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     | Monday, March 12, 2001 - 10:56 pm ISLAMABAD, March 12 (News Agencies) - Islamic clerics late Monday returned empty-handed from Afghanistan after failing to persuade the ruling Taliban militia chief to withdraw the edict ordering destruction of Buddhist relics, a report said. "They wanted us to stop the destruction but failed to convince us that destroying statues is un-Islamic," Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported quoting Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen. Three top Muslim clerics who traveled with a delegation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) were tasked to persuade the Taliban to scrap the edict. Taliban's Cultural Minister Qudratullah Jamal, who is in charge of the demolition process, said the delegation of Islamic clerics had come to the "wrong place." They should have gone to India to enquire about the demolition of the historic Babri mosque by Hindu fanatics in 1991, as well as to Jerusalem to contest the Israeli occupation, Jamal said. The OIC delegation was headed by Qatar's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Mahmud and arrived in Kandahar on Sunday. It included Egypt's top religious leader, Mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel and top Sunni clerics, Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi and Mohamed al-Rawi. Wassel told reporters in Cairo Saturday that "from a religious viewpoint it is clear, these statues are part of humanity's heritage and do not affect Islam at all." "Why these Islamic clerics did not go India when the Babri Masjid was being demolished. Why under present conditions do they not go to Bait al-Moqdas (Jerusalem) which is the Muslims' place and property," he said. Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a decree two weeks ago to demolish the statues, saying his decision was based on orders of God and the Qur'an, Islam's holy book. The militia ignored a world outcry over the destruction and rejected appeals from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan who met Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel in Islamabad, to the stop the destruction. UNESCO's special envoy to Afghanistan has confirmed the ruling Taliban militia has destroyed the ancient Buddha statues at Bamiyan, the agency's director general said Monday. "I was distressed to learn from my special envoy, Pierre Lafrance, that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas has been confirmed," Koichiro Matsuura said in a statement released at the U.N. cultural organization's Paris headquarters. Matsuura called the demolition of the 1,500-year-old figures "a crime against culture."
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| | Tuesday, March 13, 2001 - 12:11 am Outcry as Buddhas are destroyed 3/12/2001 (BBC) :: India and Pakistan have led global condemnation of the Taleban''s destruction of two ancient statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan, which was confirmed on Monday. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee described the demolition of the Buddhas in central Bamiyan province as "an act of barbarism". Pakistan''s Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who has accused the international community of doing too little, said it was "a tragic disaster". In Bangladesh, a rally was held in the capital, Dhaka, to protest against the destruction, as Muslim nations from Malaysia to the Middle East queued up to stress the attacks on the statues had nothing to do with Islam. Earlier Unesco Director-general Koichiro Matsuura said in a statement that the demolition of the relics was complete. "I was distressed to learn from my special envoy, Pierre LaFrance, that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas has been confirmed," he said. Mr LaFrance has visited Afghanistan twice in an attempt to save the artefacts, but to no avail. The Taleban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, in Islamabad to meet with UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, confirmed that the two giant statues had indeed been destroyed, along with all moveable artefacts. "We do admit all these statues were the cultural heritage of Afghanistan, but we will not leave the part which is contrary to our belief." Mr Mutawakil said. Explosives Even a delegation of senior Muslim scholars from the 55-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) had been unable to dent the Taleban''s resolve to annihilate the country''s pre-Islamic heritage. Journalists are barred from the region, but international aid workers have confirmed that the militia used explosives to bring down the soaring statues. "The destruction work is not as easy as people would think," Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal told Reuters. The statues are now said to lie in ruins at the foot of the cliff where they have stood since the second and fifth century. Intolerance Standing at 51 and 36 metres high, the statues were once a symbol of the religious tolerance that pervaded the region but today Bamiyan is a war zone. Islamic leaders around the world have stressed that the Taleban''s iconoclasm has no justification in Islam. Only Sudan and Saudi Arabia, one of only three countries to recognise the Taleban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, have remained quiet. Kofi Annan, in Pakistan on a tour of the region, described the Taleban''s acts as a "disservice" to themselves and to Islam. Some analysts believe the demolition of the statues may have come in retaliation for UN sanctions imposed for the Taleban''s refusal to hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Bamiyan statues being destroyed, Taliban tells Annan Reported by: Kyodo ISLAMABAD, 3/12/2001 :: Taliban Foreign Minister Wakeel Ahmad Mutwakkal has said that all moveable statues in Afghanistan have been destroyed and the destruction of two giant statues of the Buddha has begun, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told reporters Sunday. Speaking at a press conference in Pakistan, Annan said he told Mutwakkal that ''''you have to respect what is sacred to others,'''' and the destruction was a lamentable act and a disservice to the Taliban itself and to Islam. Asked if the destruction of the statues would affect the response by donors to his appeal for more funds for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, Annan said it would not help. But no country has so far said it will not provide such funds if the statues are destroyed, he said. Annan said such funds are meant for people who have nothing to do with the destruction of the statues. ''''I think a hungry child is a hungry child and we should do everything to help him,'''' he remarked. After his meeting with Annan, Mutwakkal told a press conference that work had started on the destruction of the two Buddha statues in Bamiyan, northwest of Kabul, but he did not know the current status of the work. ''''I do not think they have been completely destroyed because they are tough ones,'''' he said, pointing out that in the days of former Afghan King Zahir Shah, cement and iron had been used to strengthen them. Mutwakkal said there was no possibility of moving the statues abroad or selling them. ''''Surely we will destroy them completely,'''' he said. World Cares More for Buddhist Statues than Human Life Anyone who has been closely following the media reports coming out of Afghanistan this week can only come to one conclusion: that the world community cares more about ancient relics than it does human lives. This week, shortly after Taliban leaders announced their decision to destroy two Buddhist statues carved into a sandstone cliff in the central Bamiyan province, the international community lashed out with strong condemnation. Unsurprisingly, the United States was among the first to criticize Afghanistan''s ruling regime. Relations between the Taliban and the Americans deteriorated even further after the U.S. initiated latest round of sanctions on the war-torn nation. During a State Department briefing this week, US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the edict against the statues "directly contradicts one of Islam''s basic tenets -- tolerance for other religions". The United Nations sent a special envoy to meet with the Taliban foreign minister, warning their destruction would cause "international outrage". The European Union, along with several other industrialized nations urged the Taliban to reverse the decision. Shortly thereafter, a long list of countries joined the international uproar over the relics, including Malaysia, Germany, Russia, India, and Japan. Even Egypt''s spiritual leader, mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel, expressed "astonishment" at the Taliban''s decision, saying they had no negative impact on Muslims. Sri Lanka and India even offered to move and protect the statues if the Afghani government would agree. And without hesitation, the international media dutifully reported the outpouring of grief and anger over the threatened Buddhas, as one headline read, "Worldwide horror as Afghan Taliban begin smashing ancient statues". But there was no "worldwide horror" or "international outrage" when UN officials announced Friday that more than 260 people have died in displacement camps in northern Afghanistan where an additional 117,000 people are living in miserable conditions. There was no outpouring of grief for those refugees who mostly died of hunger and exposure to cold weather. Sadly, no one seemed to care that most of the deceased were children under the age of five, elderly men, and women who did not survive childbirth. And there were no invitations to house these refugees as conditions in these camps are expected to deteriorate. Perhaps the only consolation in all of this, is that these refugees may never know how much the world cared for two statues and how little it cared for them. Chechen rebels see world "hypocrisy" Support for the Taleban campaign to destroy the Buddhist statues has come from a senior figure in the Chechen rebel movement - Yusuf Ibrahim, an influential editor at the Kavkaz-Tsentr news agency. The following are excerpts from his Kavkaz-Tsentr article on Saturday 3 March: The heathen world is upset. The so-called world community, which is personified by the Judeo-Christian heathen alliance, has kicked up a real fuss over the decision by the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to destroy stone idols in its country. The world hypocritically laments for the stone idols and blesses the Kremlin crusade against the Muslims of Chechnya Yusuf Ibrahim Numerous international organisations and entire states have launched an unprecedented hullabaloo in the news and are accusing the Afghans of vandalism... So, the heathen alliance considers the actions of Muslims who are carrying out an elementary prescription of the shari'ah as "hostility towards values common to all mankind". The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him), whose first action was to destroy idols and idolatry, is also a "vandal" and an "enemy" in the eyes of the heathens... Without shame or remorse over its own shamelesness, the world community is hypocritically lamenting the stone idols and simultaneously giving its blessing to the Kremlin gangs' crusade against the Muslims of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria... Human rights Neither hundreds of corpses nor concentration camps nor the Satanic mayhem of the Russian occupiers have had any impact on the "opinion" of the so-called human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe, Alvaro Gil-Robles who, after his ignoble and cowardly statements, can be taken for nothing other than an enemy. The international outcry over the fate of the stone statues and the joyous silence over the mass killings of Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, the Philippines and other countries once again demonstrate the true essence of Kufr (lack of faith). Those Muslims who are still being deceived regarding the so-called world community must finally understand that there will be no peace, security and justice, while violence and true obscurantism prevail on the face of the Earth, as long as our entire religion and law fail to belong to our Creator, the Lord of the Worlds, the Great God (the Most High) who is the only One who sets laws and the only One worthy of worship. Taliban: The World Needs the Iconoclasts Reported by: Khalid Baig, Current Affairs 3/5/2001 :: As expected, the Taliban decision to destroy statues from the Islamic State has created a big international uproar. The entire "civilized world", with the UN at its head, has been jumping up and down to condemn this "great crime against humanity." The world leaders have been shaking with anger. The Taliban have been warned by the UN of a "devastating reaction" if they harm the sacred stones. One pundit even suggested sending an army to rescue the beleaguered Buddhas. It is fascinating to see all these political and cultural champions get all worked up with "moral indignation." Through their pious pronouncements they try to persuade us that theirs is a principled stand. The only problem is that it is difficult to discern what that principle is. "No poor country has ever been sanctioned the way Afghanistan has." (UN Report) Is it their concern for humanity? Well, it is the same UN that has started the project of torturing and killing the people by the millions in the war-devastated Afghanistan by imposing sanctions against it. The scheme they are using --- depriving the little children of milk, the hungry of food and the sick of medicine --- has been perfected in Iraq where it has killed half a million people according to the estimates of the UN itself. The UN Security Council first imposed sanctions on Afghanistan in October 1999. They were tightened even more in December 2000, under strong pressure from the United States and Russia. According to a Global Policy Forum report, the new sanctions were imposed despite an August 2000 report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which highlighted the "tangible negative effect" on Afghanistan''s populace of the existing sanctions. Another draft OCHA report has said that "no poor country has ever been sanctioned the way Afghanistan has." So much for their concern for humanity. Is it their concern for religious freedom? It is important to remember that the Taliban are not destroying any place of worship or anything belonging to a place of worship. And although it is not apparent from the heated condemnations, the Taliban are not doing anything illegal either. The stone artifacts belong to their country; no body else holds title to them. If one buys a home and it comes with some statues, he has a right to keep them, sell them, destroy them or throw them away. Similarly, whether or not others like it or agree with it, the Afghans have a right to do what they want with the mountains, stones, and statues in their country, as long as they do not cause a danger to anybody else. Things become more interesting if we begin to check the credentials of the anti-Taliban campaign itself on the issue of religious freedom. Consider India, a leader in the current crusade, where the same people are ruling today who had led frenzied mobs to destroy the historical Babri Mosque just eight years ago and had killed 2000 people in the ensuing protests. It is amazing that the butchers have been prompt to display righteous anger over this "medieval barbarism." Given that the record of our beloved "International Community" on humanity and religious freedom is rather appalling, let us look at something more plausible, like a concern for universal cultural heritage. The results are no better here. For one must ask where were our guardians of cultural heritage when mosques, libraries, schools, historic buildings, and museums ---many of them great historic monuments ---- were being destroyed in the Balkans. More than 1200 mosques were destroyed in Bosnia by the European fanatics known as Serbs. More than 200 were destroyed in Kosova. Of course, unlike the Taliban they also killed the Imams and the rest of the population with the historic monuments they were destroying. Of course they committed other crimes so grisly that their cultural vandalism appeared to be a non-issue in comparison. And of course, the guardians of cultural heritage, of religious freedom, and of humanity were happily strolling through their art galleries when the butchery was going on. So if there is a principle behind their "principled stand," we are unable to find it. In a rare case the Washington Post tried to find an answer to the question as to why Afghans must keep and preserve the statues: "These old buildings are Afghanistan''s identity. And when you lose your identity, you''ve lost your soul." The problem is these artifacts are NOT Afghanistan''s identity. And the assertion is nothing but unvarnished cultural imperialism. Afghanistan''s identity derives from the life and example of the Prophets. Prophet Ibrahim, alayhi-salam, destroyed the idols, even though his own father was the idol maker. He was threatened with the wrath of gods. (Today, his followers are being threatened with the wrath of the "International Community," which is the same thing). He did not care. And in the process he exposed the weakness of the idols and the wickedness of the idol-worshippers. Later on, in Makkah he said the prayer: "O my Lord! Make this city one of peace and security and preserve me and my sons from worshipping idols. O my Lord! They [the idols] have indeed led astray many among mankind." [Ibrahim 14:35-36] When the pagans later on filled the Ka''ba he had rebuilt with idols, Allah sent Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam. Again he destroyed all of the idols there, forever. He did not preserve them as cultural heritage. Rather, with every stroke of the hammer, he declared, "Truth has come and falsehood has vanished." Those who have hearts of stone are naturally showing their love for stones. This is the Islamic heritage. You clean your own life and your own house of the idols. You do not preserve them as your cultural heritage or as a cherished work of art. And in doing so you will liberate the world. So is there a principle behind the "International Community''s" stand? May be there is an underlying principle, but it is a sinister one. One "expert" summed up the mood of this commotion while talking to the Los Angeles Times. "I would send in the army, I really would," Pratapaditya Pal, a visiting curator to the US, said. "It is of course very difficult to compare [a statue] with a human life, but don''t forget that we [humans] can reproduce. These Buddhas . . . are destroyed forever." There it is. We are living in a world in which animals are more valuable than humans (In India, for example, men have been slaughtered over the issue of cow slaughter). And now even the stones are more valuable than the humans. And to top it off, those who have developed such inverted values are the self-declared champions of human dignity. And why not? Those who have hearts of stone are naturally showing their love for stones. This is a cruel, self-conceited, arrogant, wicked and ignorant world. It has incessantly talked about its love of art but the only art at work here is the art of propaganda. It needs someone who can expose that. It needs the iconoclasts who would refuse to continue the business as usual; who would challenge its hegemony and tyranny; and who would rid it of its cruelty, self-conceit, arrogance, and ignorance.
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| | Sunday, March 18, 2001 - 11:04 pm I love some of the •••• in this article. Since when did the world "bless" the Russian campaign in Chechnya against the Chechnyan scum? Russia took incessant heat - only Slobodan Milosevic and China approved; not exactly harbingers of human rights. Decrying the what the Taliban did, as most nations did, does not mean you can not also decry sanctions you do not improve of. This doesn't highlight hypocracy, this highlights a basic lack of intelligence so common among religious, political and media leaders. A has nothing to do with B, but we'll associate them anyway and cry hypocracy. The sanctions are really not tied to a bunch of stone statues, they're tied to the fact that the Taliban are a bunch of troublemakers limited only by their small capacity to project power. Now, I make this prediction. If the Taliban survive as a political entity and continue to rule most of Afghanistan, the Afghani people will continue to suffer violence, deprivation and hunger. You heard it here first folks. None of you are going to do a thing to help your "Muslims brothers". You'll all talk a lot of smack and that's all it will be is talk. No one will empty his bank account, fly over there, and actually help anyone. So much for Muslim brotherhood. I can't tell you the number of times I have heard someone here say if only the Muslims would be real Muslims then Islam would rise to the top - but you always must mean someone else cause no one here wants to make any personal sacrifice to achieve that end.
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 03:44 am The world, America and west wanted to help staving somalis but they could not. How many years iraqi people and children were suffering violence, deprivation and hunger the west imposed on them? God is the one who helps, but God will not change the condition of a people until they change things for themselves. How many years the israelis were suffering hunger and slavery under Phorah and did the world come to rescue them? http://convertstoislam.org/JewsforAllah.htm
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 03:48 am Praise be to Allah who grants dominance to whom He wills and deprives it of whom He wills. He is the Enricher and the Preventer. He the Almighty Says: "And so are the days (good and not so good), We give to men by turns, that Allah may test those who believe, and that He may take martyrs from among you. And Allah likes not the Zalimun (poland wrong doe)" [3:140]. Peace and blessings upon His servant and messenger who was sent as a mercy to this world. He (s.a.w.) said: "Verily, this matter (ie. this Religion) will reach what the night and the day has reached (i.e. the whole earth). Allah will not exclude an urban nor a nomad household without which this religion would have entered" [Reported by Ahmad]. During these times when the affliction upon the people of Islam is exacerbated, Islam continues to suffer ruthless attacks by its cunning enemies. These are the times of hardship and agony when the Muslim struggles to convince himself about the reality of the inversed facts. This is expected when polytheism becomes religious monotheism, when adulation of the enemies of Allah is regarded as wisdom and craftiness, when slackening to support and defend the oppressed Muslims is a sign of intelligence and aptitude. In short, when truth becomes falsehood and falsehood becomes truth. Living these critical times, one feels the urgent need of those honest and trustworthy people of knowledge and religion who are sincere to Allah, His Book, His Messenger and to the Imams of the Muslims and their common folk. Unfortunately, we observe that many of those who claim to have knowledge are negligent in declaring the truth and in inviting people to it. Instead they garnish the falsehood and dissolute its identity in order to justify their negligence while accepting the transient adornments of this world. This lead the ignorant blind-followers to regard the statements made by these false men of religion as true evidence to dismiss them from preparing for revival. One of the consequences of this chronic disease that was caught by the Muslim Ummah is the content and approval of our people when the infidel rulers of today held a permanent accord with the Jews. Those who did not approve this accord were nevertheless influenced by the fabrications made by those rulers and said: "The presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine has become an unavoidable reality that we must accept. The Ummah must now be prepared to deal with it !!". There are also those poor and defeated people who thought that this cursed accord will relieve their difficulties. The best of those people were crying: "Land in exchange for peace". All those people overlooked the fact that this is a matter of Kufr and Iman and that it is a trial from Allah to test His servants and to distinguish the wicked from the good, and to witness those who will give victory to the religion by sincerely fighting for Allah's Cause, as He the Most High said: "Do you think that you shall be left alone while Allah has not yet tested those among you who have striven hard and fought and have not taken Walijah [(helpers, consultants from disbelievers, pagans, etc.) giving openly to them their secrets] besides Allah and His Messenger, and the believers. Allah is Well-Aquatinted with what you do" [9:16], "Or think you that you will enter Paradise without such (trials) as came to those who passed away before you? They were afflicted with severe poverty and ailments and were so shaken that even the Messenger and those who believed along with him said, 'When (will come) the Help of Allah?' Yes! Certainly, the Help of Allah is near!" [2:214]. Indeed it is a trial and an affliction by Allah who promised to give victory, honour and consolidation to the believers. There is no doubt that disbelief and falsehood will be abolished, in particular the state of the Jews who earned Allah's Anger, the murderers of the Prophets and the enemies of the Messengers. The termination of this state is announced in the Book of our Lord and proclaimed by our Prophet (s.a.w.). Allah (s.w.t.) States: "And we decreed for the Children of Israel in the Scripture, that indeed you would do mischief on the earth twice and you will become tyrants and extremely arrogant! So, when the promise came for the first of the two, We sent against you slaves of Ours given to terrible warfare. They entered the very innermost parts of your homes. And it was a promise (completely) fulfilled. Then We gave you once again, a return of victory over them. And We helped you with wealth and children and made you more numerous in manpower. (And We said): 'If you do good, you do good for your ownselves, and if you do evil (you do it) against yourselves'. Then, when the second promise came to pass, (We permitted your enemies) to make your faces sorrowful and to enter the mosque (of Jerusalem) as they had entered it before, and to destroy with utter destruction all that fell in their hands. [And We Said in the Taurat (Torah)]: 'It may be that your Lord may show mercy unto you, but if you return (to sins), We shall return (to Our Punishment). And We have made Hell a prison for the disbelievers" [17:4-8]. In the previous verses, Allah (s.w.t.) mentions how the Children of Israel rebelled and disobeyed the Command of Allah, and how they became extremely arrogant. The Qur'anic Mufasiroon (commentators) -may Allah have mercy upon them- have lengthily described how the Jews did mischief on this earth twice. Most of them report that the doing of mischief twice had passed when the Jews killed Zachariah (as) and then killed Yahiah (John) son of Zachariah (as). However, the scholar Al-Shinqeety -may Allah have mercy on him- says in his Tafseer (Adwa'ul-Bayaan), that their conclusions were based on Israi'liat (Jewish reports). Al-Shinqeety in commenting on the verse 'But if you return (to sins), We shall return (to Our Punishment)', says: "The Most High explains how he decreed for the Children of Israel in the Scripture, that indeed they will do mischief on the earth twice. When the first promise came, He sent against them slaves of His given to terrible warfare who occupied their homes and tortured them. Then, when the second promise came to pass, He sent to them a tribe that made their faces sorrowful and who entered the mosque (of Jerusalem) as they had entered it before, and who destroyed with utter destruction all that fell in their hands. He (s.w.t.) also explained that if they return to doing mischief for the third time, then He will return to take revenge from them by subjecting their enemies upon them 'but if you return (to sins), We shall return (to Our Punishment)'. Moreover, Allah (s.w.t.) did not explain here whether they have or have not returned to mischief for the third time. However, He did indicate in many other verses that they have returned to mischief by disbelieving in the Messenger [i.e. Muhammad (s.a.w.)], by covering his characteristics that are mentioned in their books, and by breaking their covenant with him and supporting his enemies, and many of their other hideous habits. So Allah (s.w.t.) has retaliated to fulfil 'but if you return (to sins), We shall return (to Our Punishment)' by sending His Prophet (s.a.w.) and the Muslims upon Bani Quraitha and An-Naddeer, Bani Qainuqa' and Khaybar where they were killed, made captives and expelled, and those who remained were forced to pay the Jiziah, so that they were deprived and dishonoured. Among the verses that prove their return to mischief is the Sayings of the Most High: 'And when there came to them (the Jews), a Book (this Qur'an) from Allah confirming what is with them [ Torah and the Gospel], although a foretime they had invoked Allah [for coming of Muhammad (s.a.w.)] in order to gain victory over those who disbelieved, then when there came to them that which they had recognised, they disbelieved in it. So let the Curse of Allah be on the disbelievers. How bad is that for which they have sold their ownselves, that they should disbelieve in that which Allah has revealed (the Qur'an), grudging that Allah should reveal of His Grace unto whom He wills of His slaves. So they have drawn on themselves wrath upon wrath. And for the disbelievers, there is disgracing torment' [2:88-90], and His Saying: 'Is it not (the case) that every time they make a covenant, some party among them throws it aside?' [2:100], and His Saying: 'And you will not cease to discover deceit in them..' [5:13], and His Saying: 'And those of the people of the Scripture backed th(the disbelievers) - Allah brought them down from their forts and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) a group (of them) you killed, and a group (of them) you made captives. And He caused you to inherit their lands, and their houses, and their riches, and a land which you had not trodden (before)' [33:26-27]". [Adwa' ul-Bayaan 3/408] It is evident that Allah has Promised to subject upon the corrupted Children of Israel His believing servants who will afflict them with a horrible torment. And here they are today, they have became tyrants and extremely arrogant, they have spoiled the tillage and the progeny and caused mischief on earth. We ask the Almighty to hasten His Promise for He has Stated: "And (remember when your Lord declared that He would certainly keep on sending against them (ie. the Jews), till the Day of Resurrection, those who would afflict them with a humiliating torment. Verily, your Lord is Quick in Retribution (for the disobedient, wicked) and certainly He is Oft-Forgiving (for the obedient and those who beg Allah's Forgiveness)" [7:167]. Commenting on this verse, Ibn Katheer reports how Mousa (as) forced the Jews to pay land tax, then they were conquered by the Greeks, the Kashdanies and others, then they were surmounted and degraded by the Christians, then when Muhammad (s.a.w.) came, they were under Islam's subjugation and custody, compelled to pay the land tax and Jiziah. Finally, their end will come when they emerge as supporters of Ad-Dajjal (Anti-Christ), who will be killed by Eesa bin Maryam (Jesus) (as) and the Muslims. This battle will take place at the end of time. [Tafseer Ibn Katheer 2/288] The Praiseworthy Said: "The Jews say: 'Allah's Hand is tied up (ie. He does not give or spend of His Bounty)'. Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for what they uttered. Nay, both His Hands are widely outstretched. He spends (of His Bounty) as He wills. Verily, the Revelation that has come to you from Allah increases in most of them their obstinate rebellion and disbelief. We have put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection. Every time they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it; and they (ever) strive to make mischief on earth. And Allah does not like the Mufsidun (mischief-makers)" [5:64]. In this verse, Allah (s.w.t.) revealed how their Kuffur, extreme envy and departure from the truth, led them to deceive the believers. He (s.w.t.) further revealed that He will defend His believing servants and will repel the conspiracy of the Jews in two ways: Firstly, He (s.w.t.) has put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection, they will never agree upon the truth so long as they deny and disbelieve in the Prophet (s.a.w.). "You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided" [59:14]. Secondly, Allah (s.w.t.) has promised to extinguish every fire of war they kindle. Hence, every time they betrayed the Prophet (s.a.w.) and the Muslims or continue to contest the religion of Allah, He the Almighty abolishes their cunning ambitions. It is important for the Muslim to know the characteristics of the Jews that are mentioned in Allah's Book because it will be these characteristics that will initiate their downfall and humiliation. Some of these distinctive characteristics of the Jews are explained below: They like to spread mischief and corruption on earth and strive hard to accomplish this, "and they (ever) strive to make mischief on earth. And Allah does not like the Mufsidun (mischief-makers)" [5:64]. They have incurred the Curse and Wrath of Allah. The consensus opinion of the Imams of Tafseer regarding the people asserted in the verse, "those who earned Your Anger" [1:7] is the Jews. This opinion is supported by the Allah's Saying: "Say [O Muhammad (s.a.w.) to the people of the Scripture]: 'Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allah: those who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshiped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in Hell-fire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world)" [5:60]. They are people of indignity, disobedience and transgression as Stated by Allah (s.w.t.): "Indignity is put over them wherever they may be, except when under a covenant (of protection) from Allah, and from men; they have drawn on themselves the Wrath of Allah, and destruction is put over them. This is because they disbelieved in the Ayats (evidences, verses, revelations, etc.) of Allah and killed the Prophets without right. This is because they disobeyed (Allah) and used to transgress beyond bounds (in Allah's disobedience, crimes and sins)" [3:112]. They are people of cowardliness, dismay and weakness as described by Allah (s.w.t.): "They fight not against you even together, except in fortified townships, or from behind walls. Their enmity among themselves is very great" [59:14], "and if they fight against you, they will show you their backs, and they will not be helped" [3:111]. As a result of the above, they tend to adhere strongly to this life even if it was a humiliating villainous life, as Allah Said: "And verily, you will find them (the Jews) the greediest of mankind for life.." [2:96]. Furthermore, they will always remain divided and disagreed among themselves; and conceal enmity and hatred towards each other as verified by Allah (s.w.t.): "We have put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection" [5:64]. and "You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided" [59:14]. This is a great advantage for Muslims since during wars and fighting, their ranks will disunite and their assemblies will disintegrate. If one is to follow the stories of the Jews in Surat Al-Baqarah, Al-A'araf and others, and how they treated their prophets, one would find wonders. Their disbelief and rejection of the Message of Allah with utmost arrogance is the true nature of the Jews. That is why no deviant nation has been Cursed by Allah more than that of the children of Israel. They truly earned the Wrath and Resentment of Allah, and thus they have lost all the factors of survival and existence. As for the glad tidings of the Sunnah which were articulated by the trusted and the trustworthy Muhammad (s.a.w.), Ibn Umar (ra) narrates that the Prophet (s.a.w.) said: "The Dajjal (anti-Christ) will appear behind the city, then Allah will exploit the Muslims to kill his followers, so that the Jew would hide under a tree or (behind) a stone, and that tree or stone will say to the Muslim: 'There is a Jew (hiding behind me)! Kill him' " [Reported by Imam Ahmad in his Musnad]. The Prophet's (s.a.w.) saying, 'You will fight the Jews' is addressed to the Companions; however, within the context it intends those who come after them. The above mentioned Ahadeeth and others confirm the occurrence of a battle with the Jews wherein they will be killed. Those Ahadeeth embody great tidings for this Ummah, which are the continuity of the religion of Islam till the time when E'esa bin Maryam (as) descends and the continual existence of the Supported Group (At-Ta'ifah Al-Mansoorah) which will continue to fight till he (as) descends as stated by the Prophet (s.a.w.): "There will always remain a group from among my Ummah who will continue to fight by the truth, they are apparent to those who oppose them, until the last (followers) of them fight the Maseeh Ad-Dajjal" [Reported by Ahmad and Abu Dawood]. The Ahadeeth that describes At-Taai'fah Al-Mansoorah are famous and numerous in both of the Saheehs and other compilations. Many of the Sahabah (ra) narrated the descriptions of this group which include the fact that they establish Allah's Commands, and that they are supported and upheld by Allah (s.w.t.). The above mentioned sacred verses and narrations indicate that this Ummah has been promised victory and consolidation when it abides by the prerequisite causative means, ie. when it arms itself with steeds of war and prepares itself to fight for the Cause of Allah (s.w.t.). Thereafter, the State of the Jews will perish.
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 03:52 am Al-Hiki Actually, the world did feed hundreds of thousands of Somalis. Hundreds were dying every day in Baidoa alone at the height of the famine. But I do agree that God helps those who help themselves. You ask how long the Israelis suffered under Pharoah before God delivered them, does this mean that God has delivered them again, and therefore their occupation of Palestine (Israel) is God will and should be respected???? Israel is a powerful society today. God must have made them powerful for a reason and given them back the land that was once theirs. Is God recognizing their piety?
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 04:24 am MM, I thought the world and the West failed in their mission to restore hope in Somalia. From what Anonymous posted, it is evident that Allah has Promised to subject upon the corrupted Children of Israel His believing servants who will afflict them with a horrible torment.
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 04:36 am Who is suppose to inflict who with horrible torment???? I'm not sure I'm following you here. the Jews already had their horrible torment and are now inflicting horrible torment. So are the Jews now supose to inflict horrible torment upon the Muslims???? Restore Hope wasn't the total failure it's been labeled. Somalia is far more stable now than in 92 and the famine was largely defeated. The larger, more permanent solution of establishing a Somali government failed. But in the aggragate I think we can safely say Somalia is far better off now than it was prior to the intervention. It's really a question of whether you see the glass as half full or half empty I guess.
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 04:49 am MM, Read what Anonymous wrote and you will know who is suppose to inflict horrible torment. The US and UN plan to restore hope, peace and stablity were a total failure. U.N. COUNCIL SAYS SOMALIA STILL UNDER ARMS EMBARGO (Reuter 6 Apr 95, by Anthony Goodman) UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council reminded all governments on Thursday that a 1992 arms embargo still applies to Somalia, despite the ending last month of the U.N. peackeeping operation in that faction-torn country. This was one of the points in a statement, read at a brief council meeting, summing up some of the lessons of the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM), which at one time involved more than 29,000 troops. They took over in May 1993 from an even larger United States- led task force which arrived in December 1992 to help end starvation and try to halt factional fighting. "The Security Council reaffirms the obligations of states to implement fully the embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Somalia...and calls on states, especially neighbouring states, to refrain from actions capable of exacerbating the conflict in Somalia," the statement said... UN GOES BACK TO SOMALIA (Economist via RBB 20 May 95) Barely three months have passed since the last United Nations peacekeepers left the Somali capital, Mogadishu, at the end of a mission widely seen as inept and ineffective even by UN standards. Yet now UN aid agencies such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF are to go back. The conditions, though, will be very different: no UN troops, no UN political office. The risks are considerable. Security in Mogadishu is fragile, and without the protection of the UN troops aid workers could easily become caught up in the petty squabbles which so often lead to street fighting in the city. They are also likely to face claims for money from thousands of Somalis formerly employed by the UN. The Somalis are not known for their patience in bargaining; if negotiation fails, they may well resort to intimidation and indeed hostage- taking. The UN is confident, however, that it can win the support of clan leaders and the ordinary citizens of Mogadishu. Its humanitarian work will be kept distinct from politics. During its earlier intervention, the two were closely linked, an awkward relationship that often led to a conflict of purpose. In 1993, when the UN switched from trying to keep the peace to trying to enforce it, and began pursuing Mogadishu's most powerful warlord, General Muhammad Farrah Aideed, humanitarian projects suffered. Aid workers who had nothing to do with the pursuit of General Aideed became the focus of hostility. If there is to be a new UN political office for Somalia, it is likely to be based outside the country in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. General Aideed has made it clear that he will not tolerate the presence of UN political officers interfering in what he considers his domain. For the past three months, his radio station has been broadcasting bellicose statements against any new UN political mission in Somalia, but declaring that he would welcome UN aid officials provided they limit their work to that field... The money available will be limited: the new UN aid operations are likely to cost barely a tenth of what the UN was spending, overall, at the height of its earlier operations. The aid projects will concentrate on enhancing the Somalis' ability to grow enough to feed themselves. The country has come a long way since the darkest days of the 1992 famine, but the UN fears it could soon descend again into famine if fresh fighting erupts... U.N. HAS ABANDONED SOMALIS TO WARLORDS, GROUP SAYS (IPS 7 May 95, by Farhan Haq) UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia has left the nation at the mercy of armed faction leaders whom it did little to discourage, a U.S.-based human rights group says. In a report evaluating the two-year U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM), Human Rights Watch (HRW)/Africa, faults the world body for focusing too much on clan leaders, at the expense of building real peace in Somalia. UNOSOM ended its mission at the end of March. "The U.N. dealt with the war leaders as if with national leaders, but without holding these claimants to authority and legitimacy accountable for their actions against any consistent standard," the report charges. HRW traces a pattern of disastrous ties with faction chiefs from the moment that UNOSOM took over from a U.S.-led force in March 1993 to help rebuild the country after two years of war and famine in which more than 300,000 people died. It details the tight cooperation which developed between UNOSOM officials and the major warring factions, particularly those based in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. By early 1994, for example, UNOSOM employed some 17,000 Somalis, including about 11,000 in Mogadishu. Many of these workers - including guards and local police - were recruited by rival Mogadishu warlords, notably Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohammed. The report cites one Somali official's claim that Aidid - the target of a failed five-month U.N. manhunt in 1993 - "received a 30 percent cut of the rents paid for houses by the U.N. and the salaries paid to armed guards and escorts." Such collusion between UNOSOM and the faction leaders they ostensibly sought to keep in check weakened the entire U.N. mission, the report says. By focussing its peacemaking efforts on the faction leaders and failing to hold them accountable for abuses against their fellow-Somalis, the report argues, UNOSOM undermined peaceful alternatives to those leaders' power struggles. "In some ways, UNOSOM actually boosted the power of the Mogadishu war leaders - by providing a source of political legitimacy, huge amounts of cash, and even arms," the report argues. U.N. officials have stressed in the past that they did not knowingly collaborate with leaders like Aidid, but rather chose to work with Somali elders and clan heads to rebuild the nation's shattered civil society. But some officials have admitted they made serious mistakes. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said last year that deals with faction-linked guards or drivers of armed vehicles called "technicals" were "known, but unavoidable" in Mogadishu. Independent experts on Somali relief agree that the militia focus badly skewed U.N. priorities in rebuilding the country. "I think the United Nations relied too much, for reasons which need to be investigated and audited, on some militia leaders who had little to do with the reality of ordinary Somalis," says Hussein Bolhan, a founder of the U.S.-based Centre for Health and Development. "It catered to warlords whom it pampered, or alternately alienated," Bolhan adds. "That completely derailed a mission which had been declared to help people." HRW also accuses the world body of abandoning its former Somali employees, many of whom have been threatened since peacekeeping forces left Somalia at the end of March... LETTER FROM BOUTROS-GHALI TO PRESIDENT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL (UNIC 6 Jun 95 [UN document S/1995/451, 2 Jun 95) I have the honour to refer to my letter of 18 April 1995 concerning the situation in Somalia (S/1995/322), in which I told you of my intention to inform the members of the Security Council of any new developments concerning the small United Nations political office for Somalia, which is presently operating out of Nairobi, and of the conclusions of the security assessment mission that had just been dispatched to Mogadishu. With regard to security, a new set of guidelines for Mogadishu has been adopted on the basis of the mission's conclusions. These guidelines include the provision that international United Nations staff members are authorized to travel to Mogadishu and stay there no longer than three days a week. I should point out, however, that the instability and unpredictability of security conditions in the Somali capital since the mission took place have severely curtailed visits by international staff. I have twice taken the necessary steps, in late April and in early May, to dispatch special envoys to Mogadishu to request the views of Somali leaders concerning a possible United Nations political presence in their country. This effort has yielded no results, because of the opposition of the two principal leaders. Indeed, Mr. Ali Mahdi refused to meet with my first envoy because the envoy had been associated with the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM); as for my second envoy, his visit failed to take place, since at the last minute General Aidid went back on his decision to see him. It is worth pointing out, however, that a wide range of leaders representing the main Somali factions, including a wing of the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance (USC/SNA), favourably welcomed my intention to set up a United Nations political office in their country. Under these circumstances, I have decided that the political office for Somalia currently operating out of Nairobi will be kept there until an improvement in the situation allows it to be transferred to Mogadishu. I have also decided to reduce the staff of this office to one director at the D-2 level, and one General Service staff member... (Signed) Boutros BOUTROS-GHALI SOMALI CLANS ARE THE KEY (NA June 95, p.20, by Faisal Ahmed Hassan) ...The Americans and the UN have come and gone without producing any political solution and there is little chance that they will return. Their plans to restore hope, peace and stability were a total failure. The UN failed to find any solution to the Somali crisis because it did not understand the psychological and political structure of the Somalis. It did not understand or did not take into account the all important clan system... It is time to look for new and creative solutions to solve the existing problems. The basis must lie in the Somali clan loyalties which dominate our social, political and economic life. We need to rethink a new political structure based on decentralization, with power in the provinces regions, where clan loyalties actually unite rather than dividing our people. The provinces must be able to decide their own futures rather than waiting for the warlords in Mogadishu to conclude their struggle and impose their solutions on the rest of us. The new provinces should represent clan interests and provide safe-havens for their own people. The provincial leaders should be elected by their clan members and be fully accountable to them. They should have the power to follow the interests of their own people. Somalis all believe in clan politics and clan affiliation whether educated or not. They instinctively understand the complex inter clan relationships that influence every facet of their lives. Indeed their strong belief in tribalism is the basis of their identity. Mogadishu is primarily the base of the Hawiye clan which is fighting for recontrol of the city. Gunmen control everyday life because the struggle inside the Hawiye clan is still not decided. Yet the Hawiye leaders think that they will be able to control the destiny of the whole nation. Other clans and provinces have to wait while the wasteful warfare continues. But there is an alternative to this struggle to death. I propose that we should decentralize, base power on the provinces and recognise that clan loyalty is the determining factor in our identity. In addition: - Provinces based on clans should be separate but equal. - We should redraw the boundaries of provinces and regions to take account of the true distribution of clan populations. - Power should be decentralized from the central government and transferred to the provinces. - Each province should draft its own constitution and produce its own identity cards. - Each province should have its own legislature and pass its own laws. - Each province should have elected leaders accountable to their clan members. - The Federal Government should only be symbolic and its budget should be approved by the provinces voting separately. - Provinces should have equal numbers of representatives in the Federal Government. - Provinces should have the power to make treaties with other provinces and nations. Under this system each province would be able to control its own resources and make decisions affecting its future. This would allow General Aideed to concentrate on the development of his own province rather than fighting for national control in Mogadishu. Aideed's Habir Gedir sub-clan of the Hawiye comes from the Mudug region. It is poor, short of water, exposed to drought with little agriculture except for cattle raising. Aideed would concentrate on the welfare of his own clan and on trade with others rather than trying to seize total power at the centre. ** FIGHTING CONTINUES WITH ARMS AND WORDS ** BELET HUEN RETAKEN (Reuter 11 April 95) A Somali faction said on Tuesday it had seized control of the central town of Belet Huen from forces loyal to warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in fighting that killed nearly 50 people. Ahmed Weheliye, leader of the United Somali Congress-Peace Movement from the Hawadle clan, said his fighters captured Belet Huen during a day-long battle on Monday in which 46 people were killed and nearly 100 others were wounded. U.N. officials said they had no independent confirmation of the report. The so-called Peace Movement is allied to warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed's United Somali Congress. Aideed's Somali National Alliance dominated by the Habr Gedir sub-clan captured Belet Huen, whose population is mainly Hawadleh and which lies 300 km (190 miles) north of Mogadishu, last year... ALI MAHDI RADIO ACCUSES AYDID FACTION OF TRYING TO BUY ARMS (SWB 19 Apr 95 [RMO in Somali, 17 Apr 95]) Excerpts from report by Somali pro-Ali Mahdi Muhammad radio... An important reliable report received from sources close to the SNA [Somali National Alliance] says that SNA officials are roaming some districts in Zone Five of Ethiopia, which is inhabited by members of the Somali community, with the the aim of buying arms from the Ethiopian government. The report adds that the officials operating in the SNA's name are now in Shilabu District in Zone Five of Ethiopia. The plan to smuggle arms from Ethiopia into Somalia is being closely monitored. These secret arms deals by the SNA grossly contravene the recent peace agreement [between the SNA and the Somali Salvation Alliance, SSA] and the UN's arms embargo on Somalia... The spokesman added that other reliable reports say that a delegation of SNA officials had been sent to Nigeria to procure arms from Nigeria. The delegation is said to be in Lagos at the moment trying to convince the military leadership of that country to consent to their wishes... MENA REPORTS CHALLENGE TO AYDID'S LEADERSHIP FROM HIS FORMER FINANCIAL BACKER (SWB 23 May 95 [MENA news agency, Cairo, in Arabic 21 May 95]) Nairobi: Somali diplomatic quarters and foreign diplomats are awaiting the results of the coup [Arabic: inqilab] led by Somali businessman Osman Husayn Ali Atto against Maj-Gen Muhammad Farah Aydid, leader of the United Somali Congress [USC]. Observers note that Atto, Aydid's right-hand man and the main financier of the USC militias since the outbreak of the Somali civil war, poses a real challenge to Aydid in south Mogadishu, the first since the downfall of late President Muhammad Siyad Barreh. A former Somali ambassador in an African country says Aydid never expected a rebellion against him from a member of his own clan of Habar Gedir, which he led for five years in ferocious battles against other clans and tribes until Habar Gedir imposed control over south Mogadishu. In an interview with a MENA correspondent in Nairobi, the ambassador said the Habar Gedir clan, like other factions of the Somali people, is tired of the civil war and has opted for peace with other factions rather than have Aydid as president of Somalia. The ambassador noted that Atto, who led the rebellion to remove Aydid from the USC leadership, has rallied the majority of the Habar Gedir clan behind him by raising the slogan of peace and dialogue with other tribes, believing that five years of war and destruction are enough to convince the Somalis of the futility of war, which has led to the deaths of thousands and the displacement of millions of Somalis. The Somali diplomat noted that although Atto has won the majority of the USC Central Committee over to his side, including Muhammad Hasan Awali and Husayn Tumbul, it is difficult for him to exclude Aydid from the Somali political equation for good. The diplomat noted that Aydid still enjoys the support of fanatical youths and has the ability to manoeuvre in view of his former political and military experience... Reports from Mogadishu indicate that Ali Mahdi, the leader of the Somali Salvation Alliance and a bitter foe of Aydid, has advised his allies not to hold contacts with the two disputing sides until things become clear. Atto has declared that he has split from Aydid and that he supports dialogue with the other Somali factions for the formation of a national unity government and the achievement of a comprehensive reconciliation. Aydid retorted by accusing Atto of being an agent of foreign forces, declaring that any Somali or foreigner who contacts Atto will become his enemy. He also threatened to seize Atto's property. OSMAN ATTO WARNS AGAINST FRESH FIGHTING IN KISMAYO (Reuter 7 Jun 95, by Aden Ali) MOGADISHU - Mogadishu militia chief Osman Hassan Ali Atto on Wednesday warned rival leaders against restarting the bloody clan feuds which devastated the Horn of Africa nation over the past four years... Osman Atto was referring to threats by Ahmed Omar Jess, a militia leader of the Ogaden clan and an ally of Mogadishu faction leader Mohamed Farah Aideed of the Habre Gedir clan, who recently declared plans to attack the southern port of Kismayu. The port city itself is held by militia leader Mohamed Siad Hersi, also known as General Morgan, while Jess's followers are in the hinterland. Division of the southern Lower Jubba region along those lines was agreed at a United Nations-sponsored conference last year and Osman Atto, who played a role in the negotiations, wants it to be maintained. "Any party or individual detrimental to the Lower Jubba peace agreement will face a joint opposition from our side and General Morgan," Osman Atto told Reuters. He said he was aware Jess was being supported by figures in Mogadishu, a clear reference to Aideed. "If Jess insists on sabotaging the peace agreement, he will face the consequences," Osman Atto warned... SOMALI FACTION VOTES TO REMOVE AIDEED AS CHAIRMAN (Reuter 12 Jun 95) MOGADISHU - Powerful Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed, who defied U.N. forces in Mogadishu, has been ousted as chairman of his faction and replaced by his former right-hand man, members of the faction said on Monday. A vote against Aideed was taken on Sunday at a special congress in Mogadishu of the United Somali Congress-Somali National Alliance (USC-SNA), called by Aideed's opponents within the group. Aideed was replaced by former ally and financier Osman Hassan Ali Atto. Osman Atto attacked Aideed for frustrating efforts to rebuild Somalia and urged the United Nations and aid agencies to return and help the broken Horn of Africa nation. "We will give them a guarantee of security," Osman Atto told the 2,000-strong congress... Sunday's congress follows a three-week central committee meeting by the USC-SNA, sponsored by businessman Osman Atto who broke with Aideed before a U.N. troop withdrawal in March. The heavily-guarded congress, expected to last a week, is being attended by intellectuals, businessmen, politicans and women delegates. Aideed has refused to recognise the meeting, calling it "foreign-manipulated". Somalia has been generally quieter since U.N. forces left in early March, although there is sporadic factional fighting and fears Osman Atto and Aideed's dispute would provoke a widespread conflict. ** HUMANITARIAN ISSUES ** CALL FOR AID (Moneyclips via RBB 23 May 95 [Saudi Gazette, by Alawi Al Jifri]) Jeddah, May 18: Seventeen out of Somalia's eighteen regions are currently stable and governed by its own people. Mogadishu remains vulnerable to another civil strife as its conflicting military factions seem reluctant, as always, to reach a compromising agreement over each faction's share in power, hence, minimising the hopes of the whole Somali nation of a new, stable order, Mowlid Ma'an Mohamoud, Chairman of Somali African Muki Organisation (Samo) told the Gazette yesterday. "We call on the members of the international community to assist stable regions in Somalia", says Mohamoud. Samo is a political movement, with supporters in nine of Somalia's richest regions. Its supporters constitute 35 percent of the 9.7m Somali population. Born out of sedentary societies Samo has never been engaged in military activities. Samo is one of the signatories of the Addis Ababa conference for the national reconciliation of Somalia. Seven new organisations have surfaced in Somalia afterwards. "Although they haven't been recognised by the United Nations, their Somali brothers can neither ignore their existence nor underestimate their contributions," says Mohamoud. With other allies Samo will embark on an international campaign to look for potential countries which may be willing to host another Somali reconciliation conference. "We can't be ruled by gun point, leaders of Somali military groups know this. We have to come together and discuss our differences openly. We must try to solve our disputes once and for all. Our dialogue must be that of facts and reason and not that of guns and bullets," he notes. Mohamoud calls on the UN and members of the international community to resume their aid programmes to the Somali nation. He emphasises that donating countries must make sure that their assistance are being distributed equally and fairly. It must reach the hands of the needy and not to the hands of the greedy, he says... CODE OF CONDUCT FOR AID TO SOMALIA (AKGED 28 Apr 95 [Code of Conduct for International Rehabilitation and Development Assistance to Somalia. SACB, 8 Feb 95]) International assistance to Somalia is founded on the basic principle that responsibility for its effective execution shall remain with the Somali people. It is expected, therefore, that responsible Somali authorities will assume their proper role to ensure that conditions exist for the effective implementation of aid activities. Donors and other international partners are prepared to consider rehabilitation and development assistance in areas where a number of conditions are fulfilled. The following principles, drawn up by the Somalia Aid Coordination Body (SACB) define the circumstances required for the sucessful and sustainable implementation of rehabilitation and development assistance. The same principles are also applicable for humanitarian assistance with due regard to its particular nature. 1. Agencies working with the Somali people will: 1.1 pay due regard to local social customs, cultural an dreligious values; 1.2 maintain impartiality in the conduct of their activities; 1.3 develop a coordinated approach to programme implementation. 2. For their part, the responsible Somali authorities must guarantee: 2.1 that secure conditions prevail for aid agencies and their staff (as evidenced by the absence of acts such as banditry, kidnapping, extortion and other forms of violence); 2.2 that they pursue and bring to justice the perpetrators of criminal acts. 3. The responsible Somali authorities must also provide the necessary conditions for the implementation of rehabilitation and development activities by: 3.1 providing office and residential premises to agencies (where available); 3.2 allowing agencies to decide how to meet their own transport needs; 3.3 allowing agencies to decide their local staffing needs, and to employ staff on technical merits in accordance with project requirements; 3.4 exempting all aid personnel and aid- related cargo (including fuel) from duties, taxes and any other form of levy; 3.5 publishing a scale of reasonable tariffs for the payment of services rendered at the demand of an agency for the clearance of aid cargo at ports and airports. 4. The SACB will monitor closely the implementation of this Code and advise Donors and other international partners to take appropriate action whenever deemed necessary, including suspension of activities. WORK GOES ON AFTER THE UNOSOM WITHDRAWAL (NNS Feb-Mar 95) Despite the UNOSOM withdrawal from Somalia in early March, work by NGOs and UN organisations is continuing `as normal' in most parts of the country, where, says Johan Svensson of Life and Peace Institute (LPI), the situation is "quiet and calm". LPI was involved in capacity building initiatives for district councils under UNOSOM and currently has a team in Jowhar training 3 councils this week. Training for a further 7 is planned for mid-April. They also restarted a series of workshops for women's groups in Galcayo in early March, the second this year is underway in Bossasso... MARKET FORCES STILL WORK IN ANARCHIC SOMALIA (Reuter 27 Apr 95, by Aden Ali) MOGADISHU - Somalia's central bank was blown to bits and looted years ago but market forces still have a way of working amid the anarchy of this Horn of Africa nation. This week, U.S. dollars have flooded the capital as exporters cash in on the pilgrimage season to the Holy city of Mecca by dispatching shiploads of goats for pilgrims to eat. As a result, the Somali shilling strengthened on Thursday to 5,450 shillings to the dollar from 6,300. In early March, the shilling fell to about 6,500 shillings to the dollar from around 4,500, when U.N. peacekeeping forces evacuated after a failed two-year mission to restore peace that cost in excess of $3 billion. The U.N. operation was Somalia's largest single employer. Exchange rates are set by traders who sit in Mogadishu's teeming Bakaaraha market and keep up to date on international markets by listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation. Many feared a return to all-out civil war between rival clan militias with the pullout of U.N. forces but that has not yet happened and trade has boomed at Mogadishu port. Somalia was plunged into anarchy when clan guerrillas ousted former president Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991. The doors of the central bank were blown apart, safes were blasted and much of the cash was looted. Bank notes littered the streets outside. In defiance of the principles of economics, the Somali shilling maintained value and is still used locally today. Mogadishu's two main rival warlords, Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, tore the city apart in bitter feuding that in part was caused by a quarrel over money. Aideed was angry that Ali Mahdi had privately imported "New Somali Shilling" bank notes to pay his militias. The new Somali shillings are now only accepted in Ali Mahdi's enclave in northern Mogadishu, while most of the rest of the country uses old Somali shillings. In northwestern Somalia, the former British protectorate that declared independence from the rest of the country in May 1991, clan leaders want to introduce their own currency too. With no more bank notes being printed - Somalia has not had a government for four years - the currency is literally disintegrating in people's hands. People welcomed the appearance of counterfeit bank notes on the market early this year - and used them as tender - because they were clean and looked good, a Mogadishu resident said. FIRST U.N. SHIP SINCE EVACUATION IN SOMALI CAPITAL (Reuter 2 May 95) MOGADISHU - The first United Nations relief ship since thousands of peacekeepers abandoned Somalia in March docked in Mogadishu on Tuesday, aid officials said. The ship, chartered by the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), offloaded 323 tonnes of food and medical supplies, plus 100 special education kits for use in schools that began functioning again after foreign troops arrived in 1993. Dozens of ships have made it into Mogadishu port since the last U.S. Marines evacuated the port on March 2, though many had predicted that all-out clan fighting would erupt after the foreigners left. Rival clan militia leaders Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed agreed to place the sea port under joint management, with civilian police to guard the docks themselves. Somalis say it was an agreement reached under pressure from powerful local merchants who wanted trade to work. A similar accord was reached for control of the airport but the runway has not functioned since March because many rival clan gangs have laid claim to different parts of it, dumping sand on the tarmac so that planes cannot land... NEW PORT ACCORD (ION 3
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 05:08 am http://www.netnomad.com/
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| | Monday, March 19, 2001 - 10:53 am The Christain and atheist Missionary Menace: Christian missionaries and atheist organizations and NGOs have launched an intense proselytizing campaign in Muslim countries. The poverty, misery and starvation of the impoverished Muslims are being exploited by these missionaries to proselytize them. Welfare measures, developmental, health and educational programs form the backbone of their massive campaign. Relief aid is being organized with the explicit purpose of converting the indigent Muslims to Christianity. Systematic religious propaganda and indoctrination are being carried out on an unprecedented scale. They have achieved immense successes in this field. "Then Trojan Horse" which has entered the Muslim lands is posing a great threat to their Imaan and Islam. They are in full swing in countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia where they expect to convert half the population to their faith by the year 2000. Indigent Muslims driven by poverty and misery grovel at the feet of the kuffar for relief and succor at the cost of their Imaan. Cross stupidity and crass ignorance have caused them to barter their Emaan for some miserable gains of the Dunya. The kuffaar await such conditions to arise among the impoverished Muslims to rush relief aids with the underlying motive of evangelization. This vicious Octopus of Kufr has extended its deadly tentacles to a network of outlying villages in Muslim countries to mislead unwary and uninformed Muslims and entrap them in the web of dark kufr. It is said that in Bangladesh alone they are operating in over 800 villages. Asaf Hussain writes about the predicament in Bangladesh: "the ultimate objective of the numerous mission organizations and agencies operating there is the evangelization of the people of Bangladesh .... As such economic development was not an end in itself to benefit the people, but a means for proselytizing them. Missionaries were therefore, very articulate about their developmental schemes but very reticent about evangelization of the people. Particularly, in the case of Muslims any such statistics of evangelization of Muslims was not published." (BIRTH OF BANGLADESH THE POLITICAL ROLE OF MISSIONS) In the present times, the Emaan of the Muslims have reached a low ebb. It is like a shaking reed. It is further emaciated by crass ignorance and abject poverty. It has provided a fertile ground for religious rivals to sow the seeds of apostasy among the impoverished and unwary Muslims. Ignorant Muslims consider these crusading religious bodies as great benefactors of humanity. They are prepared to even abandon their faith for the contemptible gains of the Dunya. Hence, in these countries the number who has embraced Christianity amounts to legion. The old myth that the Muslims are staunch believers and cannot be converted to any other religion holds no water. Modern missionaries with their vast resources and foreign aid have exploded this myth. They are scoring great successes in this field. Asaf Hussain writes: "Christian Missions are approaching Muslim populations in a very systematic and well organized manner. They lack neither finds nor organization nor expertise. The Muslim countries, on the other hand, have done nothing to counteract this. On the contrary, they are confident that Muslims cannot be converted and in some cases actively extend help to accomplish the mission work. This is only a self-delusion and in the long run it will turn out that Muslims are increasingly becoming Christians." (Birth of Bangladesh: The Political Role of Missions) In Indonesia too much missionary work is going apace. The question how Muslims in Indonesia come to turn away from Islam and end up as Christians is a moot point. The missions have their own strategies in promoting evangelization. Ahmad Von Denffer writes: "In Indonesia today the preaching of the gospel goes along with the rendering of highly appreciated service to society through schools, universities, hospitals and orphanages. Church people tell missionaries that quick results should not be expected. Rather the seeds are to be sown now, while harvesting comes after the process of "de- Islamization' (which expresses itself in promoting secular and Western thought) has gone far enough... the effort to create the impression that Muslims in Indonesia are not really Muslims after all, is part of the main strategy that Christians now employ when doing mission among Muslims. Their motto is "After care, comes the evangelism." Their official indoctrination program has been epitomized in the following words? "The theory was indoctrination,. but the practice was care and evangelism" (INDONESIA? How Muslims are Made Christians) Christian evangelization programs embrace the whole World. They specifically target Muslims. Mali for example which is a Muslim-majority country is said to be a fertile ground for missionaries. Ahmad Abu Sulaiman writes: "Mali is one of the poorest countries on this earth. Almost all the population is engaged in insufficient subsistence economy, and is illiterate and ignorant of even the basic teachings of Islam... Today, widespread poverty and ignorance provide the two most important inlets for the missionaries, providing ample scope for the medical, social, educational and other activities that prepare the way for proselytization, which is the ultimate goal."  CHRISTIANITY AND MISSION IN MALI) Alhaj A D Ajijola narrating his Nigerian experience, attributes the origin of Western education in Nigeria to Christian missionaries who followed a ruthless policy of proselytism. He writes: "The Muslims, until lately, did not become involved in educational development early enough in Nigeria but, Christian Missionaries who came from secular states of Europe with public funds, introduced education on the Western pattern which soon spread all over the country. Admission to these Christian schools was conditioned on accepting Christianity. Thus, the Christian missionaries used educational institutions to force the Muslim youth to follow their faith." (Introduction, THE MYTH OF THE CROSS) Tanzania another Muslim majority country too had the above experience. Muhammad Samiullah in his "PLIGHT OF MUSLIMS IN AFRICA AND ASIA" states: "Modern education was first provided by the Mission Societies who came to Tanzania (then Taganyika). Both the Roman Catholics and Protestants established primary schools, secondary schools and agricultural colleges. It was then necessary for all who wanted to get education in these schools to become Christians. Therefore, many Muslims adopted Christianity to get education. Even those Muslims who remained Muslims in these schools had to go to the church and study the Bible and be examined on it. Thus, because of being in contact with the Christian way of life for a long time, many Muslims did not come back to Islam after completing their studies. Others who came to Islam remained half Muslims and half Christians.In Malawi out of the 5000 odd villages only a few have madrasahs. Over 95% Muslims are ignorant. The Christian missionaries are working very hard in the area and the Muslims, therefore, need to organize themselves on sound footings to meet the challenge. Poverty and ignorance of Islam has enabled the missionaries to convert many Muslim villagers to Christianity. Sierra Leone which has a Muslim majority also faces the Christian missionary onslaught. They are operating through the educational system. Christian missions run the great majority of Primary schools. Samiullali writes: "Christian Missions desire Muslim children to become Christians. This problem is not duly tackled in all humanity and sincerity our younger generation would be led astray and become converted to Christianity throughout the whole country. The whole of the African continent is infested with missionaries aiming to convert Muslims. The Tabligh Jamaat can perform a yeoman service by propagating Islam among the masses and establishing Madrasahs to educate the ignorant children along the religious lines and also repeatedly warning them about the perils of this black serpent of kufr which has surrounded them which is seeking for opportunities to send them to perdition by misleading and misguiding them to worship stones and images and uphold myths and fallacies of Roman pagans and Greek philosophers; to believe in a tampered and interpolated version of the divinely rejected Gospel which is bristling with errors, additions and forgeries concocted by copyists and priests and mutilated by Pauline creed of Trinity, Atonement and Crucifixion which were canonized as the true word of God in the Council of Nicea in 325 CE consigning to the flames the numerous genuine Gospels to the Litter dismay of the world, opening the way to infernal and eternal doom. Mission work in India, in the past, was sullied by a spate of violence and inhuman crimes. With the collapse of the Mughal Empire, the British became the virtual rulers of India which paved the way for a great multitude of missionaries and ancillary workers to stalk the land in a crusading campaign to propagate Christianity. Like in Bangladesh, they aimed at converting the whole of India to Christianity. They left no stone unturned in their efforts to proselytize Muslims but they failed miserably in their efforts because of the unshakable Emaan of the early Muslims. The enemies used threat and intimidation to force Christianity on an unwilling public but to no avail. They resorted to such brutal measures as massacring the Ulema, general killing of civilians, exiling religious scholars, closing down religious schools and eliminating the Sharia. All these Draconian measures did not produce the desired results. Their failure created frustration and an inferiority complex in them which culminated in a campaign of vilification of Islam by word and thought. Some of the tactics these nefarious elements employ are fraudulent, deceptive and repulsive. Hospitals run by missionaries coerce their Muslim patients to take in the medicine ordered to them in the name of Jesus. But Allah Taala is the Curer of disease. There are other instances where asked to worship the image of Mary or Jesus before qualifying for free medical treatment and hospitalization. Performing this action is tantamount to idolatry which expels one from the fold of Islam. As Western medicine is full of side effects, the benefit derived is practically nil or negligible. The belief that their medicine cures is a baseless conviction. The distribution of pictures of Jesus or Mary form part of their charitable work in order to create an impression that these gods of theirs are the real helpers and therefore, deserve to be loved and deified. The distribution of free meals under relief aid, may contain haraam ingredients that is detrimental to Imaan. Such meals may include even pork-based products. Missionaries and their cohorts have large sums of ill-gotten wealth at their disposal. They single out gullible women for financial aid. These are not doled out to them on humanitarian grounds or for any altruistic motives but with the sole aim of evangelization. To ensure that these recipients do not play a deceptive role, some part of their body is stamped with a kufr emblem which deprives them of their lmaan and forebodes an evil end. This is evidenced in Bangladesh. Further, the frantic struggle among the Muslim parents to admit their children to Catholic schools for the sake of prestige and good education has proved to be a great disaster. Children who come under demoralizing and dehumanizing influences in these institutions of atheism and immorality soon learn to question the accepted beliefs of Islam and throw overboard its time honored injunctions and practices. Eventually, their lmaan and Aakirah are being jeopardized. The eyes of the parents have turned blind that the road leading to Jannah is not visible. The results of the missionary efforts of the kuffaar are stunning and staggering. A considerable number of Muslims have been converted to their deviant faith. The bulk of the Muslim preachers should make concerted efforts to stem the tide of mass conversions taking place in the third world Muslim countries. They have to put their heart and soul into the affair with absolute sincerity and dedication to halt to the missionary menace. Public platforms should be used for this purpose along with the launching of an extensive literary propaganda to enlighten the ignorant and weak Muslim masses depicting the splendor of Islam and the perils of apostasization and the divine retribution awaiting them in the Aakhirah But they are oblivious to this state of affairs The Ulama are the vanguard of Islam. They should urge the apostates to return to the fold of Islam after due repentance. But why have they adopted a lackadaisical attitude towards the spread of kufr which is eating the very vitals of the society. Why are they conniving at this burgeoning evil? Can they expect to receive Allah Ta'ala's blessing and mercy by adopting such a nonchalant attitude? Definitely not! They must instead be prepared to receive divine punishment. No wonder these countries where apostasy is rife are degenerating day by day. Their misery is multiplying. There are disasters like drought, disease, famine, starvation, floods and cyclones that are playing havoc on them. This is the dismal result of begging help from the enemies of Allah Azza Wa Jal and bartering one's faith for the transient pleasures of Dunya. It was an age old dream of missionanes to cause the Muslim community to deviate and apostatize from Islam. They employed various vile stratagems to achieve this end History bears ample testimony to their oppressive, repressive and deceptive methods of proselytization. Lets have a glimpse at the chronicles of the ecclesiastical history for a wider understanding.
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| | Tuesday, March 20, 2001 - 12:23 am Al-Haki I disagree. I do not think it was a total failure. It really brought a great deal of stability (particularly economic and security wise) to Somalia. Somalia in 1992 was really a total zoo. People were dying everywhere. The security situation had not yet sorted itself out. Post 1995 there's certainly still some factional violence, and there's certainly still a problem with Mooryan, but mass starvation is a thing of the past, and the level of violence is considerably lower than it was. The reason for the harsh critique is multi-fold. First, the press love to point to institutional failures. Hence they are much more likely to point out what wasn't achieved than what was. Second was the way the mission ended. It did not end on UN terms. The UN was more or less forced to quit and accept the fact that they couldn't force a resolution. But the reality is the mission did in fact have some marked success, most importantly bringing the famine back under control and estabilshing an environment in which the level of violence was reduced considerably.
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| | Tuesday, March 20, 2001 - 08:08 am MM, None of the things the UN or the US did made Somalia better. The situation in Somalia at that time could only gotten better. When the UN and the US left Somalia, the situation was still the way they left or worst. They left with no hope and therefore no hope were restored.
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| | Tuesday, March 20, 2001 - 10:55 pm Al-Haki Saxib I beg to differ. First of all let's start with raw numbers. There were literally hundreds of people dying every day from starvation when I arrived in December 1992. Those people would most certainly have died without our intervention. Most reasonable estiamates of the number of people who would have died without the intervention range into the hundreds of thousands. As for security, the security situation improved for two principal reasons. We destroyed a lot of heavy weapons while we were there. Tanks, artillery, recoilles rifles and the like. Secondly, the SNA (the most powerful of the military groups) used large amounts of ammunition in fighting us. This resource expenditure was not easily replaced. Hence the level of organized violence post 1995 has not come even close to the level of pre-1993 violence. Check the casualty figures for these post 1995 fights and it's always in the single or double digits, never in the 4 digits like in 1991 and 1992. So while I agree that we pulled pitch early and should have stayed and completed the mission, I don't agree that nothing at all was accomplished. that's hyperbole which argues directly in the face of the facts.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 12:05 pm Here is the facts and numbers according to NOT Mad Mac: According to the NY Times, December 8, 1993, UN/U.S. forces inflicted 6,000 to 10,000 casualties on the Somali. UN Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni estimated that 2/3 of the casualties were women and children.The Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1993, estimated that only a small fraction of the UN and US relief efforts benefited Somali people. Foreign business people profited from fast food sales to the UN soldiers, a $9 million sewer system in the UN/U.S. headquarters and helicopter flights for Western officials. The U.S. mission in Somalia- anarchy, wasted money, many Somalis and American dead. The subject of armies helping starving people were not the mission of US. Operation restore hope was, officially, a humanitarian mission to deal out food to the starving civilians in Somalia. However, as Corporal Shawn Nelson noticed after spending over a month in Somalia without seeing a single hunger-stricken somali, that was not why the American rangers where there at all: They were there to wage war against a Somali clan armies. He had not once left the american base in Mogadishu airfield until at 3 pm on the 3rd of October 1993 he was sent on a simple mission: 120 commandoes from the Ranger unit and the Delta group would drop down from Blackhawks to the front of hotel Olympic in the center of Mogadishu. Part of the commmandos would stay out to guard the building, while others would enter the hotel in order to capture a somali war leader, Mohamed Farah Aidid. When the plan was cerreid out, the commanders of the US troops soon noticed they'd underestimated their adversaries. At 5 o'clock a US helicopter was hit, and crashed. Shawn Nelson, who was guarding the hotel saw the smoke rise from behind the buildings. A group of Somalis rushed towards the smoke. Nelson knew the crew would need help: the last time a Blackhawk had crashed, they had shown pictures of Somalis dragging the mutilated bodies of the soldiers down a street. Part of Nelsons platoon was ordered to the crash site. Two little boys ran at them, one of them had something in his hand. Nelson fired at them with his M60. One of the boys fell down, the other limped to hide behind a corner. The dead boy had a wooden stick in his hand. An armed somalese man rode a cow down the street. 8 men were walking beside the animal, two of whom were armed. Nelson fired again, and the men dropped to the ground. Soon a new crowd was walking determinedly towards the americans. Nelson tried at first to only aim at those who were armed, but the armed were mixed with the unarmed. Nelson did not think any further and fired at the crowd. Some ran away, most of them remained lying on the street. Soon a new, larger still crowd had gathered. The somali were running towards the US troops, some of them firing their assault rifles. Nelson let his M60 do the work, mowing the crowd down. Little Bird flew to help. The combat helicopters Minigun could send off 4000 rounds in a minute. "At one moment I was faced with a huge crowd and in an instant it was replaced with a bleeding heap of dead an wounded", the corporal later described the event. Back in hotel Olympic, General Aidid did not attend the meeting at all, and the commandos were only able to take captive a couple of dozen of his aides. The american rescue convoy was delayed by hours by somalese road blocks. Another helicopter was soon shot down, and the rescue crew got lost in the night. The troops wer in trouble, the operation was supposed to be over in an instant, and the soldiers had been ordered to leave their IR goggles and water cantines in the base. It was a top secret operation, of which the UN soldiers from other countries were not informed. It was hard to convince them to help the US troops out. A US officer had to tell the commander of Pakistani armor troops to order his soldiers into battle, threatening him with a gun. The 400 pakistani men calmed the situation down, and the battles were over by morning. 18 US soldiers were killed, 73 wounded. The press was concerned about the fate of an american helicopter pilot, and mentioned that tens of somalis had died in combat. The official US estimate was 200 casualties. In December 1992, the UN responded to Somalia's anarchy and famines by dispatching a "peace-keeping" force that included 2000 U.S. marines. U.S. and UN policies in Somalia became intertwined. Nevertheless, U.S. actions in Somalia must be evaluated separately. And what were these actions? First, The fact is that the U.S. humanitarian troops had arrived after the famine had subsided. News reports stated that the U.S. found no famine in the capital, Mogadishu. They expected to find it inland in Baidoa. No famine in Baidoa. The famine had retreated to the villages. Reports from the villages did not disclose famines. The UN and U.S. marines did not go home. Instead, marines began house to house searches for weapons, and caused several casualties in the searches. On June 5, 1993, UN troops attempted to close the radio station commanded by Mohammed Farah Aideed, one of the contenders for Somali leadership who declared his faction to be the legitimate Somalia government. In repelling the attack, Somali militiamen killed 24 Pakistani troops. This action propelled the U.S. forces into a five month manhunt for Aideed. In the process the marines engaged in several "shoot outs" with Somali, including the killing of two children who had climbed into the marine's vehicles and reached for their sunglasses. After 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and had some of their corpses dragged through the Mogadishu streets, the U.S. military left Somalia while the situation was in the same way they arrived.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 12:29 pm Failures Of U.S. foreign policy has not exhibited diplomacy and peace. The policies almost always degenerated into military ventures and did not resolve the policy issues. It seems incredible, but it can be shown that since the end of World War II, U.S. indirect, and often direct, intervention in all areas of the world, resulted in the deaths of more than two million persons, wounded and maimed many more, caused dislocations and uprooting of masses of persons, and destroyed infrastructures and economies. The American people have sent their children to die in several fruitless interventions that have served no beneficial purposes. Since World War II, U.S. foreign policy has rarely accomplished its objectives and has been counterproductive. Although anti-communism posed as the principal guide to foreign policy, the same policies continued after the Cold War. Counter-insurgency rarely encountered insurgents and at times promoted insurgency. In almost all cases, force replaced diplomacy and military policy dictated foreign policy. It may seem logical to examine the policies chronologically. Yet, a regional approach exposes a similarity in policy failures. A comprehensive review of policy towards many countries of different regions and in different eras shows that foreign policy exhibited the same elements: ineffective diplomacy, degenerating into military excursions and a lack of statesmanship. If the presentation appears one-sided, it is only because the policies have been one-sided with a common pattern and a trajectory that could lead to an international catastrophe. The European Scene: Europe had opposing forces facing one another across a thin line. Nevertheless, no military confrontations occurred. The U.S. succeeded in stabilizing Western Europe and preventing the Soviet Union from encroaching upon West European territory. The communist state maintained its sphere of influence in East Europe and the U.S. reluctantly permitted it. After the fall of the Soviet Union from internal policies, the U.S.achieved its objectives without firing a bullet in Europe. Detractors claimed that the length of the Cold War, and its social and economic strains on the United States, signaled the policy as a failure, that the Cold War did not have to happen. Others proclaimed that, since the Soviet Union dissolved without internal interference or from a military battle, other U.S. foreign policy decisions, which often involved interference and confrontation, had been mistaken. These policies rarely resolved situations and usually caused havoc. Greece-1946 The first major post-war military policy decision, the Truman Doctrine, allowed active military support to the anti-communists in the Greek 1946 civil war. U.S. participation occurred although the Soviet Union refused to provide assistance to the Greek communists and refrained from interfering in the struggle. The U.S. succeeded in preventing a communist government in Greece, one of its few post war successes. The interference added to the initial frictions between the East and the West. Berlin-1948 Rather than a simple case of harassment, the USSR tested U.S. intentions in Berlin. Viewing the allied sectors in Berlin as espionage bases and of no other importance to the allies, the Soviets probed Western power decisiveness on a vital issue. If the allies desired good relations with the USSR, they would compromise and evacuate Berlin. The Berlin airlift indicated to the East that the West's struggle for each vantage point it had acquired, signified they would not seek an accord with the Soviet Union. The U.S. successful response to the Soviet's efforts may have been the critical event that moved the Cold War to earnest and initiated the drastic arms race. NATO-1948 to Present NATO grew in size and strength and sat silently all through the Cold War. Despite opportunities to provide assistance to Czechoslovakia in 1948, Hungary in 1956, the Czechs again in the Prague spring of 1968 and the Poles in the 70's, NATO refrained from modifying its doctrine of only attacking after being attacked. In the post Cold War era, after the Soviet Union had been humbled and could not retaliate, NATO changed its position. As a component of U.S. foreign policy, NATO's existence succeeded in preventing any military action against Western Europe. Balkan Wars The words Balkan wars creates images of armies with long muskets and early century colorful uniforms. Despite two World Wars, the creation of two international peace organizations, and several implemented resolutions that resolved the Balkan borders, the area's problems continually revived and persisted. The ferocity of the antagonisms, killings, dislocations, and brutalities committed in the Balkans, and the military involvement of the U.S. and NATO, indicate that the a capitalist/communist hostility, the most accepted reason for previous disputes, and one that had never resulted in military strife in Europe, may have disguised other reasons-the assurance of trade and markets, the control of a major portion of world resources, the need to have all nations conform to a unified economic plan, world domination by one party, and rendering powerless those nations that threatened an emerging New World Order or did not conform it. Although the return of the Kosovar refugees to their towns and villages seemed to prove that the ends justified the means, all the results should be considered-testing of weapons in all types of conditions that caused victims and destruction, strong nations now able to attack weaker nations with the pretext of unfair treatment of their minorities, revival of the cold war, renewal of an arms race, the loss of sovereignty, and the uncomfortable feeling that no matter where you are in the world, if you don't agree with a specified policy you may become a target of a guided missile. Considering the extent of the strife and mayhem, can U.S. policy in the Balkans be considered a success? The diplomacy did not prevent the violence, the "ethnic cleansing," and the military confrontations. The policy resulted in death and destruction of a nation. The policy has not resolved the issues and has left them with an undefined future. The aggravation of the problems, the manner of their resolution, and the resulting partition of the Balkan nations, indicates that the past Cold War policies were only a prelude and not an ending to a carelessly formed European foreign policy. Today's Europe, containing a united Germany, a disintegrated Soviet Union, a divided Czechoslovakia, a fragmented Balkans, and one nation that possesses a military and cultural dominance that controls the activities of the other nations, although it does not have a physical presence in Europe, has been shaped similarly to the Nazi German practices. It almost seems that we have accepted the Nazi vision of Europe, including separation of peoples by ethnic identity. European Strife-1946 to Present The fact that throughout the post-war years, the U.S. had no severe conflicts with the Western European countries opens a question: Why did the U.S. apply pressure and force to Third World countries who were either antagonistic to U.S. policies, behaved too socialistic or appeared to be on the road to communism, and did not bother the European countries that exhibited similar traits? U.S. foreign policy tried to destroy the leftist government of the former Portuguese colony of Angola, and did not bother Angola's former parent country, Portugal when it was governed by the leftist, Caravalho. Leftist regimes in Greece and Spain replaced former rightist regimes that had championed U.S. policies. The communists were always Italy's major political party and they had several opportunities to achieve power. In France, Mitterand's Socialist government had characteristics that normally alarmed the U.S. State Department and DeGaulle pursued independent policies that severely conflicted with U.S. policies. The answers to the question: Undoubtedly, Americans would not support attacks on Europeans, nor would other Europeans remain silent if any European country became a victim of an attack. A touch of cowardice and bully is also apparent-The U.S. has only attacked small, less industrialized Third World nations. And lingering around the question another question: Does racism guide U.S. foreign policy? The Asian Scene Except for Korea, U.S. foreign policy and military adventures in Asia have been disasters.Without resolving controversies in its favor, U.S. policies temporarily destroyed the Indo-China countries, allowed repressive regimes to flourish in other countries and could not impede China's development. Korean War 1948-1952 The U.S. had no alternative to military intervention in the Korean Civil War. The intervention prevented the Korean peninsula from becoming totally controlled by the Northern communists. Nevertheless, in 1948, the U.S. had not prepared a Korean policy, although the two Koreas had been threatening one another, and it had become obvious that the stronger North Korea showed itself ready to settle the conflict by military force. Shortly after the war started, with U.S. troops trapped in a small part of the peninsula, MacArthur launched a counterthrust by landing troops at Inchon. Deemed a suicide venture by military experts, and ignored as an impossibility by the North Korean command, the surprise maneuver doomed the North Korean army and cleared the South of all but enemy guerrilla forces. At this point, instead of calling a truce, U.S. foreign policy drifted into its first great post-war mistake, a chilling prelude to a future of similar military catastrophes. U.S. troops continued into North Korea. This excursion generated a military confrontation with China, an additional 45,000 American deaths, many more wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Korean casualties. The results after the truce: Korea remains divided as it had been in 1948. Uncertainty and war threaten the Korean peninsula. The military move across the 37th parallel escalated the Cold War, and gave the Soviet Union closer support from China. We can cite a strategic foothold on the Asian mainland and the progress of South Korea as successful ingredients of the Korean policy. The losses in American and Korean lives, the human tragedies due to the lack of reunification and the escalation of East-West tensions offset the success. Viet Namese War 1961-1975 The greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history brought America 47,382 military dead, 10,811 non-combatant deaths, 153,382 wounded, and 10,173 captured. The military devastated both North and South Viet Nam, inflicted 1 million casualties upon their peoples and brought environmental catastrophes to large areas. Washington claimed counter-insurgency for the U.S role in the war. Both parties were insurgents. The war escalated because the United States, defender of free elections, acted to prevent the Viet Namese peoples from voting on the unification of Viet Nam. Those guiding U.S. foreign policy used facetious exaggerations, such as the dubious Tonkin Bay attack on U.S. warships by small North Viet Namese speed boats, to justify intervention, and then cited doubtful SEATO treaties and an amateurishly created "domino effect" to give it legitimacy. The results: After years of turmoil and violence in Viet Nam and at home, the U.S. got its wish-no election. The North took control of all of Viet Nam. Cambodia 1968-1978 The destruction in Cambodia started before the end of the Viet Nam campaign. Not willing to have North Viet Namese troops use a neutral territory to bring their men and material to the South, the U.S. carried the war into Cambodia with intensive bombings and military excursions. This "secret" war signified the first time after WWII that the U.S. attacked a sovereign country in an undeclared war, and set a precedent for future attacks. After realizing that they could not convince Sihanouk, Cambodia's ruler, to take action against the North Vietnamese, the CIA engineered Sihanouk's overthrow. The years following this action are one of the saddest of any country's history. Sihanouk, who brought a measure of stability and prosperity to his country during a wartime crisis, did not want to antagonize the U.S. He simply wanted to remain neutral. His disposal, exile and replacement by Lon Nol soon brought violence and civil war to the country. The Khmer Rouge captured the leadership and brought the country to civil and economic ruin. The new Socialist Republic of Viet Nam invaded the country, ostensibly to create order. The war, and further civil wars, increased the death and destruction that had started with the U.S. policy of replacing Sihanouk. China 1948 to Present A containment that is designed to prevent China from developing into a world economic and military power that may challenge U.S. hegemony, guides United States' China policy. The world recognizes that superior nations are bound to challenge any threat to their invincibility, and this policy is accepted if it does not cause a world catastrophe. Since 1948, U.S. policy towards China has grown from intense hostility without violent intent to a "constructive engagement," that cajoles them, insults them, accuses them, and tries everything to get them to do...what? Nobody is sure and so, regardless of what we state or imply, they have done what they want-wars with Viet Nam and India, incorporating Tibet, controlling their people how they feel they should be controlled. Meanwhile they grow economically and militarily more powerful each day. And each day the U.S. perceives them as an increasing threat. Since our containment of China has not succeeded and has had only one direction, we can expect that U.S. attitude towards China may become more severe. The trajectory of the China policy is leading to a world catastrophe, and to an eventual conflict that will undoubtedly use the mightiest weapons to achieve victory. Other Asia Economic interests have dictated U.S. policy towards other Asiatic countries. In Japan and Formosa, the U.S. has assisted in creating economic powerhouses in order to have stable, friendly governments that allow the U.S. to maintain military bases. Other countries have not been as fortunate. Indonesian and Philippine have, for decades, maintained totalitarian and corrupt governments. The policy has generated insurrections, retaliations and violent confrontations. After some years of prosperity turned into economic collapse, these countries have started to evolve more stable institutions. The Mid-East Scene The immediate post-war mid-east policy liberated the mid-east countries from foreign domination. It also enabled them to control their oil resources and develop them in partnership with Western interests. The United States had the superior capability for assisting the oil producers, and initially became the favored partner. As energy became the most significant resource to the fast growing Western world, U.S. policy in the mid-east retreated to one sentence- Keep the oil at any cost. Nevertheless, several powerful oil producers are antagonistic to the United States and the policy is one of the causes of terrorism. The hypocritical policy has created havoc for some of the areas people. Lacking any apparent change, it portends a dangerous future. Iran 1946 to Present In 1946, after the Soviet Union had occupied Northern Iran for contradictory reasons, Truman demanded and succeeded in removing the Russian troops. This overlooked event signified a basis for cooperating with the Soviet Union. The U.S. government ignored the signal and headed into the Cold War. The next major Iranian event occurred in 1954 when Mossadegh threatened to nationalize the oil industry. By evening he had been forced from office and the U.S. had its colleague, the anti-communist, anti-nationalist Shah Pahlevi firmly in power. The State Department failed to realize that the Shah considered Iran his personal fiefdom and that the uneven economic progress he brought to Iran did not have the support of the masses, especially those inclined to a more rigid Islam. This failure proved fatal-In 1979, the Iranians deposed the Shah and an Islamic movement, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, gained control. Instead of using diplomacy with the new government and demonstrating restraint, U.S. policy reflected its bias against a regime that did not follow its dictates. Despite Iran's protests, the government allowed the Shah to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. This event precipitated extreme groups in Iran to seize the American embassy and hold U.S. citizens as prisoners.Within a short time, the Shah returned to Panama and eventually died in Egypt. Mostly due to one unnecessary event, relations with Iran rapidly declined to a total separation. The U.S. quickly lost any economic and strategic advantages it had established in Iran. U.S. policy planners could not admit mistakes and their policy towards Iran continued on a destructive path. The U.S. provided arms and support to Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, in its war against Iran. U.S. moved warships into the Straits of Tiran to protect the straits and Kuwait against possible Iranian aggression. Yet, the only aggression in the Straits was the bombing of a U.S. warship by the Iraqi air force, who at that time, was considered as a U.S. friend. Later, the U.S. became forced to defend Kuwait against an aggressive Iraq, the country that the U.S. had supported against the "supposed aggressor." The Iran/Iraq war, encouraged by U.S. military support to Iraq, caused massive destruction to both countries and, as a side effect, to the Kurdish peoples of both countries. The hostilities in the Straits of Tiran damaged Iranian shipping and brought death and losses to their flimsy navy. In a coda to the macabre concerto, a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in their territorial waters, killing all on board. After all this, the U.S. has tried to establish friendly relations with Iran and can't imagine why the Iranians are obstinate. Iraq 1980 to Present U.S. policy towards Iraq has been the reverse of its policy towards Iran. The U.S. made Iran its enemy and now has tried to become more friendly. In Iraq, the U.S. started out friendly and later reverted, almost over-night, to becoming an enemy. For almost twenty years the U.S. treated Saddam Hussein's Iraq favorably until the invasion of Kuwait changed everything. Like Jekyll becoming Hyde , the U.S. suddenly turned all its power against Iraq and within one month destroyed the country's infrastructure, brought death to thousand of its citizens, including those who felt safe in hardened bomb shelters, and created a road of death in which U.S. war planes bombed and strafed fleeing and defenseless Iraqi soldiers. Those left dying remained unattended, and, according to reliable reports, were bulldozed alive into permanent graves. Estimates are that 250,000 Iraqis and only 160 from the allied contingent died in the war. Did all of this have to happen? By being cordial to Saddam Hussein for many years, the United States reinforced his power. State department dispatches indicate that Ambassador Glaspie gave Iraq a "green" light to invade Kuwait or at least did not apply sufficient pressure to prevent it. Iraq could make a good case of legitimate complaints against Kuwait: Kuwait had siphoned oil from the shifting sands of Iraqi territory. Kuwait owed a prostate Iraq some remuneration for having defended Kuwait against a possible Iran excursion. Kuwait had walked out of meetings and totally rebuffed Iraq. These were not difficult complaints to resolve. They could have been easily arbitrated or forced into compliance by the United States. The U.S. policy makers had options. They chose to be complacent and indirectly paved the path to a punishing war. The post-war policy has continued the pattern of established ferocity. Iraq is still being bombed, almost on a daily basis. The U.S. has destroyed more "command and control" facilities than exists in the any country. They have destroyed more "radar bases" than Iraq can possibly have. This senseless and vicious policy has transformed Iraq from an emerging country with a moderate prosperity into an impoverished country with a starving population. Estimates are that 250,000 have had their lives shortened by the punishing embargoes and bombings, and that future generations will inherit the suffering. What are the purposes of this unstated policy? Is the U.S. assuring that Iraq does not have any weapons of "mass destruction?" -The final UN inspections indicated that Iraq no longer possesses these weapons and bombing unknown targets cannot prevent their development. Most countries of the world possess some type of gas and germ warfare, some of which can be manufactured in a garage. No matter how long the U.S. bombs Iraq, an eventual Iraqi government will develop the weapons they want. They can't be policed forever. Is the U.S. attempting to overthrow Saddam Hussein?-If so, haven't they failed? And why encourage rebellions by the Shiites and Kurds that reinforce Saddam's internal support? Is the U.S. protecting the rebellious Kurd and Shiite minorities?- If they are protecting these minorities, then why allow the Turks to decimate the Kurds, and the Shiites to be terrorized in Oman? These are obviously not the reasons for our Iraqi policy. Then what are? If the results follow policy, then the results indicate our unstated policy is the opposite to what is believed. The U.S. does not want a new Iraqi government. It wants a continually unstable, embattled, embargoed and disrupted Iraq that maintains the country weak. Why? To diminish the number of strong mid-east countries that could contend U.S. policy and arouse the area against the U.S. major partners in the middle east-Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Israel. And the number of Iraqis that may suffer from this policy- it doesn't matter. Israel/Palestine 1948 to Present The mid-east policy is driven mostly by the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. has been intimately involved in the conflict since its inception in 1948. Although the U.S. had the military and economic power and many opportunities to force an acceptable solution to the strife and bring it to an end, its wandering and contradictory policy has kept it going. The contradictions include being the only country besides Israel to vote against a myriad of UN resolutions that criticized Israel and may have forced a solution. After 50 years of conflict and debate, the conflict and debate continue. The parties in conflict showed their distrust in U.S. effectiveness by not allowing the U.S. to participate in or be informed of the Oslo meetings that resulted in the Oslo accords from which the presently attempted solution is derived. Since Israel's strength is mega times that of the Palestinians, the U.S. could serve to equalize the strengths. Yet, the U.S. insists the two parties compromise their differences. Everyone knows that a dominant Israel will not make make concessions to a weak, almost fragile Palestine. The U.S. policy has accomplished nothing. And the future is ominous. The conflict affects and involves many countries. It could lead to an atomic war. Lebanon 1956 to Present Once, the most prosperous, most beautiful and most hospitable of all the mid-east countries, Lebanon has been destroyed by its indirect involvement in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The only times that the U.S. became involved in Lebanon's affairs had no positive results. In the Eisenhower administration, during a short period of political uncertainty, U.S. marines landed on the Lebanese beaches. They stayed and they left. It was never clear why they had arrived. During the latter stages of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980's, the U.S. together with other European countries, dispatched warships and marines to Lebanon. Although they had entered a sovereign country to assist it, U.S. warships responded to spurious attacks on the marines by shelling the Lebanese mountains and killing scores of people. A Lebanese group retaliated by blowing up the marine barracks and killing more than 200 marines. U.S. policy in Lebanon left many killed on both sides and didn't help anybody. Afghanistan 1980 to Present A feature of U.S. foreign policy is that the United States has at times armed its eventual enemies to combat perceived antagonists. One example is our assistance to the Mujaheedin in Afghanistan. The Soviet Unions's intervention in the internal conflicts of Afghanistan may have been improper, but it did not contain elements of economic exploitation or seizing of territory. Efforts to contain the internal political frictions, prevent a Civil War from creating anarchy that could undo the economic progress of previous governments, and a desire to maintain the status quo in East-West spheres of influence, impelled the Soviet Union to supply troops from 1980-1986 to assist Babrak Kamal's Afghan regime. They may have been doing the U.S. a favor. The Afghan internal politics, the Civil War, and the Soviet Union intervention did not directly affect U.S. world hegemony. The Mujaheedin, whom the U.S. supported, consisted of a radical Islam that had already shown itself to be hostile to the U.S. The objectives for which the Soviets strived would have certainly created a more acceptable Afghan government than those that followed. During the struggle, the United States, through Pakistan, provided arms, material and finances to the Mujaheedin that eventually assured their victory. Published estimates show that 15,000 Soviets and 350,000 Afghans died in the Civil War. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in Feb. 1989, the United States had an opportunity to let the war play out among Afghans. The U.S. continued the arms shipments through Pakistan to the Mujaheedin and the Najibullah government, that tried to carry out some democratic reforms and create a coalition government of reconciliation, fell in 1992. After the continuing civil war among the many factions had caused more than 50,000 additional deaths, the Taliban, a reactionary Islamic religious group by U.S standards, gained control of Afghanistan. The Mujaheedin, characterized as freedom fighters and brought to fighting capability by U.S. arms, destroyed Afghanistan, caused an immense number of deaths, could not compromise among themselves to form a government, and became responsible for the Taliban emergence and their control of Afghanistan. They also trained major terrorist groups that have brought death to Americans and destruction to U.S. facilities. The only remaining vestige of U.S. intervention in the Afghanistan Civil War is Ibn Ben Laden. African Scene: Knowing that the African countries don't posses much economic and military muscle on the world scene, the U.S. has generally treated central African countries with benign neglect. In some countries, notably Egypt, South Africa and Zimbabwe, U.S. policy has been mildly constructive. Egypt has received financial and military assistance without compromising its national integrity. This occurred after the U.S. refused to support the construction of the Aswan dam, an economic benefit that the Soviet Union rescued. The South African policy, that included embargo of many goods, assisted in the termination of Apartheid and a government of reconciliation. In Zimbabwe, the United States has not fought the evolution of the former white led Rhodesia to its present status as a majority black led Zimbabwe. The political framework of the latter countries, where Nelson Mandela, an ardent communist became the president of South Africa, and where a leftist government gained power in Zimbabwe, demonstrated that the U.S. could work effectively with leftist governments and these government would not imperil U.S. interests. In most other parts of Africa, policy has been formed by reacting to sudden events. Whatever the reason, U.S. policy towards the African countries has not assisted them in alleviating their continual poverty, internal wars and economic catastrophes. Republic of Congo 1960 to Present The Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, and previously the Republic of Congo is an example of the complete cycle of a U.S. policy which ends in desolation. In 1959, popular revolts and demands for independence from Belgium, forced the Belgian government to negotiate with the rebellious parties. During elections in 1960, the Congolese National Movement (MNC), directed by Patrice Lumumba, became the country's strongest party. Lumumba, already recognized as one of Africa's most vociferous leaders of anti-colonial and liberation movements, became prime minister of the Congo Republic immediately before the country's independence on June 30, 1960. He had a difficult task and could not control the many factions desiring the Congo's resources and riches. His socialist leanings and avowed non-alignment policies further prevented him from acquiring the U.S. as an ally. Within one month, Katanga, the Congo's richest province, with the assistance of the major powers, seceded. On September 14, Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko effectively neutralized the Congo's institutions and its leaders. The military placed Lumumba under house arrest and protection of the United Nations. After several transfers of his confinement, Patrice Lumumba, and two his comrades were killed on January 17, 1961. The official reason for his death: Accidentally shot while attempting to escape. The complicity of the United States and the CIA in this unfortunate episode have not been definitely proved. Many informed persons take it for granted that the CIA played a leading role in Lumumba's demise. Nevertheless, the United States motivated the anti-Lumumba activities by demonstrating its disapproval of Lumumba and by not ensuring him adequate protection. U.S. total support for Mobutu, who seized power of the Congo in 1965 and reigned for 32 years, indicates U.S. involvement in determining Congo's government. After changing the country name to Zaire, Mobutu ruled as a despot. In 1980, he banned all political parties, except his own. Although he created a sense of unity among the country's 200 ethnic groups and nationalized the mining industries, he personally controlled 70% of the country's wealth, valued at 5 billion dollars. At his death in 1997, he was personally responsible for 80% of his country's debts. Laurent-Denise Kabila, completed the cycle. Originally an avowed communist and with a vision similar to Lumumba, he forced a weakened Mobutu from power in 1997. Kabila, weakened by the years, inherited a country in ruins that soon found itself in a brutal civil war. The resource rich Congo, the most promising of the liberated central African countries, after 35 years of U.S. involvement in its affairs, returned to an economic, political and social ground zero. Angola 1970 to Present Angola became a victim of the Cold War immediately after it achieved independence from Portugal. In Angola all insurgent groups, MPLA, FLNA and UNITA had alliances with anti-American left wing international organizations. The MPLA had close ties to Moscow and received military training from Cuban forces. UNITA leader, Jonas Savimba, a late entry to the insurgency, considered himself a Maoist and was prepared to organize the country in accord with Mao's principles. Roberto Holden, an avowed Marxist, commanded the FLNA. After a group of disillusioned military officers. led by General Antonio de Spinola, overthrew the Lisbon government and granted independence to Angola on July 14, 1974, the three groups managed to form a short lived coalition. As their alliance broke down, the MPLA emerged as the most powerful group and gained the government positions of the departing Portuguese. With Neto as head of state, the MPLA extended political control over much of the country. The FLNA and UNITA joined forces to combat the MPLA. From that time the U.S. role became obvious-spoil MPLA's nation building. Initially, the U.S. supported the Marxist FLNA. As the MPLA became stronger, the U.S. also funded the Maoist UNITA. The State department inaugurated these policies although Neto obtained business alliances with U.S. oil companies and tried to secure friendly relations with many Western countries by inviting foreign investment. Rather than encourage any investment and good relations, the State department pressured the oil companies to stop operating in Cabinda, Angola's oil producing area. Neto died in 1979 and Jose Eduardo Santos, who became prime minister, preferred a mixed economy with an important role for the private sector. The United States still made no attempt to improve relations and blocked Angola's admission to the United Nations. After years, in which the CIA had continually funded the rival groups, and had promoted a covert program to solicit European and American mercenaries to fight with the FLNA, the U.S., in 1988, offered to normalize relations with Angola. The offer had one condition-a mutual settlement with UNITA. The MPLA agreed, and in that year the MPLA and UNITA negotiated a regional peace agreement. Although UNITA members served in the new Angola government of Unity and Reconciliation, Savimbi rejected a UN monitored election and retreated back to the provinces. The war resumed after the failure of peace accords the parties had signed in November 1994. The U.S. no longer supports Savimbi. He has seized control of 80% of Angola's diamond production and the country is in total ruin. Recent dispatches highlight the agony: --Six people killed and four wounded in an ambush in eastern Angola is blamed on UNITA rebels. --Lwena is strewn with land mines, and the roads leading to it are subject to frequent attack by armed men identified as rebels for UNITA. --Other cities such as Malanje and Huambo are targeted by the rebels. --Shelling on Malanje killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 this week. In Angola, the U.S. has had only a negative policy-remove the Cuban supported group from power. The only replacement, Jonas Savimbi, had a more radical philosophy than the MPLA and yet the U.S. supported him. Primarily due to that support, Angola is a ruined country and the people have suffered greatly. If Savimbi, a Maoist, gained power, what would the U.S. have done? Somalia 1970-1995 Somalia is another country that became caught in the East-West struggle. Muhammad Syad Barre, who became the Somalia leader after a bloodless coup in 1969, initially aligned his country with the Soviet Union. Problems with Ethiopia, a close ally of the Soviet Union, moved him away from the East bloc and more towards an alignment with the Arab states. After the Ethiopians prevented the ethnic Somali that lived in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia from their attempt to seize the region, the U.S. agreed to provide humanitarian and military assistance to Somalia. In return, Somalia granted to the U.S. the naval base at Berbera that had previously been a Soviet naval base. As in other Third World countries, the United States found itself financing a leader whose regime slowly became repressive, corrupt and unpopular. Armed opposition to Barre started in 1988. On June 27, 1991, Siyad Barre, after ruling Somalia for 22 years, fled the country. The fighting that ensued between rival groups caused a societal breakdown that led to periodic famines in Somalia. U.S. financial and military support had achieved nothing for Somalia. In December 1992, the UN responded to Somalia's anarchy and famines by dispatching a "peace-keeping" force that included 2000 U.S. marines. U.S. and UN policies in Somalia became intertwined. Nevertheless, U.S. actions in Somalia must be evaluated separately. And what were these actions? First, it appears that the U.S. humanitarian troops had arrived after the famine had subsided. News reports stated that the U.S. found no famine in the capital, Mogadishu. They expected to find it inland in Baidoa. No famine in Baidoa. The famine had retreated to the villages. Reports from the villages did not disclose famines. The UN and U.S. marines did not go home. Instead, marines began house to house searches for weapons, and caused several casualties in the searches. On June 5, 1993, UN troops attempted to close the radio station commanded by Mohammed Farah Aideed, one of the contenders for Somali leadership. Aideed had credentials. He had been a Somali ambassador and had been elected chairman of the United Somali Congress by a 2/3 vote. He declared his faction to be the legitimate Somalia government. In repelling the attack, Somali militiamen killed 24 Pakistani troops. This action propelled the U.S. forces into a five month manhunt for Aideed. In the process the marines engaged in several "shoot outs" with Somali, including the killing of two children who had climbed into the marine's vehicles and reached for their sunglasses. After 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and had some of their corpses dragged through the Mogadishu streets, the U.S. military left Somalia. According to the NY Times, December 8, 1993, UN/U.S. forces inflicted 6,000 to 10,000 casualties on the Somali. UN Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni estimated that 2/3 of the casualties were women and children.The Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1993, estimated that only a small fraction of the UN relief efforts benefited Somali. Foreign business people profited from fast food sales to the UN soldiers, a $9 million sewer system in the UN/U.S. headquarters and helicopter flights for Western officials. Twenty years of U.S. policy in Somalia- anarchy, wasted money, many Somali and American dead. Libya 1970 to Present U.S. policy towards Libya can be regarded as a policy of a country directed against a person, Muhammar Qadhafi. In the two decades after the Libyan 1968 military revolution, he assumed great powers in Libya as chief of the armed forces and a sometime Head of State (he relinquished his duties as general secretary of the General people's Congress in March 1979). Today, Qadhafi does not hold any public office, only the title of Revolutionary Leader. Nevertheless, his detractors claim he is still the "non- official" Head of State. Officially Libya has a complete legislative branch with Muhammad Manqush as the elected Head of government, a cabinet and a Supreme Court. Qadhafi has power, but framing a policy that considers only his power, disregards too many other Libyans. The U.S. accepted a revolutionary Libya that expelled all foreign forces and closed their bases. It could not accept Libya's perceived attempts to unite the Arab world against U.S. diplomatic and military presence in the mid-east, its initiatives against Israel, its nationalization of an economy that displaced foreign interests and its weakening of foreign control of Libya's oil resources. Actually, few of these policies fulfilled the perceptions: Libya could not unite the Arab world against the U.S: Except for the oil price rises during the 1970's neither Libya or the Arab world have harmed Western economic interests: Libyan policies have had little effect on Israel's development, and: the U.S.oil companies are reasonably satisfied with their business relationship in bringing low sulfur Libyan oil to market. Nevertheless, the U.S. adopted aggressive policies towards Libya that escalated over the years. The policies-Replace Qadhafi and stop Libya's contribution to terrorism. It is obvious that the first has been a total failure. The recent bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and previous terrorist attacks in the U.S. indicate that Libya's contribution to terrorism must have been small. The aggressive policy also broke a supposed belief: U.S. polices are dictated by the East-West conflict. Since 1972, Libya's relations with the Soviet Union have been cool. On May 30, 1973, U.S. aircraft, during maneuvers close to Libya's shores, violated the sovereign Libyan air space. Rather than intimidating Libya, the provocation increased the activities that most alarmed the U.S., the suspicion and accusations that Libya financed international terrorism and political subversion. Libya did not deny they had training grounds for recruits representing a variety of national liberation movements and that they provided financial support for Palestinian liberation organizations. Nevertheless, the Libyan role was a minute counterbalance to the huge U.S. financial and military support of those who repressed liberation movements and, by their authoritarian actions, caused international terrorism. Another significant point: Libya gained no economic or material benefit from its small support of any movement. They declared in 1981 that, to them, it was a matter of principle. For the U.S., intervention has been mostly a matter of safeguarding interests and achieving economic benefit. Having defined a policy towards Libya by the invasion of its airspace, the U.S. continually reacted to Libyan actions with an aggressive policy. Libyans protested U.S. policy in Iran by burning the U.S. embassy in Tripoli on December 1979. On August 19,1981, U.S. jets downed two Libyan air force planes during U.S. maneuvers in the Libyan Gulf of Sidra. On March 25, 1986, U.S. navy planes bombarded civilian targets in Libya's Gulf. They also attacked a Libyan Coast Guard boat and all 10 men were reported killed. Another attack on a ship resulted in the crew leaving the ship. The Libyans claimed that all 42 men, while swimming to shore, were machine gunned to death. On April 14, 1986, the U.S. mounted air attacks on the Libyan mainland. In these attacks, a bombing of the leader's house killed Qadhafi's adopted child. President Ronald Reagan claimed self-defense as the reason for the attacks. The U.S. had countered a terrorist attack on a U.S. military club in Berlin, Germany that U.S. intelligence agency attributed to Libya and signaled its determination to defend against other terrorist attacks on its citizens. No evidence has been presented that involved Libya or its agents in the Berlin club bombing. And the U.S. has not prevented terrorism. It has accused two Libyans of masterminding the explosion of the December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. Two other incidents must be mentioned. On February 21, 1973, Israeli fighters shot down a Libyan civilian airliner over the Sinai and 106 Libyans died in the attack. On December 22, 1992, A Libyan air plane exploded over Tripoli and 158 Libyans died. Libya accused Western intelligence agencies of being responsible for the explosion. The Libyan toll in their struggle with the West has been brutal. Adding to the human toll has been an economic toll. In April 1992, the U.N. banned arm sales and flights to Libya after Libya refused to turn over two suspects in the Lockerbies explosion. This ban has been recently rescinded. In 1996, the U.S. tried to organize Trade Laws that could have amounted to an embargo against Libya. Other countries did not agree. U.S. policy towards Libya has been guided by fear, miscalculation, mistrust and an unnecessary aggressiveness. It has not achieved diplomatic victories and accomplished any objectives. It has caused death and misery. It has exposed the fact that aggressive policies are not only a result of East-West relations. Central American Scene The Monroe Doctrine warned countries outside the Western Hemisphere not to interfere in Latin America affairs. The Western Hemisphere protectorate that the United States established in 1821 did not exclude the U.S. from interfering. The cold war reinforced the interferences. Unlike Africa, where the United States has neglected most of the Third World countries, the United States has actively intervened in the operation and functioning of almost all Latin American countries. For the entire 19th century and almost the entire 20th century, the Latin American countries stagnated in poverty, illiteracy, corruption and disease. The active intervention in their affairs could not have been beneficial to them. Cuba 1960 to Present What could be more damaging to the United States in the 1960's than to have the Soviet Union gain a foothold close to U.S.shores and create missile bases within firing range of U.S. territory. U.S. foreign policy planners succeeded in accomplishing that. Not understanding diplomacy and compromise, Washington responded to the Castro government's agrarian reform and expropriation of U.S. properties by imposing a trade embargo. The embargo motivated Cuba to seek economic assistance from the world's Socialist countries. This further angered the U.S., and Washington severed diplomatic relations with Cuba on January, 1961.The U.S. followed the diplomatic break with a U.S. supported and trained invasion force that landed at the ill-fated Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The poorly conceived invasion didn't bring the fall of the Castro government. Ninety invaders from the Cuban exile community died and 1200 were captured. And the legacy of the invasion? Castro, fearful of further attacks, succeeded in convincing the Soviet Union to provide a missile umbrella to counter further attacks. U.S. diplomacy had brought the U.S. close to atomic war and atomic missiles close to its shores. After settling the debacle by removing U.S. missile bases from Turkey, and promising never to attack Cuba, the U.S., either from spite or more likely from not wanting an independent and socialist government to succeed in the Western hemisphere, continued a policy of isolating Cuba from the Latin American community and imposing further sanctions. The "ups" and "downs" of US/Cuba relations couldn't contain Cuba. They drew closer to the USSR and became a member of COMECON. They provided combat forces for Marxist governments of Angola, the Ethiopian regime in its war in the Ogaden, and Yemen. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuba economy collapsed. The U.S. has taken advantage of this collapse with further embargoes and attempts at isolation. The perilous condition of the Cuban people, at one time approaching starvation, did not deter America from its aggressive policy. The Cuban policy almost brought the U.S. into an atomic war. It had other damaging consequences: an influx of Cuban refugees into Florida displaced black workers and created racial problems: Mixed with refugees, Cuba forwarded many hardened criminals who committed crimes and needed incarceration: Foreign interests gained advantages in reconstructing Cuba and American companies have been left out. Guatemala In 1951 Guatemalans elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, a reformer who considered the grievances of the lower and middle classes. By mentioning the words "land reform" and "organizing labor," Arbenz and his intended policies infuriated the banana companies and U.S. politicians. In 1954, a group of Guatemalan exiles, armed and trained by the CIA, and commanded by Colonel Carlos Castillos Armas invaded Guatemala and forced out the legitimately elected president. Since this time, Guatemala has been ruled by military dictatorships.With U.S. military and economic assistance, these governments stifled political activity and turned those who were peacefully seeking political and social change into pursuing them by violent confrontations. After a brutal suppression of guerrilla activity, civilian leaders in 1985 returned to govern with the military watching in the wings. Finally, in 1996, the Guatemalan government signed a peace accord with guerrilla forces, ending a conflict that had caused more than 100,00 Guatemalan deaths. After the accords, a trail of evidence and admissions by the Guatemalan military began to confirm what many had suspected: The U.S. government had linked itself to a suppression that some claim caused 110,000 Mayan Indian lives, and razed thousands of villages in an effort to destroy a guerrilla force estimated at 2,000 armed rebels. U.S. and Guatemala officials acknowledged that the CIA transferred millions of dollars to the Guatemala military and provided intelligence to their army. Another example of a U.S. policy that went full cycle and during the cycle brought an entire nation to self-destruction. El Salvador In 1972, a coalition led by Jose Napoleon Duarte, head of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) appeared to win the El Salvador presidential election. Instead of taking office he found himself arrested and exiled by the military. During the following years, a repressive military government maintained power while left-wing guerrilla groups formed to overthrow an illegitimate government. Partly due to the urgings of the U.S. government, the military junta in January 1980 offered concessions to moderate and leftist groups. Duarte returned from exile to become the country's leader. Despite social and economic reforms, the military still seemed to rule the nation. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of rebel forces, armed themselves with a variety of military equipment, including leftover weapons shipped from the battle fields of Viet Nam through Nicaragua and declared war on the government. The war had two characteristics: an overt war between military forces and a war against civilian populations. It has been estimated that the latter war claimed the most lives. Right wing death squads terrorized the local villages and assassinated political opponents. In 1980, they killed Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a Catholic "liberation" theologian. El Salvador troops violated and massacred four nuns. The wars escalated until the FMLN almost captured the entire country.The government repulsed the offensive and, although a "no-win" situation emerged, the violence continued. The Reagan administration used counter-insurgency as the reason for interfering in El Salvador affairs. Economic and military aid to El Salvador from1981-1992 amounted to $1 million/day in a country of 5.2 million people, and became contingent on political and social reforms. El Salvador, struggling for a democratic face, managed to have elections during that period. Military aid peaked at $197 million in 1984 and economic aid peaked at $462 million in 1987. The U.S. policy of countering insurgency and demanding reforms contradicted actuality. The U.S. did not demand the resolution of the murders of Romero, nuns and political opponents, and did not condemn the burning of villages and many other obvious human rights violations. U.S. troops advised the El Salvador military and "secretly" engaged in military operations. Amnesty International concluded that the paramilitary death squads received covert financial support and military training from the United States. The Salvadoran military realized that the collapse of the USSR meant the end of massive U.S. support. After the war had ravaged the nation, they finally agreed in 1990 to peace talks. Under the agreement, the FMLN and the Salvadoran government disbanded their respective forces and formed a new civilian police force that included National police and FMLN members. In a 1994 election, ARENA, the already established government, retained their power and the FMLN established itself as a legitimate opposition party, able to operate without government suppression. From the U.S. perspective, preventing the fall of the El Salvador government and preventing a leftist FMLN, that may have allied itself with the Soviet Union, from taking control, vindicated Washington's policy. Again we note a policy that did not resolve itself until the country had destroyed itself. El Salvador will not easily recover from its civil war. If the U.S. had been able to mediate the differences, and stop the destructive war much earlier, it could claim a successful policy. Dominican Republic U.S. intervention in Dominican Republic affairs have occurred often in the century. In 1962, the heir to Trujillo's reign, Joaquin Balaguer, was defeated in an election by Dr. Juan Bosch, a leftist reformer. President Johnson already occupied with preventing the communist North Viet Nam from expanding to include all of Viet Nam. and still troubled by the Castro government in the Caribbean, decided he could not afford another Castro type government close to America's shores. U.S. troops entered the Dominican Republic and assisted a military coup to overthrow the Bosch government. After that incursion, the Dominican Republic rode on choppy seas of fraudulent elections, corruption, and economic uncertainty. Finally, in 1990, the two contestants whose election precipitated the 1962 incursion from the U.S., and who now were octogenarians, returned as contestants in the presidential election. U.S. interference had made its usual full cycle. In the cycle, the Dominicans greatly suffered. Panama U.S. relations with Panama's Manuel Antonia Noriega are similar to that with Iraq's Saddam Hussein. For years the U.S. governments tolerated Noriega's authoritarian attitude. President Bush even praised him. When the United States declared drugs as a major threat to American society, and a Florida court indicted Noriega for drug trafficking and money laundering, the U.S. found a reason to remove Noriega from power. Having received mixed signals from the U.S. government over the years and believing that he had could reveal information that indicted the CIA and the U.S. in many covert activities, Noriega felt immune from attack. His arrogant attitude further provoked Bush. In the absence of cold-war considerations, the United States proceeded with full-scale military intervention against Panama and removed an insignificant leader from power. The invasion exhibited unnecessary brutality. Impoverished Panamanian neighborhoods, in which Noriega had most support, were demolished and many civilians were killed. The American military captured Noriega and the American judicial system convicted him and sentenced him to prison. The legality of all the operations is questionable. The severity of the invasion of Panama and its aftermath decry a meaningful policy. Previous events indicated that Noriega, rather than assisting the drug trade had impeded it. By using known narcotics dealers as informants against him at his trial, the prosecution did not make a compelling case. Besides, it is well known that in other countries, principally Mexico, the governments have been in collusion with leading narcotics dealers and the U.S. has not interfered with those governments. Panama's involvement in drugs could never approach the large scale involvement of Mexico, nor has the imprisonment of Noriega made a dent in the drug supply. Noriega may have used his military role in a despotic manner, but he was fair to the poor people of Panama and he was not a threat to the U.S. and the Central American area. Since his demise, Panama has been mis-governed and the country remains in an economic crisis. U.S. policy towards a small country failed to use diplomacy and degenerated into a brutal military adventure. The reasons for the adventure are not clear. One reason may be a stumbling policy that stumbled into a war to prevent the United States from being humiliated by an insignificant dictator. Another reason may be that a treaty of 1977 obligates the U.S. to leave the Panama canal area before Jan.1 , 2000. The United States may want a friendly government that is willing to negotiate a new treaty. Grenada Little Grenada threatened the U.S. mainland as much as City Island, New York did. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration did not favor having a hard-line Marxist, Bernard Coard, replace, by a coup, a moderate Marxist, Maurice Bishop. Citing anarchy, a state of martial law, the construction of an airport by Cuban construction workers that could be used for military flights, and a threat to United States students at a Grenada medical school, as sufficient reasons for intervention, the U.S. Marines invaded the island on October 25, 1983. President Reagan also told reporters that the Organization of East Caribbean States had requested the intervention. The facts did not entirely support the statements: Coups and revolutions have been daily affairs in Latin America.: Martial law quiets extreme situations.: The airport had European financing and was being constructed for tourist purposes.: The students did not seem disturbed until the Americans invaded. (some students did express fear): The Organization of American States (OAS) "deeply deplored" the invasion: The UN Security Council voted 11 to 1 against the attack. Two dozen Cubans,18 U.S. military and 45 Grenadians died. When the caskets containing the Cuban dead arrived in Havana, U.S. reporters noted that most of the dead were men in their late fifties and sixties and were obviously not military personnel. Most of the Grenadians died in the U.S. militaries destruction of a mental hospital. Some felt that the invasion timing, two days after a bomb in Beirut had killed 241 Marines, indicated an intention to offset the U.S. weakness in Lebanon, by displaying itsmiltary prowess close to home. The U.S. assisted in completing the tourist airport. Nevertheless, little has been done for the Grenada economy and the nation remains extremely poor. The Grenadians expressed their attitude towards the U.S. invasion by inviting Fidel Castro to the island 15 years after the invasion. The Cuban leader unveiled a bronze plaque at Port Salines airport terminal that honored the dead Cuban construction workers who had assisted in the airport construction. The plaque hangs besides a plaque that honors the U.S. Agency for International Development, which helped complete the airport the U.S. did not want built. Nicaragua Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, former proprietor of most of Nicaragua's industry and resources, mishandled the country's 1972 earthquake crisis and the international relief funds sent to alleviate the suffering. In an act of sympathy with the plight of the Nicaraguan people, U.S. suspended military aid to Somoza and paved the way for Commandante Zero and his Sandinista compatriots, known as the FSLN, to seize power in 1979. At first, Washington with Carter as president, provided aid to the new administration. Within a year, the policy changed. Fearful that the Sandinistas were allied with Moscow, could spread its influence throughout Central America, and were aiding the Salvador rebels, Washington suspended aid and became belligerent against an administration it had indirectly assisted in achieving power. Despite the passage of the Boland Act by the U.S. House of representatives, that prohibited the U.S. from supplying arms to those opposed to the Sandinista regime (Contras), the Reagan administration "covertly" armed the Contras. In an effort to destroy the Nicaragua economy, the CIA mined Nicaragua's harbors. In June 1986 the World Court sided with a Nicaragua law suit and found the U.S. guilty of violating international law. The confrontation with Nicaragua escalated during the Reagan and Bush administrations. The Contras, illegally armed with U.S. funds from several sources, including those diverted in the Iran-Contra affair, ventured from bases in Honduras into parts of Nicaragua. They attacked and destroyed, but never held territory nor could convince the Nicaraguan people to revolt. Nevertheless, the actions had their toll and the Sandinista government wanted to end the bloodshed. They accepted the Arias Plan, devised by the Costa Rican president, and which had the support of Central American countries. Despite U.S. rejections of the plan, the plan was implemented. In 1990, Violeta Barios Chamorro, representing an opposition party, defeated Daniel Ortega, the FSLN candidate in internationally supervised elections. The government and the Contras signed a permanent cease fire and the Contras demobilized. The Arias Plan brought the democracy and peace to Nicaragua that Washington had claimed as its objectives. Yet, Washington rejected the Arias Plan.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 12:33 pm The Politics of Starvation The powerful can't always use military might to suppress adversaries. Their own citizens and world opinion may react unfavorably and undermine a military adventure. Logistics may not favor it. Beside, they have other means. One of these means is economic warfare; a method that can silently crush an adversary without firing a shot. Gone to its extreme, economic warfare has the force of a neutron bomb: It debilitates the population and disables the infrastructure. Economic warfare requires preparation before implementation. First, the grieved country accuses its adversary of great crimes. The adversary is powerless to defend itself and becomes marked with the adjective, "rogue state." Since the "rogue state" cannot ameliorate the crimes of which it is accused, being that they may not exist, and since these states are usually proud and will not compromise with their national integrity ( one reason for their fate) further action must be taken against them. The next step is isolation. This has several stages. In stage #1, the grieved country forbids all its citizens, except the CIA, to travel to the "rogue state." Although forbidden by law in democratic countries and contradicting the criticism made by the democratic countries against the policy of the former Soviet Union that imposed travel restrictions on its citizens, the democratic country bans all travel to the "rogue state." It bypasses the constitutional laws by enforcement procedures. These include democratic actions such as heavy fines, harassment, embarrassing airport searches, letting the neighbors know, and calls from the internal revenue department. The reasons mentioned for this "undemocratic" action are: to protect travelers from being contaminated with "rogue" germs, shield them from vicious propaganda and prevent them from being kidnapped for ransom and from accusations of spying. These are valid reasons, The unmentioned reasons are: to assure the "rogue" country doesn't acquire tourist dollars that may enable it to survive, make certain that the travelers don't learn that all they have read and heard from their government may be propaganda, terrorize citizens against terrorists and prevent rogueidization in which a happy citizen suddenly sympathizes with the rogue and acquires rogue traits. In the next stage, the "rogue state" is isolated from international agencies, relief efforts, finances and communications. After it is forced into an isolation it doesn't desire, it may receive the adjective, "hermit kingdom." That prepares it for the great strike, economic warfare. The economic warfare punch has many shapes. Sanctions that are are not normally used against favored countries that have succeeded in arousing the wrath of the world community, (reason given that they really don't work) are used with impunity against the disfavored countries. If the preferred sanctions cannot be implemented then an illegal embargo is enforced by warships that dwarf the rowboats of the rogue country and arrive close to its beaches. Sometimes explosive mines are dropped in the rogue's harbors to complete the embargo. If the embargo proves insufficient for the cleansing task, then the grieved country may arm surrogate warriors inside or close to the rogue country and have them add human catastrophes to the natural catastrophes that inflict the rogue country. The laws of the grieved country usually prohibit this action. Nevertheless, these laws are conviently circumvented. If the grieved country keeps its hands clean and doesn't get its citizens punctured with bullet holes, the judicial system may not bother to enforce the laws. Rogues that have special qualifications earn the title of terrorists. This title sticks to their names like velcro. It appears in all articles, headlines, dispatches, reports and news, as if the word terrorist followed by the country name is one word. The rogue country earns this title by committing an evil deed that is usually in response to the tens of evil deeds committed against it. No matter! Economic warfare leads to the final step in whipping a "rogue" country back into shape-starvation. If the food supply dwindles then certainly the poor unfortunate citizens of the "rogue" country will act as those who proclaimed "Liberte", "Egalitie" and "Fraternitie" in the French revolution. They will storm the gates of their oppressors, take away their cake and demand bread. The United States has implemented a politics intending to cause starvation in several countries. Their leaders still eat cake and the people have suffered greatly from economic deprivation and, in some cases, starvation. Since WWII, the United States has implemented sanctions against approximately thirty countries. The proof that sanctions have become a major part of foreign policy and that they affect the business climate, is shown by the number of companies, such as James Orr Associates, that provide information services on unilateral and economic trade sanctions. Intentional interferences and disruptions to a nation's economy and business operations occur often from many sources, and are part of the "white collar" crime that affects the world. Economic warfare, of which sanctions is one part, is more serious than "white collar" crime and people suffer greatly from it. Intentional starvation of people due to interference by a foreign source is more serious. It is a major crime and a form of terrorism. It has been attempted by the United States in several situations. The most punishing U.S. policies have been against Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua, and Iraq. Although Washington and its allies have often stated that civilians should not be made to deliberately suffer from a nation's transgressions or from war and strife, Washington's policies have guaranteed that civilians suffer by economic warfare. Economic warfare against the above mentioned countries demonstrates the damages to their populations. Cuba The United States imposed an embargo against Cuba almost immediately after its revolution. Cuban expropriation of American property and land reform policies motivated the United States into decreasing Cuba's sugar subsidy and implementing an embargo that intended to starve Cuba of spare parts for the U.S. machinery that powered their economy. The Soviet Union aided Cuba in these unfortunate years by purchasing sugar at inflated market prices and forwarding strategic materials to the island. Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union strengthened Uncle Sam's determination to cripple Cuba by embargo. Although the reasons for the embargo faded with the years and the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States, still wanting to overthrow the Castro government and catering to the Cuban exile community, tightened the embargo. In 1992, congress passed The Cuba Democracy Act, 1992, that forbade United States subsidiaries to trade with Cuba, depriving the island of $700 million in trade, 70% of which had been in food and medicine. The Act also prohibited U.S. citizens to spend money in Cuba. It allowed private groups to deliver food and medicine. Although the United Nations general assembly on November 2, 1995, voted 117 to 3 to recommend an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, President Clinton on March 12, 1996 signed into law The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, otherwise known as The Helms-Burton Act. This Act imposed penalties on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, permitted U.S. citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned property seized by the Cuban government and denied entry into the U.S. of such investors. The tightened embargo reinforced Cuba's suffering after Russia withdrew subsidies. The pre-90's Cuba had been credited with eliminating hunger and malnutrition, wiping out infectious diseases and receiving applause from the World Health Organization for its public health system. Cuba of the mid-90's portrayed another image. The American Association for World Health and the American Public Health Association determined that the embargo caused significant deterioration in Cuba's food production and health care: Cuba is banned from purchasing nearly 1/2 of new drugs on the market. Physicians have access to only 890 medications, down from 1,300 in 1989. Deterioration of water supply has increased water borne diseases. Daily caloric intake dropped by 33% between 1989 and 1993. New Jersey Congressman Torricelli predicted that his Cuban Democracy Act would bring Castro's downfall within one year. That has not happened. It is conceivable that the Act itself has not been a significant contributor to Cuba's economic decline. The decline had already started with the loss of Soviet Union trade. The significance is that humanitarians, such as Congressman Torricelli, have been eager to take advantage of the sufferings of the Cuban people and intensify them for political purposes rather than affording the people a means to recover from the tragedy-equivalent to hitting a person you don't know as they are falling down. Cuba claims that forty years of trade embargo has cost the Caribbean island $60 billion. In 1998,they estimated their losses at $800 million. Due to the European nations refusal to abide by the embargo, and increased tourist revenues, the economic war against Cuba is slowly being lost. Angola Angola is an example of destroying the economic fabric of a nation by creating turmoil. Independence from Portugal brought civil war to a country that had the resources to become the wealthiest in Africa. The contending rivals had extreme leftist leanings and none could be considered friends of the United States. After the Soviet Union and Cuba gave financial and military support to protect the established MPLA government from the rebel group UNITA's offenses, the United States quickly supported the rebel groups. Due to military assistance from South Africa, Jona Savimbi's UNITA evolved from a small army of poorly armed followers in 1976 to a credible fighting force during the '80's. After 1985, the United States' aid to the avowed Maoist leader allowed UNITA to extend its destructive campaign throughout Angola. By the time the factions agreed to a mutual settlement in 1989, Angola had been ravaged. Library of Congress documents describe the human toll: Estimates are that between 60,000 and 90,000 had died. More than 20,000 persons had become amputees, the largest of any country. Almost 700,000 people had become displaced. About 400,000 Angolans became refugees in neighboring states. About 600,00 Angolans required nutritional assistance. Added to the human toll are the economic losses: Agricultural rich Angola became forced to import 80% of its food supplies. Iron production virtually ceased. Diamond mining and lumber were curtailed. UNITA damaged and destroyed hundreds of facilities and made development impossible. Due to civil war, the defense budget doubled between 1980 and 1986. Economic development was halved. The insurgency disrupted all areas of productivity. Inflation went as high as 1,650% in 1996. The havoc committed upon Angola did not stop with the 1988 accords between the warring parties. Although the Angolan government permitted Jonas Savimba's UNITA to enter the government, and many have remained, Jonas Savimba returned to the battle. His troops have seized the diamond mining area and now function as a government within a government. Angola's infrastructure remains in shambles. The story has an ironic twist. The United Nations, with United States voting approval, imposed sanctions against UNITA, the organization that the US armed for several years and supported until the mid '90's. Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1173, member states must freeze all UNITA assets and those of its leadership. The resolution prohibits the importation of illegal diamonds from Angola, and also prohibits the exportation to UNITA of any mining equipment, vehicles and spare parts. The Washington Post, July 25, 1999 (that's '99 and not '79), gives a clue to the US legacy of economic war against Angola: Luanda, Angola- The staff of the main public hospital here grapples with one epidemic after another. It was cholera a year ago, followed by an outbreak of polio this year. The malaria season is beginning. ..With thousands of refugees fleeing the the fighting in their villages and settling in vast squatter camps, with uncollected garbage, open sewage and contaminated water, Angolan cities can be incubators for diseases such as polio and malaria. Angola has higher rates of leprosy than almost any other country. Nicaragua Economic warfare by the United States against the people of Nicaragua consisted of all forms of disruption. Revolutionary Nicaragua's friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union aggravated Washington. After accusing the Sandinistas of human rights violations and aiding the El Salvador rebels, the United States, who had indirectly assisted the Sandinistas to achieve power by denying Somoza military assistance, started an economic war against the Nicaragua people. In 1981, Carter terminated aid to Nicaragua. In 1984, US Seals mined Nicaragua's harbors in a known"covert"action. In 1986, the World Court awarded damages to Nicaragua (that the US never paid) and confirmed this obvious violation of international law. Although the US House of Representative, in 1982, passed the Boland Amendment that prohibited the US from supplying the Contra rebels in their struggle against the Nicaraguan government, Reagan declared the Contras to be "freedom fighters," and "covertly' provided arms to them. With these "freedom fighters," the US had Nicaragua's borders isolated from land and sea. Since Nicaragua had previously been a "quasi" colony of their Northern neighbor, their trade occurred principally with the US, and their infrastructure depended on US materials. Due to the loss of aid and the embargo, Nicaragua's imports dropped from $242.1 millions in 1980 to $122.6 million in 1984. During the same period, exports dropped from 160.2 million to $62.5 million. Meanwhile, the Contra "freedom fighters," sallied from protected bases in Honduras and raided Nicaraguan farms, burnt crops, killed livestock and created havoc. They never held territory or incited the Nicaraguan people to revolt. Finally, a desperate Nicaragua agreed in 1988 to seek an end to the havoc. The Central American countries, with Nicaragua's and Contra approval, adopted the Arias Plan, named after the Costa Rican president. The Arias Plan resulted in a permanent cease-fire, demobilization of the Contras and free elections in Nicaragua. Violetta Chamorro, a previous Sandinista supporter defeated the previous government's president, Daniel Ortega. The United States never approved the Arias Plan that settled the dispute to the U.S. desires. Evidently, the Nicaraguan people had not sufficiently suffered. Iraq If Iraq were Pompeii, then the US would be Mt. Vesuvius. The US, after destroying much of Iraq in a declared war, has continued to destroy it further in an undeclared war. This war contains every imaginable form of warfare: direct military, economic, incitement to revolt, aid to insurgency, blockade, spying, propaganda. Analyzing the reasons for these attacks, that continue today, is fruitless and only deflects us from the obvious fact that the Iraq population has greatly suffered. This suffering has been outlined in a UN Report on the Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq, submitted to the Security Council, March 1999. Due to the length of the report, the significant features are mentioned. Before the Gulf War Iraq's social and economic indicators were generally above the regional and developing country averages. GDP in 1989 stood at 75.5 billion for a population of 18.3 million. By 1988 GDP per capita totaled 3.510 US dollars. Up to 1990, domestic food production represented only one third of total consumption for essential food items. As highlighted by FAO, at that time Iraq had one of the highest per capita food availability indicators in the region. Dietary energy supply averaged 3.120 kilo calories per capita/per day. Due to its relative prosperity Iraq had capacity to import large quantities of food. According to WHO, prior to 1991, health care reached approximately 97% of the urban population and 78% of rural residents. The health care system was based on an extensive expanding network of health facilities linked up by reliable communications and a large fleet of service vehicles and ambulances. Health care emphasized curative aspects, but a set of active public health programmes complemented it through immunization and control of insect borne diseases. A major reduction of young child mortality took place from 1960 to 1990, with the infant mortality rate at 65 per 1.000 live births in 1989 (1991 Human Development Report average for developing countries was 76 per- 1.000 live births). UNICEF indicates that a national welfare system was in place to assist orphans or children with disabilities and support the poorest families. Before 1991 the South and Center of Iraq had a well developed water and sanitation system comprising over two hundred water treatment plants ("wtp's"  for urban areas and 1200 compact wtp's to serve rural areas, as well as an extensive distribution network. WHO estimates that 90% of the population had access to an abundant quantity of safe drinking water. Aftermath of the Gulf War As mentioned by UNFPA, the maternal mortality rate increased from 50/100.000 live births in 1989 to 117/100.000 in 1997. The under-five child mortality rate increased from 30.2/1000 live births to 97.2/1000 during the same period. The Population Division of DESA calculates that the infant mortality rate rose from 64/1.000 births in 1990 to 129/1.000 in 1995 (the latest Human Development Report sets the average infant mortality rate for Least Developed Countries at 109/1.0 . 00). Low birth weight babies (less than 2.5 kg) rose from 4% in 1990 to around a quarter of registered births in 1997, due mainly to maternal malnutrition. The dietary energy supply had fallen from 3.120 to 1.093 kilo calories per capita/per day by 1994-95. The prevalence of malnutrition in Iraq! children under five almost doubled from 1991 to 1996 (from 12% to 23%). Acute malnutrition in Center/South rose from 3% to 11% for the same age bracket. The WFP estimates that access to potable water is currently 50% of the 1990 level in urban areas and only 33% in rural areas. Since 1991, hospitals and health centers have remained without repair and maintenance. The functional capacity of the health care system has degraded further by shortages of water and power supply, lack of transportation and the collapse of the telecommunications system. Communicable diseases, such as water borne diseases and malaria, which had been under control, came back as an epidemic in 1993 and have now become part of the endemic pattern of the precarious health situation, according to WHO. School enrollment for all ages (6-23) has declined to 53%. According to a field survey conducted in 1993, as quoted by UNESCO, in Central and Southern governorates 83% of school buildings needed rehabilitation, with 8.613 out of 10.334 schools having suffered serious damages. The same source indicated that some schools with a planned capacity of 700 pupils actually have 4500 enrolled in them. Substantive progress in reducing adult and female illiteracy has ceased and regressed to mid-1980 levels, according to UNICEF. The rising number of street children and children who work can be explained, in part, as a result of increasing rates of school drop-outs and repetition, as more families are forced to rely on children to secure household incomes. Figures provided by UNESCO indicate that drop-outs in elementary schools increased from 95.692 in 1990 to 131.658 in 1999. The qualitative dimension. Increase In juvenile delinquency, begging and prostitution,, anxiety about the future and lack of motivation, a rising sense of isolation bred by absence of contact with the outside world, the development of a parallel economy replete with profiteering and criminality, cultural and scientific Impoverishment, disruption of family life. WHO points out that the number of mental health patients attending health facilities rose by 157% from 1990 to 1998 (from 197.000 to 507.000 persons). The cumulative effect of the sanctions regime and economic decline on the social fabric of Iraq was particularly evident to the first hand observers who addressed the panel either orally or in writing. While WHO mentioned the extreme isolation of the Iraqi scientific community and its outdated expertise, the ICRC observed that medical training is no longer guaranteed and skills are being lost. UNICEF spoke of a whole generation of Iraqis who are growing up disconnected from the rest of the world. The adoption of the "oil for food" programme has played an important role in averting major food shortages in Iraq and to a considerable extent has helped to alleviate the health situation, especially in the North. Under Phase V of that programme food imports account for 1.05 billion US dollars (out of a total of 1.79 billion available for all humanitarian supplies). The objective of providing the population with a basic caloric food basket of 2.300 kilo-calories/per person/ per day, is yet to be met, with the current intake closer to a level of 2.030 kilo-calories, according to the WFP. Prior to the start of the implementation of the programme, the average kilo-calorie intake had fallen to approximately 1.300. Results of a nutritional status survey of infants attending routine Immunization sessions at primary health centers throughout Central and Southern Iraq conducted in October 1997, and again one year later, reveal little change in the nutritional status since the beginning of the programme established by Security Council resolution 986 (Nutritional Status Survey at Primary Health Centers during Polio National Immunization Days in Iraq, UNICEF November 7, 1998). According to the FAO, the survey showed signs that Infant feeding patterns may have deteriorated, and that children and younger male adults remained subject to significant levels of malnutrition. As mentioned by WFP, the introduction of the 986 food ration in 1997 led to a decrease in prices of food items found in the ration. Prices of non-ration food items such as meat and eggs, however, remain prohibitively high. The collapse of the irrigation system and the introduction of the oil-for-food programme have prompted the Government to withdraw from agriculture (the Economist Intelligence Unit, country profile Iraq, 1998-99). A recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease reported by the Department of Animal Health is assumed to have affected approximately one million cattle and sheep and is causing high mortality among offspring. It was noted that recent power cuts, which can last up to 10 hours a day, have been affecting humanitarian efforts in general, while the security situation has imposed additional constraints on the activities of humanitarian workers. The ICRC, which remained present in Baghdad and pursued its normal activities during the December 1998 air strikes, stepped up its support for treating the war wounded (over 200 casualties were seen by its delegates) and assisted with repairs to a hospital which suffered blast damage when three missiles fell nearby. Emergency assistance was also provided by the ICRC 'in the region of Basrah at the end of January 1999, when missiles hit areas inhabited by civilians. Although Iraq is exporting more oil than ever since 1991, revenue remained insufficient due to general obsolescence of oil infrastructure. Observations and recommendations Data provided to the panel point to a continuing degradation of the Iraqi economy with an acute deterioration in the living conditions of the Iraqi population and severe strains on its social fabric. As summarized by the UNDP field office, ""the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty". In marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-91, the infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world, low infant birth weight affects at least 23% of all births, chronic malnutrition affects every fourth child under five years of age, only 41% of the population have regular access to clean water, 83% of all schools need substantial repairs. The ICRC states that the Iraqi health-care system is today in a decrepit state. ....it is the panel's view that, under current conditions the humanitarian outlook will remain bleak and become more serious with time. Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war. The International Study Team noted, "Most of the babies who lost their lives during the war period must have died from diseases related to poor nutrition, lack of clean water, and related deprivations." CONCLUSION The sovereign countries that suffered from US economic warfare in undeclared wars had similar traits: 1. Independent foreign policies that didn't support the US policies. 2. The most advanced social polices of comparable countries in their area, such as the highest literacy rate, life expectancy, number of doctors/population, and the lowest infant mortality rate. This had been true of Cuba and Iraq. Angola and Nicaragua never had the opportunity to develop these characteristics. 3. Strong authoritarian leaders and lack of US concepts of democracy and freedom. This had been true of Cuba and Iraq. It was not entirely true of Angola and Nicaragua. 4. Principally dependent on the export of one essential crop or resource for survival. The economic warfare policies had similar results: 1. Almost complete devastation to the country's infrastructure. 2. Enormous suffering to the population, bordering on starvation. 3. The country's military remaining relatively intact. 4. Except for Nicaragua, no modification to the country's leadership or political structure. We visualize warfare in terms of dead soldiers, battlefield blood, eerie noises and bombed-out structures. We can't easily comprehend that warfare can be silent and still be deadly. Economic warfare has equivalents to military war. The country that takes the offense becomes the aggressor, as in any war, and the destruction to the defending state is equally brutal. In most cases, the economic war has worse results: In a one sided manner, the civilian population of the defending nation suffers greatly and the military force receives lesser pain. The aggressor country suffers no losses. The war rarely achieves the results that the offending party desired and no peace treaty is signed. The economic war remains an open issue. A limited form of economic warfare may, at times, have a legitimate purpose. A complete economic war, that invades all aspects of a country's life and continues until it debiltates the population, cannot be accepted. In a military campaign, atrocities and human rights violations are often committed. Although no shots are fired and battefields are not identifiable, economic warfare cannot camouflage its atrocities and disguise its severe human rights violations.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 12:56 pm Clinton's Legacy-----What are the Facts? Foreign Policy: Foreign policy is the major responsibility of an U.S. President. It is the major policy on which the president should be judged. From Somalia to Kosovo, Clinton's foreign policy never accomplished its objectives and resulted in deaths of many innocent people: Somalia: In a humanitarian mission, U.S. forces killed tens of Somali, including two children shot when they climbed upon jeeps. The U.S. military suffered many deaths. On October 3, 1993 Somali ambushed elite units of the US Army's Rangers and Delta Force and left eighteen Americans dead and eighty-four wounded. No objectives accomplished. Sudan: Despite no substantiated evidence that it manufactured anything but pharmaceuticals, the U.S. military destroyed the only pharmaceutical factory in the impoverished country. Iraq: Humanitarian organizations estimate that continuous sanctions have been responsible for deaths of >1,000,000 Iraqis. According to Baghdad, U.S. and British air strikes on an almost daily basis over the past two years have caused deaths of 323 Iraqis and more than 950 wounded. No U.S. pilots have been harmed. In his last days in office, for no conceivable reason, Clinton ordered an air strike on Iraq. Witnesses said six were killed and three wounded in a raid in which missiles hit a cattle feed depot run by the agriculture ministry and damaged a nearby house, killing six and wounding three others, all of them ministry employees and family members. The bombings had no clear objectives and therefore had no measurable accomplishments. Kosovo: NATO bombings destroyed much of Yugoslavia's infrastructure and caused the deaths of tens of Serb and Kosovar people. One missile hit Yugoslavia's TV headquarters and killed 16 employees. The problems of Kosovo remain unresolved and are spreading into the Serbian Republic. Russia: Clinton's support of Yeltsin contributed to Russia's impoverishment. Mid-East: Seven years of Clinton mediation resulted in war and violence rather then peace. Latin America: Violence and insurrection continue in Columbia, Peru and Ecuador. Ex-president Carter prevented a Clinton invasion of Haiti with a last minute compromise. Mexico still delivering drugs to the United States. No defined Latin American policies in all of Clinton's years. Africa: Continuous turmoil throughout Africa during the 90's decade and Clinton had no defined policies to ameliorate them in all his years in office. Asia: Clinton had active and beneficial policies with China, the two Koreas and Vietnam. The rest of Asia, from Pakistan to Indonesia, had wars or instabilities that and no helpful policies. Europe: Clinton managed good relations with the European nations, especially Great Britain. He had partial success in resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland. Israel/Palestine: Continue business as usual.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 01:02 pm U.S. policy in Iraq has followed a similar trajectory - exaggerate the potential strength and aggressive leanings of the wicked adversary, unilaterally guide duplicitous policies that continue the conflict, never resolve the situation, bring pain and sorrow to innocent people, and eventually harm America's strategic interests. Exaggerating Iraq's Potential Iraq hardly fought a Gulf War. Except for a few missiles that landed in Israel and in one air force base in Saudi Arabia, the Iraq military showed no military initiative. Iraq did not use any of its "supposed" weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was pulverized. The weak and debilitated Iraq military of the Gulf War must be weaker today. It remains too small and too guarded to acquire sufficient power to control the Mid-East region. Surrounded by U.S. military forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Iraq can hardly want to engage in any belligerent actions that will invite retaliation and destruction to itself. The U.S. has intelligence, monitoring and rapid deployment forces to counter a major provocation from Iraq before it develops into a major danger. All of the developed western world would equally respond to an Iraqi threat. Iraq is not a threat. Iraq is threatened, and that fear permeates adjacent countries, just as Nicaragua's fear engulfed the Central American region. Duplicitous Policies The United States and Great Britain stated they established the "no-fly" zones to protect the rebellious Kurdish minority in the North and the rebellious Shiite majority in the South from Saddam Hussein's government. Since that time, the Turkish government has waged a continuous war with impunity against their Kurdish minority and has attacked the Kurds within Iraq. Neither the Kurds nor Shiites have had further rebellions against the Iraq government, which is still their government. The "no-fly" zones have not protected the northern Kurds. They serve to protect the Turks from being challenged by Iraq, while Turkish planes pound and severely punish the Kurds in Iraq. According to an article in The Washington Post, Oct. 25, 2000, "The Turkish government has interrupted the flying schedules several times, sometimes to bomb Kurdish villages in Iraq and sometimes to protest America's refusal to sell Turkey certain precision guided bombs." The protection afforded to the southern Shiites is equally duplicitous. The United States does not want an independent Shiite community in southern Iraq. The Shiites are allied with Iran and an alliance would create an Iranian influence that extends to the bordes of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. The "no-fly zone fliers determine if the Shiite community is getting too rebellious. They haven't. Another duplicity is the actual use of the "no-fly" zone. The zone is shown below with dates of recent attacks. Although no U.S. or British pilots have been killed, Iraq has been consistently bombed. Interviews with pilots in the Washington Post, Oct. 25, 2000, gave clues to the reasons for the bombings. One pilot states: "One sure way to get the Iraqis to start shooting...was to buzz a heavily defended area north of the city of Mosul." Air force National Guard and reserve units, that include commercial airline pilots, constitute a major part of the contingent of RC-135 reconnaissance jets, Boeing 707 surveillance planes, Navy EA-6B equipped electronic jammers and missile laden planes that head towards Iraq. The reasons for the bombings are clear: Test weapons and logistics and train air force personnel in live action. The recent attacks on Baghdad, which is outside the "no-fly" zones, and received missile attacks from planes within the zone, tested new longer range guided missiles. Iraq is a human test ground for the U.S. air force. Pain and Sorrow By all measures, whether from the Iraqi government which estimates 1.3 million Iraqi dead due to the sanctions, or from the United Nations Report on the Current Humanitarian Situation, 30 March 1999, the effects of the sanctions approach a genocide definition. The UN Report states: The data provided to the panel point to a continuing degradation of the Iraqi economy with an acute deterioration in the living conditions of the Iraqi population and severe strains on its social fabric. As summarized by the UNDP field office, ""the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty". In marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-91, the infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world, low infant birth weight affects at least 23% of all births, chronic malnutrition affects every fourth child under five years of age, only 41% of the population have regular access to clean water, 83% of all schools need substantial repairs. The ICRC states that the Iraqi health-care system is today in a decrepit state. UNDP calculates that it would take 7 billion US dollars to rehabilitate the power sector country-wide to its 1990 capacity. Iraqi child killed in an air raid and his grieving relatives: Private Photos, Nabil Al-Jorani. Those who claim support for "human rights" and prevention of genocide cannot defend policies that contradict their claims. The Iraq situation has affected the suffering of the Palestinian people. Iraq has been vociferous in its financial and moral support of the Palestinians, and the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people have become linked to Iraq's survival. U.S. military and economic actions that debilitate Iraq increase the desperation of the Palestinian people and alienate the United States from those who recognize the oppression. Policies that Harm U.S. Strategic Interests U.S. policies in Iraq, euphemistically called coalition policies, have been supposedly designed to control Iraq's weapons production, topple Saddam Hussein, return human rights to the Iraqi people and stability to the area. None of these objectives have materialized. Why not? Because the policies conflict with the objectives. Inhuman sanctions have been sufficient for the Iraqis to view the United States as a hypocritical and dangerous enemy. This view has increased their support of Saddam's leadership. Almost the entire region has echoed similar feelings. The continuous military excursions against Iraq and deterioration in Iraqi life contrasts sharply with U.S. lack of initiatives against Israel, whom the Arab world views as an aggressor against the Palestinians and the cause of severe deterioration of Palestinian life. Policies defined for stability have made the area more unstable. The original inspections, sanctions and flights over Iraq have succeeded in limiting Iraq's weapons development and production. The military intrusions into Iraq territory, and the ultimatums given to them, trouble nations, such as Russia and China. The recent British offer to Iraq, which stated that "if Iraq is honest it will accept permanent inspections for a relief in sanctions," can be interpreted as a clever strategy for Iraq to lose its sovereignty and for the U.S. and Great Britain to exercise virtual control over the Iraq government. Iraq could never accept this offer. U.S. intended control of Iraq will be considered a dangerous trend in controlling regions and will be considered a threat to Russia and China. The United States cannot control Iraq's internal policies forever. While it focuses on a strategy to contain a relatively small nation whose countervailing power to the United States is minimal and easily contained, China and Russia grow angry and hostile to U.S. strategies. The greatest folly of the United States policy towards Iraq is a union of forces and increase in offensive capability of those who fear that U.S. power has become too extended and is getting too close to their own borders.
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 11:08 pm Anonymous MAD MAC knows more about Somalia in general, and the US intervention in particular, than ANY member of the press ever will. Now, allow me to retort. First of all, let's start with casualty counts (get the numbers out of the way). The Somali casualty count of between 8,000-10,000 is as good as any and I personally think it's a good estimate. But I don't like to use the phrase "Somali" because in fact, almost all of these casualties were Haber Gedir. Why do you think that is? Take a wild guess. Maybe we ended up fighting people who were fighting us? I spent a year there. When I traveled in Hamer, in Abgal controlled areas like Medina, Hawlwadawg, Karan, etc. I received a heros welcome. But in SNA controlled areas people were throwing stones at us, cursing us and shooting at us. I never had anything other than a good encounter with ANY, I say again ANY, clan in Somalia other than the Haber Gedir. Even Al-Itihad members invited me into a local Mosque, and sat down and talked with me. they were polite and cordial. BTW the US KIA count was 19, not 18. Typical inaccuracy in media reporting. Now as for TF Rangers, well you've accounted for about 450 of the 45,000 plus soldiers who served in Somalia. What about the rest. You think the guys from the Logistics Command were engaged in the Hunt for Aideed. There were 5,000 of those guys present at any given time. I personnally, when I arrived in December 1992, saw plenty of starving people and two dead kids who had literally starved to death. Don't tell me things weren't any different when I left than when I came. I was there dickhead!!! The Media is perenially full of ••••. They love to knock military missions, love to cite government "failure". Even you guys bitch incessantly about how the media doesn't report the full story in Palestine. What makes you think all of a sudden they got it right now? Now on to spending. The US spent over 3 billion dollars in Somalia. Much of that money went to infrastructure (of which there was none when we arrived because the Somalis had destroyed it all). Who do you think did all the work for these contracts???? I'll give you a hint, there were no ditch diggers brought in from Russia. We employed thousands of Somalis. The UN was BY FAR the single largest employer in Somalia from 1992-1995. This meant money flowing INTO the Somali economy. US dollars!!! Don't tell me Somalis or the Somali economy was not benefiting from this because I know better. As for objectives accomplished. The famine was stopped. This undeniable. Are you now trying to tell me there was no famine?? Try again, I saw it with my own two eyes. I was in Bay in 92 - where the •••• were you then? Obviously not in Bay. the security situation is siginificantly better now. The level of violence is way down, primarily due to fewer resources, specifically munitions. We destroyed enormous quanitites and a lot was expended fighting us. Again, it was not a complete solution, but certainly the political landscape in Somalia was better in 1996 than it was in 1991 and 1992 when the country was in the middle of a blood letting of huge propoertions that caused 1/3 or more of the general population to flee. I hate this revisionist bullshit. What I really hate is that people believe it. Don't tell me what I know and don't know about the US intervention in Somalia - I know the facts about what happened!!!
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| | Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 11:11 pm Oh and what the •••• does US policy vis-a-vis Iraq have to do with Operation Restore Hope??? Why do you keep posting bullshit about Iraq? Who cares about Iraq. This is Somalinet!!!
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 12:33 am Somalia Mission Control; US called the shots in failed policy: the first U.S. troops sent by President Bush arrived in Somalia. It was to be a humanitarian mission. But policy began to change as soon as they troops landed and when President Clinton sent in a Special Operations force to capture the warloard Aidid. This report looks at that decision and its consequences. By Patrick J. Sloyan. Washington It was Aug. 22, and President Bill Clinton was vacationing at Martha's Vineyard when word arrived of another attack on U.S. soldiers in Somalia. No one was killed, but a land mine wounded six Americans when it destroyed their vehicle in the streets of Mogadishu. It had been detonated by a Somali spotter using a remote-controlled device - the identical method used in two earlier attacks. One of those, on Aug. 8, had killed four U.S. Army military policemen. For Clinton, the Aug. 22 attack was the final straw. That night, on his orders, Delta Force commandos from Ft. Bragg, N.C., a helicopter detachment from Ft. Campbell, Ky., and Army Rangers from Ft. Benning, Ga., were en route to Somalia. Once there, the clandestine Special Operations force would coordinate with a CIA team that had been in place for more than a month. Their mission: Capture Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the dominant political leader in one of the world's poorest countries. Once Aidid was in custody, Delta Force would whisk him to a third-country ship off the coast of Somalia, where the warlord would be tried for murder. "We were going to set Aidid aside," said one senior Clinton adviser, using the White House euphemism for what was more commonly known among officials as the "snatch" operation. Seven weeks later the decision would result in a bloody firefight as Rangers and men of the Delta Force made their seventh attempt to grab Aidid. Eighteen American soldiers died, and 77 were wounded. An estimated 300 Somalis were killed and another 700 wounded, a third of the casualties women and children. Clinton's handling of the disaster has raised doubt about the future U.S. role, not only in Somalia, but also in Bosnia and other global hot spots. In the aftermath of the Oct. 3 battle, Aidid emerged with a global reputation by withstanding American military wrath and winning Clinton's support for a Somali-based political settlement. Clinton seemed to underline the debacle by announcing a March 31 deadline for retreat from the East African country. In hoisting a diplomatic white flag, the president portrayed himself as a victim of events controlled by the United Nations on a Somali mission that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called "peace enforcement." "We cannot let a charge we got under a UN resolution to do some police work - which is essentially what it is, to arrest suspects - turn into a military mission," Clinton said in the aftermath of the Oct. 3 battle. Even more specific were administration officials who sought to distance Clinton and his top aides from the ill-fated hunt for Aidid. "The search-and-seizure missions are UN operations," said Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen de Laski. But extensive interviews with top administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition they not be identified, showed the United States was in control of events in Somalia. Leading up to the Oct. 3 disaster were these changes in U.S. policy: A major shift from backing an Aidid-sponsored disarmament conference in May to violent confrontations with the formidable warlord. The hard-line policy was crafted by the U.S. envoy in Somalia, Robert Gosende, and retired U.S. Navy Adm. Jonathan Howe, handpicked by the Clinton administration to head the UN mission there. Clinton's approval, following an ambush that killed 24 UN peacekeepers in June, of three days of aerial bombardments of Aidid's compound with the understanding that the attacks might kill the Somali leader. U.S. forces could be used only with specific U.S. military approval even though the troops were ostensibly part of the UN mission. The attacks on Aidid triggered an escalating round of violence. Clinton's decision to withdraw 25,000 combat troops from Somalia just as the United States began what proved to be its bloodiest confrontation since a U.S. Marine peacekeeping force was massacred in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. The political standoff with Aidid had erupted into violence on June 5, when 24 Pakistani troops in the UN force were killed during an ambush in a Mogadishu area controlled by the warlord. While there was no proof Aidid ordered the ambush - he denied it - both Howe and Gosende blamed the warlord. Within 24 hours Clinton backed a UN Security Council resolution calling for the arrest and trial of those responsible for the ambush. The next week U.S. warplanes and hundreds of UN troops attacked Aidid's stronghold over a four-day period. "We didn't plan to kill him, but the president knew that if something fell on Aidid and killed him, no tears would be shed,"said one senior official who participated in Clinton's June decision. But another U.S. official said four attacks by American gunships during that period were aimed at killing Aidid. In a radio speech June 12, the day of the first attack, Clinton underlined the American policy. "We're striking a blow against lawlessness and killing," Clinton said. Later, at a news conference, he said: "We cannot have a situation where one of these warlords, while everybody else is cooperating, decides that he can go out and slaughter 20 peacekeepers." But Aidid remained defiant, and his supporters staged rallies tht led to escalating violence between the Somalis and UN troops. All of those moves contributed to the Oct. 3 disaster, but today White House officials look back to Aug. 22, when administration opponents of the covert operation to seize Aidid dropped their objections, as the crucial day. The National Security Council, the usual forums used by presidents when deciding whether to send U.S. troops into harm's way, never figured in the Clinton decision. On Aug. 22, a Sunday, Clinton talked by phone from Martha's vineyard with Anthony Lake, his adviser on the national security affairs. For weeks, top administration officials had been debating the deployment of a Delta team to seize Aidid. "They understood the plan," said one source. But when it came down to decision time that day, "it was between Lake and the president with some phone calls afterwards," said a senior White House Official. Normally, Lake would have relayed Clinton's decision first to Defense Secretary Les Aspin. But Aspin was boating on a lake in Wisconsin. Instead, Lake called the president's senior military adviser, Army Gen. Colin Powell, chairman fo the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In turn, Powell called Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, head of Central Command, the U. S. military headquarters responsible for Somalia. "It looks like we are going to send them in,"Powell told Hoar, according to military aided who heard the conversation. Instead of aresponding, Hoar remained silent, a reflection of his anger, dismay and frustration over the order. For two months Hoar's arguments had been used by Aspin, Powell and Lake to oppose the "snatch" operation favored by the State Department. According to military and congressional sources, Hoar had maintained that the chances of getting Aidid were one in four - that the 62-year-old warrior would simply elude pursuers in the narrow alleyways of Mogadishu, where he once served as chief of police; that in the media, the world's last superpower would be seen conducting a manhunt instead of using skilled diplomacy; and, finally, that capturing Aidid would change nothing. "His (Hoar's) objections made it up the chain of command,"said one Clinton national security adviser when asked if the president was aware of potential pitfalls. "But we didn't overrule the military. There was a consensur." Since a diplomatic stalemate with Aidid had eruped into violence in June, the U.S. envoy in Somalia, Gosende, had been urging the removal of the warlord. To Gosende and his UN counterpart Howe, the defiant Aidid was the roadblock to disarming the population and rebuilding the country. They had abandoned efforts by their American predecessor, Robert Oakley, to persuade Aidid and other clan leaders to supervise disarmament and help rebuild Somalia. Howe knew all the right buttons to push,"said a Pentagon official. Gosende's view had been endorsed in late June by Secreatary of Sate Warren Christopher and Peter Tarnoff, underscretary of state for political affairs. While the issue was being debated at lower government levels, Clinton approved some contingency planning in mid-June. An interagency task force began to study what would be done if, in fact, Aidid was captured. Officials of the Pentagon, State Department and CIA offered a veriety of ideas centered on expelling Aidid to Ethiopia or another African country. Eventually the task force decided on placing Aidid aboard a ship off the Somali coast, where he would be tried by panel of American judges assembled for the purpose. The move would avoid a dispute over the legal aspects of American commandos under the authority of the United Nations grabbing a Somali citizen. Meanwhile, Gosende's hard line toward Aidid had been reinforced by Ambassador David Shinn, the special conordinator for Somalia. Shinn identified Aidid as the obstruction to a political settlement in an Aug. 10 report by an interagency task force he headed that had visited Somalia. "We have been serious about trying to arrest Aidid for some period of time,"Shinn said at a news conference. "The fact of the matter is that it's not easy" with convertional U.S. and UN forces. Pulling off a kidnap under difficult circumstances was one of the clandestine arts honed by Delta Force members of Special Operations. But Lake was reluctant. He had seen clandestine operations go sour. As a young foreign service officer, he served in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1963 when Present John F. Kennedy "set aside" another political problem - South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem - in a fatal CIA orchestrated coup. Instead of a deeper commitment with U.S. force in Somalia, Lake sought to have the British government deploy a Special Air Squadron commando team to snatch Aidid. "London said no thanks," a Clinton adviser said. Increasing conventional forces in Somalia was ruled out, according to one senior White house official. Democrats in Congress were already pushing for a total U.S. withdrawal because of American deathes from the increasing violence. As part of the American turnover of control in Somalia to the UN in May, troops for 28 nations had replaced the bulk of U.S. combat troops there. But internal objections to the Special Operations option weakened and finally ceased in August. Until the Aug. 8 attack, when the four U.S. MPs were killed, U.S. troops had been immune from Somali attacks. Now defense officials worried that a large-scale Somali assault might imperil the remaining 3,100 U.S. troops in Mogadishu, only 1,120 of whom were combat soldiers. Perhaps the most important change of heart was Powell's. The Joint Chiefs chairman had come to dominate national security deliberations; his experience and focus had impressed Clinton, who had developed a personal relationship with the general during a series of private meetings. Don't cut and run just because things have become difficult, Powell told Clinton, according to a U.S. official. "We had to do something, or we were going to be nibbled to death," said a Powell aide. "The decision was driven by the circumstances of the attacks in Somalia." In later conversations with aides, Clinton would defend his actions. He based his decisions on the best information available at the time, aides quoted him as saying. In hindsight, one senior administration official said that after the first U.S. attacks on Aidid in June, there should have been a U.S. diplomatic initiative. "He sent us a message, and we sent him a message," the official said. "Then we should have invited Aidid to lunch and talked things over."Hunting Down Aidid; Why Clinton changed mind SERIES: Mission in Somalia. A year ago this week, the first U.S. troops President Bush committed arrived in Somalia. It was to be a humanitarian mission. But policy began to change in August, when President Bill Clinton sent in a Special Operations force to capture the warlord Aidid. This report looks at that decision and its consequences. Second of 4 Parts By Patrick J. Sloyan. The first attempt to grab Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid had gone badly. On Aug. 30 the U.S. Delta Force and members of the 75th Ranger Regiment cascaded from helicopter ropes into the worsening violence in Mogadishu. Their primary target turned out to be an empty building. The secondary target included one man who looked like Somalia's dominant political leader but turned out to be a member of the UN Relief Mission. He was released four hours later with profuse apologies from a U.S. Army colonel. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Les Aspin was upset. "We look like the gang that can't shoot straight," Aspin said, according to an aide who attended the session with senior military advisers. In public there had been no mention of the Special Operations team dispatched by President Bill Clinton on Aug. 22 with orders to capture the warlord and spirit him offshore to face murder charges before a panel of African judges. In a meeting with reporters, Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen de Laski mentioned only the Rangers, a light infantry force that she said represented no change of U.S. policy in Somalia. "This is not an effort to go after one man," she said. "It's an effort to improve the overall situation in Mogadishu." But in fact the Aug. 30 operation had all the earmarks of the kind of "snatch" operation perfected by the Delta Force. That first try to grab Aidid was painless compared to the seventh and final effort five weeks later. On Oct. 3 the elaborate American effort to capture Somalia's leading politician ended in fierce battle that left 18 Americans dead and 77 wounded. More than 300 Somalis were killed and 700 wounded. When the gunsmoke cleared, Clinton had suffered a major setback and left Aidid with a surprising victory. A Newsday examination of decisions leading up to the battle showed that in private Clinton was under intense pressure to change his policy after ordering the clandestine mission Aug. 22. In the week before the Oct. 3 firefight, Newsday found, he had moved from a "hang tough" stance to the verge of halting the hunt for Aidid. At first - within days of the Special Operations team deployment - Clinton had signaled a new and tougher line against Aidid. At an Aug. 23 White House meeting it was decided that Aspin would soon give a major policy address; four days later he pledged that the United States would stay in Somalia until warlords were disarmed, violence had ceased and a new Somali police force was established. But the shift was quickly attacked in Congress, most notably by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), chairman of the appropriations committee. He vowed to cut off U.S. funds for the expanded mission, claiming it should "either be specifically endorsed by Congress or we should pack up and go home. My vote is for the latter," he said. Byrd noted he was inspired, in part, by his failure to vigorously oppose the Vietnam War. In Mogadishu the hard-line tactics against Aidid rattled U.S. allies. Italy moved its contingent of troops out of the city to the safer suburbs; the French government criticized the breakdown in efforts for a political settlement with Aidid. Meanwhile, U.S. military concerns about locating Aidid in the dusty alleyways of Mogadishu had become a reality. At least four risky missions ended in failure because of bad intelligence, according to U.S. commanders in Somalia. From the outset Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar of Central Command, the military headquarters responsible for Somalia, had argued that without adequate intelligence, a Special Operations force would be useless. And military intelligence capability had been reduced as most U.S. combat troops were withdrawn as ordered by Clinton three months earlier. "They argued that the Delta Team was worthless unless it had good intelligence," said one participant in the debate, who, like many officials, spoke on condition of anonymity. "Then it was decided to send in the CIA. But the CIA said there was no point in going into Mogadishu unless the snatch team was there. It went on like that." In late June a CIA team skilled in intercepting communications and other techniques was dispatched to Somalia. They were able to listen in on satellite telephone and radio communications with Aidid's associates. "But Aidid never called them," said one U.S. official. "He went into deep cover." The CIA high-tech approach was useless in pinpointing Aidid because the warlord communicated by using dated walkie-talkies too low-powered to be detected by the CIA. And he used an old, low-power transmitter aboard a truck to make mobile radio broadcasts to his followers. In addition, Aidid's forces kept an eye on helicopter operations at Mogadishu airport, where the Delta Force was based. "It got so we were flying helicopters day and night just to cover our operations," said one U.S. military commander. But perhaps the biggest policy flaw was underlined during a long conversation Clinton had with former President Jimmy Carter on Sept. 12, the night before the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Clinton had invited Carter to spend the night at the White House, and they talked until after 1 a.m., aides said. Carter had met Aidid while visiting Somalia and had gotten letters from him protesting his innocence. According to associates of the former president, Carter told Clinton that the key to success in Somalia was a political settlement. He drove home the point that without Aidid, no political settlement was possible. "After Carter's visit the hard line toward Aidid began to weaken," said one Clinton adviser. At the same time Democratic leaders were having difficulty restraining congressional opposition to the fighting in Somalia. Eventually the House would vote overwhelmingly to either restrict U.S. involvement to humanitarian aid or require an American withdrawal. The lack of success in finding Aidid was also forcing a Clinton reassessment. While top aides to the Somali leader had been captured by the Delta Force, Aidid remained elusive and defiant. "[They] never came close," Aidid said Nov. 29 of the elaborate American effort. Aidid told a news conference he had hidden himself among his people. Violent protests on Aidid's behalf had forced a halt to United Nations patrols in Mogadishu. U.S. Army Cobra helicopter gunships fired 20-mm cannon into a crowd attacking American and Pakistani soldiers attempting to clear a roadblock Sept. 9. More than 100 Somalis were killed, including a number of women and children. "In an ambush there are no sidelines or spectator seats," U.S. Army Maj. David Stockwell said in defending the gunship attacks. But the Sept. 9 event evoked memories of Vietnam, where U.S. troops often killed and wounded women and children. As a young anti-Vietnam activist, Clinton wrote that he "loathed" the U.S. Army tactics. As a presidential candidate, he promised to avoid such U.S. involvement by endorsing a multinational approach to world trouble spots. According to White House officials, that Clinton campaign pledge was the driving force behind U.S. support for a UN takeover of Somalia - other countries would share the dirty work. But now, Clinton was commander-in-chief of the most potent force in Somalia, a force that had become embattled by the hunt for Aidid. At the time of the Sept. 9 fighting, Hoar was in the city, meeting with his local commander, Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery. With the withdrawal of most combat forces, the remaining 1,120 combat soldiers were without armored personnel carriers. To deal with the increasing threat, Montgomery requested four M-1 Abrams tanks, 14 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and some heavy artillery. "Hoar approved the request and sent it up the chain of command," said a U.S. military official. "Hoar made phone calls to the Pentagon before he sent the formal request." On Sept. 23 the request, titled "Protection of Forces in Somalia," was rejected by Aspin. "It's not going to happen," he said. According to his aides, the defense secretary feared the additional equipment would signal to a reluctant Congress and American voters a deeper U.S. commitment. As Aidid's supporters took control of the city, Robert Gosende, the U.S. envoy there, called for more military muscle. Gosende proposed the dispatch of thousands of new combat troops, but his Sept. 6 cable triggered a sharp rejoinder by Hoar. "Hoar said we had lost control in Mogadishu," said a senior Pentagon official. "He argued that if more troops were necessary, it was time to reassess our entire policy." By the end of September Congress and the worsening situation in Mogadishu caused Aspin, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Anthony Lake, national security adviser, to recommend yet another policy shift. "It was a consensus by his advisers that caused the president to change direction," said a senior adviser. The new approach: The United States would launch an initiative aimed at a political settlement in Somalia that could include Aidid, but at the same time, the hunt for Aidid would continue. Disputes continue among Clinton advisers over this so-called "two-track" policy, which was revealed in press briefings during the president's Sept. 27 visit to the UN. And there was no change in orders for the Delta Force team in Mogadishu, according to Pentagon officials. Six days after the two-track policy announcement a spy for the CIA reported that Aidid's top aides were meeting near the Olympic Hotel. When asked later about the Oct. 3 battle, Clinton implied that UN officials might have ordered the assault. "Not every tactical decision had to be cleared through General Hoar," Clinton told an Oct. 14 news conference. But U.S. military officials offered this version: It was about 1 p.m. Oct. 3 when Maj. Gen. William Garrison, the Delta Force commander, got the intelligence. By satellite phone, Garrison called Hoar in Tampa, Fla. "On these missions Hoar had a list of requirements that had to be met," a U.S. military official said. "He asked Garrison the questions, and the replies met Hoar's requirements. Hoar gave the okay." For the first time the Special Operations team would be moving into Aidid's neighborhood. "Everyone there had a gun, and everyone was angry," said one planner of the Oct. 3 mission. But six previous sorties without serious injury had instilled confidence in the troops. With approval from Hoar, Garrison turned to Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, leader of the 75th Rangers' Third Battalion. Their last mission in Mogadishu began with a single word. "Execute," Garrison told McKnight. December 7, 1993, Tuesday Full of Tears and Grief; For elite commandos, operation ended in disaster SERIES: MISSION IN SOMALIA. A year ago this wee, the first U.S. troops sent by President bush arrived in Soalia. It was to be a humanitarian mission. but htere was a mjor policy change in August, when Presient Clinton sent in a Special Operations force to capture the warlord Aidid. This report looks at the decision and its consquences. THIRD OF 4 PARTS By Patrick J. Sloyan. WASHINGTON BUREAU. Staff writer Dele Olojede contributed to this story. DATELINE: Ft. Benning, Ga. When it came time to remember the 75th Ranger Regiment's men killed in Somalia, Chaplain David Moran sought to compare their sacrifice to the fate of early Christians. "For your sake, we face death all day long," said Moran's recitation of a letter from the apostle Paul to the Romans. "We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." The shaved skulls of the Regiment's Third Battalion bowed in prayer for six members of Bravo Company during the Nov. 8 ceremony at Ft. Benning. They were among 18 American soldiers who died Oct. 3 in Mogadishu. Another 77 U.S. Army troops were wounded. An estimated 300 Somalis were killed and 700 wounded during the 12-hour firefight. Moving among the bereaved families was Gen. Wayne Downing, commander of Special Operations. A covert Delta Force element of Downing's 47,000-soldier command at Ft. Bragg, N.C., had slipped into Somalia unannounced. It was made up of Army Special Forces, the men who wear the Green Beret. From Ft. Campbell, Ky., came the Night Stalkers of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, reputedly the best helicopter pilots in the world. But their secrecy was shattered when eight Delta Force members were killed Oct. 3. Maj. Gen. William Garrison, who directed Delta's operations in Mogadishu, also expressed condolences to the families of Rangers who had provided the muscle for the mission. It was Garrison, in a handwritten letter to U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who claimed the Oct. 3 mission was a "complete success." The Special Operations team had captured 22 supporters of Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid captured that day - just as planned. But in geopolitical terms the operation was a disaster. What the Nov. 8 ceremony showed, more than anything, was the most painful results of President Bill Clinton's shifting policy decisions on Somalia. All but two of the Aidid supporters rounded up on Oct. 3 were released later after Clinton abandoned the hunt for the warlord as a mistaken policy decision. No one from the administration attended the memorial for the men who died following Clinton's secret Aug. 22 order to capture Aidid and bring him to trial. Clinton considered attending the Fort Benning ceremony, but scheduling conflicts kept him away, a White House official said. The elite commando force is often disparaged by Army regulars who call them "snake-eaters." The nickname stems from six grueling weeks of Ranger School, including desert and mountain training as well as jungle survival, where snake meat is considered a delicacy. Their legendary physical toughness and superb military skills have created a force that routinely takes risks that seem to regular soldiers to border on madness. But during the memorial service, the snake-eaters were full of tears and grief. On the stage of the Gen. George C. Marshall Auditorium, six pairs of desert boots were aligned left to right; an upturned M-16 rifle was bayonetted next to each pair. Each rifle butt held a black beret with the Ranger regimental crest. Individual soldiers took turns reciting the Ranger Creed. The fifth stanza revealed why most of those who died Oct. 3 did not escape unscathed, as they had during six previous missions: "I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy," the soldier recited. The words made Ranger Sgt. Robert Gallagher wince. On Oct. 3 the whitewashed buildings of Aidid's stronghold were obscured by beige dust from hovering helicopter gunships. The purr and whump of gunfire and grenades echoed everywhere. Gallagher explained how 142 Rangers had been on the verge of a 12-minute drive to safety with 25 prisoners when a Delta Team helicopter crashed. It was about 4:15 p.m. Less than an hour earlier the helicopter had been one of six Blackhawks that dropped 90 Rangers and Delta Force soldiers into the middle of Aidid's neighborhood near the Olympic Hotel. The group of Aidid supporters had been captured, and the escape convoy had pulled into place with another 52 Rangers aboard to provide covering fire. But now rescuing the crew of the downed helicopter became paramount. "We weren't going to leave those guys," Gallagher said. From a defensive position near the hotel, Lt. Tom Di Tomasso saw the Blackhawk crashing four blocks away. With 13 men from his platoon, Di Tomasso immediately began moving to the crash site. While Di Tomasso was on foot, most of the Rangers were aboard armored jeeps - Humvees with bulletproof windshields, doors and tops - and unarmored trucks. The halting, twisting drive toward the downed helicopter through a maze of narrow Mogadishu streets became a bloodbath. Five of the six Rangers died en route. "It was like riding around in a shooting gallery," said Gallagher, who was wounded while directing his jeep. From building windows, rooftops, behind walls, Somalis showered them with automatic gunfire and grenades. With 50-cal. machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on their jeeps, the Rangers fired back. Bands of Somalis filled the streets. A point-blank barrage of 40-mm grenades was fired into one group by a Ranger jeep commander. Somali men, women and children were left in a bloody sprawl. But the withering fire from the Somalis was proving too much. Even three of the Somali captives aboard one Ranger truck were killed. The Ranger commander, Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, ordered the rescue convoy to retreat to its base at the airport. More casualties were suffered en route. But Di Tomasso's foot patrol pressed on Two snipers aboard the Blackhawk were knocked senseless by the crash. When they came to, one of them, Delta Team Sgt. Daniel Busch, 25, of Portage, Wis., began firing at attacking Somalis. Di Tomasso, whose platoon had reached the crash site, reported that Busch killed at least 10 before being mortally wounded. As Di Tomasso's ground force arrived, one of the gunships, an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter, squeezed into the crash site. Pilot Karl Maier held the controls with one hand while firing a submachine gun with the other. His co-pilot, Keith Jones, scrambled to the downed Blackhawk while firing a pistol. The wounded Busch and another Blackhawk survivor were loaded on the Little Bird, and Maier lifted off, guns blazing. A search and rescue helicopter arrived next, dropping off 15 more Rangers and rescue equipment. That chopper also was hit by Somali fire but managed to limp back to base. Inside the downed Blackhawk, the pilot and co-pilot were dead. They were Chief Warrant Officer Donovan Briley, 33, from North Little Rock, Ark., and Chief Warrant Officer Clifton Wolcott, 36, from Cuba, N.Y. They had crashed nose-first into a low wall after Somali rocket-propelled grenades hit the chopper. Now 29 Rangers set up a defensive perimeter and began trying to free Briley and Wolcott. The force of the crash had wrapped the fuselage around the two men. Circular blades of two rescue power saws failed to cut through the twisted metal. Six hours later a relief convoy finally fought its way through to the crash site. A confused effort to get Malaysian armored vehicles to carry the relief force had caused the delay. The U.S. commander, Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, had requested armored vehicles nearly a month earlier, but his request had been rejected by Defense Secretary Les Aspin. On Oct. 3, as reports of the mounting casualties came in, Montgomery bit his lips and cursed under his breath, said aides who overheard him. "He clearly felt that this could have been prevented if he had his own armor," a top aide said. Running the Somali gauntlet was costly to the relief column. Three 10th Mountain Division soldiers were killed. More than 30 were wounded. After the relief convoy arrived, the Rangers attached truck cables to the wrecked Blackhawk. "The trucks pulled the helicopter apart, and we got their bodies," Gallagher said. A second Blackhawk helicopter had crashed beyond the reach of the Ranger force and relief convoys. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, later recounted how two Special Forces sergeants jumped from a hovering helicopter to save him. They were Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, 33, of Lincoln, Maine, and SFC Randall Shugart, 35, of Newville, Pa. They were killed along with three of Durant's crew in fighting around the chopper. "Without a doubt, I owe my life to these two men and their bravery," said Durant, who was captured and later released by the Somalis. Gordon and Shugart have been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. There will be a shower of Silver Stars, the third-highest award, for the Rangers. The memorial ceremony in Marshall Auditorium was coming to an end. Before three volleys of rifle fire and Taps, Bravo Company First Sgt. Glenn Harris conducted the Last Roll Call. "Sergeant Joyce?" There was no answer. "Sergeant James Joyce?" Silence. "Sergeant James Casey Joyce?" Finally a friend answered. "Not present, First Sergeant." The litany continued through five more names. Glenn concluded: "These men were all killed in combat operations in Somalia." The ceremony intensified the grief and anger of Larry Joyce over the loss of his son. Joyce, a retired Army officer who spent two tours in Vietnam, voted for Clinton and said he had rationalized away the president's efforts to avoid the draft and his role as Vietnam War protester. "My son opposed my support for Bill Clinton," Joyce said in a letter to Congress. "His death in Somalia - brought about by weak and indecisive amateurs in the Clinton administration - confirms my son's wisdom and my naivete." Along with some of the families of 26 other Americans killed there since last December, Joyce wants Congress to find out what went wrong and why Aspin refused to provide armor for the relief force. "Those reinforcements might not have helped my son because he apparently was one of the first killed," Joyce said in the letter. "But they certainly would have helped many of the other soldiers who were killed and wounded. To put them into combat with no way to reinforce them is criminal." December 8, 1993, Wednesday A Tough Encounter With Policy Survivors SERIES: MISSSION IN SOMALIA. LAST OF 4 PARTS. year ago this week, the first U.S. troops sent by President Bush arrived in Somalia.It was to be a humanitarian mission.But there was a major policy change in August, when President Clinton sent in a Special Operations force to capture the warlord Aidid. This report looks at that decision and its consequences. By Patrick J. Sloyan. For President Bill Clinton, the results of his policy decisions in Somalia came into sharp focus during a Sunday-morning visit to soldiers wounded in Mogadishu. Reporters were barred from Walter Reed Army Medical Center during the Oct. 24 session when an uneasy Clinton met with some of the 77 Americans wounded during an Oct. 3 battle that marked the end of a covert operation to seize Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Hospital officials who accompanied Clinton said the young commander-in-chief was shocked by the encounter. One soldier had lost his left hand, right leg, sight and hearing. Another had had his hand grafted to his stomach so a shattered arm could heal. Bullets, shrapnel and fire had maimed a young private. A sergeant had his leg in a steel birdcage after the first of a series of bone grafts. "Clinton was visibly moved," said one hospital official. "He didn't know what to say. The men could see that." Some were pleasant and respectful. "Clinton is a nice guy," said PFC Alberto Rodriguez, 20, of Naranjito, P.R. He had been riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Others were cool, even hostile. Sgt. John Burns, 26, of Philadelphia, whose leg was shattered, balked at an offer to have his picture taken with the president. "I don't want to end up in some political propaganda picture - you know, 'President Visits Wounded Soldier,' " Burns said while Clinton was in his room. The White House refused to make public photographs or television footage of that meeting or a later Oval Office meeting with the wounded. Clinton and top administration officials responsible for Somalia have yet to be publicly shown with the survivors of the fiercest firefight in terms of American casualties since Vietnam. Some administration officials say withholding the pictures is part of a damage-limitation strategy devised by David Gergen, Clinton's adviser. "They [White House officials] hope people will forget about Somalia," said a Pentagon official who objected to a plan. He favored giving the wounded the sort of White House South Lawn ceremony held in June when Clinton praised and personally decorated Marines who were first sent to Somalia by President George Bush last Dec. 6. While Gergen refused to comment, another White House official said Clinton wanted to avoid the appearance of exploiting the Somalia veterans. But the president's visit to the hospital was prompted by a call from an angry Walter Reed physician. According to hospital sources, the doctor called the White House. "He said these men have been here for three weeks, and no one had paid any attention to them," said a source informed of the exchange. "The White House called back and said, 'The president will be there tomorrow morning.' " Some within the military feel that what they consider Clinton's cold-shoulder treatment demeans the heroics and sacrifices made in behalf of the president's ill-fated policies. Burns, who balked at the White House photographer, resents the perception that his mission in Mogadishu was a failure. "That's what kills me," he said in an interview later. "We did our job. My friends did not die in vain." On Veterans Day, Nov. 12, Burns and others attended an Oval Office breakfast with Clinton. The president was awed by their tales of the firefight. "Their bravery was incredible," Clinton told one aide. Later that day, Clinton praised the Rangers during his speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. "I want you to let them know that they did their mission well," he said. But Burns and the other Rangers were sitting more than 100 yards away. Within the administration, there was even a debate over whether Clinton should write the families of the 18 men killed in Somalia on Oct. 3. "Some argued the letters should be written by [Defense Secretary Les] Aspin - not the president," said one insider. In the end, Clinton wrote personal notes to everyone. Clinton and his top aides considered but decided against attending two public memorial services for the men killed Oct. 3. But Defense Secretary Les Aspin attended a third ceremony where the press was barred. It was at Ft. Bragg, N.C., home of the top-secret Delta Team that was sent to Somalia by Clinton on Aug. 22. While Clinton aides hope the Somalia disaster will soon fade from the American consciousness, there are forces at work that are likely to keep the controversy alive. They include: Award Ceremonies. The soldiers at Walter Reed are among those selected for decorations in the aftermath of the Oct. 3 battle. There will be a number of Silver Stars, the third-highest award for valor, and at least two soldiers killed in the fighting have been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award. Dramatic Video. There is a videotape of the 11-hour battle showing everything from besieged Ranger convoys to attacking Somali mobs to crashing helicopters. Taken from helicopters hovering over the battle, the footage is likely to be released to TV networks once classified material is removed, according to U.S. military officials. Developments in Somalia. Clinton is scrambling to achieve a political settlement there before his March 31 withdrawal deadline for remaining U.S. combat troops. "It was unfortunate," Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) said of Clinton's deadline. "We have a limited amount of time to use what weakened leverage we had. I can think of no further compounding of the tragedy that has occurred there for our forces than to have them withdraw and see what started out to be a very successful, noble mission end in chaos." Without a settlement, the withdrawal would underline an American image that haunts Clinton. In the aftermath of the Oct. 3 attack the president warned that if U.S. troops were "to leave now, we would send a message to terrorists and other potential adversaries around the world that they can change our policies by killing our people. It would be open season on Americans." Congressional Hearings. Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee is planning a full-scale investigation of the switches in U.S. policy in Somalia and events surrounding the Oct. 3 battle. "There are so many questions unanswered," said Nunn, who plans to summon Clinton's senior advisers to public hearings next month. A preliminary look at those developments by Nunn's House counterpart, Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Calif.), indicated miscalculations by senior Clinton advisers in Washington as well as military and diplomatic officials in Somalia. "A terrible mistake was made that resulted in the loss of life on all sides," said Dellums, concluding that military force instead of diplomacy was used to settle a political problem. Rather than maintain a neutral peacekeeping role for a famine-relief effort implemented by Bush, Clinton became enmeshed in urban combat. "Cardinal rules were violated," Dellums said. "We chose sides, and we decided who the enemies were. It's baggage from the Cold War." Politics. What happened in Mogadishu in October has already inflicted political wounds. There have been bipartisan calls in Congress for the resignations of Defense Secretary Les Aspin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher and a housecleaning at the White House National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake. So far only Robert Gosende, the U.S. envoy who pushed for a hard-line confrontation with Aidid, has lost his position. He was recalled from Somalia by Christopher, who had endorsed Gosende's call for a clandestine effort to remove Aidid. Christopher now says he failed to pay close enough attention to Somalia. As had Lake, Christopher had seen covert efforts backfire on presidents before. He was No. 2 at the State Department when President Jimmy Carter ordered a Delta Force unit to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980. The Desert One disaster contributed to Carter's election defeat later that year. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney - two likely contenders for the GOP presidential nomination - say Somalia is certain to be an issue in 1996, if Clinton seeks a second term. So far, Aspin has been the focus of criticism for the disaster in Somalia. The defense secretary admitted it was a mistake for him to turn down requests for armored vehicles to protect U.S. troops there. Some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would like to see Aspin fired. For Aspin there has been trouble at every turn - including at Walter Reed. The day after Clinton's visit to the hospital, the defense chief showed up there. One soldier Aspin visited was Sgt. Christopher Reid, 24, of Brooklyn. On Sept. 25, while retrieving the bodies of three Americans killed when their helicopter was shot down in Mogadishu, Reid was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The blast blew off his left hand and right leg and riddled his groin with shrapnel. The explosion broke his eardrums and blinded him. His hearing has returned, and after a series of operations, most of his vision was restored. But Reid had to shield his eyes from the overhead light when he talked to Aspin. "We could have used that armor, sir," Reid said.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 12:34 am SOMALIA: Clinton addresses lessons of failed intervention NAIROBI, 10 January (IRIN) - In a recent end of term interview given to the 'New York Times' at the US White House in Washington DC, outgoing US President Bill Clinton has spoken about the impact on US intervention policy of events in Somalia in 1993. Clinton said a lot had been learned from the failed US-led UN intervention - undertaken in response to the then famine and civil war in the country - although he denied it effectively stopped the US intervening in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. With UN peacekeepers, US soldiers, and hundreds of Somalis killed in the Somali intervention attempt, Clinton said his administration had learned a lot "in terms of what kind of operational control we should have in UN missions." That did not mean an end to the US participating in UN missions, he said. Reviewing the events in Somalia in 1993, Clinton said General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, told him that US peacekeeping troops in the mission were the only ones capable of arresting the late faction leader General Mohamed Farah Aydid, said to have been responsible for the killing of Pakistani UN peacekeepers in Mogadishu. Powell said there was "a 50-50 chance to get him, probably not more than a one in four chance to get him alive", according to Clinton. Powell pressed Clinton on the issue, on the basis that "you can't just walk away from the fact these Pakistanis were murdered", the outgoing president said. The US army failed to catch Aydid, and pulled out soon after when US soldiers were killed by Somalis. "We hadn't worked through the command and control and policy-making issues when we were in a UN mission that was one mission, and then all of a sudden became a very different one when we had to go and try to arrest somebody", Clinton said. Somalia's problems needed to be worked out in their own right, but were not, for him, "some demonic nightmare" than kept him from sanctioning intervention in other places, namely Rwanda and Bosnia, he added. Clinton has previously described the Somalia operation as one of the memorable "low points" of his period in office.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 12:50 am In December 1992, a UN peacekeeping force led by about 2,000 United States Marines was sent to restore order. Over the next two years about 50,000 people were killed in factional fighting, and an estimated 300,000 died of starvation because it was impossible to transport relief supplies through the war-ravaged country. Violence continued in the country and peace-keeping forces became involuntarily involved. A number of UN soldiers were killed and, under international pressure critical of its operations, the UN force was withdrawn in 1994. In mid-1994, the last of the US troops left Somalia, having failed in their task. As soon as the US began pulling out, the aid agencies followed them. Somali law and order broke down again and the warlords resumed their fractional fighting. Warring Somali clan leaders had been unable to find any common ground for agreement, and international relief organisations were forced to suspend operations because of widespread looting.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 12:54 am How the Culture of Aid Gave Us the Tragedy of Somalia by Michael Maren The problem started with the camel guts spilling from the abattoir north of Mogadishu. As the butchers shoveled loads of entrails off the concrete slaughter blocks into the Indian Ocean, sharks swarmed in for the feast. And when theyd eaten the food they turned south along the coast to an area of Mog known as the Lido where the UN beach club and the British-American club attracted aid workers and legions of enterprising young Somalis who hustled them on the beaches. After the first Somali kid bled to death in the sand after having his leg torn off the expats retreated from the beach to their verandahs where they drank beer and whisky and tried to spot shark fins in the water. After the second Somali kid was eaten, someone put a sign on the bulletin board suggesting that maybe it was time to build a swimming pool. None of the aid workers took the pool suggestion seriously, though. Most of them wouldnt be there very long three months, six months , a year tops. It was easier and more fun to go looking for new beaches, virgin beaches south of the problem. So they set off in convoys, blazing trails across the sand in their red and green and blue Japanese-made 4-wheel drives emblazoned with the logos of CARE, UNICEF, World Vision, and Save The Children. They motored over the dunes to wide open stretches of beach getting the feeling at the top of every new hill that no one had ever been there before. And when they arrived at quiet little lagoons they spread their blankets, unpacked their picnic lunches, tossed their Frisbees and jumped into the water. This was Somalia 1981, and the West was moving in: economic advisors, consultants, diplomats, United Nations personnel, and military advisors. But the largest contingent by far were the relief workers, mostly young and inexperienced, assuming they could help, and looking for African adventure. Somalia provided opportunity for both. Thousands of refugees from the Ogaden, ethnic Somalis, were pouring over the border from Ethiopia to avoid fighting and famine. They arrived tired and hungry and in need of medical care. The young volunteers gave it to them. At the same time, Western diplomats were helping Somalia change its affiliation from a Soviet client state to a U.S. client state. They were prodding and advising the government of Somalias dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre, on how to privatize the economy hed just spent a decade socializing. And they were negotiating for the rights to station U.S. forces at an abandoned Soviet military base at Berbera on the Red Sea. Most of the aid workers paid little attention to the geopolitical maneuvering in the capital. They were there to care for the victims, to feed the hungry, give them medicine. After several months many of these carefree young people became haunted with the notion that something else was going on. Some began to say that the suffering of people was caused by the aid, and they began to suspect that maybe things wouldve worked out better for the refugees if the relief agencies had never shown up in the first place. It slowly became apparent there was no way to separate what the uniformed men were doing in Mogadishu from the task of feeding the crying children in the camps. Many of the young aid workers finally left Somalia with the fear that the refugee relief effort on 1981 had set the table for an even bigger disaster down the road. They were right. The disaster came ten years later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I arrived in Somalia early in 1981 as part of this migration of aid workers. Many of us had come straight from college or from Thailand, working with refugees from Cambodia. Id just spent four years in Kenya, two as a Peace Corps teacher and two years running food-for-work and famine-relief projects in Kenyas northern deserts for Catholic Relief Services. My new employer was the U.S. Agency for International Development the major leagues in the relief business, a reward for a job well done. I was not naive. I'd seen thousands of people starve to death in Kenya, mostly members of the Turkana ethnic group, along with Somalis. Id seen Kenyan officials exploit the starving by offering to trade small amounts of donated relief food for the hides of their animals, the last remaining things of value they owned. And Id watched the government of Kenya try to cover up the entire famine out of fear that bad publicity would hurt the tourist business. Ultimately it dawned on me that the suit-wearing, tea-sipping, europhile politicians in Nairobi didnt really give a •••• about the primitive nomadic, people in the north. The nomads were an embarrassment. Anything primitive was an embarrassment and a nuisance. All of this experience prepared me well for Somalia, but not for the scale of the deception I was about to encounter. I was hired as a food monitor. My job was to make sure that the food sent from the docks of Mogadishu reached the refugees in my region and to find out why it wasnt reaching them. That region was Hiran district, a large expanse of desert to the north of Mogadishu. 19 refugee camps had been established along the banks of the Shebele river, which wound through the district, draining the Ethiopian highlands hundreds of miles away. I set up operations in the town of Beledweyne (sounds like smell it Duane) on the Ethiopian border. The job didnt require a lot of detective work. On my first few days in the region I saw military vehicles leaving refugee camps loaded down with bags of food. I saw merchants warehouses filled with bags bearing the USAID handshake logo and the words Donated by the people of the United States of America, Not For Sale. Over the next few days I saw military warehouses packed to the ceilings with refugee food and convoys of military trucks heading toward the Ethiopian border, also packed with food. After checking ledgers at refugee camps I figured that most of the relief food being sent to the region probably about two-thirds was being stolen. Some disappeared from the docks in Mog. Some disappeared from the trucks along the way to the camps. Sometimes entire trucks would leave the port and vanish forever. Most if it, it seemed, disappeared from the camps, sold by camp commanders, who were usually Somali military men, or were just taken by the soldiers, or by the guerrillas who were members of the Western Somalia Liberation Front (WSLF). Along with the food, the WSLF also raided the camps for able-bodied young men, unwilling conscripts for a murky guerrilla war across the Ethiopian border in the Ogaden desert. The Five-Pointed Star The maps hanging on the walls of government offices told the tale of Greater Somalia. There are no borders where were used to seeing borders, just uninterrupted stretches of brown and green reaching across through central Kenya, over into Djibouti and across the Ogaden into the Ethiopian highlands, the area that Somali officials called Western Somalia. These were the lands inhabited by ethnic Somalis, one people divided by old colonial lines. The Somalis who live in these three other countries are represented by three of the points of the five-pointed star on the Somali flag. The other two points represent the regions of the former Italian Trust Territory of Somalia, that is, southern Somalia, and the former British Somaliland Protectorate, the northern region around Hargeisa. The idea of uniting the five Somali groups has long been at the root of Somali nationalism. The former British region became independent on June 26, 1960. The Italian region achieved its independence five days later, and the two joined to form one country. In 1963, as Kenya verged on independence from Britain, Somali Nationalists looked to the southwest to the part of Kenya known as The Northern Frontier District (NFD). It was more than 60 percent Somali and predominantly Muslim. Its inhabitants where overwhelmingly in favor of unification with the Somali state. Their wishes were ignored in favor of those of Kenyan nationalists who opposed an partition of the colony. When Kenya became independent in December, 1963, Somalis in the NFD began a long quite futile war against the new government. The Somalis called them freedom fighters and the Kenyan called them shifta, a term applied to bandits and cattle thieves. To this day, Kenyas Northeastern Province is a dangerous place to travel. Shifta still attack convoys and raid towns on occasion. And both the Kenyans and the Somalis are right: the shifta are usually bandits who call themselves freedom fighters, and occasionally freedom fighters who behave like bandits. The net result is that chaos in Somalia suits Kenya just fine. The situation in the Ogaden, however, proved much more explosive. For centuries Amharic Emperors had, through intimidation and agreements, controlled the Muslim lowlands of the Ogaden. As in Kenya, the freedom fight sputtered along while the Somali military had little chance of any victory against the superior American-trained Ethiopian army under Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1967, the elected Somali government of Prime Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Egal began a process of making peace with the nations that stood in the way of the pan-Somali dream. Egal realized that the dream was fruitless, that all of Africa confronted with secessionist minorities had lined up against Somalia. Though Egals peace efforts werent appreciated by Somalis, his coalition won the fraud-laced 1969 election. In the process of assuring his own power, Egal had angered the military, which overthrew him in October 1969. The coup leader, Major General Mohammed Siad Barre, ascended to the leadership of the country. After the coup, Barre announced that his government, led by the Supreme Revolutionary Council, would pursue the path of scientific socialism. A loose military alliance with the Soviet Union became more intense, and Barre began a massive military buildup with armored units, MiG-21 fighter -bombers and Ilyushin bombers. Thousands of military advisors began to train the 20,000-man Somali army. The Ethiopians and Kenyans, with reason to be scared turned to their American allies. All of this might have turned into a typical Third World Cold War arms race had it not been for the 1974 coup in Ethiopia that booted Haile Selassie from the imperial palace and installed a socialist government. The Soviets, seeing that Ethiopia was probably the most valuable piece of real estate in Africa did a clean sweep on regional foreign policy. They stopped backing Eritrean and Tigrean rebels fight against the Ethiopian government and the began to arm the new military junta, the Dergue, in Ethiopia while attempting to maintain their relationship with Somalia. In 1977, however, the Soviets were forced to choose sides. A bloody internal power struggle in Ethiopia had left the regime vulnerable. Barre sensed his opening. The Soviet military build-up in Ethiopia hadnt gotten very far, and his own army was at primed and ready. In July, 1977, he invaded the Ogaden, rapidly capturing the region and driving the Ethiopians back into the hills. Elated Somalis decreed Barre the savior of the Somali nation. He was at the peak of his popularity. What followed in Ethiopia was Jimmy Carter's worst nightmare, and changed the direction of U.S. military policy. Midway through the war the Russians, who had signed an "eternal" friendship treaty with Somalia in 1975, switched sides, airlifting 18,000 Cuban troops and $2 billion worth of arms to the Ethiopians. Barre turned to the Americans. The Carter Administration promised him weapons but then, at the height of the fighting, decided to withhold them from both sides. By then it was too late for Somalia. By March 1978 the Somalis were run out of the Ogaden. Shocked by the lightening Soviet response to the military and diplomatic crisis on the horn, U.S. military strategists started feeling paranoid about our ability to wage a conventional war, and the idea of a Rapid Deployment Force took hold. The Americans convinced themselves that the abandoned Soviet naval base at Berbera was like a prize worth having. The Heritage Foundation, soon to gain influence in the Reagan Administration spelled out the evolving mood concerning the Horn of Africa: "The Soviet Military intervention in the Horn of Africa is the centerpiece of two new foreign policy initiatives: one in the Middle East and the other in Africa. The intermediate-range targets are Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest producer of petroleum, and Kenya, the last pro-Western state from the Cape to the Horn. " And by the time U.S. hostages were seized in Iran and the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. was scrambling to look tough. In early 1981, the incoming Reagan Administration dispatched Henry Kissinger to Mogadishu, where he assured Siad Barre that America was behind him. "It is not tolerable that the Soviet Union and its proxy forces engage in expansion all over Africa and in the Middle East without opposition," Kissinger said in Cairo after a day with Barre in Somalia. From Washington, the barren wastes of Somalia suddenly looked like downtown Berlin. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Watching the Marines roll through Somalia today its hard to imagine what form of desperation might have caused the U.S. feel that this place was once a key to its global defense strategy. What Cold War delirium caused the U.S. to feel that it had to appease Siad Barre and quietly abet his military fantasies? By 1979, the gloss had worn off the Somali victory in the Ogaden. Barre was becoming increasingly unpopular, and his secret police, the National Security Service (NSS) was stepping up its campaign of intimidation against his enemies. Previously, Somali governments had tried to maintain a broad base of representation from various clans. But as Barre began to feel less and less secure he started close the circle, increasingly employing his own clansmen and his own relatives in positions of power. At the same time, the WSLF maintained a low level war against the Ethiopians in the Ogaden. The attacks drew reprisals, and increasingly the Somali nomads from the region found themselves caught in the middle. Some of them sought safety over the border in Somalia. Barre began to pressure his Western allies for refugee relief, and they responded. There were bigger stakes here in Somalia than a few million dollars in relief assistance. Barre claimed a half a million refugees, then a million and soon a million and a half. Journalists took pictures of the sick and the hungry, and the relief agencies arrived on the scene with the food. And the food was being stolen. Despite all of the disappearing food in Somalia, no one was starving to death in the refugee camps. To be sure, a lot of people were dying. They were dying from malaria, measles, dysentery, diphtheria and pneumonia . They were getting sick with river blindness. But enough food was coming into the camps to keep them fed. The obvious conclusion was that more food than necessary was coming into the country. Curious about this discrepancy I went into one of the smaller camps in my region, a place called Amalow that was supposed to have 18,500 refugees, a place that was allotted food for 18,500 refugees. I walked through the camp counting the little twig huts that the refugees built, and then counting people as they lined up for their food rations. My own unscientific survey told me that there were more like 3-4,000 people there. Using friends from the Red Cross and other groups we started counting refugees. The numbers held across the board. There were about one-third as many refugees in the region as the Somali government had claimed. Across the country, the government had been claiming 1.5 million refugees. If the figures were accurate, there was a lot more food coming into the country than anyone needed. I put all of this information into my reports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Somalis are nomads who spend most of their time looking for food. If you put a pile of food in the desert they will come and get it. If you provide medical facilities they will come and take advantage of them. The famine camps were set up and they came. And African leaders like to settle nomads. Nomads make it hard to build a modern state, and even harder to build a socialist state. Nomads cant be taxed, they cant be drafted, and they cant be controlled. They also cant be used to attract foreign aid, unless you can get them to stay in one place. But the barren Somali ecology wont support a lot of people in one place. Out in the desert, one family might have eight or ten square miles of land for grazing at any given time. In the camps they were packed into a few square yards. Sanitation, which isnt much of an issue when youre alone in the desert, became a source of disease and death. For many of the refugees, the camps might as well have been concentration camps. Once they were in, they were hooked. The desert was their barbed wire. Lives once spend herding camels in the desert were now spent navigating refugee camp bureaucracy. They spend their days waiting in lines. Food lines and medical treatment lines. Lines to collect water from the pumps. While I was monitoring the situation in Hiran District, my colleague and friend, Doug Grice, was doing the same job farther south in Bardera and the region along the Kenya border. Once a month, Id make the five hour drive to Mogadishu, and wed meet in the house we shared on the Lido, across from the beach clubs. We were given a week or so in Mog to prepare our reports, maybe meet with the ambassador, get a hot shower, catch a movie or a videotape at the American compound. From our roof deck wed sit and cut into our rations of whiskey and beer from the diplomatic shop. Wed chew khat and watch the ships in the harbor, or try to spot sharks of the coast. And wed exchange stories about the refugee camps. Separately wed arrived at the conclusion that the relief program was probably killing as many people as it was saving, and the net result was that Somali soldiers were supplementing their income by selling food, and the WSLF was fueling their attacks into Ethiopia. Then we'd embark on what was starting to become a report-writing ritual. Wed put all of this, all of these opinions and observations into our reports along with the facts: the tonnage of food received, and the tons missing; plate numbers of trucks seen driving off with food, names of camp commanders who werent cooperating. Along with this information wed also include our observations about the state of the refugees, and our growing doubts about the wisdom of the relief program. Then our boss, the Food For Peace officer, Robert J. Luneburg, would storm back with the reports and say, You guys know you cant write this stuff. Stick to the facts as you observe them. So wed retype the reports and head back to the bush. Though we'd both been hired for our Africa expertise, no one was really interested in what we had to say. They needed reports because the rules said reports had to be written. Just in case someone decided to read one of them, we were supposed to keep them technical and boring. Thus confined by the USAID report format, I sat down at my typewriter in the dusty heat of the afternoon in Belet Uen and wrote a personal memo to Luneburg and the head of the USAID mission in Mogadishu: "At the risk of being labeled politically naive, I submit the following. I cannot in good conscience leave Somalia without expressing these opinions to the U.S. government in writing. "My experience in Beledweyne during the last few months has confirmed my growing suspicion that the Somali government is deliberately taking part in the diversion of refugee food, has deliberately inflated refugee figures in order to facilitate these diversions , and is now simply humoring donors by submitting itself to the impotent inspection and monitoring of the donors. "Our involvement in the refugee relief operation is participation in a political ploy to gain support for an unpopular military government. I do not presume to influence the policy of the American government in this regard, however I believe that the situation should be recognized for what it is. Our continued support for the refugees makes possible continued activity of the WSLF in the Ogaden which in turn results in more refugees. "I realize that you have much more information than I do but the actual situation in the Ogaden, however I have made a pint of speaking with refugees about the situation there until I was warned by the NRC [National Refugee Commission] early in July to desist. When I didnt, I was confined to my house for four days and denied access to the records of food deliveries. "I believe that the refugees have been coerced as to the manner in which to answer questions pertaining to the Ogaden. I know that there are individuals living in the camps known as politicians who instruct the refugees in political rhetoric and in how to answer these types of questions. I have been struck by the consistent similarities of their answers to the basic questions of why did you come here? and What was life like under the Ethiopians? they all report that Cuban and Russian pilots had bombed their cattle and killed their relatives. "There is a festering resentment among the general population toward the expatriates and the refugees. An old man stopped me on the streets of Beledweyne and demanded to know why he was not entitled to rations and health care just because he had decided to settle in the town instead of in a refugee camp. "A man with four children working in Beledweyne for 800 shillings a month (an extraordinarily high salary) could not supply his family with the amount of food the refugees receive for free. "Many of the town people have solved that problem by keeping a residence or a part of their family in the camps. Sigalow camp [near Belet Uen] is indistinguishable from the mud-house-back streets of Belet Uen which have now reached the borders of the camp and are joining it to the town. "There are other issues that make our involvement questionable. Such as the recruitment by the WSLF and Somali Army in the camps. This activity takes place in all the camps in Hiran. Some of the camp commaners are WSLF officers. "PVOs are now submitting hundreds of proposals to improve services to refugees. Expanded services to the refugees will only aggravate the problem by encouraging them to stay, and more refugees will arrive. It will spread more thinly the resource base leaving the door open for a real emergency situation in the future. "The future for refugees in the camps holds only years of relief. The efforts of the international community should be aimed at solving the problem getting the refugees out of the camps." The "temporary" camps, set up allegedly to shelter refugees from the Ogaden war are still there, more than ten years after that war was over. As I and many of the other critics of the 1981 relief effort predicted, the residents of those camps are still dependent on relief food and still have no way to earn a living on their own. Several months after I sent this memo, Grice participated in study of the Somali economy. They found that the relief industry accounted for two-thirds of the countrys economy. There was no way Siad Barre could afford to let the refugees go. And the private relief agencies couldnt let them go, either. The Big Business of Aid The question that no one is asking in Somalia is why such a large portion of the population starves when relief food is cut off. Why were so many so totally dependent on bags of food from America in the first place? The answer is not on the TV newscasts. Its in the ads that are running between the news stories. The invasion of Somalia has made this the most intensely watched famine relief operation in history. And television viewers have had their coverage punctuated with ads from Save The Children something called Operation Phone Lift. The ad tells you that its very simple to save lives. It tells you that the only thing between life and death for the child on your TV screen is a little food. Just pick up the phone and call. (Have your credit card ready.) Hungry children turn into smiling children. Dial the phone and a C-5 transport lands at Mogadishu airport. Other agencies as well are rushing in to plant a flag on Somali soil, raising money, competing with each other for a limited pool of aid dollars. But anyone watching the news already knows that sending food to Somalia hasnt really helped anyone. Between life and death there are guns and governments and corruption and all sorts of things that Save the Children hasnt a clue about. But that hasn't deterred the aid agencies who are taking advantage of the famine to do what they do best, to raise money. Aid is a business. It is a business in which people make careers, earn a good living, get to see interesting places and have great stories to tell when they get stateside. Its a business that has to earn money to pay its executives, pay for retreats and for officials to attend conferences in Rome, buy 4-wheel drive vehicles, pay for airfare, and buy advertising time on television. Its a business that makes money by attracting clients, i.e. starving, needy people. These agencies, called PVOs or private voluntary agencies, raise a lot of money from the public, but get most of from the U.S. government. Essentially, they cook up projects and write project proposals looking for funding. When the funding is approved, say for a project to set up health clinics in a region of Sudan, they hire people to run the project. Theyll need administrators in New York or wherever theyre based, and project managers and a couple more trucks and whatever. Every project means an expansion of the agency. The bigger the agency the more power the people up top have, the more people they can claim to be helping, and the more money they can raise from the public. All of the PVOs get food from the U.S. government, and with each ton of food they get to distribute, they get money to move it and administer it. Naturally, theyre always looking to get more food and more money so they can say theyre saving more people and, well, you get the picture. Letting CARE tell the government how many starving people need to be fed in Somalia is like letting Northrop tell the Air Force how many B-1 bombers it needs. And while photogenic famines are great for raising money, most PVO projects are not in famine areas. They are in regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America where there is plenty of food. Nonetheless, a lot of projects involve food, mostly because it is a readily available resource, and one of the best ways to get grant money from USAID. And the reckless use of food aid causes famine. It depresses local market prices and provides disincentive for farmers to grow food crops. At the same time it increases incentive to grow cash crops like coffee, tea and sugar. And as more farmers start growing export crops, it depresses the prices of those crops, the consumers of which are the very same Westerners who are dumping their own surplus food supplies on the poor countries. Though food aid is discussed as if it were charity, most of it is supplied under Public Law 480, the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, known as the Food for Peace Program for public relations reasons. In 1954 Americas wheat surplus tripled, and PL 480 was designed to get rid of it. Its not so different from the Japanese flooding the American market with subsidized microchips except no ones starving to death because were not doing a very good job producing microchips any more. When its not making things worse, aid, from both governments and PVOs, supports the status quo. PVOs operating in Somalia did so with the approval of the Barre government, which only allowed projects which supported its own agenda of hanging on to power. The irony is obvious: while saying that theyre helping people, PVOs are perpetuating the power of a government that is killing them. But then again, oppressive governments dont interfere with the PVOs primary goals of expansion and fund raising. Chris Cassidy took my place when I left Somalia. He ended up spending seven years in Somalia with USAID, Save the Children, and with the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization. In his final years there with the FAO, he worked on an agricultural project that produced a surplus of food. One of the things that got Barre and his henchmen really pissed off was when you wrote reports saying that Somalia was self-sufficient in food, Cassidy said when I called him at his home in Washington state. That was because free food is what controls the place. The mentality is: Why should we let people produce their own food and control their own lives when we can keep them under our thumbs and under the gun? We claim famine, flood and refugees and get the food shipped in here for free. Now well tell you when to eat and when you cant eat. And stopping people from eating became the weapon of mass control that Barre and his successors have used so successfully. Bye Bye Barre The terror in Mogadishu began not with the anarchy of drug-crazed thugs in the employ of self--proclaimed warlords, but with police and soldiers in the employ of the legit government, the one that had been receiving $100 million a year in military and economic aid from the Reagan and Bush administrations. That money made Somalia the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance behind Egypt and Israel. Look what it bought. In May 1988 the Somali National Movement, comprised mostly of members of the northern Isaaq clan, the most powerful source of opposition to the Barre regime, seized several towns in the north. Barres army responded with bombing, shelling, and poison gas, killing as many as 50,000 people. It was the government who began starving their enemies. After two days of anti-government demonstrations and rioting in Mogadishu in July 1989, which had left at least 450 dead, the army began house-to-house searches. Hundreds of civilians were dragged from their beds and taken to prisons and detention centers. That same month, 46 men from the Isaaq clan were singled out and taken by security forces to Jezira beach, south of the capital. There, among the sand dunes, they were executed. It was only then, when Barre's massacres of rival clans became too obvious to ignore, that Washington cut off aid. A report released in September, 1989 commissioned by the US State Department documents the appalling atrocities committed by the Somali Armed Forces who, it says, "appear to have engaged in a widespread, systematic and extremely violent assault on the unarmed civilian Isaaq population." The report also documents that many of the people executed by the army had their throats cut were buried in mass graves. Meanwhile the army began its looting rampage. Chris Cassidy tells of how first he was warned not to work with farmers. They came into my office with guns and told me to stay out of the fields. So I backed off. But that wasnt enough for them. Then they went into the warehouses and emptied it of seeds and fertilizers and farm implements. If Id resisted them theyd have killed me. The withdrawal of external assistance and the relentless armed opposition by clan-based liberation movements finally brought Barre down two years ago. But the chaos of the revolution had put power back in the hands of local military leaders, leaders who had nothing in common but their hatred of Barre and his Marehan clan. Its a familiar story. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the Marines set off for Somalia, most of my friends called to ask me how I felt about it. Initially I felt that it was a viable short term solution to the immediate problem. To be sure, the Marines will bring food to the hungry. But as I watched the news coverage and saw who was being interviewed on television, I began to change my mind. What the marines are doing in Somalia is handing things back to the free food people, back to the PVOs and there are more there than ever now who will happily cooperate with any government that can insure their own safety so they can keep giving away food. The PVOs are setting the agenda. CAREs president, Phillip Johnston, visits the White House and recommends that George Bush visit the troops there. The heads of World Vision and Catholic Relief Services are treated as expert guests on talk shows. There is an assumption that these are humanitarian agencies whose only goal is to help people. In fact, they are organizations who stand to reap huge benefits in the form of lucrative contracts to deliver food. These are the same organizations that have failed for the past ten years in Somalia and all over Africa. (Hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in Africa over the last 30 years have left the continent more famine prone and dependent on outside relief than ever.) They had thousands of refugees in camps in 1981 and they failed to get them out of the camps. They didnt get them their cattle back. They didnt teach them to grow food and to be independent. They just delivered food and collected grants for development projects. The goal of the relief effort this time around must be to stop the food. How ever much food is delivered this month, there should be less next month. Farm implements should be brought in, and people should be taught to grow things or they should be sent back to the desert with a few camels. They should be allowed to reclaim their dignity and their lives. And they need to be given responsibility for their own lives. Even though there is no chance of ridding the region of weapons there are too many in East Africa, and they move freely throughout the region food should be traded for guns and ammunition. And then all of them the Marines and the relief agencies should get out as soon as possible. The U.S. is not going to stop the feuding in Somalia. Barres reign of terror kept the lid on clan rivalries, forcing age old hatreds to a boil. And now the Marines are keeping the lid on. Their presence will give the stronger leaders time to regroup and rearm. The longer they stay, the worse it will get. In the fragile political and environment ecosystem of Somalia it is much easier to screw things up that it is to set them straight. Foreign powers, East and West through military, political and economic intervention have had an impact that has been entirely detrimental. The more we meddle the worse it gets. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The skies over Beledweyne were an endless expanse of clear blue and, the ground was hot and dusty. But in the Ethiopian hills more than 500 miles away it was raining, and the Shabele river started to rise. Every morning, in the town and in the refugee camps, people would gather along its the river and watch the debris swept along by the rising flood. Every once in a while an animal carcass would drift by. And as the river got higher and faster and more and more junk floated past, the aid agencies started preparing. They applied for funds for flood relief. When the water flooded the refugee camps, and people began an evacuation of the town, the PVOs called a meeting with the military governor of Hiran district. The governor was a colonel who wore Ray Ban aviators and didn't say much. He liked to speak through an interpreter even though his English was perfect. And he didn't have much patience for all these young foreigners telling him what he ought to do. A young American representative of one of the relief groups frantically asked the colonel to order the evacuation of all the refugee camps. We have already rescued the refugees from Qoquane camp he told the colonel. What do you mean youve rescued them? the colonel asked through his interpreter. Well, we got the out of the camp, The Colonel remained still. After a minute he asked, How did you do that ? Well, we went down there and brought them out. Did you carry them? No, we just directed them.. the frustration rose in his voice. Then the colonel spoke in English. Do you think the refugees would have sat there and drowned if you hadnt come to them? These people have lived here all their lives they can take care of themselves. They dont need you to rescue them, and they dont need me to order them out of their homes. When the water comes they will go. the colonel said. They will be OK.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 01:02 am US massacred 1,000 Somalis From 'The Observer' http://reports.guardian.co.uk/papers/19980321-16.html Revealed: how trapped soldiers fired indiscriminately on crowds and used corpses as shields By Richard Dowden in Kampala Thursday March 22, 1998 As president Bill Clinton begins a six- country tour of Africa today, new evidence has emerged of how trapped United States troops indiscriminately fired on crowds of Somalis in Mogadishu in 1993, killing more than 1,000 - five times the 'official' number. In a dramatic new account of the battle in central Mogadishu, collated from hours of interviews with American and Somali survivors, Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer has revealed that US troops abandoned their rules of engagement - to fire only when threatened by fire - and shot down every Somali they saw, including women and children. It happened 10 months after US marines landed as part of a humanitarian effort to feed starving Somalis cut off by the civil war. On the afternoon of 3 October 1993, a hot sleepy Sunday in Mogadishu, a group of 40 Delta Force, Special Forces and about 75 Rangers set off to try to capture Somali leaders supporting General Mohammed Farah Aideed, the Mogadishu warlord, who were meeting in a house near the centre of town. According to Bowden's account, US troops took hostages and murdered wounded Somalis and a prisoner. They also used the bodies of Somalis as barricades. Bowden also reveals that, far from the official version of the mission (that it was not intended to kill anyone) helicopter gunships began the ill-fated raid by firing anti-tank missiles into houses. While Canada, Italy and Belgium all held inquiries into the excesses of their troops in Somalia and even put some of them on trial, the US has never held any public investigation or reprimanded any of its commanders or troops although Les Aspin, the then US Defence Secretary, resigned some time afterwards. Yet compared with what the Americans did that night, the excesses of other national forces were child's play. The revelations of the Mogadishu massacre come barely a week after America finally laid to rest the ghosts of the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam by awarding a medal to the officer who exposed the atrocity. Bowden's account, now available on the Internet and to be published as a book in the autumn, threatens to start a new controversy in the US military. Despite the debacle, the commander of the mission, Major- General William F. Garrison, took full responsibility for what happened, describing it as 'a success', while US personnel who died were all given medals, as were many of the survivors. Other key players were promoted. At the time, the world's media concentrated on dramatic television footage of the naked bodies of US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, and the drama of a helicopter pilot taken hostage. The Somali dead were a sideshow, a bland figure, estimated at about 200. Bowden, however, quotes Ambassador Robert Oakley, the US special representative to Somalia, as saying that more than 1,000 Somalis were killed. The incident occurred after the US-led peacekeeping force had handed over to a multinational United Nations force under the command of a Turkish General, Cevic Bir. Neither he, nor the UN Special Representative in Somalia, a retired US Admiral, Jonathan Howe, had been informed about the Delta Force raid. Nor was the UN consulted when the US military decided to hunt down Gen Aideed. Backed by 17 helicopter gunships, they stormed the building where the Somali leaders were meeting and took 24 prisoners. They planned to drive the three miles back to the US base but could not get out of the area. First one and then another Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. Without a back-up force the convoy ended up going in circles, trapped by hundreds of Somali gunmen firing AK47s and rocket grenades from rooftops or moving with the crowds. Eventually it had to be rescued by units from Pakistan and Malaysia. But by that time they had been involved in their biggest fire-fight since the Vietnam War and their discipline and organisation had disintegrated. Bowden describes the convoy trying to escape from the maze of streets in which it was hit by a hail of rockets and bullets at every corner: 'Some of the vehicles were almost out of ammunition. They had expended thousands of rounds. The back ends of the remaining trucks and Humvees in the lost convoy were slick with blood. Chunks of viscera clung to floors and inner walls. "The second Humvee in line was dragging an axle and was being pushed from behind by the five-ton truck behind it. Another Humvee had three flat tyres and two dozen bullet holes. "Seal Sgt Howard Wasdin, who had been shot in both legs, had his legs draped up over the dash and stretched out on the hood. Yet another Humvee had a grenade hole in the side and four flat tyres. "They were shooting at everything now. They had abandoned their new mission (to rescue the downed helicopter pilots). Now they were fighting just to stay alive as the convoy wandered into one ambush after another, trying to find its way back to base." Dale Sizemore, a young Ranger, describes "blasting at everything they saw. Rules of engagement were off." Sizemore saw young boys, seven and eight-year- olds, some with weapons, some without. He shot them all. In one incident Rangers took a family hostage. When one of the women started screaming at the Americans she was shot dead. In another incident a Somali prisoner was allegedly shot dead when he refused to stop praying out loud. Another was clubbed into silence. The killer is not identified.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 03:08 am Your third to last post is laughable. Where the •••• did you get that??? 50,000 killed in fighting, 300,000 starved??? Helloooo anyone home. The starvation stopped when we arrived, not the other way around. Only a fuckin' idiot would write that. The observers extrapolation from Bowdens account is both inaccurrate in details and also in the gist. No unarmed woman was killed for screaming. One woman, who was pinpointing Ranger positions to SNA Militia by screaming where those positions were was killed. And justifiably so. Many women and children were killed, that is true. But it's not like the Rangers rounded them up, put them against the wall and shot them. All of these people were participants in a battle. As Steve Howe said, "if you come to a battle you're wrong. People come there to fight, not to dance. We treat the accordingly. Kids were carrying RPGs. It was a fmily affair. It's not like they were innocent civilians." When the bullets started flying the innocent non-combatants should have hunkered down and taken cover. Instead they were participating in the fight. The observer is a known left wing rag - somewhere to the left of Karl Marx. I would hasten to add and I have mentioned before) that the US did try and convict two individuals for crimes against Somalis. One got 5 years and the other got life. The Observer conveniently leaves that out - or their journalism is sloppy, you pick. I love the part about how the UN was consulted in the hunt for Aideed. The UN passed the resoultion on June 6 requiring Aideeds arrest in connection with the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. I would say that defines authorization. No Somali was shot because he was praying. That's just made up BS. No Somali was beaten for praying. That's made up BS as well. In Bowdens detailed and corroborated (if somewhat Ranger Centric) account, some Somalis under Ranger custody did start praying, and some that were yelling and spitting were beaten into submission, but that's it. Now, Mr Anonymous, I was a participant in this fight. So I think I can speak from a slightly different perspective than most. The fight with the SNA occured because Aideed wanted to be the dictator of Somalia, to replace Siad Barre. When he realized that the UN might force him to make compromises, he attacked them with the intent to cow them. I could go into this ad nauseum but the fact is the SNA fired the first shot and was belligerent throughout. When the SNA attacked the UN forces it lost its legitimacy. The fight on 3/4 October, and the blood letting that ensued, happened because the Haber Gedir population decided to fight. And when it did that it deliberately sacrificed its women and children for Aideeds personnel goals. The SNA in general, and Aideed specifically, were responsible for the fighting between 5 June and 9 October 1993. I love the description of a hot, sleepy Sunday morning in Mogadischu. The raid started at 1430. And this line is great - "Eventually it had to be rescued by units from Pakistan and Malaysia." Now, Pakstani and Malaysian units did participate - BUT, and there's always a but when talking about these motherfuckers (the Obersver writers) the VAST bulk of the force were American soldiers of the QRF.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 05:58 am When President Bush sent U.S. troops to Somalia in 1992, he cited a humanitarian reason: to feed the starving Somali population and restore hope where civil order had broken down. Despite the simple and narrow focus of the mission, their finest troops eventually found itself party to the civil war and broken down. They abandoned their mission to feed the starving Somali population and restore hope. They instead caused the death of 1000's of Somalis. American troops engaged for several months in a manhunt for "warlord" Mohammad Farah Aideed, culminating in a ferocious firefight on October 3, 1993, that cost the lives of 1000's. At end, nothing substantial was accomplished. It is not true that Somalis were no longer starving, the worst of the famine was over before American troops arrived, though. "Mission creep" transformed the objec tive from easing starvation to "nation building," and no substantive progress was made toward that goal. Street fighting diminished for a time, but even before the American withdrawal in March 1994 it began to resume. Again, the costs have been tremendous: American, UN, and Somali lives; scarce economic resources ($1.3 billion for the United States alone); and American credibility were all squandered in the unsuccessful mission. Anti-American Sentiment begin for what they did and didn't do. When U.S. Marines made their dramatic landing in Mogadishu in December 1992, the Somalis greeted them with cheers. Less than a year later, on October 3, 1993, 18 Americans died in a single day at the hands of Somalis. Hatred of the United States was unmistakable, particularly in the gruesome and widely published photograph of smiling Somalis dragging the corpse of an American soldier through the streets. Despite the apparent goodwill at the beginning of the mission, American involvement was violently resented once the United States became part of the war. It was for that reason that President Clinton announced March 31, 1994, as the date for withdrawal from Somalia and, at the same time, took what appeared to be the contradictory action of sending several thousand additional troops to Mogadishu. To guarantee the security of the troops already there, additional forces had to be deployed. The intervention had created a threat to U.S. interests where there had previously been none. Intervention in regional wars is a distraction and a drain on resources. Diverting time, money, and manpower from areas that have a significant impact on national secu- rity to peripheral nonsecurity interests is never desirable. But in the event of a crisis that affects U.S. vital inter- ests, it is downright dangerous. It is difficult for the United States to be well prepared to protect national secu- rity when its military are the part of the problem and is in effective. U.S. military operations. Failed military missions engender tremendous public skepticism and the reason they went their if they left without restoring hope.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 06:11 am The UN was widely, and wrongly, blamed for the gruesome deaths of the U.S. Rangers, despite the fact that they were not part of the UN operation. The sometimes competing U.S. and UN missions were both ill-defined and out of touch with Somalia’s social reality. As a result, international intervention failed to create the conditions necessary for Somalia’s economic and social recovery. The UN force lacked sufficient resources and political and financial support for an effective humanitarian mission. Many U.S. and UN officials viewed the famine in isolation from its underlying political roots. The initial UN operation, begun in April 1992, was headed by Algerian diplomat Mohamad Sakhnoun, who tried to implement a decentralized distribution and economic development plan to help rebuild Somalia’s shattered social fabric. The U.S. and other Security Council members opposed Sakhnoun’s nontraditional approach, and he was soon forced to quit. He was replaced, after a brief interim period, with an American admiral who followed the more traditional—and flawed—policies Washington favored. In December 1992 the U.S. military, flush with its Gulf War victory, entered Somalia. The U.S. Marines landed on a deserted beach in Mogadishu with an official mandate, like the UN, to create a safe environment for food distribution. However, soon the U.S. forces were given a separate and very different mission: to capture and remove Somalia’s main warlord leader, General Mohammed Fareh Aideed. In their hunt for Aideed, the Marines quickly abandoned all pretense of playing an even-handed humanitarian role. In turn, Aideed’s militia began targeting U.S. and UN soldiers. “Mission creep” entered the U.S. vocabulary as U.S. soldiers waded into Somalia’s civil war. In June 1993, 23 Pakistani UN peacekeepers were killed and more than 60 wounded in a firefight with Aideed’s troops. 1000s of Somalis also died in Somalia including women and childern in the hand of US troops. In October 1993, 18 U.S. Rangers were killed in a fierce battle with Aideed’s forces. Televised footage of the fighting and the body of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets quickly turned American public opinion against U.S. involvement in Somalia. Although the Rangers were part of Washington’s own separate Somalia operation, the incident was played and replayed as a major “UN failure.” Under pressure at home and with warlord Aideed still at large, Clinton pulled out all U.S. troops during 1994. Most Somalis had viewed the UN and U.S. intervention with high hopes that they would relieve the famine and end the conflict. But the political and starvation/economic roots of the crisis remained unresolved. In fact, The U.S. commanders’ insistence on dealing only with military leaders rather than crucial voices of Somalia’s beleaguered civil society served to undermine local efforts toward humanitarian reconstruction and normalization of life. Following decades during which Somalia was over-armed by outside powers, the U.S. intervention served to exacerbate existing difficulties by further empowering the already strong militia leaders. In the years of civil war, countless women have been raped, an estimated 300,000 Somalis have died, and hundreds of thousands either internally displaced or forced to seek refuge in other countries. The situation in most of Somalia is largely stabilized. However, while Aideed’s death in August 1996 sparked initial peace overtures, since that time there have been more outbreaks of fighting, particularly in Mogadishu. By ignoring or underplaying that the roots of the conflict—a battle for scarce resources and a power vacuum following superpower abandonment—the U.S. not only distorts Somali history but also absolves itself of any responsibility for the crisis. Since 1993 Washington has pointed to Somalia as a symbol of failed peacekeeping and, more broadly, of the failure of the United Nations. The UN was widely, and wrongly, blamed for the gruesome deaths of the U.S. Rangers, despite the fact that they were not part of the UN operation—which President Clinton finally acknowledged during a 1996 presidential campaign debate. Yet many Americans, both policymakers and the public, continue to hold the UN responsible. This has been used to justify U.S. refusal to pay UN dues, as well as opposition to the re-election of UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The US should stop blaming the United Nations for U.S.policy failures in Somalia. Since U.S. troops pulled out from Somalia, Washington has largely washed its hands of any active involvement. The Clinton administration needs to replace its inaction with a policy of active support for Somalia’s reconstruction. This should be undertaken in collaboration with the UN and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), along with international and Somali aid, relief, development and human rights organizations. The U.S. must support and help develop effective implementation mechanisms for the long-standing embargo on the sale of arms to Somalia. Continued arms sales undermine the emergence of civil society and leadership, perpetuate the power of the militia leaders who are largely unaccountable to the population, and further disrupt Somalia’s already fragile economy. Washington should take the lead in cracking down on any U.S. arms dealers who may be providing illegal arms to anyone in Somalia. U.S. diplomatic efforts could win allied support for a stronger arms embargo. Washington should also contribute to a thorough mine-removal campaign. The U.S. should support local, regional, and international efforts at conflict resolution and reconstruction. This must include a program to demobilize and disarm the militias. The OAU in particular should be encouraged to play the leading role in establishing peace processes, and Washington should be willing to pay a substantial part of the costs of such an effort, while encouraging its European allies and Japan to contribute as well. In an effort to advance the peace process, the U.S. should consider funding a conference on peace and reconciliation in Somalia bringing together Somali nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), elders, intellectuals, women, professionals, youth, and others. The goals of this conference should be to enable Somalis to develop their own vision of a way forward out of the current quagmire. The U.S. should support higher levels of bilateral and multilateral development assistance to Somalia. The aid should be targeted to support community-based development projects such as schools, health clinics, water systems, and other social infrastructures. Identifying and creating the projects should be carried out by NGOs as well as by Somali official agencies, particularly those with specific emphasis on issues of gender equality and committed to the economic empowerment of Somali women—a sector of the population generally ignored but central to Somalia’s economic sustenance. U.S. representatives should insure that multilateral aid from the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions is not conditioned on structural adjustment policies that worsen the standard of living for the majority of the population. Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops, most U.S.-based aid agencies have withdrawn their international workers. Washington should consult with representatives of the international aid agencies to determine the needs in Somalia, and work to provide the NGOs with the financial, security, and logistics support needed to reestablish their presence inside Somalia, as well as consulting with those NGOs to determine how best the U.S. official assistance—both humanitarian and development—might best be targeted. The U.S. should abandon the pretext that the disastrous U.S. military mission in Somalia was somehow the UN’s fault. Debate over the U.S. role in the UN, and the UN’s place in U.S. foreign policy, should be based on fact, not on distortions.
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| | Thursday, March 22, 2001 - 06:48 am Ill-Fated UN Intervention: In the early 1990s, famine added to the country's misery. Faced with a serious humanitarian crisis, the United Nations and the United States decided to intervene. But Operation Restore Hope failed to live up to its name. Amid the anarchy, the US/UN soon abandoned its efforts to stop the bloodshed and human suffering. The turning point came in October 1993, when 18 US servicemen were killed and their bodies were dragged through the streets of the capital Mogadishu. The images shocked the world. International aid agencies pulled out their officers and left the people of Somalia to their own devises. After that, the situation looked hopeless. The book chronicles how U.N. and U.S. officials lost the strand of peacekeeping and ended up viewing Somali not as victims but rather as the enemy. "It was a bloody war, an up-front and personal kind of war," said U.N. intelligence director Lieut. Colonel Kevin McGovern. One telling statistic: of the billions spent in Somalia from 1992-95, less than 4% of that money found its way into the local economy. The profits amassed by U.S. defense contractor Brown & Root building facilities for U.N. staff exceeded the amount set aside to rebuild Somalia's infrastructure. Even so, U.S. Major General Thomas Montgomery, on his last day in the country, proclaimed that history would judge the U.S. mission a "great success." Of course, Somalia has been remembered as anything but. The fear of casualties (heightened by a videotape of U.S. bodies being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu) led directly to the U.S. decision not to intervene in Rwanda. But the situations were hardly comparable. "For anyone who had been to Somalia and Rwanda," writes Peterson "there were few parallels: in Somalia the U.N. created its own war and lost, in Rwanda saving lives could often have been achieved by simply being present." Later President Clinton apologized for the U.S. inaction and swore that the West would never turn its back again. Peterson's account makes clear that the Somalia operation failed because the West got involved in Somalia, but that, politically, it didn't get involved enough. In March 1992, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send experts to Somalia to study whether UN military observers should be sent to the country to enforce the cease-fire and protect relief supplies. "But at United States insistence," the _New York Times_'s UN correspondent Paul Lewis reported, "the Council's resolution was phrased in obscure terms that made only indirect reference to the likelihood of actually sending peacekeeping forces to Somalia because of fears that Congress would react adversely to another expensive peacekeeping operation in an election year." African delegates accused the United States of adopting a double standard concerning Africa.<40> The experts returned from Somalia and recommended that a 500-member peacekeeping force be sent. Washington demanded that the force be paid for by voluntary contributions rather than by the standard assessment used for such operations. Dickering over money, the Council dispatched only a force of 50 unarmed observers to Somalia.<41> The State Department insisted that it would be inappropriate to send a peacekeeping force to Somalia until the contending parties agreed to the deployment.<42> Then, in early August, a U.S. official stated that UN forces should be sent with or without the agreement of the warlords.<43> Ali Mahdi, whose "interim government of Somalia" was acknowledged in the UN- mediated February cease-fire agreement though he controlled very little territory, favored UN troops, believing they would help legitimize his position. Fearing just that, Aidid opposed a UN presence.<44> Then on August 12, the UN special representative in Somalia, Mohammed Sahnoun, got Aidid to agree to the troops.<45> Five hundred Pakistani troops were ready to go, but inexplicably, they didn't arrive in Somalia for two months. In the meantime, the Security Council authorized another 3,000 peacekeepers, but without consulting anyone in Somalia or even informing Sahnoun. Aidid saw this as a plot, and threatened to send the UN troops home in body-bags. Sahnoun then not only had to try to convince Aidid to accept the 3,000, but also to allow the 500 Pakistanis once they landed to actually be deployed.<46> Sahnoun had arrived in Somalia in April and quickly established a reputation as an effective and impartial negotiator. He was frustrated by what he saw as the lack of support from the UN in New York, and by its insistence that Aidid had the authority to block the deployment of the Pakistanis. Sahnoun was a great believer in talking things out, but once he had achieved a broad consensus among Somali parties (not just warlords) in favor of the deployment, he thought it wrong to allow Aidid a veto.<47> A Red Cross official noted that by remaining in their barracks, the 500 troops had lost the psychological impact of their presence.<48> Sahnoun was also outspoken in his criticisms of the United Nation's earlier neglect of Somalia and at the end of October he was forced to resign, thus squandering his great skill and the relationships he had established with many Somalis.<49> POOR MAN'S WAR Earlier, in July, Secretary General Boutros-Ghali had chided Security Council members for being more concerned with the "rich man's war" in the former Yugoslavia than with the situation in Somalia. The Council responded with a resolution calling for a relief airlift to Somalia.<50> U.S. disaster experts visited Mogadishu and came back skeptical that emergency airlifts would help; hasty airlifts would only increase fighting while not getting food to the needy. There was a temptation, they warned, to mount airlifts as a way of appearing to do something even though they might not achieve much.<51> Two days before the opening of the Republican National Convention in August, the White House abruptly announced that it would undertake a military airlift of food to Somalia. It soon turned out that the U.S. plan had been hastily put together and that various problems had yet to be ironed out. The _New York Times_'s Jane Perlez reported from Nairobi that "at least two American officials...said they believed that the [U.S.] haste was partly attributed [sic] to a desire by the White House to initiate a dramatic relief effort on the eve" of the Republican convention. "It was a good week to do something," said one U.S. official. Prior to the White House announcement, Perlez noted, "the civil war and the ensuing famine were described by American officials here as secondary issues in Washington."<52> But, in fact, the famine remained a secondary issue in Washington: Bush's advisers were fearful of charges that the President was fixated on foreign policy and urged him to take a lower profile until after the election.<53> So top State Department officials were moved over to the Bush re-election campaign, while the world was put on hold. The International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the few organizations that had stayed in Somalia after January 1991 and which was responsible for feeding more Somalis throughout the crisis than any other relief group, explained to Washington that it was against their policy to deliver food on planes carrying armed personnel or failing to display the Red Cross emblem.<54> Six days later, it was reported that the United States had agreed to the Red Cross terms and the airlifts began.<55> In September, the U.S. government announced a plan for dealing with the Somali famine.<56> The plan called for "monetizing" food: selling half of the food aid at low prices to Somali traders. This would re-establish the normal commercial market for food and distribution channels, give farmers a reason to go back and plant crops, and reduce the incentive for merchants to hoard and looters to loot. The other half of the U.S. food aid would continue to go to the destitute. Unfortunately, CARE was given the task of selling the food, and it failed miserably in doing so.<57> Food remained the object of fighting and theft. There were various reports in the press, repeated by U.S. officials, that 80% of all food aid was being looted.<58> Inexperienced and impatient relief agencies may have had extremely high losses, but the Red Cross, the leading provider of food to Somalia, was having losses far lower than these alarming figures. The Red Cross worked methodically with clan leaders to get food distributed, while some other agencies tried heavy- handed or hasty approaches. Some of the newer relief organizations found that the guards they hired to protect their food shipments were themselves looting; the Red Cross, on the other hand, had built up relationships of trust with its guards over many months. The two main ports of Mogadishu and Kismayu were wracked by clan-based and merchant-financed looting and frequently closed, so the Red Cross brought in most of its food through the many other smaller ports on Somalia's 1,880-mile coast, the second longest in Africa.<59> The effects of the famine were most devastating in July, August, and September. No one knows the number who died, and any claims that a particular percent of the population or a particular percent of children under five died are especially unreliable given that estimates for the total number of Somalis vary from four and a half to six and a half million or more.<60> According to the Red Cross, "several hundred thousand" Somalis died of hunger in 1992.<61> But by November, the worst of the famine was over. In Baidoa, for example, the epicenter of the famine, deaths rates had dropped from 300 a day in September to under a hundred a day in November and early December (in part because many of the young, the old, and the sick had already died).<62> And it was at the end of November, that George Bush announced his offer to the United Nations to send U.S. troops to Somalia. THE SELLING OF THE PENTAGON Here was a case, _New York Times_ diplomat correspondent Thomas L. Friedman explained, where the United States had "no strategic interests at stake."<63> The U.S. National Security Council was reported to have concluded that no U.S. strategic interests were involved or at risk.<64> On one level, this is certainly true. Given the abundance of U.S. bases in the Middle East, Somalia no longer served any global or regional strategic interest of the Pentagon.<65> The worry expressed in some of the African press that, for example, the United States decided to intervene in Somalia as a way to counter-balance Iran's announced purchase of submarines,<66> disregards the vast base structure Washington now had access to in the Gulf. Likewise, the claim that U.S. intervention was driven by potential oil or uranium resources is not very compelling. No doubt Somalia has valuable untapped oil and mineral deposits. But this was true two years earlier as well, when the United States pulled out of Somalia, and it is true for much of the African continent, where U.S. investors have been extremely hesitant about committing their capital. Stability in Somalia would help U.S. corporations, as would stability most everywhere, but reasonable projections of the profits from Somalian investment hardly seem like a large enough stake to be driving U.S. policy.<67> The absence of a strategic interest or a substantial economic stake, however, does not mean that the U.S. intervention was selflessly motivated. The end of the Cold War has generated tremendous domestic pressures on the Pentagon budget. Cutting the gargantuan military establishment could provide a ready source of funds to meet the needs of the country's long-neglected education and health care system, its economy, and its infrastructure. But deep cuts in the military budget are anathema to the Pentagon and its contractors. "Much of this new readiness to enforce law or establish order," conservative _New York Times_ columnist William Safire has noted, "may be to justify the continuance of big budgets."<68> Those who control the key institutions of the U.S. economy also have a powerful interest in maintaining a military able to engage in unilateral intervention. U.S. global hegemony is no longer a function of its economic preeminence: East Asia and Western Europe have seen to that. Today, U.S. hegemony depends upon its superpower military status, and with that status the ability to intervene anywhere in the Third World. "No other nation on earth has the power we possess," General Colin Powell has written. "We must lead. We cannot lead without our armed forces."<69> To face down the budget cutters, the Pentagon must sell itself. And one of the best sells is humanitarian action. The Defense Department prominently advertises its disaster relief operations in Guam, Bangladesh, and hurricane-wracked southern Florida.<70> "Only the United States," Bush told the American people, "has the global reach to place a large security force on the ground in such a distant place quickly and efficiently and thus save thousands of innocents from death."<71> But, of course, there is a far more efficient way to provide disaster relief: train and equip a force of disaster relief workers, complete with planes and whatever else they might need. But if no resources are allocated to the creation of a truly humanitarian force, then the task will have to fall to the military. We surely don't need to spend $275 billion annually for a disaster relief force, but that is what we have been doing, with the fringe benefit that this $275 billion force can also invade any Third World nation that does not recognize our leadership role. In his holiday greetings to U.S. troops in Somalia, George Bush told them they had "proved the wisdom of America's policy of peace through strength."<72> But they had proven nothing of the sort. The U.S. Somalia force represented one percent of U.S. troop strength and was projected to cost far less than one percent of the military budget.<73> Whatever merit may be claimed for the Somalia operation, it proves nothing about the need for the huge U.S. military establishment. But the Pentagon hopes that, with appropriate hoopla, the America people will come to think of the Somalia mission as the standard function of the military and the standard rationale for interventionism. Short memories may help. Already the _New York Times_'s Thomas Friedman tells us that the first intervention during the Bush administration was "to rescue Kuwait," somehow forgetting about the invasion of Panama.<74> Some commentators have surmised that Somalia represented Bush's attempt to do a "good deed" before he left office. It certainly would have been a first. The _New York Times_ reported that Bush's friends and advisers say it is no coincidence that the President "is leaving office with a show of American might in a noble cause."<75> There are many noble causes, but terribly few that involve "American might" and bolster its image so effectively. Does the U.S. government care about dying Somalis? The historical record leaves much reason to be skeptical of noble pronouncements. Mass murder has frequently been ignored or even promoted when it served U.S. interests -- as in Indonesia in 1965, or Bangladesh in 1971, or Chile in 1973, or East Timor from 1975, or El Salvador and Mozambique in the 1980s.<76> And George Bush himself showed remarkable indifference to human suffering when he embraced Saddam Hussein before the invasion of Kuwait, and aided other butchers in Central America or Southern Africa. Of course in the Somali case there were many voices in Congress, in the African-American community, in the international aid organizations, and even on the Left who pushed for U.S. action, all urging that Washington do more to help the people of Somalia, some specifically calling for U.S. military intervention. All of these voices, however, had been consistently ignored by the U.S. government for years. What made the Somalia pleas resonate, after many months, where other humanitarian appeals were resoundingly dismissed, was that in this case there were no important U.S. interests opposing U.S. intervention, and one important interest -- legitimizing the U.S. military -- that would be served by the intervention. Some will argue that now that U.S. troops are finally engaged in a humanitarian mission it is narrow-minded to impugn the motives of the U.S. government; after all, even the most altruistic act can be reduced to selfishness on some level. But beyond the sordid record of U.S. indifference to human suffering, there are at least two other compelling indications that the United States went into Somalia not for the primary purpose of helping the starving, but in order to promote the Pentagon and smooth the way for future U.S. interventionism: (1) Washington designed the operation in such a way that the U.S. military, and not the United Nations, would run the show; and (2) public relations opportunities for the U.S. military have taken precedence over feeding the hungry. INTO SOMALIA The U.S. offer to the United Nations to provide troops for Somalia was conditioned on Washington's retaining command over its troops<77> (a demand, incidentally, to which no member of Congress objected).<78> As _Newsweek_ explained: "Washington was not about to cede command of the operation to anyone else. But in order to get a unanimous vote on the 15-member Security Council, the Americans accepted the appearance of UN control. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was given a vague oversight role, but Americans will decide how to carry out their mission, and when to end it. They won't even wear the United Nation's blue headgear."<79> In short, as the _Times_'s Paul Lewis put it, the United States "made a number of largely symbolic concessions to those in developing and industrial nations who complain that the Security Council lost all influence over the gulf war once it had authorized it."<80> Not only did the United States insist on command over its own forces, it had to have control over all the international troops participating in the operation.<81> So, U.S. officers told the French when they could or couldn't confiscate weapons, and the Italians where they could or couldn't deploy.<82> Of course, the UN Security Council did accept Washington's demands, but it really had little choice. Ideally, the UN should have a standing force that it could deploy when necessary without having to get the approval of any country. (This would entail eliminating the veto power as well.) But such a standing UN force might mean that international troops could be sent to enforce rulings of the International Court of Justice, such as that barring U.S.-sponsored attacks on Nicaragua. It might mean that UN troops could do such things as protect Panama or Grenada from U.S. invasion. Obviously, Washington has no interest in this sort of equal justice, and has resisted any effort to establish a standing force for the UN -- as have other major powers. Far better from the point of view of the United States to maintain its own military forces, to be used in the name of the UN when convenient and unilaterally when necessary.<83> With no armed forces of its own, the UN could still put together a multinational force to deal with international crisis. But this costs money, and the dominant powers have made sure that the UN does not have the financial independence to carry out such actions. The member state with the largest arrears, in both regular budget and peacekeeping assessments, is the United States. In terms of peacekeeping, Washington owed $290 million in December 1992.<84> For the UN, the dilemma is plain. To quote Boutros-Ghali, the organization needs U.S. participation, but when the United States participates, "it insists on running the whole show and uses the UN simply as a fig leaf, as in Iraq and Somalia."<85> On December 8, U.S. Navy Seals and Marines charged up the beach at Mogadishu. Never before had such an intrepid force faced the fierce glare of TV cameras! The Pentagon disingenuously balled out the media for getting in the way, but Defense Department publicists had alerted the reporters and camera crews in advance of the landing.<86> Particularly prominent on the beach were the Marines. As Jonathan Alter wrote in _Newsweek_: "With the end of the cold war and a new, less pro-military administration, it's Budget D-Day in the Pentagon. In an era of advanced army helicopters, the amphibious mission of the Marines is in jeopardy, and they had no chance to show their stuff in Desert Storm. That means gearing up the PR machine to add the meals of Mogadishu to the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli."<87> But this was no harmless publicity seeking. Some relief officials had opposed the U.S. intervention and some had favored it, but all seemed to agree that once the U.S. forces were coming it was important to get to all the sites quickly, for there might be an orgy of looting and killing in the days before the troops arrived, and famine workers would be particularly vulnerable.<88> Yet this consideration was ignored in the interest of military image-building. Army and air force planners have noted that other Somali cities could have been occupied much more quickly by army airborne troops than by the beach-storming Marines. "We're letting service politics play this out," a disgruntled Pentagon official told _Newsweek_. "There is no other way you can explain this excruciatingly slow operation. Because the Marines didn't get to exercise an amphibious landing in the Persian Gulf, we let them do it in Somalia. If you're the Marines, and you want to sell everyone on this wonderful amphibious capability, you can't have the army upstage you with an airborne division."<89> The fears of the relief workers were justified. The _Los Angeles Times_ reported that Baidoa "has been trapped in a frenzy of shooting and looting in the three weeks since the United States first offered to send 28,000 troops to Somalia."<90> The U.S. arrival in Mogadishu intensified Baidoa's problems, as Marines pushed gunmen and armored cars out of the capital and toward Baidoa, where their killing and looting interfered with relief operations.<91> Robert B. Oakley, President Bush's special envoy to Somalia, did not seem bothered that the armored vehicles had fled Mogadishu instead of being confined to compounds in the city as the warlords had promised. "I don't have any idea where they've gone."<92> The Commander of U.S. military forces declared that if aid workers in Baidoa felt excessively threatened they should leave their posts;<93> many were forced to do so,<94> with consequences for the population that can be predicted. While U.S. troops took their sweet time getting to the famine sites, they did not miss the opportunity for self- promotion. In Mogadishu, the Associated Press reported, "Marine armored vehicles, accompanied by scores of press cars, delivered the first food of the mercy mission, passing through joyous crowds to cross Mogadishu's war-devastated 'Green Line.'" But the food was being taken to an area where there was no danger of starvation, and the amount delivered -- only a fraction of what relief agencies normally provided -- was "less than symbolic," in the words of a CARE official.<95> When the Marines finally got to Baidoa, more than a week after their arrival in the country, they again delivered food to great fanfare. "The amount of food delivered was meager compared to the quantities that relief agencies have managed to distribute even before the arrival of the Marines, although there were plenty of television cameras to record the delivery," reported the _New York Times_'s correspondent.<96> The Marines visited an orphanage where children sang to them; the Marines responded with "The Marine Hymn."<97> HAVE SOMALIS BEEN HELPED BY THE INTERVENTION? Were the U.S. troops, then, finally needed? President Bill Clinton claimed that Operation Restore Hope saved close to one million lives (though in the same speech he asserted that only two thirds of a million had been at risk of dying).<98> In fact, however, death rates had been falling dramatically before the U.S. troops arrived, and the most likely excess death estimates for December -- according to the well- informed Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omaar of Africa Rights -- were in the range of 10-15,000.<99> In a variety of ways, Operation Restore Hope actually cost lives in the short run. First, it disrupted carefully negotiated agreements that provided local stability. For example, in the two months before the U.S. intervention, Baidoa had been relatively peaceful as a result of understandings worked out between rival clans. But, as noted above, on the eve of the Marine landing these agreements collapsed and gave way to rampaging militias, causing thousands to flee, including relief agencies.<100> There was eleventh-hour violence elsewhere as well. In the port city of Kismayu, more than a hundred prominent members of the Harti sub-clan were assassinated as U.S forces arrived in Mogadishu. And hundreds more died in clan battles and looting raids. In general, U.S. officials reported that violence increased in regions where there was no foreign military presence. And in many areas where food was delivered, as soon as the troops left rioting or looting took place.<101> Second, Restore Hope drew people to refugee camps where food was distributed but where disease was readily contracted. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in Bardera, for example, the mortality rate doubled in the first month of Restore Hope and quadrupled for children under five.<102> Many of those who died were people who came to the camp already weak and near death, but the crowded conditions helped spread disease. The main argument on behalf of the U.S. intervention was that conditions were too dangerous for the agencies providing food. But in fact, in the first three months of Operation Restore Hope three foreign relief workers were killed compared to two in the previous two years.<103> The Red Cross, which had been skeptical of the troop deployment, announced on December 19 that it did not plan to use U.S. armed escorts for any of its food distribution. Its operation was so huge, an official said, that military protection was not feasible; instead, it was necessary to deal with the clan-based factions.<104> In July 1993, the UN refused to provide military escorts into areas where its peacekeepers had been killed, so CARE worked with Somali elders to assure that unescorted deliveries could be made.<105> Before the arrival of the troops, relief agencies hired gunmen to protect their shipments; now the gunmen were disarmed, leaving the agencies more vulnerable than before. Both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders reported more cars looted or shot up than before foreign forces landed.<106> Where before relief workers were valued by gunmen as a source of protection money, they were now prime targets for armed robbery.<107> As U.S. troops arrived in the famine zone, they found that the worst of the starvation was over. According to the _New York Times_, "it has become clear that because so many of the hungry died before the foreign forces arrived, emergency food is perhaps a less critical issue than was originally outlined. Just as important now, say Western diplomats, aid workers and Somalis, is the need for political reconciliation, to allow Somalia some semblance of normality."<108> The crucial question, then, is whether political reconciliation has been facilitated or hindered by the massive U.S. military presence. In Somaliland, in the north, civil society was reconstructed by Somalis. Perhaps the violence in the south is so deeply- rooted, that Somalis alone can't restore order. But there are great pitfalls in outsiders getting involved in Somalia's clan politics. Even the incident that was said to have convinced George Bush that U.S. troops were necessary -- the firing on a food ship chartered by the UN off Mogadishu, forcing it to return to sea -- revealed some of the dangers of foreign intervention. A representative of Ali Mahdi acknowledged to the BBC that his forces had fired on the vessel in order to put pressure on the UN to deploy troops (recall that Aidid opposed an increased UN presence, while Ali Mahdi favored it).<109> U.S. troops brought with them much ignorance of Somali society (despite the fact that some of them had served as advisers to Barre's military in 1988).<110> Some blunders have been amusing, such as the U.S. leaflets that rendered the Somali words for United Nations as "Slave Nation."<111> But much more serious has been the attitude toward the warlords. On the one hand, the United States and the United Nations have lavished too much attention on them, as when U.S. envoy Robert Oakley arranged a high profile meeting with the two Mogadishu warlords in December 1992, giving them a legitimacy they do not deserve. On the other hand, Washington has demonized Aidid, placing a reward on his head, and killing hundreds of civilians in its fruitless effort to capture him. Before the U.S. intervention there were signs that Aidid was waning in power within his sub-clan.<112> Now, however, in the words of a _New York Times_ report, "by painting himself as the aggrieved party in a war with UN colonialists, Aidid has increased his stature in his own clan." Among his supporters, "Aidid has taken on almost mythical proportions."<113> The tragedy of this, of course, is that Aidid is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths by famine and civil war and now he is a hero. Not that the other warlords whom the United States and UN favored<114> while going after Aidid were any better: Ali Mahdi and other warlords share with Aidid responsibility for the famine deaths, and Ali Mahdi is now being backed by the particularly brutal Gen. Said Hersi Morgan (Barre's son-in-law, guilty of major war crimes in 1988 against the Isaak).<115> In late October, 1993, Ali Mahdi organized a demonstration in Aidid- controlled territory in southern Mogadishu which UN officials speculated was intended to provoke conflict in hopes that the UN would again intervene against Aidid. The resulting clash broke the 19-month old truce between the two Mogadishu warlords.<116> The Clinton administration later tried to blame the UN for being obsessed with capturing the warlord. In fact, however, the UN resolution authorizing the anti-Aidid campaign was drafted and promoted by Washington, and many of the raids were carried out by U.S. forces operating outside the UN chain-of-command, which, in any case, was U.S. dominated.<117> The costs of trying to get Aidid have been enormous. Despite UN cover-ups,<118> hundreds of Somali civilians have been killed. Among the other victims of U.S. and UN attacks were a French relief agency (one Somali worker killed and seven others wounded), and the UN Development Program (4 foreign aid workers and 4 Somalis roughed up, arrested, and released), and the pro-UN former police chief of Mogadishu (wounded, arrested, and released).<119> Another impact of the hunt for Aidid, was that "there's an anger directed against all foreigners now," in the words of Michael McDonaugh, director of Irish Concern, a relief agency. "More than ever before, we're all targets. How can we work?"<120> Twenty-six relief organizations in Somalia sent a letter to Boutros-Ghali, charging that the UN offensives left a moral and legal cloud over the peacekeeping operation. The UN, they said, "must be held scrupulously to higher standards of conduct," singling out for special criticism the U.S. air-strikes in June and July against Aidid. The official newspaper of Italy's Catholic bishops called the July attack "a vile American raid," the Vatican charged that the operation's humanitarian mission had been "abandoned or momentarily forgotten," and both Italy's defense minister and the president of Eritrea condemned the "Rambo" behavior of the United States/UN forces.<121> In Washington, T. Frank Crigler, the former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, told a House Subcommittee that "we are turning triumph into tragedy, applying brute military force to a situation that calls for quiet diplomacy, patient mediation, steadiness and understanding."<122> But these traits -- quiet diplomacy, patient mediation, steadiness and understanding -- are precisely what the United States has in short supply. As soon as the brute force approach ran into substantial American casualties, Clinton announced that U.S. troops would be out in six months. In the meantime, the United States and the UN would not interfere with clan fighting. The obvious strategy for Aidid, a U.S. official noted and Clinton acknowledged, would be to lie low until March 31 and then bring out the guns and declare war.<123> In March 1993, Robert Oakley had boasted that the problem of clan warfare, which had taken so many lives, was "virtually gone."<124> But, in fact, the dangers of renewed civil war -- after the pull-out date, if not before -- have become worse than ever. U.S. casualties quickly revealed how superficial the humanitarian concern for Somalis was. "There are a lot of Somalis who deserve to be simply killed," a senior U.S. officer said in Mogadishu, and a reporter noted that the sentiment was widely shared among the soldiers.<125> Polls showed that half the American public favored withdrawal, even if another famine were to result. "It's really very simple," said one citizen. "If I have to choose between pictures of starving Somalian babies or dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, well, I don't want to see any more dead Americans. Sorry."<126> The United States was thus going to follow one of its two basic policies toward Africans: either dominate them or let them starve. There was, however, an alternative to both of these racist policies. Even in December 1992 it would have made sense to bring back UN special representative Mohammed Sahnoun or someone using his approach. He painstakingly built up the trust of all parties in Somalia, not just warlords but clan elders and other more peaceable elements, and was laying the basis for the political process that is a prerequisite for the survival of Somalia. A Sahnoun would have understood how to deal with Aidid, neither boosting him nor trying to humiliate him. The negotiator should also have been given more clout. He or she needed not just backing from the UN bureaucracy, but economic incentives to help encourage political reconciliation, a counter-weight to the existing incentives that encouraged looting and warfare. It also would have made sense to press for the deployment of the 3,500 UN troops, as Sahnoun had urged. The Rahanwayn clan in particular had been unable to protect itself from the depredations of the other, well-armed clans and some international protection was necessary. But this was a far cry from the massive U.S. troop presence. Where patient negotiation with Somalis was called for, Washington sent in the Marines. As things developed, the Pentagon did not get the boost it wanted from the Somalia operation. If anything, the experience has made future interventions more difficult rather than less so. (Indeed, some Republicans who opposed Restore Hope back in December 1992 worried that it might drain the Pentagon's resources and erode its willingness to intervene in more important places.<127> On the other hand, it has made the penchant for U.S. unilateralism greater than ever. Secretary of State Warren Christopher concluded that multilateralism "is warranted only when it serves the central purpose of American foreign policy, to protect American interests," while columnist William Safire wrote that the lesson of Somalia was: "Do not put U.S. troops under UN control anytime, anyplace."<128> But the real lesson of Operation Restore Hope was provided by Kevin M. Cahill, an American doctor with thirty years' experience in Somalia. Writing in early 1993, Cahill warned that he had a physician's profound mistrust of 'quick fix' therapy, of the dangers in deceiving ourselves that dramatic displays can ever substitute for the tedious tasks required to truly rehabilitate a gravely wounded nation. Changing a humanitarian effort into a security action may offer a temporary respite from the pain of frustration, but it reflects an approach that, while gratifying the short-term needs of the healer, fails to resolve the problems of the patient. In fact, the vast scope of military action adversely alters the critical relationship between donor and recipient, drains the finite resources available, and imposes a transient mirage of well-being that simply cannot be sustained.<129>
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| | Sunday, March 25, 2001 - 01:37 am Anonymous A lot of what's written here is half-truths, distortions and downright lies. HOWEVER, I do agree in principal with what Cahill wrote. An argument can be made that food and other sorts of aid, while they do relieve short term sufering, develop an unhealthy dependency and a flawed economy which finds itself unable to recover. Michael Marin makes this case in his book the Road to hell. It's a good read, but I think Marin overstates his case. Not all aid in unhealthy, unproductive nor does all aid have to have an adverse ecnomnic affect on the local economy. Massive military interventions can also be successful - Bosnias certainly appears to be. And these kind of massive humanitarian interventions are usually precipitated by horrible human catastrophes. Witness when there was no intervention in Rwanda - now six years later everyone says there should have been. You know, in life it's always easy to sit back after the fact and criticize who should have done what - or too point out where mistakes were made. But these brilliant critics themselves aren't involved in the fights. It's typical monday morning quarter-backing. So while I agree with Cahills point, the flip side of that is to let places like Rwanda run their course. If we had never gone to Somalia some 300,000 to 500,000 people who are alive right now would be dead. anonymous you would do better to cite a some of these sources to underscore your points rather than just overload the net with conflicting opinions.
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