The Name of the Game in Somalia is Oil

[miles-militis]

The Name of the Game in Somalia is Oil By Karamatullah K. Ghori -

A retired Pakistani ambassador, served as Pakistan`s ambassador to Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey and Macedonia.

 

 

Toronto. George W. Bush, under pressure from Japan and South Korea, has let it be known that he has dropped plans to attack, militarily, North Korea, one of the three " axis of evil" countries by his recknoning.

 

Those knowing the mind and mentality of Bush knew, from the moment he uttered his litany of ‘ axis of evil’ that North Korea had only been included in the pack to hoodwink the Muslims and make them believe that he was not a crusader against the world of Islam only. That he has not taken Iraq or Iran " off the table", as he is fond of saying, should not surprise anyone. Bush has his heart set on taking to finality the agenda of hostility against ‘unrelenting’ Islamic countries, initially set by his father in the late 80s and early 90s.

 

Logically, Bush should have included Somalia, the rag tag country teetering on the brink of disintegration for so long, in his ‘ axis of evil’. His military planners have long had their sights on chasing the elusive Al Qaeda partisans into their alleged lairs in Somalia. The American people, forced-fed on a diet of frenzied chauvinism since September 11, would hardly be averse to such a repeat- adventure after the ‘success’ in Afghanistan—though the chicks there are coming home to roost. The roaring box-office success of a Hollywood , adrenaline-pumping , war-thriller, " Black Hawk Down", based on the American military intervention in Somalia in the twilight days of Bush Senior in the White House, is cashing in on the popular hankering for more American ‘victories.’

 

The Hollywood thriller paints the American soldiers as, what else, ‘heroes’ fighting for liberty and human dignity, the lofty principles invariably cited as the justification for every military adventure abroad since the cold war. The American people are not prepared to question these flimsy pretexts because they have been made to believe that their ‘way of life’ is inextricably linked with America’s ‘moral crusade’ abroad. The media is squarely behind the ‘crusaders’ in their zeal to rid the world of all that is ‘evil’ to America.

 

But there are still voices of sanity pleading for a less-jaundiced version of the world divided between good and evil. An unconventional website, NetNomad.com, has recently posted a ‘ Los Angeles Times’ report of Jan.18, 1993 by the paper’s correspondent in Mogadishu, Mark Fineman, at the height of American " humanitarian" military intervention there, supposedly in defence of human rights. The report paints a totally different view of U.S. military intervention in Somalia.

 

Bush Senior went into Somalia with 20 thousand US troops in December, 1992 when he had been defeated in his re-election bid by Bill Clinton and was a lame-duck President. Why such a major overseas undertaking by an outgoing president was a question that perplexed many. His excuse was that US was in Somalia on a humanitarian mission to beef up the UN effort to stave off a bloodbath from civil war and anarchy. The real mission for Bush Senior was something else. He went in there to save the interest of US oil giants from his native Texas. After all, he had made his fortunes in the oil industry before making a mark in politics. The powerful and influence-peddling oil cartel had bankrolled him into politics, and he was anxious to pay back in kind. He might have lost his own bid for re-election but he had sons waiting in the wings to inherit his mantle. He had to lubricate their passage into high-stakes politics by obliging his powerful friends.

 

Bush’s interest in the countries around the Horn of Africa, marking the nexus of the Red Sea with the Arabian Sea, began in the mid-80s when he was Vice-President to Reagan. Hunt Oil Company, a Texas-based oil giant, had explored for oil successfully in Yemen and discovered oil deposits there of up to one billion barrels. Geologists believed that there was a natural trough of oil that extended across the Red Sea into Somalia from Yemen. The World Bank had an intensive technical study on oil prospects in the region around Yemen done by its principal petroleum engineer, an Irishman by the name of Thomas E. O’Connor, in the mid-80s. O’Connor was dead certain that "it’s there. There’s no doubt there’s oil there." Somalia beckoned, just as Yemen had lured them earlier.

 

Their doubts, if any, put to rest by this independent WB study, Bush’s friends in the oil cartel of America saw a bonanza for themselves and swooped down on Somalia in hordes. Bush used his office and influence to egg them on.

 

There was also a political motive with the Reagan Whit House to decrease America’s dependence on oil from the Gulf region, because the oil producers there constantly found fault with the undisguised pro-Israeli bias of the administration against Arab and Muslim interests. For that reason alone, Bush in particular was keen that his Texas friends from the oil industry should focus on Somalia with a big search light. Inaugurating the brand new oil refinery of Hunt Oil at Maarib, in Yemen, in April, 1986, Vice President Bush insisted that it was of " growing strategic importance to the west" to tap crude oil resources " in the region away from the Strait of Hormuz."

 

The American oil companies had no problem in winning concessions from President Siad Barre of Somalia. He was corrupt and a lackey of Washington. With his palms sufficiently greased, he awarded generous exploration rights to at least four American companies to look for oil in Somalia. These were : Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillip—all of them with connections to Bush.

 

Tens of millions of dollars were sunk into the oil wells of Somalia. The largest investment was made by Conoco. But before any of the wells could spew oil in commercial quantities, Siad Barre licked the dirt. His corrupt regime was overthrown in January 1991, and Somalia was consumed by a civil war which forced all foreign enterprises to fold their tents and get out of the country—all except Conoco. The Houston-based Conoco did not want to desert Somalia for two reasons : one, they had had the largest investment of money in Somalia and, two, their friend George Bush was, by then, in the White House. They were in no hurry to cut their losses and run.

 

But George Bush, at that juncture, was overly engrossed with Saddam Hussain and Iraq. His " Desert Storm" was just then rolling to oust Iraq from Kuwait. So, Conoco simply cooled their heels in their huge compound in Mogadishu and bribed the civil war combatants to leave them alone. They thought they had all the time in the world to recover their losses whenever calm returned to Somalia. Besides, the thumping success of their buddy, Bush, in "Desert Storm" gave them reason to believe that he would win a second term, hands down, and then look after their interest. That was not to be.

 

Bush’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Clinton robbed him of a second stint and Conoco of a powerful mentor. But Bush did not want to leave his friends high and dry in Mogadishu, and decided to give his favourite military option a last chance to fashion the chessboard in Somalia to his friends’ liking. That was the backdrop to Bush rushing in 20 thousand American troops to aid the UN, ostensibly, in its plan to restore normalcy in Somalia. Only his perspective of ‘normalcy’ was different.

 

Bush also sent in a political tribune of his trust to sort things out at the diplomatic level to pave the way for Conoco to get their oil gear out in the field once again. Robert D. Oakley was his czar in Somalia. Oakley, a chip off the old block, had pleased Bush in his stint as ambassador to Pakistan in the crucial, winding- down, days of the Afghan War. He behaved more like a pro-consul than ambassador in Islamabad which did not earn him many friends there but the hawkish, conservative, Republican right was immensely pleased with his performance. They knew he was their man to pull their chestnut out of the Somalian fire.

 

Oakley moved straight into the Conoco compound in Mogadishu which became the operational headquarters for both the civilian and military activities. While the U.S. soldiers behaved like an occupation army—exactly the way they are acting in Afghanistan, today—Oakley started throwing his weight around in the political arena. There, he soon ran into his nemesis, Farah Aideed, the warlord who had played a big role in chasing Siad Barre out of power.

 

Farah Aideed had had a chequered career. Once a favourite of Siad Barre , he eventually broke ranks with his mentor. Barre packed him off to India as Ambassador in New Delhi where he lived five years and imbibed a lot of India in him. He returned to Somalia against Barre’s will and soon became one of his tormentors. Aideed repeated his medicine on Oakley, too. And the rest, as they say, is history. American soldiers’ arrogant, colonial, behaviour made them the enemies of all the warring Somali factions, especially Aideed’s. Scores of them were killed in hand to hand combat. Clinton, by then in the White House, cut his losses and pulled the entire U.S. contingent out of Somalia. Conoco’s dream of striking rich in Somalia lay buried in the debris of war.

 

That was 9 years ago. Bush Jr. now thinks September 11 has served Somalia on a platter to him and his powerful friends in the Texas oil lobby. The new Bush doctrine of fighting evil and terrorism is a rehash of the old Bush doctrine of controlling the energy resources of the Gulf and the region around it. The essential thrust, and end-game, of both is the same: keep the world of Islam in thrall to the west and exploit its rich mineral deposits to the hilt for the benefit of the west. That was the thesis expounded by that redoubtable dispenser of power politics, Henry Kissinger, in the early 70s when OPEC imposed the first oil embargo against the west for its unabashed espousal of Israeli interests at the cost of the Arabs.

 

Conoco and others of their ilk must have started dusting their old blueprints of Somalia. They have, once again, a friend in the White House prepared to wage a crusade on their behalf. None should doubt his resolve to realise his dreams and those of his friends. He is behaving as if he were in a game of blind man’s buff, swinging his stout stick around with his eyes closed. He has despatched 600 American soldiers to assist the Filipino army to ferret out the brigands of Abu Siaf from the jungle. He has recently responded similarly to a call from Edouard Shavernadze of Georgia to fight his rebels said to be abetted by the Chechens. Anyone who could pronounce Al Qaeda may rest assured that George W. Bush would respond to their call with a missionary zeal. His mission has a single sentence bottom line: he will fight ‘ Islamic terrorism’ in the remotest corner of the world.

 

Footnote : There is no doubt that Bush has a team of stalwarts who share his conviction as much as they did his father’s. A’hero’ of the old " Desert Storm" team, General Norman Schwarzkopf, was recently interviewed on tv and asked if those accused of harbouring and assisting the alleged terrorists of September 11 did not deserve to be forgiven ? Without losing a breath, Schwarzkopf answered : " I believe that forgiving them is God’s function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting."

[Muhammad]

strange that few Somalis know what most of the Non-Somalis know. Can you believe that I have a video tape of Conoco searching for Oil in Eastren Sanaag in 1990?

 

I hope all nomads wake up and realize that there is a far greater threat than clan-based supremacy.

 

great post SW.

[nuune]

nice article indeed,it is all about oil

[Thinkerman]

perhaps.

[Liqaye]

Oil is definitely a big part of the equation.

But i cant help but wonder why they have not installed a puppet regime in somalia yet.

 

but i guess After all they can afford to wait.

I also read in a congresional report that somalia has 4 TRILLION CUBIC FEET gas proven and atleast 22 TCF that is speculated, with 4 tcf alone we are jsut behind nigeria in the gas tables.

 

Another african people dying ontop of the wealth of their motherland.

 

So what else is new? :mad:

[Thinkerman]

You say that saxiib, but u only got to look at its strong military and economic presence in the ssurronding countries to realise that they are vigilantly awaiting there chance.

 

Dijbuti is already well within the sphere of control, Ethiopia has successfully played the Terror card after 9/11 to illict more Aid in return for more "Strategic co-operation", and the kenyan Misniter of Justice recently passed Legislation which has had the effect of Grouping all Muslims in Kenya (a siginifcant majority being from somali background) into the "suspected Terrorists".

 

Indeed Its funny that, we have not even got to an Industrilized or indeed post Indusriized state and we have already had more than enough Catastrophic wars.

 

Imagine what a fully developed Oil Economy would have ment in the wider context of Tribial Conflicts and Warlordism in somalia?? A Frighting thought

[N.O.R.F]

gr8 article, why do think the arabs are contributing to the ever 'unsettlement' of somalia as a whole with there generousity towards the warlords who favour their stance on no oil being struck in the country.

 

Maan i should be going for president, i'm sure i can show them arabs a thing or two!

[Che -Guevara]

Northern....lol...I think everybody arabs n africans alike is threatened by united and prosperious somalia.