By mid 2007, the 50,000 Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in late 2006 found themselves increasingly bogged down, facing much fiercer resistance than they had bargained for as Somalis of all stripes temporarily put aside their differences to stand together against the outside invader.
As the military incursion turned increasingly sour, then US Under Secretary of State for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, who taught at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies in the 1990s, insisted that, prior to the invasion, the United States had counseled caution and that Washington had warned Ethiopia not to use military force against Somalia. Frazer was a close collaborator with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom there also is a strong University of Denver connection. Frazer certainly tried to distance the United States from responsibility for the Ethiopian invasion in a number of interviews she gave to the media at the time.
But one of the released WikiLeaks cables, suggests a different picture, one that implicates Frazer in pressing Ethiopia's President Meles Zenawi to invade its neighbor. The content of the cable is being widely discussed in the African media. It exposes a secret deal cut between the United States and Ethiopia to invade Somalia.
If accurate -- and there is no reason to believe the contrary -- the cable suggests that Ethiopia had no intention of invading Somalia in 2006 but was encouraged/pressured to do so by the United States which pushed Ethiopia behind the scenes. Already bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, the Bush Administration pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia with an eye on crushing the Union of Islamic Courts, which was gaining strength in Somalia at the time.
At the time of the invasion there was little doubt that the Ethiopian military incursion was "made in Washington." Like so many other WikiLeaks cables, this one merely puts a dot on the "i" or crosses the "t" on what was generally known, although it does give specific information about Jendayi Frazer's deep involvement in the affair.
According to the cable, as the main U.S. State Department representative in Africa, Frazer played a key role, spearheading what amounted to a U.S.-led proxy war in conjunction with the Pentagon. At the same time that she was pushing the Ethiopians to attack, Frazer was laying the groundwork both for the attack in the U.S. media and for a cover-up, by claiming that although the United States did not support Ethiopian military action, she could understand "the Somali threat" and why Ethiopia might find it necessary to go to war.
Frazer spread rumors of a possible jihadist takeover in Somalia that would threaten Ethiopian security. Turns out that media performance was little more than a smokescreen. The U.S. military had been preparing Ethiopia for the invasion, providing military aid and training Ethiopian troops. Then on December 4, 2006, CENTCOM Commander, General John Abizaid was in Addis Ababa on what was described as "a courtesy call." Instead, the plans for the invasion were finalized.
At the time of the Somali invasion, Zenawi found himself in trouble. He was facing growing criticism for the wave of repression he had unleashed against domestic Ethiopian critics of his rule that had included mass arrests, the massacres of hundreds of protesters and the jailing of virtually all the country's opposition leaders. By the spring of 2006 there was a bill before the U.S. Congress to cut off aid to Zenawi unless Ethiopia's human rights record improved. (His human rights record, by the way, has not improved since. Given how the United States and NATO view Ethiopia's strategic role in the "war on terrorism" and the scramble for African mineral and energy resources, Western support for Zenawi has only increased in recent years).
In 2006, dependent on U.S. support to maintain power in face of a shrinking political base at home -- a situation many U.S. allies in the Third World find themselves -- and against his better judgement, Zenawi apparently caved to Frazer's pressure. Nor was this the first time that Frazer had tried to instigate a U.S. proxy war in Africa. Earlier as U.S. ambassador to South Africa, she had tried to put together a "coalition of the willing" to overthrow Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, an initiative that did not sit so well with South Africa's post-apartheid government and went nowhere.
The 2006 war in Somalia did not go well either for the United States or Ethiopia. Recently a State Department spokesperson, Donald Yamamoto, admitted that the whole idea was "a big mistake," obliquely admitting U.S. responsibility for the invasion. It resulted in 20,000 deaths and according to some reports, left up to 2 million Somalis homeless. The 50,000 Ethiopian invasion force, which had expected a cake walk, instead ran into a buzz saw of Somali resistance, got bogged down and soon withdrew with its tail between its legs. The political result of the invasion was predictable: the generally more moderate Union of Islamic Courts was weakened, but it was soon replaced in Somalia by far more radical and militant Islamic groups with a more openly anti-American agenda.
As the situation deteriorated, in an attempt to cover both the U.S. and her own role, Frazer then turned on Zenawi, trying to distance herself from fiasco using an old and tried diplomatic trick: outright lying. Now that the invasion had turned sour, she changed her tune, arguing in the media, that both she and the State Department had tried to hold back the Ethiopians, discouraging them from invading rather than pushing them to attack. The WikiLeaks cable tells quite a different story. In 2009, the Ethiopian forces withdrew, leaving Somalia in a bigger mess and more unstable than when their troops went in three years prior. Seems to be a pattern here?
Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.
There is no such thing as the "war on terrorism", it's "war OF terrorism", gangsterism, imperialism. But there is, and has long been war "for African mineral and energy resources", as well as global dominance.
There's no doubt about that; certainly no reason to doubt, anyway.
Additional truth about real happenings in Africa:
"Apocalypse in Central Africa:
The Pentagon, Genocide and the War on Terror"
by Keith Harmon Snow, July 20, 2010
www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2010/07/apocalypse-in-central-africa-the-...
And that's the way it is wherever the US is involved in African countries rich in natural resources. Whenever we hear or read about the US being involved in what's reported to be only political terms, and supposedly good, we should think of articles like the above one and others Keith Snow has written about true realities in African countries where there's extreme suffering and injustice. The West never tells the truth; or if the West ever does, then it's extremely little. Most western reporting is propaganda of lies. And too many "alternative" media of the US tow the same Washington line as the New York Times and other government-extension corporate news media of the US repeat or flood the US with.
"Death Toll in Congo Whitewashed Yet Again
A Brief Assessment of the Hidden Interests and White Obliviousness of the Human Security Report Project"
by Keith Harmon Snow, Jan. 22, 2010
www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2010/01/death-toll-in-congo-whitewashed-y...
I don't know if he meant to write "a few hundred thousand" wherein he wrote, "The Reeves and Kristoff figures on Sudan skyrocketed from 2003 to 2005 from a few hundred thousand to over 400,000 dead, ...", but if he did, then I wouldn't use "skyrocketed". There isn't that much of a difference. 300,000 or 400,000 is a large difference when it's about people who are killed, but it wouldn't deserve to be referred to as a gross error or skyrocketing difference. I think he meant a few thousand, instead of a few hundred thousand, for then 400,000 definitely would be skyrocketingly more.
Anyway, he has written many articles about the real happenings in African countries and the above is his newer Web site. His older one, which is still available, is All Things Pass and there's a link for it under LINKS in the pages of the newer site.
There are other articles in which he refers to Ethiopia acting as a military proxy for the US in other African countries, certainly Sudan, but possibly others; perhaps, Kenya.
Rich African resources:
One of the rich natural resources that's important, but evidently much less mentioned is very rich, fertile land for agri. I read one or two articles earlier this year about South Africans starving while there's a lot of agri. going on; the problem is that instead of the general So. African population receiving a fair share of these crops, they're mostly exported for western profit.
"Misery industry":
The "misery industry" of so-called humanitarianism reminds me of Professor Norman G. Finkelstein's book, "The Holocaust Industry", which I haven't read, but while having learned enough about it to know what it's about, what he says about the holocaust being used by Zionist elites, the movie industry, etc., for PROFIT; definitely not for any honest and ethical reasons. He has some articles about that at his Web site, www.normanfinkelstein.com, and I believe to have found that there are also videos at Youtube and/or Google with him speaking on this topic.
Keith Snow refers to organizations known as or called humanitarian wrongheadedly calling for military solutions and this is definitely true. Some of them do that for racket, that is, criminally, while some do it out of ignorance, incompetence, or hasty reaction, say. Amnesty International and, if recalling correctly, HRW did this when they called on the US and NATO to militarily "intervene" in the Darfur region of Sudan. It's a call that I was immediately opposed to. It was incredible that they'd do this, for the US and NATO are not even the last resort call to make for intervening in countries where there are conflicts. The US and NATO are to never be called upon for interventions; not until the governments of the US and other NATO countries stop being extremely criminal anyway. They are the most extremely criminal militaries in the world, and they never operate for human rights, et cetera.
Perhaps AI and HRW, if the latter also did this for the situation in Darfur and which is a situation that Washington and its corporate "news" media grotesquely lied about, well, maybe these organizations made these calls for US and NATO military intervention based on gross ignorance, but it's difficult to believe that these organizations could be this ignorant. The whole world knows that the US and NATO are the very worst and that they only operate for western capital and power, so AI and HRW surely could not be ignorant of this fact.
No one should ever believe Washington in its claims about conflicts anywhere. Washington does [not] work for [truth], justice and peace; definitely not.
Of all of the money people donate to so-called humanitarian organizations, these people are lucky if 5% of what they give actually gets used to help the victims the money is donated for. By far most of the donations enrich the westerners running these organizations and of the amounts that they pass on to some middle parties in countries where populations are supposed to be helped, a considerable part of this left-over money is taken by the middle parties. Very little is trickled down to the people really needing the aid.
It's a YAR, yet another racket.
Keith Harmon Snow's articles are relevant in terms of the larger picture of real happenings in African countries, while the articles linked and excerpted from in this post are more specifically related to the topic of Somalia, and the US-Ethiopia war on Somalia.
Rob Prince is right in having said, "At the time of the invasion there was little doubt that the Ethiopian military incursion was "made in Washington." Like so many other WikiLeaks cables, this one merely puts a dot on the "i" or crosses the "t" on what was generally known, (my emphasis) ...".
The added emphasis in the text quoted, above, from what Rob Prince said is meant only in terms of what his article and this post are about. The same is true for many cables released by Wikileaks, but I think that some have probably brought new information that was not previously reported by anyone.
"The US-NATO March to War and the 21st Century "Great Game"
Part II"
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Dec. 5, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22170
This above article is not only about Somalia and the Horn of Africa, but there is a section specifically for this region and the subheading is, "The East Africa Front: Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan", which is just after the large map for, "Great Power Competition In The Indian Ocean".
"US, NATO Allies Prepare New Invasion Of Somalia"
by Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, July 30, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20365
That link for Rick Rozoff's article is placed as the second one for this post only for chronological dating. I recommend reading the ones linked below, first; certainly the articles by by Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Colon, and Glen Ford, anyway.
"Somalia: How Colonial Powers drove a Country into Chaos
Interview of Mohamed Hassan"
by Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Colon, Investig'Action, www.michelcollon.info, Feb. 10, 2010
That's a very good and useful, informative interview. Even if it is short, several useful questions were asked and the answers are educationally good.
"U.S-Instigated War Brings Mass Death to Somalia"
by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Radio Report, Dec. 2, 2007
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7513
This provides a very good map image, btw.
"Ethiopia has become an Anglo-American proxy in the Horn of Africa"
Jan. 13, 2007
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4446
"Somalia and Ethiopia to be Unified?
The Militarization of the Horn of Africa"
Jan. 13, 2007
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4438
Ethiopia and Somalia article indexes at GR:
GR has a link for articles by country located just beneath the site search box or field down the left-hand-side of each GR page. There are few relevant articles in the Ethiopia index, but plenty in the Somalia index. There is an article in the Ethiopia index about the country buying weapons of war from North Korea though.