U.S. Somali attack Leads to more calls for intervention.

With plenty of wars already on its plate and the U.S. public turning against the Afghan war the U.S. is desparate to find more proxies to fight in Somalia although on occasion it still does not hesitate to engage in special operations. First Ethiopia was enlisted creating a very negative reaction in Somalia and now the AU under UN auspices is trying to prop up a ludicrous simulacrum of a government installed originally in a soccer field in Kenya. Many of the arms used by the rebels are bought by insurgents from government forces who received them from the U.S.

US Attack in Somalia Leads to More Calls for Intervention
Posted By Jason Ditz On September 18, 2009 @ 7:12 pm In Uncategorized No Comments
It didn’t take long to see the fallout from Monday’s US incursion into Southern Somalia. Just days later insurgents launched a deadly car bombing against an African Union (AU) base, killing at least 16 people.
It has underscored just how fragile the AU force in the nation is, but the attack has also led to yet more calls for international intervention by both the AU and the self-proclaimed Somali government.
AU envoy Nicolas Bwakira conceded that the organization doesn’t have the capacity to continue its apparently endless nation building mission, and says now is the time for the “international community to really come forward.”
The Somali Defense Minister, a warlord who goes by the name “White Eyes” cautions that several more car bombings like yesterday’s could be in the offing, noting that several UN vehicles have been captured by the insurgents. Already heavily supplied by the US, the Somali government has been pressing for more international forces as well to seize control of the nation on its behalf.

Margolis on Somalia

While this is an interesting article it portrays US policy in Somalia almost exclusively as part of a war on Islam. There are plenty of US allies that are Muslim and certainly not at war with the US and plenty of non-Muslim enemies of the US such as Cuba and North Korea or even Venezuela now. Somalia's oil reserves are also not mentioned.




Crusade Number Four
by Eric Margolisby Eric Margolis

"The US has opened a fourth front in the war on terrorism" the Pentagon announced last week, as if the US did not have enough failing wars on its hands with al-Qaida, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In a striking irony, F-18 fighter-bombers from the carrier "USS Eisenhower," deadly AC-130 gunships from the US base at Djibouti, and Special Forces units attacked Somalia from sea, air and land. Other US units and FBI agents deployed on the Kenya-Somalia border. As America’s latest foreign war began with air strikes from the giant carrier that bears this great president’s name, no one seemed to recall President Dwight Eisenhower’s magnificent farewell address in 1961 to Americans in which he warned against foreign entanglements and the growing political influence of the military-industrial complex.
Very few Americans understood their nation had just invaded another in an act worthy of the late, unlamented Chairman Leonid Brezhnev.
Much of Somalia has already been occupied by Ethiopia’s powerful, US-financed army which invaded that defenseless nation, with Washington’s blessing, under cover of the Christmas holiday.
It is an open secret in Washington that the Somalia operation is to be the Bush/Cheney Administration’s new model for war against recalcitrant Muslims. The White House failed to convince India or Pakistan to rent their troops for occupation duty in Iraq, but it has succeeded in using Ethiopia’s army in Somalia. Ethiopia’s repressive regime was only too happy to invade Somalia and received large infusions of aid from Washington. The Administration is duplicating the British Empire’s wide scale use of native troops ("sepoys" in India; "askaris" in East Africa) in colonial wars.
But is Somalia really a "hotbed of terrorism" as Washington claimed? The US-Ethiopian invasion of Somalia was sparked by last fall’s defeat of corrupt Somali clan warlords. They had recently been armed and financed by the CIA to fight the growing popularity of local Islamists.
The warlords had kept Somalia in turmoil and near anarchy for 15 years. Last year, a group of Muslim jurists and notables, the Union of Islamic Courts, managed to defeat the warlords and impose a rough form of law and order on many parts of chaotic central and southern Somalia. Northern Somalia is ruled by a secessionist government based around the strategic port of Berbera.
The conservative Islamic Courts were sympathetic to pan-Muslim causes. But there is no evidence so far that they were involved in anti-American jihadist movements and had no identifiable links, as Washington claimed, to al-Qaida. Now, Somalis are seething with anger at America, providing yet more volunteers for jihadist operations. In fact, the Christmas US-Ethiopian invasion of Somalia threatens to ignite violence across the Horn of Africa.
A handful of African Al-Qaida suspects in the 1998 bombing of US Embassies in East Africa may have been in Somalia, but going to war against a sovereign nation to try to assassinate or capture a handful of suspects is like using a nuclear weapon to kill a gnat and is sure to generate more anti-US violence. Air strikes by carrier-based US F-18’s and AC-130 gunships killed between 50 and 100 Somali civilians but, apparently, no al-Qaida suspects. The real aim of the US air attacks was to destroy remaining fighting units of the Islamic Courts and clear the way for the US-imposed Somali figurehead government.
The invasion and occupation of defenseless Somalia is the latest – but probably not the last – example of the increasing militarization of US foreign policy. VP Dick Cheney’s new Pentagon golden-haired boys, Special Operations Command, elbowed aside the humiliated CIA and the feckless State Department and vowed to "drain the Islamic swamp" in Somalia.
Thus begins President George Bush’s fourth war against the Muslim World. Invading dirt-poor Somalia is Bush’s last stab at military glory and a final effort to convince disgruntled American voters the so-called "war on terror" is a success. So also continues Washington’s preference of only invading small nations that cannot offer much initial resistance by conventional forces: Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Somalia. Afghanistan has only 29 million wretched people; Iraq about 26 million – two-thirds of them in rebellion.
The administration is again recklessly charging into a thicket of tribal politics in a remote nation it knows nothing about. US policy in Somalia is being driven by neoconservatives seeking war against the entire Muslim World, and self-serving advice from ally Ethiopia. Israel, which has maintained close intelligence, military, and economic links to Ethiopia’s regime, is also discreetly involved: it has long conducted covert operations in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea’s western littoral.
Eritrea’s 1993 secession took away Ethiopia’s natural access to the sea, leaving it landlocked. Ethiopia’s strategic goals in Somalia may be to seize one or more deep-water ports, turn Somalia into a protectorate, and crush any Islamic movements that might enflame its own voiceless Muslims, who comprise half of Ethiopia’s 73 million people.
America’s attack on Somalia recalls Afghanistan. The US is again blundering into ancient clan and tribal conflicts, using foreign troops and local mercenaries to defend a puppet regime without any popular support. US-Ethiopian intervention in Somalia is certain to re-ignite the murderous clan rivalries that brought it to the current state of anarchy.
Like Afghanistan, Somalia was easy to invade, but may prove very difficult to rule, or eventually leave. Many Somalis saw the now scattered Islamic Courts militias as their best hope for stability and normalcy. Now they are back to zero – or worse.
Like Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001, Somalis have been slow to oppose invasion. But in time they could mount serious resistance to the new US-Ethiopian condominium over Somalia.
From 1899 to 1930, Somali mujahidin waged a fierce resistance struggle against the British, who killed a third of the native population. In 1954, Britain handed the Somali ethnic region of Ogaden to Ethiopia, thus assuring continued hostility between the two old foes.
Now we have a new war, in a faraway place, that could become yet another annoying, intractable headache for the west and yet another incubator of revenge-minded jihadis.
January 16, 2007
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.
Copyright © 2007 Eric Margolis
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Collateral Damage in Somalia

The press typically reports little of these types of collateral damage and military sources always deny or downplay them. None of the high value Al Qaeda targets of the US mission seem to have been killed. The Ethiopian troops are supplied and trained by the US. Since Ethiopia is primarily a Christian country actions such as these will just confirm muslims in the view that there is war against Islam rather than terrorism.




U.S. Somalia air raids hit nomads, 70 dead - OxfamBy ReutersNAIROBI, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Air attacks against fugitive Islamists in south Somalia in recent days have mistakenly targeted nomadic herdsmen gathering round fires, killing 70, British-based aid agency Oxfam said on Friday."Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets," Oxfam added, citing its local partner organisations in Somalia for the information.Washington sent a warplane into Somalia on Monday to try and take out what U.S. officials say are top al Qaeda suspects hiding with the Islamists.Ethiopia, which helped the interim government of Somalia oust rival Islamists from Mogadishu over the New Year, has also been carrying out air raids against the retreating fighters.While some Somali sources have reported scores of deaths, there has been no independent confirmation on the ground."Oxfam is receiving reports from its partner organisations in Somalia that nomadic herdsmen have been mistakenly targeted in recent bombing raids," Oxfam said in a statement released in Nairobi."According to the reports from local organisations in Afmadow district, bombs have hit vital water sources as well as large groups of nomads and their animals who had gathered round large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes."Further reports have also confirmed that bombings have claimed the lives of 70 people in the district."Since the open warfare started in late December, some 70,000 Somalis have fled their homes, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation, Oxfam said.

More US attacks in Somalia

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/08/world/main2335451.shtml

The US claims its attacks are based upon credible intelligence. However, US claims of credible intelligence are not always credible. You can be sure that even if some Al Qaeda members are killed that many innocent persons will be killed as collateral damage and that living family members will be prime candidates to be recruited for a Jihad. US and Ethiopian intervention in Somalia is likely to return Somalia to a state of anarchy as it was before the Islamic Courts created some stability. The Ethiopian invasion itself is a proxy ground force replacing US troops. The US public is not in a mood for more war casualties. US attacks depend upon a technology that their opponents cannot match.