Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:21:33 +0200
Is Washington Using Famine in the Horn of Africa to Embark on Yet Another Illegal War?
US Drones Coordinate Air Power For Kenyan Ground Invasion of Somalia
by Finian Cunningham
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<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, October 19, 2011
The large troop deployment by Kenya into Somali territory is taking on the form of a full-scale invasion, rather than a temporary incursion as initially reported.
What is also emerging - but largely unreported - is that the US appears to be providing coordinated aerial firepower to help the advance of the Kenyan military against Al Shabab Islamic militants who have held power in the southern Somali territory.
Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, which was installed in 2009 with US support, has been battling against the militants for the past two years. Plagued by allegations of corruption and incompetence, the TFG has only managed to cling on to power in the capital, Mogadishu, thanks to diplomatic and military support from Washington and neighbouring US-allied countries, including Ethiopia and Kenya. Some 8,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi are stationed in Mogadishu to help stave off advances by Al Shabab from the southern hinterland where it holds sway.
Kenya's surprise military intervention in its eastern Horn of Africa neighbour on Sunday came only two days after the US launched deadly aerial drone attacks in southern Somalia. According to Press TV, the worst fatalities were in the town of Qoqani, 80 kilometres from the border with Kenya. Some 78 people were killed in that attack and scores of others injured.
Qoqani was the first major urban centre commandeered by Kenyan troops - backed by heavy artillery, tanks, helicopters and fighter jets - within 48 hours of crossing the border on Sunday.
Now as Kenyan forces move towards the port city of Kismayu - some 200 kilometers from the Kenyan border and the strategic base for Al Shabab - US drones are targeting what appears to be the next military objective.
A US drone attack on Kismayu on Monday claimed the lives of some 27 people, including children, according to reports. There were also several reports of similar unmanned aerial vehicles crashing or being shot down near Kismayu, according to the BBC and Press TV. At the beginning of last month, a US drone attack reportedly killed 35 Al Shabab fighters in the port city.
In July, the Washington Post and New York Times, reported "the first US drone attack" on Somalia in which two Al Shabab commanders were targeted. The Obama administration has labeled Al Shabab a terrorist group and accuses the Islamists of having links to Al Qaeda. In recent weeks, there appears to be have been a stepped-up deployment of both spy and attack drones in Al Shabab strongholds.
In light of Kenya's invasion of Somalia this week, it would now appear that US air power has played a key role in softening up combatant positions in advance of ground troops.
The Kenyan government - as with most media reports - claim that the intervention is aimed at hunting down kidnap gangs operated by Al Shabab which have been responsible for a spate of cross-border attacks on tourists and aid workers. A British and French woman were recently kidnapped in separate incidents in Kenyan coastal resorts. Reports are emerging that the French woman has since died while in captivity from lack of medical treatment. Then two Spanish aid workers were abducted from a refugee camp in Kenyan territory near the Somali border. Al Shabab sources have denied any involvement in attacks on foreign nationals, and the Islamist group says that the Kenyans are using the kidnap allegations as a pretext to invade a sovereign country. There are several disparate criminal groups operating in southern Somalia - pirates and bandits - that could have carried out the kidnappings.
However, the lack of proof implicating Al Shabab has not deterred the Kenyan government from stridently asserting blame. That together with the large-scale military intervention by the Kenyan government, which has caused much concern among many of its own citizens over its legality, suggests that there is more going on than a cross-border swoop against criminal gangs. Also, the tacit approval by the Mogadishu government for the Kenyan invasion and the coordinated use of US drone attacks indicate a more far-reaching development.
The geostrategic importance of Somalia has long made it a prize for Washington. With its nearly 1,800-kilometre coastline overlooking the oil trading routes of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the US has been vying for a foothold on the territory ever since its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960. Washington backed the dictatorship of Siad Barre until he was ousted in 1991 by rival warlords. This prompted the US to mount its "humanitarian" invasion in 1992 - Operation Restore Hope - which ended in disaster in 1994 following the shooting down of a Blackhawk helicopter and the death of 19 US personnel whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in front of the world's media by Somali militants.
Since then Washington has preferred to use proxy forces to project its interests in the notoriously unruly country. In 2006, President George Bush gave the greenlight for the invasion by Ethiopia to topple a nascent Islamic government - the Union of Islamic Courts - that had managed to bring a degree of stability to the country out of the warlord anarchy. The Transitional Federal Government was installed three years later, but it has never consolidated control of the country, with the Islamists running most of the southern territory - much to Washington's dismay. Newly elected President Barack Obama has taken up the gauntlet with gusto. In September 2009, he ordered the assassination of senior Al Shabab commander Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan by helicopter-borne US Special Forces.
Somalia's famine may now have opened up an opportunity for Washington to pursue its proxy war. Two years of drought and conflict have left some four million Somalis exposed to hunger - with 750,000 most acutely at risk, according to various humanitarian agencies. Most of the famine victims are located in Somalia's southern region controlled by Al Shabab. Washington has pointedly refused to let food aid into the region, citing that the provisions would be misappropriated by the militants.
With rising hunger and incidence of diseases such as cholera, measles and typhoid, the military strength of Al Shabab has considerably weakened in recent weeks, according to the International Crisis Group.
This suggests that Washington has used the famine - the worst such famine seen in the Horn of Africa for 60 years - as a weapon to bring about its desired military objective: the crushing of a combatant force that is inconveniencing US geopolitical control of a strategically important country.
Finian Cunnningham is Global Research's Middle East and East Africa
correspondent
<http://us.mc1613.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cunninghamfin_at_yahoo.com>
cunninghamfin_at_yahoo.com
Barack Obama's New War in Central Africa?
by Boris Volkhonsky
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<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, October 19, 2011
-[A]ll previous and present U.S. military operations abroad have shown that the issue of "human rights" and similar slogans are raised selectively, whenever there is a need for the U.S. to establish its presence in this or that part of the world. This was the case with Afghanistan and Iraq; this is the case with Libya and the prospective cases of Syria and Iran. -Three years ago, [Obama] was elected bearing the image of a dove of peace and promising to end the two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of the two is over, a third one in Libya is going on at full scale and two others - in Syria and Iran - are looming. Now, why Uganda?
Oil is the primary reason, but not the only one.
-It is worth reminding that the Vietnam War also started from sending advisors. What it ended in is too is too well known. If Barack Obama wishes to be remembered as the President who launched the biggest number of wars in American history, he has all the right to proceed with widening military presence in Uganda and elsewhere.
U.S. President Barack Obama's last Friday's decision to send 100 American troops to Uganda has sent waves over the political space both in the U.S. and abroad. The move seems to be quite justifiable since the primary adversary of American military "advisors" will be the so-called Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has been operating in Uganda and several neighboring countries for over 20 years and is known for mass murders, rapes, abductions, arsons and other crimes.
What does not allow one to acknowledge that the U.S. military mission is a purely humanitarian character aimed at protecting the civilian population, is a series of facts related to the whole story. First, the LRA today is at its weakest point in the last 15 years. The Ugandan army has been launching relatively successful operations against the guerillas and now they are smaller in numbers than 10 years ago, scattered and based mostly in the Central African Republic and South Sudan rather than in Uganda itself.
Second, all previous and present U.S. military operations abroad have shown that the issue of "human rights" and similar slogans are raised selectively, whenever there is a need for the U.S. to establish its presence in this or that part of the world. This was the case with Afghanistan and Iraq; this is the case with Libya and the prospective cases of Syria and Iran. The main thing based in the core of all these current or prospective military actions is oil. And whatever the U.S. diplomats in Uganda might say trying to deny the obvious U.S. commercial interest does not sound true.
This fact is not only dawning upon outside observers, but even on such U.S. mainstream politicians as, for example, Senator John McCain. Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, he warned the administration to be careful and to remember the failed missions of the kind in Somalia or Lebanon.
"I worry about, with the best of intentions, that we somehow get engaged in a commitment that we can't get out of," said Senator McCain.
In fact, "a commitment the U.S. can't get out of" is probably the least desired thing for President Obama. Three years ago, he was elected bearing the image of a dove of peace and promising to end the two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of the two is over, a third one in Libya is going on at full scale and two others - in Syria and Iran - are looming. Now, why Uganda?
Oil is the primary reason, but not the only one. For a decade or more, Africa has been largely neglected by the U.S. foreign policy. Being preoccupied with the "Greater Middle East", successive administrations did not have the time, resources, power and intention to handle the problems of the "Dark Continent". To fill the vacuum, China and lately India were only eager to replace the U.S. as the main partner of Africa. And instead of their American counterparts and competitors, the method used by the two emerging powers was that of "soft power" rather than blunt military pressure.
Such a policy has yielded its results and now Obama is frantically trying to reverse the tendency. But sending 100 troops is hardly an adequate answer to billions of dollars worth of Chinese and Indian investments.
More so, one has to agree with Senator McCain that such an engagement will be difficult to get out of. He said he remembers Somalia and Lebanon, but the Vietnam War veteran might as well remember more distant times.
It is worth reminding that the Vietnam War also started from sending
advisors. What it ended in is too is too well known. If Barack Obama wishes
to be remembered as the President who launched the biggest number of wars in
American history, he has all the right to proceed with widening military
presence in Uganda and elsewhere. But it is highly doubtful that this is
really his intention. Rather, the force of inertia of the whole machine
forces him into reckless adventure like the one in Uganda.
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