[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Bush's Rampage in Somalia

[Bill Totten]

by Mike Whitney

Counterpunch (July 08 2008)


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 forty 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) 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?" (Democracy Now)

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 thirty per cent 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 lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney at msn.comhttp://

www.counterpunch.com/whitney07082008.html


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