Return to Somalia: The war on terror - a new front

[Rose Siding]

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Thirteen years after the US suffered one of its most humiliating military defeats - an ignoble retreat casting a shadow over Washington's foreign policy for a generation - the Americans are back in Somalia.

This is now the latest battleground in US's global, post-9/11 war on terror. Hundreds have been killed and wounded in the worst fighting in the country in 15 years as American-backed warlords engage Islamist militias in fierce house-to-house fighting in the capital.

There is little food or water. Those not trapped by the pulverising shelling are desperately trying to get out of the city, by foot, with younger men carrying the elderly and the infirm; by carts; or, for the precious few who can afford it, on battered buses and coaches straining with twice the load they were meant to carry.

The dead lie on the streets with people often afraid to move the bodies for fear of snipers. The wounded, some dug from under rubble, are taken to hospital by Mogadishu's unofficial ambulance service, wheelbarrows.

But the hospitals themselves are scenes of chaos with patients huddled in filthy corridors. An acute shortage of medicine and trained staff is exacerbated by Kalashnikov-waving militia fighters commandeering supplies and demanding priority treatment.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article623423.ece

Lucky for us Karen Hughes is busily teaching manners to tourists. Otherwise, someday a bereft American will end up wondering "why do they hate us?"

[AlamoDemoc]

1. thanks bringing this up

America is indeed enterested in Somalia once again

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_822.shtml

US covert operations underway in Somalia; resource conflict escalates over Horn of Africa
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

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According to a May 16 report in the Washington Post, US analysts of Africa policy and officials of Somalia's interim government say that the Bush administration is secretly supporting secular Somali warlords, whose groups are battling Islamic groups for control of Mogadishu.

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Competing Geostrategic and Energy Interests in Somalia:

Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001. This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, Somalia currently has no proven oil reserves, and only 200 billion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, and no hydrocarbon production. But this has not dimmed continuing interest in Somalia’s untapped and unexplored potential, and the possibility of an energy bonanza following any resolution of the country’s “internal security problems.” The Somalian regime currently welcomes oil interests. Conoco, Agip, Amoco, Chevron, and Phillips held concessions in the area. Of more immediate logistical and military interest, Somalia is situated on a key corridor between the Middle East and Africa, strategically located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, a short distance from Yemen.


But wait here...read here:

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As laid bare in the January 1993 report by Mark Fineman of the Los Angeles Times, "The Oil Factor in Somalia," US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia’s rich oil reserves during the reign of pro-US President Mohammed Siad Barre. These companies had secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill in large portions of the Somali countryside prior to the coup led by warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid that toppled Barre. The US Somalia envoy at the time was CIA operative Robert Oakley, a chief “counter-terrorism” officer during the George H.W. Bush presidency, and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iran-Contra operations of the 1980s. Conoco’s Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military headquarters.


...and this snip>

Recently, exploration teams from Australia have been hunting for oil in Somalia’s Puntland. Canadian lawyer Jay Park, “one of the world’s top oil and gas lawyers,” is working with the Somalian government to create a "credible petroleum regime". According to Park, "(Somalia) is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it may be sitting on some of the greatest oil and gas treasures.”

[Selatius]

2. One man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist"

I'm getting so tired of the US foreign policy notion of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." It is entirely in contradiction to what most ordinary Americans would ever support. One brutal, bloody gang of thugs over another simply through virtue of being "anti-communist" or "anti-terrorist."

[Joanne98]

3. Negropointe.... He's baaaaccccckkkkk!

[Rose Siding]

4. "Tens of thousands" angrily condemn US

Somali officials say the United States is funding the warlord coalition in return for attacks on Islamists it thinks are allied with or sheltering al Qaeda suspects.

Washington has not commented except to say it welcomes support in its "war on terror."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/06/02/thousands_demonstrate_against_us_in_somalia/