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In the War on Terror, Somalis Starve and Die |
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Food riots erupted in Somalia earlier this week, as disputes between customers and shopkeepers over whether shops would accept small bills (Somalia’s currency is weakening because of inflation and counterfeiting) escalated into clashes between rioters and the government. Aid agencies are screaming at anyone who will listen that as many as 3.5 million Somalis may need aid by the end of the year.
Today, at least 12 people died in two separate incidents of fighting between Ethiopian occupiers and Somali Muslim insurgents.
And Amnesty International has accused Ethiopia of committing war crimes inside Somala, saying that armed groups are “out of control.”
It says the situation is “dire” in the centre and the south with government troops, their Ethiopian allies and Islamist insurgents “out of control”. They carry out killings, torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary detention and forced disappearances, a report says.
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People who have visited the capital, Mogadishu, recently say parts of it are a ghost town, but Amnesty says residents fleeing the city are prey for armed bandits on the road who rape women and girls and steal whatever they have taken with them. A young child’s throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child’s mother.
Even in refugee camps, Somalis face attack, Amnesty says. It says no-one is offering them any protection. The group says more than 6,000 civilians have been killed in Somalia in the past year.
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In another incident, the report quotes Haboon, 56, saying Ethiopian troops raped a neighbour’s 17-year-old daughter in 2007.
When the girl’s two brothers tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet, she said.
The Ethiopian and Somali governments say they are fighting al-Qaeda-backed militants.
Ethiopia denies all the allegations, of course, but it’s telling that even so, they draw on our rhetoric - the rhetoric of the War on Terror - as though the urgency of the hunt for terrorists excuses human rights abuses. It’s not a leap to see where they found that idea.
As I argued the other day at The Agonist, the United States bears substantial responsibility for these tragedies.
I try not to sound shrill about foreign affairs. I try to present facts and context so that people can understand what goes on abroad, and I try to keep my tone calm so as not to get in the way of understanding.
But as a friend said the other night, concerning Somalia, “It’s wrong. It’s just wrong.”
“As I argued the other day at The Agonist, the United States bears substantial responsibility for these tragedies.”
Then why don’t you take the next plane over there and help out you moron?
BANA