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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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15 March 2010 By Rick Rozoff
Over 43 people have been killed in the Somali
capital of Mogadishu in two days of fighting between
Shabab (al-Shabaab) insurgent forces, who on March 10
advanced to within one mile of the nation’s
presidential palace, and troops of the U.S.-backed
Transitional Federal Government. The fighting has just
begun.
The last ambassador of the United States to Somalia
(1994-1995), Daniel H. Simpson, penned a column for
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on March 10 in which which
he posed the question “why, apart from the only
lightly documented charge of Islamic extremism among
the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia
at this time?”
He answered it in stating “Part of the reason is
because the United States has its only base in Africa
up the coast from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former
French Somaliland. The U.S. Africa Command was
established there in 2008, and, absent the willingness
of other African countries to host it, the base in
Djibouti became the headquarters for U.S. troops and
fighter bombers in Africa.
“Flush with money, in spite of the expensive wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense
obviously feels itself in a position to undertake
military action in Africa, in Somalia.” [1]
Fulfilling its appointed role, the New York Times
leaked U.S. military plans for the current offensive
in Somalia on March 5 in a report titled “U.S. Aiding
Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital.” (Note that
the Transitional Federal Government is presented as
Somalia itself and Mogadishu as its capital.)
The tone of the feature was of course one of
approval and endorsement of the Pentagon’s rationale
for directly intervening in Somalia at a level not
seen since 1993 and support for proxy actions last
witnessed with the invasion by Ethiopia in 2006. The
report began with a description of a military
surveillance plane circling over the Somali capital
and a quote from the new chief of staff of the
nation’s armed forces, General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye:
“It’s the Americans. They’re helping us.”
Afterward “An American official in Washington, who
said he was not authorized to speak publicly” – a
hallmark of the American free press – was, if not
identified, quoted as maintaining that U.S. covert
operations were planned if not already underway and
“What you’re likely to see is airstrikes and Special
Ops moving in, hitting and getting out.” [2]
The New York Times also provided background
information regarding the current offensive:
“Over the past several months, American advisers
have helped supervise the training of the Somali
forces to be deployed in the offensive….The Americans
have provided covert training to Somali intelligence
officers, logistical support to the peacekeepers, fuel
for the maneuvers, surveillance information about
insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns.”
[3]
Four days later General William (“Kip”) Ward,
commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM),
testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In his introductory remarks the chairman of the
committee, Senator Carl Levin, reinforced recent
American attempts to expand the scope of the deepening
Afghanistan-Pakistan war, the deadliest and lengthiest
in the world, to the west and south in stating that
“al Qaeda and violent extremists who share their
ideology are not just located in the
Afghanistan-Pakistan region but in places like
Somalia, Mali, Nigeria and Niger.” [4]
In his formal report Ward pursued a similar tact
and expanded the Pentagon’s “counter-terrorism” (CT)
area of responsibility yet further from South Asia:
“U.S. Africa Command has focused the majority of its
CT capacity building activities in East Africa on
Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Uganda, which – aside
from Somalia – are the countries directly threatened
by terrorists.” [5]
He also spoke of the current offensive by “the
transition government to reclaim parts of Mogadishu,”
stating “I think it’s something that we would look to
do and support.” [6]
Senator Levin and General Ward included eight
African nations in the broader Afghan war category of
Operation Enduring Freedom, countries from the far
northeast of the continent (the Horn of Africa) to the
far west (the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea). The U.S.
military has already been involved in
counterinsurgency operations in Mali and Niger against
ethnic Tuareg rebels, who have no conceivable ties to
al-Qaeda, not that one would know that from Levin’s
comments.
In between South Asia and Africa lies Yemen on the
Arabian Peninsula. The New York Times report cited
earlier reminded readers that “The United States is
increasingly concerned about the link between Somalia
and Yemen.” Indeed as Levin’s comments quoted above
establish, Washington (along with its NATO allies) is
forging an expanded war front from Afghanistan and
Pakistan to Yemen and into Africa. [7]
That extension of the South Asia war has not gone
unobserved in world capitals, and earlier this year
Russian political analyst Andrei Fedyashin commented:
“Adding up all four fronts – if the United States
ventured an attack on Yemen and Somalia – America
would have to invade a territory equal to
three-fourths of Western Europe; and it is hardly
strong enough for that.” [8]
Strong enough or not, that is just what the White
House and the Pentagon are doing. The only other
objection that can be raised to the above author’s
description is that it too severely narrows the
intended battlefront.
In the past six months Somali troops have been sent
to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda for combat
training and “most are now back in the capital,
waiting to fight.”
In addition, “There are also about 5,000 Ugandan
and Burundian peacekeepers, with 1,700 more on their
way, and they are expected to play a vital role in
backing up advancing Somali forces.” [9]
Last October the U.S. led ten days of military
exercises in Uganda – Natural Fire 10 – with 450
American troops and over 550 from Burundi, Kenya,
Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The U.S. soldiers were
deployed from Camp Lemonier (Lemonnier) in Djibouti,
home to the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force/Horn of Africa
and over 2,000 U.S. forces. The de facto headquarters
of AFRICOM.
At the time of the maneuvers a major Ugandan
newspaper wrote that they were “geared towards the
formation of the first Joint East African Military
Force.” [10]
In addition to using such a multinational regional
force in Somalia, the U.S. can also deploy it against
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in
Uganda, Congo and Sudan, and could even employ it
against Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Sudan, the only nations
on the African continent not to some degree enmeshed
in military partnerships with Washington and NATO.
(Libya has participated in NATO naval exercises and
South Africa has hosted the bloc’s warships.) [11]
Earlier this month the Kenyan newspaper The East
African divulged that “American legislators are
pushing for a law that will see another phase of
military action to apprehend Lord’s Resistance Army
rebels.”
The news source added that the LRA Disarmament and
Northern Uganda Recovery Bill adopted by the U.S.
Congress last year “requires the US government to
develop a new multifaceted strategy” and as such the
new bill under consideration “will not be the first
time the US government is providing support to the
Uganda army in fighting the LRA.
“The US has been backing the UPDF [Uganda People's
Defence Force] with logistics and training to fight
the rebel group.” [12]
Last month it was announced that the U.S. Africa
Command has dispatched special forces to train 1,000
Congolese troops in the north and east of their
nation, where Congo borders Uganda.
Former U.S. diplomat Daniel Simpson was quoted
above as to what in part is Washington’s motive in
pursuing a new war in and around Somalia: To test out
AFRICOM ground and air forces in Djibouti for direct
military action on the continent.
A United Press International report of March 10,
placed under energy news, offered another explanation.
In a feature titled “East Africa is next hot oil
zone,” the news agency disclosed that “East Africa is
emerging as the next oil boom following a big strike
in Uganda’s Lake Albert Basin. Other oil and natural
gas reserves have been found in Tanzania and
Mozambique and exploration is under way in Ethiopia
and even war-torn Somalia.”
The region is, in the words of the Western chief
executive officer of an oil prospecting firm, “the
last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t
been fully explored.” [13]
The article added: “The discovery at Lake Albert,
in the center of Africa between Uganda and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, is estimated to contain
the equivalent of several billion barrels of oil. It
is likely to be the biggest onshore field found south
of the Sahara Desert in two decades.”
It also spoke of “a vast 135,000-square-mile
territory in landlocked Ethiopia that is believed to
contain sizable reserves of oil. It is estimated to
hold 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as well.”
And, more pertinent to the Horn of Africa:
“A 1993 study by Petroconsultants of Geneva
concluded that Somalia has two of the most potentially
interesting hydrocarbon-yielding basins in the entire
region – one in the central Mudugh region, the other
in the Gulf of Aden. More recent analyses indicate
that Somalia could have reserves of up to 10 billion
barrels.” [14]
Washington’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization
allies are also deeply involved in the militarization
of East Africa.
On March 10 NATO extended its naval operation in
the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, Ocean
Shield, to the end of 2012, an unprecedentedly long
33-month extension. On March 12 “Standing NATO
Maritime Group 2 will take over missions from Standing
NATO Maritime Group 1 for the four-month assignment.
The change will increase NATO’s contribution from four
ships to five ships….” [15]
At the same hearings of the Senate Armed Services
Committee that AFRICOM commander William Ward
addressed, NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe,
America’s Admiral James Stavridis, “noted that 100,000
NATO troops are involved in expeditionary operations
on three continents, including operations in
Afghanistan, off the coast of Africa, and in Bosnia.”
(Evidently Kosovo was meant for Bosnia.)
Stavridis, who is concurrently top military chief
of U.S. European Command, said “The nature of threats
in this 21st century [is] going to demand more than
just sitting behind our borders.” [16]
He also said he finds “Iran alarming in any number
of dimensions,” specifically mentioning alleged
“state-sponsored terrorism, nuclear proliferation and
political outreach into Latin America.” [17]
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
recently returned from Jordan and the Persian Gulf
state of Bahrain where he pressured both nations to
support the war in Afghanistan and Alliance naval
operations.
“NATO’s top official said [on March 9] that he has
asked Jordan and Bahrain to contribute to alliance
naval operations fighting terrorism and piracy in the
Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden, as he
ended a visit to the two countries. NATO is keen to
improve cooperation with Arab and Muslim states,
seeing them as important allies for a number of
missions, including the all-important deployment in
Afghanistan.” [18]
Regarding the Western military bloc’s almost
nine-year Operation Active Endeavor in the entire
Mediterranean Sea and its Operation Ocean Shield in
the Gulf of Aden, Rasmussen said, “We would very much
like to strengthen cooperation (with Bahrain and
Jordan) within these operations.” [19]
While in Jordan he was strengthening military ties
with NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue partnership –
Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco
and Tunisia – and in Bahrain firming up the Istanbul
Cooperation Initiative aimed at the six members of the
Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates
have military personnel serving under NATO in
Afghanistan.
In late February a delegation of the 53-nation
African Union (AU) visited NATO’s Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium.
“NATO continues to support the AU mission in
Somalia (AMISOM) through the provision of strategic
sea- and air-lift for AMISOM Troop Contributing
Nations on request. The last airlift support occurred
in June 2008 when NATO transported a battalion of
Burundian peacekeepers to Mogadishu.” [20]
On March 10 AMISON deployed tanks to prevent the
capture of the Somali presidential palace by rebels.
The North Atlantic military bloc, which in recent
years has conducted large-scale exercises in West
Africa and inaugurated its international Response
Force in Cape Verde in 2006, also supports “the
operationalisation of the African Standby Force – the
African Union’s vision for a continental, on-call
security apparatus similar to the NATO Response
Force.” [21]
In May the European Union, whose membership largely
overlaps with that of NATO and which is engaged in
intense integration with the military bloc on a global
scale [22], will begin training 2,000 Somali troops in
Uganda.
Brigadier General Thierry Caspar-Fille-Lambie,
commanding officer of French armed forces in Djibouti,
said “the Somali troops will be trained with the
necessary military skills to help pacify and stabilize
the volatile country.”
He issued that statement “at the closing ceremony
of four-week French operational training of 1,700
Ugandan troops to be deployed” to Somalia in May. The
French ambassador to Uganda said “The EU troops shall
work in close collaboration with UPDF to train Somali
troops.” [23]
The 2,000 soldiers to be trained by the EU will
represent a full third of a projected 6,000-troop
Somali army.
The U.S.-NATO-EU global triad plans an even larger
collective military role in the new scramble for
Africa. On March 4 and 5 a delegation from AFRICOM met
with European Union officials in Brussels “seeking EU
cooperation in Africa,” specifically in “areas where
cooperation could be possible, notably with the
soon-to-be-launched EU mission to train Somali
troops.” [24]
Tony Holmes, AFRICOM’s deputy to the commander for
civil-military activities, said “Somalia, that’s an
area where we’re going to be doing a lot more, the
European Union is already doing a lot and will be
doing more….
“Somalia is very important for us. The European
Union is involved in training Somalis in Uganda and
that’s something we might be able to work closely with
to support.”
The AFRICOM delegation, including Major-General
Richard Sherlock, director of strategy, plans and
programs, also discussed “counter-terrorism
cooperation with the EU in the Sahel region, notably
in Mauritania, Mali and Niger….” [25]
In late January the chairman of NATO’s Military
Committee, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, said “that the
Alliance is in discussion with a Gulf state to deploy
AWACS planes for a reconnaissance mission over
Afghanistan in support of its ISAF mission and also
for anti-piracy off Somalia.” [24]
To demonstrate that NATO’s anti-piracy operation
off the coast of Somalia has other designs than the
one acknowledged, early this year a NATO spokesman
announced that the bloc’s naval contingent in the Gulf
of Aden “now has an additional task” to intervene
against a fictional deployment of Somali fighters
across the Gulf to Yemen.
The spokesman, Jacqui Sheriff, said “NATO warships
will be on the lookout for anything suspicious.” [25]
As though Somali al-Shabaab fighters have nothing
else to do as the U.S. is engineering an all-out
assault on them in their homeland.
Five days after the New York Times feature detailed
American war plans in Somalia, the Washington Times
followed up on and added to that report.
U.S. operations are “likely to be the most overt
demonstration of U.S. military backing since the
ill-fated Operation Restore Hope of 1992….”
“Unmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft have been seen
circling over Mogadishu in recent days, apparently
pinpointing insurgent positions as the TFG
[Transitional Federal Government] marshals its forces.
U.S. Army advisers have been helping train the TFG’s
forces, which have been largely equipped with millions
of dollars’ worth of U.S. arms airlifted into
Mogadishu over the last few weeks.”
The newspaper report further stated: “It’s not
clear when the offensive will start. The word on the
street is sometime in the next few weeks….”
The campaign has already begun.
“After securing Mogadishu, the offensive, supported
by militias allied with the government, for now, at
least, is likely to continue against al-Shebab in the
countryside west and south toward the border with
Kenya.” [26]
After the capital, the entire country. After
Somalia, the region.
The war has just begun.
1) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 10, 2010
2) New York Times, March 5, 2010
3) Ibid
4) Senate Armed Forces Committee, March 9, 2010
5) United States Africa Command, March 9, 2010
6) Senate Armed Forces Committee, March 9, 2010
7) U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And
Indian Ocean
Stop NATO, January 8, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/u-s-nato-expand-afghan-war-to-horn-of-africa-and-indian-ocean-2
Yemen: Pentagon’s War On The Arabian Peninsula
Stop NATO, December 15, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabian-peninsula
8) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January
11, 2010
9) New York Times, March 5, 2010
10) The Monitor, October 14, 2009
11) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire
World
Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world
12) The East African, March 1, 2010
13) United Press International, March 10, 2010
14) Ibid
15) Stars and Stripes, March 11, 2010
16) United States Department of Defense, March 9, 2010
17) Ibid
18) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 9, 2010
19) Ibid
20) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
February 24, 2010
21) Ibid
22) EU, NATO, US: 21st Century Alliance For Global
Domination
Stop NATO, February 19, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/eu-nato-us-21st-century-alliance-for-global-domination
23) Xinhua News Agency, February 13, 2010
24) Europolitics, March 5, 2010
25) Ibid
26) Kuwait News Agency, January 28, 2010
27) Canwest News Service, January 1, 2010
28) Washington Times, March 10, 2010
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