Beware, From Mogadishu to Miami Al-Qaeda now Wears a Black Face

[Jabhad]

Beware, From Mogadishu to Miami Al-Qaeda now Wears a Black Face

 

 

The Monitor (Kampala)

COLUMN

June 27, 2006

Posted to the web June 27, 2006

 

 

By Vukoni Lupa Lasaga/Third Eye Open

 

 

The television footage of keffiyah-wearing members of the United Islamic Courts (UIC) prowling the streets of Mogadishu with AK-47 rifles has caused something of an earthquake in Washington DC.

 

 

But the Americans have only themselves to blame for finding themselves on the wrong side of history 13 years after they abandoned Somalia. The country is what it is today partly because of the myopia of U.S. policy makers. That short-sightedness was in plain view once again when the Islamic Courts militia routed the CIA-financed armies of the discredited warlords.

 

 

Meddling in the affairs of other nations is bad enough, but when it is so ineptly done by a country with the resources that the U.S. has, the result is more than embarrassing. It is pathetic.

 

 

What's even more astounding, the Islamic Courts provided an escape hatch for the U.S. State Department, writing twice that they were not terrorists but only wished to bring peace and security to their land. Which is a fair thing to ask for. But the U.S. is now issuing more threats against the new rulers of Mogadishu.

 

 

Before the world fully digested the absurdity of the U.S. sponsoring the very warlords whose forces had shot the American army's Black Hawk helicopter down in 2003, the FBI was making a spectacle of itself on national television.

 

 

So, I had the surreal experience of watching television and finding that from Mogadishu to Miami, Al-Qaeda now wears a Black face like mine.

 

 

All this happened because last Friday, Americans woke to the news of crime-busters announcing that they had foiled a terrorist plot to blow up the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the country, and the second tallest in the world.

 

 

Not that Black folks cannot plan or execute terrorist acts. But the strange thing in this case is that the suspects had neither arms nor bombs. They were not even militarily trained, although it seems they were dabbling in some martial arts training.

 

 

As a result, many African American media outlets are scoffing at the charges leveled against the suspects by the Justice Department. The online Black News Weekly said:

 

 

"They didn't have any money! They didn't have a plan! They didn't have guns or bombs; in fact they are poor Blacks trying to live a decent life in a racist country. My God -- the seven young men can't even spell Al-Qaeda -- and they didn't even have shoes!"

 

 

That much may be true, but prosecutors have been quick to arraign the alleged plotters in court. Very quickly, much of Black America has dismissed this case as good old racism looking for an excuse to bust some Black *** .

 

 

Already, allegations are swirling that the Miami arrests are a media diversion from Bush's low ratings in opinion polls. A friend wrote to me, pointing out that armed and dangerous white hate groups have been given free rein by the Bush administration. The Miami mafia is so tame when compared to these Aryan groups that snurtured the white terrorist Timothy McVeigh and his murderous band of delusional but deadly white supremacists.

 

 

These groups run riot around the United States, openly training militias, trading bomb-making recipes, and buying powerful assault rifles at gun shows without any background checks exposes the real agenda driving the so-called war on terror.

 

 

This isn't the first time that terrorism has won a Black face here. For example, Zakaria Moussaoui, the Black Morrocan, has been controversially convicted for being a mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Some of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay are or were Black. A year or so ago, two African American brothers were arrested in Manila, Philippines, and paraded before the cameras as supporters of Al Qaeda.

 

 

But the Miami case is the first one in which a band of brothers within the United States have been arrested on terrorism charges.

 

 

The way this situation is unfolding, Africans would be unwise to assume that all is well in their world -- that Somalia is a fluke, and no more Blacks will be summarily arrested without proper prosecutorial evidence.

 

 

Although only a tiny fraction of the African elite shows any sense of awareness and concern, Black people on the mother continent are very much on target too. The CIA's counterproductive activities in Somalia are a symptom of expanding U.S. meddling in Africa.

 

 

Sooner rather than later, the African Union will have to prove its relevance by making a declaration on keeping foreign troops (with the exception of properly vetted UN missions) away from the African soil.

 

 

African outposts Diego Garcia, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia are already hosting U.S. bases. The Pentagon is furiously scouting for places in West Africa from which the U.S. military can launch rapid reaction to any threats to the empire's interests on our continent's Atlantic coast. Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, and Sao Tome and Principe are now earmarked as prime candidates for U.S. bases in that region.

 

 

The pattern is clear. Target small, autocratic, or dysfunctional African states. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which have been appropriated for the Euro-American imperial project, Islam is proving to be a very powerful tool of counter-hegemony. The U.S. establishment's response to this development is so paranoid that it instinctively opposes any political movement that floats an Islamic banner.

 

 

All militant, political, or socially conscious Islam is now conflated with terrorism or Al Qaeda regardless of the casus belli. This is a replay of the Cold War framework, except that Islamic terrorism has replaced the communist bogey.

 

 

In this poisoned atmosphere, to be classified correctly or wrongly as Black and Muslim is as deadly as it once was to be Black and Communist.

 

 

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