U.S. Sows Seeds of Wider War in East Africa

U.S. Sows Seeds of Wider War in East Africa (Glen Ford )

Like a pyromaniac, the United States threatens to

ignite the entire East African region in its campaign

 to suppress Islamist forces in Somalia. Unable to

marshal support for the pitiful puppet regime in Mogadishu, the

Americans try to buy ethnic Somali recruits in surrounding countries. A new

military offensive is set for late December.

Americans have organized mass recruitment among the hundreds of

thousands of Somalis who have fled the fighting to refugee camps in

Kenya.

Somali refugees and ethnic Somali citizens of Kenya are being recruited and

trained [2] by the thousands for a U.S.-backed offensive in Somalia, to

begin next month. The Associated Press, citing numerous sources among

refugees, young men who have deserted from the new militia and their

families, local Kenyan officials and foreign diplomats, reports that the

offensive against Islamist forces in Somalia is planned for late December,

the end of the Somali rainy season. That’s the same seasonal window the

Americans took advantage of three years ago, when the U.S. instigated an

Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that plunged the country into what the United

Nations described as the “worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.” That

crisis continues, complicated by a severe drought and a U.S. blockade of

food aid. [3]

Washingrton supports a puppet government that controls little more than a

small corner of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and would immediately

collapse where it not for the protection of Rwandan and Burundian troops

that guard the airport. Most of central and southern Somalia is controlled

by Islamist Shabab fighters. The U.S. is attempting to starve the region

into submission by withholding 40 million pounds of food warehoused in

Mombasa, Kenya.

With little support inside Somalia, the Americans have organized mass

recruitment among the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have fled the

fighting to refugee camps in Kenya – a practice that violates

international law. Recruits are also being drawn from ethnic Somalis who

are Kenyan citizens, in the northeastern part of the country. The

Associated Press has learned of similar recruitment and training in the

Somali regions of Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the United States maintains

a huge military base.

The recruits are lured into service with promises of $600 a month, but

deserters say they are often beaten, ill-fed and unpaid.

“The Americans are fanning the flames of war among Somalia's neighbors

– including Kenya.”

The Americans are playing a very dangerous game. In addition to breaking

international law and discrediting aid agencies by recruiting among

refugees, the U.S. is encouraging a wider conflict in East Africa. Ethnic

Somalis dominate in northeastern Kenya, in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia,

and in Djibouti. Ethnic Somalis waged a secessionist war in Kenya [4] in

the mid-1960s and continue to resist Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden.

According to the Associated Press, recruits in Kenya are deprived of their

identification cards and told, “You are not a Kenyan. From this moment,

tell yourselves and other people you are a Somali.” Recruiters are

apparently doing the same thing among ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia and

Djibouti.

The Americans, in their zeal to defeat the Islamist Shabab in Somalia, are

encouraging Somali nationalism [5] in neighboring countries, and thus

planting the seeds of future wars of secession. Although the U.S. may think

that it is turning brother Somalis against one another for U.S. foreign

policy purposes, in reality the Americans are fanning the flames of war

among Somalia's neighbors – including Kenya. These are the fruits of

AFRICOM, the U.S. military's African Command. Commander-in-Chief Barack

Obama is destabilizing his father's own homeland, and the whole of East

Africa.