When the Bush Administration began its attack on purported al Qaeda operatives in Somalia, I cautioned that the source of their intelligence was weak. After much speculation and reports that one of the persons responsible for the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been killed, we now find out that the Bush Administration missed. What a shocker!
The Washington Post reports tonight that the United States has boots on the ground in Somalia and those boots found no al Qaeda had been killed:
A small team of American military entered southern Somalia to try to determine exactly who was killed in a U.S. airstrike Monday that targeted suspected al-Qaeda figures thought to be hiding in swampy mangrove forests along the Indian Ocean, U.S. sources said Thursday.
So far, "no one can confirm a high-value target" among the dead, said one U.S. source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But items recovered at the strike site — a piece of bloody clothing and a document — indicated that Aden Ayrow, head of the military arm of the Islamic Courts movement and the de facto defense minister of the deposed Islamic government, had been at the scene.
There are two very important pieces of information in the above two paragraphs. First, no al Qaeda was killed. Second, and more importantly, the US is now involved in a civil war in Somalia. We have taken the side of warlords against the Islamic Courts Union. More bluntly, we have taken the side of chaos over stability.
There is now no doubt that the United States has been actively involved in the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The two countries are sharing information with each other and the warlords:
The U.S. military has worked closely with Ethiopian ground and air forces operating in Somalia and has shared intelligence and target lists. But American decision-makers have been cautious about sending U.S. personnel into Somalian territory. In the aftermath of the AC-130 attack, it was seen as a necessary risk in the effort to positively identify the casualties.
While the US claims that the attacks were "surgical" and "10 people suspected of terrorist links" had been killed, reports from the area suggest widespread destruction and loss of life. The weapon of choice, the AC-130 gunship, suggests that the attack was not surgical:
A day after widespread publicity over claims that a "surgical" attack had killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, allegedly involved with the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, it emerged that neither he, nor two other suspects, Abu Taiha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, were among the dead.
US officials insisted the 10 people who were killed in the raid in southern Somalia were Islamist allies of al-Qa’ida. But a local MP, Abdelgadir Haji, claimed there had been far larger scale civilian casualties inflicted by the Americans and their Ethiopian allies.
Mr Haji said: "The number of the dead we have confirmed until now is 150 dead. But, every day, new reports are coming in and that number is expected to rise.
"America strikes from the air. Ethiopian tanks are coming in over land and the Kenyan border is closed. The people have no escape. Hundreds of cattle were killed and no aid is being allowed over the border. It is a hellish situation."
Even official pronouncements from the Somali "government" suggest a large loss of life:
Government officials reported many died in the attack carried out on Monday by the gunship, an armed variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane, designed for close air support.
"Many people were killed and I think the terrorists were eliminated," Information Minister Ali Jama told AFP.
"Absolutely, a lot of people were killed," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. "So many dead people were lying in the area, we do not know who is who, but the raid was a success."
Since the initial attack, there have been reports of other aerial attacks in southern Somalia. The US government has denied that they carried out the attacks. However, regardless of whether it was the Ethiopians or the Americans, the local population will now see the two countries joined at the hip. Any atrocities carried out by the Ethiopians or the Bush Administration’s warlord allies will now be connected to the Americans as well. This is the price of our "close coordination":
U.S. officials repeatedly emphasized close coordination with the Ethiopian military, saying that continuing air attacks by the Ethiopians in the south were motivated by intelligence reports that one of the three embassy suspects, Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese, was in the area.
The U.S. military action in the southernmost tip of Somalia has been widely criticized by European diplomats, the U.N. secretary general and the chairman of the 53-member African Union, who are concerned that it will work against efforts to stabilize a country that has been without a central government since 1991.
In the chaotic capital, Mogadishu, the weak transitional government, backed by the United States and Ethiopia, is struggling to assert control in a city still full of Islamic Courts fighters, as well as militias of clans and sub-clans who feel marginalized by the new government and resentful of the presence of Ethiopian soldiers in the city.
The Bush Administration has taken its "War on Terror" road show to Somalia. It is now fighting an undeclared war in the Horn of Africa. The original excuse of a "surgical" strike against al Qaeda has been proven to be false. Instead the Bush Administration is now actively engaged in war against the widely popular Islamic Courts Union. This is a recipe for further instability in the war-torn country of Somalia.
It is time to consider wider ramifications of the Bush Administration’s one-dimensional "us" versus "them" foreign policy. The United States, under the Bush Administration, is quickly becoming the major force for global instability. While war still rages in Afghanistan, the Bush war bandwagon took the show to Iraq. It has now expanded the war into Africa. There are indications now that Iran and Syria are next to be attacked. This policy of rapidly expanding instability is making Mr. Bush perhaps the world’s most dangerous man.
We are now at the mercy of Mr. Bush’s war without end. It is time for the United States Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility and rescue this nation and the world from presidential war-making run amok.
