The US/Ethiopian intervention of 2006–07

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US Marines land on Somali coast to hunt militants
China Daily, 6 May 2005. U.S. Marines landed on Somalia's coast in one of their most visible hunts for militants in the country since they set up a Horn of Africa counter terrorism force in 2002. The Marines' arrival coincided with signs of U.S. military activity elsewhere along the coast of Somaliland, a relatively stable region which declared independence in 1991 to escape chaos engulfing the rest of Somalia.
U.S. Secretly Backing Warlords in Somalia
By Emily Wax and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, 17 May 2006. More than a decade after U.S. troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, officials of Somalia's interim government and some U.S. analysts of Africa policy say the United States has returned to the African country, secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu.
US covert operations underway in Somalia; resource conflict escalates over Horn of Africa
By Larry Chin, Online Journal, 22 May 2006. The Bush administration is secretly supporting secular Somali warlords, whose groups are battling Islamic groups for control of Mogadishu. Somali government spokesman has unequivocally declared the US government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu.
Somalia must not become a haven for al-Qa'ida militants, Bush warns
By Kim Sengupta in Nairobi, The Independent, 8 June 2006. Bush declares he will not allow the country to become an “al-Qa'ida haven” even as the militias themselves vowed to make the Horn of Africa “a land under the Koran”. The defeat of a coalition of US-backed warlords by Islamists who have taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, and have followed their enemies to the town of Jowhar, where a battle is thought to be imminent.
Islamic fighters control southern Somalia
AP via CNN, 14 June 2006. Fighters bent on bringing Islamic rule to all of Somalia took the strategic town of Jowhar on Wednesday, after secular rivals fled their last stronghold in the southern part of the nation. The Islamic Courts Union and its allies now control all of southern Somalia, except Baidoa, the town where the transitional government sits.
US accused of covert operations in Somalia
By Antony Barnett and Patrick Smith, The Observer (UK), Sunday 10 September 2006. Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer. The leaked communications between US private military companies suggest the CIA had knowledge of the plans to run covert military operations inside Somalia—against UN rulings—and they hint at involvement of British security firms.
Kenyan Muslims accuse US of plotting to attack Somalia
By Steven L. Robinson, Agence France-Presse, Middle East Times, 4 November 2006. Kenyan Muslims Saturday accused the United States of lying about plans by Somali Islamists to carry out suicide bombings in Kenya and Ethiopia as a pretext to attack Somalia. Washington was using the alleged attacks as a ploy to attack and destroy the lawless Horn of Africa state, where a powerful Islamic movement is rapidly gaining influence.
US warned against lifting Somalia's arms embargo
By Rob Crilly in Nairobi, The Irish Times, 30 November 2006. The US is risking all-out war in Somalia by pushing for the UN to ease its 15-year-old arms embargo. It has the backing of the UK and is seen as a way of protecting the country's government against an Islamic movement that has swept all before it since seizing the capital Mogadishu in June.
In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war
By Salim Lone, International Herald Tribune, Tuesday 26 December 2006. Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.
The Making of Another Iraq
By Abukar Arman, Foreign Policy in Focus, 3 January 2007. A new front in the global war on terror has emerged with its center in war-torn Somalia. The target of the new front, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), both brought back normalcy to seemingly untamable southern Somalia and anxiously legislated morality to the point of social suffocation. According to the U.S. State Department, its greatest sin was its purported link to al-Qaida.
The Real Agenda Of The Global Elite In Somalia
By Steve Watson, Infowars.net, Wednesday 10 January 2007. Neocons are backing the same warlords that slaughtered US troops in 1993. This week has seen the latest example of the US power elite bombing a broken-backed country in the name of the global “war on terror”. The phantom menace of “Al Qaeda” has again provided a pretext for the further destruction and destabilization of struggling state, this time Somalia, in order that the Western elite power-mongers can move in and control its valuable resources.
U.N. backs deployment of troops to Somalia
By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, 11 January 2007. The U.N. Security Council said it backs the speedy deployment of African troops to Somalia. Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other. The rout of the Islamic movement that controlled most of Somalia for the past six months by Somali government troops and Ethiopian soldiers has allowed the country's weak U.N.-backed transitional government to enter the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since it was established in 2004.
Somalia will not forget this latest catastrophe
By Richard Dowden, The Independent, 11 January 2007. The rise of the Union of Islamic Courts was the result of America's previous attempt to get the alleged al-Qa’ida operatives responsible for the embassy bombings. Early last year the CIA paid local warlords to get them. This united Somalis as nothing else has for decades. In their fury at American support for the hated warlords, they rose and drove out the warlords.
Oil, not terrorists, the reason for US attack on Somalia
By Wanjohi Kabukuru, Daily Nation (Kenya), 22 January 2007. Geologists put Somalia and Sudan at the top of the list of prospective commercial oil producers. The little known yet well-heeled contact group, consisting of Norway, the US, UK, France and Tanzania are also deeply enmeshed in Somalia. While the terrorism theory holds some water, the reality of the factors contributing to the mess in Somalia is pegged on natural resources.
Africans denounce U.S. attacks on Somalia
By Deirdre Griswold, Workers World, 25 January 2007. Bush's rationale is that the Islamic Courts Union, which had come to power with popular support in most of the country, was harboring “terrorists” from Al-Qaeda. The U.S. is supposedly coming to the aid of “Black Africans” who are Christians—in this case the present government of Ethiopia—against “Arabs” who are Muslims. This blatant attempt to pit the peoples of Africa against each other along ethnic and religious lines is also the strategy of those who covet Sudan's oil and have pressed for Western intervention in Darfur.