Somalia:
New Hotbed Of
Anti-Americanism
By Nicola Nasser
08 January, 2007
PalestineChronicle.com
The U.S. foreign policy blundering
has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent
Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim
capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab
or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the
U.S. vital regional interests.
The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of the Somali capital, Mogadishu,
on Dec. 28 is closely interlinked in motivation, methods, goals and
results to the U.S. bogged down regional blunders in Iraq, Lebanon,
Syria and Sudan as well as in Iran and Afghanistan, but mainly in the
Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Mogadishu is the third Arab metropolitan after Jerusalem and Baghdad
to fall to the U.S. imperial drive, either directly or indirectly through
Israeli, Ethiopian or other proxies, and the fourth if the temporary
Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982 is remembered; the U.S. endeavor
to redraw the map of the Middle East is reminiscent of the British-French
Sykes-Pico colonial dismembering of the region and is similarly certain
to give rise to grassroots Pan-Arab rejection and awaking with the Pan-Islamic
unifying force as a major component.
The U.S. blunder in Somalia could not be more humiliating to Somalis:
Washington has delegated to its Ethiopian ally, Mogadishu’s historical
national enemy, the mission of restoring the rule of law and order to
the same country Addis Ababa has incessantly sought to dismember and
disintegrate and singled Ethiopia out as the only neighboring country
to contribute the backbone of the U.S.-suggested and U.N.-adopted multinational
foreign force for Somalia after the Ethiopian invasion, thus setting
the stage for a wide-spread insurgency and creating a new violent hotbed
of anti-Americanism.
The U.S. manipulation is there for all to see; a new U.S.-led anti-Arab
and anti-Muslim regional alliance is already in the working and not
only in the making; the U.S.-allied Ethiopian invaders have already
taken over Somalia after the withdrawal of the forces of the United
Islamic Courts (UIC), who rejected an offer of amnesty in return for
surrendering their arms and refused unconditional dialogue with the
invaders; the withdrawal of the UIC forces from urban centers reminds
one of the disappearance of the Iraqi army and the Taliban government
in Afghanistan and warns of a similar aftermath in Somalia in a similar
shift of military strategy into guerilla tactics.
The UIC leaders who went underground are promising guerilla and urban
warfare; “terrorist” tactics are their expected major weapon
and American targets are linked to the Ethiopian invasion. It doesn’t
need much speculation to conclude that the Bush Administration’s
policy in the Horn of Africa is threatening American lives as well as
the regional stability.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, “Because
the United States has accused Somalia of harboring al-Qaeda suspects,
the Ethiopian-Eritrean proxy conflict increases the opportunities for
terrorist infiltration of the Horn and East Africa and for ignition
of a larger regional conflict,” in which the United States would
be deeply embroiled.
Eritrea accused the United States on Monday of being behind the war
in Somalia . “This war is between the Americans and the Somali
people,” Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters.
The U.S administration found no harm in keeping the divided country
an easy prey for the warlords and tribal bloody disputes since 1991,
probably finding in that status quo another guarantee-by-default for
U.S. regional interests. It could have lived forever with the political
chaos and humanitarian tragedy in one of the world’s poorest countries
were it not for the emergence of the indigenous grassroots UIC, who
provided some social security and order under a semblance of a central
government that made some progress towards unifying the country.
Pre-empting intensive Arab, Muslim and European mediation efforts between
the UIC and the transitional government, Washington moved quickly to
clinch the UN Security Council resolution 1725 on Dec. 6, recognizing
the Baidoa government organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies and
dominated by the warlords as the legitimate authority in Somalia after
sending Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to Addis
Ababa in November for talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on bailing
out the besieged transitional government by coordinating an Ethiopian
military intervention.
Resolution 1725 also urged that all member states, “in particular
those in the region,” to refrain from interference in Somalia,
but hardly the ink of the resolution dried than Washington was violating
it by providing training, intelligence and consultation to at least
8,000 Ethiopian troops who rushed into Baidoa and its vicinity before
the major Ethiopian invasion, a fact that was repeatedly denied by both
Washington and Addis Ababa but confirmed by independent sources.
To contain the repercussions, Washington is in vain trying to distance
itself from the Ethiopian invasion; U.S. officials have repeatedly denied
using Ethiopia as a proxy in Somalia . Moreover it is trying to play
down the invasion itself: “The State Department issued internal
guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion
in public statements,” read a copy of the guidelines obtained
by The New York Times.
Mission Accomplished?
“Mission Accomplished,” Addis Ababa's Daily Monitor announced
when the Ethiopian forces blitzed into Mogadishu, heralding a new U.S.
regional alliance at the southern approaches to the oil-rich Arab heartland
in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; in 2003, the same phrase adorned
a banner behind President Gearge W. Bush as he declared an end to major
combat operations in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. All facts on the
ground indicate that the U.S. mission in Somalia won’t be less
a failure than that in Iraq , or less misleading.
The U.S. foreign policy has sown the seeds of a new national and regional
violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, the heart of what
western strategists call the Middle East, by succeeding in Somalia in
what it failed to achieve in Lebanon a few months ago: Washington was
able to prevent the United Nations (UN) from imposing a ceasefire until
the Ethiopian invasion seized Mogadishu; the Lebanese resistance and
national unity prevented the Israeli invaders from availing themselves
of the same U.S. green light to achieve their goals in Beirut.
In both cases, Washington involved the UN as a fig leaf to cover the
Israeli and Ethiopian invasions, repeating the Iraq scenario, and in
both cases initiated military intervention to abort mediation efforts
and national dialogue to solve internal conflicts peacefully.
In Somalia as in Iraq, Washington is also trying to delegate the mission
of installing a pro-U.S. regime whose leaders were carried in on the
invading tanks to a multinational force in which the neighboring countries
are not represented, only to be called upon later not to interfere in
Somalia’s internal affairs, as it is the case with Iran, Syria
in particular vis-à-vis the U.S.-occupied Iraq.
The Bush administration has expressed understanding for the security
concerns that prompted Ethiopia to intervene in Somalia . So once again
U.S. pretexts of Washington ’s declared world war on terror were
used to justify the Ethiopian invasion as a preventive war in self-defense,
only to create exactly the counterproductive environment that would
certainly exacerbate violence and expand a national dispute into a wider
regional conflict.
Real Security Concerns of Ethiopia
Regionally, the U.S. pretexts used by Addis Ababa to justify its invasion
could thinly veil the land locked Ethiopia ’s historical and strategic
aspiration for an outlet on the Red Sea by using the Somali land as
the only available approach to its goal after the independence of Eritrea
deprived it of the sea port of Assab .
Agreed upon peaceful arrangements with Somalia and Eritrea is the only
other option that would grant Ethiopia access to sea - whether to the
Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Bab el Mandeb or the Arabian Sea, and
through these sea lanes to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This
option is pre-empted by the empirical dreams of Greater Ethiopia that
tempted the successive regimes of Emperor Hailie Selassie, the military
Marxist rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the incumbent U.S.-backed
oppressive regime of Meles Zinawi, which were deluded by the military
means of the only country with a semblance of a nation state and a military
might in a regional neighborhood disintegrated into the poorest communities
of the world by tribal strife left over by the British, French and Italian
western colonialist powers; hence the Ethiopian wars with Eritrea and
Somalia.
The Eritrean fear of an Ethiopian invasion of Assab via Somalia is realistic
and legitimate, given the facts that Ethiopia’s borders are, like
Israel’s, still not demarcated, its yearning for an access to
sea as a strategic goal is still valid and its military option to achieve
this goal is still not dropped because of the virtual state of war that
still governs its relations with both Somalia and Eritrea. Hence the
reports about the Eritrean intervention in Somalia, denied by Asmara,
and the regional and international warnings against the possible development
of the Ethiopian invasion into a wider regional conflict that could
also involve Djibouti and Kenya.
Internally in Ethiopia, the successive regimes since Hailie Selassie
were dealing with the demographic structure of the country as a top
state secret and incessantly floating the misleading image of Ethiopia
as the Christian nation it has been for hundreds of years, but hardly
veiling the independent confirmation that at least half of the population
are now Muslims, a fact that is not represented in the structure of
the ruling elite but also a fact that explains the oppressive policies
of the incumbent U.S.-backed regime.
Here lies the realistic fears of the Ethiopian ruling elites from the
emergence of a unified Somalia and the impetus it would give to the
Ogaden National Liberation Front, which represents the 1.5 million Muslim
tribesmen of Somali origin who inhabit the 200,000-square-kilometer
desert region occupied by Addis Ababa and led to the 1977-88 war between
the two countries and remains a festering hotbed of bilateral friction.
A united independent Somalia and a liberated or revolting Ogaden would
inevitably deprive Ethiopia of its desert corridor to the coast and
have at least adverse effects on/or imbalance altogether the internal
status quo in Addis Ababa . True the potential of infiltration by al-Qaeda
is highly probable with such a development but it is only too inflated
a pretext for Addis Ababa to justify its unconvincing trumpeting of
the “Islamic threat” emanating from the ascendancy of the
UIC in Somalia .
Ethiopia’s justification of its invasion by Washington’s
pretexts of the U.S. war on terror is misleading and encouraging Addis
Ababa to justify its invasion by the “Islamic threat,” leading
some UIC leaders to declare “Jihad” against the “Christian
invasion” of their country and in doing so contributing to turning
an Ethiopian internal and regional miscalculations into seemingly “Muslim-Christian”
war, which have more provocateurs in Addis Ababa than in Mogadishu.
The sectarian war among Muslims fomented by the U.S.-led occupation
of Iraq within the context of “divide and rule” policy could
now be coupled with a “religious war” in the Horn of Africa
to protect the U.S. military presence that is “defending”
the Arab oil wealth in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq against a threat
to its mobility from the south, a war that could drive a new wedge between
Arabs and their neighbors, in a replay of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s,
and in tandem with a 60-year old Israeli strategy of sowing divide between
them and their Ethiopian, Iranian and Turkish geopolitical strategic
depth.
However this U.S.-Israeli strategy is certain to backfire. Somalis could
not but be united against foreign invasion in a country where Islamism
is the essence of nationalism and where Pan-Arabism could not but be
a source of support as the country is too weak and poor to be adversely
affected by Arab League divides; they are in their overwhelming majority
Muslims with no divisive sectarian loyalties and no neighboring sectarian
polarization center as it is the case with Iran in Iraq; the “Christian
face” of the invasion would be a more uniting factor and would
serve as a war cry against the new American imperialistic plans because
it is reminiscent of earlier “Christian” European colonial
adventures.
-Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West
Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights