October 2009 so the 16th anniversary of the operation in Mogadishu, Somalia where 2 US UH-60 Black Hawks were shot down…

————–

The Crisis in Somalia: US-NATO Plans to Control the Indian Ocean

by Rick Rozoff  May 3, 2009

Cold War Origins

For the past seven months world news outlets have provided daily coverage on what has been described as escalating piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and attempts by international, primarily Western, military vessels to combat it.

Absent from such reporting, as the exigencies of commercial news broadcasting inevitably entail, is how and why the situation in the region reached the impasse it has and what its broader significance is.

Instead the picture presented is, according to the standard formula, a point on a blank canvas with no historical depth, no geoeconomic and geopolitical width and no strata of diversified and interrelated causes that contribute to and dynamics that result from what is in truth a lengthy and complex process of developments.

In short the Somali situation is portrayed as a simple and self-contained event that at a seemingly gratutitous moment was declared a crisis.

There are dozens of comparable cases in the world, analagous in the general sense of presenting economic, security, national and regional threats to other nations and their environs, but these have not been declared crises and so aren’t given world attention.

The determination of what constitutes a crisis, and a world crisis at that, since the end of the Cold War is a prerogative of the United States and its allies, the governments of which render the verdict, with their own and much of the world’s news media echoing the claim.

And the evaluation is inevitably a onesided affair. What has been observed about Europe’s most mature writers – Skakespeare, Goethe and Balzac, for example – that their antagonists were never mere villains, that they reflected the complexity and even ambiguity of real life with no character monopolizing the virtues or the vices – is summarily discarded and a broad panaroma of multifaceted motives, players and conflicts reduced to an banal pseudo-morality play with just three actors: Evil culprits, innocent victims and valiant heroes.

The first category is assigned to any individual or group which is opposed to the designs on their nation by major Western powers or, what is interpreted by the latter as the same thing, pursue a policy of protecting local rights and interests. The second is comprised of whoever can be cast into the role to arouse indignation and hostility against the first, currently the crews of Western commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden. And the third is led by the United States, NATO and the European Union, the self-deputized military vigilantes of the world.

That many of those off the Somali coast capturing foreign, mainly Western, vessels and holding them, their cargo and their crews for ransom are reported to be former fishermen driven out of their sole occupation by years of intrusive and illegal large-scale poaching by world commercial concerns or affected by eighteen years of toxic, including nuclear, wastes dumped off their shores isn’t acknowledged. To do so would complicate the narrative contrived by those who have with disastrous consequences interfered in the internal affairs of Somalia and its neighborhood for several decades and are in large part responsible for the current crisis.

Instead the action begins where the governments of the Western states that have deployed warships, helicopters, snipers and bases to the region script its opening act: With pirates.

As though a director would begin a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the protagonist thrusting his sword through Polonius and not with the visitation of his father’s ghost, so that Hamlet appeared as a brutal murderer and not a reluctant avenger of parricide and regicide.

The national tragedy of Somalia didn’t begin last summer with an increase in the seizure of foreign vessels off its coast; it didn’t begin with the armed conflict between the Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 and the invasion by military forces of the US proxy government of Ethiopia; it didn’t commence in 1991 with the ouster of long-time president Siad Barre and internecine fighting between militia groups.

It started in 1977.

Eight years earlier, almost forty years to the day, a military government headed by General Siad Barre came to power in Somalia. Anticipating what would become a general pattern in Africa and indeed throughout most of the non-Euro-Atlantic world, the government pursued a path of non-capitalist, avowedly socialist development. The term Barre and his allies used was scientific socialism; that is, Marxism.

In the decade between 1969 and 1979 similiar political and socio-economic transformations occurred throughout Africa, resulting in socialist-oriented goverments allied with and receiving assistance from the Soviet Union. In addition to Somalia, nations matching this description included Angola, Benin, Capo Verde, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), the Republic of Guinea (Conakry), Guinea Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, with Namibia, Rhodesia, South Africa and Western Sahara poised to follow suit.

The pattern also emerged in Asia – Vietnam with its unification in 1975, Laos, Cambodia (after the ouster of the Khmer Rouge in 1978) and Afghanistan; on the Arabian peninsula with South Yemen; and in Latin America and the Caribbean with Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Jamaica and Surinam during the same period.

What was progressing at an apparently inexorable pace was the integration of the Soviet-led socialist bloc, including Cuba, with the entire developing, non-aligned world which coincided with and gave substance to the demands for a New International Economic Order advocated by the developing nations through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and supported by the world socialist community.

Demands included the replacement of the US-enforced Bretton Woods system – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the first instances – in a revision of the entire international economic system that would elevate the nations of the South from mere monoculture exporters to diversified and modernized countries with with industrial bases.

On March 25, 1975 the Second General Conference of UN Industrial Development Organisation, meeting in Peru, adopted the Lima Declaration and Plan of Action on Industrial Development and Co-operation which included the following provisions:

“That every state has the inalienable right to exercise freely its sovereignty and permanent control over its natural resources, both terrestrial and marine, and over all economic activity for the exploitation of these resources in the manner appropriate to its circumstances, including nationalisation in accordance with its laws as an expression of this right, and that no state shall be subjected to any forms of economic, political or other coercion which impedes the full and free exercise of that inalienable right.”

“That special attention should be given to the least developed countries, which should enjoy a net transfer of resources from the developed countries in the form of technical and financial resources as well as capital goods, to enable the least developed countries in conformity with the policies and plans for development, to accelerate their industrialisation.”

“The new distribution of industrial activities envisaged in a New International Economic Order must make it possible for all developing countries to industrialise and to obtain an efficient instrument within the United Nations system to fulfil their aspirations.”

One objective of the plan was to insure that by 2000 25-30% of world industrial production was to occur in the developing world – and not in the manner that has ensued in the current neoliberal order with the transfer of manufacturing to underdeveloped states in a manner that has rather intensified than diminished exploitation of both labor and resources.

With the rising tide of political changes in the developing world during the same time, a shift from neocolonialist dependency toward genuine independence and development, and the support of the Soviet-led socialist bloc – which with its industrial base was issuing longterm, low interest loans to southern nations for infrastructual and industrial projects – the prospects for the creation of new global economic and political order was on the near horizon.

But not everyone was pleased with this development.

The US – alone – opposed the Lima Declaration and the follow up New Delhi Declaration and Plan of Action four years later.

America’s NATO allies, almost to a member at the time former colonial powers bent on maintaining historial prerogatives over their former possessions, were no less dissatisfied.

And the People’s Republic of China, having lost earlier bids to dominate the world communist movement and what it deemed the Third World alike, was focused entirely on combating what it derided as “Soviet social imperialism” and after the secret meeting of Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai in Beijing in 1971, followed by Richard Nixon’s meeting there with Mao Tse-Tung the next year, worked hand-in-glove with the US to counter Soviet influence around the world, including providing joint support to armed groups fighting against the governments of Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

With what would in the 21st Century be called the US’s hard power/soft power duality and rotation, the Nixon era method of dealing with the reorientation of developing nations away from the West and toward the East – most cynically and brutally exemplified by its support to the military overthrow of the elected Salvador Allende government in Chile in 1973 – gave way to that of the Carter administration and its foreign policy grey eminence and all-purpose Mephistopheles Zbigniew Brzezinski in January of 1977.

The Carter administration had barely moved into the White House when it began to bribe the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq into entering political and military alliances and in several cases giving notorious “green lights” for military invasions of other nations. Its foreign policy architect was not Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, but the man who brought about Vance’s downfall and resignation over the Operation Eagle Claw fiasco in Iran in 1980: Brzezinski, an arch-Russophobe during the Soviet period and ever since even onto the grave.

Somalia is the main subject of investigation, but a brief review of similiar cases is in order.

In its first year in office the Carter administration bought off Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, splitting the Arab world, destroying any unified approach to the Palestinian catastrophe and the realization of UN resolutions 242 and 338 and ousting the Soviet Union as the fourth partner in the Middle East peace process, leaving Israel and Egypt armed and backed by the US and the rest of the Arab world, including Palestine, unrepresented, unprotected and defenseless.

Since 1979 Egypt has been the second largest recipient of US military aid in the world, with only Israel besting it in that category. Over the past thirty years Egypt has received more US aid, over $30 billion, than any other country.

In the period between Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in November of 1977 and the Camp David Accords of September of 1978, in March of 1978 Israeli launched an invasion of Lebanon, Operation Litani, with over 25,000 troops, a warm-up exercise for the full-fledged attack of 1983.

This was one of the green lights given by the Carter administration.

A year later Washington gave a green light to China to invade Vietnam, according to Beijing to “punish” the latter for its role in helping drive the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia the previous year.

In the summer of 1978 US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, emulating Kissinger’s trip in 1971, paid a secret visit to Beijing to normalize relations with China, leading to recognition of the People’s Republic and derecognition of Taiwan on January 1, 1979.

On January 29, 1979 Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping arrived in Washington, the first visit by a senior Chinese official to the United States since 1949.

According to former Balkans hand and current US Afghanistan-Pakistan point man Richard Holbrooke, the trip “began with a private dinner at Brzezinski’s house.” [1]

Deng left on February 6 and eleven days later China launched an invasion of Vietnam along its entire northern border.

Reports exist that in July of 1980 US CIA officials – some rumors say Brzezinski himself – travelled to the Jordanian capital of Amman to meet with high-ranking officials of the Iraqi government. Then Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr claims the meeting included both Brzezinski and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. [2]

As recently as March of 2009 Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei renewed the accusation, stating that “They gave Saddam the green light to attack our country. If Saddam had not received the green light from the U.S., most probably he would not have attacked our borders.”

Later the first Reagan administration secretary of state, Alexander Haig, wrote in a memo to Reagan that “President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through [Saudi Arabian Prince] Fahd.”

In appreciation of Somalia’s geostrategic importance, in the first days of the Carter-Brzezinski administration efforts were made to wean Somalia from its pro-Soviet stance and to secure military, mainly naval, bases on its territory.

The covert campaign was largely conducted through the mediation of Saudi Arabia and in July led to the Somali invasion of the Ogaden region of Ethiopia with tens of thousands of troops, tanks and warplanes.

“Somalia had mounted its major offensive in Ogaden because of a U.S. promise to furnish arms aid. The U.S. policy had resulted from Ethiopia’s decision to expel U.S. military advisers from the country and its successful bid for aid from the Soviet Union.

“According to the report, Somali President Mohamed Said Barre had received secret U.S. assurances that the U.S. would not oppose ‘further guerrilla pressure in the Ogaden’ and would ‘consider sympathetically Somalia’s legitimate defense needs.’ [3]

The Soviet Union and its Cuban ally assisted Ethiopia and the US and China, mainly through Saudi Arabia, provided arms to Somalia.

Brzezinski urged the deployment of the US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to the region as a show of support to Somalia and an act of defiance toward the Soviet Union and its Ethiopian ally and, referring to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the time, said “SALT lies buried in the sands of the Ogaden,” as a report of the time phrased it “signifying the death of detente.”

Somalia was defeated and withdrew the last of its military forces from the Ogaden Desert in March of 1978. Estimates are that the war cost Somalia one-third of its army, three-eighths of its armored units and half of its air force.

In marked the beginning of the end for Barre and for Somalia itself. Barre would linger on as president of a weakened Somalia until his overthrow in 1991, yet another former client cast off after having served his purpose.

His ouster would be followed by years of conflict between rival armed militias and US military intervention that caused the deaths of thousands of Somalis.

Yet for all the horrors US administrations from that of Carter to the current one have visited upon the Somali people, Washington gained what it intended to: Military bases and forces astride many of the world’s most strategic shipping lanes and chokepoints in an area encompassing the Suez Canal and the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

In 1977 the Carter White House issued a presidential directive calling for a worldwide mobile military force which in October of 1979 Carter would officially designate Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF).

The site for its first deployments were to be the recently acquired military client states of Somalia and Egypt along with Sudan, Oman and Kenya.

The initiative was inaugurated as the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) on March 1, 1980 and according to its first commander, “It’s the first time that I know of that we have ever attempted to establish, in peacetime, a full four service Joint Headquarters.” [4]

Orginally envisioned to focus on the Persian Gulf, the RDJTF was expanded to include Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia as well as Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of Yemen [Aden], Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the Yemen Arab Republic.

That is, from the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf to the eastern coast of Africa to the western one of the Indian subcontinent with the northern half of the Indian Ocean and its seas and gulfs included.

Carter’s announcement of the launching of the Rapid Deployment Forces preceded by three months his 1980 State of the Union Address in which he laid out the doctrine that has since borne his name.

Coming less than a month after the first Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, Carter’s comments included this disingenuous hyperbole:

“The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.”

That at the time a small handful of Soviet troops had arrived in Kabul, the capital of a landlocked nation hundreds of miles from one of the world’s five oceans, could in no conceivable manner affect the Straits of Hormuz.

Carter continued: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Brzezinski claims credit for authoring the second half of the above sentence, modeling it on the Truman Doctrine “to make it very clear that the Soviets should stay away from the Persian Gulf.” [5]

It is exactly the Carter Doctrine that was employed by the US for its two wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and for its ongoing military presence in the Persian Gulf in preparation for aggression against Iran.

As “soft power” Carter was succeeded by “hard power” Reagan, the Rapid Deployment Forces were converted into Central Command, the US’s first new regional military command since World War II, under Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

Central Command (CENTCOM) has as its area of responsibility twenty nations: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. It also takes in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and western portions of the Indian Ocean.

It also included the only African nations not formerly assigned to the European and Pacific Commands – Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and the Sudan – until all 53 African states were turned over to the new African Command last October.

CENTCOM was the main force in the 1991 and 2003 wars against Iraq and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Both Iraq and Afghanistan remain in its area of responsibility and its current commander, General David Petraeus, is in charge of operations in both nations.

It has bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan and Central Asia and until recently at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, now part of African Command.

The Command’s zone of operations is in fact the northern half of the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz where some 40% of the oil shipped in the world passes to the Gulf of Aden where, as recent reports frequently repeat, ten percent of all global shipping occurs to the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia where 25% of world trade, including half of all sea shipments of oil and two-thirds of global liquefied natural gas shipments bound for East Asia, pass.

In addition to the US, NATO launched its first naval operation in the Gulf of Aden last October and has now resumed it with the deployment of the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1).

The SNMG1 held naval maneuvers with Pakistan last week off the coast of Karachi in the Arabian Sea.

These deployments are a continuation of NATO’s plans in the region described last year by veteran Indian journalist M K Bhadrakumar in an article titled “NATO reaches into the Indian Ocean”:

“By October 15 [2008], seven ships from NATO navies had already transited the Suez Canal on their way to the Indian Ocean. En route, they will conduct a series of Persian Gulf port visits to countries neighboring Iran – Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which are NATO’s ‘partners’ within the framework of the so-called Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The mission comprises ships from the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

“NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General John Craddock, acknowledged that the mission furthers the alliance’s ambition to become a global political organization.

“By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli.

“NATO’s naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance’s transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn’t have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended.

“In retrospect, the first-ever visit by a NATO naval force in mid-September last year to the Indian Ocean was a full-dress rehearsal to this end. Brussels said at that time, ‘The aim of the mission is to demonstrate NATO’s capability to uphold security and international law on the high seas and build links with regional navies.’ In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September.

“[An] Indian warship [dispatched off the coast of Somalia] will eventually have to work in tandem with the NATO naval force. This will be the first time that the Indian armed forces will be working shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO forces in actual operations in territorial or international waters.

“The operations hold the potential to shift India’s ties with NATO to a qualitatively new level.” [6]

Securing the safe passage of vessels in the Gulf of Aden and particularly those delivering United Nations World Food Program aid is a legitimate concern.

But plans by the United States and NATO to take control of the whole Indian Ocean for military purposes and to insure global energy dominance is not a legitimate concern.

Notes

1) Project Syndicate, December 28, 2008
2) My Turn To Speak: Iran, The Revolution And Secret Deals With The U.S, 1991
3) Newsweek, September 23, 1977
4) Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies Journal, June 1981
5) Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser
6) Asia Times, October 20, 2008
—————- —————-

Dead Ethiopian Soldiers in Somalia two years ago 2007 14 years after the Americans…

———

———-

——–

16 years ago dead  US soldiers  were dragged on the streets of Mogadishu we remember a sad situation like that of the Ethiopians two years ago… the full responsibility of the Ethiopian Victimes in Somalia falls on Melese Zenawi and his group. And he willface the jugment  infront of the people of Ethiopia… that is not far too long from now…

The desecrations happened on Wednesday in heavy fighting that killed at least 13 people and injured scores more.

The US yesterday condemned the soldiers’ mutilation. “Something like that is of course a horrendous, horrendous act and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” said Michael Ranneberger, the US envoy responsible for Somalia.

The corpses of five soldiers — either from the Somali Government army or its Ethiopian allies — were desecrated during some of the worst clashes in the lawless capital since the interim government took over in December.

In one place, men dragged two semi-naked corpses by the feet while a crowd chanting “God is Great” kicked and pelted them with stones. In another, three bodies were hauled by rope, kicked and set alight.

The grisly scenes recalled the aftermath of the 1993 shooting-down of a Black Hawk helicopter by Somali militiamen during a failed US operation to hunt down warlords.

Images of dead US troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were the beginning of the end for a US-UN peacekeeping force that quit Somalia in 1995.

As well as the five soldiers, witnesses and medical sources said at least eight civilians died in yesterday’s clashes.

The fighting, which wounded at least 65 people according to hospital staff, began early in the day when insurgents fired at Ethiopian and government forces in tanks, and was still raging in the afternoon, residents said.

“I have never seen or experienced the kind of fighting that I saw today. People were running in all directions. I saw an old man die in front of me,” said Faduma Elmi, 80.

The interim government took over Mogadishu in late December during a brief war in which it and Ethiopia routed a militant Islamist group that ruled most of south Somalia since mid-2006.

——

Global Research, January 10, 2007

INTERVIEW OF MOHAMED HASSAN

This is not a war between Ethiopia and Somalia . This is a war of the USA against all the peoples of the Horn of Africa.

Analysis by Mohamed Hassan

To understand what is happening in the Horn of Africa, the nature of the TPLF-regime of Zenawi Meles in Ethiopia that sent its troops into Somalia last month must first be explained.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was created in 1975. In its first manifesto it said its main objective was to create the Independent republic of Tigray. This is a narrow nationalist and racist approach that makes language the first factor to unite or divide people. There was opposition to this narrow vision within the TPLF itself as well as within the other organisations and fronts that fought against the Mengistu regime, the dictatorship of that time.

The mainstream idea was that Tigray was part of Ethiopia and there was no reason to claim independence for Tigray. The main objective for the liberation struggle in Ethiopia was to create a new Ethiopia based on equality of nationalities and brotherly relations with all neighboring countries. After 50 years of war this very rich region inhabited by poor people desired a new start and the beginning of a developing economy.

Zenawi Meles is a great demagogue and a liar. He uses Marxism-Leninism today and tomorrow he will use Buddhism. The day after he will read a few books and be the champion of Hinduism against Buddhism. He hid his narrow Tigray-nationalist agenda of TPLF and created the Marxist Leninist League of Tigray to gain control of the TPLF and eliminate all opposition against his narrow racist ideology within it.

In the eighties when the struggle against the Mengistu dictatorship became stronger he also created the EPRDFF which was a larger front of different organisations representing different nationalities living in Ethiopia , under the leadership of the TPLF. Meles pretended to unite Ethiopian nationalities in the struggle for the liberation of Ethiopia, but all the time its real objective was the creation of a greater Tigray, that controls the other nationalities and regions in Ethiopia.

Once the Mengistu-regime fell, a transitional government was formed. The EPLF (Eritrean People Liberation Front) from te neighboring country Eritrea that was occupied by Ethiopia, convinced all the other organisations who were members of this government that it was better to give military control of the country to the army of TPLF. When Zenawi saw that in the regional elections of 1992 the Omore liberation front won they began eliminating its members from the government and the OLF left the government. Instead of following a policy of integration of the different nationalities, Zenawi followed a policy of “divide and rule” against all the other nationalities in Ethiopia

Today Zenawi’s unbelievably narrow and reactionary dream of “a greater Tigray” has become reality. The population of Tigray is only 6% of the Ethiopian population (76 million) and Tigray is a poor region, situated at 800 km from the capital Addis Ababa. But it is Tigray-people who control 99% of public services and 98% of trade.

All opposition and protest is brutally repressed and the rule of the TPLF/EPRDF is maintained by narrow racist nationalist policies that divide the different Ethiopian nationalities.

In reality this is a very dangerous situation first of all for the Tigray people itself. I know many people from Tigray who have lived their whole lives in Addis Ababa and who flee the country, because they fell themselves more and more hated each day by their neighbors of whom the overwhelming majority are non Tigray.

At the same time the regime is very weak and depends completely on the support of the USA .

The May 2005 elections were a big defeat for the EPRDF. The official results published a month after the elections put the EPRDF in a minority position of 45%. The EU observers confirmed the defeat of the EPRDF. However the official election committee did an “investigation” and finally gave 60% to the EPRDF. The leaders of the main opposition parties were put in jail and many people were killed.

In the past year, the opposition inside Ethiopia has become more radical. In August 2006, a group of high-ranking officers led by General Kamal Galchuu joined the Oromo Liberation Front. In the Orome area a real intifadah started up and a few months ago, the OLF launched an appeal to all opposition groups to join the united front ADF (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom).

The USA is pleased with the situation because this way it has a puppet that completely depends on its financial, political and military support. The Ethiopian state is becoming more and more a CIA-led state that is very isolated.

The conflict with Eritrea.

In fact the military capacity of the EPRDF in the eighties was relatively weak. It was its close relationship with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) that was militarily strong that made victory over the dictator Mengisthu in 1991 possible. It was the troops of the EPLF that liberated the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. But the EPLF was a liberation movement of a neighboring country, Eritrea, that had been occupied by Ethiopia since 1952 and was annexed in 1962. And the objective of the EPRF was to liberate Eritrea from the Ethiopian occupation. So it formed a close alliance with the EPRDF/TPLF to topple the Ethiopian government. Once this was done, the EPLF took over the administration of Eritrea and organized in Eritrea a referendum in 1993 where more then 98% of Eritreans voted for independence. While in Ethiopia a transitional government was formed led by EPRDF/TPLF.

The EPLF held on to its ideals of a liberation movement that wanted to develop its country for the interest of its people. So it followed a policy based upon self-reliance, mobilising the population, installing national structures, refusing outside interference via Western NGOs and controlling foreign trade. The EPLF also followed a policy based on national integration and cohabitation of the 9 Eritrean nationalities and the two religions (Christian and Muslim).

This was just the opposite of the policy Zenawi followed in Ethiopia that was based on privatisation, foreign donors and the policy of International institutions such as the IMF and the WB. Confronted with this difference, Eritrea decided in 1997 to stop using the Ethiopian pound and chose to have its own currency, the Nakfa.

From then on, there were many provocative acts and killings of Eritrean officers and soldiers at the border that triggered off a war, which lasted from 1998 to 2000. It was a catastrophic war; on the Ethiopian side 135.000 soldiers died. In fact the Ethiopians lost the war and were forced to accept the Algiers agreement in 2000.

The agreement included three phases: 1. A commission of the International Court in The Hague would decide on the territorial dispute and the exact location of the border. 2. Another commission of the International Court would decide on the claims of the two parties for confiscation or damage to property of citizens thate were confiscated by the other side. 3. Finally a commission of the African Union would decide on the question which country started the war and should have the responsibility to compensate for the immense damage that was caused by the war. The two first commissions have already concluded in favor of the Eritrean position and claims. It is almost certain that the third commission will condemn Ethiopia, because the Ethiopian government accused Eritrea of starting the war by an air-attack against the city of Adi-Grat and occupying the village Badima. This story of Eritrean jets bombing this city was a lie; once the commission examines this story, the truth will be crystal clear. What is more: the first commission already decided that Badima was Eritrean territory.

So there is a sword of Damocles hanging above the government of Zenawi Meles. Until now the African Union, under pressure from the USA, postponed the foundation of the third commission. But sooner or later, this third commission will be formed.

The very risky war against Somalia

The extremely fragile position of the Meles-regime can explain its offensive to attack Somalia last December. Indeed, by attacking Somalia under pretext of attacking “the allies and even members of Al Qaeda” Zenawi wants to position himself as a friend of the U.S. and Bush’s strong man in the Horn of Africa in the US global war against Islamic terror. But this is a very risky operation.

First of all, Ethiopia and Somalia have had a long history of animosity and wars. For the Somalis the Ethiopian invasion is an aggression of an archenemy. It could be compared to a military intervention by Germany in Belgium or France. Somalis are one people, have one language and one religion. The only factor that is dividing them is the clans. Confronted with a foreign occupation force, however, they can unite and deal heavy blows. It was the Americans themselves who experienced this in 1993. At that moment they had sent 30.000 marines to the country in a military operation called “Restore Hope”. But soon they had to withdraw because of their losses and the fact that the dead corpses of American soldiers were dragged through the streets in front of the cameras.

Second, the Somali people are tired of the chaos and destruction of 16 years of a warlord regime. However it is just the same warlords who have been protected and brought to power again in Mogadishu by the Ethiopian army. The warlords were hated before by all Somalis for their corruption. Now they will be despised as traitors and stooges for the number one enemy of the Somali people, Ethiopia.

Third, The overwhelming majority of Somalis saw the Islamic Courts as a stabilizing factor. This support of the Islamic Courts was not a support for international terrorists. Most jihadists do not speak Somali and few speak Arabic. They stand out too much with their different eating habits and clothing. When the population helped the Islamic Courts to defeat the warlords in a few weeks time and then to liberate practically the whole country in six months, it was because they were tired of the anarchy, the pillage of the warlords. You must know that since 1991, 3 million Somalis have left the country and the Somali diaspora are often modern secular people who try to help their country in spite of the warlords’ corruption. And they are very ingenious at doing that. For example, in spite of all the chaos, Somalia is one of the only African countries where every village has good telephone communication facilities. There is an informal banking system (1 billion $ a year). There are five private airways and so on. A large number of Diaspora Somalis were willing to return to Somalia, and rebuild the country, once peace and security were ensured. When Somali businessmen went to the American embassy in Nairobi to invite them to come to Somalia and see for themselves that there were no Al Qaeda members in the Islamic Courts, the Americans refused. They will never forget nor forgive the USA and their puppet Ethiopia for bringing Somalia back to the reign of terror and chaos of the warlords. And in their eyes it is crystal clear that the talk about Al Qaeda’s presence in Somalia is nothing else then the excuse, the lie that must justify the war. Just like the lies about the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam used to justify the aggression against Iraq .

Fourth, all Somalis are aware of the fact that in the sixteen years of anarchic rule by the warlords, there was never any initiative of the “International Community” to intervene in Somalia. However, just when the Islamic courts brought order and stability, they saw in November last year the UN Security council under the instigation of the USA vote the resolution 1752 that opened the door for the Ethiopian intervention that brought back the terror and anarchy they had just chased away. So the only way the common Somali can see this invasion is that of an aggression against the Somali people and nation.

Fifth, The invading soldiers of Zenawi in Somalia are largely from his Tigray Christian tribe. These soldiers do not speak the Somali language; once deep inside Somalia, they will be exposed to attacks by the locals. But also in Ethiopia itself, Zenawi needs these men back as soon as possible because he needs them to confront the growing revolt in his own country. It is true; the Americans are negotiating with Uganda and Nigeria to deliver 8000 troops to replace the Ethiopian army. But who will pay for this operation and will these poor governments take the risk of being sucked into the swamp of a guerilla war? Certainly the different neighboring countries such as Kenya and Uganda take high risks because there are many Somali refugees living in Kenya who will not forget nor forgive a Kenyan engagement on the side of Ethiopia.. The Ugandan economy largely depends on the Kenyan harbor of Mombassa, but 30 km of this harbor there is a city Lamui where Somalis are in the majority… So it may well be that Zenawi’s troops will be forced to stay too long in Somalia and that they will be sucked into a swamp that will be fatal for the TPLF/regime.

What is the role of the Americans in this war?

The Zenawi regime is a rogue force used in the hands of American imperialism in the region. Since Antony Lake, Clinton’s national security advisor, indicated Ethiopia as one of the four countries (the others were Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt) that are decisive for the defense of American interests in Africa, the government of Zenawi has had all the support it needed.

The Ethiopian army is at present being reformed as a local mercenary force in the service of the Americans that can be used against any country in the region. On one of the American army’s websites, Stars and Stripes (http://www.estripes.com/), one could read on 30 December the testimony of one of the sixty American instructors who are training Ethiopian soldiers. Sgt. 1st Class Bill Flippo is an instructor based at Camp Hurso near in the city of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. He says; “I feel that what I’m doing now is really helping to fight the war on terror,” Flippo said. “The knowledge we are giving to these soldiers is what they will use if they go and fight in Somalia, Eritrea or wherever.”

Many observers note that the invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia was not only encouraged, and protected by the USA , but even paid by USA-money. And after the first successes, American military participated directly with the Ethiopian army in the hunt for leaders of the Islamic courts.

What are the American interests in the region?

There is the presence of oil and gas reserves. Since 1986, four big oil transnational corporations received permission for the first time from the Somalian president Siad Barre to search for oil. And they found important reserves. But most of all : Somalia has a very strategic location. It has a coast of 3300km. This is the largest coastline in Africa. One part of this coastline is just in front of the most important region in the world for the moment, the Middle East. Another part of the coastline faces the Indian Ocean. You must know that before the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century, there was considerable traffic between India and Africa that passed by harbors on this coast. 10% of the words of the Somali language are words of Indian origin.

The Emir of the Indian State of Kudjrad had bodyguards that came from the Horn of Africa. In the Somali harbors there were also Somali who spoke Chinese. They were called “Abanas”. They were translators between the Chinese and businessmen from the African hinterland.

This century the historical wheel is turning again towards the emerging countries of China and India . Chalmers Johnson, author and president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, cites Javed Burki, a former vice-president of the World Bank’s China Department who predicts that by 2025 China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity and will have become the world’s largest economy followed by the US at $ 20 trillion. (http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2259)

This year we also saw important efforts from China to increase its trade with Africa . China urgently needs oil and other minerals for its rapidly developing economy. And Africa can respond to that need. So the Horn of Africa has become a very strategic place for the next twenty years.

Since the Bush-government cannot control the whole world, they prefer a policy of deliberately destabilizing the whole region for many years, rather than letting it become a wealthy region that can play a key-role in the increasing trade relations between Africa and the new emerging economies of Asia .

There are Somalis living in different neighboring countries such as Ethiopia , Kenya , Djibouti . Somali nationalism has ignited and this war will extend into places like Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, known until now mostly as a safari destination for Western tourists.

The peoples of the region are becoming mature. They see what is happening and their first reaction is that of horror. If the Bush agenda of destabilizing and genocide continues, anti-imperialist feelings will increase and people will unite to defend their homes and countries.

Mohamed Hassan is the son of a member of the resistance against the regime of emperor Haile Selasie. He is an independent writer on Middle Eastern and African politics.

Please support Global Research

© 2009 – 2010, Prof. Muse Tegegne. All rights reserved. info@ethiopianism.net