Excerpts of an interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Salim Lone is a
columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN
mission in Iraq.
David Leigh and David Pallister, "The
New Scramble For Africa," Guardian, June 1, 2005
"Backed by the U.S., Ethiopia
Invades Somalia," The Wisdom Fund, May 12, 2006
[More people have been displaced in Somalia in the past two months than
anywhere else in the world, the United Nations has said.--"Somalia is 'worst
refugee crisis'," BBC News, April 27, 2007]
[ . . . behind the US-Ethiopian political alliance lies a strategic move to
secure positioning in this oil region. . . .
We now know that the Bush administration gave the Ethiopian government the
go ahead to ignore its own imposed ban on weapons purchases from North
Korea, in order to gear up for the battle ahead. US military forces took
part in the assault.
'The US political and military alliance with Ethiopia - which openly
violated international law in its aggression towards Somalia, is
destabilizing the Horn region and begins a new shift in the way the US plans
to have permanent and active military presence in Africa', wrote Kadane.
Planning for the invasion actually began last summer when the Union of
Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of the Somali government.
The US-Ethiopian version of shock and awe was to swiftly bring about the
desired regime change, installing the Washington-favoured,
government-in-exile of President Abdullahi Yusuf.--Carl Bloice, "Somalia: The Hidden
War for Oil," allafrica.com, May 10, 2007]
[United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, which is to be discussed by
the security council in mid-June. He would like to mount a UN-sanctioned
"coalition of the willing" to enforce peace and restore order in Somalia -
in other words, the UN would help Ethiopia and the United States achieve
what their own illegal military interventions have failed to accomplish: the
entrenchment of a client regime that lacks any popular support. . . .
The Somali government is busy crying "al-Qaida" at every turn and offering
lucrative deals to oil companies, in a bid to entice greater western
support.--Salim Lone, "The
only way the US can prop up its client regime in Somalia is through
lawlessness and slaughter," Guardian, April 28, 2007]
[The reality, of course, is that deposing the Islamic Courts council - which
had reached out to the West, seeking recognition and cooperation - and
plunging Somalia back into anarchy virtually guarantees that it will indeed
become a haven for terrorism, just as in Bush's other "regime change"
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, the Terror War has never been
about curtailing the terrorist threat against Americans. This is blatantly
obvious, as every aspect of the "War" has only exacerbated terrorism and
anti-American feeling around the world. The Terror War is about securing
even more loot and power for elite factions in the American Establishment
(and selected foreign cronies). Somalia's oil and its strategic location
make it a prime target for the Terror Warriors; hence the invasion and the
blood-soaked occupation.--Chris Floyd, "Press Plays 9/11
Card to Justify Somalia Slaughter," lewrockwell.com, May 3, 2007]
[On file are plans - put on hold amid continuing conflicts - for nearly
two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields to be allocated to the US oil companies
Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips.
It was recently reported that the US-backed prime minister of Somalia has
proposed enactment of a new oil law to encourage the return of foreign oil
companies to the country.--Carl Bloice, "The Hidden War for
Oil," Fahamu (Oxford), May 11, 2007]
[Somalia now represents a worse displacement crisis than Sudan's Darfur
region.--"Ethiopia seeking
Somalia pullout," BBC News, May 15, 2007]
"US attacks Somali
'militant base'," BBC News, June 2, 2007
[The ruins of the old sugar factory in Marere, in the southern interior of
Somalia, tower over the wooden shacks and brick huts which shelter the 2,000
or so people still living here. This used to be the second-largest sugar
factory in the world, employing more than 20,000 people. Now, its rusting
steel frame, chimneys and pipes sunk deep into the tall grass provide a
painful echo of the wreck which Somalia has become.
Local people, from teen-agers to elders, now talk of the brief period of
rule by the Islamic Courts in wistful tones. For the first time in a
generation, there was a level of security in the district that few had
believed was possible. The various clan-based militias which terrorised the
region, setting up checkpoints and settling disputes with guns, buried their
arms.--Steve Bloomfield, "Somalis
yearn for Islamic rulers to return and tame the warlords,"
Independent, June 15, 2007]
[Amnesty International accused Kenya of blocking 141 trucks of food and
other aid headed for more than 200,000 displaced Somalis suffering from
"alarming levels" of malnutrition.
Many businessmen and civil society leaders in Mogadishu say that over the
past two weeks, they have been unjustly labeled "al-Qaeda" and their homes
and offices have been ransacked by Ethiopian and Somali troops.--Stephanie
McCrummen, "Ethiopian Premier Admits Errors on
Somalia," Washington Post, June 29, 2007]
[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."--Justin Raimondo, "Mass Murder in the
Horn of Africa," antiwar.com, October 19, 2007]
[A year after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist
regime in Somalia, the country has become Africa's worst humanitarian
catastrophe.--Shashank Bengali, "Somalia descends
into Africa's worst crisis," McClatchy Newspapers, December 12, 2007]
"US bombs
Islamist town in Somalia," BBC News, March 3, 2008
Aweys Yusuf and Abdi Sheikh, "Somali
Islamists say US terror listing forges unity," Reuters, March 21,
2008
[Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in
Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its
allies of committing war crimes.--Steve Bloomfield, "Call for inquiry into US role in
Somalia," Guardian, May 7, 2008]
[. . . many in Africa see it as an unwelcome expansion of the U.S.-led war
on terrorism and a bid to secure greater access to the continent's vast oil
resources. Several countries have refused to host the command, and officials
say Africom will be based in Stuttgart, Germany, for the foreseeable future.
. . .
U.S. covert operations in Somalia and elsewhere have fueled the controversy.
. . .
The Department of Energy says that 17 percent of U.S. crude oil imports now
come from Africa, more than the U.S. gets from Persian Gulf countries. But
rising powers such as China have strengthened their ties with Africa and
become a powerful counterweight to American influence. . . .
Africom will assume control over the largest U.S. military base in the
region, the 1,500-strong Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, housed at
a former French Foreign Legion facility in the tiny eastern nation of
Djibouti.--Shashank Bengali, "The Pentagon's
new Africa command raises suspicions about U.S. motives," McClatchy
Newspapers, September 29, 2008]
[ . . . the United States has intervened directly into the conflict,
carrying out bombing raids on fleeing refugees and nomads, firing missiles
into villages, sending in death squads to clean up after covert operations,
and . . . assisting in the "rendition" of refugees, including American
citizens, into the hands of Ethiopia's notorious torturers.--"What Nobody Wants To Know About Somalia And
Why; And What That Means," winterpatriot, October 3, 2008]
[His frank admission confirms what is known but seldom publicly acknowledged
by those with a stake in Somalia's future, from Ethiopia, whose continued
occupation unites the different Islamist groups against a common enemy, to
the UN and western countries, which have backed the warlord-heavy government
for years.--Xan Rice, "Government near to collapse, says Somalia
leader," Guardian, November 17, 2008]
M K Bhadrakumar, "The Great Game of
Hunting Somali Pirates," Asia Times, November 22, 2008
[The last Ethiopian troops in Somalia's capital have left Mogadishu, two
years after they captured it from Islamists who again control much of
it.--"Islamists
take bases in Mogadishu," BBC News, January 15, 2009]
"Somali
Islamists to rule by sharia law in Baidoa," Reuters, January 27, 2009
Daniel Ooko, "UN
envoy lauds election of new Somali President," xinhuanet.com,
January 31, 2009
[It is an Islamist versus Islamist war, and the Sufi scholars are part of a
broader moderate Islamist movement that Western nations are counting on to
repel Somalia's increasingly powerful extremists.--Jeffrey Gettleman, "For Somalia, Chaos Breeds Religious War," New York
Times, May 24, 2009]
The battle-by-proxy for Somalia was not new; during the cold-war, the United
States and the Soviets vied for control of the tiny country to gain access
to the oil routes on its long coastline.--Eliza Griswold, "The
Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and
Islam," Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 17, 2010) page 127
Jason C Mueller, "Somalia:
US's hidden and forgotten forever war: Despite one of US military's greatest
fiascoes, American troops are still in Somalia fighting an endless and unjustifiable war
on terrorism'," asiatimes.com, October 6, 2023