From: Hank Roth <odin@halcyon.halcyon.com>
Subject: MADE IN THE USA
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 03:27:18 GMT

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From LIVING MARXISM, January 1993}
MADE IN THE USA
by Barry Crawford
 
Many commentators have emphasised that Somalia's problems are 
rooted in its past. Some claim that the Somalis' `warlike nature' 
is an inherent racial characteristic; others identify tribal 
blood feuds which have been going on for more than a century. But 
the history which has really shaped the recent conflict in 
Somalia is that of European colonialism and American militarism 
in Africa. 
 
By the end of the nineteenth century, European colonialists had 
divided the Somali people into British, French and Italian 
subjects. Britain also handed the million Somalis of the Ogaden 
region over to Ethiopia. The British and Italian regions were 
joined together in the republic of Somalia in 1960. But many 
Somalis remained divided under the rule of Ethiopia, Kenya and 
(until 1977) France.
 
The era of European colonialism left Somalis a legacy of poverty 
and civil strife. That legacy was built upon by the Americans 
during the Cold War.
 
General Mohammed Siad Barre seized power in Somalia in 1969, 
taking advantage of popular discontent with the ruling elites 
sponsored by Britain and Italy. In a bid to break the hold of the 
West, Barre declared Somalia a socialist republic and provided 
naval facilities for the Soviets. Meanwhile, Somalis fought 
against the French, Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities for a united 
Somalia.
 
By the late seventies, the Americans, having suffered setbacks in 
the third world after their defeat in Vietnam, sought to re-
establish their global authority by launching a militaristic 
offensive which became known as the Second Cold War. 
 
In 1977 president Jimmy Carter identified Somalia as one of six 
third world countries in which the Soviets looked most 
vulnerable. So Carter cut off all aid to Ethiopia, and encouraged 
Barre to believe that he would get US backing if he seized the 
Ogaden. When Barre duly invaded early in 1978, the Soviet Union 
switched its support from Somalia to Ethiopia, and Cuban forces 
helped drive the Somalis out. American national security adviser 
Zbigniew Brzezinski delcared that US-Soviet detent `lies buried 
in the sands of the Ogaden', and Somalia returned to the Western 
fold.
 
In August 1980, Barre signed a defence pact with the Carter 
administration which gave US troops access to the air and naval 
facilities at the Soviet-built port of Berbera. It became a key 
base for America's Rapid Depoloyment Force, and US aid flooded 
into Somalia.
 
Through the eighties, the USA under Ronald Reagan and George 
Bush funded and armed Barre's incrasingly corrupt dictatorship. 
Any notion of uniting Somalis was buried by Cold War politics. 
Through Barre, the Americans manipulated and intensified ethnic 
divisions in Somalia. He used US dollars to buy allies, and US 
arms to keep down his enemies. Somalia became an American-built 
armed camp.
 
With the end of the Cold War, however, Barre became expendable. 
Since the USA no longer needed a proxy power to counter Soviet 
influence, it had no further interest in what happened to the 
Somalis. In 1991 America pulled out, the Barre regime fell and 
central authority collapsed. The divisions fostered under Barre 
now burst into war, and the country was split along the lines of 
the old Anglo-Italian carve up. In 1992, the Americans had the 
nerve to use the conflict caused by their policies as a pretext 
for re-invading Somalia and reasserting their global authority. 
Yet again, the Somalis have been caught up in Western intrigue.
----------------------------------------------------------
LIVING MARXISM is the monthly review of the Revolutionary 
Communist Party. It is published in England by Junius 
Publications Ltd, BCM JPLTD, London WC1N 3XX 
------------------------------------------------------------
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