The Empire's Dirty Hands In The Horn Of Africa
In 1993 the US made a big splash about it's highly visible "peacekeeping" mission in Somalia, culminating in the battle in Mogadishu where Blackhawk helicopters were blasted out of the sky and fighting raged through the city. Today the empire is back, only this time america's third front in it's phony war on terror is more clandestine and far more tragic.
Somalia: The World's forgotten catastrophe
"The first US airstrike was carried out on 7 January 2007 – its first and only publicly acknowledged military operation inside Somalia since 1994. Two AC-130 helicopter gunships, flown from an airbase in eastern Ethiopia, carpet-bombed a convoy of trucks moving through Ras Kamboni, a fishing village near the Kenyan border that has also been home to an al-Qa'ida training camp.A team of US special forces based in Kenya's Manda Bay flew in after the airstrike with orders to kill anyone left alive and find out who had died. The mission was instantly declared a success. Those attacked were "senior al-Qa'ida leadership", the Pentagon said.
There was only one problem. According to local Somalis, and confirmed by western diplomats and aid officials in Nairobi, none of the dead was connected to the [Islamic] Courts [or al Qaeda]. Instead, a group of pastoralists gathering around a fire to keep the mosquitoes away had been killed.
(...)
Somalia is now experiencing its worst period of violence in two decades. The daily battles between Ethiopian-backed government forces and the insurgents have had a devastating impact on the population.
(...)
More than 600,000 people fled Mogadishu last year. Around 200,000 are now living in squalid impromptu refugee camps along a 15km-stretch of road outside the capital. According to UN officials it is the largest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world. Those same officials now consider Somalia to be the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, eclipsing even Darfur in its sheer horror."
Somalia: The World's forgotten catastrophe
"The first US airstrike was carried out on 7 January 2007 – its first and only publicly acknowledged military operation inside Somalia since 1994. Two AC-130 helicopter gunships, flown from an airbase in eastern Ethiopia, carpet-bombed a convoy of trucks moving through Ras Kamboni, a fishing village near the Kenyan border that has also been home to an al-Qa'ida training camp.A team of US special forces based in Kenya's Manda Bay flew in after the airstrike with orders to kill anyone left alive and find out who had died. The mission was instantly declared a success. Those attacked were "senior al-Qa'ida leadership", the Pentagon said.
There was only one problem. According to local Somalis, and confirmed by western diplomats and aid officials in Nairobi, none of the dead was connected to the [Islamic] Courts [or al Qaeda]. Instead, a group of pastoralists gathering around a fire to keep the mosquitoes away had been killed.
(...)
Somalia is now experiencing its worst period of violence in two decades. The daily battles between Ethiopian-backed government forces and the insurgents have had a devastating impact on the population.
(...)
More than 600,000 people fled Mogadishu last year. Around 200,000 are now living in squalid impromptu refugee camps along a 15km-stretch of road outside the capital. According to UN officials it is the largest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world. Those same officials now consider Somalia to be the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, eclipsing even Darfur in its sheer horror."
posted by nolocontendere at 7:17 PM
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