Somalia and the CIA

I thought I'd leave the Iraq/Afghanistan wars alone today and take a look at an interesting turn of events in Somalia. You might remember Somalia from a few years ago. There was an attempt in 1994, by the American military, to capture a warlord named Mohammed Farrah Aidid. The operation was a disaster and the soldiers sent to accomplish this task found themselves surrounded and heavily outnumbered by an angry mob led by the very people they were sent to capture. There was a very touching film, called Blackhawk Down, made about the event.

Somalia is a country ravaged by seemingly endless conflict. The present conflict, which has lasted for over a decade, is being fought by a group of Islamic fundamentalists calling themselves Mujahiddin, who want to establich an Islamic Sharia State in Somalia, and a diverse group of warlords who have joined together, with funding supplied by the CIA, to oppose them.

It is ironic that the last group calling themselves Mujahiddin, who were engaged in a war with the Soviet Union, were themselves heavily financed and armed by the CIA, and that the same warlords we were fighting in 1994 are now being funded by the CIA. Wasn't it them also, along with the Whitehouse, that supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran? It would be charitable to say that the American government can't make up it's mind, or that it seems to be involved in constant wars brought about it's own blundering and blinkered short-sightedness. This contrdictory and counter-productive foreign policy that America has followed for the last five decades has left the world in tatters...all except the American world that is. Only one of their mad chickens has come home to roost...on September 11, 2001. The leader of those terrorists was himself once a "friend" of the CIA, who helped him set up training camps for the aptly named Afghan Mujahiddin.

An article in the New York Times today, concerns one of the major, and most recent, effects of the CIA funding of the warlords. The fall of Mogadishu, from the control of the CIA funded warlords, into the hands and control of the Mujahiddin. The CIA, although attempting to thwart the attempts of the Mujahiddin to take control of the country, has managed to accomplish just the opposite.

The article offers us a quote from a govenrment official: "You've got to find and nullify enemy leadership," one senior Bush administration official said. "We are going to support any viable political actor that we think will help us with counterterrorism."

Another passage from the same article offers us this insight: Some Africa experts contend that the United States has lost its focus on how to deal with the larger threat of terrorism in East Africa by putting a premium on its effort to capture or kill a small number of high-level suspects.

The international community does not know what to think about the United States. The devisive and mercurial foreign policies, often accompanied by blatant and unashamed violence and corporate greed, lead many in the world to begin to consider the USA as the number one stumbling block to world peace...if there could ever be such a blessed state of affairs.

And the war goes on..and on...and on.