Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB

This is a very interesting look at the situation in Somalia...

Carl Bloice elucidates the failure or unwillingness of the Western media to accurately report the invasion and occupation of Somalia by a US backed Ethiopian government. He asserts that behind the US-Ethiopian political alliance lies a strategic move to secure positioning in this oil region.

The Hidden War for Oil

Extracts:
'The carnage and suffering in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade - but you'd hardly know it from your nightly news', wrote Andrew Cawthorne for Reuters from Nairobi last week.

ABC and NBC had not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once, dedicating three whole sentences to it. Despite the fact that there have been more casualties in this war than in the recent fighting in Lebanon.

While the major US print media have not completely ignored the conflict, their reporting is even more shallow than prior to the invasion of Iraq.

The attack on Somalia was pre-planned. It would never have taken place without the approval of the White House.

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.

Three months later, the Ethiopians are still in Somalia committing what numerous observers are calling horrendous war crimes.

'The obviously indiscriminate use of heavy artillery in the capital has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, and forced over 200,000 more to flee for their lives', Walter Lindner, German ambassador to Somalia, wrote to the country's acting president last week.

Displaced persons are 'at great risk of being subjected to looting, extortion and rape - including by uniformed troops' at a various "checkpoints". Cholera - endemic to the region during the rainy season - is beginning to cut a swathe through the displaced', he continued. Adding that attempts by international groups to offer assistance to the victims are being obstructed by militias who are stealing supplies, demanding 'taxes', and threatening relief workers.

On 3 April, Associated Press reported that a senior European Union security official had sent an email to the head of the EU delegation for Somalia warning that:

'Ethiopian and Somali military forces there may have committed war crimes...donor countries could be considered complicit if they do nothing to stop them. I need to advise you that there are strong grounds to believe that the Ethiopian government and the transitional federal government of Somalia and the African Union (peacekeeping) Force Commander, possibly also including the African Union Head of Mission and other African Union officials have, through commission or omission, violated the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.'

...Meanwhile, the 'transitional government' and Ethiopian forces have been reported shelling civilian areas in the capital from the government compound they are supposedly guarding.

At the time of writing, about 1,300 people are reported to have perished in the fighting. Over 4,300 wounded, and nearly 400,000 have fled their homes. Refugees trying to cross the Red Sea are reportedly drowning off the Somali coast.

And, just as in Iraq, US supported forces - the small army of the enthroned and very unpopular government and the invaders - are caught up in a civil war, set in motion by invasion and occupation.

'For the major [world] leaders, there is a tremendous embarrassment over Somalia', Michael Weinstein, a US expert on Somalia at Purdue University told Reuters.

'They have committed themselves to supporting the interim government - a government that has no broad legitimacy, a failing government. This is the heart of the problem. But Western leaders can't back out now, so of course they have 100% no interest in bringing global attention to Somalia. There is no doubt that Somalia has been shoved aside by major media outlets and global leaders, and the Somali Diaspora is left crying in the wilderness.'
On 26 April, Martin Fletcher wrote in The (London) Times about five days he spent in Mogadishu, during which he canvassed many ordinary Somalis:
'People lack water, food and shelter. Cholera has broken out. The sick sometimes have to pay rent even to sit in the shade of trees. Things will get worse with the rains, which have started. Aid agencies say people will soon start dying in large numbers. Some reckon Somalia is facing its biggest humanitarian crisis, worse than in the early 1990s, when the state collapsed amid famine and slaughter. Overwhelmingly, they loathed a government they consider a puppet of the hated Ethiopians.'

'There are two main questions that Colonel Yusuf's and Ethiopia's Western backers should now ask themselves', said The (London) Guardian 26 April 26.

First, what was gained by encouraging the Ethiopian army to topple the Islamic Courts? The US allowed Ethiopia to arm itself with North Korean weapons and also participated in the turkey shoot by using gunships against suspected insurgents hiding in villages near the Kenyan border.

Second, Washington was convinced that the Islamic Courts were sheltering foreign terror suspects: 'But how many did they get and what price have Somalis paid?'

'America can be more heavily criticised for subordinating Somali interests to its own desire to catch a handful of al-Qaeda men who may (or may not)have been hiding in Mogadishu', said The Economist.

Chatham House, a British think tank of the independent Royal Institute of International Affairs, has concluded:

'None has been caught, many innocents have died in air strikes, and anti-American feeling has deepened. Western, especially European, diplomats watching Somalia from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya to the south, have sounded the alarm. Their governments have done little.

Actually, there is no more reason to believe the Bush administration promoted this war, in clear violation of international law and the UN Charter, 'to catch a handful of al-Qaeda men', than that the invasion of Iraq was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. What has unfolded over the past three months flows from much larger strategic calculations in Washington.

The invasion and occupation of Somalia coincided with the Pentagon's now operational plan to build a new 'Africa Command' to deal with what the Christian Science Monitor dubbed 'strife, oil, and Al Qaeda'.
When I first visited this subject shortly after the invasion, I quoted 10 per cent as the figure which is the proportion of our country's petroleum from Africa; and noted that some experts were saying the US would need to up that to 25 per cent by 2010. Wrong again.

Last week came the news that the US now imports more oil from Africa than from the Middle East; with Nigeria, Angola and Algeria providing nearly one-fifth of it - more than from Saudi Arabia.

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.