From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2008 - 14:42:03 EDT
Bush’s Rampage in Somalia
by Mike Whitney
Global Research, July 17, 2008
cleveland.indymedia.org
While George Bush was breezing through photo-ops at the G-8 summit
in Japan, his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more
carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been
killed in the last 48 hours.
On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program
in Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque after prayers.
He died before reaching the hospital with wounds to the head and chest.
Ali Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed
in the ongoing battle between Bush’s Ethiopian occupiers and the Somali
guerrillas.
US foreign policy in Somalia has resulted in disaster. Millions of
Somalis have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent
cities in the south to escape the fighting. The latest surge in
violence has been the worst in a decade and the security situation
continues to deteriorate despite the arrival of 2,600 troops from the
African Union and a tentative truce that was signed in June between
some of the warring factions.
The western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising
death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention
on America’s “villain du jour,” Robert Mugabe. Mugabe appears to be
next on the neocon’s list for regime change. (Paul Wolfowitz even
composed a postmortem for Zimbabwe’s president in a recent Wall Street
Journal editorial, “How to Put the Heat on Mugabe”)
In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords
known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a
base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the
US-backed Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and
AC-130 gunships, the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south.
But, much like Iraq and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into
a tenacious guerrilla army which has returned to the capital and
resumed the fight making it impossible for their Ethiopian adversaries
to govern.
As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation has gone from
bad to worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to
acute food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high
inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5
million by the end of 2008. The UN Security Council has helped
facilitate the violence by failing to condemn US support for Ethiopia’s
invasion and by promising to send peacekeepers to mop up after fighting
ends. They’ve shown no interest in stopping the bloodshed or
threatening sanctions against the aggressors. The UNSC has become
little more than an accomplice in Bush’s rampages.
In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Salim Lone, a
columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for
the UN mission in Iraq explains the UN’s role in providing the “go
ahead” for the US invasion:
The lawlessness of this particular war is astounding; the most
lawless war of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are
illegal. But in this particular one, there have been violations of the
UN Charter and gross violations of international human rights. But, in
addition, there have been very concrete violations by the United States
of two Security Council resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo
imposed on Somalia, which the United States has been routinely
flaunting for many years now. But then the US decided that that
resolution was no longer useful, and they pushed through an appalling
resolution in December, which basically gave the green light to
Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution which said that
the situation in Somalia was a threat to international peace and
security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and
Chatham House’s report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic
Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that
Somalia had not enjoyed in sixteen years. So here was the UN Security
Council going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly
falsified UN resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation of the
UN Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution
and the Security Council is not allowed to pass laws or rules that
violate the Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them?
The Bush administration has predictably invoked the “terrorist”
hobgoblin to justify its involvement in Somalia, but no one is buying
it. The ICU is not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization
despite the absurd claims of the State Department. It is true that the
ICU was trying to enforce Sharia Law, but a much milder form of Sharia
than America’s ally, Saudi Arabia.
The ICU was the first government in over a decade to restore
security and order to Somalia and — generally speaking — the people
were supportive of the new regime. Political analyst James Petras
summed it up like this:
The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord
corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected,
ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed
thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes
moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed
fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and authoritarians.
Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying the country and
creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation.
The real motives behind the invasion were oil and geopolitics.
According to most estimates 30 percent of America’s oil will come from
Africa in the next ten years. Bush’s new warlord friends in the
Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have already indicated that they
are ready to pass a new oil law that will encourage foreign oil
companies to return to Somalia. The same oil giants that are now lining
up in Iraq will soon be making their way to Somalia as well.
The Horn of Africa is also critical for its deep-water ports and its
strategic location for future military bases. It’s all part of the
Grand Schema for reconfiguring the region to accommodate America’s
hegemonic ambitions.
Humanitarian Catastrophe: “The Ethiopian invasion has destroyed all the life-sustaining systems”
Heavy fighting and artillery fire have reduced large parts of
Mogadishu to rubble. More than 700,000 people have been forced to leave
the capital with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs.
Entire districts have been evacuated and turned into ghost towns. The
main hospital has been bombed and is no longer taking patients.
Ethiopian snipers are perched atop rooftops across the city. Over 3.5
million people are now huddled in the south in tent cities without
sufficient food, clean water or medical supplies. It is the greatest
humanitarian crisis in Africa today; a man-made Hell entirely conjured
up in Washington.
Just weeks ago, Amnesty International reported that it had heard
many accounts that Ethiopian troops were “slaughtering (Somalis) like
goats.” In one case, “a young child’s throat was slit by Ethiopian
soldiers in front of the child’s mother.”
In another Democracy Now interview, Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, had this to say:
The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government,
has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which
the population have built without the government for the last fifteen
years. And the militia that are supposed to protect the population have
been looting shops. For instance, the Bakara market, which is the
largest market in Mogadishu, has been looted repeatedly by the militias
of the so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, supported
by Ethiopian troops. And the new prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Hassan
Nur Hussein, has himself announced in the BBC that it was his militias
that — who have looted this place. So what you have is a population
that’s hit from both sides — on one side, by the militias of the
so-called Transitional Federal Government, which is recognized by the
United States, and on the other side, by the Ethiopian invaders who
seem to be bent on ensuring that they break the will of the people to
resist as free people in their own country…. What you have is really
terror in the worst sense of the word, a million people have been
displaced that the Ethiopians have been denying humanitarian aid, and
the United States which seems to just watch and let it happen.
It’s like there’s has been a calculated decision made somewhere in
the world, maybe in Washington, maybe in Addis Ababa, maybe in
Mogadishu itself, to starve these people until they submit themselves
to the whims of the American military and the Ethiopians, who are
acting on their behalf.
Amnesty International has called for an investigation of the United States role in Somalia.
Regrettably, neither the United Nations nor the establishment media
are at all interested in Bush’s war crimes in Africa. All they care
about is Mugabe.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mike Whitney
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9608
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Some background notes:
You
will recall that after years of instability by USA backed rival war
lords, the UIC emerged out of the chaos, uniting local village courts
that acted to resolve problems between local people in the absence of
any government.
UIC succeeded in uniting together and pacifying Somalia (which is
100% moslem tribal nation) under the leadership of Sheikh Sherif Ahmed,
and even opened the port of Mogadishu which had been closed for years.
At that point “Bin Laden” came out with a message in their support (UIC
denied any connection — and this is another proof that the OBL tapes
are issued by Al CIAda), to justify the USA hostility towards UCI, and
to justify the subsequent USA supported invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia
troups to back the unwanted West apponted puppet provional Somalia
government.
The president of the puppet government President Abdullah Youssef is
now protected by a French private mercenary company Secopex.
Ethiopian troupes are sustaining heavy losses, even as they have been supported by USA misile attacks on villages.
http://eldib.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/bush%E2%80%99s-rampage-in-somalia/
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