Not the Salvation Army

While the media treatment of the US intervention in Somalia is not the big scandal, it is nonetheless hard to stomach. Suddenly, there are far more reporters in Somalia to cover the arrival of the US troops than ever went there to report on the famine, despite the fact that famine has been endemic in the Horn of Africa for several years.

But, now, of course, media coverage has a special function; not to alert the world to the suffering of Somalis, but to back up an American military expedition, the third and last operation of its kind under George Bush —after Panama and the Gulf.

The hypocrisy is hitting new heights. “We will not tolerate armed gangs… condemning their own people to starvation,” George Bush stated on December 4. This from a man who has made the Iraqi people pay for the tyrant that oppresses them by an embargo whose results in terms of hunger and the death of children hardly get a mention in the media. And we may ask how many press teams have covered the human impact of the US blockade against Cuba, the first country in the American to have done away with illiteracy.

The word “humanitarian” is entering the lexicon of great power double-speak alongside “pacification.” For the benefit of those who be tempted by the sound of the word, here are some fact that reveal the real meaning of this new American intervention and its predictable consequences.

Bush inaugurates Clinton

The rather unusual decision by an outgoing president, two months before the inauguration of his successor, to send troops abroad on a mission that is not without risks, is not the gallant last stand some may imagine. This is not how the United States is run.

The operation has a far more devious motive: the military-industrial complex that Bush represents is uneasy at the coming into office of a man who has neither hidden, nor apologized for, his opposition to the Vietnam War.

Now, Clinton will take up office in the middle of a foreign military intervention, the “achievement” of the Bush presidency having been the revival of such interventionism, after Reagan’s rather unconvincing efforts in this direction. The pretext has been chosen with particular care and can be easily justified through a media blitz and the usual hypocritical speeches. The Somalia expedition has 66% public support, according to a Newsweek poll.

The intervention in Somalia, a country in the forefront of the arc of crisis of which the Gulf is the main prize, is in strategic continuity with the Iraqi operation. Somalia is a Muslim country and borders on Sudan, a key ally of Iran, the stronghold of Islamic fundamentalism — the new bugbear of the West after the “collapse of Communism.”

An intervention in Somalia is thus highly significant at a time when repeated high-level leaks to the media seem to be preparing for an attack on Iran (which has opposed the intervention).

Consolidation of new world order

The Somali expedition marks an important new step in the consolidation of the “new world order” inaugurated after the Gulf War. This has three key elements: (1) The US is the global cop; (2) it acts under the United Nations auspices and (3) gets others, and particularly rich allies who benefit from US armed protection, to pay for its military operations.

The first element is blatant: once again the US has been more ready to intervene than powers much closer to the theatre of operations — France, for example, which moreover has a base on the neighboring territory of Djibouti.

The second element is becoming a reflex. This is the second time since August 1990 that the US has got the UN Security Council to legitimize its decision to send troops after the event. It is also the second time that the UN flag has been placed in the hands of US troops without even the formality of the latter donning blue helmets and with a highly elastic mandate, authorizing the use of force. This is also the first time that the “right to interference” in a country’s internal affairs has been formally accepted.

Once more, the US has imposed its will on the UN’s member states. The latter had already decided to establish a 3,500 strong force entrusted with the job of protecting the distribution of food aid in Somalia. The deployment of this force, which did not include American troops, had just started.

The 500-strong Pakistani contingent had just arrived when Bush decided to move in. The African states, knowing that they cannot prevent the intervention (since only the five permanent members of the Security Council have the right to veto), have (vainly, of course) asked that the US troops be put under UN command.

Lastly, contributions are being collected. As in the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and Japan are first in line to pick up the bill. The cost of this expedition will surely be greater than that of the food aid sent to Somalia.

Heavy civilian casualties likely

Taking this into account, it is clear that an intervention by Third World troops under UN command would have been far less expensive, even if no more “disinterested.” Quite possibly the 3,500 strong force already being organized by the UN would have been enough to assure the distribution of food. And it is also quite possible that the intervention itself will claim more lives than it saves.

Unlike in the Gulf War, where the disposition of forces allowed the massacre of Iraqi forces and the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure without direct massacres of civilians, the Somali militias operate among the population and in the urban centres. The use of heavy weaponry by US troops in these conditions risks big losses and serious “mistakes,” as was the case in Panama.

The disquiet voiced by many in the humanitarian organizations has been hardly reported or actually repressed — this is the case with the Somali Rakiya Omaar who has been suspended from her post as director of the American organization Africa Watch.

In current climate of systematic mystification, it is essential to relentlessly remind that the United States army is not the Salvation Army!

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