The report makes clear that the Bush Administration’s malign intervention in Somalia began well before the Ethiopian invasion in 2006. Indeed, it was an application of the age-old American policy of “divide and conquer” — deliberately fomenting violent conflict in the society of a targeted country — that helped radicalize and empower extremist factions in Somalia:
The first American intervention failed to bring its hired warlords to power, but instead paved the way for a coalition of moderate and hardline Islamist factions to govern. And for a few months, this worked well:
Factional disputes between moderates and hardliners — with the latter taking increasingly strident public positions — gave Ethiopia the excuse for its long-planned, American-backed invasion. As an April 2008 report for Enough by John Prendergast notes:
The United States is concentrating most of its energies on capturing or killing three foreign Al Qaeda fugitives and a dozen or so of their Somali associates. U.S. support includes a vast and sustained intelligence effort, support for self-interested Somali “counter-terrorism” agencies, and obstruction of international efforts to broker a ceasefire and power-sharing agreement with Islamists…
U.S. counter-terrorism policy has failed to differentiate organic resistance movements in Somalia and elsewhere from real terrorists. By branding all resistance “terrorism” and providing aid to factions of the Somali transitional government that are simply warlords with titles, the United States has contributed to further polarization and made a political settlement less likely.
This is standard practice on every Terror War front, of course. Prendergast goes on to say:
Lobe has more from other experts who attended the most recent report’s release:
Albin-Lackey, who has conducted some 80 interviews of Somali refugees in East Africa in the past month, said ongoing violence, including almost daily artillery bombardments by Ethiopian army and TFG forces on the one hand and opposition militias, including the Islamist Shabaab on the other, as well as assassinations carried out by both sides, have added to the insecurity.
“People have nowhere to turn for security,” he said, adding that search operations by TFG forces, while nominally for the purpose of arresting suspected insurgents, had become “an excuse for murder, rape and looting on an incredibly large scale.” As a result, he said, Mogadishu has become “largely depopulated” with about two-thirds of the population – or about 800,000 people – having left their homes there over the past 18 months.
The new report by Menkhaus details the humanitarian catastrophe:
Second, food prices have skyrocketed, eroding the ability of both IDPs and other households to feed themselves. The rise in food prices is due to a global spike in the cost of grains and fuel; chronic insecurity and crime, which has badly disrupted the flow of commercial food into the country; and an epidemic of counterfeiting of the Somali shilling by politicians and businesspeople, creating hyperinflation and robbing poorer Somalis of purchasing power. Mother Nature is not cooperating either: a severe drought is gripping much of central Somalia, increasing displacement, killing off livestock, and reducing harvests in farming areas.
Third, humanitarian agencies in Somalia are facing daunting obstacles to delivery of food aid. There is now virtually no “humanitarian space” in which aid can safely be delivered. Until recently, the TFG and its uncontrolled security forces were mainly responsible for most obstacles to delivery of food aid. TFG hardliners view the provision of assistance to IDPs as support to an enemy population—terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in their view—and have sought to impede the flow of aid convoys through a combination of bureaucratic and security impediments. They also harass and detain staff of local and international non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and U.N. agencies, accusing them of supporting the insurgency. Uncontrolled and predatory TFG security forces, along with opportunistic criminal gangs, have erected over 400 militia roadblocks (each of which demands as much as $500 per truck to pass) and have kidnapped local aid workers for ransom.
As Lobe notes: “The UN recently estimated that, barring substantial improvement in the security situation, some 3.5 million Somalis will be dependent on humanitarian aid by the end of this year.” That is more than half the population of the entire country reduced to the most absolute penury. An equivalent number would be 14 million people in Iraq — or 150 million in the United States.
Meanwhile, as we have seen in Iraq, the violent extremism, government terror and sheer chaos unleashed by the U.S.-backed invasion is destroying Somali society itself. From Lobe:
A peace agreement signed last month by moderate factions of the opposition and the TFG is already in great peril from hardliners in both camps — and from U.S. policies which continue to exacerbate the conflict. Lobe reports:
But the implementation of the agreement faces “steep challenges,” warned Menkhaus, not least because “the moderates [who negotiated the accord] don’t control any of the armed groups.” While the Shabaab have already denounced the [moderate] leaders as “apostates,” he noted, hard-liners in the TFG know that they can stay in power “if and only if the Ethiopians stay.”
Only by reinforcing the moderates can the international community, including the US, enhance the chances for the agreement’s successful implementation and, with it, the chances for reconciliation, according to Menkhaus. But that will require major changes in US and western policies, which have “actually worked to strengthen and embolden hardliners” over the past two years.
In that respect, the US emphasis on counterterrorism has been particularly destructive, not only in supporting the Ethiopian offensive in December, 2006, but, more recently, in placing the Shabaab on its list of designated terrorist groups last March. That step not only isolated opposition moderates from their own coalition but also gave the Shabaab “even more reason to sabotage” ongoing peace talks.
At the same time, Washington has provided “robust financial and logistical support to armed paramilitaries resisting the command and control of the TGF, even though they technically wear a TFG hat” to both fight the Shabaab and track down suspected terrorists.
“To the extent that these security forces also deeply oppose…reconciliation efforts with the opposition, the US counterterrorism partnerships have also undermined peace-building efforts by emboldening spoilers in the government camp,” according to the report…
The Tomahawk missile attack that killed Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayro [and at least two dozen civilians] in May – the latest in a series of similar strikes against armed Islamists in Somalia, allegedly tied to al-Qaeda – resulted in a sharp radicalization in the group, which announced at the time that it would strike against US and western targets, including aid workers, as well as Ethiopian and TFG forces, compounding an already dramatic humanitarian crisis.
Again, these are policies that seem designed to produce more terrorism, more conflict, more instability, more death and suffering. Certainly, no sentient observer could believe that the American actions in Somalia are in any way designed to alleviate these conditions.
III.
But perhaps we are being too cynical in suspecting subtle Machiavellian ploys behind U.S. policy in Somalia. It could be as brutally simple as this: the bipartisan imperial elite want to have their way — they want to crush anyone they have designated as an enemy, they want to have their own clients and puppets in power, they want to “project dominance” over strategic regions, they want to frighten other nations into compliance with Washington’s wishes, etc., etc. — and they don’t care what it costs. In other words, perhaps they have not deliberately set out to destroy a nation and grind its helpless people into the dust….but if that’s what it takes to get their way, then by God, that’s what they’ll do. It’s not their fault if these darkie Muslims won’t play ball.
This is of course a gangster mentality: “If you do what we want, nobody gets hurt. Hey, we might even send you a turkey at Christmas, or get your nephew a job or something. But if you cross us, then you’ll get what’s coming to you — and it’ll be your own damn fault.”
This hideous mentality is not restricted to the Bush Administration. It is the long-standing philosophy of America’s bipartisan ruling elite. As Major General Smedley Butler noted back in 1933:
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism….
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
The racket is immeasurably more vast and more powerful these days. Somalia is its latest — and one of its most cruelly ravaged — victims. Yet among the great and good of America, not a word is raised in protest or opposition to the nation’s complicity in this work of evil.