Like a pyromaniac, the
United States threatens to ignite the entire East African region in its
campaign to suppress Islamist forces in Somalia. Unable to marshal
support for the pitiful puppet regime in Mogadishu, the Americans try
to buy ethnic Somali recruits in surrounding countries. A new military
offensive is set for late December.
Somali refugees and ethnic Somali citizens of Kenya are being recruited and trained
by the thousands for a U.S.-backed offensive in Somalia, to begin next
month. The Associated Press, citing numerous sources among refugees,
young men who have deserted from the new militia and their families,
local Kenyan officials and foreign diplomats, reports that the
offensive against Islamist forces in Somalia is planned for late
December, the end of the Somali rainy season. That’s the same seasonal
window the Americans took advantage of three years ago, when the U.S.
instigated an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that plunged the country
into what the United Nations described as the “worst humanitarian
crisis in Africa.” That crisis continues, complicated by a severe
drought and a U.S. blockade of food aid.
Washington
supports a puppet government that controls little more than a small
corner of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and would immediately collapse
where it not for the protection of Rwandan and Burundian troops that
guard the airport. Most of central and southern Somalia is controlled
by Islamist Shabab fighters. The U.S. is attempting to starve the
region into submission by withholding 40 million pounds of food
warehoused in Mombasa, Kenya.
With
little support inside Somalia, the Americans have organized mass
recruitment among the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have fled
the fighting to refugee camps in Kenya – a practice that violates
international law. Recruits are also being drawn from ethnic Somalis
who are Kenyan citizens, in the northeastern part of the country. The
Associated Press has learned of similar recruitment and training in the
Somali regions of Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the United States
maintains a huge military base.
The recruits are lured into service with promises of $600 a month, but deserters say they are often beaten, ill-fed and unpaid.
The
Americans are playing a very dangerous game. In addition to breaking
international law and discrediting aid agencies by recruiting among
refugees, the U.S. is encouraging a wider conflict in East Africa.
Ethnic Somalis dominate in northeastern Kenya, in the Ogaden region of
Ethiopia, and in Djibouti. Ethnic Somalis waged a secessionist war in Kenya
in the mid-1960s and continue to resist Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden.
According to the Associated Press, recruits in Kenya are deprived of
their identification cards and told, “You are not a Kenyan. From this
moment, tell yourselves and other people you are a Somali.” Recruiters
are apparently doing the same thing among ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia
and Djibouti.
The Americans, in their zeal to defeat the Islamist Shabab in Somalia, are encouraging Somali nationalism
in neighboring countries, and thus planting the seeds of future wars of
secession. Although the U.S. may think that it is turning brother
Somalis against one another for U.S. foreign policy purposes, in
reality the Americans are fanning the flames of war among Somalia's
neighbors – including Kenya. These are the fruits of AFRICOM, the U.S.
military's African Command. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama is
destabilizing his father's own homeland, and the whole of East Africa.
Black Agenda Report
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