Somalia: a victim of Bush’s recklessness!

[Nur]

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

 

 

Somalia: a victim of Bush’s recklessness

 

How the West ended Somalia’s brief flirtation with stability

 

By Matthew Carr

 

02/05/08 "First Post" -- - One of the forgotten battlegrounds of George Bush's 'war on terror' jumped sharply into focus yesterday, with the announcement that a pre-dawn US missile strike had killed the Islamist militia leader Aden Hashi Ayro and at least 10 other people in the town of Dusamareb in Somalia.

 

The Americans claim Ayro was a key al-Qaeda figure in East Africa. There is no way of objectively assessing these claims, but his assassination is certain to fuel the ongoing conflict in a country that Oxfam recently described as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

 

To much of the Western public, violent mayhem has long been synonymous with the failed state depicted in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. But the violence that is currently ripping Somalia apart is a direct consequence of the Bush administration's reckless military adventurism and the Manichean fantasy world of the 21st century's terror wars.

 

The present conflict can be traced to Christmas Day 2006, when the Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi invaded Somalia in order to topple a grassroots Islamic movement, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

 

During their six-month ascendancy in the south of the country, the Islamic Courts earned themselves some kudos amongst the war-weary Somali population, who were prepared to tolerate their literalist interpretation of Sharia in exchange for the freedom to walk the streets without being robbed, shot or raped by warlord militias.

 

It was a period in which many analysts, such as John Prendergast, a former Clinton official, saw 'the beginnings of governance' after nearly two decades of relentless civil war.

 

However, the xenophobic Zenawi regime did not regard the triumphant Islamists in Somalia with any enthusiasm. Nor did the Bush administration, which saw the Islamic Courts as an incipient Taliban and accused its leaders of sheltering "half a dozen or less" al-Qaeda leaders and an unknown number of lesser operatives.

 

The UIC denied these allegations and even made some conciliatory overtures to the West, but these efforts were not reciprocated. Instead the Bush administration gave what one US official called a 'yellow-green light' to an invasion that the Zenawi regime presented as its own 'war on terror'.

 

From its bases in Kenya and Djibouti, the Pentagon's newly-created Africa Command also provided military support for the invasion, in the form of special forces and helicopters. In January 2007 US helicopter gunships carried out 'rinse and repeat' attacks on fleeing refugees near the Kenyan border, who were believed to include al-Qaeda terrorists.

 

The main casualties in these attacks appear to have been nomads and their livestock, though few people were counting. But the Islamists appeared to have been routed and Ethiopia promptly set about establishing a puppet government, headed by the warlord Abdullahi Yusuf. Since then, resistance to Ethiopian occupation has grown exponentially and Somalia has sunk ever deeper into a vortex of violence. More than one million people have been displaced, thousands have been killed and the country's fragile food supply once more placed in jeopardy.

 

Was all this done in order to eliminate "half a dozen or less" al-Qaeda operatives who may never have been in the country in the first place? Did the US hope to gain access to Somalia's rich oil fields? Or was the Bush administration so blinded by its association between 'Islamism' and 'terror' that it chose to shoot first and ask questions later?

 

We cannot know what the Islamic Courts might have become had the US engaged them diplomatically or offered aid instead of rinse and repeat free fire zones. But the consequences could hardly have been much worse than they are now.

 

In its bloody attempt to rescue Somalia from 'fundamentalism' the US and its Ethiopian proxy have paved the way for the violent political fragmentation in which al-Qaeda thrives. While Western politicians dream of further humanitarian interventions elsewhere, it is salutary to pause and reflect on the catastrophe inflicted on yet another country that had to be destroyed before it could be saved.

 

 

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A Year and a half ago, The following article appeared!

 

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

 

by Henk Ruyssenaars - Ex Africa correspondent Thursday December 28, 2006 at 02:06 AM

 

 

US: " 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) US troops, so called "peace keepers".

 

THE LAWLESS U.S. WITH ETHIOPIA IS VIOLATING THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF SOMALIA

 

Henk Ruyssenaars

 

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 managers using the usual and ****** and worn out pretext of their own* al Qaeda: "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."

 

No evidence, only by the CIA etc. themselves fabricated 'proof' is ever offered. No names, dates, nothing!

 

And if that wasn't enough to enlarge the usual pack of lies there's more 'hot air' produced by Washington for their propaganda media: "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 and against human intelligence.

 

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 rogue 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 conflicts which are than used by them - and they 'run' United Nations - to fix some 'UN resolution' to solve the (US made) problem so it can start the full scale killing and drilling under a UN fig leaf of humanitarian help to cover US interests.

 

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 AND 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*

 

 

"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 an 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. [FPF: globally!]

 

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 Ethiopian Occupied 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.

[Fabregas]

SOmalia is a victim of her people, or should I say her Sons?

[Nur]

Call for inquiry into US role in Somalia

By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi

Wednesday, 7 May

 

The Independent, UK.

 

 

Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes.

 

 

The human rights group yesterday listed abuses carried out by Ethiopian and Somali government forces, and some committed by al-Shabaab, an anti-government militia which the US designated a terrorist group.

 

According to the report, based on the testimonies of refugees who have fled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in recent weeks, Ethiopian troops have killed civilians by slitting their throats. Ethiopian and Somali forces were also accused of gang-raping women and attacking children.

 

A refugee, named Haboon, accuses Ethiopian troops of raping a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter. When the girl's brothers – aged 13 and 14 – tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet. The Ethiopian government last night issued a statement strongly rejecting the Amnesty allegations and criticising the organisation's "uncritical use of sources."

 

Amnesty called for an international commission of inquiry into allegations of war crimes and said the role of other countries that have given military and financial support to perpetrators should also be investigated.

 

US troops trained Ethiopian forces involved in military operations in Somalia, and the US government supplied military equipment to the Ethiopian military.

 

"There are major countries that have significant influence," said Amnesty's Dave Copeman. "The US, EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks."

 

After attacks by Ethiopian and Somali forces on civilian areas in Mogadishu last year, European lawyers considered whether funding for Ethiopia and Somalia made the EU complicit. The results of their deliberations were never made public.

 

The Amnesty report detailed a pattern of attacks. Refugees who fled the violence said al-Shabaab would launch an attack from a residential area. Ethiopian troops would respond with a security sweep, often going from door-to-door attacking civilians. Those who did not flee faced further reprisals.

 

Increased military activity has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About 700,000 people have fled – out of a population of up to 1.5 million. The UN estimates that 2.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance – more than one quarter of the population.

 

Peace talks between the Somali government and the main opposition alliance are scheduled to begin later this month.

[Nur]

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

 

 

America's National Strategy of Global Intervention

 

By William Pfaff

 

October 18, 2008 ICH -- Paris, October 15, 2008 – Last June the U.S. Department of Defense unexpectedly issued a new version of its National Defense Strategy. It was unexpected because there will be a new administration in Washington in January which might be expected to issue a statement of its own ideas about military strategy.

 

Some in Washington speculated that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, only recently named to that office, a man who gets along with Democrats as well as Republications, might be bidding to keep his job under a new administration.

 

The new statement lacks the Bush administration’s unilateralism and triumphalism (as if there were anything left to be triumphal about), but it foresees a “Long War” of “promoting freedom, justice and human dignity by working to end tyranny, promote effective democracies and extend prosperity; and confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies.”

 

All that is straight Bush doctrine, drawn from his second inaugural address and Condoleezza Rice’s policy statement last summer predicting decades of a “new American realism” of “nation-building” to conquer “extremism.” By now the “Long War,” realistic or not, will have become orthodoxy for most of the Washington defense and strategic studies community.

 

The noteworthy thing about this National Defense Strategy statement is that it says nothing directly about American national defense. It is a strategy for intervening in other countries, and preventing others from blocking or resisting American interventions.

 

It states the responsibilities of America’s armed forces (summarizing the document’s introduction) as follows:

 

§ Conduct a global struggle against a violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn the international system.

 

§ Deal with the threats of rogue-nation quests for nuclear weapons.

 

§ Confront the rising military power of other states.

 

These duties “[will require] the orchestration of national and international power over years or decades to come” to accomplish the following:

 

§ Long-term innovative approaches to counter al-Qaeda’s rejection of state sovereignty, violation of borders, and attempts to deny self-determination and human dignity.

 

§ Deal “with the inability of many states to police themselves effectively or work with their neighbors to ensure regional security.” Armed sub-national groups must be dealt with, “including but not limited to those inspired by violent extremism” which if left unchecked will threaten the stability and legitimacy of key states, and allow instability to spread “and threaten regions of interest to the United States, its allies and friends.”

 

§ Form local partnerships and creative approaches to deny extremists the opportunity to gain footholds in “ungoverned, under-governed, misgoverned, and contested areas” affecting local stability and regional stability.

 

§ Counter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and enrichment capabilities, and deal with the ability of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to threaten international order, sponsor terrorism, and disrupt fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

§ Meet possible challenges from (a) “more powerful states [that] might actively seek to counter the United States in some or all domains of traditional warfare or to gain an advantage in developing capabilities that offset our own,” as well as (b) nations that might “choose niche areas of military capability and competition in which they believe they can develop a strategic or operational advantage [even though] some of these potential competitors [may also be partners of the U.S. in] diplomatic, commercial or security efforts...”

 

§ For the foreseeable future, “hedge against China’s growing military modernization and the impact of its strategic choices on international security....The objective of this effort is to mitigate near-term challenges while preserving and enhancing U.S. national advantages over time.”

 

§ Recognize that Russia’s [pre-Georgian crisis] “retreat from openness and democracy,” “bullying of its neighbors,” and “more active military stance... and signaled increase in reliance on nuclear weapons as a foundation for its security ...[are warnings of] a Russia exploring renewed influence” and a greater international role.

 

§ Prevent prospective adversaries, especially non-state actors and their state sponsors, from adopting “anti-access technology and weaponry [that can] restrict our future freedom of action,” and also from “making adversary use of traditional means of influence” such as by “manipulating global opinion using mass communications venues and exploiting international commitments and legal avenues.”

 

§ The global “commons [space, international waters, aerospace and cyberspace] must be secured and with them access to world markets and resources,” using military capabilities and alliances and coalitions, participating in international security and economic institutions, and employing “diplomacy and soft power to shape the behavior of individual states and the international system, using force when necessary.”

 

The principal preoccupation of the document is to protect American forces operating in foreign countries: to block measures by foreign states to “deny” American efforts to intervene in their countries, or to develop measures and technology to resist American intervention (or to send Americans to international criminal courts).

 

As for the United States itself, the document quotes the constitutional obligation of the government “to provide for the common defense,” but says that today, after more than 230 years, the U.S. “shoulders additional responsibilities on behalf of the world,...a beacon of light for those in dark places.” Yet the fear of those dark places that permeates the document compels the recommendation that American troops remain at home, where they will be safe from enemies and untrustworthy allies, and defend their own country.

 

William Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, including books on utopian thought, romanticism and violence, nationalism, and the impact of the West on the non-Western world. His newspaper column, featured in The International Herald Tribune for more than a quarter-century, and his globally syndicated articles, have given him the widest international influence of any American commentator.

 

© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved

[Nur]

From The Daily Record

 

December 28, 2008

 

 

Obama inherits Somalia problem

 

 

Add Somalia to the list of Bush administration blunders that Barack Obama's people need to straighten out. Good luck on this one.

 

In 2007, the Bush administration sponsored and covertly financed an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia. It wanted to dislodge from power an organization called the Islamic Courts. This mixed Muslim group had finally brought a semblance of order to Somalia after decades of warlord chaos. However, it frightened the neocons surrounding Bush. They didn't want another Islamic government in the Persian Gulf area.

 

As a result of the invasion, the Islamist regime collapsed and went into hiding. Chaos returned to Somalia. The puppet government set up by the U.S.-backed Ethiopian forces couldn't even control Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, forget the rest of the country. Moreover, it can't, or won't, control pirates operating from Somalia's shores that are terrorizing shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

 

The Ethiopians have given up. They're withdrawing their forces by the end of 2008. The Islamic forces are returning. Only this time they're much tougher and they are led by stridently anti-American fundamentalists. Those leaders who were deemed moderate are dead or totally silenced. According to those in the know, formerly moderate leaders were amenable to discussions with the United States. Now, no way.

 

I guess that our continued military presence in Afghanistan is justified by the hope (perhaps a slim one) that the country will not devolve into a failed state available to accommodate the likes of al Qaeda.

 

With one swoop, the "Bushies" have virtually ensured that Somalia will remain a failed state with even better possibilities for al Qaeda than Afghanistan.

 

MICHAEL G. BUSCHE

 

Sparta

[Chewer]

Somalis had Failed to establish themselfs so therefor every country can invade and dump waste in somalia if they wanted to. Seriously who can stop Them? U.N heheheh Seriously were a joke..

And you blame Mr. Bush on all Somalia's problems remember that we were Killing each other for 20 plus years..

 

 

Blame everything On mr. BUSH

[Fabregas]

^^High levels of khat use could be to blame for that. I saw a clip of a highly drugged Somali man on Aljazeera right after the Ethiopians tanks rolled on. He was happy and nothing in the world mattered him, except that he could chew his khat again. That was his goal in life.