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The "War on Terror" and Africa's Worst Humanitarian
Crisis
By Sadia Ali Aden
Approximately three months ago,
Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG),
pressured out Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi.
Surprisingly, this political re-arrangement of
deckchairs generated much noisy headlines.
Meanwhile the real story - the great
unfolding humanitarian disaster - continued unnoticed.
For the Somali people, the Ethiopian
invasion of December of 2006 could not have started at a
worse time. Defeating the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)
and propping up the TFG; this was Ethiopia's immediate
rationale for violating Somalia. The larger goal?
Forging a partnership between Washington and Addis Ababa
in order to execute "war on terror."
A year later, this mission has not
been accomplished. Instead, the "war on terror" has
become the terror of war being visited on the Somali
people.
Admittedly a handful of Somalis have
benefited from the invasion, specifically the dozens of
warlords previously driven out of Mogadishu by the UIC.
These warlords, the instigators of Somalia's current
civil conflict, were reinstalled in their fiefdoms
riding on the backs of Ethiopia's invading tanks. As a
result, the reviled check points and road blocks used to
bully cash out of unarmed civilians were reintroduced in
Southern Somalia, particularly Mogadishu.
To keep the invasion and Africa's
worst humanitarian catastrophe going, heavy and modern
weapons, including airplanes were used. One was a U.S.
Air Force AC-130 gunship that attacked and killed Somali
villagers and countless livestock in the hunt for three
foreign men suspected for the bombing of 1998 American
embassies in Africa, who yet remain at large.
Among those caught in the chaos were
visiting Somalis from the Diaspora. In the period
between June and December 2006, Somali technocrats
returned to their native country to partake in the
rebuilding during the six month period of peace and
stability that was established under the rule of the UIC.
The Diaspora arrived with the intention to give back to
the land and the people they left behind and contribute
to rebuilding their lives.
Unfortunately, "extraordinary
rendition" programs were the gratitude they received.
The TFG, Kenya, Ethiopia and US are all implicated.
Males as young as 12 were seized from their homes in the
dead of the night, blindfolded and taken to unknown
destinations.
Fleeing refugees met a similar fate.
Unfortunately, these refugees had nowhere to escape, as
Kenya decided to close its borders and deny them entry.
This paved the way for the current nightmare scenario:
one million internally displaced persons (IDPs,) mostly
children and women, without any provision or protection
from the UN or other humanitarian agencies or NGOs.
In order to create a safe haven for
the displaced refugees, the international community must
demand that neighboring countries open their borders.
All too often, the casualties of war are those that are
unmentioned: the innocent men, women and children,
caught in the middle, left with no way out.
The UN's High Commissioner for
Refugees, António Guterres, said border security
measures should not impair the ability of deserving
Somali civilians to enter Kenya to seek safety and
protection as refugees. The neighboring nations have a
humanitarian responsibility to safeguard these
refugees.
On October 30, 2007, 40 international
NGOs released a joint statement warning of the looming
humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia, while Ethiopian
forces and militias loyal to the Transitional Federal
Government callously prevent delivery of life-saving
aid.
Ethiopian forces continue their
shelling of Mogadishu neighborhoods. According to Elman
Human Rights group, 7000 civilians - mostly women,
children, and elderly - were killed between January and
November of 2007.
Human Rights Watch's August 2007
report on Somalia, titled
"Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu,"
documented "many of the most serious patterns of abuse
by Ethiopian troops, such as indiscriminate attacks on
civilians, summary executions and repeated targeting of
hospitals," wrote the organization's Washington Advocacy
Director for Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, in an
open letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
However, the international media by
and large remain morally selective in what they show to
the world.
Somali caricaturist, Amin Amir (AminArts.com)
depicts this moral selectivity on his
December 12, 2007 cartoon. The powerful imagery
shows a representative of the international media
zooming his camera on a severely malnourished child
standing in the middle of a killing field littered with
bodies while Ethiopian jets fly overhead firing
missiles. The child declares: "I don't need your
coverage; it is these atrocities"—pointing to the
dead—"that you need to be telling the world."
The current Somali nightmare was
exacerbated by the systematic assassination of Somali
independent media groups. And the silence of the
international community on this matter is deeply
disturbing and sadly deafening. This year alone, eight
Somali journalists were killed for having simply dared
report the reality on the streets of Mogadishu. The TFG
and Ethiopian forces have created an environment of
terror and coercion.
According to the
United Nations Children's Fund, one-quarter of the
refugees around Afgooye are younger than age of five.
Sick children and pregnant women often are turned away
at checkpoints, and trucks carrying food and other
humanitarian aid are routinely charged $500 each for
passing through.
"Things are now getting absolutely
worse," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UNICEF
representative for Somalia. "There is a dirtiness to
this war. Children are a real target."
Sadia Ali Aden is a mother, writer, and voice for
justice and equality who lives in Virginia. She can be
contacted at
sadiaaden@gmail.com This e-mail address is being
protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to
view it .
This article
originally appeared in
WorldPress.org.
Source:
Black Agenda Report
posted 4 December 2007
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update 26 July 2008 |
