The UN is a tool in US Hands By Mohamed Hussein Caddow. Wednesday, 29 August 2007
On the 20th August 2007, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1772, under Chapter VII, extending the African Union led mission in Somalia. The resolution also calls for the protection of the Ethiopian and US backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Abdullahi Yusuf to “help them carry out their functions of government and security”.
UN backing legitimises the US-backed Ethiopian occupation of Somalia despite the many atrocities they have committed in Mogadishu. On the 13th of August, a Human Rights Watch report said Ethiopian forces indiscriminately bombarded highly populated areas of Mogadishu with rockets, mortars and artillery during two periods of intense fighting in March and April. It also said that hospitals were targeted and some civilians had been executed. This resulted in the death of thousands and the creation of up to 400, 000 refugees. US air strikes in January also resulted in the death of many innocent Somali herdsmen.
The current bloodshed and chaos is in stark contrast to the situation this time last year. Many outside observers and journalists, who visited Mogadishu, testified to the stability enjoyed under the rule of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). It was a stability that warlords and the 1993 US invasion were never able to produce. Today, in its ‘war on terror’, the US is prepared to go against the will of the majority of the Somali people who had welcomed the IC and the stability they brought.
America and her agents in the Horn of Africa, with the Ethiopian regime at their head, were shocked when the saw the people of Somalia coming together around the Islamic Courts. They feared that this movement might unite Somalia in the name of Islam, ruining their plans for the region. After all, Somalia is a land that enjoys a strategic position on the Indian Ocean, and it is virgin land in terms of having untapped resources of uranium, natural gas, and petroleum.
America always yearned for the influence it enjoyed in Somalia under the rule of Siad Barre. She tried to regain influence in 1992, under the pretext of humanitarian efforts, ‘Operation Restore Hope’ using twenty eight thousand troops, but this failed and she had to pull out in 1995.
She has now resorted to two tools. Political backing for the formation of the TFG and military backing for the nastiest warlords, who killed many Somalis, and local proxies like Ethiopia. This fits into her wider plan to increase her influence in Africa at the expense of the old colonial masters: Britain and France.
So we have seen more use of her military base in Djibouti and the formation of a separate military command – The United States Africa Command (Africom) – for Africa. Her excuse for this colonialist venture is the claim that parts of the continent have become a haven for ‘terrorists’ and therefore another theatre for its ‘war on terror’. A licence to terrorise the African natives!
By passing resolution 1772, the UN has once again shown that it is little more than a tool for legitimising the atrocities of Western powers in their ‘war on terror’. The UN is a tool they can rely on to justify their brutal invasions, just as it did after their invasion of Iraq.
As in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Somalia, Western governments' interference in the Muslim world, which has been so destructive for decades, must end. The people of Somalia have a legitimate right to defend this land against foreign aggression. Unlike Abdullahi Yusuf and his henchmen they should not collaborate with the invaders, who so brutally ended the short lived peace that was much needed in Somalia.
Somalia has been a living example of where the people discarded a corrupt system and expressed their desire to restore to the society and ruling, the system of Islam. It was Islam that illuminated the path for the people of Somalia and united them under a single flag and thus they lived in peace under the leadership of the Islamic Courts Union. This same desire for Islam, the Shariah and the Caliphate can be heard from the masses throughout the Islamic world.
The response of Western governments to this unstoppable tide is to try to preserve their influence in the Islamic world by backing brutal rulers, invading Muslim lands and a fierce propaganda campaign against the return of Islam to the political arena. These attempts are doomed to fail because, by Allah’s will, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come
Mohamed Hussein Caddow
London Uk
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