US goes berzerk - New Iraq in Somalia

Let’s admit it. The USA is drifting and going mad while at it. One would think that in sight of the disaster that resulted from their attack on Iraq, they would pause and think for a second. But that’s not about to happen. While the world is puzzling over which of Iran or Syria would be the next target of another US-led invasion peace-bringing effort, the USA has started to openly attack Somalia in an effort to - as the US-Administration says - get rid of Al-Qaeda-Militants.1

For the US-Administration it seems to be clear, who is good and who is evil in this part of the world - or any other part really. More frightening is the aspect of non-negotiation that the US-Administration seems to have taken as a credo. Everyone opposing the US has to be a terrorist, who’s only goal is to destroy the “free world” and abandon freedom in general. And every single one of those has to die or he will pose a threat to the US.

Democracy in Somalia?

In Iraq and subsequently in the middle east, the USA says, it wants to establish democracy. Even though this claim isn’t really credible2 the claim becomes even more absurd in the latest front.

The US started out by aiding different warring Warlords and Clans in Somalia. These are the same Clans that are responsible for the long-lasting civil war, that has plagued Somalia. As an alternative to the warring Clans the international community created a interim regime, that should have stopped the violence. Problem was, that this regime was created above the heads of the Somalis themselves. While the intention might have been good, the project was poised to fail. The transitional government had no real control over Somalia and all it could do over the two years period was reign over the relatively small region of Baidoa.

In June 2006 the so called “Islamic Courts Union” (ICU) started taking over Somalia by defeating the warlords. The first thing we heard about it here in Germany was that the ICU banned people from watching the football world cup! Immediately the ICU was compared to the early Taliban in Afghanistan, who too started out by cutting in trivial individual freedoms. Like the Taliban, the ICU was pretty successful in midst of the warring Clans and soon was controlling all of south Sudan except for the Baidoa-Region in which the “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) fortified itself. At first, there seemed to be a chance that the TFG and the ICU could find a way to cooperate and spare the country more bloodshed: The ICU had the support of many Somalis (which the TFG lacked) and the TFG had support from the international community (which of course the ICU lacked totally).

Salim Lone - former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq and close observer of Somalia - in an interview with Democracy Now even gave the negotiations a very high importance:

It is a totally brutal attack that has killed many civilians. There was no need to do it this way. There are other ways to fight terror. And in this particular case, the best way to fight terror was to work with the Islamic Courts Union, which had lots of support and controlled virtually all of southern Somalia. We should have engaged — “we” meaning the international community, the US — should have engaged with them to ensure that there was no terror coming out of Somalia. This is completely reckless.

Fact of the matter is, that this would have been the greatest asset: The TFG first welcomed the relative stability and order that the ICU presented when it took over from the warlords. The international community - and especially the African Union - should have supported the negotiations between the two fractions that ultimately completed each other.

To me, it’s not quite clear, why the negotiations failed, it could be that the TFG felt powerless or maybe the ICU insisted on banning cinemas, but effectively the TFG demanded that international troops be stationed in Somalia and the ICU disarm. For the ICU this was of course not an option, since it’s arms were what held the warlords - some of which fled to nearby Ethiopia - at bay. Moreover nobody was asking for international troops as long as the Somali clans were fighting before June 2006. Why should any sane person demand international troops when the country was relatively stable?

To make things worse, Ethiopia - which has been supporting warlords against the TFG - started supporting the TFG itself and emboldened them by actively marching into Somalia3. At the same time, Ethiopia is being supported by the USA.4

Why do they hate us?

What i’m trying to say is, that the engagement of US-forces cannot be understood under any circumstances as a way to fight terrorism. In fact, beside creating more hatred against Americans ultimately through bombing civilians, the destabilization of Somalia (as in any other country) would provide feeding and training ground for terrorist organizations that will - someday - once again be a threat to the whole world.

Why not - for a change of pace - start actively supporting negotiations and fair discussions? Once again, i have to stress, that the US is loosing it. And i don’t mean only the war5. The US has lost much of it’s international credibility after the three years of war in Iraq. The ones supporting it on grounds of “this is the Holy US” won’t give up their support so easily. But everyone else will. Even German chancellor Angela Merkel6 will have to denounce the attacks and the engagement in Somalia if she knows what’s good for her nationally.

I do call for an international isolation of the USA as long it acts in a way that endangers anyone who opposes their policies7. Meanwhile American citizens - and the newly elected democratic majority - have to come out in the open and demand from the administration that it stops sounding up the war drums.

Terror

Today, a grenade/rocket hit the US-embassy in Athena. Until now, it’s not clear, who did it and why, although two callers identified themselves as part of the organization “Revolutionary Struggle”. A Greek minister said he believes, it was a terrorist attack with symbolic character of the sorts of ‘we can attack the US and we denounce them’.

Der griechische Minister für öffentliche Ordnung, Byron Polydoras, verurteilte im griechischen Fernsehen den Anschlag: “Wir glauben, es ist ein Terrorakt mit symbolischer Bedeutung in der Art ‘Wir können die USA schlagen und wir verurteilen sie’ “.

Well, unfortunately the signal isn’t getting through to the US-Administration! It should read “No matter what you achieve militarily and how much you kill, you can’t stop those who want to ‘retaliate’ from doing so.”.

Lessons to be learned by humble humans - not by ‘godly chosen’ ones..

Fighting fire with fire

Is the US playing a positive role in the Somali conflict? First, we’d have to know, how a positive role would look like. What is the US-Administration after?

It can’t be the establishment of a democratically elected government, since the transitional government that was “democratically elected” by the international community8 in the two years period it was “in power” never made plans about how they wanted to prepare for elections, although at the beginning they were backed by some warlords. The transitional government was never really accepted by the majority of the Somalis and the support of those warlords who did support it was evidently of pragmatic nature - a chance to sip out of the cup of power. When the government turned to Ethiopia for help, their democratic legitimacy faded away completely. Still, Europe and the USA kept supporting them.

To keep it short, Salim Lone thinks that Somalia will be playing a pivotal role in the next phase of the “war on terror”, since it’s geographic location and newly found natural resources will be important to the US.

The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is also just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through that waterway. The United States has a huge military base in neighboring Djibouti that is being enlarged substantially and will become the headquarters of a new US military command being created specifically for Africa. As evidence of the area’s importance, Gen. John Abizaid, the military commander of the region, visited Ethiopia recently to discuss Somalia, while Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Horn countries a few months ago in search of oil and trade agreements.

In that i actually think, the US will be able to be successful, since to secure access to the oilfields in the future, the US only needs an outpost. What they will never achieve - and i doubt it’s a priority - would be peace in Somalia. Regardless of whether the US will be able to achieve it’s goals in Somalia, one loser is already evident: the Somali people will join the Iraqi people in the hall of failed nations..

Fighting fire with fire? Actually, the US seems to be fighting fire with highly explosive oil! Ironically oil is ultimately what they are seeking..

Articles

  1. it should be noted, that the ICU, whom the US accuses of harboring Terrorists at least doesn’t openly support Terrorism and denounces Ussama Bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, although Al-Qaeda Operative Al-Sawahiri was quoted as saying Somalia is the ‘next battleground’.[↩]
  2. The US is the main supporter of the arab regimes starting with Saudi-Arabia through the Jordan and neither last nor least the Egyptian quasi-dictator[↩]
  3. which of course they denied at the beginning.[↩]
  4. Now as far as democracy goes, Ethiopian democracy is really a farce. In fact, the Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi is honored as being the “dictator of the month” February 2006. It’s been suspected, that elections in Ethiopia have been rigged but more concerning should be the human rights violations.[↩]
  5. every Somali and every Iraqi is loosing those wars too[↩]
  6. who even supported the Iraq-war at the beginning[↩]
  7. including Guantanamo and the Iraq war[↩]
  8. should read: the USA, the Arab League and European countries[↩]

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categories Ausland, Politik, Sicherheit | authorOmar | 12. Januar 2007

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