In mid-December
15,000 Ethiopian troops, armed, trained and supplied with intelligence by the United States, invaded Somalia. Within two weeks the
Ethiopian army had entered Mogadishu
and overthrown the de facto government
– the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The Transitional Government of Somalia - a non-elected warlord government
cobbled together by the U.S.
in 2004 and rubber stamped by the UN - has now been installed in Mogadishu. Despite the
claims of the Ethiopian government that its intervention has finally brought
peace to Somalia,
the events of the past week indicate that the country may soon be plunged back
into a state of full-scale civil war.
The roots of the
current problems in Somalia date back to the Cold War and the attempts by both
the U.S. and the Soviet Union to control the strategic Horn of Africa and,
thereby, all shipments through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Each superpower
groomed agents within Ethiopia
and Somalia
and the allegiances of both governments switched from one superpower to another
and back again a number of times. In 1991 the Somali government of Said Barre
was overthrown by the United Somali Congress (USC), but
the USC soon split into two rival factions led by Mohammed Aidid and Ali Mahdi
and civil war erupted. Despite support from the U.S.
and various European countries, Mahdi was driven out of most of Somalia and
Aidid became the most powerful warlord in the country. Under the guise of
“humanitarian concern” the U.S.
and its European allies pushed for and got a
UN-sanctioned military intervention in Somalia in 1992. Although billed as
a “peacekeeping” mission, the main thrust of the UN intervention was to defeat Aidid’s forces and install Mahdi as president. However, the
U.S. incurred heavy losses
in battles against Aidid’s forces and withdrew from Somalia in
1993, with the UN following suit shortly after.
Following the
departure of the American, UN and African Union troops, Somalia was
divided up among several warlords and a state of general anarchy ensued.
Whatever law and order existed was provided by a loose collection of Islamic
Courts, which gradually established their own police and armed forces to
enforce their decisions. In 2004, in response to the growing power of the
Islamic Courts, the U.S. put
together an interim government comprised of the very warlords who had brought
disaster to Somalia
throughout the 1990s and pressured the UN and African Union to recognize it as
the official government of Somalia.
However, the Transitional Government of Somalia did not dare set foot inside
the country and had to operate out of Kenya.
At the beginning
of 2006 the Islamic Courts organized themselves into the Islamic Courts Union
(ICU) and challenged the warlords for control of the entire country. In an
article dated May 17, 2006 the WashingtonPost
reported that the U.S. was
secretly supporting the warlords fighting against the ICU and was violating the
UN arms embargo on Somalia
by providing the warlords with weapons. However, despite their American support
the warlords were defeated by June 2006 and over the next six months the ICU
established law and order, disarmed the warlords, opened the ports for trade
and began to rebuild a number of major government institutions. Although the
ICU is portrayed by the American media as being a Taliban-like regime, the
evidence suggests that it was in fact relatively moderate and enjoyed the
support of the vast majority of the Somali people, who were fed up with the
lawlessness and indiscriminate killings carried out by the warlords.
Shortly after
the ICU came to power, the Ethiopian army – trained, armed and financed by the U.S. – sent troops across the border and
occupied parts of Somalia.
It was clear that the Ethiopian move had the blessing and backing of the Bush
administration, which was portraying the ICU as Islamic fundamentalists linked
to al Qaeda. Peace talks between the ICU and the warlords began in the fall of
2006; the main demand of the ICU was the complete withdrawal of Ethiopian
troops from Somali soil. However, in mid-December the Ethiopians, with the
approval of the Americans and with U.S.
intelligence support, launched a full-scale invasion of Somalia with
15,000 troops and a massive bombing campaign. In the face of such an
overwhelming force the ICU government abandoned its control of major Somali
cities, including Mogadishu,
pledging to continue to fight a guerilla war against the occupation forces.
In the early
days of 2007 the U.S.
openly entered the battle, carrying out mass bombings of villages still under
the control of the ICU. The U.S.
has also announced that it has sent Special Forces into Somalia to hunt
down the leaders of the ICU government. Despite this, the Ethiopian government
continues to claim that it is not acting at the behest of or in collaboration
with the U.S.
It has now been reported that the Ethiopians and the U.S. have reinstalled four warlords
to govern over areas from which they were ousted by the ICU in 2006, despite
extensive documentation of the crimes and human rights violations committed by
these warlords over the past decade and more.
There is little
doubt that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia was planned and authorized by the
Bush administration and that it is closely linked to Bush’s “surge” strategy in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush administration seems to think that by a massive
escalation of violence throughout the Middle East it can deal a death-blow to
all of its enemies in the region and stabilize its control of the entire Middle East and its vast oil resources. However, just as
with George Bush’s declaration of victory in Iraq
in May 2003, it is beginning to look as if similar claims of victory by the
Americans’ Ethiopian proxy forces in Somalia will also prove to be
premature.