IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
“This poor country keeps taking one blow after another,” Peter Goossens observed, two months ago in an interview with The New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman. “Ultimately, it will break.” The country is Somalia, and Goossens directs the World Food Programme, which is now feeding some 1.2 million people there, 15% of the population. This tragic & tortured land is “marching right up to the edge of a crisis,” Goossens said. With a vigilance stepped up since Sept. 11, the US has reformulated its long standing efforts to control the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea & Somalia) as a front line in the “war on terror.” Somalia is at its very tip. Members of the African Union have sent small peacekeeping forces there. But they are unlikely to succeed, as “there’s no peace to keep (in Somalia) in the first place,” Richard Cornwell, Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, told Scott Baldauf & Alexis Okeowo of The Christian Science Monitor. By November, the UN noted that Somalia had “higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed & fewer aid workers than Darfur,” Gettleman reported.
Responsibility lies substantially in the US’ hands. In 1992, after the overthrow of the Somali dictatorship & the ensuing famine, the US sent thousands of soldiers on a dubious “rescue mission”. But in October 1993, during the “Battle of Mogadishu,” two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali militiamen, leaving 18 US Army Rangers dead, along with perhaps 1,000 Somalis. US forces were immediately withdrawn. CIA officials privately conceded that during US operations, in which 34 US soldiers were lost, Somali casualties may have been 7-10,000, Charles William Maynes reported in Foreign Policy. “After that, the US – and much of the rest of the world – basically turned its back on Somalia,” Gettleman reports. “But in the summer of 2006, the world started paying attention again after a grassroots Islamist movement emerged from the clan chaos & seized control of much of the country.”
UN officials observe that “the country was in better shape during brief reign of Somalia’s Islamist movement last year” than post US-backed Ethiopia invasion, which took place just after the UN Security Council, at US initiative, passed Resolution 1,725 for Somalia, essentially calling all states to refrain from action that could further endanger humanitarian situation.
Immediately after Sept. 11, the US spearheaded an international effort to close down Al-Barakaat – a Dubai-based Somali remittance network – on grounds that it was financing terror, which was widely hailed. In contrast, US withdrawal of its charges, as without merit, a year later aroused little interest. The greatest impact was in Somalia. As per the UN, in 2001, Al-Barakaat was responsible for about half the $500 million remittances to Somalia, “more than it earns from any other economic sector and 10 times the foreign aid (Somalia) receives.”
US is launching a new Africa command & extending naval operations, part of a broader campaign to ensure domination of primary energy resources in the Gulf & Africa. Africa’s resources are too valuable to be left to others, particularly with China extending its commercial reach. If poor Somalia collapses in starvation & misery, it’s merely a sideshow of grand geopolitical designs, and of little moment.
Noam Chomsky
For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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