Inside Africa's Guantánamo

[Xudeedi]

Inside Africa's Guantánamo

 

 

The only way the US can prop up its client regime in Somalia is through lawlessness and slaughter

 

Salim Lone

Saturday April 28, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly violated two UN security council resolutions. To complete the picture, one of these resolutions contravenes the charter itself.

 

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Lots of Non-Somali people have responded to this article by Salim Lone, most of them concerned world citizens. Salaim used to be a spokesman for the U.N Mission in Iraq. He is now a columnist for the Daily Nation.

 

His article also prompted the underhanded Ethiopian Embassy to respond. http://allafrica.com/stories/200705010596.html

 

Thanks Salim.

[rudy-Diiriye]

i tried to write an article to allafrica.com, guess what they ask me! they asked to provide a pic of me or else my article wont be published!! lool...! i wrote back to them and ask them if they wanned my dna 2!! what punch of morans!!

 

this shyte is in Uganda!!... can u say puppet regime.

[Xudeedi]

The long silence and the refusal even now to announce measures that might arrest this slaughter mark

the lowest point in the big powers' abdication of the

"Responsibility to Protect" mandate - adopted,

with British leadership, at a summit-level meeting of the security council two years ago. The world's most impoverished people are now being ripped to shreds with no effort whatsoever to get the perpetrators to desist.

 

A huge campaign must be launched to press western governments to end this slaughter, which is almost entirely the work of those in control of the country. The European Union warned a month ago that war crimes might have been committed in an assault on the capital last month - in which the EU could be complicit because of its large-scale support for those accused of the crimes.

 

Human Rights Watch has documented how Kenya and Ethiopia had turned this region into Africa's own version of Guantánamo Bay, replete with kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons and large numbers of "disappeared": a project that carries the Made in America label.

Allowing free rein to such comprehensive lawlessness is a stain on all those who might have, at a minimum, curtailed it.

 

Work must begin to derail the astounding proposal from the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, which is to be discussed by the security council in mid-June. He would like to mount a UN-sanctioned "coalition of the willing" to enforce peace and restore order in Somalia - in other words, the UN would help Ethiopia and the United States achieve what their own illegal military interventions have failed to accomplish: the entrenchment of a client regime that lacks any popular support. Such an operation is unlikely to succeed in any event, but it could further threaten the turbulent Horn of Africa, which is already teetering on the brink of chaos.

 

The Somali government is busy crying "al-Qaida" at every turn and offering lucrative deals to oil companies, in a bid to entice greater western support.

But this war was lost long ago. In turning to the arch enemy Ethiopia, the transitional government's fate was sealed: the nation will not abide an

Ethiopian-US occupation.

 

Only a political solution will resolve this crisis. Africa must step up to the plate and show spine and leadership in a drive to protect its civilians, and work with Europe and the UN to convince the US to swiftly terminate its latest destabilising adventure.

[emphasis added]

Specific and right to the point, Mr. Salim visits the plight in Somaila , I would say, with keen reasoning and accuracy.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Originally posted by rudy:

i tried to write an article to allafrica.com, guess what they ask me! they asked to provide a pic of me or else my article wont be published!! lool...! i wrote back to them and ask them if they wanned my dna 2!! what punch of morans!!

 

this shyte is in Uganda!!... can u say puppet regime.