In Somalia, the U.S. Is Bombing the Extremely ‘Terrorists’ It Created
US and British meddling transformed Somalia’s al-Shabaab into an extremist group, inflaming the humanitarian crisis that persists throughout the nation.
By TJ COLES
This July, the Biden administration picked up where Trump left offand started bombing Somalia,a country with a gross domestic product of less than $6 billionand a poverty rate of 70 percent. But why?
The official factoroffered by the Pentagon was that the Somali National Army required air support in its operations to counter al-Shabaab. But the real factor was that Somalia is geo-strategically important to US empire.
Successive United States administrations have actually cycled through a myriad of reasons to either bomb the nation or to equip its dictators: Cold War politics, “humanitarian intervention,” anti-piracy, and more just recently counterterrorism.
As we will see, in the mid-2000s, a delicate union of soft and hard Islamists– explicitly not allied to al-Qaeda at the time– brought some measure of peace to the locations of Somalia it controlled. With help from Britain and neighboring Ethiopia, the United States smashed the coalition and pushed more conservative components like al-Shabaab over the edge into militancy.
And obviously, the global superpower battle among the poorest countries in the world in the name of national security is not terrorism.
Let’s take a look at the more comprehensive context and specific chronology.
An US royal bulwark is born in Africa
The Pentagon has divided the world into self-appointed Locations of Obligation (AORs). The Southern Command considers itself“responsible” for operations in Central and South America, no matter what individuals of the region believe.
The Central Command (CENTCOM) coversmuch of the Middle East and Central Asia: the essential crossways of energy fields and pipelines that allow the United States to affect the worldwide economy at the expense of rivals, significantly Russia and China.
The Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established in 2007 by the George W. Bush administration and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. President Barack Obama greatly broadened its operations.
AFRICOM’s present AOR covers53 of the continent’s 54 states, with Egypt in the northeast currently under the AOR of CENTCOM due to its tactical value (more below).
AFRICOM recently braggedabout how it assisted collaborate with Somali “partners,” implying aspects of the program troubled the country by the West, to organize the Biden-led bombing of al-Shabaab.
AFRICOM says:“The command’s initial evaluation is that no civilians were hurt or killed provided the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.” However who understands?
US leaders operating in the African theater have actually tended to dismiss the idea that civilian deaths need to be tallied at all. In 1995, for instance, the US wound down its “support” to the UN mission in Somalia, but ended up in a shooting war in which a number of Somalis passed away.
The United States commander, Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, statedat the time, “I’m not counting bodies … I’m not interested.”
Somalia’s geopolitical value to United States empire
In the Africa-Middle East areas, 3 seas are of strategic value to the huge powers: the Mediterranean, the Red Sea (connected by Egypt’s Suez Canal), and the Gulf of Aden, which is shared by Somalia in Africa and Yemen in the Middle East.
Through these seas and paths travel the shipping containers of the world, carrying oil, gas, and consumer products. They are important for the strategic deployment of soldiers and naval destroyers.
Somalia was inhabited by Britain and Italy during the “Scramble for Africa,” the continent-wide resource-grab by Western colonial powers that started in the late-19. Ethiopia continues to inhabit Somalia’s Ogaden region.
A 1950s’ British Colonial Office report describedthe Gulf of Aden as “an essential base from which marine, military and flying force can safeguard British interests in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.” “British” interests, like “United States” interests today, means elite interests.
A George W. Bush-era report by the US Army War College notesthat, “Even before the Suez Canal entered being, the [Red] Sea had actually been of value as a worldwide waterway. It served as a bridge in between the wealthiest locations of Europe and the Far East.” The report emphasizes that the “geopolitical position of the Red Sea is of an unique importance.”
AFRICOM was founded with a grand imperial ambition: to make the four of the 5 countries on Africa’s Red Sea coast– Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan– abide by United States elite interests, and to keep the Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Suez Canal open for organization and strategic release.
As kept in mind prior to, CENTCOM covers Egypt. During the Arab Spring a years ago, US strategists feared, like their British predecessors, that losing the Suez Canal to a democratic federal government in Egypt “would damage U.S. abilities to set in motion forces to contain Iran and would compromise the overall U.S. defense method in the Middle East,” house of much of the world’s accessible oil.
International disturbance drives Somalia’s civil conflict
Somalia declared self-reliance in 1960. Its British and Italian areas merged into a single country led by President Aden Abdullah Osman and Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, who later became president. A lot of political celebrations merged with the Somali Youth League to create a de facto single-party state.
Backed by the West, Ethiopia blocked Somalia’s diplomatic efforts to recover the Ogaden area. As president, Abdirashid took millions of dollarsin Soviet military help and was subsequently assassinated by one “Said Orfano,” a young police-trained male posing as a police officer and incorrectlydescribed in modern sources as a “bodyguard.”
Major General Siad Barre took over in 1969 and ruled up until his topple in 1991. An early-1970s CIA intelligence memo refersto Russian-Somali relations as “mainly a liaison of benefit,” ruined by “mutual” “distrust.”
After Barre’s failed war with Ethiopia over Ogaden and his explicit rejection of Soviet cash and ideology, the United States saw him as a client. In 1977, senior US policymakers highlighted Somalia’s “break with the Soviets.” From then until 1989, the US provided almost $600 millionin military aid to Barre’s program to nudge it further from the Soviet sphere of influence.
The Barre routine used the freshly augmented military— from 3,000 to 120,000 personnel– to squash the rival Somali National Movement, eliminating 10s of thousands of civilians and driving a million people from their houses.
But the coalition that deposed Barre in 1991 broke down and the competing factions fought a civil war that set off starvation and eliminated an extra 300,000 peoplewithin the very first number of years.
The United Nations stepped in to provide food to civilians. The United States saw the relocation as an opportunity to test the brand-new doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” in the type of Operation Restore Hope. President George H.W. Bush saidthat the objective was to “save thousands of innocents from death.”
But a master’s thesis by Major Vance J. Nannini of the US Army’s Fort Leavenworth supplies a version of occasions much closer to the fact:“Throughout our participation with Somalia, our bypassing strategic objective was merely to obtain and keep the capability to respond to any military contingency that might threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East, Northeast Africa and the Red Sea area.”
Restore Hope ended in a fiasco for the US, exemplified by the famous Black Hawk Down incident, and countless Somali deaths– “I’m not counting bodies,” as Leader Zinni stated of a later objective.
A practical target in the “war on horror”
In Djibouti in 1999, a Transitional National Federal Government (TNG) was formed in exile and pertained to power in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in 2001.
At the exact same time, a broad umbrella of Sufis and Salafists– the “left” and “best” of Islam– called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was getting political and territorial ground.
The TNG collapsed in 2004 and was replaced with a Transitional Federal Government founded in Kenya and backed by the Ethiopian proxy Abdullahi Yusuf, a guy harbored by Britain and even provided a liver transplant in the UK. (The liver supposedly came from an Irish Republican Army member. “Now I am a real killer,” jokedAbdullahi.)
Abdullahi was discovered accountable for damagesin a UK court over the killing of a British person in Somalia in 2002 by his bodyguards.
Under the post-9/ 11 rubric of combating a “war on horror,” the CIA contributed to the chaos throughout the duration by discreetly funding non-Islamist “warlords,” consisting of those the United States formerly combated in the 1990s. The goal was to eliminate and catch ICU members and other Islamists.
In addition, the Pentagon’s deceptive Joint Unique Operations Command (JSOC) took part in hidden operations. Quotesof the number of JSOC personnel on the ground in Somalia variety from 3 to 100.
United States Unique Forces set up a network of operations and surveillance in the nation, supposedly to counter al-Qaeda.
In 2003, for instance, United States representatives kidnapped an innocent male, Suleiman Abdullah Salim, from a Mogadishu medical facility. Claiming that he was an “al-Qaeda” operative, the United States had Suleiman tortured at a variety of “rendition” websites prior to launching him. (The operatives who grabbed him were tipped off by the “warlord” Mohammed Dheere, who was paid by the CIA.)
However one of the Arabic meanings of “al-Qaeda” is “the database,”referring to the computer system file with details on the 10s of thousands of mujahideenand their acolytes trained, armed, arranged, and funded by the US and Britain throughout the 1980s to fight the Soviets (Operation Cyclone).
There are more direct links between the US and al-Shabaab. In his more youthful days, ICU secretary and later al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane signed up with the only major terrorist group in Somalia in the 1990s, Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI, “Islamic Union”). The AIAI fighters trained with “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the United States and Britain were training “al-Qaeda.” (See citation no. 7.)
Killing Somalia’s hope
By the mid-2000s, with the increase of the ICU, the hope of stability concerned Somalia– however it was not to last. In 2003, the US Combined Joint Tasks Force Horn of Africa started trainingof Ethiopia’s military in methods, logistics, and upkeep. The US backing later on can be found in convenient fighting the ICU.
The ICU was rapidly and commonly painted as an extremist company. However, a Congressional Research Study Service (CRS) report notesthat it was “well received by the individuals in the areas the Courts managed,” especially as it provided social services.
Western propaganda spun the ICU’s shutting down of cinemas as evidence of its Islamo-fascism. However the CRS report says that such steps were carried out at the demand of parents because children were skipping school, “not due to the fact that of the Courts’ alleged jihadist and extremist ideology … There is no evidence to support the claims that women were restricted from working.”
As Western vesselscontinue to diminish starving Somalia’sfish stocks to sell to comparatively privileged consumers, propaganda denounces Somali “piracy” against Euro-American ships. However, a report by the Royal Institute for International Affairs (the British think tank likewise called Chatham Home), says:“The only duration throughout which piracy virtually vanished around Somalia was during the 6 months of rule by the Islamic Courts Union in the 2nd half of 2006.”
A World Bank report from 2006 notesthat the ICU “brought a measure of order to the big areas of South-Central Somalia” it managed. The United States State Department, on the other hand, was hosting a global conference in a bid to remove the ICU and bolster the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
With United States and Britishtraining, consisting of logistical support, Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late-2006 to install Abdullahi as President of the TFG.
The US and Britain worked hard to set up a new routine in a war so brutal that over 1 million people left their houses. In addition, tens of thousands crossed the Gulf of Adento Yemen in harmful little boats cruised by traffickers. Numerous thousands ended up in alarming refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where women and women were raped.
An US- and UK-backed regime terrifies Somalia’s people
The Transitional Federal Government scared the Somali population. One of the couple of British reporters to report on this at the time, the Kenya-born Aidan Hartley, wrote: “numerous Somali leaders who have actually been linked to allegations of war criminal offenses versus many civilians are living double lives in Britain.”
General Mohamed Darwish, head of the TFG’s National Security Agency, was “offered British citizenship, state advantages and a subsidised house.”
The taxpayer-funded privatization unit the Department for International Development (DFID, now part of the Foreign Workplace) paid TFG political leaders’ wages, in addition to purchasing authorities radios and lorries.
Person Rights Watch statesthat the Commissioner of the Somali Police Force, Brig. Gen. Abdi Hasan Awale Qaybdib, was “a former warlord who has been linked in serious human rights abuses that precede his tenure as commissioner.”
A House of Commons Library report validatesthat the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the World Food Program (WFP) were used as unwitting channels: “DFID has promised over ₤ 20 million in brand-new dedications for Somalia, including ₤ 12 million to the WFP. No money goes straight to the TFG. It is transported through the UNDP.”
By 2011, this included training 3,000 policein Somaliland and employing mercenaries formerly of the UK Unique Boat Service, who were assuredup to ₤ 1,500 a day.
The repercussions for Somali civilians were ravaging. In addition to the refugees noted above, the instability brought on by the war activated another starvation by jeopardizing help and driving people from locations near food distribution centers.
The US has actually made it through shocks like 9/11 due to the fact that it is a robust country. Vulnerable nations like Somalia can not stand up to significant political interruptions.
Transforming Somalia into an extremist sanctuary
President George W. Bush bombed “al-Qaeda” targets in Somalia in January 2007. Al-Shabaab, then led by the hard-line Godane, made it through the collapse of the ICU in the very same year.
The UN Security Council then licensedthe African Union (AU) to occupy Somalia with “peacekeepers,” with AMISON being the US support mission.
The British-backed TFG President Abdullahi resigned in 2008 and was changed by the former ICU leader, the more moderate Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Sharif consulted with Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009, who vowedUS support to the TFG in its battle versus its former armed wing, al-Shabaab.
A West Point study keeps in mindthat, using sharia, al-Shabaab had by 2009 “prospered in producing a period of relative stability in much of the territory it controlled,” much like the ICU before it. Shabaab was likewise relatively moderate: the “leadership pursued a practical technique toward clan politics and drew its management and rank-and-file from a fairly diverse array of clans and sub-clans, unlike a number of Somalia’s other armed factions.”
But the group made tactical errors, such as the Ramadan Offensives (2009-1010) against the TFG and AMISON forces in Mogadishu. With Shabaab deteriorated, Godane combined the group with “al-Qaeda” in 2011.
British-backed terrorists poured into Somalia to join Godane. By the time it allied with al-Qaeda, a quarterof Shabaab’s fighters hailed from the UK. Numerous had been radicalized by Abu Qatada, a male once explainedas Bin Laden’s “right-hand male in Europe” and a secured assetof Britain’s internal MI5 Security Service.
Via an entity called al-Muhajiroun (the Emigrants), MI5 informantOmar Bakri Mohammed and an alleged double-agentfor Britain’s external security force (MI6), Haroon Rashid Aswat, likewise radicalized young Muslimsto eliminate in Somalia.
The Nigeria-born Michael Adebolajo, who was charged in the UK with murder, had actually formerly attempted to hire for Shabaab in Kenya. He keeps that MI5 triedto recruit him.
A tried and true dish for destabilization and catastrophe
Because merging with “al-Qaeda,” al-Shabaab has actually extended its reach, reportedly sending out suicide bombers into neighboring countries, including Kenya.
One could state that the Biden administration has actually discovered no lessons after years of interference in Somalia. However this would be inaccurate. Successive US administrations comprehend perfectly that stirring the pot of extremism and counting on propaganda to report the result, not the procedure, gives them limitless excuses to occupy other countries.
The Pentagon is dedicated to international dominance, Somalia is a tactical chokepoint, and the Department of Defense needs factors to preserve its presence in the nation.
The US created al-Shabaab in a number of methods. Initially, it escalated Islamist vs. non-Islamist tensions by backing secular “warlords” as a proxy against the ICU in the mid-2000s. This alienated the moderate factions of the ICU and empowered the conservative Islamists.
Second, and most importantly, Washington backed Ethiopia’s intrusion in late 2006, activating a disaster for the civilian population, many of whom invited hard-line Muslims because they enforced a degree of order.
Third, by painting the nomadic and Sufi Islamist country of Somalia as a center of conservative Salafi extremism, Western policymakers and media propagandists created a self-fulfilling prophesy in which Muslim fundamentalists ultimately joined the terror groups they were already accused of being part of.
Fourth, for a country allegedly concerned with international terrorism, the US has actually done nothing to control one its closest allies, the UK, whose successive federal governments have protected a number of Islamic extremists that hired for Somalia.
Even if we look at Somalia’s crisis through a liberal lens that neglects titanic imperial criminal activities, such as activating scarcities, and focus on the lesser however still severe criminal activities of suicide battles, it is tough not to conclude that Somalia’s pot of extremism was stirred by Western interference.