Obama's Turn to Kill Africans
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"The war in Somalia is about to become Barack Obama's problem."
The corporate media declare that Barack Obama's first foreign crisis will be in Gaza where the Israelis will likely still be engaged in the work of massacre when the president-elect puts his hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible, January 20.
The 60-year U.S.-Israeli connection is but one of many unholy alliances in which Washington is perpetually mired. In truth, the criminal entanglements of American empire is a minefield of crises waiting to explode. They pop up at the most inconvenient times. Chickens are liable to fly home to roost from all sorts of places - like Somalia.
Two years ago, George Bush conspired with Ethiopia to invade Somalia, its neighbor in the Horn of Africa. Somalia's crime was to have achieved a brief, six-month period of relative peace under an Islamist regime. At first, the Americans massively funded combinations of warlords to fight the Islamists, preferring the chaos of bandit rule to a peaceful Somalia under an Islamist government. When the warlords were defeated, Washington encouraged and bankrolled the Ethiopian invasion, just before Christmas 2006. U.S. advisors accompanied Ethiopian troops down to the company level, while American aircraft and warships bombarded Somalis from air and sea.
"Ethiopia found it could not remain among the Somalis, no matter how much the Americans paid for their services."
If any stimulus could be predicted to unite Somalis, it is invasion by Ethiopia, Somalia's historical rival in the region. The Americans and Ethiopians succeeded only in creating the "worst humanitarian crisis in Africa" - worse than Darfur, according to the United Nations. Nearly half of Somalia's seven million people were put in danger of starvation, with well over a million displaced from their homes. The capital city, Mogadishu, was virtually emptied. Washington could convince only it's client states Uganda and Burundi to contribute troops to a puny United Nations "peace keeping" force that spent most of its time trying to keep out of the way. Ethiopia found it could not remain among the Somalis, no matter how much the Americans paid for their services. Its army is in the process of withdrawing.
The farcical, puppet Somali government installed by the Ethiopians and Americans could never survive on its own, and has effectively disintegrated. Some form of Islamist force will soon take power on the ground. The United States has talked itself into a corner. George Bush justified the U.S. and Ethiopian assault on Somalia as a necessity of the War on Terror, a blow against Osama bin Laden's friends among Somali Muslims. It was a lie, of course, but now the U.S. is stuck with it. Washington cannot simply allow people who it claims are affiliated with Al Qaida to form a government.
George Bush started the war against Somalia, but it's about to become Barack Obama's problem. Obama's soon-to-be United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice, is a rabid believer in America's right to intervene in Africa, generally, and in Somalia, specifically. Obama and George Bush share the same Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who was sworn into office on December 18, 2006, just one week before the U.S.-backed Ethiopians stormed Somalia's capital city.
It's been Gates' and Bush's war for two years. Now Obama must decide if he will kill Africans based on George Bush's lies.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.[email protected].
News of the deployment of National Guard troops to an unspecified location in the Horn of Africa is an indication that US interference in the region will continue.
Extinction
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is William C. Anderson.
Richard and Roberto would like to dedicate this feature to Glen Ford, one of the fiercest critics of U.S. corporate media the country has ever known.
The best way for leftist anti-imperialists to support Ethiopia is to not take a hardline position on the internal politics of the country.
