Hiding America's Crime: Mogadishu Empty and in Ruins
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"Human Rights Watch says ‘the world would be shocked' at
the devastation and the plight of Somalia's people."
Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has ceased to exist as a
city. Inhabited by nearly three million people less than two years ago, and
still home to more than a million nine months ago, Mogadishu has been virtually
emptied of civilians. Whole sections have been leveled, according to the BBC,
in what Human Rights Watch calls "the most ignored tragedy in the world" today.
Ignored, that is, by the American and most of the world's media.
A lone reporter for the BBC described neighborhoods as
having been "systematically leveled" in desperate battles between resistance
fighters and Ethiopian occupation soldiers and their allies. Human Rights Watch
says "the world would be shocked" at the devastation and the plight of
Somalia's people, millions of whom are now refugees stalked, bombed and
besieged in the desolate southern Somali countryside. A year ago, United
Nations officials declared that Somalia was the "worst
humanitarian crisis in Africa" - more dire than Darfur - and in May Amnesty
International released a report charging Somali civilians were routinely
targeted for attack, mainly by the Ethiopian occupiers and soldiers of the
rump Somali government imposed by the Ethiopians.
Why have the world media all but ignored the destruction of
a capital city and the death and dispersal of its people? Racism is, of course,
the paramount reason. Europeans and Americans absolve themselves of guilt for
their centuries of rapacious exploitation of the African continent, by turning
the historical crime upside down. Africans, they say, are savages who cannot
help but kill each other; therefore, that's not news. But the carnage in
Somalia that has emptied Mogadishu is a direct consequence of American
policy: Washington's so-called War on Terror, which is really an endless
war against peace.
"Washington prefers the
victim die in silence."
In December of 2006, the U.S. encouraged its ally, the
Ethiopian dictatorship to stamp out peace in neighboring Somalia, where Muslim
Courts had established relative stability for the first time since Somalia fell
into chaos 1991. The U.S. lavished weapons on the Ethiopian army, placing
American "advisors" down to the company level. When the U.S. gave the word, the
Ethiopians
attacked, backed by American air and naval power. Washington claimed the
Somalis had been infiltrated by Al Qaida and, with Ethiopia, installed a Somali
government to their own liking. It is a puny regime that could not last a week
without Ethiopian and U.S. support, and which has presided over the demise of
Somalia's great and once beautiful city, Mogadishu.
The world media ignore the leveling of Mogadishu because it
is an American crime, and Washington prefers the victim die in silence.
Certainly, the U.S. State Department, which leads the corporate press corps
around by the nose, is not encouraging anyone to visit what's left of Mogadishu
- although they are eager to facilitate visits to Darfur.
Black America's celebrated "son of Africa," Barack Obama,
has had nothing to say about the nightmare that the Bush regime has inflicted
on Somalia, and which he will inherit if elected in November. Or, maybe his
silence speaks for itself.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at [email protected].
Broadcasters and others desiring a downloadable MP3 copy of this commentary can find one on the Black Agenda Radio archive page.
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