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Somalia:
The Other Hidden American War for Oil
Posted By Carl Bloice [Requested
not to publish contact detail]
The U.S. bombing of Somalia took place while the World Social
Forum was underway in Kenya and three days before a large
anti-war action in Washington, January 27. Nunu Kidane,
network coordinator for Priority Africa Network (PAN) was
present in Nairobi, and after returning home asked out loud
how 'to explain the silence of the US peace movement on
Somalia?' Writing in the San Francisco community newspaper Bay
View, she suggested one reason I think valid: 'Perhaps
US-based organizations don't have the proper analytical
framework from which to understand the significance of the
Horn of Africa region.
Perhaps it is because Somalia is
largely seen as a country with no government and in perpetual
chaos, with 'fundamental Islamic' forces not deserving of
defense against the military attacks by US in search of
'terrorists'.' To that I would add: the major U.S. media's
role in the lead up to the invasion and the suffering now
taking place in the Horn of Africa. 'The carnage and suffering
in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade -- but you'd
hardly know it from your nightly news,' wrote Andrew Cawthorne
from Nairobi for Reuters last week. Amy Goodman's Democracy
Now recently examined ABC's, NBC's and CBS's coverage of
Somalia in the evening newscasts since the invasion. ABC and
NBC had not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war
once, dedicating a whole three sentences to it. This, despite
the fact that there have been more casualties in this war than
in the recent fighting in Lebanon.
While the major U.S. print media has not completely ignored
the conflict, its reporting is even shallower than its
reporting was prior to the invasion of Iraq. As recently as
last week, Reuters was still maintaining that Ethiopian troops
had invaded its neighbor with the 'tacit' support of the
United States. At least the New York Times has taken to
describing it as 'covert American support.' Both
characterizations obscure the truth. The attack on Somalia was
preplanned and would never have taken place without being
approved by the White House. We now know that the Bush
Administration gave the Ethiopian government the go ahead to
ignore its own imposed ban on weapons purchases from North
Korea in order to gear up for the battle ahead. U.S. military
forces took part in the assault.
'US political and military alliance with Ethiopia - which
openly violated international law in its aggression towards
Somalia, is destabilizing the Horn region and begins a new
shift in the way the US plans to have permanent and active
military presence in Africa,' wrote Kadane.
The planning for the invasion actually began last summer when
the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of the Somali
government. It, too, was supposed to be a slam dunk. The U.S.-
Ethiopian version of shock and awe was to swiftly bring about
the desired regime change, installing the Washington-favored,
government- in-exile of President Abdullahi Yusuf. Only a few
days after their troops entered the country, Ethiopian
officials said their forces lacked the resources to stay in
Somalia and they would be leaving soon. At one point,
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared - Bushlike -
that the invaders' mission had been successfully accomplished
and two-thirds of his troops were returning home. That turned
out not to be true. Three months later the Ethiopians are
still in Somalia committing what numerous observers are
calling horrendous war crimes.
'The obviously indiscriminate use of heavy artillery in the
capital has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, and
forced over 200,000 more to flee for their lives.' Walter
Lindner, German Ambassador to Somalia, wrote to the country's
acting president last week. Displaced persons are 'at great
risk of being subjected to looting, extortion and rape -
including by uniformed troops' at a various
"checkpoints."
"Cholera - endemic to the region during the rainy season
- is beginning to cut a swathe through the displaced,' he
continued, adding that attempts by international groups to
offer assistance to the victims are being obstructed by
militias who are stealing supplies, demanding 'taxes' and
threatening relief workers.
On April 3, the Associated Press reported that a senior
European Union security official had sent an email to the head
of the EU delegation for Somalia warning that 'Ethiopian and
Somali military forces there may have committed war crimes and
that donor countries could be considered complicit if they do
nothing to stop them. I need to advise you that there are
strong grounds to believe that the Ethiopian government and
the transitional federal government of Somalia and the African
Union (peacekeeping) Force Commander, possibly also including
the African Union Head of Mission and other African Union
officials have, through commission or omission, violated the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court," the
e-mail said.
In the meantime, the Bush Administration has worked hard to
raise troops from nearby cooperative states to take over the
job. Promises were made, but with one exception, remain
unfulfilled. In a telephone conversation, Ugandan President
Yoweri Museveni promised President Bush to provide between
1,000-2,000 troops to protect Somalia's transitional
government and train its troops. The Ugandans arrived but are
said to have been largely confined to their quarters,
refraining from taking part in the effort to crush the
opposition. Meanwhile, the 'Transitional Government' and
Ethiopian forces have been reported shelling civilian areas in
the capital from the government compound they are supposedly
guarding.
None of the reporters on the scene appear to have explored the
question of why the other African governments have failed to
send troops but I think the answer is obvious. They would be
called 'peacekeepers' but would be called upon to inject
themselves into a civil conflict on the side of an unpopular
puppet government, something they are loathed to do.
Three months ago, I wrote in this space that 'If the unfolding
events in Iraq are any indication, what started out as a swift
invasion and occupation could turn out to be a long and
widening war.' That was an understatement. As of this writing,
about 1,300 people are reported to have perished in the
fighting, over 4,300 wounded and nearly 400,000 have fled
their homes.
Refugees trying to cross the Red Sea are reported drowning off
the Somali coast.
"There is a massive tragedy unfolding in Mogadishu, but
from the world's silence, you would think it's
Christmas," the head of a Mogadishu political think- tank
told Cawthorne. 'Somalis, caught up in Mogadishu's worst
violence for 16 years, are painfully aware of their place on
the global agenda.'
"Nobody cares about Somalia, even if we die in our
millions," Cawthorne was told by Abdirahman Ali, a 29-
year-old father- of-two who works as a security guard in
Mogadishu.
And, just as in Iraq, the U.S. supported forces - the small
army of the enthroned and very unpopular government and the
invaders - are caught up in a civil war, set in motion by the
invasion and occupation. In addition to the forces loyal to
the overthrown Islamist government, the regime in power is
opposed by the Hawiye, one of the country's largest clans. A
spokesman for the clan recently called upon 'the Somali
people, wherever it exists, to unity in the fight against the
Ethiopians. The war is not between Ethiopia and our tribe, it
is between Ethiopia and all Somali people,' he said.
"For the major [world] leaders, there is a tremendous
embarrassment over Somalia," Michael Weinstein, a US
expert on Somalia at Purdue University told Reuters.
"They have committed themselves to supporting the interim
government -- a government that has no broad legitimacy, a
failing government.
This is the heart of the problem. ... But Western leaders
can't back out now, so of course they have 100% no interest in
bringing global attention to Somalia. There is no doubt that
Somalia has been shoved aside by major media outlets and
global leaders, and the Somali Diaspora is left crying in the
wilderness."
Last week, during what was described as a lull in the fight,
Ethiopian soldiers were moving from house to house in the
capital Mogadishu, taking hundreds of men away by the
truckloads to an uncertain fate. Meanwhile, the traumatized
residents of the rubble strewn city were reported gathering up
bodies, many of them rotting, for burial. 'Most of the
displaced civilians are encamped on Mogadishu's outskirts,
where the scenes are medieval,' reported The Economist last
week. 'People lack water, food and shelter. Cholera has broken
out. The sick sometimes have to pay rent even to sit in the
shade of trees. Things will get worse with the rains, which
have started. Aid agencies say people will soon start dying in
large numbers. Some reckon Somalia is facing its biggest
humanitarian crisis, worse than in the early 1990s, when the
state collapsed amid famine and slaughter.'
Martin Fletcher wrote in the London Times, April 26, about
five days he spent in Mogadishu, during which he canvassed
many ordinary Somalis. 'Overwhelmingly, they loathed a
government they consider a puppet of the hated Ethiopians.'
Last week the Washington Post reported that interviews it
conducted in Ethiopia and testimony given to diplomats and
human rights groups, 'paint a picture of a nation that jails
its citizens without reason or trial, and tortures many of
them -- despite government claims to the contrary.'
'Such cases are especially troubling because the U.S.
government, a key Ethiopian ally, has acknowledged
interrogating terrorism suspects in Ethiopian prisons, where
some detainees were sent after being arrested in connection
with Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in December,' said the
Post story. 'There have been no reports that those jailed have
been tortured.' The following day, the paper reported, 'More
than 200 FBI and CIA agents have set up camp in the Sheraton
Hotel here in Ethiopia's capital and have been interrogating
dozens of detainees -- including a U.S. citizen -- picked up
in Somalia and held without charge and without attorneys in a
secret prison somewhere in this city, according to Ethiopian
and U.S. officials who say the interrogations are lawful.'
History will probably record the Ethiopian government's
decision to team up with the U.S. Administration for regime
change in Somalia as the height of folly. The country has
enough problems at home. This was brought into sharp relief
April 24, when forces of an ethnic- Somali separatist group,
the Ogaden National Liberation Front, raided an oil
exploration facility, killing 74 people, including nine
employees of a Chinese oil company. 'As Much as China's - and
indeed America's - ally Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime
minister, might like to be on top of security across the Horn,
he is not always able to deliver,' said the Financial Times
editorially April 26. 'His army is the region's most powerful
conventional force. But under his rule, Ethiopia is fraying
again around the edges. Armed separatist groups are now
changing tactics. Unable to match the army on the battlefield,
the Ogaden National Liberation Front has chosen the
spectacular to draw attention to its cause. Only recently, a
separatist group in the north tried something similar, by
kidnapping a group of British diplomats.'
'Both horrific events can be attributed partly to fallout from
Ethiopia's messy intervention in neighboring Somalia,' said
the newspaper. 'Initial battles last December were decisively
in Ethiopia's favor. But like the Americans in Iraq, the
Ethiopians in Somalia were ill prepared for the aftermath. A
growing insurgency has delayed the withdrawal of their troops,
exposing the government to attacks at home. It has also
inflamed tension among ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, who fight
for the ONLF.
'Ironically, the Chinese workers killed near Ethiopia's border
with Somalia may have been victims more of Washington's policy
in the region than of Beijing's. The US has actively backed
Mr. Meles's Somali adventure. In doing so it has undermined
multilateral efforts to bring about peace.'
'There are two main questions that Colonel Yusuf's and
Ethiopia's western backers should now ask themselves,' said
the Guardian April 26. 'What was gained by encouraging the
Ethiopian army to topple the Islamic Courts? The US allowed
Ethiopia to arm itself with North Korean weapons and also
participated in the turkey shoot by using gunships against
suspected insurgents hiding in villages near the Kenyan
border. Washington was convinced that the Islamic Courts were
sheltering foreign terror suspects. But how many did they get
and what price have Somalis paid?'
'America can be more heavily criticized for subordinating
Somali interests to its own desire to catch a handful of al-
Qaeda men who may (or may not) have been hiding in
Mogadishu,'said The Economist. 'None has been caught, many
innocents have died in air strikes, and anti-American feeling
has deepened. Western, especially European, diplomats watching
Somalia from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya to the south, have
sounded the alarm. Their governments have done little.'
Chatham House, a British think tank of the independent Royal
Institute of International Affairs, has concluded, "In an
uncomfortably familiar pattern, genuine multilateral concern
to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia
has been hijacked by unilateral actions of other international
actors -- especially Ethiopia and the United States --
following their own foreign policy agendas.'
Actually, there is no more reason to believe the Bush
Administration promoted this war, in clear violation of
international law and the UN Charter, 'to catch a handful of
al-Qaeda men,' than that the invasion of Iraq was to eliminate
weapons of mass destruction. What has unfolded in over the
past three months, flows from much larger strategic
calculations in Washington. The invasion and occupation of
Somalia coincided with the Pentagon's now operational plan to
build a new 'Africa Command to deal with what the Christian
Science Monitor dubbed 'Strife, oil, and Al Qaeda.'
When I first visited this subject shortly after the invasion,
I quoted a 10 percent figure for the proportion of petroleum
our country takes in from Africa and noted that some experts
were saying the U.S. will need to up that percentage to 25 by
2010. Wrong again. Last week came the news that the U.S. now
imports more oil from Africa than the Middle East, with
Nigeria, Angola and Algeria providing nearly one-fifth of it
-- more than from Saudi Arabia. While the rulers in Addis
Ababa claim the invasion was a preemptive attack on a
threatening Somalia and the Bush Administration says giving a
wink and a nod to the attack was only a chance to capture a
few terrorist holed up in Somalia, for most of the media and
diplomatic observers outside the U.S. it was another strategic
move to secure positioning in the region where there is a lot
of oil. On file are plans - put on hold amid continuing
conflicts - for nearly two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields to
be allocated to the U.S. oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron
and Phillips. It was recently reported that the U.S. - backed
prime minister of Somalia has proposed enactment of a new oil
law to encourage the return of foreign oil companies to the
country. Salim Lone, spokesperson for the United Nation
mission in Iraq in 2003, now a columnist for The Daily Nation
in Kenya, recently told Democracy Now: 'the prime minister's
attempt to lure Western oil companies is on a par with his
crying wolf about al-Qaeda at every turn. Every time you
interview a Somalia official, the first thing you hear is al-Qaeda
and terrorists. They're using that. No one believes it. No one
believes it at all, because all independent reports say the
contrary.'
I spoke with Kidane last week and she allowed that the
situation in Somalia might seem complex to many in the peace
and social justice movements. However, she said it is
impossible to overlook the parallel with the situation in the
Iraq. 'It's aggression, that is undeniable, and the same
language is being used to justify it,' she said. Kidane is on
target in insisting that the movements for peace and justice
in the U.S. - and elsewhere - must take up the issue. The
unlawful U.S.- Ethiopian invasion and occupation of that
country and the accompanying human suffering and human rights
abuses constitute a new - and still mostly hidden - war in
many ways similar to that in Iraq. And, waged for the same
reason.
*Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of
the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked
for a healthcare union.
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