The Ethiopian Army invaded Somalia in December 2006, overthrowing the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government and installing the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Two years later, approximately 10,000 people have lost their lives, and 1.1 million Somalis were turned into refugees, the victims of Ethiopian occupiers and an ongoing civil war.
From the beginning, the TFG, though backed by the U.S., was weak, maintaining control in only a small area of the capital of Mogadishu, and some regions of western Somalia. Several thousand African Union troops--including U.S.-trained Ugandan forces--ostensibly bolster the TFG, to little effect. The U.S. also intervened directly in Somalia with sporadic air strikes...
SOMALIA IS located in the strategically crucial Horn of Africa on the eastern edge of the continent--adjacent to the Red Sea, Suez Canal and key commercial waterways. Somalia and neighboring Sudan have been targeted for oil exploration by U.S. companies, but China, India and other countries have also gotten their foot in the door with development contracts.
Competition past and present is behind the U.S. government's concern with Somalia. The U.S. has variously engaged in direct intervention (as in the infamous "Black Hawk Down" Marine invasion of 1992-3), backed different warlord factions and supported proxy armies (such as Ethiopia). Actually, the history of Western intervention in Somalia and the Horn of Africa extends back throughout the 20th century...Somalia's civil wars--like those in Darfur and southern Sudan--must be seen as a direct result of the U.S. and the former USSR arming different sides with billions of dollars, all while famines raged...
As Mike Whitney pointed out it on the Counterpunch Web site: "The Bush administration invoked the 'war on terror' to justify its involvement in Somalia, but its claims are unconvincing. The UIC is not an al-Qaeda affiliate or a terrorist organization. In fact, the UIC brought a level of peace and stability to Somalia that hadn't been seen for nearly two decades..."
THE END result of the U.S. intervention has been untold destruction. Human Rights Watch published a report in December 2008 detailing the impact:
"Two years of unconstrained warfare and violent rights abuses have helped to generate an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, without adequate response. Since January 2007, at least 870,000 civilians have fled the chaos in Mogadishu alone--two-thirds of the city's population...
Humanitarian organizations estimate that more than 3.25 million Somalis--over 40 percent of the population of south-central Somalia--will be in urgent need of assistance by the end of 2008...Freelance militias have robbed, murdered and raped displaced persons on the roads south towards Kenya. Hundreds of Somalis have drowned this year in desperate attempts to cross the Gulf of Aden by boat to Yemen..."
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/09/somalia-nightmareTo some, it's apparently about supporting women's right to wear bras.
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