Somalia Victimized by U.S., Ethiopia and Their Warlord Allies

a Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The United States has brought its Global War Against Terror to Somalia. That never-ending war, something new in the history of mankind, is based on the assumption that any group or combination of forces, anywhere on the planet, that pose a theoretical threat to U.S. interests – however defined – must be eliminated. It goes without saying that the imperatives of the Global War Against Terror override any considerations of international law – a painfully constructed edifice of civilization that the U.S. now effectively declares to be inoperative, for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.

That nightmare future reached the capital of Somalia this past week, as the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army escorted the puny forces of the foreign-organized so-called Somali transitional government into Mogadishu and other major cities. For the previous six months, the capital had known its longest period of relative peace in 17 years, after Islamic forces drive out the warlords – criminal gangs, really, based on cash and family connections. But Islam is a red flag to Washington, even when it promises to bring peace to a 99 percent Muslim country. The Americans find that kind of peace, unacceptable.

“The Americans assured their Ethiopian clients that it was time to move into Somalia, and put in place a government favorable to Washington.”

Ethiopian rule is unacceptable to the vast majority of Somalis. American troops serve as advisors at all levels of Ethiopia’s army. The Americans are also embedded in the armed forces of Kenya, to Somalia’s south, and Washington maintains a huge base in Djibouti, the French enclave on Somalia’s northern border. The Americans had Somalia surrounded, and late last month assured their Ethiopian clients that it was time to move in, and put in place a government favorable to Washington.

Among the native Somali troops that rolled into Mogadishu and other cities as passengers on Ethiopian tanks, some served a transitional government that was itself put together in neighboring Kenya. Others were gunmen whose first allegiance is to the warlords that had been driven out of the capital, in June. Now, this motley crew are considered friends and allies of the United States – one of the many insane situations that increasingly emerge in the bizarre world conjured up by Washington’s Global War Against Terror.

It is a war, and a world view, that bears no relationship to reality – which is why the entire American planetary criminal project is bound to collapse. In the small northeast corner of Africa that is Somalia, the people will not long abide a government imposed by the United States and Christian-dominated Ethiopia, Somalia’s ancient rival. No such government can ever hope for legitimacy. But the regime in Washington doesn’t know the meaning of the word, legitimacy, except in the sense that anything the United States does is legitimate and justified in the context of its Global War Against Terror.

Somalia, humiliated by European colonialism, stripped of territories in favor of Ethiopia and Kenya, wracked by famine, and then subjected to nearly a generation of rule by warlords, has now been deprived of any semblance of national self-determination. The sick minds in Washington think that’s a great victory over the evils of Islam. In fact, it is yet another prelude to eventual American defeat. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.

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