putting somalia on the antiwar agenda:
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?'
(...) '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.
(...) 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."
(...) 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.
(...) "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.
(...) 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.'
(...) 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.'
(...) 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.'
(...) 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.
(...) 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.