Africa in Crisis- The Merged Superthread

[NL_engineer]

I find it rather amusing that the "citizens" they want us to rescue have been in-country "since the summer."

They would never have come out and said that they had a Canadian citizenship till there was trouble.

You know, I just don't care anymore. We're the Great Satan until they want our $$$.

Just remember, those kids we fed in 1993 are now carrying those AKs and ridng around with RPGs etc.

The next generations will be doing the same.

Good point Wes

 

[MarkOttawa]

Kenya arrests as many as 2 men with Canadian passports: reports
Last Updated: Tuesday, January 2, 2007 | 1:18 PM ET
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/01/02/kenya-canadians.html

As many as two Somali Islamic fighters who claim to be Canadian were among 10 fighters arrested by Kenyan police, according to separate reports Tuesday.

The 10 were arrested on Monday at the Liboi border crossing in Kenya as they tried to flee Somalia, the Kenya Daily Nation reported.

Two were reportedly carrying Canadian passports, while the remaining eight were said to have Eritrean passports. According to the newspaper, all 10 militants were being detained in the Kenyan town of Garissa. It is not known whether they have been charged.

A Canadian Press report, however, said only one man with a Canadian passport had been detained. The report quotes Kenya police spokesman Gideon Kibunja.

"It's difficult to judge if they are Islamic Courts fighters, but a number of them were Eritrean and one had a Canadian passport," Kibunja said.

Foreign Affairs officials in Canada told CBC News on Tuesday that they were aware of the Kenya Daily Nation report, but they would not comment until they had more information.
Continue Article

Officials at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi said they were trying to get information from Kenyan police about the arrests, but they have not had much success.

"Consular officials are aware of the arrest on the Kenya-Somalia border," said Ian McKinley, a counsellor with the High Commission. "We are actively investigating whether Canadian nationals were detained in order to provide them with consular help." [emphasis added]

Canada has issued a travel warning urging Canadians not to travel to Somalia, or if there already, to leave immediately.

10 stopped while fleeing in vehicle

According to the Kenya Daily Nation, Kenyan security forces suspect that the 10 fighters helped to finance the Council of Islamic Courts, an Islamic movement that has been driven out of Somalia by government forces backed by Ethiopian troops...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Another poor innocent, misunderstood Canadian caught inbetween warring factions? Poor lad....where's the memorial service?

 

[sober_ruski]

Nah, he just got an all inclusive tour to Somalia. For an extra $99.99 they take you a shooting range of sorts.

 

[NL_engineer]

From CTV
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070104/som_islam_070104/20070104?hub=TopStories

Kenya says it has closed border with Somalia

Updated Thu. Jan. 4 2007 8:13 AM ET

Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Kenya said Thursday it has closed its border with Somalia in an apparent effort to keep Islamic militants and refugees from entering the country.

"The Kenyan border is officially closed," Foreign Affairs Minister Raphael Tuju told The Associated Press, but he did not say when the decision was made or how the border would remain closed.

Kenya has sent extra troops to its northern frontier with Somalia.

The UN's humanitarian agency said Wednesday that about 4,000 Somali refugees were reported to be near the Somali border town of Dhobley, unable to cross into Kenya.

That same day, a Kenyan security helicopter and a Kenyan air force plane were fired at by unidentified gunmen on either side of the border. Tuju said he had no information on the incidents.

The minister told journalists on Wednesday that Kenya will not allow Somali refugees into the country following the routing of Somalia's Islamic movement because Kenya did not know of any threat facing the refugees.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Top Islamist ponders return to Toronto
Toronto Star, Jan. 8
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/168839

Somalia will descend into anarchy if Ethiopian troops do not leave, says a Canadian who is a high-ranking member of an Islamist group in the country.

Abdullahi Afrah, who remained in Mogadishu when fellow leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts fled the Somali capital last month, warned against the involvement of "external forces" in shaping Somalia's future.

"The only solution is that Ethiopia should get out of Somalia peacefully, or with force," the former Toronto grocer said when the Toronto Star reached him on a cellphone in Mogadishu. "They will be out either willingly or unwillingly."

But while the 54-year-old denounced Al Qaeda and suicide bombers [well he would say that to the Star, wouln't he] following a call on Friday for "martyrdom campaigns" against Ethiopia, other Islamists have vowed a holy war.

That raises the question of what happens if Somali Islamists with dual citizenship do decide to return to the West.

Afrah said while he plans to stay in Mogadishu for now, he might return to Toronto some day.

Since he's a Canadian citizen, there would be no impediment to his return, according to a Foreign Affairs Department spokesperson.

But it's likely Canada's spy service would attempt to question him upon his arrival here. As early as June, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was compiling reports every two weeks on the UIC, according to documents released to the Star under Access to Information legislation...

Those who knew Afrah here in the 1990s as the mild-mannered co-owner of a Dundas St. W. halal grocery store were shocked at his involvement with the UIC.

Afrah, who left Toronto with his wife and children for Mogadishu in 1997, said he also once worked as a security supervisor for Toronto's Catholic Board. His friends here said that while he lived in Canada, Afrah wasn't overly political or religious...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

If he loves his country so much now, why does he not give up his "get out out Somalia" card and stay to work towards making the country work.

IMHO...these are some of the ones we really don't need as citizens.

 

[1feral1]

IMHO...these are some of the ones we really don't need as citizens.

Exactly!

Lets hope he ends up in someone's sight piccy, and silences him for good.

I guess he should have stuck to his halal shop!

Sadly, I think Canada and other western nations are rife with such trash.

One of our lives is not worth risking for any of them. I hope we steer clear of this mess completly.


My two cents.

Wes

 

[NL_engineer]

Sadly, I think Canada and other western nations are rife with such trash.

One of our lives is not worth risking for any of them. I hope we steer clear of this mess complety

Well said Wes

 

[MarkOttawa]

This will certainly cause controversy and criticism of US involvement (reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act):

U.S. targeted al Qaeda suspects in Somalia: report
Reuters, Jan. 8
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070109/ts_nm/somalia_qaeda_report_dc

A U.S. gunship conducted a strike against two suspected al Qaeda operatives in southern Somalia, but it was not known whether the mission was successful, CBS News reported on Monday.

The U.S. Air Force plane, operated by the Special Operations Command, flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia, where the al Qaeda suspects were believed to have fled from the capital Mogadishu, the U.S. network reported.

A Pentagon spokesman said he had no information on the report.

The al Qaeda operatives, who were not named, included a suspect in the car bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the report said.

CBS story:
http://kcbs.com/pages/179626.php?contentType=4&contentId=285495

A U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports exclusively.

The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Martin reports. The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no confirmation of the identities.

The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia, Martin reports, where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.

Once they started moving, the al Qaeda operatives became easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command.

If the attack got the operatives it was aimed at, reports Martin, it would deal a major blow to al Qaeda in East Africa.

Meanwhile, a jungle hideout used by Islamic militants that is believed to be an al Qaeda base was on the verge of falling to Ethiopian and Somali troops, the defense minister said Monday.

While a lawmaker had earlier told The Associated Press that the base was captured, Somalia's Defense Minister Col. Barre "Hirale" Aden Shire said troops had yet to enter it and that limited skirmishes were still ongoing, though troops were poised to take the base.

Ethiopian soldiers, tanks and warplanes were involved in the two-day attack, a government military commander told the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Shire said there had been heavy fighting with high numbers of casualties.

"There are a lot of casualties from both sides," he said, declining to give details.

Residents in the coastal seaport of Kismayo, some 90 miles northeast of Ras Kamboni, said they saw wounded Ethiopian soldiers being loaded onto military helicopters for evacuation.

"I have seen about 50 injured Ethiopian troops being loaded onto a military chopper," said Farhiya Yusuf. She said 12 Ethiopian helicopters were stationed at the Kismayo airport.

Somali officials said the Islamic movement's main force is bottled up at Ras Kamboni, the southernmost tip of the country, cut off from escape at sea by patrolling U.S. warships and across the Kenyan border by the Kenyan military.

In Mogadishu, Somalia's president made his first visit to the capital since taking office in 2004. During the unannounced visit, President Abdullahi Yusuf was expected to meet with traditional Somali elders and stay at the former presidential palace that has been occupied by warlords for 15 years, government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.

U.S. officials warned after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that extremists with ties to al Qaeda operated a training camp at Ras Kamboni and that al Qaeda members are believed to have visited it.

Three al Qaeda suspects wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Islamic movement. The Islamists deny having any links to al Qaeda.

Somalia's government had struggled to survive since forming with backing from the United Nations [emphasis added--surely that makes it a Good Thing for the NDP, Liberals and BQ? But I suspect not] two years ago, and was under attack by the Islamic militia when Ethiopia's military intervened on Dec. 24 and turned the tide.

But many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent the presence of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The countries fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.

On Sunday, gunmen attacked Ethiopian troops, witnesses said, sparking a firefight in the second straight day of violence in the capital, Mogadishu.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Aircraft Attack Al Qaeda Haven, Ike Moves off Somalia
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
Article Link

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2007 – A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attack in Somalia on Jan. 7 targeted senior terrorist leaders, a senior Pentagon official confirmed today.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters the attack targeted "what we believe to be principal al Qaeda leadership" operating in the southern part of Somalia.

Whitman declined to discuss damage assessments or the effectiveness of the strike, or future operations in the area.


The U.S. 5th Fleet moved the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower into the waters off Somalia in an effort to capture al Qaeda terrorists attempting to flee the country, a 5th Fleet spokesman said.

Whitman said the attacks were aimed at terrorists who may have struck the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "We are going to continue to work in close cooperation with our allies in the region, who all understand the importance of pursuing terrorist activities and denying them safe havens," he said.

More U.S. ships are moving in to the waters off Somalia to reinforce the maritime interdiction effort there, said U.S. 5th Fleet officials. “Due to rapidly developing events in Somalia, U.S. Central Command has tasked USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to join USS Bunker Hill, USS Anzio and USS Ashland to support ongoing maritime security operations off the coast of Somalia,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, a spokesman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

The ships will stop vessels and search them for al Qaeda terrorists attempting to escape from Somalia, officials said.
End

 

[NL_engineer]

Somali government denies reports of new airstrikes

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/news/article_1241788.php/Somali_government_denies_reports_of_new_airstrikes

Mogadishu/Nairobi - The Somali interim government on Wednesday denied eyewitness and media reports of a new series of airstrikes in the south of the country, following the confirmed US strike against suspected al-Qaeda militants on Sunday.

Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari rejected witness reports which claimed the new strikes took place in the region of Ras Kamboni, a coastal area close to the Kenyan border which is believed to be one of the last strongholds of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) Islamist militias.

The United States has confirmed it carried out an airstrike on Sunday targeting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in the border region. The Somali government said it has been informed of the strike and had granted its consent.

Witness reports however spoke of further airstrikes Monday and Tuesday across the region in which up to 60 people are said to have been killed. It was not clear however whether they were carried out by US or by Ethiopian fighter jets.

More on link

 

[NL_engineer]

Somalia Government Tries to Confirm Terrorist's Death

http://voanews.com/english/2007-01-10-voa29.cfm

Somalia's interim-government spokesman says the government cannot confirm one of the three key al-Qaida operatives involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa has been killed in a U.S. air strike in southern Somalia. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu in our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi reports.

FBI most wanted poster of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
FBI most wanted poster of Fazul Abdullah Mohamed
The Associated Press news agency quoted the chief of staff of Somalia's interim president, who said he had received a preliminary report from American officials about the results of Monday's air strike. The report said that al-Qaida suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohamed had been killed in the attack, near the Somali border with Kenya.

Somali interim-government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari says government officials and troops are now trying to verify the information.

"Our forces and officials are trying to know if this information is right or wrong. We cannot confirm it," said Dinari.

Born in Comoros, Fazul Abdullah Mohamed joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and is believed to have planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. He eluded capture for nearly a decade, despite a $5 million bounty.

The United States believes that Mohamed and two other al-Qaida operatives fled Mogadishu late last month with several senior leaders of Somalia's radical Islamist movement, as the country's government troops, backed up by the Ethiopian military, advanced on the capital.

A U.S. airplane pursued the suspects near the Islamist stronghold of Ras Kamboni, in southern Somalia near the border with Kenya. The air strike was the first American military offensive in Somalia since a humanitarian mission ended in disaster in 1993.

In Washington, U.S. officials said the air attack was ordered after receiving credible intelligence about the whereabouts of the al-Qaida suspects. An American newspaper Tuesday quoted an unidentified U.S. diplomat, who acknowledged that the United States was working with Somali clans to locate the al-Qaida fugitives.

More on link

Image from article:

 

[NL_engineer]

Somalia: to bomb or not to bomb?

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/22870/2007/00/10-171634-1.htm

It seems to takes bombs to push Somalia into the headlines, at least judging from the piles of comments and heaps of news that has followed the U.S. attacks on suspected Islamist militant targets there. But while opinions abound on "terrorism" and security, there's precious little in the press on Somalia's shaky humanitarian situation.

First, the praise for intervention. Con Coughlin in London's Daily Telegraph is as impressed with the (Washington-trained, he notes) Ethiopian forces who took Mogadishu as with the U.S. strikes on militant hideouts believed to shelter al-Qaeda operatives. A "rare combination of African steadfastness and raw American power" has scored an important victory, he concludes.

The Wall Street Journal says the strikes are a reminder that only victory will do in the "war on terror", noting that Ethiopia made the attacks possible by pushing militants "out of their safe houses and into the open".

Then there are the doubters. The U.S. attacks run the risk of backfiring, warns Simon Tisdall in Britain's Guardian newspaper. The bombings are not part of the Ethiopian-led struggle to topple the Islamic Courts, he says, and could risk undermining Somalia's shaky government as well as international efforts to reverse "decades of Somali violence, famine and despair".

"These days the axis of evil is expanding faster than the European Union," the same paper's Jonathan Freedland muses while reflecting on a potential Cold War-style "war by proxy" in the region.

Jonathan Stevenson, writing in the New York Times, fears for a fragile peace and argues for a "low-cost" U.S. option: regional diplomacy, not military intervention, should do the trick in the Horn of Africa, he says.

And what about some sharp critique? Conor Foley, writing a Guardian blog, says the attacks raise the stakes in what could escalate into a regional conflict, adding that the tacit U.S. endorsement of Ethiopia's "illegal foreign invasion" of Somalia opens the prospect of more bloodshed.

It's "instructive" that the United States attacked only 48 hours before President George W. Bush's planned nationwide address on January 10, Britain's Independent notes dryly. Bush is likely to come in for criticism there for boosting U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

Coverage from the east African press is sometimes more nuanced than media coming out of Western capitals. The ongoing conflict has thrown up two problems, according to L. Muthoni Wanyeki in the East African: Ethiopia waging an offensive war despite little room for it in international law, and Kenya rejecting fleeing Somalis the right to seek asylum. Meanwhile, Somalis suffer an imposed solution that they probably won't tolerate. "Military intervention, covert or overt, of the external variety does not make for internal legitimacy," Wanyeki says.

John Mbaria, also writing in the East African, warns that the defeat of the Islamist could revive bitter clan conflicts, fuelled by struggles over natural resources. The invasion destroyed a "home-grown" peace-building process, he says, and now international donors and African countries are failing to clean up the mess.

In a separate piece in Kenya's The Nation, he says: "Even after supporting the hounding out of the Islamists and - now - the direct attack by U.S. planes on its remnants, the international community is seemingly not ready to bankroll the difficulty process of returning Somalia back to normal." Too little aid money is put forward and too few peacekeepers have been offered so far.

Uganda remains the only one to raise its hand with an offer of troops. But not so quick, says an editorial in the Kampala-based New Vision. Uganda should first urge other countries to join, should have a clear exit strategy and make sure to bring all Somali leaders on board, including the Islamic Courts.

Somalia's problem is the proliferation of guns and the country's historic resistance to outside intervention, the paper argues - echoed by the Irish Times back in Europe with its warning that warlords still "armed to the teeth" are now busy reclaiming their old patches from the Islamists. "Disarming Somalia is no joke", the Ugandan editorial concludes - that rare thing, a comment most opinion-makers would agree

 

[NL_engineer]

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2694/

It appears as if the Americans must be enjoying themselves so much being bogged down in the Afghan war, that they want to try to create another Afghanistan in the Horn of Africa. That would seem to be just about the only sensible explanation for Washington’s policy towards Somalia, which has culminated this week in air strikes against suspected al-Qaeda camps in the country’s coastal swamps.

Washington policy towards Somalia has veered from one extreme to another in recent years. But the results have been consistent: at every stage, its interventions have succeeded in stirring up conflict and making matters worse. The latest turn seems likely to be no exception, a dramatic illustration of what happens when foreign policy runs out of control.

A bit of background should help to put current events in perspective. The Horn of Africa was an important arena for Western and Soviet intervention during the Cold War, with both sides sponsoring proxy wars and supporting unpopular governments. In Somalia, the brutal dictator Siad Barre switched sides from the Soviets to the Americans in the late 1970s. Washington then propped up his regime until 1989, reportedly to the tune of some $100million a year. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, America no longer had strategic need of the likes of Barre. The USA withdrew its support, his regime collapsed, and Somalia descended into factional strife.

After the Cold War Somalia became the scene for a different sort of US and Western intervention, as the West sought to assert its global authority under the new banners of humanitarianism. In 1992, as almost his last act in office, President George HW Bush sent 25,000 American troops into famine-wracked Somalia ostensibly to guarantee aid supplies, in Operation Restore Hope. That this operation was primarily intended to restore the image of US power was made clear when the marines restaged parts of the landing for the cameras, so that the media could get the right pictures. The invaders’ lack of knowledge or interest in Somalia was captured by a story doing the rounds at the time, which had one US marine asking his sergeant which Somalis were the good guys and which the bad guys. To which the sergeant supposedly replied, ‘The good guys are the skinny ones, the bad guys are the fat ones….’

Under new US President Bill Clinton, the US and UN forces quickly became embroiled in Somalia’s internal conflicts between competing ‘warlords’, with predictably dire consequences. First the Americans backed the warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed against rival clan chiefs. Then they changed tack, branded Aideed the Somali ‘Hitler’ (sound familiar?), and tried to hunt him down. This operation culminated in the infamous ‘Battle of Mogadishu’ in October 1993, when US special forces and helicopter gunships blundered into a catastrophic firefight which left hundreds of Somalis dead and in which, more importantly from Washington’s perspective, 18 American soldiers were not only killed but some of their bodies were dragged through the city streets. (For the Hollywood version, see Black Hawk Down.) Clinton pulled out the humiliated US military. Somalia had now all but ceased to exist as a nation state, as warlords vied for control of clan fiefdoms. (See Somalia: killed by ‘kindness’, by Brendan O’Neill.)

You might have thought that American presidents had learnt their lesson about staying out of Somalia by now. But with the launch of the global ‘war on terror’ after 9/11, the Bush administration started panicking that the al-Qaeda leaders supposedly driven from Afghanistan might land up in Somalia, listed as another ‘failed state’ (I wonder who could be responsible for that?). Attention focused on the rise of the Union of Islamic Courts, a loose coalition of Islamic groups seeking to re-impose some order in Mogadishu in the name of Sharia law. This inevitably brought them into conflict with the warlords.

Mogadishu warlords put aside their longstanding rivalries to launch the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) to oppose the Islamic courts. As the name suggests, this motley outfit became the unoffocial Somali wing of Bush’s war on terror, and was funded by the CIA. Thus America signed up to support the same warlords who had fought against it a decade ago. Some warlords became incorporated into the official-but-impotent Somali government.

The result of this latest intervention was that America effectively helped to create a popular Islamist movement. The Union of Islamic Courts grew in opposition to the US-backed ARPCT, finally taking control of Mogadishu after fierce fighting in 2006. The courts then reopened Mogadishu’s airport and seaport for the first time in a decade, banned guns from the streets, and drove pirates (who had held international organisations to ransom) from the surrounding areas. Many Somalis who were by no means Islamic radicals supported the courts’ campaign to restore order, seeing even this collection of Islamists as being preferable to the warlord alternative.

The US response to all of this was to encourage its allies in the neighbouring Ethiopian government to invade Somalia and fight alongside the warlords in support of the ‘legitimate’ government. This they did in December 2006, the well-equipped Ethiopian forces quickly driving the Islamists out of Mogadishu. The people of the city celebrated the return of the warlords by turning off all the lights and shutting up shop.

Despite the return of chaos to the streets of Mogadishu, however, the US authorities apparently considered this a major strategic success. Thus they moved to take advantage of the situation this week, by launching air-strikes against suspected al-Qaeda bases in the coastal swamps, where they claim leading terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were sheltering. At the time of writing the immediate military results are unclear, with American claims to have got their men countered by local reports of civilian casualties.

The wider political results of the latest US intervention, however, should already be clear enough. It risks plunging Somalia into another round of Afghan-style conflict and turmoil, with every chance of the instability spreading elsewhere in east Africa.

Historically, this region is no hotbed of Islamic militancy. Yet US policymakers seem to be doing their darnedest to rectify that situation. Even before these events, the past few years had given rise to a widespread conspiratorial belief that America and in particular the CIA are behind everything that goes wrong in Africa today.

At the end of December, as the UIC fled Mogadishu, a young Somali human rights worker gave a telling interview to the BBC. He described how the fear of a return to ‘chaos, confrontation and lawlessness’ in the city had grown alongside anger with the Americans and their Ethiopian agents. ‘When helicopters and warplanes appeared over our city and the bombs were dropped on Mogadishu airport, we got the feeling that what is going on is an international war – the war on terror. The fighter planes were coming from the sea and US ships from their Djibouti base are in the Indian Ocean. People really do believe that the US is part of this mission.’ After this week’s air strikes, of course, they would appear to have pretty good reason to be certain of that.

Even if those strikes did hit their immediate terrorist target or not (and the record in Afghanistan is hardly encouraging for the Americans), they will have gained little in return for losing a lot more authority and support. As that Somali human rights worker summed it up, ‘Since 9/11 everything has changed. America used to be a dream for us….’

So why do they do it? The point is that the ‘war on terror’ is not really about what happens in Somalia or Afghanistan. It is about America and the West seeking to resolve their own problems on the international stage, thrashing around in the desert of Afghanistan, the towns of Iraq or the swamps of Somalia in search of a moral mission, a victory. The result is an out-of-control, fear-driven foreign policy, characterised by a mixture of risk-aversion and recklessness that has proved so disastrous in the Iraqi conflict and beyond.

President George W Bush’s decision to send more troops into Iraq this week has been described as a ‘surge’. In fact, like the air strikes in Somalia, it looks more like a violent spasm from an almost-paralysed foreign policy elite. Having talked up the war on terror as the test of America’s resolve, the pressure to ‘do SOMETHING’ leads to an apparently endless cycle of overreactions and own-goals.

More on link

 

[GAP]

Official: Top leader of Somalia's Islamic militia arrested
POSTED: 1411 GMT (2211 HKT), January 15, 2007
Article Link

GARISSA, Kenya (AP) -- Kenyan police arrested a top leader in Somalia's Islamic militant movement on Monday, a Kenyan security official said.

The leader was arrested at midmorning at a refugee camp near the Kenyan border with Somalia, the official said, quoting from a police report. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he was on his way to the Dadaab refugee camp, 62 miles (100 kilometers) east of Garisa, to help identify the suspect.

If confirmed, the arrest could be a major step toward ending the fighting in Somalia, which began when Ethiopian troops intervened to stop the Islamic movement's advance to destroy the internationally backed government. Top movement leaders Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed have pledged to carry on a guerrilla war as long as Ethiopian troops remain in Somalia.

Unidentified gunmen have repeatedly attacked Ethiopian troops in the capital, Mogadishu, over the last two weeks.

Aweys was the founder of the Council of Islamic Courts, which took up arms to establish an Islamic emirate in Somalia in January. Before that, he was a senior leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a group listed by the United States as a terrorist organization with ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Ahmed is considered a religious moderate compared to Aweys. He emerged as the leader of the courts' executive council in early 2006, but has been named as a religious leader who could be part of national reconciliation talks to end 16 years of clan violence in Somalia.

The Horn of Africa country has not had an effective central government since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew the government and then turned on each other. The Islamic courts control most of southern Somalia for six months, until Ethiopia intervened on December 24. Within 10 days, the Islamic council had been driven out of all major towns and was in hiding.
End

 

[GAP]

U.S. confirms second air strike in Somalia
24 Jan 2007 17:57:20 GMT Source: Reuters
Article Link

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The United States has conducted a second air strike in Somalia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, as the top U.S. envoy in East Africa met an ousted Islamist leader to press for reconciliation with the government.

The new air strike came roughly two weeks after an AC-130 plane killed what Washington said were eight al Qaeda-affiliated fighters hiding among Islamist remnants pushed to Somali's southern tip by Ethiopian and Somali government forces.

One official said the targets this week were from the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC), a militant group defeated by government troops with Ethiopian armour and air power in a two-week war started before Christmas.

A second source said the target was an al Qaeda operative. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.

"We're going to go after al Qaeda and the global war on terror, wherever it takes us," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

"The very nature of some of our operations are not conducive to public discussions and there will be times when there are activities and operations that I can talk to you about and there will be other times when I just won't have anything for you," he added.

Washington believes Somali Islamists have protected al Qaeda members accused of bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and an Israeli-owned Kenya hotel in 2002.
More on link

 

[Donut]

Fair dealings, etc.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2374345.ece

Zimbabwe threatens diplomats with expulsion

By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg
Published: 20 March 2007
Zimbabwe summoned all Western diplomats based in Harare and threatened them with expulsion as reports said President Robert Mugabe was importing at least 3,000 security personnel from his regional ally Angola to bolster his police force in cracking down on opponents.

The Foreign minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, criticised Western diplomats yesterday over the latter's perceived support for the opposition, telling them to "shape up or ship out". His words infuriated the American ambassador, Christopher Dell, who walked out of the meeting in protest.

"We have been basically told to stop meddling in Zimbabwe's internal affairs or get kicked out," said one diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

It is understood the diplomats were also warned against their continued interactions with opposition officials. They were ordered to stop visiting them and attending their court appearances. Those breaking the latest orders would face imminent expulsions.

Mr Mumbengegwi addressed the diplomats as it emerged that Mr Mugabe is particularly keen on expelling the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Andrew Pocock, and his American counterpart, Mr Dell, as an example of what he can do to the rest of the Western diplomats. The two, particularly Mr Dell, have been outspoken in their criticism of the Mugabe regime, with Mr Dell describing it in the past as being "corrupt" and "misruling" Zimbabwe.

"If these two don't shut up from now, their expulsions are imminent," said a Zimbabwe foreign affairs official, who said "stern action" was being contemplated against Mr Dell for his walkout. He did not elaborate. Efforts to contact Mr Dell failed. He is due to leave Harare today and it is unclear whether he will return.

Mr Mugabe was particularly infuriated by the Western diplomats when they visited several police stations to try to locate the officials of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who were arrested more than a week ago and whose whereabouts remains unknown. The diplomats summoned included those from Britain, the United States, Germany, Sweden, the European Union mission in Zimbabwe, Canada and Australia.
The summons came as it was revealed that Mr Mugabe is importing up to 3,000 militiamen from Angola to help bolster his own police force's ability to clamp down on the opposition.

Angola and Zimbabwe are strong allies and they jointly deployed their armies to save the late Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila from a Ugandan and Rwandan-backed rebel onslaught in 1997.

The regional analysts SouthScan quoted Angola's Home Affairs minister, Roberto Monteiro, as saying that Angola would be bringing in more that 3,000 police militia to help Zimbabwe in "quelling violence and maintaining law and order". Mr Monteiro, who was in Zimbabwe at the weekend, further said Angola was "sympathetic" to Zimbabwe's police force in light of recent disturbances and attacks on Zimbabwean police. Mr Mugabe accuses the opposition of attacking the police first and resisting arrest.

According to a recent leaked confidential police memo, the Zimbabwe police has of late been hit by wide-scale desertions by poorly paid officers and soldiers who opt to work as security guards in South Africa, thus leaving Zimbabwe's security exposed.

Doubts over some army and police units has forced Mr Mugabe to create regiments that are loyal to him and report to him directly. It is these regiments that are being used to intimidate and attack the opposition.

On Saturday, Mr Mugabe told a meeting of his ruling party he will stand again in presidential elections next year and rule until 2014, by which time he will be 90.



Article Ends, emphasis mine.

I think it's time to expell the Zimbabwean mission in Ottawa, and recall our staff from that shithole poorly managed, dictatorial piece of the African paradise.  Unfortunately, that will mean a loss to the relations we enjoy with Angola and Botswana.  His Excellency, Ambassador Dell, did the correct thing in walking out.

We have a long history of promoting democracy among nations, and to have our staff threatened by the thugs loyal to Mugabe over a long-standing Canadian policy indicates to me that it's time to cut our ties to that regime.  Conversely, we can accept the risk to our mission staff, and offer tacit and materiel support to the potentially "disloyal" Army regiments who are reportedly threatening the Mugabe regime.

DF

Edited to add link

 

[TCBF]

Robert Mugabe: Poster Boy for Tertiary Syphillis.

 

[GAP]

They need to cut off the sources of aid income that is being funneled into that country as a start. This was a country that used to be self sufficient, now it has been raped repeatedly. The $0.25 solution would be a good one.