"If we did nothing, why did we do nothing?"
"Mr President, a time such as this demands that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth should be told. It should be told because not to tell it is to create the conditions for the crime to recur.
"Not to tell the truth is to impose an additional burden on those who already carry too heavy a burden of an intensely felt pain, of denying them the possibility to forgive those who had done wrong, of condemning them to nurse a consuming anger and grievance against those guilty of acts of commission and omission.
"Mr President, at a time such as this, it is inevitable that many questions will and must be asked and answers demanded.
"Why did it happen?
"What evil force captured the souls of the genocidaires, giving them the courage to murder a million people in cold blood?
"What was it that gave the leaders and commanders of the genocidaires the murderous courage to direct and preside over so gruesome a crime?
"What did we as Africans do to stop the slaughter? If we did nothing, why did we do nothing?
"Why did the United Nations, set up to ensure that genocide, as occurred when the Holocaust was visited on the Jewish people, did not recur anywhere in the world, stand by as Africans were exterminated like pernicious vermin?"
Thabo Mbeki | On the 10th Anniversary of the Commencement of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
Because good men like Shepherd Yuda did nothing?
Pic: Erin Lubin
We, meanwhile, complain about ungrateful Somali refugees. What — I ask our president and the myriad moronic commenters clogging our newspaper sites, might we do with the killing fields from which they fled — George W. Bush's Godforsaken corner of Africa?
Sadly, most South African newspaper readers believe the United States absent from Africa and therefore irrelevant to any discussion of its problems. I mean, what the hell do the Americans want with Somalia?
Would that our pissing pundits acquaint themselves with my old friend Thomas P.M. Barnett's plans for that neck of the woods. In The Americans Have Landed, Barnett relates with glee and undisguised pride:
Ethiopia's Meles regime, which American Central Command officers describe as "xenophobic to the core," was going into Somalia last December whether the Americans approved or not. The recently installed Somali Council of Islamic Courts, with its loose talk of getting back another star point in its flag (otherwise known as Ethiopia's Ogaden region), simply had to go. As it happened, the Americans, who had been quietly training the Ethiopian troops for years, did approve."Rinse and repeat"? Cool, huh? Turns out most of those killed were civilians...
In fact, Centcom was very eager for the operation. Most press leaks made it sound like our main targets were a trio of Al Qaeda senior operatives responsible for bombing American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania a decade ago. But the real story is one of pure opportunism, according to a knowledgeable source within the headquarters: "There were three thousand foreign fighters in there. Honestly, nobody had any idea just how many there really were. But we wanted to get them all."
When the invading Ethiopians quickly enjoyed unexpected success, Centcom's plan became elegantly simple: Let the blitzkrieging Ethiopian army drive the CIC, along with its foreign fighters and Al Qaeda operatives, south out of Mogadishu and toward the Kenyan border, where Kenyan troops would help trap them on the coast. "We begged the Kenyans to get to the border as fast as possible," the Centcom source says, "because the targets were so confused, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off."
Once boxed in by the sea and the Kenyans, the killing zone was set and America's first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat "until no more bad guys," as one officer put it.
You didn't know?
It should be no great surprise that the western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on America's "villain du jour", Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is next on the neocon's list for regime change. Neocon Godfather Paul Wolfowitz even composed a postmortem for Zimbabwe's president in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial "How to Put the Heat on Mugabe".
In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south.
MIke Whitney | Bush's Blood-Orgy in Somalia: "They Are Slaughtering Somalis Like Goats"
In many cases TFG and Ethiopian forces were searching for specific, named individuals believed to have collaborated with armed groups, and in several such cases they beat, arrested or killed someone other than the person they were looking for. In many other cases, TFG and Ethiopian forces would sweep entire streets, moving door to door, beating or shooting those they found in areas from which armed groups were believed to have launched attacks, or areas presumed to be armed group strongholds.
Many individuals and families under such circumstances were accused of collaboration with armed groups by association or mere proximity to attacks.
Among the most common violations reported were an increased incidence of gang rape, and scores of reports of a type of killing locally referred to as "slaughtering," or "killing like goats." These terms refer to extrajudicial killing by slitting of the throat. Amnesty International heard dozens of testimonies stating that the bodies of such victims were left lying in pools of blood in the streets and in homes until combatants, including snipers, evacuated the area and it was considered safe for family and neighbours to retrieve them.
Amnesty International | Routinely Targeted: Attacks on Civilians in Somalia
Until now, the attitude of African leaders has been an obstacle to peaceful change. Despite everything, some still look to Mugabe's leadership in the historic fight against white supremacy. Most significant among them is President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Paul Wolfowitz | How to Put the Heat on Mugabe
"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing." [Burke]
