U.S. aircraft, special forces kill scores of Somali civilians

Jan. 10—The Bush administration and its military arm have attacked Somalia.

It is a sure sign that their plan to get Ethiopian troops to do the fighting for them in this East African country has backfired, stirring up even more resistance to foreign intervention.

And it is also a sure sign that they intend to expand the criminal war begun in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is aimed at securing U.S. imperialist domination over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Africa.

On Jan. 8, U.S. warplanes began bombing targets in many different parts of Somalia, claiming they were seeking out members of Al-Qaeda—in other words, the same old excuse the Bush administration gave earlier for unleashing open aggression, which is illegal under every international law.

The Associated Press reported Jan. 10 that U.S. special forces were participating in the fighting in Somalia, and that five U.S. warships were off the coast, including the enormous aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower, whose 4.5-acre flight deck can carry 100 aircraft. This ship is a monstrous moving base for aggression around the world.

As of this writing, the attacks have continued for three days. They have been carried out by AC-130 gunships, horrible planes built by Lockheed. Costing $72 million each, the latest version of this death-dealing aircraft has guns and cannon that spray out thousands of rounds a minute.

A Somali elder, Haji Farah Qorshel, said 64 civilians had been killed and 100 injured in the three days of attacks. (New York Times, Jan. 10) Spokespersons for the U.S. government, speaking from Washington and refusing to be identified, claim only a handful were killed.

A later report from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, appeared on the Times’s Web site on the afternoon of Jan. 10. It said that, since the U.S. attacks began, fighting between the “government” and “insurgents” has intensified. This “government” was imposed after Ethiopia invaded Somalia on Dec. 20 with the blessings and material support of Washington and the Pentagon. For the last week, the Western media had been reporting that the “insurgents” were on the run.

“The capital of Somalia exploded in violence this morning after insurgents attacked a government barracks overnight and soldiers responded by sealing off large swaths of the city and searching house to house for weapons,” said the Times report.

“The raids immediately sparked resistance. Squads of Ethiopian soldiers and troops loyal to the transitional government poured into the streets, where they battled outraged residents and a handful of masked insurgents.

“From dawn through early afternoon, the pop of gunfire and the boom of explosives echoed across Mogadishu. ...”

The U.S. calls the popular Islamic Courts Union “insurgents.” For over a year, this grassroots grouping, which has no outside imperialist support, has been building up social services in the country and pushing back the group of Somali puppets now dubbed the “government” by the invaders. These same forces used to be referred to by the corporate media as “warlords.”

Washington has secretly funded these Somali puppets, according to many press reports, but this strategy blew up in the faces of the Bush crew last May as the ICU drove the foreign-backed collaborators out of many cities, to the applause of enthusiastic crowds who greeted the Islamic fighters as their liberators.

Now the puppets are being called the government by the Western media, and the “deputy prime minister,” a former U.S. Marine named Hussein Aided, is dutifully calling for U.S. troops on the ground. Aided’s call must amuse/enrage many Somalis, since U.S. troops have been there ever since the December invasion. (Guardian, Jan. 10)

The last time the U.S. admitted to having troops in Somalia was in the 1990s. An intervention orchestrated by George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, in 1992 toward the end of his administration was carried out supposedly for “humanitarian” reasons. Somehow, the news media here saw no problem with echoing the line from Washington that heavily armed Marines were needed to deliver bread to hungry Somalis.

This cynical maneuver against one of the poorest countries in the world ended in disaster for the invaders. After a vicious attack by Black Hawk helicopters on a crowded market area in downtown Mogadishu in October 1993, the armed and motivated population shot down one of the warships. In the street fighting that followed, some 18 U.S. troops, many of them highly trained Delta Force commandos, were killed by the enraged populace. Washington’s dreams of controlling Somalia and its strategic coastline on the Horn of Africa had been dashed.

The present situation seems to be pointing in the same direction. The Somali people have resisted foreign domination ever since the colonial period. As the latest report in the New York Times shows, the civilians are cheering on those who risk their lives by fighting back against this highly armed force of U.S.-supplied mercenaries.

As Bush calls for more troops to Iraq, sending soldiers and National Guards overseas for a second and even third time, the hatred for U.S. imperialism grows ever more acute throughout the world.

This latest violence against the people of Somalia, concocted by callous, smug, racist empire-builders playing with the lives of millions, will end in disaster, too. But the end will come only when an aroused popular movement joins the people of the world in demanding: Troops out now!

E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org