Somalia : the Horn gets gored

Medeshi 25 Aug, 2008
Written by Antony Black
Monday, 25 August 2008
A View From the Gallows by Antony Black
'I don’t believe in capital punishment - as a rule. But I’m willing to make a few exceptions for our fearless leaders, indeed all the fearless leaders, who have so willingly prosecuted the totally bogus ‘war on terror’; who have, under the banner of peace, democracy and civilization, waged a ruthless campaign of war, terror and barbarism. '
(Picture; The guillotine)
Naturally, nary a court now in existence is capable of reaching such exalted levels of critical jurisprudence and justice. Take the International Criminal Court for example.


The ICC has recently made a big splash by indicting a world leader for war crimes. Bush and crew you say? Or perhaps their brown-nosing poodles and fellow conspirators Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? Or maybe some of their fellow NATO war criminal comrades-in-arms, busy little fascist bees that they are burning down their own domestic liberties whilst spreading militarism, empire and a new global arms race unto the very reaches of outer space? Maybe some of these goons? You know, the ones who have helped turn whole countries that never threatened them – or us - in any way whatsoever into complete rubble? You know, the guys who’ve (just recently) killed over a million people in Iraq and are implicated in the genocides, old and ongoing, in central (and as we’ll see, eastern) Africa? Like, maybe, these guys? Nope. The ICC has, instead, fingered Omar Bashir of Sudan. Now not to review the whole modern history of Sudan (See Issue #21, ‘Darfur & Humanitarian Imperialism’), still it is pertinent, nevertheless, to recall that the US has been, and currently is, heavily implicated in the political woes of this war torn country having variously armed and supported all sides to the conflict over 30 years. Sudan’s woes, of course, don’t mean a tinkers damn to Washington which is more interested in its large deposits of oil, uranium and copper (currently under largely Chinese control), and in the strategic barrier it represents to the US’s goal of securing the African continent as part and parcel of its global empire. The ICC, then, is simply acting, as have the various kangaroo ‘international war crimes tribunals’, i.e. as a tool of war. The only difference is that whereas the criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda served as post-facto justifications for subversion and attack, the ICC is now acting to justify in advance any potential ‘pre-emptive’ attack / intervention by the United States, or that is to say, the ‘international community’.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the African front the Pentagon is moving fast and furious. For though the ‘eyes of the world’ are fixed steadfastly on the likes of Sudan and Zimbabwe, a larger and purely Western instigated humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding unseen and unreported – in Somalia.

The Horn Gets Gored
In December 2006 Ethiopia, acting under orders from Washington, and backed by US air and naval power, invaded Somalia. The Ethiopian invaders quickly installed a puppet regime called the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), this after having first deposed the popular Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The ICU was the first administration in living memory to have won the support of the majority of Somalis allowing it to end a decade of warlord violence, corruption, kidnapping and extortion.
Unfortunately for Somalia, there was oil in ‘them thar hills’ (The US is expected to import up to 30% of its oil from Africa by 2018). In addition, the Horn of Africa sports deep water ports and a strategic location abutting the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Washington had long had designs on these and, indeed, had made a prior, if unsuccessful, attempt to take over the country back in 1994. Now, with Ethiopia having become one of its new ‘client states’ care of the new ‘war on terror’, the US proceeded to pressure the UN Security Council to grossly violate the UN Charter by passing a fraudulent resolution saying that the ‘situation’ in Somalia was a ‘threat to international peace’ – this precisely at a time when the ICU had, for the first time in decades, brought nothing but peace and stability to the war-torn nation. The UN Security Council, in playing along with this total fiction, not only sealed Somalia’s fate, but, incidentally, proved once again what a travesty is the UN’s vaunted ‘independence’.
With the UN resolution in hand, the US proxy force proceeded to kick butt. That is, they proceeded to kill thousands, round up thousands more into Ethiopian / US ‘rendition’ jails (i.e. torture gulags) and force hundreds of thousands of Somalis to flee the capital, Mogadishu. The ICU has since, however, been able to reconstitute itself as an effective and tenacious guerrilla force. The Ethiopians and TFG have, in response, resorted to wholesale violence and terror to try and break the spirit of the resistance. Thus, according to reports received by Amnesty International, Ethiopian forces are “slaughtering (Somalis) like goats”. At least 700,000 people have now been forced to flee Mogadishu, large sections of which have been reduced to rubble. In conjunction with the invasion, a prolonged drought has placed over 2.5 million Somalis in imminent danger of starvation, a figure which, according to UN monitors could easily top 3.5 million by the end of the year.
All this care of your friendly, neighbourhood humanitarian imperialism. And, of course, care of your dutiful, subservient ‘free press’ without whose total complicity this new, gratuitous humanitarian outrage – like all the multitudinous others - would scarce be able to operate unopposed.

Qaar ka mid ah Ururada Bulshada Rayidka ah oo walaac ka muujiyay mudo dhaafka golayaasha deegaanada

Annaga oo ah Ururada Bulshada Rayidka ah ee Madaxa-banaan waxaanu si wayn uga walaacsanahay