'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Somalia: Worse than ever? Worse than Darfur?

What will end up being the most serious indictment on the charge-sheet leveled against the Bush administration for its reckless mishandling of foreign policy since 2001? Oh my! So hard to tell. The candidates for this sad honor are legion.

But we'll have to put Somalia on the list somewhere. Somalia where, you'll remember, in November and December 2006 the Bushites plotted with the government of Ethiopia and other parties to launch a massively armed assault against the body that was just then, however tenuously, starting to bring some order to Mogadishu and other areas of the country...

That was the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a body that-- like the Taliban in Afghanistan-- had found a unifying Islamist ideology that helped its supporters to rebuild some social solidarity within a country riven by ferocious and mega-lethal warlordism.

In late November 2006, the wise analysts of the International Crisis Group warned the US of the expected, very escalatory consequences of an impending US decision to arm and support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

The Bushites went ahead anyway.

Things went violently awry from almost the very beginning of the Ethiopian occupation of much of Somalia that ensued.

Today, the NYT's Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Somalia that,

The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt, several top United Nations officials said...

Top United Nations officials who specialize in Somalia said the country had higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting peacekeepers and aid money.

The relentless urban combat in Mogadishu, between an unpopular transitional government — installed partially with American help — and a determined Islamist insurgency, has driven waves of desperate people up the Afgooye road, where more than 70 camps of twigs and plastic have popped up seemingly overnight.

The people here are hungry, exposed, sick and dying. And the few aid organizations willing to brave a lawless, notoriously dangerous environment cannot keep up with their needs, like providing milk to the thousands of babies with fading heartbeats and bulging eyes. “Many of these kids are going to die,” said Eric Laroche, the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia. “We don’t have the capacity to reach them.”

Today, too, the spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Jennifer Pagonis, announced in Geneva that the number of displaced people in Somalia, population nine million, has now risen to one million.

She added that,

Sixty percent of the population [of Mogadishu], or some 600,000 people, are believed to have fled from the lawless Somali capital... since February this year – nearly 200,000 of them in the past two weeks alone, leaving entire neighbourhoods in the volatile capital empty.

Now, I am quite certain that, when the Bushites discuss and then authorize various military actions around the world, they do not intend that those actions end up inflicting massive harm on large populations of non-Americans. But look at the record! Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia today. (Or look at the US-authorized prolongation of Israel's assault against Lebanon last year.)

These are almost unbelievably reckless and harmful operations.

Someone needs to rein in the militarists who have taken over the White House-- and also, I fear, far too much of rest of the US political elite. Mainly, it is the responsibility of the rest of the US citizenry-- the anti-militarists amongst us-- to do this. But it would be great if we could also count on a ready and capable United Nations, and a coalition of the world's other, non-US powers to help us turn the tide of history away from mindless militarism and back toward a real commitment to using non-military ways to resolve the many conflicts among the peoples of the world.

So many such ways exist! And the UN could be-- if the other powers really wanted to make it so-- a powerful vehicle for diverting the energies of governments, including my government, away from violence and back toward the really constructive work of negotiation, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.

Pray for the people of Somalia tonight. And then tomorrow, let's resume the campaign to do all we can to save the world from the forces of militarism.

By the way, this is Reliefweb's excellent portal to the latest news of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.