US accused of backing Somali warlords

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-accused-of-backing-somali-warlords/2006/05/17/1147545393215.html

MORE than a decade after US troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, there are claims that America is secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu.

The clashes last week and at the weekend were among the most violent in Mogadishu since the end of the US intervention in 1994, and left 150 dead and hundreds more wounded. Leaders of the interim government blamed US support of the militias for provoking the attacks.

US officials refused to confirm they were backing the Somali warlords, who call themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-terrorism, in what some Somalis describe as a marketing ploy to get US support.

A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, had said the US would "work with responsible individuals … in fighting terror. It's a real concern - terror taking root in the Horn of Africa. We don't want to see another safe haven for terrorists created."

[shain from kane]

1. Is it my imagination, but is it this administration's policy to become

involved in the internal politics of every country that we have suffered a humiliating incident or defeat in the past? Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Somalia. Is Viet Nam next?

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. I suppose we are bound as Dems to finance the technocrats instead?

(aka "liberal" or "neoliberal" kleptocrats elected thru the typical corrupt family-based system of "democratic opposition parties" that
exists in much of the world)

to restore "order" to Somalia? A figure like they had under Siad Barre (or Milton Obote in Uganda, another figure liberals and conservatives could agree upon.)

Frankly, I am not too upset over this. The problem is that funding the warlords makes them, instead of the Islamists, strong enough to take over the country. This has been the pattern with US foreign policy. Add more fuel to the brushfire.

They should follow the lead of the neighboring republic of Somaliland
and form an (unrecognized) tribal council type "government".

This will go unrecognized because it does not have a "head of state" -- a person capable of answering to the neoliberal globalists.

(in most of the world, a "liberal" refers to a Reaganite/Thatcherite capitalist, a technocrat, a US- or UN-sponsored kleptocrat like Obote, or a powerless stand-in for western interests that is crucially in favor of putting their nation in hock up to their eyeballs thru the World Bank, or some combination thereof. Only in the US is "liberal" considered left )

[NNN0LHI]

3. Just out of curiosity were you not too upset back when the USA...

...was financing Osama bin Laden so he could terrorize the Soviets for us also?

Don

[Igel]

4. The US probably is backing the warlords.

Talk about a Hobson's choice, Somalia's presented a long series of them.

Get involved, and get reamed for imperialism. Don't get involved, and let them slaughter each other, and get reamed for imperialist attitudes.

Send them food, and have the warlords use it for their own ends--or the clerics get it, and use it for theirs. Bonus: pirates seizing food ships. Or let the people starve.

Support the weak government--what, the 92nd in the last year?--in exile, one that has no police, no military, no tax revenue, and no authority--or support one of the sets of thugs that so desperately want to gain power, however limited, that they're constantly creaming their pants in anticipation of. Some are warlords. Some are clerics who advocate shari'a enforcement so retrograde and medieval that makes the most hard-line clerics in Sa'udia Arabia positively giddy with excitement. I know the clerical establishment there praised Somalia when the clerics announced they were in charge and shari'a was the law of the land (just as they did when Sudan made the same announcement), but I'm unsure that Sa'udi Arabia's officially recognized them.

The last time we were presented with precisely this sort of problem, and the clerics got in charge of the territory, we saw that wonderful darling of the liberal wing of the democratic party take power--the Taliban. (And if you really need the sarcasm emoticon, here it is: :sarcasm: ) Personally, I have no preference in who to support on strictly moral or democratic principles.

I don't even know that I support the idea of just one being in charge. At least this way the two camps of totalitarian idiot-despots kill innocents mostly by accident. But I think the clerics would win, appealing to populist superstitious lunacy has seldom failed.

But a few years ago the US state department said it would interfere to prevent failed states in northern Africa from harboring what they considered terrorists. Only a very few states qualify: Algeria, Somalia ... Somalia ... Somalia. Sudan keeps coming close; but one result was pushing for peace in the south. It's more likely the quasi-Wahhabi clerics in Somalia would support bin-Ladenites more than the warlords would.