I see there's already been a debate about the US's recent foray into Somalia, so I'm just going to go ahead and post some articles I was writing for a student activist magazine:
The US Government Hasn’t Forgotten Somalia, But That’s Not Something to Cheer For (Part 1) by D.G.
Somalia has often been maligned as one of Africa’s many “problem children”- Eurocentric teleologies and imagery which should be the first to be called into question when dealing with the idea of Africa and its constructed “backwardness”. A nation without a state, it’s been wracked by civil war for the past fifteen years. As of late, however, the Baidoa-based transitional federal government (TFG)- first created in Kenya and whose president Abdullahi Yusuf is a former warlord from the Puntland- has been able to defeat the Islamic Courts Union (UIC). Although during much of the Somali civil war the fighting took place between clans, the most recent war took place between the UIC, the TFG and its Ethiopian backers for control of the country. In Somalia, like most of Africa or the rest of the world for that matter, conflict does not remain isolated within national or even regional boundaries. Perhaps it should be no surprise then that the US continues to provide substantial direct and indirect support to the Ethiopian invasion forces and the TFG.
To understand the recent case of Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia on behalf of the TFG, one must go back to 1977. The “Marxist” Mengistu Haile Mariam, that most hated of all of Ethiopia’s dictators, was firmly entrenched with his Dergue regime in Addis Ababa. Meanwhile Siad Barre, another despot, was rounding off his eighth year of dictatorship. In order to quell internal dissent and grab some more land that he claimed had historically been Somali, Siad Barre thought it’d be a good idea to invade Ethiopia’s Ogaden region. Barre’s irredentist ambitions jarred with his mentor’s desire [the USSR] to keep both Ethiopia and Somalia as strategic allies. Recognizing that Ethiopia would be the better pick of the two, the USSR cut off aid to Barre and stopped using Somalia’s Berbera port. Meanwhile, the US cut off aid to Ethiopia, citing “human rights abuses”, and went to support Barre.[1] After a year of fighting, Barre’s forces were pushed out of Ethiopia with the help of USSR advisors and Cuban troops fighting on behalf of the Dergue.
Although Somalia and Ethiopia have had historical enmities over the Ogaden region, these were kept relatively in check as civil war raged in Somalia throughout the ‘90s. By 2006, however, Ethiopia started taking keener notice in Somalia’s affairs with the rise of the Islamic Courts Union. The UIC had been able to defeat the US-backed warlord “counter-terrorist” alliance, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). The ARPCT reportedly was receiving $100 to $150 thousand dollars a month from the CIA in violation of a UN arms embargo.[2] Nevertheless, the warlords were hated by most Somalis, and the UIC was invited into Mogadishu by its residents after fierce fighting during the Second Battle of Mogadishu during May 2006. According to Mahir Ali, the Somali residents’ “jubilation cannot be interpreted as support for a potential Islamist agenda.” Rather, he continues:
It was simply a reaction to the fact that ordinary people could get about in the Somali capital without fear of violence, extortion or rape. The hired bodyguards that almost everyone- even taxi drivers- relied upon for protection were suddenly no longer necessary.[3]
The UIC was quickly able to extend its influence over most of southern Somalia and the ARPCT was dissolved by the summer of 2006. Most Somalis had mixed reactions to the UIC’s strict brand of sharia law but nonetheless welcomed the UIC’s ability to maintain order and transcend clan divisions.
Despite the conciliatory note struck by Sheik Sharif Ahmed, one of the leaders of the UIC, the peace didn’t last for long. The US at first was ambivalent about the role of the UIC, and a State Department spokesman even went so far as to declare, "In terms of the Islamic courts, our understanding is that this isn't a monolithic group, that it is really an effort on the part of some individuals to try to restore some semblance of order in Mogadishu.”[4] Nevertheless inflammatory rhetoric quickly returned, as the UIC accused the Ethiopian government of sending military personnel to support the weak TFG based in Baidoa. After a series of car bomb attacks in Baidoa blamed on the UIC but also suspected of possibly being Ethiopian false flag operations, intensive military operations began.[5] By December of 2006, heavy fighting was reported as the UIC attempted to move on the TFG’s Baidoa holdout. Ethiopia responded by sending in 15,000 troops backed by artillery and fighter jets on 24 December 2006 in order to rout the UIC. The UIC quickly retreated into southwestern Somalia and left behind the prize of Mogadishu, while thousands were killed, wounded or displaced. While it remains under siege, some of its leaders say they are preparing for a (unlikely) guerilla war against the TFG and any Ethiopian troops that remain in the country. The questions to ask now, also the most obvious, are why has the US and Ethiopia become so heavily involved in Somalia’s affairs and what have been the effects?
[1]“Gravy Train: Feeding the Pentagon by Feeding Somalia” by Stephen R. Shalom,
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/shalomsomalia.html, November 1993
[2]“Somalia: Washington’s Warlords Lose Out” by Rohan Pearce,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10556, 11 July 2006
[3]“Regime Change in Mogadishu” by Mahir Ali,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10490, 27 June 2006
[4]“Fall of Mogadishu Leaves US Policy in Ruins” by Xan Rice, Oliver Burkeman, and Rory Carroll,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,1794391,00.htm, 10 June 2006
[5]“US Backing Ethiopia’s Somalia Intervention?” by Bill Weinberg,
http://ww4report.com/node/2883, 6 December 2006
The US Government Hasn’t Forgotten Somalia, But That’s Not Something to Cheer For (Part 2) by D.G.
Although Somalia lacks the vast amount of mineral resources comparable to other African countries such as Congo-Kinshasa, it has consistently remained a target for intervention and support by various countries, the US in particular. Ethiopia, as mentioned in the first part of this article, has consistently fought with various Somali governments and forces laying claim to the ethnic Somali Ogaden region of Ethiopia. These historical links between Somalia, the US and Ethiopia make their recent interventions into Somalia all the more worrying.
Hollywood, always ready to support US imperial ambitions, portrayed Somalia as a starving, “backwards” African country that received the good graces of the American people in the movie Black Hawk Down. In return the people of Somalia were simultaneously portrayed as a mass of black savages biting the [white] hand that feeds them. At least, this is the perspective I received from several people with whom I discussed the movie. One woman in particular told me that seeing Black Hawk Down made her “really hate Somalis”. No surprise that such a narrow-minded and bigoted view could be produced concerning the fact that the film is narrated from the perspective (based on the book) of rough-and-ready US soldiers. An alternative story, however, is much less kind to this racist portrayal of American do-gooders on the “dark continent”. Throughout the 1980s, the US passed on hundreds of millions in military aid to Said Barre’s military regime. According to a Library of Congress country study, the weapons purchased, ostensibly to fight Ethiopians and external Somali attackers, were instead turned on Somali dissidents.[1] Meanwhile the US conducted countless joint military exercises with the Somali military, while the Somali government allowed US access to the strategic port of Berbera near the Gulf of Aden. Nevertheless, Isaak clan-based Somali National Movement (SNM) and other assorted rebel groups began an insurrection and sounded the attack against Barre’s regime during the late ‘80s. Barre’s response was devastating, and the bombing of the northern Somali town of Hargeisa in 1988 proved to be the pinnacle of his brutality. Thousands died during this incident alone.[2]
By 1991, Barre’s regime was finished. A variety of clan-based movements had sprung up and started quarreling over the spoils. Elements of Barre’s regime, mostly from the Marehan clan, started burning farms and fields. As journalist Scott Peterson writes, “this tactic…turned food into a strategic weapon and resulted in famine.” [3] Entire groups of people were forced to flee from Somalia, most notably the Somali Bantu. The Somali Bantu, originally from southern Africa and forced to work as slaves until the early 1900s, aren’t clan-based and were unable to prevent some armed Somali clans from destroying their farms and homes. Some refugees, and subsequent employees of Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services, with whom I worked told me how family members were killed and homes destroyed early on as the Somali civil war began. While the Somali state imploded the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), among others, started bringing food aid into the country. This was, however, frequently looted and used by some clan militias as a weapon. By the time the US finally intervened in December 1992, the worst of the famine was over as most of the sick and old had already died or fled the country.[4]
Although the US government is frequently portrayed with benevolent intentions if sometimes failed plans, especially in the post-Cold War period, the Somalia intervention was no innocent humanitarian operation- acknowledging that even the most innocent of such projects carry their own discourses of power and “unintended consequences”. Some elements of the US government and military may have genuinely believed they were doing “God’s work” as President George H.W. Bush put it. The Scottish historian of empires, V.G. Kiernan, would probably call this zeal to invade Somalia the “missionary character” that is so characteristic of US society. An ex-World Bank president has even gone so far as to say that “most Americans involved in foreign operations are to some degree missionaries.”[5] Most higher-ups in the Pentagon, however, realized the need to legitimize the continued expansion of the US military even after the Cold War.[6] Other reasons for US intervention are less explicit.
By 1992, the US had already obtained strategic ports and airbases in the gulf, with no need for ports like Berbera. At the same time, however, one can’t ever doubt a lust for oil. According to a report by Mark Fineman which won a Project Censored award, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the US oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Barre’s regime was overthrown.[7] According to a 1991 World Bank report by two leading geologists, Somalia’s oil potential at the time was the second highest in the region (next to Sudan) if it ever became stabile enough to allow for exploration and exploitation.[8] US companies’ oil operations in East and Central Africa pique the government’s interest all the more as it seeks to develop and control oil fields away from the straight of Hormuz, in President George H.W. Bush’s own words.[9] Predictably, these companies ignore human rights in their search for oil. An example is a recent Amnesty International Press Release on Chad which states, “The ExxonMobil-led consortium that operates the [$4.2 billion] pipeline is effectively side-stepping human rights law in Chad and in Cameroon.”[10] The companies’ actions in this case, as in most, are inextricably tied to the US government’s own casual memory loss of its rhetoric about “democracy”, as the US continues to support Chadian dictator Idriss Deby. Back to the original reasons for the Somalia intervention, however, the US’s military ventures can be useful as propaganda in their own right for legitimizing the need for 300 or 400+ billion dollar-a-year military expenses- especially for an operation like Somalia that was projected to cost less than 1% of the military’s budget.[11]
When Operation Restore Hope began, the US’s name for its 1992-3 Somalia intervention, the effects were fairly devastating in opposition to what Presidents Bush and Clinton might have hoped to achieve. For those swayed by the portrayal of the US operation in Black Hawk Down, some basic facts are in order. First, whenever one intervenes in a civil war, especially such a multifaceted one like the Somalia conflict, one is bound to take sides. In this case who the US took sides with- one warlord, Mohammed Ali Mahdi contra another, Mohammed Farah Aidid- proved no moral high ground. The US in fact enraged the local Somali population when, on 12 July 1993, Cobra attack helicopters blew up a meeting of Aidid’s clan elders. The attack left over fifty dead, and according to Human Rights Watch even the UN Special Operations Mission for Somalia [UNOSOM] questioned the legality of the attack as no warning or possible chance of surrender was given to the building’s occupants.[12] The US meanwhile pounded Mogadishu with AC-130 Spectre gunships- the same used to kill innocent Somalis once again a few weeks ago- while failing to disarm the warlords during the early stages of its invasion.[13] The US operation finally ended in failure after October 3rd-4th when two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down and eighteen US soldiers were killed in firefights with Aidid’s Habr Gedir clan. Hundreds of Somalis also died during this incident. US troops were forced to leave due to public pressure back home, while the UN left a short while later.
For Ethiopia, reasons for its most recent intervention into Somalia are also varied. Ethiopia is a country made up of many peoples, some of whom such as the Oromo have been fighting for regional autonomy or even a separate state. The threat to Ethiopian “national security” is accordingly well recognized so long as the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) remains in existence, and a desire to incorporate the Ogaden into “Greater Somalia” (or at least create more regional autonomy). Ethiopia is also a landlocked country. With access to Eritrean ports extremely erratic due to enmities between the countries, there could be more to the Somalia invasion than a simple desire repeating the US’s rhetoric to “defeat Islamic terrorists”. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to ascertain what exactly the Ethiopian government would determine as a success in Somalia: an obedient client regime?
The links between the US and Ethiopia, however, are clear as the US has proffered moral support and special forces advisors to Mr. Zenawi in his fight against the Islamists both in his country and Somalia.[14] Since Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, first came to power in 1991 he’s been ruling with an autocratic approach ever since while attempting to keep low ethnic tensions. His professional and technocratic garb, however, has since been stained by the blood of his regime’s abuses such as the massacre of around two hundred people during the elections of May 2005. Also tied to his commitment to Ethiopia’s “security”, he has allowed the continuing massacres and ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia’s Gambella region against the Anuak and Nuer peoples. According to journalist and genocide investigator keith harmon snow, since 13 December 2003 hundreds of Anuak have been killed, thousands raped and thousands more have fled into neighboring Sudan as refugees.[15] According to snow, Texas-based Hunt Oil and Malaysia’s Petronas (also involved in operating the Chad-Cameroon pipeline with Exxon) have oil exploration deals with the Ethiopian government in the Gambella region. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government has been relocating Tigrayan and Amhara “highlander” settlers to the Gambella region since 1974. Zenawi’s attempts at ethnic cleansing have also been, at least indirectly, supported by the US as it continues to provide special forces training and hundreds of thousands of dollars in International Military and Education Training (IMET) assistance to Ethiopian forces.[16] The most prominent terrorists of the region appear to be US-backed.
As Ethiopia and US Special Operations Forces based in Djibouti continue to intervene in Somali affairs, we can only wait and see what happens to Somalia’s TFG. The UIC has retreated and abandoned its towns, but remains largely in hiding. If threats of guerilla war continue to destabilize Somalia, what hope is there for the rest of the war-wracked region? The US has unfortunately proven a partial and dishonest broker in the region’s affairs thus far.
UPDATE: This article was finished on 1 January 2007. Accordingly, a lot has come to pass in Somalia that has further proven the US’s direct intervention in the region. The most blatant have been the several aerial bombardment strikes against “al-Qaeda targets” carried out by US AC-130 Spectre gunships and helicopters. In one incident near Afmadow, many civilians were reportedly killed. As Local MP Abdulkadir Haji Mohamoud Dhagane told the BBC, “‘thousands of Somalis are caught between the rock and hard place as they are in the middle of air strikes, Ethiopian tanks and the Kenyan soldiers who have blocked the border.’”[17] The TFG meanwhile imposed about a week-long media ban (on al-Jazeera’s TV office in particular) although it was forced to repeal this ban due to international pressure.[18] Whether the AU peacekeeping force will arrive after Ethiopia’s forces pullout, and whether calm comes to pass as some Islamists perhaps join in a national unity government remains to be seen. The effects thus far of Ethiopia and the US’s intervention, however, are clear. These interventions have killed hundreds and forced thousands more to flee their homes, even during a time of massive floods.
[1]“Somalia’s Difficult Decade: 1980-1990”,http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+so0038)
[2]Peterson, Scott. 2001. Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. London, Great Britain: Routledge, p.14
[3]Ibid., p.29
[4]“Gravy Train: Feeding the Pentagon by Feeding Somalia” by Stephen R. Shalom”,
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/shalomsomalia.html, November 1993
[5]Kiernan, V.G. 2005. America- The New Imperialism: From White Settlement to World Hegemony. New York, NY: Verso, p.114
[6]“Gravy Train: Feeding the Pentagon by Feeding Somalia” by Stephen R. Shalom”,
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/shalomsomalia.html, November 1993
[7]“The Oil Factor in Somalia” by Mark Fineman,
http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivejuly/000922601.htm, 18 January 1993
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid.
[10]“Amnesty International Press Release: Chad-Cameroon pipeline: New report accuses oil companies and governments of secretly contracting out of human rights”,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGPO...open&of=ENG-TCD, 7 September 2005
[11]“Gravy Train: Feeding the Pentagon by Feeding Somalia” by Stephen R. Shalom”,
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/shalomsomalia.html, November 1993
[12]“Somalia- Human Rights Developments”,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/WR94/Africa-08.htm, 1994
[13]Peterson, Scott. 2001. Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. London, Great Britain: Routledge, pp.63, 83
[14]“How US forged an alliance with Ethiopia over invasion” by Xan Rice and Suzanne Goldenberg,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,1989401,00.html, 13 January 2007
[15]“State Terror in Ethiopia- Another Secret War for Oil?” by keith harmon snow,
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jun2004/snow0604.html, June 2004
[16]Ibid.
[17]“US air strikes ‘kill many’”,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6243459.stm, 9 January 2007
[18]“Somalia lifts media ban” by Jim Boumelha,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,1993805,00.htm, 18 January 2007
