Africa:Bush's war Rampage in Somalia while distracting people with anti-Mugabe campaign.

Extract:
"The western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising
death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on
America's "villain du jour," Robert Mugabe. Mugabe appears to be next on
the neocon's list for regime change. (Paul Wolfowitz even composed a
postmortem for Zimbabwe's president in a recent Wall Street Journal
editorial, "How to Put the Heat on Mugabe")

In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known
as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of
operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed
Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130
gunships, the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts
Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south. But, much like Iraq
and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla
army which has returned to the capital and resumed the fight making it
impossible for their Ethiopian adversaries to govern.

As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation has gone from bad to
worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to acute
food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high
inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5
million by the end of 2008. The UN Security Council has helped facilitate
the violence by failing to condemn US support for Ethiopia's invasion and
by promising to send peacekeepers to mop up after fighting ends. They've
shown no interest in stopping the bloodshed or threatening sanctions
against the aggressors. The UNSC has become little more than an accomplice
in Bush's rampages."
By: Mike Whitney:
Some background notes: You will recall that after years of
instability by USA backed rival war lords, the UIC emerged out of
the chaos, uniting local village courts that acted to resolve
problems between local people in the absence of any government.

UIC succeeded in uniting together and pacifying Somalia (which is
100% moslem tribal nation) under the leadership of Sheikh Sherif
Ahmed, and even opened the port of Mogadishu which had been closed
for years. At that point "Bin Laden" came out with a message in
their support (UIC denied any connection - and this is another proof
that the BL tapes are issued by Al CIAda), to justify the USA
hostility towards UCI, and to justify the subsequent USA supported
invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia troups to back the unwanted West
apponted puppet provional Somalia government.

The president of the puppet government President Abdullah Youssef is
now protected by a French private mercenary company Secopex.

Ethiopian troupes are sustaining heavy losses, even as they have
been supported by USA misile attacks on villages.

Long live UIC and Sheikh Sherif Ahmed. Long live the resistance.
Lets us not forget the heroic struggle for an Indepenant and free
Somalia.
Informatron

While George Bush was breezing through photo-ops at the G-8 summit in
Japan, his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage
on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been killed in
the last 48 hours.

On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program in
Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque after prayers. He
died before reaching the hospital with wounds to the head and chest. Ali
Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed in the
ongoing battle between Bush's Ethiopian occupiers and the Somali
guerrillas.

US foreign policy in Somalia has resulted in disaster. Millions of Somalis
have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent cities in the
south to escape the fighting. The latest surge in violence has been the
worst in a decade and the security situation continues to deteriorate
despite the arrival of 2,600 troops from the African Union and a tentative
truce that was signed in June between some of the warring factions.

The western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising
death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on
America's "villain du jour," Robert Mugabe. Mugabe appears to be next on
the neocon's list for regime change. (Paul Wolfowitz even composed a
postmortem for Zimbabwe's president in a recent Wall Street Journal
editorial, "How to Put the Heat on Mugabe")

In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known
as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of
operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed
Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130
gunships, the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts
Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south. But, much like Iraq
and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla
army which has returned to the capital and resumed the fight making it
impossible for their Ethiopian adversaries to govern.

As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation has gone from bad to
worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to acute
food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high
inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5
million by the end of 2008. The UN Security Council has helped facilitate
the violence by failing to condemn US support for Ethiopia's invasion and
by promising to send peacekeepers to mop up after fighting ends. They've
shown no interest in stopping the bloodshed or threatening sanctions
against the aggressors. The UNSC has become little more than an accomplice
in Bush's rampages.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Salim Lone, a columnist
for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission
in Iraq explains the UN's role in providing the "go ahead" for the US
invasion:

The lawlessness of this particular war is astounding; the most lawless war
of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are illegal. But in this
particular one, there have been violations of the UN Charter and gross
violations of international human rights. But, in addition, there have
been very concrete violations by the United States of two Security Council
resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo imposed on Somalia, which
the United States has been routinely flaunting for many years now. But
then the US decided that that resolution was no longer useful, and they
pushed through an appalling resolution in December, which basically gave
the green light to Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution
which said that the situation in Somalia was a threat to international
peace and security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and
Chatham House's report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic
Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that Somalia
had not enjoyed in sixteen years. So here was the UN Security Council
going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly falsified UN
resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation of the UN
Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution and
the Security Council is not allowed to pass laws or rules that violate the
Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them?

The Bush administration has predictably invoked the "terrorist" hobgoblin
to justify its involvement in Somalia, but no one is buying it. The ICU is
not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization despite the absurd
claims of the State Department. It is true that the ICU was trying to
enforce Sharia Law, but a much milder form of Sharia than America's ally,
Saudi Arabia.

The ICU was the first government in over a decade to restore security and
order to Somalia and - generally speaking - the people were supportive of
the new regime. Political analyst James Petras summed it up like this:

The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord
corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected,
ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed
thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes moderates
and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed fighters, liberals
and populists, electoralists and authoritarians. Most important, the
Courts succeeded in unifying the country and creating some semblance of
nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation.

The real motives behind the invasion were oil and geopolitics. According
to most estimates 30 percent of America's oil will come from Africa in the
next ten years. Bush's new warlord friends in the Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) have already indicated that they are ready to pass a new
oil law that will encourage foreign oil companies to return to Somalia.
The same oil giants that are now lining up in Iraq will soon be making
their way to Somalia as well.

The Horn of Africa is also critical for its deep-water ports and its
strategic location for future military bases. It's all part of the Grand
Schema for reconfiguring the region to accommodate America's hegemonic
ambitions.

Humanitarian Catastrophe: "The Ethiopian invasion has destroyed all the
life-sustaining systems"

Heavy fighting and artillery fire have reduced large parts of Mogadishu to
rubble. More than 700,000 people have been forced to leave the capital
with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs. Entire
districts have been evacuated and turned into ghost towns. The main
hospital has been bombed and is no longer taking patients. Ethiopian
snipers are perched atop rooftops across the city. Over 3.5 million people
are now huddled in the south in tent cities without sufficient food, clean
water or medical supplies. It is the greatest humanitarian crisis in
Africa today; a man-made Hell entirely conjured up in Washington.

Just weeks ago, Amnesty International reported that it had heard many
accounts that Ethiopian troops were "slaughtering (Somalis) like goats."
In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in
front of the child's mother."

In another Democracy Now interview, Abdi Samatar, professor of Global
Studies at the University of Minnesota, had this to say:

The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has
destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the
population have built without the government for the last fifteen years.
And the militia that are supposed to protect the population have been
looting shops. For instance, the Bakara market, which is the largest
market in Mogadishu, has been looted repeatedly by the militias of the
so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, supported by
Ethiopian troops. And the new prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Hassan Nur
Hussein, has himself announced in the BBC that it was his militias that -
who have looted this place. So what you have is a population that's hit
from both sides - on one side, by the militias of the so-called
Transitional Federal Government, which is recognized by the United States,
and on the other side, by the Ethiopian invaders who seem to be bent on
ensuring that they break the will of the people to resist as free people
in their own country.... What you have is really terror in the worst sense
of the word, a million people have been displaced that the Ethiopians have
been denying humanitarian aid, and the United States which seems to just
watch and let it happen.

It's like there's has been a calculated decision made somewhere in the
world, maybe in Washington, maybe in Addis Ababa, maybe in Mogadishu
itself, to starve these people until they submit themselves to the whims
of the American military and the Ethiopians, who are acting on their
behalf.

Amnesty International has called for an investigation of the United States
role in Somalia.

Regrettably, neither the United Nations nor the establishment media are at
all interested in Bush's war crimes in Africa. All they care about is
Mugabe.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research
Articles by Mike Whitney

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9608