Shabaab: Monsters Made by the U.S.A.

Most people don't pay much attention to political news, most of the time. So they just think whatever the news story they happen to see (or hear) tells them to think. So they see there are monsters in our world, but they are often mistaken about how monsters are made.

There was a massacre of civilians, most of them students, in Kenya this last week. A few members of the Somali organization, Shabaab, killed nearly 150 people at the Garissa University College in Kenya on April 2, 2015.

It was a crime, a war crime, and a crime against humanity. It was about as terrible of behavior as humans can conduct, at that scale.

To understand what happened, how some men born as innocent (and potentially deadly) as anyone else ended up assigned to kill these innocent students, and accepted the assignment, and carried it out, it helps to know a little history.

I started paying attention to Somalia around the time of the Black Hawk Down incident (aka Battle of Mogadishu) in 1993. So let me refresh your memory.

When the Cold War ended the leaders of the U.S. concluded that they might as well run the world. Somalia in 1993 was not run by anyone. It was a chaotic landscape of rival clans and their war lords. Largely devoid of resources that could be exploited by industrialists and the corporate security state, Somalia nevertheless was and is geographically important. The U.S. and allies tried to take over Somalia in 1993, but were defeated by the most powerful of the warlords, Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Despite that victory, General Aidid was unable to unite Somalia under his command.

A tiny group of men eager to take money from the U.S. declared themselves the national government in Mogadishu, but war lords continued to rule in reality.

In response to the rather unpleasant situation, at the grass-roots level Somalis started setting up local courts to try to cut down on rampant levels of crime. These were based on traditional local courts, which in Somalia, a mainly Islamic area, were Sharia courts. They were popular, spread, grew in strength, and became known as the Union of Islamic Courts. By 2000 they were the closest thing to an effective government Somalia had. By 2006 they had defeated most of the war lords.

At least a couple of the warlords had been on the U.S. payroll. Recall that in 2006 the U.S. was still fighing both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Al Qaeda was Public Enemy Number One. Al Qaeda had sent emmisaries to the Islamic Courts. But they were not in positions of power. Their attitude was contrary to the Courts goal. The Courts were working for peace and unity in Somalia. As to Sharia law, they were quite moderate in their use of punishment. They varied locally, but mainly practiced a civilized, somewhat modern form of Islam.

Nevertheless, the U.S. security state (then with George W. Bush as a figurehead) reacted very negatively to the words "Islamic" and "Sharia." The Union of Islamic Courts was declared to be a terrorist organization, a bunch of rebels against the U.S.'s hand picked government in Mogadishu. The U.S. bombed them and paid Ethiopia to invade Somalia in 2007.

At first the Ethiopians, who were much better equiped than the Somali people, did quite well on the battlefield. But they were hated, and so was the U.S. puppet government they protected in Mogadishu.

Within the Islamic Courts movement, suddenly the main goal became kicking foreign troops out of Somalia. That requires a different type of leadership and operations than trying to bring peace and justice to a country. Who new how to fight Ethiopians? Why, the Al Qaeda operatives. Quickly training young, enthusiastic volunteers in their brand of Islam and mayhem, Shabaab was born (naturally, this description is a simplification of complex infighting).

The original Shabaab was also different than today's Shabaab. Despite its authoritatianism and religious orthodoxy, it was reasonably popular and became the de facto government of most of Somalia. Ethiopia was unable to control the countryside, and eventually could not even hang onto Mogadishu.

So eventually the U.S. paid a whole bunch of nations to invade Somalia. Troops poured in from all over: Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, the Ethiopeans again. Meanwhile U.S. battleships shelled coastal towns, drones assassinated whoever they could find, and U.S. Special Forces unleashed their own kind of mayhem on the countryside.

Shabaab no longer controls much territory. It is a guerilla group now. Only the most fanatical members remain. Only those who love to kill remain. It's like a whole organization of special forces guys.

It is sad that ordinary Kenyan students had to pay the price for the government of Kenya's decision to invade Somalia. It is also bad strategy on Shabaab's part. Had they assassinated Uhuru Kenyatta much of Kenya would have not minded. But indiscriminate killing is uniting Kenyans against Somalis, just as the invasion united Somalis against Kenya.

If the U.S. had not paid for the destruction of the Islamic Courts, there would have been no Garissa University College massacre. Maybe the Bush/Obama team had some sort of grand plan I am not seeing. But it looks like the plan never amounted to more than giving stupid people too much money, too much power, and too many weapons.

Note: Shabaab is also spelled out as Shabab and Al-Shabaab

Somalia Gets U.S. Military Advisors

Without asking or informing the American People, the Barack Obama administration has ordered American professional gunmen to Somalia. There are not many of these "advisor" soldiers, we are told, just three so far. But since the U.S. has long had a network of CIA operatives in Somalia, has frequently sent in special forces to assassinate local leaders, and has used various forms of aerial bombardment. The U.S. also pays for Somalia to be occupied by multiple African nations' armies of U.S. trained gunmen. Given the context, this new development should be taken seriously.

This new secret of a long-simmering secret war was released by Tom Davis of the United States Africa Command, on Friday, January 10.

Somalia is not so much a nation as an area defined by European imperialist powers. Within the area of Somalia are many ethnic groups, which get along or conflict with each other in ever-shifting patters. During the Cold War the Communist Block got the upper hand in Somalia, but then the U.S. encouraged the overthrow of the one stable government the area has ever seen, that of Mohamed Siad Barre, in 1991. The U.S. tried to install a puppet government, and invaded along with other U.N. forces, only to suffer a disastrous military defeat in the Black Hawk Down battle (aka Battle of Mogadishu) in 1993. The massive, purposeful, and well-documented slaughter of civilians by U.S. Special Forces in that battle has never been brought before a War Crimes tribunal.

Following a period of clan and war lord rule (which the CIA manipulated as best it could) the people of Somalia got fed up and established a moderate, multi-ethnic form of governance usually called the Islamic Courts Union in the West. The idea that people could govern themselves according to common sense without a strong central government or war lords terrified the U.S. government, business, and defense establishments.

So we (U.S. citizens should bear some responsibility for what our government does ... don't you think?) smashed up the Court system, paid Ethiopia to invade, re-invigorated certain war lords, and set up a puppet "national" government of Somalia that seldom controlled more than the backyards of the "ministers" in its "Cabinet."

As a natural reaction, moderates in Somalia were shoved aside and the most radical Islamic military faction, Shabaab, came to represent the vast majority of people in Somalia (whether they liked it or not). For a few years Shabaab defeated everything the U.S. could pay to have thrown at them, but invasions from multiple U.S. "partners" eventually pushed the Shabaab out of Mogadishu and some other major towns. Some ethnic groups that did not like Shabaab also managed to expel them, though that has not translated into loyalty to the U.S. puppet government.

In the usual fashion U.S. taxpayer money has flowed to the puppets, who have mostly just lined their pockets with it.

Unless they are laying the groundwork for a more massive U.S. intervention, it is hard to see how 3 U.S. military advisors in Mogadishu are going to change the situation.

If a pro-U.S. regime did rule Somalia, and anti-U.S. troops from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda had invaded the nation, every news outlet in the U.S. would be letting you know that a great war crime was being committed.

To see how the rest of the world really views our nation, take a look a look at what Sri Lanka has to say about war crimes. By the way, the CIA is now working on how to overthrow the government of Sri Lanka and place U.S. puppets in control there. Yippee! Another Asia War. All we need now is to draft all those young American boys living at home with nothing to do into the Army.

[This first appeared as an editorial at www.mendoday.com]

Massacre in Mogadishu: July 12, 1993

When the rapacious European empires divided (or re-divided) Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, the British empire grabbed Somalia proper and the Italian empire grabbed Somaliland (north Somalia) to add to its holdings in Eritrea and later Ethiopia.

Independence came in 1960, and of course Somalia became ensnared in the Cold War maneuvers of the American empire and the Russian (Soviet) empire. In a military coup Mohamed Siad Barre set up a socialist government in 1969. The American empire stirred up a rebellion against Barre as the old Russian empire collapsed. Barre went into exile in 1991.

Barre was a member of the Marehan Darod clan, and relied heavily on the clan for support towards the end of his reign despite his Marxist-Leninist ideology. Somalia divided up into areas controlled by clans, often headed by warlords. The second-most powerful clan in Somalia were the Habr Gidr, who led the rebellion against Barre. They were led by General Mohamed Farrah Aidid who had earlier served in Barre's cabinet and who had received military training in the Soviet Union.

The U.S. and its allies thought that the Somalia should become another U.S. franchise, complete with free-market capitalism. General Aidid was not interested in being a U.S. puppet, and the Darod clan and other clans were not interested in subordinating themselves to Aidid, and the country was already shot to hell from the rebellion against Barre.

To enforce U.S. rule President Bill Clinton sent in the stormtroopers. Under the fig leaf of the United Nations, forces attacked Aidid and the Habr Gidr. The clan had the audacity to fight back, with some success. Clinton also sent in a peace negotiator, Jonathan Howe, a former admiral who, like Clinton and all U.S. Presidents, believed in negotiations backed by plenty of firepower.

Responding the the peace offer from Howe, the Habr Gidr decided to call a meeting to talk it over. They would meet on July 12, 2013 at the house of Abdi Hassan Awale in Mogadishu. Almost every important civilian in the clan attended, along with militia leaders. This included businessmen, lawyers and other college educated men, religious leaders, traditional elders and even the clan's best-known poet. Many supported the peace initiative, or were ready to abandon General Aidid.

We'll never know the outcome of the meeting. Learning that the leadership of the clan would meet in one place, the U.S. security apparatus decided to go for decapitation. Eventually Bill Clinton and Admiral Howe signed off on the plan.

TOW anti-tank missiles slammed into the house. Sixteen missiles in all blew up, delivered from helicopters. Then Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters poured machine-gun fire on the survivors. Casualty estimates vary, but mostly likely 73 died and another 175 were wounded. The casualties were mostly civilians, and mostly adult men, but included women and children.

If Americans had not done it, the act would be labeled a war crime. In any case it was incredibly stupid, even from the point of view of furthering U.S. imperial dominance of the globe. The entire Habr Gidr clan rallied around Aidid, and even rival clans were shocked. Who could trust a nation that would do such a thing?

So when stormtroopers went to grab two Aidid senior officials (or Somali government officials, if you can look at it that way) on October 3, 1993, it is really not that surprising that half the city of Mogadishu rose up to fight the Americans. That battle (in which tactics used by Afghanistan veterans to fight the Russians were used by the Somalis ...) is generally known as Black Hawk Down.

Neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush, nor Barack Obama has shown any real learning curve. With Afghanistan winding down (and moving towards a restoration of the Taliban, or of another warlord regime), Africa is an increasing American focus, with Somalia still a center of attention. Every nation in Africa has or is scheduled to soon have an American military presence.

The tactical change is the U.S. is now paying Africans to fight Africans. U.S. troops are still so universally hated in Somalia that they are very rarely used, and only for brief raids. Instead Obama pays a variety of African nations to try to put chains on the people in Somalia.

Note that it has nothing to do with brutality, or the usual propaganda about women (in which we hate the Taliban but love the Saudis, even though they treat women exactly the same.) Obama & crew have no problem with brutality as long as the leader practicing it is pro-American. History has shown the U.S. corporate security state will not put up with the most kindly of governments, if they are not pro-American.

Look at our ally Kenya. It has troops in Somalia, trying to prop up the latest in a series of U.S.-appointed puppet governments. Meanwhile Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. President Obama, ever polishing his image while seething with inner corrosion, has refused to meet with Kenyatta in public, but has no problems with training and funding the Kenyan military.

My prediction: more of the same. Hillary Clinton may not have joined Bill Clinton in ordering the Mogadishu Massacre (though she might have whispered in his ear), but she's been around the imperialist block plenty of times, including during her 4 years as Secretary of State. Since most Republican voters always support American war crimes, and since most Democratic Party voters support war crimes if committed by a Democratic President and Congress, you can bet who the imperialist security czars will be backing in 2016.

The only thing that will stop the madness is the national debt, and only if interest rates rise enough. Strangely a strong economy could sink the entire ship, since interest payments would increase faster than tax revenues, leading to a death spiral. Only then will the troops come home and leave the various peoples of the world to sort out their own societies without the threat of U.S. military intervention.

[Much thanks to Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, particularly pages 71-74 and 94-95]

Invitations, War Crimes, and Obama in Somalia

There are a whole bunch of behaviors that constitute war crimes, down to using artillery on areas where civilians are present (even when enemy soldiers may also be there); also burying enemy soldiers without recording their identities and burial locations and giving that information to an international agency like the Red Cross.

But the most basic of war crimes is to make war on another nation. So leaders of nations like the United States have devised a number of scenarios that give them fictional cover for their war crimes. "We were attacked first," is a standard one, and was also used by Germany when it attacked Poland, launching World War II. This was the excuse used when the U.S. launched its attack on North Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Which for the most part took place only in the minds of Lyndon Johnson and high-ranking Pentagon types who were looking for an excuse to launch a war.

The other big, common excuse, most used by imperialist nations, is the "we were invited" excuse. You find some faction that does not like the current system of government in a nation, and you get them to invite you in. Voila, you are not committing a war crime, you are aiding what you quickly prop up to be "the legitimate government."

In the Vietnam War, this was the excuse for U.S. troop deployments in South Vietnam prior to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In the present war against the people of Afghanistan, this was part of a dual-excuse for war crimes strategy. We were invited by the Northern Alliance to help them overthrow their enemies, the Taliban.

Contrast President Franklin Roosevelt's behavior during the civil war in Spain (1930s), where he refused invitations to intervene on the side of the elected, democratic government because he did not want to alienate the powerful Catholic voting block within the Democratic Party of the United States. The Catholic Church supported General Franco.

Jeffrey Gentleman (a pseudonym?) wrote an article, "U.S. Aiding Somalia in its Plan to Retake Capital", published in the New York Times March 5, 2010, stating that the Obama administration plans to escalate the war in Somalia. The U.S. already provides substantial military aid to the "government" of Somalia. Gentleman quotes an unnamed U.S. official as saying that U.S. Special Ops troops will be involved on the ground.

The situation in Somalia is both complex and obscure. A few years ago the Islamic Justice Courts were set up and were very popular with a people tired of crime and war lord rule. The Bush administration overreacted to the Islam word. It set up an unpopular government of war lords which then called in an invasion from Ethiopia. This just led to the spreading of more radical, more militant Islamic groups. So today the U.S. is supporting a "moderate" Islamic government against Islamic enemies, some of whom are certainly influenced by Al-Qaeda. And why should they not be? Was not Al-Qaeda's central political thesis, that the U.S. is at war against Islam, clearly proven in Somalia?

The U.S. has no business in Somalia. Its 30-some years of meddling have consistently made matters worse. An invitation from Sharif Ahmed, whose government would collapse in three days if it were not a puppet government for the U.S., is not an invitation from the Somali people. Strangely, Sharif Ahmed is the former commander of the Islamic Justice Courts.

Al Shabab, who control the capital, Mogadishu, are the de facto government of Somalia. I don't like Al Shabab; I don't like religious fanatics. Within the context of better governance for Somalia, I liked the Islamic Justice Courts. But it is up to the people of Somalia to decide their own affairs. President Barack Obama will be committing a war crime if he uses U.S. soldiers in Somalia, or even supplies air support for the Ahmed faction. It is Barack Obama (and his predecessor George W. Bush, and pretty much the entire U.S. military industrial complex) who needs to be arrested and tried for his crimes.

Both the Democratic Party of Barack Obama and the Republican Party should be banned as war crimes organizations. Because that is what they are.

U.S. Government of Somalia Collapsing

The U.S. government of Somalia installed against the will of the vast majority of the people of Somalia appears to be falling apart. Aside from an actual invasion by U.S. or allied troops (beyond the current occupation forces from Ethiopia and Uganda), there seems to be little the U.S. government can do to impose its will on Somalia. While no actual U.S. invasion is likely until after Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, it would not be surprising if the U.S. resumed bombing Somalia before the end of the Bush adminstration.

The tiny group of men styling themselves the government of Somalia (not long ago known as the Provisional Government of Somalia, and probably soon to be know as the former warlords financed by the CIA who briefly got the world press to call them a government) just split up. According to the Associated Press, a majority of the cabinet ministers resigned on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008. They were led by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who had a dispute with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein over who should be the warlord, I mean mayor, of Mogadishu.

This follows the collapse of peace talks with the democratic opposition. The opposition had restored a semblance of good government in Somalia in 2006, but called itself the Islamic Justice Courts. Fearful that the establishment of justice in the Horn of Africa would endanger U.S. military and economic interests, the U.S. CIA (directed, of course, by President George W. Bush) picked a favored warlord told him and his friends to call themselves the Provisional Government. Detested by the people of Somalia, this provisional Government was later propped up by an invasion of marauders from Ethiopia and Uganda, financed by the U.S.

Somalians are used to foreigners. As I wrote in Portuguese Catholics Destroyed East African Islamic Societies in 1500's, the role of "civilized Europe" in the Horn of Africa has always been one of piracy. Colonial rule only ended in 1960.

The only civilized approach to the Somalia mess (this is a mess that means millions of people are starving, without housing or medical care) is to withdraw all foreign troops and let the people decide the issue for themselves. That may mean anarchy. It may mean a patchwork of warlord-dominated regions. It might mean an Islamic state. It might even mean a peaceful democracy. Left to themselves, the people of Somalia will find a solution to their problems. Short-term solutions will evolve into long-term solutions. Short term, the issue will be settled partly with guns. But who the people point their guns at will depend on the popular consensus. Elections might make sense, but no outside government can be trusted to run fair elections. When the people themselves organize elections, they may be ready to rely upon the results of those elections.

For more insight into the history of what has been happening in Somalia since 2006 see my main Somalia page.

For New York Times (registration required) archives (mostly Associated Press articles) see NYT Somalia archives (but note these are highly biased in their descriptions of factions in Somalia).

Somalia and Failed Nation States

A phrase we hear often lately is "failed nation-state." The term is used for Iraq, and now it is an apt term to describe Somalia. But I question the universal value of nation-states. Why can't some people be organized on some other basis?

According to this week's Economist article "Somalia: Breaking into even smaller bits?", in addition to the U.S./Ethiopian/U.N. imposed chaos in southern Somalia and the capital, Mogadishu, now Somaliland and Puntland are splintering as well. The "governments" of the two areas fought a small batlle over the town of Los Anod.

One problem in Somalia and much of Africa is that today's nations have artificial borders that were created when European powers carved up the continent into colonial territories. Most of these nations have multiple tribal groups within them. In many cases a tribal group will find itself half on one side of a border and half on the other side. This is also true of Iraq, where, for instance, the Kurds form a natural nation that occupies only a fraction of Iraq but also includes sections of Iran and Turkey.

In the past empires typically consisted of multiple tribes or nations. Often nations, for instance Germany, were broken down into multiple states. There is a pragmatic belief that if a national grouping, defined by language and culture, is incorporated into a single state, the result tend towards peace, stability, and harmony. Such nation-states are rare in their pure form, since most contain one or more minorities.

Somalia was never a nation state. It corresponds roughly to the Horn of Africa. There were ancient civilizations there as old as any on earth. But for the most part Somalia in the past consisted of city-states and smaller tribal regions (See Portuguese Catholics Destroyed East African Islamic Societies in 1500's). Even in the colonial era Somalia was not a single colony, the British have grabbed some and Italy having grabbed the rest.

So why try to unite this vast area with not-particularly related tribal groups? For the convenience of the U.S. war on "terror?" To keep it from having multiple seats at the U.N.?

Switzerland is a good example of a state that is not a nation is the classic sense. At least four languages are spoken there. It works as a state because the inhabitants have something else in common: living in the Alps and valuing freedom and prosperity over meddling in other people's affairs.

The problem in Somalia is in local "big men" not being content to be local. Everyone wants to be king, or at least President. It is true that grouped together, united in a nation, it might be easier to resist outside preditors. But that is just a choice of preditors.

The recent government like substance known as the Islamic Justice Courts had found a way for the people of varying clans to get along with each other. By stripping the warlords of their power and turning power over to a popular court system they briefly allowed for peace, freedom to travel without robbery, and renewed economic activity. That freaked out the CIA, which got the Ethiopians and U.N. and various thugs to reimpose chaos.

All the foreign troops in Somalia are war criminals, and all of the leaders who sent them there are war criminals.

But think beyond that. If there is peace, if there is trade between areas, and if there is some system of justice, do we really need a nation state? Do the people benefit from any state based on elevating a minority to power over a majority?