Fw: WILL SOMALIA BE NEXT? U.S. TARGETS ANOTHER POOR COUNTRY

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

 Via Workers World News Service
 Reprinted from the Dec. 20, 2001
 issue of Workers World newspaper
 -------------------------
 
 WILL SOMALIA BE NEXT?
 U.S. TARGETS ANOTHER POOR COUNTRY
 
 By Deirdre Griswold
 
 The Pentagon has been sending warplanes over Somalia,
 claiming this is part of its "war on terrorism." The London-
 based Observer of Dec. 9 reported, "Navy pilots have flown
 waves of missions to map two Al Qaeda camps near the Kenyan
 border with a view to launching air strikes."
 
 This was confirmed Dec. 11 in a news item from the United
 Nations service IRIN, which said "Fears of an imminent
 American air strike [are] gripping Somalia after reports
 that military aircraft have been conducting surveillance
 flights over the country. ... The first sighting of military
 aircraft was reportedly last week, according to Abdulkadir
 Isse, a Mogadishu resident. 'Over the past week we had to
 listen to their droning sound every night,' he said. 'People
 are really terrified to sleep at night.'"
 
 Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia, an extremely poor
 country of 7.5 million people, many of them nomads, on the
 Horn of Africa facing the Indian Ocean.
 
 On Dec. 9, the Mogadishu-based HornAfrik radio reported that
 a group of nine U.S. military officers had visited the town
 of Baidoa, 140 miles southwest of Mogadishu, that day. They
 toured military facilities, including the airport, evidently
 in preparation for air strikes or troop movements.
 
 An article filed with the Telegraph of London by Robert Fox
 and Jessica Berry on Dec. 2 reported "Britain has been asked
 by America to help prepare military strikes against Somalia
 in the next phase of the global campaign against Osama bin
 Laden's Al Qaeda network. ... A team of senior British
 military officers who visited U.S. Central Command in Tampa,
 Fla., last week was asked to prepare the strategy for
 attacks on sites in Somalia."
 
 The rationale for all these military preparations is said to
 be Somalia's harboring of terrorists. But a report by BBC
 Africa analyst Elizabeth Blunt on Dec. 4 said "Somalia may
 still be a patchwork of feuding factions, but when a BBC
 team visited Mogadishu last week it found everyone united in
 asserting that there were no terrorist training camps in the
 country and that any American attack would be a great
 mistake."
 
 ATTACKS ON ECONOMY, TOO
 
 This ominous military activity by the Pentagon comes after
 several U.S. and British moves paralyzed the Somali economy.
 On Dec. 3, Randolph Kent, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator
 for Somalia, said the country was "on the precipice of
 potential and total economic collapse."
 
 U.S. authorities shut down overseas branches of the Somali-
 owned Al-Barakaat banking and telecommunications systems,
 charging them with "aiding and abetting terrorism." The FBI
 simultaneously raided small neighborhood offices inside the
 U.S. used by Somali immigrants to send money home to their
 families.
 
 On Nov. 23 the BBC reported that the closures, along with
 denying all Internet access to Somalis, had "severely
 restricted international telephone lines and shut down
 vitally needed money transfer facilities." An estimated 80
 percent of Somalis depend on money from relatives abroad.
 
 The Somali Internet Co. was forced to close when it found
 that its international gateway had been cut off.
 International telephone service was shut down when Somalia's
 gateway to the world, run jointly by AT&T and British
 Telecom, was shut down.
 
 Since these measures, prices have skyrocketed in Somalia.
 Some foodstuffs have more than tripled in price, leaving
 most of the population in desperate straits.
 
 No one should think that this is because Somalia is guilty
 of attacks on the United States. Actually, the opposite is
 true. Elements in the Pentagon are determined to get revenge
 on the Somalis for having fought back in 1993 when the U.S.
 tried to impose a puppet government on their country, under
 the guise of delivering food aid.
 
On Oct. 3, 1993, U.S. helicopter fire killed some 500
 civilians in the main market of Mogadishu. But the crash of
a Black Hawk helicopter started a chain of events in which
18 U.S. soldiers were killed and nearly 80 wounded as
Somalis rushed into the area to fight the invaders. After
that, the U.S. withdrew from Somalia. Many in the Pentagon
have been itching for "revenge" ever since.

 If Bush spreads his war of exploitation and plunder to
 Africa, he will only further antagonize another huge section
 of the world's people, including many millions of workers
 here in the United States. That is probably why Washington
 is asking London to do some of the dirty work. But for the
 U.S. to get Britain, the world's biggest former colonial
 power, to attack Somalia only exposes both imperialist
 ruling classes as robbers bent on world domination.
 
 Both imperialist powers will find that they have an
 Achilles' heel--the multinational working class at home,
 which is in no way friendly to the racist themes that used
to motivate colonial expansion in the past.