Skip to main content

Home/ Development Africa/ Group items tagged uic

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Somalia's rough road to peace - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...66276

somalia pambazuka al-shabab uic somaliland

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Without Barre’s iron fist, the clan-based political rivalries which had been artificially repressed for two decades bloomed and a country swimming in foreign arms and local animosity was plunged into a vicious civil war.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
       
      Too reductionist and appeals too much to primordialism.
  • Where international peacekeepers and foreign soldiers had cut and run, the UIC, working with the local population, struggled to extract peace and order from chaos.
  • By 2007, a weak Somali transitional government called for international military action to help destroy the Islamic courts. Ethiopian forces – bolstered by the United States’ blessing and with the support of some its arms – entered the fray to destroy an organisation supposedly linked to al-Qaeda. However, this same organisation had won the respect of many Somalis by rescuing parts of the country from chaos and random violence. Although Ethiopia’s military action in Somalia decimated the UIC, it also forever de-legitimised the Transitional Federal Government.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The foremost ethnographer of Somalia, I.M. Lewis, penned a letter in 2007 criticising the European Union’s ‘astonishing, and imperialistic behavior … in completely ignoring Somali public opinion and its overwhelming rejection of [the TFG]’.[6]
  • A recent International Crisis Group (ICG) report on al-Shabaab describes the Ethiopian invasion as the event that turned the loosely organised Islamic courts coalition into a much more centralised and extremist organisation.[8]
  • the Kampala bombings must be seen as what they are, a baiting of the bear. By bringing the Somalian fight to the international community so crudely, al-Shabaab is counting on an aggressive international response. More civilian deaths at the hands of AMISOM soldiers will close off the renewed possibilities for moderate leadership to seize the reins from al-Shabaab and discredit the transitional government. Similarly, the rampant anti-Islamic rhetoric of the US war on terror will alienate the moderate elements of Somalia’s Islamist movements. Once bombs begin falling in earnest and fighting intensifies, the Somalian struggle will once again align with the script that poses national patriots against foreign aggressors, and the al-Shabaab will have already won the ideological struggle for the Somali people’s support.
  • The United States and the African Union must leave off nation-building in Somalia. Effective solutions to the Somalian civil war will not be cooked up in Kampala, Washington DC or Addis Ababa. One of the key lessons of Somaliland’s experience is that effective government must come from within. In the words of the former Somaliland president Dahir Rayale Kahin, ‘you can’t be donated power… We built this state because we saw the problems here as our problems. Our brothers in the South are still waiting—till now—for others.’[9]
  • Most importantly, Somaliland has secured a treasured peace on its own terms and by its own efforts. In the past 20 years Somaliland’s struggle has been for world recognition. Yet, ironically, it is precisely the country’s isolation from the international community that has allowed it to develop home-grown peace and stability. Without the dubious direction of international experts and unable to rely on international economic assistance, Somaliland has reconstructed itself with self-reliance, accountability and local investment as its touchstones.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
       
      Persuasive argument.  Somaliland developed because of, not in spite of, isolation from "international experts" and "international economic assistance."  A useful project would compare Somaliland, Eritrea, Niger and Mali.  All have in important ways separated themselves from the international development mainstream.
  • [9] Jeffry Gettleman, ‘Somaliland is an overlooked African success story,’ The New York Time, March 6, 2007
  • Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
     
    Following the al-Shabaab bombing in Kampala, current plans to send more AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) troops into Somalia will simply jeopardise the possibility of a new moderate leadership emerging in the country, writes Abena Ampofoa Asare. 
Arabica Robusta

The War in Mali » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...the-war-in-mali

development international governance world bank mali us intervention

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • The current crisis gripping northern Mali—an area about the size of France— has its origins in the early years of the Bush Administration, when the U.S. declared the Sahara desert a hotbed of “terrorism” and poured arms and Special Forces into the area as part of the Trans-Sahal Counter Terrorism Initiative. But, according to anthropologist Jeremy Keenan, who has done extensive fieldwork in Mali and the surrounding area, the “terrorism” label had no basis in fact, but was simply designed to “justify the militarization of Africa.”
  • When the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) was formed in 2008, it took over the Initiative and began working directly with countries in the region, including Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Niger, Mauretania, and Senegal.  Indeed, the only country in the region that did not have a tie to AFRICOM was Libya.
  • For instance, the US supported the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that overthrew the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government. Washington said the UIC was associated with al-Qaeda, but never produced any evidence of that.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The so-called “terrorist” groups, like Ansar al-Din, al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad and AQIM, only moved in after the Tuareg Movement for the National Liberation of Azawed had expelled the Malian army from the north and declared a separate country.
  • “Whatever the motivation of the principle NATO belligerents [in ousting Gadaffi], the law of unintended consequences is exacting a heavy toll on Mali today,” former UN regional envoy Robert Fowler told the Guardian (UK) “and will continue to do so throughout the Sahel as the vast store of Libyan weapons spreads across this, one of the most unstable regions of the world.”
  • Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid is being directed at fighting terrorism on the continent, and the US military is training the armed forces of dozens of African nations.  A Malian army captain used that aid and training to pull off a coup that now threatens to turn into a regional war.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20▼ items per page