In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war

[Nur]

In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war

 

By Salim Lone

Tribune Media Services

 

12/26/06 "IHT" -- -- NAIROBI -- Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.

 

As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

 

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

 

An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.

 

With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.

 

The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peacekeepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed.

 

Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary — because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

 

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.

 

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

 

Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the ******is and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.

 

The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.

 

Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune

[Alle-ubaahne]

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

And we must clear our position to the world that we are still Muslims and we will fight as Muslims to an extent of myrterdom, insha-Allah.

[S.O.S]

CIA with Ethiopia vs Somalia: another U.S. proxy war

 

"The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia,” The same violations as the US junta is guilty of in neighboring Sudan which still refuses an invasion by twenty-two-thousand (22.000) so called "peace keepers"

 

THE LAWLESS US WITH ETHIOPIA IS VIOLATING THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF SOMALIA

 

Henk Ruyssenaars - Ex Africa correspondent

 

FPF - Dec. 27th 2006 - Today The New York Times in it's daily stream of propaganda confirms the support of the US junta's CIA for this new war against Somalia, another inhuman atrocity by the US using the usual and ******, worn out pretext: "American intelligence officials theorize that the Islamists, who wrested control of Mogadishu in June from a coalition of warlords supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, have ties to a Qaeda cell based in East Africa that is responsible for the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998."

 

And if that wasn't enough to enlarge the usual pack of lies by Washington: "A spokeswoman for the State Department, Janelle Hironimus, said Ethiopia was trying to stem the flow of outside arms shipments to the Islamists. Ms. Hironimus added that Washington was concerned about reports that the Islamists were using child soldiers and abusing Ethiopian prisoners of war." This is absolutely baloney, scare mongering propaganda. None of this is true of course but the US propaganda mill grinds on against better human judgement.

 

THE PRESS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED...

 

According to the New York Times: "On Tuesday, a day after an Ethiopian jet strafed the airport in Mogadishu, the capital, the State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements. “Should the press focus on the role of Ethiopia inside Somalia,” read a copy of the guidelines that was given to The New York Times by an American official here, “emphasize that this is a distraction from the issue of dialogue between the T.F.I.’s and Islamic courts and shift the focus back to the need for dialogue.” T.F.I. is an abbreviation for the weak transitional government in Somalia. “The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia,” the guidance said.*

 

The same violations as the US junta is guilty of in neighboring Sudan which still refuses an invasion by twenty-two-thousand (22.000) so called "peace keepers": an illegal occupation by heavily armed US/UN troops in oil rich Darfur to get the natural resources there. Also there the US junta makes the civil wars and other problems, nd then uses the by them run United Nations to solve it killing and drilling under a UN fig leaf of humanitarian help.

 

ETHIOPIA HAS HAD THIS FALSE "HUMANITARIAN HELP" BY THE US, IT'S IMF, THE WORLD BANK, THE FAKE NGO'S AND SIMILAR KILLING AND ROBBING GROUPS FOR TEN YEARS: THE LIFE EXPECTANCY HAS BEEN LOWERED TO FORTY-FIVE (45) YEARS. WHICH HELP? THEY KILL PEOPLE DAILY AND BY THE MILLIONS!

 

In a comment called Somalia in A Hole And Digging Faster, David Seaton writes: "If you thought Bush was going to "go quietly" you are in for another think. Perhaps Bush's only chance to avoid his own personal humiliation is to widen and deepen the crisis. He is looking at a level of failure, exposure to ridicule and universal repudiation that few human beings will ever have to face. Although he makes much of his Christianity he doesn't seem to cultivate the Christian virtues of meekness, humility, repentance and truthfulness. The failure of conspicuously Christian, Jimmy Carter's presidency is nothing beside Bush's and if I can't imagine Bush resigning himself to a lifetime of redemption through good works... is this a failure of my imagination? So be prepared for universal collapse, catastrophe and war. Bush is his own little apocalypse." DS*

 

This is what via FPF was published yesterday: "US backed Ethiopia declares war on Somalia" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/vtrwd

 

"IN SOMALIA, A RECKLESS U.S. PROXY WAR."

 

In a comment even published by the 'International Herald Tribune' Salim Lone writes from Nairobi about this new incredible breach of all laws* and decency by the US junta in the article: "Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.

 

As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

 

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

 

THOUSANDS OF NEW ANTI-U.S. MILITANTS AND TERRORISTS

 

An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.

 

With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.

 

The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peace keepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed.

 

Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary — because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

 

DOMINATED BY THE WARLORDS AND TERRORISTS

 

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.

 

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

 

Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Western Somalis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.

 

The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.

 

[andend] - 2006 The International Herald Tribune - Story Url.: http://iht.com/bin/print.php?id=4017649

 

[ September 21, 2010, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: Nur ]

[S.O.S]

"Government forces" vs "Islamic militiamen".

 

by lenin

 

Anyone would think that media outlets were deliberately trying to confuse and bewilder people with their reporting of the crisis in Somalia. Depending on who you read, "government forces" or "forces loyal to Somalia's government" have been fighting "Islamist militiamen" or "Islamic militiamen". The "government forces" are, of course, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) led by "President" Abdullahi Yusuf and supported not only by "Ethiopian troops" as the WaPo has it, but most significantly by the United States. The trouble with the label "government forces" is that they do not govern in any meaningful sense, and represent no significant constituency within Somalia. Since international 'peace talks' secured the TFG in 2004, they have not controlled any significant part of the country. They are a loose and unpopular collection of warlords who now control only one town: Baidoa, which The Observer describes as "the temporary capital". No no - Mogadishu is the capital. I checked.

 

The "Islamist militiamen" are the Islamic Courts Council who do represent a popular constituency, and do in fact government from Mogadishu. Earlier this year it was reported that, despite the ICC's success in defeating the US-backed warlords back in July, the CIA and US private military 'contractors' (mercenaries) would continue to to support the TFG. Leaked e-mails from one such mercenary outfit, Select Armor, discusses meetings with CIA agents and Abdullahi Yusuf, and remarks that several British mercenary outfits were looking to get involved - one can think of a few who would be well-placed to do so. The e-mails also refer to the "****s" at the UN, who are nevertheless "on side" on the basic question of supporting the TFG. It certainly is - the UN Security Council only yesterday authorised the use of African troops to support "government forces".

 

Now, when I say the "government forces" are a collection of warlords, I mean it in roughly the same sense that the current ruling elite of Afghanistan are warlords: military commanders whose main source of revenue is violent extortion, and traffic in people and drugs. The US has, more or less since the collapse of the state led by Siad Barre in 1991, first fought and then relied upon these people to keep the country safe for American investors.

 

One of the results of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 was the discovery of a treasury trove of documentation about US foreign policy involving the Shah. One of those revelations was the Safari Club, a coalition of states initially directed by Kissinger to coordinate anticommunist interventions in African states. Siad Barre, a Greater Somalia nationalist and a brutal ruler who tended to disappear dissidents into secret prisons, initially tended to orient toward the Soviet Union, but when he tried to invade and annexe the Ogdalen, a region claimed by Ethiopia, Cuban troops directed by the SU repelled his forces. Consequently, the Safari Club offered him the arms that he would need to take the Ogdalen if he would only tear up his treaties with the Soviet Union. Since it was not in the US interests, however, this deal was not followed through, although America supported Barre until he was overthrown in 1991, not least because of the access he allowed US oil corporations.

 

Today, the equivalent of the old Safari Group in relation to Somalia is the Contact Group created by the State Department earlier this year, composed of America and several EU states. Formally promoting dialogue between the TFG and the ICC, this group is providing illicit military support to the otherwise beleaguered military commanders. If 6,000 Ethiopian troops are now assisting the "government forces", it is because the Contact Group has, through the UNSC given it the green light.

 

The war is clearly a war between the Somali people, who want a strong, stable and independent central government run by the Islamic Courts, and the "international community" who want the country subordinated to imperialist interests. The impression given by the news coverage of this fighting, which could indeed result in a regional conflagration, is that there are these inscrutable black people, some of them scary Muslims, who are inexplicably fighting one another over some obscure doctrinal disputes, while the West stands helplessly by. It is a chaotic story, in which facts aren't given any coherence. The Observer mentions the UNSC's "controversial" resolution, but displays no awareness of the significance of this, nor does it mention its previous revelations of mercenary involvement. It mentions that US policy could be viewed as "taking sides", but doesn't mention that this is because the US is in fact "taking sides". It mentions that the UNSC policy of supporting African troops to support the TFG is driven by the US, but then goes on to describe such troops as "foreign peacekeepers". The US is acting "controversially", but no one knows why. It supports "peacekeepers" who "take sides" but it is not clear if the US is in fact taking sides, and for what reasons. All is a muddle. Is this incoherence and confusion what liberal hacks mean by their insistence on "nuance"?

 

link

[Nur]

S.O.S.

 

It looks like that "Government Forces" losing ground to " Islamic Militia" while the US Ambassador in Nairobi is " Concerned" that the "Job" by the "Government Forces" was not wrapped up in two days as expected.

 

Nur

[S.O.S]

It looks like that "Government Forces" losing ground to " Islamic Militia" while the US Ambassador in Nairobi is " Concerned" that the "Job" by the "Government Forces" was not wrapped up in two days as expected.

Nur, you probably know more than anyone else that this "concerned" US Ambassador in Nairobi is de facto president of Somalia. I personally think that he's frustrated to witness his plans derail towards a point of no return. Welcome back btw, your insightful analysis has greatly been missed by many.

[Nur]

SOS brother

 

Administrations and ambassadors come and go in East Africa, but misery stays, due to local politicians.

 

The Shermarke government is down, as many governments before him, he is leaving office as a wealthier politician than when he was appointed by Sheikh Sharif, but the condition of the poor whose name he has enriched himself, is worse off.

 

Let us see the new line up of Prime Ministers, Ambassadors, mercenaries and Informers to sustain misery and poverty in Somalia on behalf of the national interest of the western nations.

 

 

Nur