Why is the U.S. subsidizing and supporting
murder, rape, and systematic ethnic cleansing in the Horn of Africa? The
reason: it's all part of our strategy for "victory" in
the "war
on terrorism."
The village of Kamuda a remote
outpost in the Ogaden
region of eastern Ethiopia, where the majority are Muslims and
ethnically Somali had some unexpected
visitors last June, when a platoon of Ethiopian soldiers showed up,
announcing their arrival by shooting their rifles into the air and
demanding to know why the villagers had been providing food and safe haven
to rebels from the Ogaden National
Liberation Front (ONLF). With no satisfactory answer forthcoming, the
soldiers took action: they picked out seven young ladies, between the ages
of 15 and 18, and dragged them off into the bush.
Three were later found hanging from
trees, beaten to death. The rest simply disappeared.
This "anti-terrorist"
activity is funded by you, the
American taxpayer. It comes out of the $97
million in aid we sent to Addis Ababa this year, including the military
surplus and training we provide to the Ethiopian military, which is rampaging
through Somalia as well as the Ogaden region. The invasion of Somalia
by Ethiopian troops held
up by the American right-wing
as an example
of how the U.S. ought to be conducting its own "anti-terrorist"
operations has collapsed into a
welter of confusion
and looming disaster, as the "government" set up by the
Ethiopians implodes and the Muslim insurgency shakes Mogadishu,
the Somali capital.
Amid the rising chaos, Somalian
"government" troops recently stormed the UN
World Food Program headquarters, and detained the chief official, Idris Osman:
the reasons for this were unclear, but thuggishness is a general
principle with the current U.S.-backed rulers of this desolate,
tortured land, and perhaps it was just a reminder to people that no one is
immune from random acts of violence by the government.
As the Ethiopian- and U.S.-backed
Somalian "government" of warlords and
criminal gangs rampages
through the streets of Mogadishu, and throughout the country, murdering, looting,
and raping, the U.S. signals its approval. Indeed,
the U.S. has given its backing to Ethiopia. As the Independent reports:
"America's top official on
African affairs, assistant secretary of state, Jendayi Frazer, visited one
town in the Ogaden last month. On her return to Ethiopia's capital, Addis
Ababa, she criticised the rebels and said the reports of military abuses
were merely allegations. "We urge any and every government to respect
human rights and to try to avoid civilian casualties but that's difficult
in dealing with an insurgency."
U.S. backing for the Ethiopian
"former" communist dictator Meles Zenawi who
ordered a "recount" of Ethiopia's last poll until he got a more
satisfactory result was a reaction to the sudden rise of an Islamic court
system in Somalia, where complete disorder
reigned until Muslim fundamentalists filled the power vacuum and set up
their own decentralized system that imposed sharia law, yet made the area liveable
once more, and received the support of what remained of Somalia's business
community. In faraway Washington, however, this news was received with
something less than enthusiasm: al-Qaeda
was moving into Somalia, they
decided, and it was time to move. U.S. military personnel stationed in
Mogadishu are said to be directing the regime's military operations against
the Muslim guerrillas, who were pushed out during the Ethiopian invasion
but have infiltrated
back in and now control much of the capital city.
A phony "national
reconciliation accord" has been sponsored by the Saudis, but this
is a farce, considering that none of the insurgents were invited. A rival
conference, held in Eritrea which provides safe haven and aid to the
insurgents denounced the proceedings. So much for "national
reconciliation."
An equally phony bill
that is supposed to call attention to the dire situation in Somalia has
been introduced in Congress by Rep. Donald Payne
(D-New Jersey): it's phony because it simply addresses the lack of "democracy" in
Ethiopia, demands that the Ethiopians submit to foreign overseers who will
measure their "progress" and release aid conditional on the
"success" of the program, and the deal-breaker is that the
legislation has several loopholes in it big enough to drive a couple of
Ethiopian tanks through. For one, Bush can simply waive the bill's
requirements, and, secondly, the military component of U.S. aid is
exempted.
In short, even if the bill passes the
Senate unlikely those Ethiopian soldiers who terrorized the villagers
of Kamuda will still be subsidized and succored by American taxpayers, even
as they continue rampaging through the Ogaden, and Somalia.
The history of our intervention in the
Horn of Africa is a case study in what not to do, and how to hurt our own
interests, in the guise of "fighting terrorism," and I've covered
that here, here, and here. The latest
chapter in the region's long agony merely confirms the original diagnosis:
that U.S. intervention creates
new problems instead of solving old ones.
U.S. intervention has put us in the
same corner with one of the most savagely repressive governments in
Africa, which is saying quite a lot. Ethiopian strongman Mele Zenawi fits
in rather neatly with Washington's foreign policy: he's a bit of a
neocon himself a "reformed" Marxist who went from hailing
the late Enver
Hoxha, the dictator of Stalinist Albania, as the leader of the world
revolution against capitalism, to hailing
George W. Bush as the world's leader in the "war on terrorism."
Some are comparing
the slaughter in the Ogaden and Somalia to what's happening in Darfur, and,
ironically, we'll probably be hearing calls by the "humanitarian"
interventionist set for the U.S. and/or the UN to "do
something," i.e. send in the troops or intervene in some
meaningful way. The big flaw in these sorts of proposals is that we've
already intervened our guys are in Mogadishu, directing much of the
fighting and that is precisely the cause
of the problem.
The toll taken by our efforts has, so
far, been enormous:
hundreds
of thousands uprooted, tens
of thousands killed, and the prospect of worse to come.
There is only one "solution"
to the developing genocide in the Horn of Africa, and it is this: get the
U.S. out, end all aid to the Ethiopian government, and immediately airlift
our aid workers and American civilians out of the area. Will this solve all
the region's problems? Hardly. The ethnic, religious, and clan-based
conflicts that are roiling the Horn are not amenable to any easy solution,
and certainly not one imposed by Washington. Many problems don't have any
"solution," and whatever hope exists for the region longterm
economic development, the rational exploitation of oil resources, the
liberalization of the neo-Stalinist regimes that infest the area is gong
to be nipped in the bud rather than nurtured by our clumsy attempts to mold
events to our liking.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Be sure to check out my essay, "Ayn Despite
the Randians," written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary
of Atlas Shrugged, over at Taki's Top Drawer. I had great fun
writing it.
