Somalia: Another CIA-Backed Coup Blows Up

[Nur]

U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948:

 

Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [u.S. military- economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948

 

" To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet ."

 

US President Obama. 2008

 

 

Somalia: Another CIA-Backed Coup Blows Up

 

By Mike Whitney

 

" The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population has built for the last fifteen years. " Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, Democracy Now

 

December 02, 2008 "ICH" --- Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that's all changed and there's talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdrawal all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?

 

The United States has lost the ground war in Somalia, but that doesn't mean its geopolitical objectives have changed one iota. The US intends to stay in the region for years to come and use its naval power to control the critical shipping lanes from the Gulf of Aden. The growing strength of the Somali national resistance is a set-back, but it doesn't change the basic game-plan. The pirates are actually a blessing in disguise. They provide an excuse for the administration to beef up it's military presence and put down roots. Every crisis is an opportunity.

 

There's an interesting subtext to the pirate story that hasn't appeared in the western media. According to Simon Assaf of the Socialist Worker:

 

" Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland's Achair Partners and Italy's Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia's politicians and militia leaders. This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war. Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Programme said, "European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste ."

 

When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal. Tons of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia. Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation.

 

" There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal hemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties ," the UN noted.

 

Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals.

 

In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen. Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast.

 

So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards." (Socialist Worker)

 

The origins of piracy in Somalia is considerably different than the narrative in the media which tends to perpetuate stereotypes of scary black men who are naturally inclined to criminal behavior. In reality, the pirates were the victims of a US-EU run system that still uses the developing world as a dumping ground for toxic waste regardless of the suffering it causes. (just ask Larry Summers) In fact, the dumping continues to this day, even though we have been assured that we're living in a "post racial era" following the election of Barak Obama. Unfortunately, that rule doesn't apply to the many black and brown people who still find themselves caught in the imperial crosshairs. Their lives are just as miserable as ever.

 

ETHIOPIA'S PLAN FOR WITHDRAWAL

 

In 2006, the Bush administration supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG captured Mogadishu and forced the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) to retreat to the south. Since then the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla army that has recaptured most of the country.

 

The Bush administration invoked the war on terror to justify its involvement in Somalia, but their case was weak and full of inconsistencies. The ICU is not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization despite the claims of the State Department . In fact, the ICU brought a high level of peace and stability to Somalia that hadn't been seen for more than sixteen years .

 

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 Bush administration is mainly interested in oil and geopolitics . According to most estimates 30 per cent of America's oil will come from Africa within the next ten years. That means the Pentagon will have to extend its tentacles across the continent. Washington's allies in the TFG promised to pass oil laws that would allow foreign oil companies to return to Somalia, but now all of that is uncertain . It is impossible to know what type of government will emerge from the present conflict. Many pundits expect Somalia to descend into terrorist-breeding, failed state for years to come.

 

The latest round of fighting has created a humanitarian disaster. 1.3 million people have been forced from their homes with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs. Over 3.5 million people are now huddled in tent cities in the south with little food, clean water or medical supplies.

 

According to the UN News Center: " Nearly half the population is in crisis or need of assistance....Continuing instability, coupled with drought, high food prices and the collapse of the local currency have only worsened the dire humanitarian situation in recent months. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of the population, are in need of assistance. In addition, one in six children under the age of five in southern and central Somalia is currently acutely malnourished ." (UN News Center)

 

The war between the occupying Ethiopian army and the various guerrilla factions has steadily intensified over the last two years. Fighters from the ICU, Al-Shabaab and other Islamic groups have moved from the south to the vicinity of Mogadishu where fighting could break out at any time. It's "game-over" for Bush's proxy army and the transitional federal government. They cannot win, which is why the Ethiopian leaders announced a complete withdrawal of troops by the end of the year. By January 1, 2009, the occupation will be over.

 

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, "US Appears to be Losing in Somalia", journalist Paul Salopek sums it up like this:

 

"(Somalia) is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants...and secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships. The British civil-rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as floating prisons since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...

 

" Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11 ," said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. " By any rational metric, what we've ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted ." (Paul Salopek, "US Appears to be Losing in Somalia" Chicago Tribune)

 

The CIA has done its job well. It's created a beehive for terrorism and the potential for another catastrophe like 9-11.

 

Currently, negotiations are underway between the guerrilla leaders and the TFG over a power-sharing agreement. But no one expects the talks will amount to anything. The moderate ICU may regain power but the country will still be ungovernable for years to come. At best, Somalia is a decade away from restoring the fragile peace that was in place before Bush's bloody intervention.

[Nur]

I Just read that the Nigerians are replacing the Ethiopians! and some of us think that Africa is free!

 

 

Nur

[S.O.S]

Africa is far from free. Still colonised through self perserving corrupting criminal leaders who provide their mercenary services to the ighest offeror. A master class act of illusion-free advanced colonialism without moral accountabilities.

[Nur]

CIA and Assassinations:

 

The Guatemala 1954 Documents

by Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh

 

These documents, including an instructional guide on assassination found among the training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS," were among several hundred records released by the Agency on May 23, 1997 on its involvement in the infamous 1954 coup in Guatemala. After years of answering Freedom of Information Act requests with its standard "we can neither confirm nor deny that such records exist," the CIA has finally declassified some 1400 pages of over 100,000 estimated to be in its secret archives on the Guatemalan destabilization program. (The Agency's press release stated that more records would be released before the end of the year.) An excerpt from the assassination manual appears on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Saturday, May 31, 1997.

 

The small, albeit dramatic, release comes more than five years after then CIA director Robert Gates declared that the CIA would "open" its shadowy past to post-cold war public scrutiny, and only days after a member of the CIA's own historical review panel was quoted in the New York Times as calling the CIA's commitment to openness "a brilliant public relations snow job." (See Tim Weiner, "C.I.A.'s Openness Derided as a 'Snow Job'," The New York Times, May 20, 1997, p. A16)

 

Arbenz was elected President of Guatemala in 1950 to continue a process of socio- economic reforms that the CIA disdainfully refers to in its memoranda as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president--a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas and codenamed Operation PBFORTUNE--was authorized by President Truman in 1952. As early as February of that year, CIA Headquarters began generating memos with subject titles such as "Guatemalan Communist Personel to be disposed of during Military Operations," outlining categories of persons to be neutralized "through Executive Action"--murder--or through imprisonment and exile. The "A" list of those to be assassinated contained 58 names--all of which the CIA has excised from the declassified documents.

 

PBSUCCESS, authorized by President Eisenhower in August 1953, carried a $2.7 million budget for "pychological warfare and political action" and "subversion," among the other components of a small paramilitary war. But, according to the CIA's own internal study of the agency's so-called "K program," up until the day Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, "the option of assassination was still being considered." While the power of the CIA's psychological-war, codenamed "Operation Sherwood," against Arbenz rendered that option unnecessary, the last stage of PBSUCCESS called for "roll-up of Communists and collaborators." Although Arbenz and his top aides were able to flee the country, after the CIA installed Castillo Armas in power, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the repressive operatives of sucessive military regimes murdered more than 100,000 civilians.

 

Click on the document icon to view each document.

 

Document 1, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals, 1952-1954", CIA History Staff Analysis by Gerald K. Haines, June 1995.

 

 

CIA records on assassination planning in Guatemala were first gathered pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 1979. All of them were withheld on national security grounds at that time. In 1995, the CIA's historical staff "rediscovered" these records during a search of Guatemala materials to be declassified as part of the agency's "Openness" program. A staff historian, Gerald Haines, was assigned to write this brief history of these operations. He concluded that as early as January 1952, CIA headquarters began compiling lists of individuals in Arbenz's government "to eliminate immediately in event of [a] successful anti-Communist coup." Planning for assassination included budgeting, training programs, creation of hit teams, drafting of target lists of persons, and transfer of armaments. Haines writes that "until the day that Arbenz resigned in June 1954 the option of assassination was still being considered." The CIA, according to this history, did not implement its assassination strategy. But the declassifiers of this study, and other related documents, have deleted the names of the targeted individuals, making it impossible to verify that none of them were killed during or in the aftermath of the coup.

 

Document 2, "A Study of Assassination", Unsigned, Undated.

 

 

Transcription

 

 

Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a "Study of Assassination." A how-to guide book in the art of political killing, the 19-page manual offers detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination. "The simplest local tools are often much the most efficient means of assassination," counsels the study. "A hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice." For an assassin using "edge weapons," the manual notes in cold clinical terms, "puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached....Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region." T he manual also notes that to provide plausible denial, "no assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded." Murder, the drafters state, "is not morally justifiable," and "persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it."

 

 

Document 3, "Selection of individuals for disposal by Junta Group", March 31, 1954.

 

 

One of the many assassination lists compiled by the CIA during planning for Operation Success. As the memorandum indicates, the chief of one of the CIA's divisions involved in the coup (the division title has been deleted) requested a list of names of Arbenz government leaders, members of the Communist Party, and individuals "of tactical importance whose removal for psychological, organizational or others reasons is mandatory for the success of military action." The memo asks that CIA personnel read through the list and initial the names of those who should be included on a "final list of disposees." The list (and the initials or names of all CIA officers appearing in the document) has been withheld. A handwritten note attached on the bottom of the memo reads:

 

Elimination List

April [illeg.] - [illeg.] is taking a copy of list of

names for checking with the [illeg.]

April 7 - Original Memo

with attached Biographic data

has been passed to [deleted]

Returned by [deleted] on 1 June 1954

 

 

Document 4, "Guatemalan Communist Personnel to be disposed of during Military Operations of Calligeris", Origin deleted, Undated.

 

 

Another version of the assassination lists compiled by the CIA and Carlos Castillo Armas (code-named "Calligeris") in the course of preparing for the 1954 coup. The names of the agency's intended victims were divided into two categories: persons to be disposed of through "Executive action" (i.e., killed) and those to be imprisoned or exiled during the operation. Before releasing this document to the public, the CIA deleted every name, leaving only the rows of numbers to indicate how many people were targeted.

 

 

Document 5, "Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952- 1954", CIA History Staff document by Nicholas Cullather, 1994. Excerpt.

 

 

A narrative history of the CIA's role in planning, organizing and executing the coup that toppled Jacobo Arbenz Guzm�n on June 27, 1954. Cullather, now a diplomatic historian at the University of Indiana, worked on contract for one year with the CIA, where he was given access to thousands of agency records and secret operational files in order to produce this overview. The result is a surprisingly critical study of the agency's first covert operation in Latin America. Beginning with a review of the political, economic and social forces that led to Arbenz's presidency in 1951, the document is an intimate account of how cold war concerns convinced President Eisenhower to order the removal of the democratically-elect ed leader by force. It also provides countless new details of a covert mission plagued by disastrous military planning and failed security measures: according to Cullather, "Operation Success" barely succeeded. The CIA scrambled to convince the White House that it was an unqualified and all but bloodless victory, however. After Arbenz resigned, Eisenhower called the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan W. Dulles, and his senior covert planners into a formal briefing of the operation. Cullather's account now reveals that the agency lied to the president, telling him that only one of the rebels it had backed was killed. "Incredible," said the president. And it was. At least four dozen were dead, according to the CIA's own records. Thus did the Guatemala coup enter agency lore as an "unblemished triumph," Cullather explains, and become the model for future CIA activities in Latin America.

 

In Guatemala, of course, "Operation Success" had a deadly aftermath. After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing.

[Nur]

World Food Organization has declared that Somalia needs urgent food shipment , as usual, no one but the generous US is responding. Since Somalians love to bite the bullet, America under the kind, humane and soft face of America ( Obama) is delivering urgent shipment of guns and bullets for a Mercy Killing!

 

America is standing by it's man in Somalia this time around. Sheikh Shareef will get 19 containers of weapons flown from Uganda against the international Law. And the " International Community" will be watching the Killing Fields from the comfort of their living rooms watching CNN showing the areal bombardment of American Drones of Somali SWAT terrorist infested areas, with some Dick Chaney sh..t happens "unavoidable accidental deaths of civilians" and burning of villages ( flushing Terrorist hideouts).

 

The American Weapons en route to Mogadishu are to be distributed to the Warlords Militia, and also to create new Militia in areas where there is no Militia at present. The Final Goal, to create Condoleeza Rice Theory of Creative Chaos, after which, the US will directly intervene to set up Afghanistan style Jirga Parliament that will rubber stamp all of US Oil claims in Somalia, of course, few hundred thousand people will die, and no one in the US will cry for the dead Somalis like NEDA, remember the Iranian girl demonstrator who died in Tehran for Democracy?

 

Way to Go President Obama, like Journalist Yvonne Riddley described you, you sure live up to your Character; From Charmer to Harmer!

 

Thank You President Obama, for being so Kind to The Muslim World! I am sure they will never Forget Your Favors For generations To Come!

 

 

Nur