whom fled toward the Kenyan border once the Ethiopian intervention gained ground. This was the US–Ethiopian intelligence liaison at its most fruitful for both states. The US Embassy in Addis Ababa wrote at the time, ‘Ethiopia’s military gave us complete and unprecedented access to information they obtained in Somalia’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007a).
Yet the initiation of covert US operations from Ethiopian facilities would soon stoke renewed tensions between the liaison partners. The literature on intelligence liaisons suggests that a classic point of contention for liaison partners arises when one partnering state does not effectively protect the confidentiality of joint covert activities, hence endangering the security and interests of its partner (Richelson 1990). This concern became paramount for the Ethiopians days after their incursion into Somalia when the US began to launch covert airstrikes from Ethiopian airfields.
On 7, 9 and 23 January 2007, US AC-130 gunships operating from airstrips in eastern Ethiopia struck suspected Al-Qaeda operatives and training camps in southern Somalia (Bureau of Investigative Journalism 2015). In the days immediately following the first two airstrikes the Meles administration publicly denied that they had been launched from Ethiopia, yet behind closed doors Prime Minister Meles suggested that he was pleased that the US was targeting militants in Somalia and was largely unconcerned about leaks to the US press that were bringing attention to these covert operations (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007c). However, in the run-up to the third strike in late January, the Ethiopians began to urge the US to maintain a lower profile. Ethiopian officials expressed concerns that news of the bombing campaign might lead to terrorist reprisals against Ethiopia, as well as African countries that were considering contributing to a peacekeeping force that was preparing to enter Somalia. In the days following the 23 January airstrike in Somalia, also widely reported in the US press, the Ethiopians made it clear that they could no longer tolerate US leaks about these operations. The Meles administration demanded that the US end the airstrikes and remove its AC-130 gunships from Ethiopian territory. In a move that strengthened this demand the Ethiopians also temporarily shut down the fusion cell that served as a vehicle through which Ethiopian liaison officers shared intelligence on Somalia with their US counterparts (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007c).
Prime Minister Meles suggested that these leaks compromised ‘operational security’ and led to headlines that detracted from the diplomatic efforts that African states were initiating to bring peace to Somalia. The prime minister indicated that, rather than facilitating covert US strikes, the Ethiopians would take a more independent approach. While he welcomed any information that the US could provide, Ethiopian forces would act on their own to neutralise extremist elements in Somalia and engage terrorists that the Pentagon deemed high-value targets.
In a January 2007 cable to Washington, the US Embassy in Addis Ababa noted the importance of the intelligence fusion cell, which was scheduled to resume its activities the following day, to Ethiopian–US military cooperation and recommended ‘compliance with the Prime Minister’s request for removal of the AC-130 aircraft’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007c). Another senior Pentagon official was more blunt about the conclusion of these covert airstrikes: the Ethiopians warned the US to keep the operations quiet, and when the US didn’t: ‘They got told to go home’ (Naylor 2011c).
By the middle of 2007 relations between the militaries of the US and Ethiopia had grown increasingly fraught. US security assistance to Ethiopia was a particular point of contention between the two states. The US failure to deliver promised military aid, such as C-130 aircraft and Humvees, and the closure of a US-funded Command and Staff College to train Ethiopian officers were symptomatic of sharp declines in US security assistance to Ethiopia (Serafino 2014). Ethiopia’s military brass, in turn, viewed the US as an increasingly unreliable partner.
The US Embassy in Addis Ababa implored the Department of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Agency to act quickly to provide funding for security assistance initiatives directed at the Ethiopian National Defence Force. This was particularly important, according to the Embassy, because while other facets of the security partnership were faltering, intelligence sharing was actually expanding. Military intelligence cooperation between the US and Ethiopia remained one of ‘the strongest and most mutually beneficial relationships on the continent’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2007a).
While the Embassy’s appraisal overlooks the tensions and bargaining that had characterised the intelligence liaison between the states, it was reasonable to contend that by the middle of 2007 the liaison was the most critical facet of the security partnership between Ethiopia and the US. Moreover, the ‘beneficial’ character of the liaison also implied a US dependency on the results produced by this intelligence cooperation. Ethiopia had proven its willingness to exploit this US dependency on its human intelligence in Somalia. While the intelligence provided by US spy satellites to the Ethiopians was of assistance, as early as 2005 in the run-up to brutal post-election crackdowns in Addis Ababa, an internal memo circulated among Ethiopia’s ruling party made explicit that the Meles administration was fully prepared for the ‘US to turn its back on us’ (Indian Ocean Newsletter 2005).
Renditions and reciprocity
Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia led to the capture of a number of suspected extremists who had been associated with the Islamic Courts Union. Many of these suspects were transferred to secret detention facilities, or ‘black sites’, in Addis Ababa for interrogation by Ethiopian and US intelligence officials (Open Society Justice Initiative 2013). These renditions and the opportunities they provided for FBI and CIA officials to interrogate suspects reinforced Ethiopia’s status as a key American ally in the ‘War on Terror’. Throughout much of its campaign in Somalia, Ethiopia routinely provided American agents with access to suspected extremists captured by its forces. Yet by early 2008 when Ethiopian and US security cooperation was clearly showing signs of strain, this element of the liaison also became a means for the Ethiopians to impose costs on their stronger ally. At the time, Ethiopian State Security officials refused to grant the FBI the opportunity to interrogate a suspect who was in their custody, despite more than a month-long effort by the American agency to acquire access to the detainee (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2008).
On the heels of this refusal, the Meles administration would again test the limits of compliance with the terms of the liaison by using intelligence provided by the US in a manner completely inconsistent with US aims. In February 2008, Ethiopian forces detained and placed under house arrest a team of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) personnel, including one American citizen. The Ethiopians charged that while operating in the Ogaden, the MSF team had made contact with and provided medical care to Ogadeni insurgents. When the US Embassy raised the issue with Prime Minister Meles in an attempt to have the American citizen released, the prime minster was not only well aware of the details of the arrests but, to the surprise of the US ambassador, indicated that Ethiopian forces had taken the team into custody using ‘intelligence shared by the United States Government with the GoE [Government of Ethiopia] as part of our established intelligence sharing relationship’ (US Embassy Addis Ababa to US Embassy Belgium Brussels 2008). In short, Ethiopia had used US intelligence to detain a US citizen. The arrests were not only an indication of the Meles administration’s antipathy toward MSF, which had widely declared that the Ethiopian military was engaging in human rights abuses in the Ogaden. Meles’ openness about the arrests and the intelligence used to execute them, more importantly, were a clear signal that he was willing to misuse intelligence provided by the US to advance Ethiopian interests.
Over the course of 2008 and 2009 the bargaining tactics Ethiopia had been deploying to capitalise on its liaison with the US continued to bear fruit. The US became increasingly responsive to Ethiopia’s demands for security assistance funding and equipment. It delivered on a promise to assist in the maintenance of Ethiopia’s C-130 aircraft, reimbursed Ethiopia for some of the expenses associated with its campaign in Somalia, and donated equipment to Ethiopian peacekeepers (US Embassy Addis Ababa to CIA 2008). Just as critically, during this time the US began construction of a base for unmanned aerial vehicles or drones at Arba Minch in Ethiopia. This drone base would become an important node in US intelligence collection and covert operations infrastructure, further strengthening the liaison between the two states.
Secret analysis conducted by the Pentagon’s Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Task Force suggests that until it was shuttered in September 2015 this drone base was vital to US counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa. The Pentagon’s analysis also made clear that the US continued to confront a dearth of human intelligence in Somalia and faced considerable challenges using drones to maintain ongoing surveillance over the vast stretches of territory of the Horn of Africa. As a result, the cooperation of host state partners, such as Ethiopia, in supplying intelligence that facilitated drone strikes was critical (Intercept Drone Papers 2015). Moreover, the Pentagon’s assessment pointed to a growing need for ‘finish derived’ intelligence that could be gained by interrogating suspects who had been captured instead of killed.7 Yet capturing these suspects in the Horn of Africa, which is not a defined theatre of armed conflict, ‘requires the assistance of host nation partners’ (Intercept Drone Papers 2015). As such, the report recommended that more Special Forces teams be deployed alongside the troops of partnering states to engage in Advance Force Operations, such as intelligence gathering, that enabled captures instead of kills.
Conclusion
It is clear that both Ethiopia and the US shared an interest in maintaining their intelligence liaison. Yet in terms of actual intelligence gains and access to military infrastructure the US was more reliant on this cooperation than Ethiopia. For the US, by 2008 intelligence cooperation was, in fact, the central pillar of its security partnership with Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s willingness to run the risk of leveraging this liaison was in part derived from the divergence of interests with regard to Somalia between the two states. While Ethiopia perceived the presence of Al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia as a threat, it was even more concerned with preventing Eritrea from funding and supporting a strong coalition of militants in Somalia that could transit Ethiopia’s porous borders. In short, for Ethiopia the conflict in Somalia quickly became a proxy war with Eritrea, rendering Al-Qaeda a secondary concern. For Pentagon and State Department officials, Al-Qaeda operatives were the primary concern and a prominent view among these officials was that the US required the human intelligence that Ethiopia gathered through its clandestine activities in Somalia (Lyons 2009).
I have argued that it was this dependency that the Meles administration manipulated, not only as means of compelling the US to comply with its reading of the terms and limits of the liaison, but also in an effort to gain broader political concessions. There is no direct evidence that the Meles administration threatened to disrupt intelligence cooperation with the US in response to State Department or Congressional criticisms of his regime’s track record on electoral politics and civil liberties. However, a clear interest in preserving the liaison at the very core of the US strategic partnership with Ethiopia in all likelihood influenced the Bush administration’s efforts to oppose US legislation sanctioning the Meles administration for its increasingly authoritarian policies. Bush administration officials, in part swayed by Ethiopia’s lobbyists in Washington, consistently expressed their opposition to Congressional criticisms in an ongoing effort to placate a valued ally in the ‘War on Terror’.
The intelligence liaison was certainly not the only factor influencing US policies toward Ethiopia. From an economic standpoint, for example, Ethiopian officials garnered the approval of State Department officials by entertaining the possibility of purchasing Boeing, instead of Airbus, aircraft for the state airline (Federal News Service 2005; for an alternative explanation of the durability of the US–Ethiopian security partnership, see Lefebvre 2012). More importantly, the Meles administration’s pronouncements, in the press and international organisations, were invariably supportive of the Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror’. Yet at the heart of Ethiopian–US relations was their security partnership, and the operational core of this partnership was the intelligence liaison. Ethiopia’s efforts to compel the US to comply with its reading of the terms of this liaison and its attempts to use the liaison as a source of leverage to gain political concessions have both been largely successful.