The World After Bush Part II: Somalia

By Liam Bailey

I said in a recent article that the U.S. arms sale to the gulf is a possible sign that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might be closer than Bush wants to admit. With all my conviction I say: there will be no U.S. victory in Iraq and eventually they will have to pullout, if not before Bush leaves office then sometime soon after.

When reading an article about the continued violence in Somalia with my last article still fresh in my mind, I asked myself the question, where will the world be after the Bush administration? Further, will things calm down, or have the Neocons caused so much friction and meddled so much that the explosion of violence in so many places around the world will continue to worsen?

I will attempt to answer my questions in a series of articles, and through the course will also inadvertently show why electing the son of a U.S. President, as President is perhaps a mistake, that should not be repeated.

In most of the worlds current conflict zones the U.S. has had some involvement, but never has their involvement been as catastrophic as under (the infantile megalomaniac) President Bush Jnr.

Part II: Somalia

Somalia is another country that the U.S.' mistakes in the past have caused problems leading to current, recent and probably future mistakes. After Somalia's dictator Siad Barre was ousted in 1991 a similar situation as that of present day Iraq arose: with the brutality of a dictatorship gone, a ticking time-bomb exploded -- though unlike Iraq the bomb was clan warfare not sectarian warfare.

Somalia's civil war began -- it still hasn't ended. In 1993 the U.S./U.N. sent in peacekeepers because of the heavy civilian death toll. Their mission: to enforce the latest peace agreement, disarm clan militias and engage one faction that refused to cooperate with the peace initiative -- namely, warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's faction. Aidid's militia inflicted heavy casualties on the U.S./U.N force, culminating in the Black Hawk down incident Oct 3 - 4 1993, with the vicious killing of 18 American soldiers, 1 Malaysian, and the wounding of 83 U.S, 7 Malaysian and 2 Pakistani troops.

On October 6 President Clinton ordered an end to all U.S. operations in Somalia except self-defense, announcing that all U.S. forces would withdraw no later than Mar. 31 1994 -- not least because the dead soldier's bodies were dragged through the streets by elated civilians. There were similar scenes during the recent peacekeeping mission.

When the peacekeepers left, Somalia went back to much the same as it had been before: protection racketeering, hijacking and open battles between rival warlords and their respective clans/factions. Mogadishu residents -- as always -- suffered worst.

The warlords formed the Transitional National Government when they met in Djibouti 2000, but it improved nothing in Somalia. The battles between the warlords and rival clans/factions lessened, but that just freed up more gunmen to roam the streets robbing, raping and pillaging. The situation remained the same after the Transitional Federal Government was formed at a second meeting in Kenya 2004.

The Union of Islamic Courts began to sweep to power mid-2006, they swept the chaos and violence away, replacing it with their brand of socially restrictive but peaceful and secure calm in the areas they controlled. Children could go back to school and nurses could treat the sick instead of droves of war wounded.

Because of this the U.I.C. enjoyed popular support, not least from the businessmen who founded and funded the growingly popular group. The U.I.C. had the T.F.G. and its warlords holed up in one town, Baidoa within months. Ethiopian troops began appearing in and around Baidoa to strengthen the T.F.G. foothold. The U.I.C. began to attract the world's attention, not least with their threats to attack the Ethiopian invaders, as well as reports of the U.I.C. closing cinemas and stoning women for not wearing Hijab's.

Their hard-line brand of Salafist Islam and Islamic (Sharia) Law put the U.I.C. on the U.S.' radar; in the crosshairs of the War on Terror. Not too long after that the inevitable Al Qaeda connection was made. I am not denying an Al Qaeda connection to a few members of the group, though I would say more U.I.C. hardliners sought Al Qaeda affiliation than actually had it. But nor will I deny that a large number of U.I.C. followers were (are) hard-line Islamists, because it was in fact that branch of the group that was responsible for their firepower and rapid sweep to power. But there was a moderate following just as large and powerful within the group.

Now anyone with any sense, seeing that the U.I.C was easily defeating the warlord T.F.G. and seeing that they were restoring order in Somalia for the first time in 15 years, would have been attempting to talk with the U.I.C. -- even if only the moderates. Attempting to gain assurances on its treatment of women and civilians, attempting to get them to make a public address condemning Al Qaeda and all it stood for -- in return for international recognition and assistance.

But the U.S. and all its followers including the U.N. still refused to give the group validity. U.N. Resolution 1725 was passed authorizing a possible peacekeeping force, and reiterating that the T.F.G. was the only recognized Somali government, that the U.N. saw the T.F.G. as the only route to a peaceful Somalia, and stating that any group targeting the T.F.G. would be dealt with.

But it was when the U.I.C. made their final advance to crush the T.F.G. once and for all that Bush really excelled himself in the proving stupidity stakes.

Bush would have been told (he certainly wouldn't have known) about the long-running (since 1964) history of hatred and violence between Somalia and Ethiopia. So, Bush, supporting, or possibly even initiating Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia to re-instate the T.F.G. government and crush the U.I.C. was like supporting an Israeli invasion of Lebanon to crush a movement regarded as a terror group. Oh, that's right, Bush did that too, but that's another article.

With the summer Lebanon war and the Iraq quagmire as models Bush should have known that a nation invading a country where it is hated is going to meet fierce resistance, from dedicated but invisible fighters coming from and/or bedded into the civilian population. An insurgency of almost never ending numbers, well, more recycling numbers; every innocent killed by the invaders creates more insurgents. But from a man who said while speaking in Vietnam about Iraq that the U.S. only lost the Vietnam war because it pulled out, and he won't make the same mistake in Iraq, Bush probably thought with his courage to stay the course he could bring peace to Somalia.

So Somalia's citizens are still suffering from Bush's error. The calm and relative normality under the U.I.C. has been replaced by their insurgency and the same tribal issues as before the U.I.C. took power: sporadic gunfire, mortars, Ethiopian and Ugandan peace keeper deaths, civilian deaths, general insecurity and anarchy. The situation is worse in Mogadishu than much of the country.

This is all made worse by the fact that there was no reason to invade Somalia, as I said the UIC were restoring order. The moderate elements should have been strengthened by conditional international recognition and support. Like doctors who bury their mistakes, this is just another U.S. mistake that the world has to live with.

So, I have looked at Iraq and Somalia, both very different in terms of how the Bush administration meddled, but both very similar in their chances of enjoying peace and security in the near future. In Somalia the U.S. involvement has always been indirect (on the surface), but because of Bush and with the help of U.S. contractors, money and weapons, Ethiopia is now occupying Somalia. Given their history that will never be a peaceful occupation. The Ugandan peace-keepers have been attacked also. But even if everybody withdrew tomorrow, or after Bush leaves office, Somalia went 15 years of anarchy before the U.I.C. restored some semblance of order, left to their own devices it could well be another 15 years before it happens again. It certainly won't be anytime soon.

International Community: Divide and Function

The U.S. is setting the world's foreign policy agenda based on its own interests.

By Liam Bailey

For far too long the U.S. has set the foreign policy agenda, and the "international community" blindly and unquestioningly follows. But with decades of evidence that U.S. foreign policy serves nothing further than their own interests, it is time we opened our eyes and made up our own minds.

Furthermore, major organizations like the U.N, N.A.T.O, the E.U., and the Quartet are all failing miserably as peace-makers. Why? Because the U.S is impeding them from the front, determining efforts at conflict resolution based on its own interests. The "international community" backs their efforts and echoes their words. Really they should know better; the U.S using its influence to have the international community serving its interests is the root cause of most of the world's current conflicts, and one of the main reasons some of the longer-running conflicts haven't been resolved. When is it going to stop?

Part 1: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and...

The War on Terror:

The two biggest wars of our generation have been started by the U.S. under the umbrella of the War on Terror, but they are not actually lessening terror around the world — in fact if anything they are increasing it. Just last year, a report by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies said that Iraq has become a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism and is providing a training and exercise ground for Jihadis from around the globe. Afghanistan is serving the same purpose, though perhaps on a smaller scale.

It seems, on the back of the notoriety gained from 9/11 and their endeavours in Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with the latter's legitimization of their terrorism as a battlefield war, Al Qaeda has spread terrorism and suicide bombing around the globe. I say this because of the recent spate of suicide bombings in Morocco and Somalia.

Many people believe the War on Terror is a cover for using military force to shore up control of natural resources for America's future. No one doubts that the Bush administration is one of the most conservative we have seen in the White House. The last such conservative President, who put the same weight on oil when making foreign policy decisions, was President Reagan.

Afghanistan:

It was Reagan's determination to stop the Soviet Union and end their control of strategically vital Afghanistan; rather his means of doing so that kick-started the phenomenon of Islamic extremist terror aimed at western interests. Reagan's policies included: funding the extremist of extreme Mujahideen groups, pressuring Saudi Arabia to match their level of funding, and arming the anti-Soviet Afghanistanis with the best weaponry via Pakistani intelligence.

Perhaps the two biggest mistakes were pressuring Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to the point where his intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal hired Bin Laden to recruit fighters and secure funds from rich Arabs for the Afghan Jihad, and having the U.K's Special Air Service give the Mujahideen explosives training, including how to improvise Soviet explosives captured in ambushes and recovered mines. Bin Laden kept a database of fighters recruited for the struggle. Al Qaeda is base in Arabic.

Pakistan also used U.S. dollars to build dozens of religious schools, or seminaries in the border regions. It was the U.S and Pakistan's shared aim, that the seminaries would maintain extremist teachings and provide a steady flow of Muslims to go and fight in the Afghan Jihad. Many of those religious schools remain breeding grounds for Salafist anti-western extremism to this day.

It is because of the policy of fomenting extremism to breed Jihad in Pakistani seminaries working so well that the combined forces of N.A.T.O, the U.S., and the Afghan Northern Alliance haven't fully defeated the Taliban nearly six years after they removed them from power. Piling the pressure on Pakistan's Musharraf to help deal with the problem has led to the balance being tipped, and now Pakistan's border regions are engulfed with Talibanization. The Taliban, meaning seminarian or seeker of knowledge, were raised in the seminaries in the border regions. So their support there has always been high. But now their supporters are angry at what they see as Musharraf picking the U.S. over his own people.

A few years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1994, the Taliban went forth across the border, supported by a Pakistan regime still flush with U.S. dollars and keen to install an Islamic ally in Kabul. When they achieved rapid success and took power in most of Afghanistan by 1996, they allowed the return of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. By this time Al Qaeda was a well-known terror network that had declared war on America and their allies — in effect the "international community".

Al Qaeda:

Al Qaeda and Bin Laden weren't taken seriously by the U.S. until their attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998, and U.S.S Cole in Yemen in 2000. But Al Qaeda membership was dwindling, despite the acclaim in the extremist world for those attacks, and the anti-Americanism building in the Islamic world for years. Muslims were and are angry at the years of America supporting Israel's theft of Muslim land and other actions against the Palestinians, as well as the U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia after Saddam invaded Kuwait. That deployment and its permanence after the first Gulf war ended were the main causes behind Bin Laden's (Fatwas) declarations of holy war against the U.S. The U.S. was also indirectly to blame for Saddam's invasion, and therefore the Al Qaeda Fatwa's (religious rulings), but part II will cover the Middle East.

9/11 really put Al Qaeda on the world stage. It also gave America the license to fulfill its resource hungry interests. The Taliban was putting the brakes on a massively profitable UNOCAL pipeline, and the U.S. was planning to invade but would have had trouble selling a war of aggression to Congress, the U.S. public, and the "international community". 9/11 provided justification for the invasion, which, in truth was probably necessary as Reagan's policies had turned Afghanistan into a home-base for international terrorism.

Bush declaring a "War on Terror" and then heavily bombarding and invading a Muslim country gave Al Qaeda's now notorious struggle a legitimate battlefield. It also made easier their job of manipulating events to support claims of western aggression against Muslims. This, combined with the conspiracy theories of U.S. and or Israeli complicity in the attacks, which were widely believed in the Arab world, put an end to Al Qaeda's problem with dwindling membership.

Put simply, the United States' self-serving foreign policy is directly responsible for Al Qaeda and indirectly for the Taliban being such thorns in the world's side. So why should the international community follow their lead in dealing with the threat?