(GLOBALRESEARCH) Fighting Al Shahab Rebels: Washington’s Terrorism or Counter-terrorism in Somalia?
By Dr. Ismail Salami
Global Research, January 19, 2014
Region: sub-Saharan Africa
Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Oil and Energy
Somalia has become a breeding ground for Washington’s black operations since 2001, with the African country suffering human losses due to US hegemonic policies.
Only recently, it has been revealed that the US secretly deployed two dozens of troops under the guise of military advisors. It is naïve to think that the US has no ulterior motives other than giving advisory clues to the military men in Somalia or protecting the security of the African people.
In 1993, the US embarked on a military expedition dubbed Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia under the pretext of eliminating a Somali warlord, an operation which sadly caused massive human losses. Quite naturally, the US swiftly exonerated itself and attributed it to a misstep.
According to Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy, CIA officials privately concede that the US military may have “killed from 7,000 to 10,000 Somalis during its engagement. America lost only 34 soldiers. Notwithstanding that extraordinary disparity, the decision was to withdraw.” So, the estimates delivered by the US media have been drastically overlooked or underestimated.
The fact is that there is no justification for this human catastrophe. However, as is their wont, Washington officials barefacedly insist that their mission was to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid who was openly opposed to the presence of the US in Somalia.
Later, much to the disappointment of many, this military farce was unfortunately glorified on the screen by Ridley Scott in a movie called Black Hawk Down.
Among other black operations in Somali is a series of killer drone sorties which the US had been carrying out for years without openly acknowledging the fact. It was in 2012 when the White House eventually lifted the lid of secrecy on its black ops in the Horn of Africa and admitted to the crime for the first time.
The US excuse for launching such attacks is the same old story: eradicating the al-Qaeda elements.
A count by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism claims that the US-conducted drone attacks have so far at least 112 Somali militants. This treacherously dubious number excludes the 60 civilians who were killed in the killer drone attacks. Washington’s method of distinguishing between the civilians and non-civilians is understandably strange. Those who are adults are non-civilians and those who are not, are civilians.
Interestingly, the US used to prefer a policy of denial regarding the drone attacks until a few months ago when the CIA acknowledged that the drone attacks in Somalia and other parts of Africa were carried out under the supervision of the espionage agency.
Further to this, there is an active CIA station in Mogadishu. In August, Jeremy Scahill reported on the CIA’s compound at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport, sating, “the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. At the facility, the CIA runs a counter-terrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab.”
According to Scahill, the CIA is not in the least interested in dealing directly with Somali political leaders, who they say are corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. “They support us in a big way financially,” says the senior Somali intelligence official. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”
What is the US really doing in Somalia?
A look at the natural resources of this country is enough to provide an answer to this question.
An LA Times article reveals that nearly two-thirds of Somalia’s resources were allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration’s decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.
Officially, the Administration and the State Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian. Oil industry spokesmen dismissed as “absurd” and “nonsense” allegations by aid experts, veteran East Africa analysts and several prominent Somalis that President Bush, a former Texas oilman, was moved to act in Somalia, at least in part, by the U.S. corporate oil stake.
According to a report issued by Range Resources, there are some huge oil seeps in north Somalia (Somaliland) and in the southwest where Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet.
New estimates of the country’s oil reserves, onshore and offshore, run as high as 110 billion barrels. According to the reports, there are likely vast natural gas reserves in Somali waters in the Indian Ocean. Add to that a series of fields which have been found off Mozambique and Tanzania and which contain an estimated 100 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Under the banner of combating terrorism, the ghoul of imperialism intervenes and vindicates its spree killer drone attacks and other inhuman black operations and spares no efforts in reaping the ill gotten benefits of its military lust in the Muslim lands.
Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA, TERRORISM
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(GLOBALRESEARCH) Fast and Furious UK-Style: Britain’s Gun-running to East Africa, Somali Pirates
By Patrick Henningsen
Global Research, January 06, 2014
21st Century Wire
In the US, we’re used to seeing the alphabet soup agencies involved in trafficking arms, and as long as the government are doing it, no one in government seems to mind too much.
For Washington DC, state-sanctioned gun-running has developed into a nice, not-so-little cottage industry, with arms flooding into the hands of criminal drug cartels in Mexico being well-documented through Eric Holder’s ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal.
Add to this the recent CIA admission of overseas gun-running into the hands of quasi-terrorist outfits in Syria, and you can see how government-controlled gun-running operations are key to maintaining instability and a criminal climate in regions all around the world.
By contrast, in Britain, business enterprises like international gun-running are mere whispers in the halls of Westminster, and remain well-hidden behind the walls of London’s infamous city state – the financial Square Mile. A new report this week (see full article below), accuses the British Government of having been caught in their own ‘Fast and Furious’ episode – this time shipping some 44,000 guns to East Africa – in the last 15 months alone. That’s just the tip of the global iceberg. Does this also explain how all of those lovely weapons made it into the hands of rebel fighters in Libya and Syria?
In order for this river of arms to keep flowing, it’s important that a government maintain little or no oversight regarding state-sanctioned weapons trafficking. The UK’s House of Commons Arms Export Controls Committee has now admitted that the government’s Business Department, which ‘approves’ these massive weapons exports, “did not thoroughly assess where the weapons were going”. Dear, oh dear.
There is a strong suggestion in this report that many of these weapons have ended up into the hands of Somalian pirates – and this is where we see the business cycle come full circle…
Is their any relationship between the British government, the destabilisation of East Africa and the City of London’s insurance and trading firms? The connections run deep indeed.
Insurance syndicates raking in profits
Who benefits from Somalian piracy in the Gulf of Aden? According to a study conducted by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), insurance companies have seen a windfall in profits from the Somali pirate attacks, with insurance premiums sharply increasing. The DIW white paper concluded that:
“Many of the relevant players (Somali pirates, local communities, nascent government in pirate regions, international navies, private security and the insurance industry) have no incentive to stop piracy. In fact, there is a relatively stable relationship between these groups, many of whom share a clear business interest in maintaining piracy at its current level.”
Even though Somalian piracy only affects a small percentage of shipping through Somalia’s coastal waters and the Indian Ocean, thus far the overall winner of this regional “crisis” has to be the insurance syndicates providing coverage to the shipping industry. DIW confirmed that, “Of an estimated 30,000 ships transiting the Gulf of Aden in 2009, 116 were attacked, less than one in 250. Moreover, the 25 final ransoms are still only a small fraction of the overall value of the ship, crew and cargo”.
Lloyds insurance moguls saw other opportunities to increase their profits by extending the ‘pirate zone’, even in the face of international opposition. Bloomberg reported in 2011, that “India is lobbying Lloyd’s of London to reverse its expansion of the area judged prone to pirate attacks to cover almost all of the nation’s west coast after insurance costs surged as much as 300-fold this year”.
A clear nexus exists between the City’s business elite, the UK government and the World Bank. Keeping Somalia entrenched in a pit of debt and dependent of “aid” from multi-lateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank helps fuel the cycle of poverty and lawlessness, which in turn, puts even more money into established City pockets in the form of insurance premiums. Add to this, NATO is overseeing the entire security operation in and around the Gulf of Aden from its new maritime headquarters – in North London. That’s right – nearly everything concerning Somalia and its ‘security crisis’… comes from, or passes through London.
So it’s no surprise then why the British government has bothered to funnel £2.2m into the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime’s ”counter-piracy programme”, to run prisons in Puntland, Somalia and helps fund the reinforcement police and maritime forces which will defend British interests in the region.
Big Money for Major Players
It’s no secret that British mining and energy interests in East Africa – especially in Ethiopia and Somalia, are a top priority for neocolonial market makers, shakers and takers in the City of London. Ethipoian-based British proxy firm SouthWest Energy is one of the major players in the region. According to Hands of Somalia blog, SouthWest’s advisory board include Sir John Bond, chairman of Xstrata, Simon Murray, chairman of Glencore and Lord Malloch-Brown, who served for two years as UK minister of state in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of Gordon Brown’s Labour government with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the UN.
Hands off Somalia notes here how insurance rackets and their beneficiaries (opportunists) have already carved up a their niche market:
“On 6 January (2013) the first private British navy for the last 200 years was set up off Somali waters by a group of businessmen to defend western private interests and rake in massive shipping insurance contracts with Lloyds of London.
Simon Murray backs the company behind the venture, Typhon. The firm is composed of ex-Royal Marines, Legionnaires, NATO commanders, and even a former chief of HSBC’s marine and insurance business. Typhon owner Anthony Sharp told the Telegraph “I had the idea for Typhon playing polo one afternoon, thinking about what my next business might be”.
City insurance stalwart Lloyds of London started in business doing marine insurance, underwriting centuries of British empire-building – and have been profiting out of the piracy game for centuries. Other piracy insurance giants based in the City of London. include Willis Group Holdings plc. According to a report by Forbes in 2010, buying the highest insurance package per voyage would, somehow, significantly lower the risk of a piracy attack. If you were one of the hundreds of ships to buy Willis Group’s full ‘Vessel Shield’ package – a bargain at $35K per voyage, then you would have completely avoided being targeted by Somali pirates. What luck. Go figure.
It would be interesting to know if the same City of London insurance and financial firms involved the Gulf of Aden piracy market also have any business interest in arms shipments to East Africa, or the mining and oil businesses. If you dig deep enough, it’s likely that you might find a yes(s) somewhere in this criminal matrix, but who really knows, right?
With Somalia weak and unstable, British and other US and European firms only need wait until the moment is right to jump on Somalia’s natural resource assets. Until then, there’s plenty of money to spread around.
Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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(ANN GARRISON) AfrobeatRadio guests: Al Shabaab and Somali pirates created by international piracy and military force
Submitted by Ann Garrison on Thu, 01/19/2012 - 15:03
WBAI AfrobeatRadio on Somalia, with journalist/Icc Broadcasting Network host Hassan Isilow and University of Minnesota Professor Abdi Samatar
Hassan Isilow, Journalist and radio host for Icc Broadcasting, a gobal Islamic network
On 11.26.2011, we spoke to Professor Abdi Samatar and journalist Hassan Isilow, following that week's news, reported by Democracy Now, the Daily Maverick and other outlets, that U.S. ally Ethiopia had once again invaded Somalia across Somalia's Western border backed up by the ongoing U.S. drone bombing from U.S. military bases in the region. The Telegraph reported, on November 15th, that Israel is supporting the Kenyan invasion of Somalia across its southern border.
This week's Somalia news included:
1) Hunger, homelessness, and the Somali refugee population, continue to grow.
2) Six Somali refugees died, burned to death by the Kenyan Army in Kenya.
3) Six Somalis, including an aid worker and a security guard, died in a suicide bomb blast at a refugee camp in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.
4) The BBC reported that oil drilling has begun in Somalia's Puntland State, which may have up to 4 billion barrels of oil.
University of Minnesota Geography Professor Abdi Samatar
The fundamentals of the Somali crisis discussed on AfrobeatRadio in November remain the same. Abdi Samatar said, and Hassan Isilow agreed that international forces imposing a political project on Somalia, plus the Ethiopian occupation, produced Al-Shabaab and "the Somali pirates." Abdi Samatar said that the biggest pirates off the Somali coast are the international fishing fleets who have stolen billions of dollars worth of fish from the mouths of the Somali people, and Hassan Isilow said that local piracy had also arisen in response to foreign ships dumping toxic waste off the Somali Coast.
Abdi Samatar said, "I think what our audience needs to know is that there was a great deal of hope about the coming of the Obama Administration to power. And many of us worked for him . . . The tragedy is that this Administration has done more damage than even the Bush Administration overseas, especially in Somalia."
Labels: AL SHABAAB, SOMALIA, TERRORISM
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Riots in Kenya after Somali Shabab member assassinated
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
MOMBASA: Deadly riots broke out in Kenya’s main port of Mombasa on Monday after the assassination of a radical cleric linked to Somalia’s al Qaeda-allied Shabab militants.
At least one person was hacked to death as thousands of angry protestors took to the streets after Aboud Rogo Mohammed — who was on US and UN sanction lists for allegedly supporting the Shabab — was shot dead.
“A car behind us aimed at my husband, they shot him on the right side,” said his widow Haniya Said, screaming in grief after the killing by unknown attackers. “One person has been killed, he was slashed to death during the protests,” said regional police chief Aggrey Adoli.
Cars were set on fire and two churches were looted in the city — Kenya’s main port and a key tourist hub — according to an AFP reporter. “There is chaos in town now, and our officers are on the ground dispersing the rioters to maintain peace,” added Adoli. “They are demonstrating against the killing of Aboud Rogo, who was shot by unknown people.”
Witnesses said that Mohammed’s car was riddled with bullets, and a photograph released by his supporters showed his bloody corpse slumped behind the wheel of a car.
“He died as we rushed him to hospital. Why have they killed my dear husband?” his widow added, before she and her children were taken to the hospital. Mohammed was placed on a US sanctions list in July for “engaging in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Somalia”, specifically for recruiting and fundraising for the hardline Shabab.
The United Nations Security Council placed a travel ban and asset freeze on the cleric in July, saying he had provided “financial, material, logistical or technical support to al-Shabab”.
He was the “main ideological leader” of Kenya’s Al Hijra group, also known as the Muslim Youth Center (MYC), the UN said.
African Union and Somali troops captured the key port of Marka from al Qaeda-linked Shabab insurgents on Monday, the latest in a string of bases to be wrested off the extremists, officials said.
“We have taken Marka, we entered alongside the Somali government forces Monday morning,” said Colonel Ali Houmed, the spokesman for the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM). “There was some fighting, but not so heavy, most of the Shabab had fled.” The loss of Marka, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, is another major blow for the insurgents, who have been on the back foot for several months. AU and Somali troops have made significant gains in recent months against Shabab, although they remain a major security threat. Ethiopian troops are also battling the militants from the south and west.
The loss of Marka leaves the Shabab with two major ports in southern Somalia — Barawe and the key rebel bastion of Kismayo — although an international naval blockade has already greatly squeezed maritime access there. agencies
Labels: KENYA, SOMALIA
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COMMENT - There are generic ads and newsitems talking about 'famine in the Horn of Africa' as if there is no backstory of decades of known destabilisation by the US and UK, including through military invasion by the Anglo-Saxon proxies Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Camps aren't good at the best of times, however, there seems to be a consistent agenda behind the ongoing western destabilisation of Somalia.
UN Starves One Million Somalis on 10 Cents A Day
Tue, 05/29/2012 - 23:23
by Thomas C. Mountain
The United States enlisted Ethiopia, Uganda, the African Union, and the United Nations to destroy the lives and sovereignty of the Somali people. The subjugation of Somalia has cost billions, which the Americans have freely spent, but Washington and its vassals can spare only 10 cents a day to feed the Somali victims – a budget designed for mass death.
“A million dollars a day for the War on the Somali People, 10 cents a day to feed the victims of that war.”
The UN announced its budget for feeding the over one million Somali refugees under its care for the next year and have allocated less than 10 cents a day to do so.
Anthony Lake, once nominated to head the CIA, now UNICEF supremo, held a press conference in April, 2012, to declare a budget of $35 million for the next year to feed the Somali refugees in its care, over one million and growing by the day. And all the while the UN is funding the 20,000 man strong African Union army “pacifying” Mogadishu to the tune of over $350 million, $30 million a month and counting.
The UN created these refugees in the first place, sending in the Ethiopian army in 2006 to bring fire and sword to newly peaceful Somalia, followed by the UN-dispatched relief forces, now over 15,000 from Uganda, ever since 2008.
Half a million Somali refugees created by the Ethiopian army, another half a million created by the UN/AU “pacification” of Mogadishu and now, following the worst drought and famine in 60 years, less than 10 cents a day to feed the lot. Talk about cold blooded. Upon hearing this shouldn’t one automatically think mass murder by starvation, genocide even? Just as the US Army used to do to American Indians, drive them from their land into “refugee camps” and then starve them to death? Just as the USA did to the Filipino people when it colonized the Philippines in the early 20th Century? The same again in Vietnam in the 1960’s?
“Shouldn’t one automatically think mass murder by starvation, genocide even?”
The War on Terror in Somalia is none other than the War on the Somali people and the UN is the instrument used to commit Pax Americana’s crimes. A million dollars a day for the War on the Somali People, 10 cents a day to feed the victims of that war.
I can still remember when the government here in Eritrea kicked out all the UN “peacekeepers” and how good it felt to see them go. Here’s to the day all of Somalia sees the end to the UN, the AU, Ethiopia, the USA or any foreign military presence, both overt and covert. Until that day blood will only continue to be spilt and children starve and war, the war on the Somali people, will continue.
Thomas C. Mountain is the most widely distributed independent western journalist in Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.
Labels: DESTABILISATION, GENOCIDE, HUNGER, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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Somali envoy blames Zambia for chaos at his embassy
By Joseph Mwenda
Mon 07 May 2012, 12:00 CAT
SOMALIAN ambassador to Zambia Shirwa Abdullahi Ibrahim (right) has blamed Zambia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Friday incident in which another Somali national attempted to unseat him.
And Ambassador Ibrahim has apologised to the diplomatic community in Zambia over what he described as an embarrassing incident which led to police questioning him on Friday. Ambassador Ibrahim named the 'diplomat' who attempted to overthrow him as Muhammad, a member of the Somali community living in Lusaka's Chaisa compound.
Woodlands police on Friday picked up the East African envoy together with Muhammad for questioning after the latter claimed that he had been sent to take over the diplomatic position in Zambia.
In an interview from his office yesterday, Ambassador Ibrahim said the incident had dented the image of his government and the embassy.
"It is a very embarrassing situation that we had to disclose our differences at the police station. As a diplomat, I am very sorry.
That should not have happened. But I do have the right to call on the police and the local administration if I feel there is need," he said.
He confirmed that Muhammad attempted to oust him.
"I called the police to come and take out the person who was causing violence here. So the police came and asked him if he was a diplomat.
Unfortunately, he said 'yes'. He produced… in Somalia but that is not true. I think those documents are forged," Ambassador Ibrahim explained.
He said police did not close the embassy, but merely took them for questioning and that business had returned to normal at the offices.
"The police did not close the embassy. As you can see that flag is flying high and I am here working peacefully," he said.
Ambassador Ibrahim disclosed that the operations of the embassy were being jeopardised by corrupt members of the Somalian community in Lusaka.
"The Somali embassy has been having problems for the past two years because of a group of people calling itself the Zambia-Somali Friendship Association.
These people are murdering the warm relations that exist between the two countries (Zambia and Somalia). They want to take over the embassy and put a member of their group so that they can start using the embassy to facilitate their business transactions with the Zambian government," Ambassador Ibrahim said.
He said he had reported the incident to his government and that a formal response would be made to the Zambian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"My government has been dressed down. It has been hurt by that incident which you published in your journal. They will use the diplomatic channels to clarify our role here," he said.
Ambassador Ibrahim said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to blame for the problems facing his embassy.
"I want to emphasise that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must stop dealing with individual members of the Somalian community. On Thursday, I went to see the Chief of Protocol there and his secretary told me that he was in a meeting with Somalian diplomats.
I was surprised to hear that because I am in charge of the Somalian embassy in Lusaka. How can individual civilians gain access into a high office like that one without clearance from the embassy? Even for me as a diplomat, I have to make an appointment before I go to see the Chief of Protocol. I cannot just go to see him," he said.
Ambassador Ibrahim claimed some corrupt Somalis had been gaining access to government departments through bribes.
"Right now, the Somalian community in Zambia is more popular than the embassy. We have Somalians all over the world and the largest community in Kenya, but they do not behave the way this community behaves in Zambia," said Ambassador Ibrahim, who reported for duty in Zambia there months ago.
Ambassador Ibrahim said it was not true that the Friday incident was an indication that the Somalian government was week, but proof that the Zambian ministry of Foreign Affairs was tolerating bureaucracy.
Labels: AMBASSADOR, EMBASSIES, SOMALIA
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(COMMENT) Interesting. The absence of the former Central Bank makes the money mass of Somali Shillings a finite commodity. Which then gives it it's value.
Somalia’s mighty shilling
Hard to kill
A currency issued in the name of a central bank that no longer exists
Mar 31st 2012
USE of a paper currency is normally taken to be an expression of faith in the government that issues it. Once the solvency of the issuer is in doubt, anyone holding its notes will quickly try to trade them in for dollars, jewellery or, failing that, some commodity with enduring value (when the rouble collapsed in 1998 some factory workers in Russia were paid in pickles). The Somali shilling, now entering its second decade with no real government or monetary authority to speak of, is a splendid exception to this rule.
Somalia’s long civil war has ripped apart what institutions it once had. In 2011 the country acquired a notional central bank under the remit of the Transitional Federal Government. But the government’s authority does not extend far beyond the capital, Mogadishu. The presence of the Shabab, a murderous fundamentalist militia, in the south and centre of the country, makes it unlikely that Somalia will become whole anytime soon. Meanwhile, 2.3m people are in need of edible aid. Why, then, are Somali shillings, issued in the name of a government that ceased to exist long ago and backed by no reserves of any kind, still in use?
One reason may be that the supply of shillings has remained fairly fixed. Rival warlords issued their own shillings for a while and there are a fair number of fakes in circulation. But the lack of an official printing press able to expand the money supply has given the pre-1992 shilling a certain cachet. Even the forgeries do it the honour of declaring they were printed before the central bank collapsed: implausibly crisp red 1,000-shilling notes, with their basket weavers on the front and orderly docks on the back, declare they were printed in the capital in 1990.
Abdirashid Duale, boss of Dahabshiil, the largest network of banks in Somalia, says that his staff are trained to distinguish good fakes from the real thing before exchanging them for dollars. Others accept the risk of holding a few fakes as a cost of doing business (shillings are often handed over in thick bundles of 100 notes). By this alchemy, an imitation of a thing which is already of notional value turns out to be worth something.
Shelling out shillings
A second reason for the shilling’s longevity is that it is too useful to do away with. Large transactions, such as the purchase of a house, a car, or even livestock are dollarised. But Somalis need small change with which to buy tea, sugar, qat (a herbal stimulant) and so on. Many staples are not produced domestically, making barter impractical. The shilling serves as well as shells or beads would as a medium of exchange. It also has a role as a secondary store of value. Once a year the economy gets an injection of dollars when goats are sold to Saudi Arabia to feed pilgrims undertaking the haj. Herders need to find ways to save money received then for spending over the next year. The shilling is one of them.
The shilling has a further source of strength. Since each party to a transaction is likely to be able to place the other within Somalia’s system of kinship, the shilling is underpinned by a strong social glue. Paper currencies always need tacit consent from their users that they will exchange bills for actual stuff. But in Somalia this pact is rather stronger: an individual who flouts the system risks jeopardising trust in both himself and his clan.
Having survived against great odds, the shilling now faces a serious challenge in the form of dollars transferred by mobile phone. Zaad, a mobile-money service, allows users to pay for goods by texting small amounts of money to a merchant’s account, and is proving popular in Mogadishu. But the shilling’s endurance suggests it should not be counted out. If it can survive without a government, it can probably brush off modern technology, too.
Labels: CURRENCY, INFLATION, NEOLIBERALISM, SOMALIA
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Australian SAS spying in Africa
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 00:00
SYDNEY — A secret squadron of Australian Spercial Air Service (SAS) soldiers has been operating at large in Africa, performing work normally done by spies, in an unannounced and possibly dangerous expansion of Australia’s foreign military engagement. The deployment of the SAS’s 4 Squadron — the existence of which has never been publicly confirmed — has put the special forces unit at the outer reaches of Australian and international law.
The Age has confirmed that troopers from the squadron have mounted dozens of secret operations over the past year in African nations including Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Kenya.
They have been out of uniform and not accompanied by Australian Secret Intelligence Service officers with whom undercover SAS forces are conventionally deployed.
It is believed the missions have involved gathering intelligence on terrorism and scoping rescue strategies for Australian civilians trapped by kidnapping or civil war.
But the operations have raised serious concerns within the Australian military and intelligence community because they involve countries where Australia is not at war.
There are also concerns within the SAS that the troopers do not have adequate legal protection or contingency plans if they are captured. “They have all the espionage skills but without (ASIS’s) legal cover,” said one government source.
In a comment relayed to government officials, one soldier said: “What happens if we get caught?”
Australian National University professor Hugh White, a former deputy secretary of Defence, said: “Such an operation deprives the soldier of a whole lot of protections, including their legal status and, in a sense, their identity as a soldier. I think governments should think extremely carefully before they ask soldiers to do that.”
Despite the dangers, then foreign minister Kevin Rudd last year asked for troopers from 4 Squadron to be used in Libya during that country’s conflict.
SAS 4 Squadron is based at Swan Island, near Queenscliff, a high-security defence facility that has doubled in size over the past decade, in part to accommodate the new squadron.
The squadron was formally raised in 2005 by the Howard government, but The Age has learnt that its new intelligence-focused role was authorised in late 2010 or early last year by Mr Smith.
Collecting intelligence overseas without using violence is the main function of ASIS, which was created in 1952 but not officially acknowledged until 1977. Since the mid-1980s, ASIS officers have been refused permission to carry weapons or use violence, but in 2004 the Howard government amended legislation to allow them to have weapons for self-defence and to participate in violent operations provided the officers themselves do not use force.
It was around that time that the creation of the fourth SAS squadron was authorised, with its soldiers expected to be an elite version of bodyguards and scouts for ASIS intelligence officers.
The African operations by 4 Squadron initially centred on possible rescue scenarios for endangered Australian citizens, such as freelance journalist Nigel Brennan, who was held by Somali rebels.
The soldiers have also assessed African border controls, explored landing sites for possible military interventions and developed scenarios for evacuating Australians, as well as assessing local politics.
ASIS officers are legally permitted to carry false Australian passports and, if arrested, can deny who they are employed by. ADF members on normal operations cannot carry false identification and cannot deny which government they work for.
While the SAS has worked alongside Australia's intelligence agencies for decades, the creation of a dedicated squadron mirrors the US model, where the military and the intelligence services have closer links.The intelligence gathered by the Australian soldiers in countries such as Kenya all flows into databases used by the US and its allies in Africa.
Australia’s security service ASIO is also increasingly concerned by the domestic threat posed by Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab. ASIO holds concerns that a small group within Australia’s growing Somali community is sending money to al-Shabaab.
— Sydney Morning Herald.
Labels: AUSTRALIA, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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COMMENT - Vienna Conference of 1885, anyone?
Somalia's future is discussed at London conference
By BBC News
Thu 23 Feb. 2012, 14:30 CAT
World leaders are attending a major conference on the future of Somalia in London to focus on finding peace and ending threats of terrorism and piracy. As it opened, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he hoped the process would generate "new momentum". Somalia has endured more than two decades of civil war and famine.
Representatives from many Somali factions are also attending, but not the Islamist group which controls much of the centre and south of the country. The UK has described Somalia as the "world's worst failed state" but said it needs a "second chance".
Mr Cameron told the gathered leaders, who included US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi and UN chief Ban Ki-moon, that the world would pay a high price if it ignored the plight of Somalia.
During his speech, Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed called for an end to the arms embargo.
Yoweri Museveni, the leader of Uganda - which has provided the bulk of troops for African Union (AU) forces in Somalia - told the gathering African solutions to African problems worked best.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council approved a resolution increasing the number of AU troops in Somalia by 5,000 to more than 17,000. Council members also agreed to extra funding for the mission and to extend its mandate.
'Realistic'
At the same time, Ethiopian and Somali troops took the strategic stronghold of Baidoa in the south-west of the country held by militant group al-Shabab, which recently merged with al-Qaeda.
On Wednesday evening, officials said a bomb planted by the militants exploded in the centre of Baidoa causing minor injuries.
Islamist insurgents who have been fighting the internationally recognised government since 2007 have said the London conference was "another attempt" to colonise Somalia.
"They want us under trusteeship and we will not allow that. God willing we will face the outcome with full force and stop it," a spokesman for al-Shabab, Ali Mohamud Rage, said.
"A stronger America failed and all these Africans failed and we say you should not waste your time, you will lose. We also tell them not to waste their resources."
The UK says its increased focus on the country is justified as the activities of militant groups and pirates operating off the coast of Somalia pose a direct threat to British interests in the region and to both regional and global security.
Naval ships from the UK and other countries around the world have been sent to patrol the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast to deter pirate attacks.
They have foiled a number of kidnapping attempts in recent months but attacks continue - and have been staged further from the shore.
The UK has also said it cannot rule out sending more military advisers to boost its small team currently assisting Ugandan forces part of the AU mission.
Kenya has also sent troops into Somalia to tackle al-Shabab, blaming the group for a number of kidnappings on its territory last year. Its forces will now be absorbed into the AU force following the UN resolution.
Mr Cameron told the UK Parliament on Wednesday that a more co-ordinated approach was needed by the international community to tackle the multiple challenges facing the country.
"This is about trying to put in place the building blocks among the international community but, above all, among the Somalis themselves for a stronger and safer Somalia," he said.
"That means taking action on piracy, on hostages, to support the African Union's mission in the country, it means... working with all parts of Somalia to try and give that country a second chance."
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who visited Somalia earlier this month, says he is "realistic" about what can be achieved in a single day but a more stable Somalia would benefit the region as well as the UK.
Somali leaders have said its challenges cannot be solved by military means alone and a parallel focus is needed on boosting humanitarian aid, education and law and order.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali told the BBC that his country was at a "crossroads" and needed a massive injection of money.
"It is at a very critical juncture in its history," Mr Ali said. "We are moving from an era of warlordism, terrorism, extremism and piracy and we are moving into an era of peace, stability and normalcy.
"Twenty years of lawlessness, violence and chaos is enough. Somalis are ready to move on."
Despite being forced out of the capital, Mogadishu, last year, al-Shabab has continue to stage suicide attacks in the city.
The BBC's Mohammed Dhore in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, says security is extremely tight in the city because of the conference, with more than 50 roadblocks compared to the usual five.
Union Jacks are also flying at major road junctions and government buildings, he says.
Labels: SOMALIA
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BREAKING: Horn of Africa: US Proxy War in Somalia Veers Towards Regional Conflict
Ethiopia’s anticipated invasion marks scramble for territory with Kenyan rival
by Finian Cunningham
Global Research, January 1, 2012
The conflict in Somalia has been raised to dramatically higher stakes at the weekend after Ethiopian troops occupied a central town, routing Al Shabab militants in fighting that claimed dozens of lives.
The Ethiopian military entered the town of Beledweyne near its border on Saturday morning along with Somali troops belonging to the Western-backed Transitional Federal Government. The latter has been battling with Al Shabab Islamic militants for the past two years, but has only managed to maintain tenuous control of the capital, Mogadishu. Large areas of the country, especially to the south, have been under the command of the militants.
Earlier reports of Ethiopian troops having invaded Somalia with heavy armour were denied by the government in Addis Ababa. But the weekend offensive now confirms Ethiopia’s involvement in its neighbour to the east.
Almost every country in the Horn of Africa has a military presence in war-torn Somalia. In mid-October Kenyan forces mounted a large-scale invasion of Somalia with thousands of troops backed up with tanks and fighter jets. Nearly three months on, Kenyan forces are still battling with Al Shabab militants mainly in the territory south of Mogadishu on Kenya’s north-eastern border.
Last month, a contingent of troops from Djibouti arrived in Mogadishu, officially welcomed by the Somali government to join forces from Burundi and Uganda, which have been present in Somalia for the past two years as part of an African Union (AU) “peacekeeping mission” to combat the militants.
In addition to these contingencies is the involvement of the United States and France. Washington and Paris have given military support to the Kenyan and AU forces. American aerial attack drones and French naval firepower have coordinated with the Kenyan ground assault.
A week before Djibouti troops were dispatched to Somalia, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Djibouti where he warned about “key terror nodes in Yemen and Somalia”.
Ethiopia is also a close Washington ally. The government in Addis Ababa was given the green light by then President Bush to invade Somalia in 2006 in a bid to oust the Islamic Courts Union that was in power then.
The latest intervention by Ethiopia is unlikely to have been sanctioned without Washington’s clearance.
Superficially, it would appear that Washington is orchestrating a multi-prong offensive against the Somali militants. The US agenda has little to do with fighting terrorism and is motivated by geopolitical concern to assert control over the strategically important East African country. The country has been wracked by conflict for the past two decades ever since the US-backed Siad Barre dictatorship was overthrown in 1991.
With its coastline overlooking the key oil routes of the Gulf of Yemen and Red Sea, the US has been vexed by Somalia’s relentless instability – instability that has been largely engendered by Washington’s proxy warmongering in the region. The US-backed government in Mogadishu, which is accused of corruption and misrule, has proven incapable of decisively controlling the country. Even with generous aid from Washington and military support from neighbouring US-backed states, including the presence of US mercenaries, the government in Mogadishu can only but cling on to its central seat of power.
The entry of forces from Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti could be seen as Washington trying to ratchet up the military pressure on Al Shabab.
But of deeper concern is that US proxy war-making in East Africa could be stoking up nationalist rivalries that may backfire in a regional war between the various players who so far appear to be on the same side, that is, in doing Washington’s dirty work against Al Shabab.
In recent years Ethiopia’s regional leadership has been challenged by the rise of Kenya. Both countries share borders with Somalia and, historically preceding colonial demarcations, both lay claim to adjacent Somali territories. When Kenyan forces invaded Somalia in October, there was a marked diplomatic silence from Ethiopia. Ethiopia had suffered a humiliating defeat when it carried out its US-backed military gambit in Somalia in 2006. With the US latterly turning to Kenya as its favoured proxy there seemed to be a certain chagrin felt in Addis Ababa.
While appearing to do Washington’s bidding against Al Shabab, political sources in Kenya have told Global Research that Nairobi’s agenda is to annex a large swathe of Somalia’s southern Jubbaland territory, historically known as Azania. There have also been reports of Kenyan politicians surreptitiously striking oil deals with French company Total in this part of Somalia. Another crucial natural resource for Kenya in that territory is the acquisition of freshwater, which Kenya is in short supply of.
With Somalia’s territorial integrity at risk from 20 years of internecine violence and lawlessness – despite Washington’s efforts to shore up the federal government – it can be seen as only a matter of time before Ethiopia would join in a scramble for neighbouring land. It is significant that the latest invasion by Ethiopia has targeted the central part of Somalia, the south already being assailed by Kenyan forces.
So far, Washington’s orchestration of conflict in Somalia may appear as a smart bid for neocolonial control. But the real danger is when the deep-seated regional rivalries of Washington’s proxies start to clash at close quarters. And given the desperate need for natural resources in this famine-prone region, the stakes of any resultant all-out conflict take on even greater urgency and mordancy.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent
cunninghamfin@yahoo.com
Labels: JENDAYI FRASER, KENYA, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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The Neocolonial Scramble for Africa
by John Cherian
Global Research, November 2, 2011
Frontline and Stop NATO - 2011-11-01
The neocolonial scramble for Africa has truly begun with
the installation of the National Transitional Council in Libya.
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda at a news conference in Kampala on October 16. He said the despatch of U.S. troops to deal with the rebel outfit Lord's Resistance Army was not meant for combat but rather liaison and support in the area of intelligence.THE installation of the National Transitional Council (NTC) government in Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) could signal the beginning of an open neocolonial scramble for Africa. Suspicions about such a blueprint were first aroused when President George W. Bush set up the United States-Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, months before demitting office. The demand for a permanent American military footprint on the African continent had come from right-wing think tanks that enjoyed great clout in the corridors of power during the eight years of the Bush presidency.
A background paper prepared in 2002 by the influential right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation had called for the creation of a military command for the continent so that “direct military intervention”, using air power and naval forces, could become possible to “protect vital U.S. interests” in Africa. Such interventions, its authors wrote, would not necessitate the deployment of U.S. forces on the ground. Such wars, the paper proposed, should be fought with the help of local allies. The U.S. Defence Department's African Contingency Operation Training and Assistance Programme is deeply involved in training the armies of many countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana, America's close allies in the region.
The authors of the paper clearly spelt out what they meant by vital interests: “With its vast natural and mineral resources, Africa remains strategically important to the West, as it has been for hundreds of years, and its geostrategic significance is likely to rise in the 21st century.” According to the National Intelligence Council, “the United States is likely to draw 25 per cent of its oil from West Africa by 2015, surpassing the volume imported from the Persian Gulf”, the Heritage Foundation study reported. The Bush administration's Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner was quick to echo the views expressed by the foundation. He went on record stating that Africa's oil had “become a national strategic interest”.
Libya is among Africa's biggest oil producers. China was importing 11 per cent of Libyan oil for its domestic needs before the NATO-instigated civil war in the North African state started seven months ago. It could now find itself locked out of new oil contracts. Top functionaries of the NTC have said that China, Russia and Brazil would be frozen out of contracts.
These countries had criticised the misuse of the United Nations Security Council resolution on Libya to bring about a regime change. China gets around one-third of its oil from Africa. The French newspaper Liberacion recently published documents revealing the NTC leadership's offer of 35 per cent of Libya's oil production to France in return for its “total and permanent support” for the new government. Gene Cretz, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, recently blurted out that “oil is the jewel of the crown of Libyan national resources”.
President Barack Obama, who famously claimed that he was leading the war in Libya “from behind”, used precisely the tactics prescribed in the Heritage Foundation report. AFRICOM played an important behind-the-scenes role in planning the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya. U.S. Special Forces teamed up with its counterparts from France and the United Kingdom to arm and organise the ragtag rebel forces into a fighting unit. It was the coordinated air strikes, coupled with an amphibious operation led by the U.S., that finally led to the fall of Tripoli. South African President Jacob Zuma complained bitterly that it was NATO bombing that prevented the African Union (A.U.) from hammering out a negotiated settlement to the civil war in Libya. More than 200 prominent Africans wrote an open letter in August criticising the recourse to “militarised diplomacy to effect regime change in Libya”.
In early October, a few days before the fall of Sirte and the killing of Muammar Qaddafi, Obama ordered the despatch of 100 U.S. Special Forces troops to Uganda. He said the decision to send the troops was taken to help the U.S.' ally in the region, Yoweri Museveni, defeat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which was engaged in a guerilla war with the central government in Kampala. Obama told Congress that the troops were deployed in order “to assist African forces in the removal of Joseph Koni [the LRA leader] and the LRA leadership from the battlefield”. Museveni, one of Africa's long-serving authoritarian rulers, was a one-time friend of Qaddafi. Qaddafi had extended support to the rebel army that brought Museveni to power in 1986. After coming to power, Museveni became one of the trusted allies of the West and was regularly feted at the White House.
At America's bidding, Uganda has sent peacekeepers to Somalia under the A.U. umbrella to keep the Islamist Al Shabab militia out of the capital, Mogadishu. Two years ago, Ethiopia despatched its troops to Somalia to drive away the Islamic Courts Union government from Mogadishu after it had managed to unite most of the country. In the face of immense resistance, the Ethiopian troops were withdrawn, but the country was left in chaos again. Al Shabab exploited this and now poses a potent threat to U.S. interests in the region.
In the middle of October, Kenya replicated what Ethiopia did. Encouraged by the U.S., it sent its troops deep into Somalia to fight Al Shabab. The U.S. is providing air support to the Kenyan military. The Kenyan invasion has already led to terror attacks in Kenyan cities. Only a handful of African states have bothered to send peacekeepers to the war-ravaged country, viewing the conflict there as one mainly instigated by the West.
Observers of the African scene are suspicious of the Obama administration's sudden decision to send Special Forces to Uganda. Obama has also indicated that the U.S. forces will be sent to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, ostensibly to help the governments there to crush rebel groups. AFRICOM provides billions of dollars worth of equipment to the armies of countries that are friendly to the U.S. The U.S. military is already helping counter-insurgency operations in Mali and Niger, where the marginalised Tuareg ethnic group has raised the banner of revolt. “With Libya secure, an American invasion of Africa is under way,” observed John Pilger in a recent article.
The LRA, which operates along Uganda's borders with Southern Sudan and the Central African Republic, was never considered a serious threat in the 24 years that it has been active. It is said to have around 500 fighters, many of them child soldiers. Many African commentators suspect that the real goal of the Obama administration is to start preparing the ground for a permanent military base for AFRICOM on the continent. AFRICOM is currently headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, but it has a major military facility in Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, a small state located in the Horn of Africa. In all, 1,800 American troops are permanently based there.
In the island state of Seychelles, the U.S. has secretly deployed MQ-9 Reaper drones. These “hunter-killers” have been deployed extensively over Somalia. African civil society is very much opposed to U.S. military involvement in Africa. No African country has until now openly offered permanent basing facilities, although there were reports in the media that Liberia and Morocco were among the countries that were being short-listed by Washington. The regional grouping, Southern African Development Community (SADC), has refused to give any kind of support or access to AFRICOM.
Military analysts say that from the strategic point of view, land-locked Uganda provides the ideal location for a permanent U.S. military base on the African continent. With Libya already under NATO stewardship, the U.S. can regain control over the military bases it was ousted from following the removal of the pro-Western King Idris. It has been a long-term U.S. goal to occupy the strategic crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Arab world. The death of Qaddafi has made this goal an achievable reality. The next step is to ensure the U.S. military's stranglehold on Central Africa to control the region's hydrocarbon and other mineral resources. Uganda's neighbours, such as Congo and Southern Sudan, are rich in mineral resources, which include diamonds and precious metals such as gold, platinum, lithium and cobalt.
According to oil industry experts, Uganda has huge untapped oil resources. A UPI report in March said: “East Africa is emerging as the next oil boom following a big strike in Uganda's Lake Albert Basin. Other oil and gas reserves have been found in Tanzania and Mozambique and exploration is under way in Ethiopia and war-torn Somalia.” The region is rich in rare earths, which remain largely unexploited. Currently, China has a monopoly over rare-earth production located within its borders.
The Economist had noted that “several jealous western governments and companies want to stall China's advance into the Congo basin, with its vast reserves of minerals and timber”. The big economic and diplomatic stride made by China on the African continent has caused a lot of heartburn in Western capitals. China has been focussing on Africa since the 1960s. China started investing heavily there ever since it began to emerge as a big economic power. Its investments in 2010 were estimated at $47 billion. Beijing's policy of giving liberal “no-strings-attached” loans to African nations has won it a lot of goodwill. But with Chinese labour and capital moving into the continent in a big way, the resentment that has been building up in some countries has come in handy for the West.
Global Research Articles by John Cherian
Labels: AFRICOM, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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America's War in the Horn of Africa: “Drone Alley” – a Harbinger of Western Power across the African Continent
US Military Confirms Washington’s Secret New War in Somalia Despite Official Denials
by Finian Cunningham
Global Research, October 29, 2011
US military sources have confirmed that the Obama administration is engaged in a new war in the famine-hit Horn of Africa region.
The disclosure in the Washington Post [1] comes only days after other prominent Western media outlets, including the New York Times and the Financial Times, carried denials from the US government that it was involved in directly supporting Kenyan forces that invaded Somalia on 16 October.
Global Research first reported on 19 October [2] the lethal use of US drones in attacks on various locations across southern Somalia in a coordinated air campaign to assist the advance of Kenyan ground troops deep into Somali territory held by Islamic insurgents. We reported that US drones began attacking Somali targets days before the Kenyan army began its incursion, and have continued in a pattern that indicates American air power is being used to pave the way for ground forces as they advance towards the southern port city of Kismayu – the main stronghold of the Al Shabab insurgents, which the US government accuses of having links with Al Qaeda.
It is believed that scores of Somali fighters and civilians have been killed over the past two weeks by US unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that have attacked several cities and towns, including Qoqani, Afmadow and Kismayu. Global Research also reported on 26 October [3] that French naval forces had joined the bombing campaign – again despite official French denials carried in Western media – and that the conclusion from these military developments was clear: Washington and Paris are now engaging in a secret new war in East Africa ¬– a region where up to 12 million people are at risk of starvation from years of drought and Western-induced conflict.
On 27 October, the Washington Post cited US military officials confirming the deployment of attack and surveillance drones in “a rapidly expanding US-led proxy war against an al Qaeda affiliate in East Africa”. The UAVs – also known as Reapers or Hunter Killers – are believed to be operated from a site in southern Ethiopia, Arba Minch, as well as from US bases in Djibouti and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
The WP report states: “The [US] Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia… The location of the Ethiopian base and the fact that it became operational this year, however, have not been previously disclosed.”
This disclosure of US military operations in Somalia amounts to an admission that Washington is at war. However, the Washington Post, while stating “rapidly expanding US-led proxy war”, does not highlight the legal implications of that startling admission, concentrating its reportage on technical and logistical issues that are providing “support for [US] security assistance programs”.
Iranian news channel Press TV – citing civilian eyewitnesses and Kenyan and Somali military officials – has been one of the few media outlets that has consistently reported the almost daily lethal US drone attacks in southern Somalia since the Kenyan invasion. However, even Press TV has not drawn the explicit conclusion that this amounts to war.
While the other Western news media, including the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times, had earlier reported increased US drone activity in Somalia between June and September, these outlets appeared to have dropped coverage of the deadly attacks being reported since and just before 16 October.
Following the disclosure in the Washington Post, the BBC on 28 October seemed to resume its coverage, with the headline: “US flies drones from Ethiopia to fight Somali militants”. The BBC, as with the WP, does not view this as an act of war, and stressed that the “remotely-piloted drones were being used only for surveillance” – contrary to evidence on the ground.
As well as playing down the fact of US-led war in Somalia, the mainstream media now seem to be crafting a new narrative for the military offensive. The initial pretext for the Kenyan ground invasion faithfully repeated in the Western media was the “hot pursuit” of kidnap gangs allegedly belonging to Al Shabab. It is true that there has been a spate of kidnappings of Western holidaymakers and aid workers from Kenyan territory by gangs suspected to originate inside Somalia. However, there is no proof that Al Shabab has been involved and indeed the militant group has denied any involvement.
Now it seems that the rationale being given for the Kenyan invasion and Western “technical support” has subtly morphed into an extension of the “war on terror”. Al Shabab has been waging an insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, which was installed in 2009 with the support of US and other Western governments as a bulwark against the Islamists. The TFG has only managed to maintain a tenuous grip on power thanks in part to Washington’s military and economic support and to the presence of thousands of African Union troops from Uganda and Burundi.
Al Shabab is on Washington’s terror list and is accused of having links to Al Qaeda. However, many Western analysts do not consider Al Shabab to be a regional threat. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington-aligned think-tank, estimates that the group has only a few hundred hardcore combatants and that its alleged links to Al Qaeda may be no more than rhetorical. Nevertheless, the militants have prevented the pro-Western TFG from gaining control of the country. In that way, the group has thwarted Washington and Western geopolitical dominance of the strategically important East African maritime territory.
This would seem to be a more plausible explanation for the US/French/Kenyan war in Somalia. Namely, the assertion of Western geopolitical control, rather than “war on terror” and certainly not the hot pursuit of kidnap gangs. That gives the real meaning behind the “constellation of US drone bases” being operated in the region – to strike any African country when and where required. Currently, Somalia (and Yemen) is in the firing line. But the entire region appears being turned into a “drone alley”. It is perhaps only a matter of time before reports emerge of drone activity in Sudan, Eritrea, Uganda and elsewhere. The recent deployment of US Special Forces in Uganda and other Central African countries is also a harbinger of this strategic force projection.
The bigger picture to this is, as John Pilger noted previously in Global Research, a “modern scramble for African resources” by Western powers, which have in recent years watched enviously the growing influence of China in the region. This neo-imperialist scramble for Africa is consistent with NATO’s conquest of Libya. The close collaboration between the US and France in the bombing of North Africa is now being rolled out in East Africa.
It also marks a new era of lawlessness by Western powers. Not only can President Barack Obama personally order the assassination of individuals with his penchant for “hunter killer” drones. Evidently from developments in Somalia, Commander-in-Chief Obama is no longer obliged to notify the US Congress or the American people of their country’s engagement in new wars. Nor is he obliged to even seek a phony UN mandate. Not so long ago such abuse of power would be sure grounds for impeachment.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent
cunninghamfin@yahoo.com
Notes
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethiopia-is-operational/2011/10/27/gIQAznKwMM_story.html
[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27165
[3] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27310
Global Research Articles by Finian Cunningham
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=listByAuthor&authorFirst=Finian&authorName=Cunningham
Labels: AFRICOM, BARACK OBAMA, CIA, HILLARY CLINTON, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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Is Washington Using Famine in the Horn of Africa to Embark on Yet Another Illegal War?
US Drones Coordinate Air Power For Kenyan Ground Invasion of Somalia
by Finian Cunningham
Global Research, October 19, 2011
The large troop deployment by Kenya into Somali territory is taking on the form of a full-scale invasion, rather than a temporary incursion as initially reported.
What is also emerging – but largely unreported – is that the US appears to be providing coordinated aerial firepower to help the advance of the Kenyan military against Al Shabab Islamic militants who have held power in the southern Somali territory.
Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, which was installed in 2009 with US support, has been battling against the militants for the past two years. Plagued by allegations of corruption and incompetence, the TFG has only managed to cling on to power in the capital, Mogadishu, thanks to diplomatic and military support from Washington and neighbouring US-allied countries, including Ethiopia and Kenya. Some 8,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi are stationed in Mogadishu to help stave off advances by Al Shabab from the southern hinterland where it holds sway.
Kenya’s surprise military intervention in its eastern Horn of Africa neighbour on Sunday came only two days after the US launched deadly aerial drone attacks in southern Somalia. According to Press TV, the worst fatalities were in the town of Qoqani, 80 kilometres from the border with Kenya. Some 78 people were killed in that attack and scores of others injured.
Qoqani was the first major urban centre commandeered by Kenyan troops – backed by heavy artillery, tanks, helicopters and fighter jets – within 48 hours of crossing the border on Sunday.
Now as Kenyan forces move towards the port city of Kismayu – some 200 kilometers from the Kenyan border and the strategic base for Al Shabab – US drones are targeting what appears to be the next military objective.
A US drone attack on Kismayu on Monday claimed the lives of some 27 people, including children, according to reports. There were also several reports of similar unmanned aerial vehicles crashing or being shot down near Kismayu, according to the BBC and Press TV. At the beginning of last month, a US drone attack reportedly killed 35 Al Shabab fighters in the port city.
In July, the Washington Post and New York Times, reported “the first US drone attack” on Somalia in which two Al Shabab commanders were targeted. The Obama administration has labeled Al Shabab a terrorist group and accuses the Islamists of having links to Al Qaeda. In recent weeks, there appears to be have been a stepped-up deployment of both spy and attack drones in Al Shabab strongholds.
In light of Kenya’s invasion of Somalia this week, it would now appear that US air power has played a key role in softening up combatant positions in advance of ground troops.
The Kenyan government – as with most media reports – claim that the intervention is aimed at hunting down kidnap gangs operated by Al Shabab which have been responsible for a spate of cross-border attacks on tourists and aid workers. A British and French woman were recently kidnapped in separate incidents in Kenyan coastal resorts. Reports are emerging that the French woman has since died while in captivity from lack of medical treatment. Then two Spanish aid workers were abducted from a refugee camp in Kenyan territory near the Somali border. Al Shabab sources have denied any involvement in attacks on foreign nationals, and the Islamist group says that the Kenyans are using the kidnap allegations as a pretext to invade a sovereign country. There are several disparate criminal groups operating in southern Somalia – pirates and bandits – that could have carried out the kidnappings.
However, the lack of proof implicating Al Shabab has not deterred the Kenyan government from stridently asserting blame.
That together with the large-scale military intervention by the Kenyan government, which has caused much concern among many of its own citizens over its legality, suggests that there is more going on than a cross-border swoop against criminal gangs. Also, the tacit approval by the Mogadishu government for the Kenyan invasion and the coordinated use of US drone attacks indicate a more far-reaching development.
The geostrategic importance of Somalia has long made it a prize for Washington. With its nearly 1,800-kilometre coastline overlooking the oil trading routes of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the US has been vying for a foothold on the territory ever since its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960. Washington backed the dictatorship of Siad Barre until he was ousted in 1991 by rival warlords. This prompted the US to mount its “humanitarian” invasion in 1992 – Operation Restore Hope – which ended in disaster in 1994 following the shooting down of a Blackhawk helicopter and the death of 19 US personnel whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in front of the world’s media by Somali militants.
Since then Washington has preferred to use proxy forces to project its interests in the notoriously unruly country. In 2006, President George Bush gave the greenlight for the invasion by Ethiopia to topple a nascent Islamic government – the Union of Islamic Courts – that had managed to bring a degree of stability to the country out of the warlord anarchy. The Transitional Federal Government was installed three years later, but it has never consolidated control of the country, with the Islamists running most of the southern territory – much to Washington’s dismay. Newly elected President Barack Obama has taken up the gauntlet with gusto. In September 2009, he ordered the assassination of senior Al Shabab commander Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan by helicopter-borne US Special Forces.
Somalia’s famine may now have opened up an opportunity for Washington to pursue its proxy war. Two years of drought and conflict have left some four million Somalis exposed to hunger – with 750,000 most acutely at risk, according to various humanitarian agencies. Most of the famine victims are located in Somalia’s southern region controlled by Al Shabab. Washington has pointedly refused to let food aid into the region, citing that the provisions would be misappropriated by the militants.
With rising hunger and incidence of diseases such as cholera, measles and typhoid, the military strength of Al Shabab has considerably weakened in recent weeks, according to the International Crisis Group.
This suggests that Washington has used the famine – the worst such famine seen in the Horn of Africa for 60 years – as a weapon to bring about its desired military objective: the crushing of a combatant force that is inconveniencing US geopolitical control of a strategically important country.
Finian Cunnningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent
cunninghamfin@yahoo.com
Labels: KENYA, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOMALIA
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COMMENT - The real cause of famine anywhere - neoliberal destruction of the domestic economy, by the IMF/World Bank.
Somalia: the Real Causes of Famine
by Michel Chossudovsky
First published in 1993, Third World Resurgence and Le Monde diplomatique
The IMF Intervention in the Early 1980s
Somalia was a pastoral economy based on "exchange" between nomadic herdsmen and small agriculturalists. Nomadic pastoralists accounted for 50 percent of the population. In the 1970s, resettlement programs led to the development of a sizeable sector of commercial pastoralism. Livestock contributed to 80 percent of export earnings until 1983. Despite recurrent droughts, Somalia remained virtually self-sufficient in food until the 1970s.
The IMF-World Bank intervention in the early 1980s contributed to exacerbating the crisis of Somali agriculture. The economic reforms undermined the fragile exchange relationship between the "nomadic economy" and the "sedentary economy" - i.e. between pastoralists and small farmers characterized by money transactions as well as traditional barter. A very tight austerity program was imposed on the government largely to release the funds required to service Somalia's debt with the Paris Club. In fact, a large share of the external debt was held by the Washington-based financial institutions.' According to an ILO mission report:
[T]he Fund alone among Somalia's major recipients of debt service payments, refuses to reschedule. (...) De facto it is helping to finance an adjustment program, one of whose major goals is to repay the IMF itself.
Towards the Destruction of Food Agriculture
The structural adjustment program reinforced Somalia's dependency on imported grain. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, food aid increased fifteen-fold, at the rate of 31 percent per annum.' Combined with increased commercial imports, this influx of cheap surplus wheat and rice sold in the domestic market led to the displacement of local producers, as well as to a major shift in food consumption patterns to the detriment of traditional crops (maize and sorghum). The devaluation of the Somali shilling, imposed by the IMF in June 1981, was followed by periodic devaluations, leading to hikes in the prices of fuel, fertilizer and farm inputs. The impact on agricultural producers was immediate particularly in rain-fed agriculture, as well as in the areas of irrigated farming. Urban purchasing power declined dramatically, government extension programs were curtailed, infrastructure collapsed, the deregulation of the grain market and the influx of "food aid" led to the impoverishment of farming communities.'
Also, during this period, much of the best agricultural land was appropriated by bureaucrats, army officers and merchants with connections to the government.' Rather than promoting food production for the domestic market, the donors were encouraging the development of so-called "high value-added" fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and cotton for export on the best irrigated farmland.
Collapse of the Livestock Economy
As of the early 1980s, prices for imported livestock drugs increased as a result of the depreciation of the currency. The World Bank encouraged the exaction of user fees for veterinarian services to the nomadic herdsmen, including the vaccination of animals. A private market for veterinary drugs was promoted. The functions performed by the Ministry of Livestock were phased out, with the Veterinary Laboratory Services of the ministry to be fully financed on a cost-recovery basis. According to the World Bank:
Veterinarian services are essential for livestock development in all areas, and they can be provided mainly by the private sector. (... Since few private veterinarians will choose to practice in the remote pastoral areas, improved livestock care will also depend on "para vets" paid from drug sales.'
The privatization of animal health was combined with the absence of emergency animal feed during periods of drought, the commercialization of water and the neglect of water and rangeland conservation. The results were predictable: the herds were decimated and so were the pastoralists, who represent 50 percent of the country's population. The "hidden objective" of this program was to eliminate the nomadic herdsmen involved in the traditional exchange economy. According to the World Bank, "adjustments" in the size of the herds are, in any event, beneficial because nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa are narrowly viewed as a cause of environmental degradation."
The collapse in veterinarian services also indirectly served the interests of the rich countries: in 1984, Somalian cattle exports to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries plummeted as Saudi beef imports were redirected to suppliers from Australia and the European Community. The ban on Somali livestock imposed by Saudi Arabia was not, however, removed once the rinderpest disease epidemic had been eliminated.
Destroying the State
The restructuring of government expenditure under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions also played a crucial role in destroying food agriculture. Agricultural infrastructure collapsed and recurrent expenditure in agriculture declined by about 85 percent in relation to the mid-1970s." The Somali government was prevented by the IMF from mobilizing domestic resources. Tight targets for the budget deficit were set. Moreover, the donors increasingly provided "aid", not in the form of imports of capital and equipment, but in the form of "food aid". The latter would in turn be sold by the government on the local market and the proceeds of these sales (i.e. the so-called "counterpart funds") would be used to cover the domestic costs of development projects. As of the early 1980s, "the sale of food aid" became the principal source of revenue for the state, thereby enabling donors to take control of the entire budgetary process."
The economic reforms were marked by the disintegration of health and educational programmes.'3 By 1989, expenditure on health had declined by 78 percent in relation to its 1975 level. According to World Bank figures, the level of recurrent expenditure on education in 1989 was about US$ 4 Per annum per primary school student down from about $ 82 in 1982. From 1981 to 1989, school enrolment declined by 41 percent (despite a sizeable increase in the population of school age), textbooks and school materials disappeared from the class-rooms, school buildings deteriorated and nearly a quarter of the primary schools closed down. Teachers' salaries declined to abysmally low levels.
The IMF-World Bank program has led the Somali economy into a vicious circle: the decimation of the herds pushed the nomadic pastoralists into starvation which in turn backlashes on grain producers who sold or bartered their grain for cattle. The entire social fabric of the pastoralist economy was undone. The collapse in foreign exchange earnings from declining cattle exports and remittances (from Somali workers in the Gulf countries) backlashed on the balance of payments and the state's public finances leading to the breakdown of the government's economic and social programs.
Small farmers were displaced as a result of the dumping of subsidized US grain on the domestic market combined with the hike in the price of farm inputs. The impoverishment of the urban population also led to a contraction of food consumption. In turn, state support in the irrigated areas was frozen and production in the state farms declined. The latter were slated to be closed down or privatized under World Bank supervision.
According to World Bank estimates, real public-sector wages in 1989 had declined by 90 percent in relation to the mid-1970s. Average wages in the public sector had fallen to US$ 3 a month, leading to the inevitable disintegration of the civil administration." A program to rehabilitate civil service wages was proposed by the World Bank (in the context of a reform of the civil service), but this objective was to be achieved within the same budgetary envelope by dismissing some 40 percent of public-sector employees and eliminating salary supplements." Under this plan, the civil service would have been reduced to a mere 25,000 employees by 1995 (in a country of six million people). Several donors indicated keen interest in funding the cost associated with the retrenchment of civil servants."
In the face of impending disaster, no attempt was made by the international donor community to rehabilitate the country's economic and social infrastructure, to restore levels of purchasing power and to rebuild the civil service: the macro-economic adjustment measures proposed by the creditors in the year prior to the collapse of the government of General Siyad Barre in January 1991 (at the height of the civil war) called for a further tightening over public spending, the restructuring of the Central Bank, the liberalization of credit (which virtually thwarted the private sector) and the liquidation and divestiture of most of the state enterprises.
In 1989, debt-servicing obligations represented 194.6 percent of export earnings. The IMF's loan was cancelled because of Somalia's outstanding arrears. The World Bank had approved a structural adjustment loan for US$ 70 million in June 1989 which was frozen a few months later due to Somalia's poor macro-economic performance. '7 Arrears with creditors had to be settled before the granting of new loans and the negotiation of debt rescheduling. Somalia was tangled in the straightjacket of debt servicing and structural adjustment.
Famine Formation in sub-Saharan Africa: The Lessons of Somalia
Somalia's experience shows how a country can be devastated by the simultaneous application of food "aid" and macro-economic policy. There are many Somalias in the developing world and the economic reform package implemented in Somalia is similar to that applied in more than 100 developing countries. But there is another significant dimension: Somalia is a pastoralist economy, and throughout Africa both nomadic and commercial livestock are being destroyed by the IMF-World Bank program in much the same way as in Somalia. In this context, subsidized beef and dairy products imported (duty free) from the European Union have led to the demise of Africa's pastoral economy. European beef imports to West Africa have increased seven-fold since 1984: "the low quality EC beef sells at half the price of locally produced meat. Sahelian farmers are finding that no-one is prepared to buy their herds"."
The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Since the 1980s, grain markets have been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank and US grain surpluses are used systematically as in the case of Somalia to destroy the peasantry and destabilize national food agriculture. The latter becomes, under these circumstances, far more vulnerable to the vagaries of drought and environmental degradation.
Throughout the continent, the pattern of "sectoral adjustment" in agriculture under the custody of the Bretton Woods institutions has been unequivocally towards the destruction of food security. Dependency vis-à-vis the world market has been reinforced, "food aid" to sub-Saharan Africa increased by more than seven times since 1974 and commercial grain imports more than doubled. Grain imports for sub-Saharan Africa expanded from 3.72 million tons in 1974 to 8.47 million tons in 1993. Food aid increased from 910,000 tons in 1974 to 6.64 million tons in l993.
"Food aid", however, was no longer earmarked for the drought-stricken countries of the Sahelian belt; it was also channeled into countries which were, until recently, more or less self-sufficient in food. Zimbabwe (once considered the bread basket of Southern Africa) was severely affected by the famine and drought which swept Southern Africa in 1992. The country experienced a drop of 90 percent in its maize crop, located largely in less productive lands." Yet, ironically, at the height of the drought, tobacco for export (supported by modem irrigation, credit, research, etc.) registered a bumper harvest. While "the famine forces the population to eat termites", much of the export earnings from Zimbabwe's tobacco harvest were used to service the external debt.
Under the structural adjustment program, farmers have increasingly abandoned traditional food crops; in Malawi, which was once a net food exporter, maize production declined by 40 percent in 1992 while tobacco output doubled between 1986 and 1993. One hundred and fifty thousand hectares of the best land was allocated to tobacco .2' Throughout the 1980s, severe austerity measures were imposed on African governments and expenditures on rural development drastically curtailed, leading to the collapse of agricultural infrastructure. Under the World Bank program, water was to become a commodity to be sold on a cost-recovery basis to impoverished farmers. Due to lack of funds, the state was obliged to withdraw from the management and conservation of water resources. Water points and boreholes dried up due to lack of maintenance, or were privatized by local merchants and rich farmers. In the semi-arid regions, this commercialization of water and irrigation leads to the collapse of food security and famine.
Concluding Remarks
While "external" climatic variables play a role in triggering off a famine and heightening the social impact of drought, famines in the age of globalization are man-made. They are not the consequence of a scarcity of food but of a structure of global oversupply which undermines food security and destroys national food agriculture. Tightly regulated and controlled by international agri-business, this oversupply is ultimately conducive to the stagnation of both production and consumption of essential food staples and the impoverishment of farmers throughout the world. Moreover, in the era of globalization, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program bears a direct relationship to the process of famine formation because it systematically undermines all categories of economic activity, whether urban or rural, which do not directly serve the interests of the global market system.
(for footnotes see Chapter in the Globalization of Poverty)
Labels: HUNGER, IMF, NEOLIBERALISM, SOMALIA, World Bank
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Somalia: How Colonial Powers drove a Country into Chaos
Interview of Mohamed Hassan
by Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Colon
Global Research, February 11, 2010
Investig'Action - 2010-02-10
Somalia had every reason to succeed: an advantageous geographical situation, oil, ores and only one religion and one language for the whole territory; a rare phenomenon in Africa. Somalia could have been a great power in the region. But the reality is completely different: famine, wars, lootings, piracy, bomb attacks. How did this country sink? Why has there been no Somali government for approximately twenty years? Which scandals stand behind those pirates who hijack our ships? In this new chapter of our series “Understanding the Muslim World”, Mohamed Hassan explains for us why and how imperialist forces have applied in Somalia a chaos theory.
How did piracy develop in Somalia? Who are those pirates?
Since 1990, there has been no government in Somalia. The country is in the hands of warlords. European and Asiatic ships took advantage of this chaotic situation and fished along the Somali coast without a license or respect for elementary rules. They did not observe the quotas in force in their own country to protect the species and they used fishing techniques –even bombs!- that created huge damages to the wealth of the Somali seas.
That’s not all! Taking also advantage of this lack of any political authority, European companies, with the help of the mafia, dumped nuclear wastes offshore Somali coasts. Europe knew of this but turned a blind eye as that solution presented a practical and economical advantage for the nuclear waste management. Yet, the 2005 Tsunami brought a big part of these wastes into the Somali lands. Unfamiliar diseases appeared for the first time among the population. This is the context in which the piracy mainly developed. Somali fishermen, who had primitive fishing techniques, were no more able to work. So they decided to protect themselves and their seas. This is exactly what the United States did during the civilian war against the British (1756-1763): with no naval forces, President George Washington made a deal with pirates to protect the wealth of the American seas.
No Somali state for almost twenty years! How is that possible?
This is the result of an American strategy. In 1990, the country was bruised by conflicts, famine and lootings; the state collapsed. Facing this situation, the United States, who discovered oil in Somalia a few years ago, launched Operation Restore Hope in 1992. For the first time, US marines intervened in Africa to take control of a country. It was also the first time that a military invasion was launched in the name of humanitarian interference.
The famous rice bag exhibited on a Somali beach by Bernard Kouchner?
Yes, everybody remembers those pictures carefully showcased. But the real reasons were strategic. An US State Department report recommended indeed that the United States must stay the lonely global superpower after the Soviet Bloc collapse. To reach that goal, the report advocated to occupy a hegemonic position in Africa, which enjoys a vast amount of raw materials.
However, Restore Hope will be a failure. There was even that Hollywood movie “Black Hawk Down”, with those poor G.I.’s “attacked by the bad Somali rebels”…
US soldiers were indeed defeated by a Somali nationalist resistance. Since then, American policy was to keep Somalia without any real government, even to balkanize it. This is the old British strategy, already applied in many places: setting weak and divided states in order to better rule them. That is why there has been no Somali state for almost twenty years. The United States has implemented a chaos theory in order to stop any Somali reconciliation and keep the country divided.
In Sudan, due to the civilian war, Exxon has had to leave the country after having discovered oil. So isn’t letting Somalia plunge into chaos contrary to American interests, which cannot exploit the discovered oil?
Oil exploitation is not their priority. The United States know that the reserves are there but doesn’t need it immediately. Two elements are much more important in its strategy. First, prevent the competitors from negotiating with a rich and powerful Somali state. If you consider Sudan, the comparison is interesting. The oil that the American companies discovered there thirty years ago, Sudan is selling it today to China. The same thing could happen in Somalia. When he was president of the transition government, Abdullah Yusuf went to China although he was supported by the United States. US mass media had strongly criticized that visit. The fact is that United States have no guarantee on that point: if a Somali government is established tomorrow, whatever is its political color, it could probably adopt a strategy independent of United States and trade with China. Western imperialists do not want a strong and unified Somali state. The second goal pursued by this chaos theory is linked to the geographical location of Somalia, which is strategic for both European and American imperialists.
Why is it strategic?
The issue is the control of the Indian Ocean. Look at the map. As mentioned, western powers have an important share of the responsibility in the Somali piracy development. But instead of telling the truth and paying compensation for what they did, those powers criminalize the phenomena in order to justify their position in the region. Under the pretext of fighting the piracy, NATO is positioning its navy in the Indian Ocean.
Source: Wikipeda
What is the real goal?
To control the economic development of the emerging powers, mainly India and China. Half of the world’s container traffic and 70% of the total traffic of petroleum products passes through the Indian Ocean. From that strategic point of view, Somalia is a very important place: the country has the longest coast of Africa (3.300 km) and faces the Arabian Gulf and the Straight of Hormuz, two key points of the region economy. Moreover, if a pacific response is brought to the Somali problem, relations between African in one hand, and India and China on the other hand, could develop through the Indian Ocean. Those American competitors could then have influence in that African area. Mozambique, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Zanzibar, South Africa etc. All those countries connected to the Indian Ocean could gain easy access to the Asian market and develop fruitful economic relationship. Nelson Mandela, when he was president of South Africa, had mentioned the need of an Indian Ocean revolution, with new economic relationships. The United States and Europe do not want this project. That is why they prefer to keep Somalia unstable..
You say that the United States does not want Somali reconciliation. But what are the roots of the Somali divisions?
In order to understand this chaotic situation, we must delve into Somali history. This country had been divided by colonial powers. In 1959, Somalia gained independence through the fusion of the Italian colony in the South, and the British colony in the North. But Somalis were also living in some parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The new Somali state adopted a star on its flag, each branch representing one part of the historical Somalia. The message behind that symbol: “Two Somalias have been united, but three are still colonized”.
Facing the legitimacy of those claims, the British – who controlled Kenya-, organized a referendum in the Kenyan area claimed by Somalia. 87% of the population, composed mainly of Somali ethnics, voted for the Somali unity. When the results were published, Jomo Kenyatta, a Kenyan nationalist leader, threatened the British to throw the colonists out if they gave a part of the territory up to Somalia. So Great Britain decided not to take the referendum into account, and today an important Somali community is still living in Kenya. You must understand that those colonial borders were a real disaster in the Somali case. The border issue was besides the object of an important debate among the African continent.
What was the issue of that debate?
In the sixties, as many African countries became independent, there was a debate between what we called the Monrovia and the Casablanca groups. This later, including among others Morocco and Somalia, resolved that the borders inherited from colonialism be discussed. For them, those boundaries had no legitimacy. But most of the African countries and their borders are colonialism products. Finally, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the ancestor of the current African Union, closed the debate by decreeing that the borders were indisputable: going back over those boundaries would provoke civilian wars everywhere on the continent. Later, one of the OAU architects, the Tanzanian Julius Nyerere, confessed that this decision was the best but that he regretted the Somali outcome.
What will be the impact of the colonial divisions on Somalia?
They will create strains with neighboring countries. During those years when Somalia advocated for revising the borders, Ethiopia became a US imperialism bastion. The United States had also military bases in Kenya and Eritrea. At this moment, Somalia, a young pastoral democracy, wished to build its own army. The goal was to not appear weak in front of the armed neighbors, to support Somali movements in Ethiopia and even to regain by force, if necessary, some territories. But the western forces were opposed to the creation of a Somali army.
So Somalia had tense relations with its neighbors. Was it not reasonable to be opposed to this Somali army project? It would have provoked wars, wouldn’t it?
The West did not care about conflicts between Africans but its own interests. The United States and Great Britain were providing and training militaries in Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea. Those countries were still under the yoke of very repressive feudal systems. But they were also neocolonial regimes devoted to Western interests. On the other hand, the power in place in Somalia was more democratic and independent. So the West had no interest in providing for a country that could escape its control.
As a consequence, Somalia decided to turn to the Soviet Union. This frightened the Western forces that feared Soviet influence stretching in to Africa. Those fears became more important with the 1969 putsch.
What do you mean?
Socialist ideas were spread in the country. An important Somali community was indeed living in Aden in South Yemen. However, this is where Britain used to exile persons it considered dangerous in India: communists, nationalists and so on. They used to be arrested and sent to Aden where nationalist and revolutionary ideas quickly developed and affected later both Yemenites and Somalis. Under the influence of civilians with Marxist ideas, a coup d’état was led by officers in 1969 and Siad Barre took power in Somalia.
What were the reasons of that coup d’état?
The Somali government was corrupted. He had however the cards in hand to erect the country to the great regional power rank: a strategic position, only one language, one religion and many common cultural elements. This is fairly rare in Africa. But, by missing the economical development of the country, this government has created a context favorable to divisions among clans. Under the pretext of doing politics, Somali elites become divided. Everyone created his own political party, without any real program, and recruited voters among the existing clans. This increased the divisions and turned out to be totally useless. A democracy in a liberal type was in fact unsuitable for Somalia: there were at once 63 political parties for a three million population country! And the government was even not able to adopt an official script, which was creating serious troubles in the administration. Education was weak. Bureaucracy, police and army were, however, established. This later will play a key role in the progressive coup d’état.
“Progressive”! With the army?
The army was the only organized institution in Somalia. As a repressive apparatus, it was supposed to protect the so-called civilian government and the elite. But for many Somalis coming from different families and areas, the army was also an exchange place where there were no borders, no tribalism, no clan divisions. This is how Marxist ideas from Aden circulated among the army. So the coup d’état was led by officers who were most of all nationalist. They did not have a good knowledge of socialism but they had sympathy for those ideas. Moreover, they knew what was happening in Vietnam, and that fed anti-imperialist feelings. The civilians, who knew Marx and Lenin’s teachings lacked a mass political party, supported the coup d’état and become the advisers of the officers who took power.
What changes did the Somali coup d’état bring about?
One important positive aspect: the new government quickly adopted an official script. Likewise, the Soviet Union and China were helping Somalia. The students and the population mobilized themselves. Education and social conditions were enhanced. The years that followed the coup d’état were in fact the best ones that Somalia never knew. That is, until 1977.
What happened?
Somalia, which has been divided by colonial forces, attacked Ethiopia to get the territory of Ogaden back. Ogaden was mainly populated by Somalis. At this time however, Ethiopia was itself a socialist state supported by the Soviets. This country had been led for a long time by Emperor Selassie. But in the seventies, there was an important mobilization to overthrow him. The students’ movement, in which I personally participated, made four major demands. First, to nonviolently and democratically resolve tensions with Eritrea. Secondly, to establish a land reform that would distribute the lands to the peasants. Thirdly, to establish the principle of equality among the nationalities; Ethiopia was a multinational country led by elite who did not represent the diversity. Fourthly, to abolish the feudal system and to establish a democratic state. As in Somalia, the army was the only organized institution in Ethiopia and the civilians joined the officers to overthrow Selassie in 1974.
How did two socialist states, each supported by the Soviet Union, enter conflict?
After the Ethiopian revolution, a delegation including Soviet Union, Cuba and South Yemen organized a round table with Ethiopia and Somalia in order to resolve their contradiction. Castro went to Addis Abeba and Mogadishu. To him, Somali claims were justified. Finally, the Ethiopian delegation agreed to seriously seriously its Somali neighbor’s demands. The two countries made an agreement stipulating that no provocation should happen as long as no decision has been taken. Things seemed to start well but Somalia did not honor the agreement…
Two days after the Ethiopian delegation returned to its country, Henry Kissinger, a former Nixon Secretary of State, turned up to Mogadishu. Kissinger was representing an unofficial organization: the Safari Club that was among others including Shah’s Iran, Mobutu’s Congo, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and French and Pakistani intelligence services. The objective of that organization was to fight against the Soviet infiltration in the Gulf and in Africa. Under the Safari Club pressures and help promises, Siad Barre committed a disastrous strategic mistake of attacking Ethiopia.
What were the consequences of that war?
Soviets left the region. Somalia, still led by Siad Barre, integrated the neocolonial network of the imperialist forces. The country had been seriously damaged by the conflict and the World Bank and the IFM were in charge of “rebuilding” it. This has aggravated infighting among Somali bourgeoisie. Each regional elite wanted to have its own market. They made the divisions among the clans’ worst and contributed to the progressive dislocation of their country up to Siad Barre’s fall in 1990. Since that, any head of state succeeded to him.
But, thirty years after the Ogaden war, the opposite scenario happened: Ethiopia was supported by the United States to attack Somalia…
Yes, as I said, since the Restore Hope failure, United States has preferred to keep Somalia in chaos. However, in 2006, a spontaneous movement developed under the Islamic courts to fight against the local warlords and bring unity to the country. It was a kind of Intifada. In order to stop this movement from rebuilding Somalia, United States decided suddenly to support the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) after having refused to recognize it before. In fact, they realized that their project of a Somalia without effective state was no more possible: a movement – furthermore Islamic!- was about to lead to a national reconciliation. In order to sabotage the Somali unity, United States decided to support the TFG. But this later was lacking any social basis and an army. So the Ethiopian troops, commanded by Washington, attacked Mogadishu to overthrow the Islamic courts.
Did it work?
No, the Ethiopian army was defeated and had to leave Somalia. On their side, the Islamic courts were dispersed in several movements that still control a big part of the country today. As for Abdulla Yusuf’s transitional government, he collapsed and United States replaced it by Sheik Sharif, the former Islamic Court spokesman.
So Sheik Sharif has passed to “the other camp”?
He used to be the Islamic courts spokesman because he is a good orator. But he has no political knowledge. He has no idea what imperialism or nationalism are. That is why western powers took him back. He was the Islamic court’s weak link. Today he chairs a fake government, created in Djibouti. This government has no social base or authority in Somalia. It only exists on the international level because the imperialist forces support it.
In Afghanistan, the United States said they were ready to negotiate with Taliban. Why don’t they look for discussing with the Islamic groups in Somalia?
Because those groups want to take the foreign occupier over and to allow a national reconciliation for the Somali people. As a result, the United States wants to break those groups: a reconciliation, through the Islamic movement or through the TFG, is not in the interests of the imperialist forces. They just want chaos. The problem is that today, this chaos reached Ethiopia too, which is very weak since the 2007 aggression. A nationalist resistance movement came to the light over there to fight against the pro-imperialist government of Addis Ababa. With their chaos theory, United States had in fact created troubles in the whole region. And now, they took it out on Eritrea.
Why?
This little country leads an independent national policy. Eritrea also has a vision for the whole region: the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia) do not need foreign powers’ interference; its wealth should allow it to establish new economical relationship on the basis of mutual respect. According to Eritrea, the region must get it together and its members must be able to discuss about their problems. Of course, this policy frightens United States that fears that other countries follow that example. So they accuse Eritrea of sending weapons to Somalia and instigating troubles in Ethiopia.
Isn’t Eritrea sending weapons in Somalia?
Not even a bullet! This is a pure propaganda as they did against Syria about the Iraqi resistance. Eritrea’s vision catches up with the project of Indian Ocean revolution that we spoke about before. The western powers do not want of that and wish to bring Eritrea back to the circle of the neocolonial states under control, such as Kenya, Ethiopia or Uganda.
Are there no terrorist in Somalia?
Imperialist powers have always labeled as terrorists the people who fight for their right. Irishmen were terrorists until they signed an agreement. Abbas was a terrorist. Now, he is a friend.
But we heard about Al Qaeda in Somalia?
Al Qaeda is everywhere, from Belgium to Australia! That invisible Al Qaeda is a logo designed to justify to the public opinion military operations. If United States say to their citizens and soldiers: “We are going to send our troops into the Indian Ocean in order to probably fight against China”, people would be afraid of course. But if you tell them that it is just about fighting piracy and Al Qaeda, it won’t be a problem. The real goal is however different. It consists in setting forces in the Indian Ocean region that will be the theater of major conflicts in the coming years. This is what we will analyze in the next chapter…
Mohamed Hassan is a geopolitics and Arab world specialist. Born in Addis Abeba (Ethiopia), he participated in student movements on the occasion of the socialist revolution of 1974 in his country. He studied political science in Egypt before specializing in public administration in Brussels. As a diplomat for his country of origin, he worked in Washington, Beijing and Brussels. Co-writer of L’Irak sous occupation (EPO, 2003), he has also contributed to books about Arab nationalism, Islamic movements and Flemish nationalism. He is one of the best contemporary experts on the Arab and Muslim world.
Understanding the Muslim World with Mohamed Hassan - Previous chapters:
Yemen: USA are fighting against democracy, not against Al-Qaeda
What should Ahmadinejad do to get the Nobel Price?
Afghanistan – Pakistan: the black hole of the empire
The Darfur crisis: blood, hunger and oil
“Gaza is a normal place with normal people”
How can we explain the success of Hamas ?
To examine the subject in depth, Mohamed Hassan recommends the following publications:
Mohamed Omar, The Road to Zero: Somalia's Self-Destruction, Haan Publishing,1993
Babu, Abdul, Rahman Mohamed. African Socialism or Socialist Africa? Londres, Zed Press, 1981, 190 p.
Hersi, Ali Abdirahman, The Arab factor in Somali history : the origins and the development of Arab enterprise and cultural influences in the Somali Peninsula, Thesis--University of California, Los Angeles, 1977
Michel Caraël, La ruine du pansomalisme, in Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 1982
Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,
John K. Cooley, Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 2000
John Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?, Haan Publishing, 1994
Translation review: Fausto Giudice
Grégoire Lalieu is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Grégoire Lalieu
Global Research Articles by Michel Colon
Labels: BORDERS, COLONIALISM, ETHIOPIA, KENYA, SOMALIA
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