From: nyxfer%panix.com@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Behind the Catastrophic Famine in Somalia
Date: 21 Aug 92 21:17:29 GMT
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Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

            Behind the Catastrophic Famine in Somalia

                       By Deirdre Griswold

The roots of the current famine and chaos in Somalia go back to
1977, when President Siad Barre was persuaded by the U.S. and
Saudi Arabia to invade Ethiopia.

Today we read horror stories about the starvation and violence in
Somalia. U.S. troops have been sent to the area -- yes, U.S. troops
on the move once again -- to dispense emergency food aid. Couldn't
this be done by civilian personnel? Oh no, explain the willing
mouthpieces for the Pentagon, things have gotten so far out of
hand, there are so many heavily armed warlords on the loose, that
only military forces can do the job.

The number facing starvation is anybody's guess, but the figures
thrown out range from 1 to 4 million in a country of only 8
million.

Failure to understand what lies behind this stupendous calamity
will only doom everyone to see it repeated again and again. No
amount of last-minute, grudging relief supplies from imperialist
countries that sit on millions of tons of surplus food can make
up for the years of manipulation, exploitation and then callous
neglect that brought Somalia to such straits.

Didn't happen overnight

In Somalia a whole country has been rendered destitute, sunken in
anarchy and dependent on imperialist charity. But this didn't
happen overnight. Nor is it just the result of drought.

Of course, every formerly colonized country bears deep scars from
that inhuman period, which so enriched the colonizers and so
impoverished their "subjects." Somalia was split between the
British, Italians and French from 1840 to 1960 But the present
catastrophe arises particularly out of events since 1960.

When Somalia became politically independent, a government was
formed led mainly by people trained by the former colonialists.
There were high hopes that the relationship with the developed
imperialist West would at last facilitate modernization. But
these hopes proved illusory.

This regime was overthrown in 1966 by a group led by Siad Barre,
who espoused revolutionary socialism and aspired to develop the
country. He sent envoys to Moscow and other countries in the
socialist bloc and got some development assistance.

Relations with Ethiopia

Neighboring Ethiopia was still under feudal rule at that time.
Emperor Haile Selassie, a long-time ally of the U.S., had built
up one of the most powerful armies in Africa with military
assistance from Washington. Somalia, which had a territorial
dispute with Ethiopia, began to expand its army with Soviet help.

But then, in 1974, the feudal regime in Ethiopia fell apart. The
military took over from the feudal Crown Council as peasants
began seizing land and workers and students demonstrated in the
streets. The revolution in Ethiopia deepened. By 1975, all land
had been nationalized. Marxist junior officers ousted the more
conservative generals and nationalized the banks, factories and
extra houses. The power of the feudo-bourgeois class was broken.

The chance now existed for cooperation between Ethiopia and
Somalia on an anti-imperialist, socialist basis. Both were
extremely poor countries, trying to pull themselves up by their
bootstraps. Somali-speaking nomadic peoples moved back and forth
over the border with their cattle in the vast plains area called
the Ogaden.

A road not taken

In fact, in 1977 Cuba's Fidel Castro went to South Yemen, where
he met with Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam and Siad Barre and
urged the three countries to join in a progressive federation.
But Siad Barre balked.

Within months, his army had invaded Ethiopia.

The capitalist media explain it all on the basis of intractable
nationalism. But there was another reason. Somalia had been
offered what must have seemed like the deal of a lifetime. The
Carter administration signaled Siad Barre it would support a
Somali attack on Ethiopia with arms and money. The editor of
Newsweek, Arnaud de Borchgrave, let the cat out of the bag on
Sept. 26, 1977, when he wrote, "The Somalis claim that they began
their all-out invasion of Ethiopia's Ogaden region last July
because of the prospect of U.S. arms aid -- and because they had
received a secret U.S. message which they interpreted as a
go-ahead to conquer the area."

Then Saudi Arabia, Washington's trusty paymaster, offered Somalia
$500 million in aid -- the equivalent of two years' gross national
product.

Thus it was that the Somali army, whose remnants are now reported
to be terrorizing starving civilians, was built into a big war
machine. The invasion was finally thrown back early in 1978, but
for years there were border skirmishes -- and enough money kept
coming from Washington to nourish a hefty military and civilian
bureaucracy.

Last year, however, the long campaign of the imperialists and
reactionaries to overthrow the Ethiopian revolutionary regime
finally succeeded. And suddenly Somalia was of little interest to
Washington anymore. Siad Barre was overthrown, and the army,
without a program for resolving the massive social problems
caused by colonial and neocolonial underdevelopment, fragmented
into warring bands.

United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali accused
the Security Council members -- particularly Britain, the former
colonial power in both Somalia and Egypt, Boutros-Ghali's
home -- of totally ignoring the "poor man's war" in Somalia for the
"rich man's war" in Yugoslavia. Had it not been for his public
rebuke, it is doubtful that even the minimal, eleventh-hour food
aid now being dropped into a few villages in Somalia would have
materialized.

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".)

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