By JERRY OKUNGU | NewVision
When did Somalis overthrow Siad Barre? It must be 20 years now or there about. After Siad Barre, came one General Aideed. He is the Somali warlord credited with disorganizing the America humanitarian marines deployed to bring food supplies, law and order into war-torn Somalia in the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The encounter left the Americans with blood on their noses and a humiliating experience that saw a dead body of one marine dragged along Mogadishu streets as barefoot Somali fighters celebrated America’s humiliation. These horror pictures were so devastating to the American public back home that Bill Clinton ordered the operation stopped and the rest of the marines evacuated.
The only remaining super power had been badly humiliated by a wretched ragtag army in the Third World.
For close to 20 years, successive American administrations have been weary of meddling in Somali conflict. More importantly, America has thought it wise not to engage Somalis directly as they have done with Iraqis, Afghans, Koreans and Vietnamese in recent years. Instead, they have used neighbouring countries like Ethiopia and Uganda to contain the alleged Osama bin Laden influence in that chaotic lawless country.
The American involvement in the current Somali conflict is something that has confused analysts on the scene. More curiously, it has not been the kind of involvement that would be considered humanitarian. It is more to do with arms supplies to one side of the conflict than anything else. One wonders what will happen if the present good boy of Mogadishu turns against the hands that fed him just like Osama bin Laden did after the Russian-Afghan conflict. It is obvious to us that when Ethiopia’s [tribal junta] decided to invade Somalia in support of the ousted Abdulahi Yusuf regime, it was to defeat an Islamic “terrorist” group then led by the current president. The Ethiopian regime’s air power scattered the Islamic courts insurgents forcing their commanders to take refuge in Yemen. Now, hardly a year later, this former Al Qaeda sympathizer has suddenly become the good boy worthy of American arms supply.
America’s involvement in the Horn of Africa’s conflict is not something new. It is as old as our independence. We remember that at one point when Siad Barre’s regime was the darling of the Soviet Union,
Americans were the biggest supporters of Emperor HaileSelassie. However, when Mengitsu HaileMariam’s regime overthrew the monarch and established a communist regime on the model of the Kremlin with full backing from Moscow, Americans quickly filled the vacuum the USSR had left in Mogadishu.
Therefore as the Ogaden war erupted between Ethiopia and Somalia, it was really a war of influence between Moscow and Washington. Yet, both super powers achieved their primary objectives. Their arms industries found ready-made markets in the Horn of Africa. And even after the Ogaden war, other civil wars had to continue in both countries for decades with Ethiopian one being conducted in two phases. The first phase had to do with getting rid of Mengitsu’s regime, while the second phase pitted former allies against one another.
It was Eritrea’s war of cessation. As Ethiopia continued to slide deeper and deeper into protracted civil wars, Somalia never rested after the Ogaden war either. More prolonged conflicts finally threw Siad Barre out in the early 1990s. One would have expected a new regime, more humane to replace Barre and restore sanity into the country. It was not to be. The era of warlords had arrived.
We all know that very few African countries are in the business of manufacturing arms of any kind save for South Africa. We are all net importers of military armaments we deploy in our conflicts. We don’t even manufacture gas masks, teargas, bullet-proof vests and helmets. All we export to industrialized Europe, America and China are raw materials like oil, diamonds, gold, uranium, tea and coffee, most of which they extract themselves and pay us peanuts for! In exchange, our countries have huge and secretive military budgets that we must spend year in year out whether we are at war or not.
This state of affairs has been made worse by our selfish, unfocused and uncaring political leadership from our region for nearly half a century. At the center of it all is deep-seated corruption and insatiable greed for individual wealth. This is the greed that has enslaved our countries to the industrialized nations with occasional belief that we can depend on them in our hour of need when hunger ravages our neighborhoods. It is a slave-master relationship that will take time to break.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
6 thoughts on “Africa’s slave-master relationship with industrialized nations”
What a great analysis in such a short space!! I hope some Ethiopian writers with lengthy web articles learn from this and some other articles posted on Ethiopian review lately.
Good analysis. Except:
“…Instead, they have used neighboring countries like Ethiopia and Uganda to contain the alleged Osama bin Laden influence in that chaotic lawless country.”
What about Kenya? Kenya is right now the only African/world nation likes to be re-colonized by the former colonizers’ and slave traders/owners treated a human being as slave inhumanly with cruelty for many hundreds years.
Osama Bin laden was attacked the west not from Uganda or Ethiopia. But Kenya and Tanzania. Not Tanzania but Kenya is the only nation in Africa its citizens are too corrupt at all levels as high as the govt and as low as the village level. Kenya is the only nation that her citizens have no what so ever patriotism feeling towards their country. They are too corrupt and they can sell or deny themselves for money. Like their colonizers/masters, money is becoming their only faith and being.
That is why all sorts of agencies, organizations and the likes are in Kenya like they are having the best free base there to affect the rest of Africa in many ways. The best and vast Kenyan land is still in the hands of the British Aristocrats. Their economic and other systems are running by their masters the way only the masters are benefiting from. And the Kenyas are proud and seem happy with it.
What Africa has/must do separately and in AU is that condemning Kenya for her stupid and slave mentality action by being the safe heavens to the known African enemies whom once where the Gods’ to Africa and black people and now they are coming back with tactics to affect the continent again for their greedy benefit.
No Somalia, Sudan, North Africa or the like nations that are considered to be the breeding place for Islamic fundamentalism would affect Africa. But Kenya being the base and safe heaven to the former colonizers and slave owners/masters to do their dirty job against Africa. Take for instance BBC and other British and other western European organizations settling in Kenya. From the base there are affecting the entire African continent in the form of Ethnicity and election while they are there for humanitarian or so on purposes. And the stupid black man believes them. It is sad
I wonder how the black man brain is working when the white man/a racist/a slave owner/ a slave trader/a colonizer/ a… is becoming between blacks and the black don’t get it despite it is going on for 500 years. This is the way Africa is fighting against each other because of a white man is becoming between them.
As long as Kenya is stopped being the base to all sorts African enemies, there will be no peace and development in the continent. Kenya must have national/African/black people patriotism instead of being slaves to their formers masters and this way affecting the rest of Africa. White man must be stopped becoming between black men to fight against each other while the world knows the white man’s history against the blacks/ Africa. Stop being an animal and think as a human being of your time. As long as you are doing the best for yourself by yourself, no one would do it, especially any one from Western Europe that is started colonization, slavery and all miseries against blacks all over the world and Africa as a continent.
Yes, these all hapened because of recruited people like Meless Zenawi who have been working to destroy countries in the name of Liberation Fronts. I am not touching the strugle agains apartide.
To be honest , this is the only time I remember myself reading a whole article on this site.The article is a very selfless simple reality that I admit I wish it wasnot true but it is true.The relationship exists and some greedy individuals (leaders) maybe selfish and uncaring but definately not unfocused.They are very focused on being a slave Cabbo.
Here we go again. It is all America who did this and that to us! It was the Soviet Union and now Russia who did this and that to us!!!! Cry babies are having a fit on the same old tiring rubbish complaints. This is really sickening. America, China, Russia, India, UK or all other influence-laden developed countries have and must have an objective when dealing with any other country be it among themselves or an African country. Good for them. I bet you they read comment like this in contempt just like me. If some one gives this comment to Obama or Mr. Brown or Hu Jintao they will laugh at it uncontrollably. What do you think? They will say; do you expect a free lunch all the time? Ha!Ha!Ha!!!. Until we stop crying foul at every move this power are taking and make excuses for our lagging behind in every thing, I mean every thing, we can say progress kiss and good bye. Colonialist did this and that to us, blah, blah, blah!!! Who opened the door for them? Who rounded up millions and millions of young and able Africans and march them all the way to shipping dock? Who facilitated slavery in the hinterlands of Africa? Hello!!!!!!!! Who signed an agreement of protection (protectorate) and gave a huge and vital swath of shorelines to the Europeans in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries? They did not come in and grab the land. This is the same lame excuse as saying ‘I am not going out and look for a job because I know I will be discriminated’. They were instances in the African history when a European power tried to coerce an African country into a protectorate, people rose up in unflinching unity to teach the aggressor a lasting lesson. Menelik was a perfect example. I bet you I just rattled some cages in the twin cities area!!!! So I hope we stop moaning and crying for do about nothings and go back to work.
To understand the true relationship of Africa and the US, a must read book is “Confessions of an economic hit man”. It spells it all out what has been happening right after the 1930’s to present. Africa is always part of the equation to make the West rich. Whether any state is peaceful or destablized, it still benefits the West one way of another. Blood diamond is an example. But today I think the Earth is tired of exploitation and the collective dangers that face humanity, like the environmental devesation, economical downturn, is going to force humanity to change from “How can I exploit and benefit”, to how can we survive the next millenium? So, nature will force as to be philanthropic and extend resolution to the entire planet. Everthing that needs to be exploited has been exploited and now it is coming back to haunt the very people who did the exploitation. I live in the US and I am happy here but when I contemplate how many people around the world go to bed hungry, I would rather not have the comfort I have. It is painful, and there is a direct correlation how much of the world’s resource is consumed here in the US, while we make up only 5% of Global population. We must expand our thinking to show concern for all of humanity without gender, tribal, colour etc..concerns.