Monday, March 03, 2008

Somali News Bulletin: US Bombs Civilians Again; The Failure of the Fake 'War on Terror'

U.S. Strikes at Terror Target in Somalia

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
The Associated Press
Monday, March 3, 2008; 3:43 PM

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- The U.S. Navy fired at least one missile into a southern Somali town before dawn Monday, targeting a terrorism suspect as an Islamic group with links to al-Qaida appears to be gathering sway again in this lawless African nation.

Residents and police in Dobley said at least eight people, including four children, were seriously injured when a home was destroyed. The attack was confirmed by U.S. officials, who said only that the target was a "known al-Qaida terrorist."

The U.S. military has staged several attacks on suspected extremists in Somalia over the past year amid fears the Horn of Africa country could become a haven for terrorists.

"As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in Washington.

Whitman declined to provide any details, including the target's identity, the fate of the targeted individual or reports of any other casualties.

Another defense official told The Associated Press that the strike used one or more Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a U.S. submarine off Somalia's coast. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss details.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters that "the action was to go after al-Qaida and al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists," suggesting it may have been designed to hit more than one person. Like Whitman, Johndroe declined to provide any details.

One other U.S. military official said the target was believed to have been staying in a building known to be used regularly by terrorist suspects. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record.

A radical Islamic movement that ruled much of southern Somalia in 2006 took over Dobley last week, led by senior official Hassan Turki. Turki, who is rarely seen in public, is on U.S. and U.N. lists of suspected terrorists for alleged ties to al-Qaida. His fate after the strike was not known.

People in Dobley, a town about four miles from the Kenyan border, said the sound of explosions shook them awake before dawn Monday.

"When we came out we found our neighbor's house completely obliterated as if no house existed here," Fatuma Abdullahi told The Associated Press. "We are taking shelter under trees. Three planes were flying over our heads."

The Islamic movement, the Council of Islamic Courts, seized control of much of southern Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu, in 2006. But in early 2007, troops loyal to the U.N.-backed interim Somali government and the allied Ethiopian army defeated the Islamic group.

The Islamic council now appears to be re-emerging.

On Monday, fighters linked to the group overran Bur Haqaba, a hilltop town about 35 miles from the provincial capital of Baidoa in the south. The group released prisoners from jail and killed a police chief before retreating, witnesses said.

Last month, Islamic fighters briefly took over Dinsor in southern Somalia, killing nine soldiers, police said.

The United States has repeatedly accused the Islamic group of harboring international terrorists linked to al-Qaida and allegedly responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

America has been concerned Somalia could become a breeding ground for terrorist groups, particularly after the Islamic militants briefly gained control of the south and Osama bin Laden declared his support for them.

The U.S. sent a small number of special operations troops to help the Ethiopian force that drove the Islamic movement into hiding, and a Navy warship shelled suspected al-Qaida targets. U.S. warplanes staged at least two airstrikes in January 2007 in an attempt to kill suspected al-Qaida members, Pentagon officials have said.

The U.S. Navy still patrols Somalia's 1,880-mile coast, which is the longest in Africa. Somalia is near key shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean and piracy is rampant in the waters offshore.

The U.S. has avoided sustained military action in Somalia since it led a U.N. force that intervened in the early 1990s in an effort to fight famine. That mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including a battle in Mogadishu that killed 18 American soldiers.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on each other. The current government was formed with U.N. help in 2004, but it has struggled to assert any real control.
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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington and Elizabeth A. Kennedy in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.


The "war on terror" and the Worst Humanitarian Crisis in Africa

By Sadia Ali Aden

Approximately three months ago, Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), pressured out Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi. Surprisingly, this political re-arrangement of deckchairs generated much noisy headlines.

Meanwhile the real story—the great unfolding humanitarian
disaster--continued unnoticed.

For the Somali people, the Ethiopian invasion of December of 2006 could not have started at a worse time. Defeating the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and propping up the TFG; this was Ethiopia's immediate rationale for violating Somalia. The larger goal? Forging a partnership between Washington and Addis Ababa in order to execute "war on terror"…

A year later, this mission has not been accomplished. Instead, the "war on terror" has become the terror of war being visited on the Somali people.

Admittedly a handful of Somalis have benefited from the invasion, specifically the dozens of warlords previously driven out of Mogadishu by the UIC. These warlords, the instigators of Somalia's current civil conflict, were reinstalled in their fiefdoms riding on the backs of Ethiopia's invading tanks.

As a result, the reviled check points and road blocks used to bully cash out of unarmed civilians were reintroduced in Southern Somalia, particularly Mogadishu.

To keep the invasion and Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe going, heavy and modern weapons, including airplanes were used. One was a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship that attacked and killed Somali villagers and countless livestock in the hunt for three foreign men suspected for the bombing of 1998 American embassies in Africa, who yet remain at large.

Among those caught in the chaos were visiting Somalis from the Diaspora. In the period between June and December 2006, Somali technocrats returned to their native country to partake the rebuilding in the six month period of peace and stability that was established under the rule of the UIC. The Diaspora arrived with the intention to give back to the land and the people they left behind and contribute to rebuilding their lives.

Unfortunately, an extraordinary rendition programs were the gratitude they received; in that, the TFG, Kenya, Ethiopia and US all being implicated. Young men as young as 12 years of age were taken out of their homes in the dead of the night, blindfolded and taken into unknown destinations.

Fleeing refugees of mostly women and children did meet a similar fate.

Unfortunately, these refugees had no where to escape, as Kenya decided to close its borders and deny them entry. This paved the way to the current nightmare scenario: 1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs,) mostly children and women, without any provision or protection from the UN or other humanitarian agencies or NGOs.

In order to create a safe haven for the displaced refugees, the international community must demand the neighboring countries to open their borders. It is all too often that the casualties of war are those that are unmentioned. The innocent men, women and children, caught in the middle, left with no way out.

The UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, said border security measures should not impair the ability of deserving Somali civilians to enter Kenya to seek safety and protection as refugees. The neighboring Nations have humanitarian responsibility to safeguard these refugees.

On October 30, 2007, 40 international NGOs have released a joint statement ominously warning against a gathering cloud of humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia urging the international community to respond to this man-made calamity as the Ethiopian forces and militias loyal to the (TFG) callously prevent the delivery, and bluntly stating that "there is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in South Central Somalia".

Meanwhile, Ethiopian forces continue their shelling of Mogadishu neighborhoods and killing, according to Elman Human Rights group, 7000 civilians mostly women, children, and elderly between January and November of 2007.

"In Shell-Shocked, Human Rights Watch's August 2007 report of our investigation of the March-April hostilities, we documented many of the most serious patterns of abuse by Ethiopian troops, such as indiscriminate attacks on civilians, summary executions and repeated targeting of hospitals," wrote Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, in an open letter to Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

However, the international media by and large remain morally selective in what they show to the world.

Somali caricaturist, Amin Amir (AminArts.com,) depicts this morally selectivity on his December 12, 2007 cartoon. The powerful imagery shows a representative of the international media zooming his camera on a severely malnourished child standing in the middle of a killing field where many bodies are on the ground and Ethiopian fighter jets are flying overhead and dropping missiles. The child retorts: I don't need your coverage; it is these atrocities – pointing to the dead--that you need to be telling the world.

The current Somali nightmare was exacerbated by the systematic assassination of Somali independent media groups who are not pro TFG and the Ethiopian occupation. And the silence of the international community on this matter is deeply disturbing and sadly deafening.

This year alone, eight Somali journalists were killed- their crimes being to have simply dared reporting the reality on the grounds of Mogadishu. The TFG & Ethiopian forces are terrorizing Somali reporters creating an uncomfortable environment of terror and coercion.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund, one-quarter of the refugees around Afgooye are younger than age of five.

Sick children and pregnant women often are turned away at checkpoints, and trucks carrying food and other humanitarian aid are routinely charged $500 each for passing through.

"Things are now getting absolutely worse," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UNICEF representative for Somalia.

"There is a dirtiness to this war.

Children are a real target."
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Sadia Ali Aden is a mother, writer, and voice for justice and equality who lives in Virginia
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Somalia is on fire again

By OSCAR KIMANUKA
oscar_kim2000@yahoo.co.uk

Television screens are awash with images of death and despair in Mogadishu, Somalia. Crowds of Somalis beat, hammer and drag dead Ethiopian troops in a manner that reminds us of the bitter experience of American troops back in October 1993, when a mob dragged the bodies of two United States soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu. The American soldiers had been ruthlessly killed in an intense street battle.

It was soon after the firefight that the US withdrew its troops from chaotic Somalia.

What had led the Americans then to intervene in Somalia was the war and famine following Siad Barre’s exit from power. The rescue effort led by the Americans began in a blaze of glory and publicity in December 1992 as the American marines stormed ashore on the beaches of Mogadishu into the lenses of waiting television cameras. Their task, code-named Operation Restore Hope, was to impose peace and democracy and feed the hungry and starving.

FIFTEEN MONTHS AFTER their colourful and triumphant arrival, the Americans made an ignominious withdrawal, leaving the United Nations to clean up the mess.

Somalia today is yet again in chaos. The hope that the Transitional Federal Government would make progress towards national reconciliation is quickly evaporating. In scenes reminiscent of the 1993 battle, the bodies of two dead Ethiopian soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, a grim reminder that the fragile East African state of Somalia is far from stabilising.

THE WAR IN SOMALIA IS A war few would like to touch even the UN. No less a person than the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that sending a UN peacekeeping force to Somalia right now is “neither realistic, nor viable” and has instead suggested the formation of a multinational “coalition of the willing.”

Interestingly, Mr Ban should be aware that no one is willing to send troops into Mogadishu. The African Union, which had previously pledged to send 8,000 peacekeepers, just supplied 1,600 Ugandan troops.

The images on the television screens of dead bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu are a serious impediment to anyone out there with the remote wish of sending in troops.

Oscar Kimanuka is a commentator on social and economic issues based in Kigali.

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