US, China, Norway, ‘Ethiopia’, Somalia and the Horn of Africa

[rudy-Diiriye]

U think Tanisha/Jendaya will understand this!! i dont think so... well, here take a look.

 

Following recent mid-term developments, one can easily draw the conclusion that the US policy in the Horn of Africa region has faced a serious blow. American legislators and diplomats have already perceived the extent of the threat, but for the time being there is no sign of US policy shifting; yet, this becomes an urgent matter, if the area has not yet been abandoned by the US and the European colonials to the chaos of the expanding Islamists, and the afro-emerging Chinese superpower.

 

Impediments and Setbacks for the US in Africa

 

In the beginning, one could enumerate US mistakes in the Islamic Terrorism containment; later, one may have supposed that the US may have wished an increased Chinese presence in Africa, as a means of weakening the impenetrable control France and Britain have fortified over two colonial centuries in Africa.

 

Others have surmised that the State Department has viewed Africa like another Afghanistan, considering possible to use some of the African Islamists against China in the perspective of 2010 – 2015. Nothing is more irrelevant than thoughts like that.

 

The US faces many setbacks in Africa, a continent where America has always been outlandish. First, the British – French colonial impact persists; the new irrelevant French President plan for a Euro-Mediterranean bogus-alliance and bogus-cooperation is another European colonial device to keep the US far from Northern Africa, and to detach a sizeable part of the Black Continent in order to extract its resources, enslave its populations, and spread further discord throughout Africa. Turkey alone buried the ominous project, but America should remember it always in its African considerations.

 

Second, the Spectrum of Intolerant Islamic Terror expands from the Horn of Africa to Western Sahara. Exasperated, impoverished, and destitute nations, mercilessly exploited within bogus-realms that have been formed out of colonial borders, find in Islamism the hope that they never encountered in anything else; one cannot keep starving nations oppressed and tyrannized by their invaders for more than 100 years and assume that they will not react en masse.

 

And what does it matter whether the hope promised by the Islamists will supposedly be materialized in the Hereafter? A hope is a hope; who else gave them one? Meles Zenawi, the Tigray gangster of fake ‘Ethiopia’? Omar al Bashir, the Pan-Arabist murderer of Khartoum? Or the Moroccan origin Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ludicrous French puppet and bogus-president of Algeria?

 

Third, the rise of China in Africa is a real fact that few studied well, and even fewer reckoned its consequences. Few people have realized that China pursues in Africa a long-term target project only one aspect of which is the extraction of natural resources through the cooperation with unpopular, criminal and outrageous dictators.

 

Few have been perspicacious enough to see that China in Africa is not following a European or American colonial model presence but worked out a new Chinese pattern of colonialism that involves extraction of resources, commercial - economic control, political support to dictators (particularly those of sizeable countries), and – last but not least – covered military presence.

 

All the Chinese workers who work in Chinese fields, factories and plants can easily form and man a Chinese army on African soil – perfectly equipped, as not a single African dictator thought possible to check their installations, cargos and ammunitions.

 

China can deliver in Africa a big surprise at a moment of global crisis that will be detrimental for European and American interests in the Black continent.

 

Norway: a Brilliant Paradigm for US African Policy

 

America has a tiny but very courageous ally, a small but brave and historical nation that preferred self-reliance to the European Union amoral mayhem, namely Norway. The small, 4.5 million people nation that draws from the illustrious Vikings who landed in America 500 years before Cristobal Colon placed its position in international fora and hotspots on the basis of Moral Standards and Principles evolving around Humanism, Respect for the Other, Freedom of Expression and Religion, Equality, Equity, and Democracy.

 

This is the reason, Norway was never constrained to silence, and Norwegian diplomats always deployed considerable efforts in dispute resolution, humanitarian aid, and oppressed nations’ support.

 

The ongoing crisis between Norway and the totalitarian realm of ‘Ethiopia’ that pursues multi-condemned practices of Genocide in ****** should be carefully studied by the US administration. In fact, the ‘Ethiopian’ tyrannical government expelled six Norwegian diplomats accusing them of supporting Eritrea.

 

In an interview with the Norwegian Aftenposten, the tyrannical government’s ‘foreign minister’ Seyoum Mesfin said: “Norway tries to build a peace-keeping image, but cannot do so at the expense of the peace on the Horn of Africa.” The Tigray tribal pseudo-minister went on accusing Norway of supporting “terrorist groups” in Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan!

 

Yet, it is known allover the world that ‘Ethiopian’ – not Norwegian – soldiers are being accused of extrajudicial killings in ******, Tigray thugs – the very relatives of gangster Seyoum Mesfin – rape ******i women in the streets, kick inhabitants out their houses, imprison large numbers of ******i youth, and expropriate ******i families from their belongings as they inhumanly consider them as accomplices of the ****** National Liberation Front.

 

“At the expense of the peace on the Horn of Africa”; who speaks? Seyoum Mesfin, the most appalling butcher of the Horn of Africa, the most unrepresentative Foreign Minister in world, the guy who gets the support only of the Monophysitic Tigrays of Abyssinia, less than 8% of the entire country’s population!

 

Seyoum Mesfin’s peace is the Peace in the Morgue.

 

Top threat to destabilizing the Horn of Africa is Seyoum Mesfin’s government itself.

 

Replying to these charges, Norwegian Parliamentary Secretary Mr. Raymond Johansen described them as “False allegations.” Norway cut aid to Ethiopia after her diplomats were expelled. Mr. Johnasen’s brief comment is absolutely true. Ethiopia and Eritrea may have entered an unfinished war, but it has become clear that this war served the interests of the two unpopular governments.

 

It would rather be erroneous to conclude that both countries have been engaged in a long-running battle over a border dispute. The accusations about a false war that helps only perpetuate two dictators’ presence atop the technical entities named ‘Ethiopia’ and Eritrea are very frequent and truly abundant these last days (‘Eritrea – OLF Relationship and Its Impact on Oromo Struggle’http://www.oromoindex.com/News).

 

“The soldiers in Eritrea are financed in full by Norway. By supporting those who destroy peace processes in our neighbouring countries, Norway undermines the Ethiopian government’s peace work,” Mesfin claimed. He added that Norwegian money sponsors weapons for terrorist groups in Somalia and Sudan, and that Norwegian authorities operate out of sight of local governments.

 

Parliamentary Secretary Raymond Johansen in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry denied the Ethiopian Minister’s allegations. “Nothing he says is correct,” Johansen said. Johansen said that the Norwegian authorities had always been open and honest about their intentions, and that they wanted nothing but peace and reconciliation on the Horn of Africa.

 

In the light of the Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki’s recent statement in favour of the ‘unity’ of ‘Ethiopia’, one can understand that allegations like this, coming from the mouth of the Tigray chieftain who impersonates a ‘minister of foreign affairs’, are ….. quite an indictment!

 

Yet, at this very moment, a reconsideration of the US approach to the Horn of Africa would be very propitious, as it becomes clear that the deterioration in the relations between Norway and the ‘Ethiopian’ tyranny would be repeated in case the US pursued a Moral Standards and Principles attitude towards the murderous thugs and criminals around Meles Zenawi.

 

This reveals precisely the importance of the US choice between amoral support to, and relationship with, African tribal dictators and US African policy based on Moral Standards and Principles.

 

China: the Best Ally for African Tyrants

 

By opting for the latter, the US opens Pandora’s Box, as China replicates, and there is no way to prevent China from doing so; but as China does so, Africa’s tribal dictators have immediately a more trustworthy interlocutor than the American diplomats.

 

There is no need here to expand, as it goes without saying that nothing brings together an American diplomat who excels in Political Theory and Democratic Doctrine, and a tribal Tigray criminal who illegally pretends to represent a country whereby his ethno-religious group is rejected by more than 92% of the entire population.

 

American diplomats, politicians, congressmen, senators, administrators, academia and businessmen are viewed very suspiciously by the Tigray gangsters who know very well that more than 92% of their country’s population resent them, and that the Tigray control over the entire Abyssinia, falsely re-baptized ‘Ethiopia’, bears no trace of legitimacy. American Democracy and Humanism are a direct threat to the ruthless Tigray rulers.

 

Contrarily, an ‘Ethiopian’ and a Chinese diplomats have many things in common; as much as Abyssinia tyrannizes ******, so much China oppresses Tibet. As much as ‘Addis Ababa’ terrorizes Oromia, Sidama Land, Afar Land, the Shekachos, the Kaffas, and the Gambellas, so much Beijing prosecutes Eastern Turkistan, Inner Mongolia, other parts of the vast and cruelly undemocratic Chinese Imperium, and all the other oppressed peoples of China.

 

China’s targets in Somalia seem to have been truly underestimated by the State Department. Chinese thirst for Somalia’s rich Oil resources may soon herald a shift in Tigray Tyrant Zenawi’s foreign policy; this sort of tyrants are able to develop instinctive survival thoughts and short-term survival considerations.

 

- “If America starts speaking about Human Rights in 2007 ‘Ethiopia’, we will strike a strategic alliance with China” seems to think this trash of criminal Zenawi.

 

If this comes to happen, it will be a long-term disaster for the US. This is the reason a US reconsideration of the American Horn of Africa policy has become an urgent matter. And the Chinese are there! In Somalia!

 

China’s Rise In Force throughout Horn of Africa Region

 

Last July, the Transitional President of Somalia (in the Somali South) Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a miserable ‘Ethiopian’ puppet and most loathsome figure among today’s Somalis, was allowed to negotiate a contract with the Chinese state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the same firm that one year earlier had been forced to back off a takeover of Unocal under pressure from a broad bipartisan group in the U.S. Congress, as well as the smaller China International Oil and Gas (CIOG) Group.

 

It is noteworthy to remember that in November 2006, when the Transitional Federal Government of that unrepresentative bogus-president was besieged at Baidoa by the Islamists, he had traveled to CNOOC headquarters in China to ratify the deal with the Oil group’s chairman and chief executive officer, Fu Chengyu.

 

And last June, when special envoys from the US did their best to support the ‘national conference’, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government “energy minister” Abdullahi Yusuf Mohamad was in Nairobi, Kenya, joyfully chatting with Chen Zhuobiao, Head of CNOOC operations in Africa in order to put the final touches on the deal’s technical details.

 

The most critical point in the Chinese – unrepresentative Somali deal is precisely the location of the targeted oil field, which does not lie in Southern Somalia where the US idiotically try to support the loathsome ‘Ethiopian’ Transitional Federal Government of ‘Somalia’. The oilfield is located in the Mudug region of the semi-autonomous northwestern region of Puntland, which was considered as the traditional fief of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s ***** clan.

 

In the 1980s, a number of Western firms, including Conoco-Phillips (then two separate enterprises), Chevron, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, and Italy’s Eni S.p.a., held exploration concessions in Somalia and, according to some estimates, invested more than $150 million in onshore geological studies before they were forced to shut down operations with the collapse of the state.

 

Now, Range Resources Ltd. has concluded from data collected by earlier firms as well as field studies that it has managed to conduct in recent years thanks to its close ties with Puntland’s rulers that the potential yield may be as high as 10 billion barrels, thus making the Mudug field alone worth more than $700 billion.

 

The deal gives the Chinese firms 49 percent of the profits with the rest supposed to go to the Transitional Federal Government. In addition, the Transitional Federal Government will receive a bonus of $50 million for any wells which yield more than 200,000 barrels a day for seventy-five consecutive days.

 

It has also been reported that a deal was in the works to sell a 49 percent stake in the nascent Somali ’state’ petroleum firm that would be vested with the 51 percent share of the Chinese deal to Indonesia’s state-owned PT Medco Energi Internasional Tbk and Kuwait Energy Company (also known as Zahra Oil and Gas KSCC), a privately-held enterprise.

 

Although the venture may now look somewhat risky for the Chinese firms because of Somalia’s Civil War, one should rather estimate the result in case the deal meets success at the end. Questions may vary in this case from the possibility of another President in Puntland, and the longevity of the Transitional Federal Government in the Somali South, to the possible relationship between Puntland and Somalia’s unrepresentative Transitional Federal Government.

 

If the former allows the latter to materialize the illegal - due to the lack of representativity of the Transitional Federal Government - Oil exploitation, Puntland will be deprived of its most significant resources, kept out of its exploitation, and above all, dtripped of any and every sense of legitimacy.

 

An intensification of the Transitional Federal Government’s cruel and totalitarian practices has been noted recently; a few days ago, the popular Shabelle radio station in Mogadishu reported that it was shut down for several hours when the local police commander in the Holwadag quarter arrested nine staff members (all were eventually released). On the same day, two Transitional Federal Government soldiers and two civilians were killed in fighting in the same neighborhood.

 

On the next day, the director of the independent radio station - Horn Africa’s second FM station - Capital Voice, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, was shot dead by unknown assailants. It becomes therefore clear that the attitude displayed by the Transitional Federal Government will drive the outright majority of the Mogadishu inhabitants into the embrace of the Islamists.

 

The South will soon be lost for the Transitional Federal Government and their master, the ‘Ethiopian’ tyrant Zenawi, who may both have anticipated a collapse in the Somali South, and a parallel rise in the North-East through the eradication of the unrecognized structures of Puntland.

 

With China controlling the rich resources of Puntland, and the Islamists rising again in power in the Somali South, America will be left with empty hands; then, tyrant Zenawi will officialize its alliance with the Chinese dictators who have understood perfectly well that arms transfers as a means of policy can serve a wide array of Chinese foreign and even domestic policy purposes, including improving relations with totalitarian African countries, as it undermines what little leverage Western governments and international organizations have with this sort of recalcitrant regimes.

 

If all this happens, we will truly be unable to calculate who lost more, the Somalis or the Americans. It will very ironical to see China prevailing in the Horn of Africa area, after all the US money spent, intelligence deployed, and diplomacy effort carried out.

 

How could the US outmaneuver China’s Horn of Africa Plans?

 

Parallel developments in Asmara offer the US an incredible possibility for a successful shift of policy. A week ago, Somali opposition figures named Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as Chairman of a Liberation Alliance, declaring war on ‘Ethiopian’ tyrnat Zenawi’s tribal troops, and urging the exit of Ugandan peacekeepers from the Horn of Africa nation.

 

America should study the event carefully; a dictator’s advice would not help in this regard. American diplomats, congressmen, and administrators must feel comfortable with the rightful Somali pledge for National Independence; in the same way America became independent, Somali leaders and true representatives of the Somali people vow to achieve Independence and Unity with the illegally occupied by Abyssinia ******.

 

There is nothing wrong in it.

 

Hundreds of delegates meeting in Eritrea’s capital chose Sheikh Sharif Ahmed to steer the new opposition grouping. It’s a new beginning in which the ominous Islamist Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys is absent. The Somalis are certainly Muslim, but in their outright majority they are traditional African tolerant and multicultural Muslims harboring no extremist feelings. And certainly America understands that there is nothing wrong with the Islamic faith.

 

The US administration should not be partially predisposed against those struggling for National Independence and Freedom of Faith. Nothing guarantees that Sheikh Sharif Ahmed did not learn his lesson from the time he participated in the Islamist Government of Somalia, the Islamic Courts of Justice. 2008 will not be a repetition of 2006.

 

The use of political language was this time far more elaborate, and not extremist at all. “Resistance to the occupation is a legitimate and sacred right. It is a national duty as well as a religious obligation for all citizens,” read a final communique from the week-long conference of opposition delegates in Asmara.

 

In the communique, it was also said that the new opposition movement would be called the “Alliance For The Re-Liberation Of Somalia” or ARS, a small modification of the previously-announced “Alliance For The Liberation Of Somalia.” The change of name means a lot, and it should be well perceived in Washington.

 

Including a wide range of figures from Islamists to former government members, ex-parliamentarians and members of the Somali diaspora, the delegates surprised some observers with their resolution to kick the tyrannical ‘Ethiopian’ invader away. They have threatened immediate military action against Meles Zenawi’s tyranny.

 

It was also stated that ARS will not enter into any talks with the so-called Transitional Federal Government before a complete withdrawal of the Ethiopian occupation army.

 

With respect to the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia, consisting of 1,600 Ugandan soldiers, the Communique stated the following: “The ARS demands the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from our country since their presence is illegal and has become at present part of the occupation force” (http://www.ijaraonline.com/a2230.html).

 

Organisers said the Islamists would get about 40% of seats in the alliance’s 191-member central committee, former MPs about 25% and members of the Diaspora about 16%. A former Somali parliament speaker was elected head of the central committee.

 

The movement criticized America for an immoral alliance with tyrannical ‘Ethiopia’, but did not attack the US foreign policy in its totality, and did not portray America negatively. In Europe one can find far stronger Anti-Americanism than in the ARS Communique. The following was stated explicitly: “The ARS calls upon the U.S. administration to reverse its anti-Somalia policy.

 

The Somali people are devoted Muslims, but not terrorists. The ARS is not a terrorist organisation Chairman Ahmed is widely seen as a moderate”.

 

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed represents for America the best chance to return in force and stay influential for long in the area; the reasons and the related prospects we will analyze in a forthcoming article.

 

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommat

http://free-somalia.org/?p=295