What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
Blood Diamonds:
the Inside Story
An amazing
expose by T.R. Naylor: How the "Blood" or "Conflict
Diamonds" Myth peddled by NGOs Helped a Vicious Mining Company
Shore Up Its Monopoly, Made a Pile of Money for A Washington
Post Reporter and Leonardo di Caprio, Served As A Propaganda
Myth in the "War on Terror" and had Nothing to Do With
Osama Bin Laden. Pinochet
is gone, and the world is a cleaner place. JoAnn Wypijewski recalls
1988 in Santiago, when Chile lost its fear. And yes, here they
are in charge of Congress again, ready to facilitate a troop
hike in Iraq. Alexander
Cockburn re-introduces an old acquaintance: the Democrats--Party
of War. Remember, we are funded solely
by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this
website by buying a
subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you
won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the
cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now
"The president is not
going to allow Somalia to become a safe haven for terrorists."
US spokesperson, May 2006
Once again the Horn of Africa is being
drawn into a global power game likely to increase the suffering
of its peoples. Ethiopia's attack on Somalia, backed by a nod
from George W Bush, is the clearest sign yet that the region
in high on the US's agenda in its all-consuming "war on
terror".
But Ethiopia and Somalia aren't new to global power politics.
For decades brutal dictators have received massive support to
play the pawns of the US, and previously also the Soviet Union.
Cold War
Throughout the Cold War Ethiopia
and Somalia were used as proxies, receiving billions of dollars
worth of weapons while famines and wars raged throughout the
region. US support of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia from
the Second World War until 1974, ensured US access to the vitally
important spy base at Kagnew, while next door the Soviet's backed
Siad Barre's 'Marxist' regime in Somalia.
On the back of US aid, Ethiopia
developed one of the largest armies in Africa, which it used
to devastate Eritrean society in an attempt to maintain control
of the region. As Haile Selassie's policies became increasingly
unpopular, most especially when he ignored the famine of the
early 1970s (as 100,000 peasants were known to have died, one
of his Minister's is quoted as saying "If we could save
the peasants only by confessing our failure to the world, it
is better that they die"), this very army overthrew his
rule, and Major Mengistu quickly took control of the ruling military
committee, known as the Derg.
Ultimately, Mengistu preferred
a relationship with the Soviets, more in line with his proclaimed
ideology and thought more likely to provide the weapons he needed
to keep himself in power. Seeing Ethiopia as a far more important
prize than Somalia, the Soviet Union did indeed outbid the US,
sending $9 billion in military hardware before Mengistu was ousted
in 1991. Soviet aid allowed Mengistu to unleash a terror on political
opponents, as well as many ordinary civilians, and increased
the war drive against the Eritrean People's Liberation Front,
massacring thousands of civilians in Eritrea. Despite some embarrassment,
Soviet support even continued throughout the famine of the mid-80s,
which killed at least 1 million people, as Mengistu spent $55million
celebrating the anniversary of his revolution.
To add to the murky politics,
Mengistu also received a little help from Israel, who bribed
him to allow the deportation of Ethiopian Jews that it needed
to bolster the Jewish population of Israel. Shortly after the
deal, Israeli-made cluster bombs started falling on Eritrean
towns. While condemning Soviet aid to Mengistu, the US, needless
to say, didn't mention Israeli aid.
Across the border, the US supported
Somalia, albeit with less fanfare, not wanting to upset a potential
future relationship with Ethiopia. As early as 1977, the US promised
to find allies who would be able to supply Somalia the military
assistance that it would need to attack Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan all rushed in with the
required aid.
In 1980, the US signed an arms
deal which allowed it access to Somali bases. Under Regan, the
US supplied more than $680million to Said Barre, at least $195
million of which was intended for military use (the figure increases
dramatically when related aid is counted), despite Congressional
obstacles. Barre spent around 1/5 of his country's income on
arms, while he faced the lowest literacy rate in the world (12%).
Of course the US claimed its
relationship had a moderating impact on Somalia. Human Rights
Watch disagreed, claiming that 50,000 of Barre's own civilians
were killed and half a million displaced in the late 1980s. Other
organisations detailed his carpet bombing of urban areas and
the fact that in the month before he was ousted alone January
1991 20,000 people were killed.
When asked to justify the continued supply of arms to Somalia
during this period, one Defense Department official said "What
is the sense of having this program if we're not going to give
them the military support when it counts most?"
For the US and the Soviet Union,
local suffering counted for no more than did the proclaimed ideology
of their proxy dictators. The important thing was the global
edge that arming such countries could bring to their overall
game.
Humanitarian
Intervention?
While the Cold War wound down,
and as Siad Barre was ousted from power, the US initiated a 'humanitarian
intervention' to clean up the mess left in Somalia (with no mention
of the role of US support in creating this situation), which
included a raging famine and rampant warlordism. The result of
the 1992/3 UN-backed 'Operation Restore Hope' was disastrous.
It is estimated that between 6,000 and 10,000 Somalis died before
President Clinton terminated the operation after 18 American
soldiers were killed. But few questioned the pure movies of Bush
Senior's Administration.
One of those who did was Stephen
Shalom. Writing in the early 1990s, he detailed how the US military
establishment was desperately searching for a post-Cold War justification
for its continued budget levels and the central position the
military played in US policy-making. Military power was vital
to the US's continued pole position in the world, but how to
justify it? The 'war on drugs' was tried in Latin America, 'sovereignty
and justice' in Iraq/ Kuwait, and 'humanitarian intervention'
in Somalia.
These justifications served
for the down times, but ultimately the attack on the World Trade
Centre on 11 September 2001 solved the problem. The war on terror
has begun.
The War
on Terror
Like the Cold War, the war
on terror is an all-encompassing analysis of world affairs
if a situation looks similar, incorporate it into the bigger
game. That's why the Ethiopian government has referred to the
Somali Islamic Courts, the group which has until recently been
de facto ruling Somalia, as a "terrorist group"
they want to be part of the game. In an interview with the Washington
Post, Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's Prime Minister and former head
of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front said on 14 December
2006:
"It does surprise me that
intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you
respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but
if you appease them, you somehow tame them."
Bush Junior himself couldn't
have put it better (no, really).
Meles puts up with no nonsense
at home either. When opposition groups protested at his re-election
in November 2005, government forces opened fire. 197 people,
including 6 police officers, were killed, and thousands have
been arrested, including 100 opposition leaders, journalists
and relief workers. Impeccable credentials for a key player in
the war on terror.
All of this plays extraordinarily
well in Washington. The US Administration has stated that the
Islamic Courts is "controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals".
To this end the US funded the very warlords that threw its troops
out of Somalia a decade earlier in Operation Restore Hope. In
January 2006, an International Crisis Group expert reported that
between $100,000 and $150,000 was being funneled by the US to
warlord proxies in Kenya every month, effectively breaching the
UN embargo on arms to Somalia. The money was sent through a Pentagon
force which has been based in Djibouti since shortly after September
11, 2001. In Somalia, this is accompanied by some familiar sights
and sounds unidentified surveillance flights and abductions
of suspected terrorists.
The real tragedy is that the
situation in Somalia, as in so many other places, is actually
more complex than the US or its Ethiopian proxy would like to
admit. Since 1991 there has been no stable government. In 2004
Kenya, worried by the impact that a politicised brand of Islam
in Somalia would have on its own Muslim minority, helped get
agreement from various warlords to establish a Transitional Federal
Government (TFG). The TRG, itself made up of some very unsavory
characters, initially pretended to 'run' Somalia from Kenya,
and until very recently they actually controlled almost none
of the country. Nonetheless it has received international backing,
containing as it does so many of the warring factions and tribes.
The Islamic Courts does not
have international recognition, but does have popular support
and, until recently, controlled most of the country. Verdicts
on the Islamic Courts differ markedly within Somalia many
praise the stability that it has brought after so many years
of chaos and violence, but it also appears to be taking an increasingly
hardline position in terms of internal law and order. However,
the International Crisis Group wrote in 2005 that "Islamist
extremism has failed to take a broader hold in Somalia because
of Somali resistance not foreign counter-terrorism efforts."
In fact, religious forms of justice are widely seen as the only
way to rise above warlord violence.
It was in this context that
Ethiopia had secretly stationed at least 8,000 troops in Somalia
from the Transitional Federal Government capital in Baidoa. In
October 2006, the Islamic Courts issued a threat to Ethiopia
to leave Somalia, and Ethiopia, with backing from the US, decided
it was time to invade properly, conducting air raids and most
recently entering the capital Mogidishu, as the Islamic Courts
withdrew. The Ethiopian government made its intentions clear
"we are going to use any appropriate means to destabilise
the anti-Ethiopian forces in Somalia".
Ethiopia appears to have won,
for now, with the warlords in the Transitional Federal Government
installed as Somalia's de facto, as well as de jure, government.
Ethiopia claims 1-2,000 have been killed with 4-5,000 wounded
while tens of thousands risk being displaced. Martial law
has been declared to attempt to rein in the chaos that has returned
to the streets of Mogadishu. Even more worrying is what this
means for the future of the region, where the war on terror is
now firmly implanted, with all the international repercussions
that entails.
Somalia's Transitional Federal
Government is highly unstable, unpopular and broke, while the
Islamic Courts is likely to re-start an insurgency. Countries
throughout the Horn of Africa are also effected. Eritrea supports
the Islamic Courts while Kenya supports the Transitional Federal
Government both are religiously mixed countries. Religious
and ethnic divisions in Sudan are well known. Both 'sides' have
been radicalised and are calling on international support. The
Guardian newspaper describes the dangerous situation aptly:
"Washington has viewed
Somalia's domestic complexities and their intertwined regional
repercussions through the distorting prism of the "war on
terror". the stage is set for a wider, partly proxy conflict,
in which a fully fledged Somali war joins the daily horrors from
Iraq and Afghanistan."
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
