Christian Fraser

BBC / January 10, 2007

Italian soldiers are still dying following exposure to depleted uranium in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, their relatives say.

Troops who served during the wars in the 1990s believe they have contracted cancer and other serious illnesses from extended exposure to the munitions.

The US says it fired around 40,000 depleted uranium rounds during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts.

A pressure group says 50 veterans have died and another 200 are seriously ill.

Depleted uranium is used on the tips of bullets and shells. Because of its density it can pierce the armour plating on tanks.

But when it explodes it often leaves a footprint of chemically poisonous and radioactive dust.

The Italians who served in Bosnia and Kosovo were involved in the clear-up of battlefields and came into close contact with exploded ammunition.

Children with disabilities

The association representing the soldiers, known as Anavafaf, says many of those who have died or are ill have contracted cancer.

In 2002 the Italian defence ministry published a report compiled by independent scientists which found a higher than average number of servicemen were suffering from cancer.

It said there was an excessive number of Hodgkin’s disease victims among Italian Balkan peacekeepers.

A number of children fathered by the soldiers have been born with disabilities.

There are similar reports from soldiers’ associations in Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Both the US and Britain acknowledge the dust from depleted uranium can be dangerous if inhaled but they insist the danger is short-lived and localised.

 
Irish Examiner / January 10, 2007

Witnesses reported renewed air strikes aimed at Islamic militant targets in Somalia today, and a Somali official claimed that a senior al-Qaida figure had been killed.

Also today, a senior Somali politician said US troops were also needed on the ground to fight a Muslim extremist threat.

At least four AC-130 gunship strikes took place today around Ras Kamboni, the rugged area on the Somali coast a few miles from the Kenyan border that the US also attacked Monday, a local resident who declined to give his name told two-way radio operator Doorane Adan Harere in Nairobi, Kenya.

Presidential chief of staff Abdirizak Hassan said at least three US airstrikes have been launched since Monday and that more were likely. US defense department officials, speaking privately yesterday in Washington because the department was not releasing the information, suggested the military was either planning or considering additional strikes in Somalia.

Hassan said Al Qaida suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was killed in a US airstrike early Monday, according to an American intelligence report passed on to Somali authorities.

If confirmed, it would mean the end of an eight-year hunt for a top target of Washington’s war on terror. Fazul, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, was allegedly harboured by a Somali Islamic movement that had challenged this country’s Ethiopian-backed government for power.

In Washington, US government officials said they had no reason to believe that Fazul has been killed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the information’s sensitivity.

In Ethiopia, Prime Minister Meles said that most of the victims in the first US air strike were Somalis, but said identities would not be confirmed until DNA testing is completed.

Fazul, 32, joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan and trained there with Osama bin Laden, chief of the terror network, according to the transcript of an FBI interrogation of a known associate. He had a five-million-dollar bounty on his head for allegedly planning the 1998 attacks on the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

The US campaign is the first US offensive in this African country since 18 American soldiers were killed there in 1993 while on a peacekeeping mission. In addition to trying to capture al Qaida members thought to be fleeing since the Islamic militia began losing ground last month, American officials want to ensure the militants will no longer threaten Somalia’s UN-backed transitional government.

Somalia’s Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aided said today that US special forces were needed on the ground as government forces backed by Ethiopia are unable to capture the last remaining hideouts of suspected extremists.

“They have the know-how and the right equipment to capture these people,” Aided, a former US Marine said.

A senior Somali government official said a small US team was already on the ground, providing military advice to Ethiopian and government forces.

In Washington, two senior Pentagon officials said today they had heard of no plans to put any sizeable contingent of Americans on the ground in Somalia.

Small teams of liaison officers – such as special forces advisers or trainers - are another matter, they said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the subject.

A third official noted that it would be virtually unheard of for the US to be involved in an operation of this size if it didn’t already have “eyes on the ground.” He declined to comment on any plans for future teams and asked not to be identified because the Defence Department is reluctant to talk about special forces.

US troops based in neighbouring Djibouti have been training Ethiopian soldiers for years, mostly in small unit tactics and border security. Ethiopia has the largest military in the region and is America’s closest ally in the Horn of Africa, long considered a hot spot in the war on terror.

More than two dozen men who appear to be paramilitary in civilian clothes were seen in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia in the weeks running up to Ethiopia’s intervention on December 24.

Pentagon, regional US military officials and the US Embassy in Kenya all declined to comment on possible special forces operations in Somalia. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said US forces were not with his troops, but said America was supplying him with battlefield intelligence.

In the capital, Mogadishu, some said the US airstrike would increase anti-American sentiment in the largely Muslim country, where people are already upset by the presence of troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population.

The US strikes also have been criticised internationally, with the African Union, the EU and the UN secretary-general among those expressing concern. But British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a key US ally, insisted in remarks to lawmakers in London Wednesday that it was right to stand up to extremists who were using violence to “get their way” in Somalia.

Leaders of Somalia’s Islamic movement have vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war, and al Qaida’s deputy chief has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on Ethiopian troops.

 
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Baltimore Chronicle / January 10, 2007

Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan? A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are focused on President Bush’s proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies prepare an assault on Iran.
Commentators have expressed puzzlement over President Bush’s appointment of a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The appointment makes sense only if the administration’s attention has shifted from the insurgencies to an attack on Iran.

The Bush administration has recently doubled its aircraft carrier forces and air power in the Persian Gulf. According to credible news reports, the Israeli air force has been making practice runs in preparation for an attack on Iran.
Recently, Israeli military and political leaders have described Israeli machinations to manipulate the American public and their representatives into supporting or joining an Israeli assault on Iran.

Two US carrier task forces or strike groups will certainly congest the Persian Gulf. On January 9 a US nuclear sub collided with a Japanese tanker in the Persian Gulf. Two carrier groups will have scant room for maneuver. Their purpose is either to provide the means for a hard hit on Iran or to serve as sitting ducks for a new Pearl Harbor that would rally Americans behind the new war.

Whether our ships are hit by Iran in retaliation to an attack from Israel or suffer an orchestrated attack by Israel that is blamed on the Iranians, there are certainly far more US naval forces in the Persian Gulf than prudence demands.

Bush’s proposed surge appears to have no real military purpose. The US military opposes it as militarily pointless and as damaging to the US Army and Marine Corps. The surge can only be accomplished by keeping troops deployed after the arrival of their replacements.

Moreover, the increase in numbers that can be achieved in this way are far short of the numbers required to put down the insurgency and civil war.

The only purpose of the surge is to distract Congress while plans are implemented to widen the war.

Weapons inspectors have failed to find a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Most experts say it would be years before Iran could make a weapon even if the Iranian government is actively working on a weapons program. Since the danger, if any, is years away, why is Israel so determined to attack Iran now?

The answer might be that Israel has the chance now. The Bush administration is in its pocket. The White House is working with neoconservatives, not with the American foreign policy community represented by the Iraq Study Group. Neoconservative propagandists are in influential positions in the media. The US Congress is intimidated by AIPAC. The correlation of forces are heavily in Israel’s favor.

Part of the Israeli/neoconservative plan has already been achieved with the destruction of civilian infrastructure and spread of sectarian strife in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. If Iran can be taken out with a powerful air attack that might involve nuclear weapons, Syria would be isolated and Hezbollah would be cut off from Iranian supplies.

Israel has two years remaining to use its American resources to achieve its aims in the Middle East. How influential will Israel and the neoconservatives be with the next president in the wake of a US defeat in Iraq and Israeli defeat in Lebanaon? If the US withdraws its troops from Iraq, as the US military and foreign policy community recommend and as polls show the American public wants, the only effect of Bush’s Iraq invasion will have been to radicalize Muslims against Israel, the US, and US puppet governments in the Middle East. Extremist elements will tout their victory over the US, and the pressures on Israel to accept a realistic accommodation with Palestinians will be over-powering.

Now is the chance–the only chance–for Israel and the neoconservatives to achieve their goal of bringing Muslims to heel, a goal that they have been writing about and working to achieve for a decade.

This goal requires the war to be widened by whatever deceit and treachery necessary to bring the American public along.

The US Congress must immediately refocus its attention from the surge to Iran, the real target of Bush administration aggression.

 
Jim Bronskill

Canadian Press / January 10, 2007

OTTAWA – They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.

Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Defense Department.

Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology.

“You might want to know where the individual is going, what meetings the individual might be having and, above all, with whom,” said David Harris, a former CSIS officer who consults on security matters.

“The more covert or clandestine the activity in which somebody might be involved, the more significant this kind of information could be.”

The counterintelligence office of the U.S. Defense Security Service cites the currency caper as an example of the methods international spies have recently tried to illicitly acquire military technology.

The service’s report, Technology Collection Trends in the U.S. Defense Industry, says foreign-hosted conventions, seminars and exhibits are popular venues for pilfering secrets.

The report is based on an analysis of 971 “suspicious contact reports” submitted in the fiscal year 2005 by security-cleared defence contractors and various official personnel.

“On at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006, cleared defence contractors’ employees traveling through Canada have discovered radio frequency transmitters embedded in Canadian coins placed on their persons,” the report says.

The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved. A service spokeswoman said details of the incidents were classified.

As a result, the type of transmitter in play – and its ultimate purpose – remain a mystery.

However, tiny tracking tags, known as RFIDs, are commonly placed in everything from clothing to key chains to help retailers track inventory.

Each tag contains a miniature antenna that beams a unique ID code to an electronic reader. The information can then be transferred by the reader into a computerized database.

The likely need for such a reading device means the doctored coins could be used to track people only in a controlled setting, not over long distances, said Chris Mathers, a security consultant and former undercover RCMP officer.

“From a technology perspective, it makes no sense,” he said. “To me it’s very strange.”

Then there’s the obvious problem: what if the coin-holder plunks the device into a pop machine?

“You give the guy something with a transmitter that he’s going to spend – I mean, he might have it for an hour,” Mathers said with a chuckle.

Harris speculates recent leaps in miniaturization could allow for a sophisticated transmitter capable of monitoring a target’s extensive travels.

“I think we can be pretty darn confident that the technology is there for the sorts of micro-units that would be required to embed these things in a coin,” he said.

“It’s a brave new world, and greatly concerning on so many levels.”

Passing the coin to an unwitting contractor, particularly in strife-torn countries, could mark the person for kidnapping or assassination, Harris said.

“You could almost, by handing a coin to somebody, achieve the equivalent of the Mafiosi’s last kiss on the cheek.”

The Defense Security Service report says employees of U.S. contractors reported suspicious contacts from individuals, firms or governments of more than 100 countries during the year.

Technologies that generated the most interest were information systems, lasers and optics, aeronautics and sensors.

A foreign approach often meant a simple request for information from the contractor.

But the report also underscores clandestine means of acquiring secrets from U.S. employees, particularly those travelling abroad.

“It is important to recognize copiers and shredders can contain built-in scanners to copy the data.”

Other common methods include placing listening devices in rooms, searching hotel rooms, inspecting electronic equipment and eavesdropping on conversations.

The report, which first came to light in a U.S. newspaper, has since been posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that tracks the intelligence world and promotes government openness.

Alan Bellows

Damn Interesting / January 9, 2007

On 22 November 1987, sports anchor Dan Roan of Chicago’s WGN-TV News Network was narrating the video of the day’s football highlights when something highly unusual happened. The pictures on the station monitors in the studio suddenly began to jitter and twitch. Across Chicago, countless other televisions did the same, as Dan’s clips of the Bears game were lost in a brief flurry of static and replaced with the sinister, grinning visage of Max Headroom. Most viewers were familiar with the techno-stuttering character from the recently canceled television program bearing his name, and from advertisements for the New Coke soft drink. But there was something unsettling and surreal about this rubber-masked imposter.

As a low buzzing sound belched from thousands of televisions throughout Chicago, the intruder’s image swayed and wiggled in front of a slowly rotating background. Half a minute later, as suddenly as it had appeared, the strange scene was gone. As Chicago’s televisions reverted back to the world of the ordinary, the visibly flustered sports reporter reappeared, and commented, “Well, if you’re wondering what happened… so am I.”

WGN-TV’s on-site technicians neutralized the “pirate” transmission by switching to an alternate transmitter, but the attacker’s motives and methods were a mystery. It was not the first time a commercial television broadcast had been commandeered, but very few prior attempts had been successful. The previous year a satellite dish salesman going by the fanciful pseudonym “Captain Midnight” had succeeded in briefly replacing HBO’s signal with a complaint about their prices, and earlier in 1987 an employee of the Christian Broadcasting Network had hijacked the Playboy Channel’s signal. Both of these prior offenders had clear motives, and the authorities had successfully located and prosecuted the troublemakers. But this new instance of signal hacking was much more perplexing.

The Captain Midnight message

In spite of the quick actions of WGN-TV engineers, Chicago had not yet seen the last of of this new signal-plundering pirate. Almost exactly two hours after the first unplanned detour from normality, at 11:15pm, viewers of the PBS affiliate WTTW were absorbing an episode of the British sci-fi series Doctor Who when their TV pictures danced sporadically for a moment. With a randomly gyrating panel of corrugated metal used as a backdrop, the unnerving Max Headroom doppelganger launched into an eccentric diatribe in a highly distorted voice. With no engineers on location at the transmission tower, WTTW employees looked on helplessly as the intruder seized control of their broadcast to say the following:

This symphony of strangeness reached its crescendo when the rubber-masked imposter dropped his trousers, exposed his backside, and weathered a spirited flyswatter spanking from a female assistant. Moments later the picture went dark, and the surreal signal terminated in a flash of static. Viewers were dumped back into the pedestrian world of Doctor Who as though the bizarre buttocks-swatting incident had never happened. Many were confused and troubled by the display. The following day a number of viewers contacted the station to lodge their complaints regarding the “nudity.” In a television interview, one flustered Doctor Who fan summed up his reaction: “I got so upset that I wanted to bust the TV set… I really did.”

The Federal Communications Commission and the FBI sprang into action, launching independent pirate-hunting squads to unmask the disturbing messenger. It was clear that the fellow had a rare knack for electronics and microwave equipment. WTTW’s uplink antenna was atop the 1,454 foot Sears tower in downtown Chicago, and investigators concluded that the “signal pirate” smothered the legitimate broadcast by sending a more powerful signal to this antenna. According to some experts in broadcasting, a rig of sufficient power could be purchased for about $25,000– or perhaps rented for a few thousand dollars– and the disassembled equipment could be transported using a few large suitcases. Agents believed that the perpetrator either beamed his message from the rooftop of an adjacent building, or that he somehow gained access to a powerful ground-based transmitter. But Max had covered his tracks well, there was no clear indication of how he had executed his sophisticated attack.

His motive was even more puzzling than his methods. The enigmatic message may have been due to a grudge against WGN-TV, since the station’s call letters stand for “World’s Greatest Newspaper,” and he makes a reference to “greatest world newspaper nerds”; and he also mentions Chuck Swirsky, another WGN sports reporter at the time. But given the resources and risks involved in commandeering a commercial signal, the message seems disproportionate. At that time, the law allowed for a maximum penalty of $100,000 and one year in prison for such signal piracy. Perhaps the intrusion was merely a proof-of-concept– a precursor of future ambitions– or perhaps there is more meaning to the message than what is immediately evident.

The Max Headroom television show had been set in a post-apocalyptic future where evil television corporations controlled the world, and freedom fighters spread their messages by zipping their pirate signal into live television feeds, and this subtle social commentary was not lost on investigators.

Whatever the impostor’s intentions, he certainly took significant risks to bring his nebulous message to the televisions of Chicago. The exhaustive investigations by the three-letter agencies turned up nothing substantial, and over time the FCC and FBI resigned their manhunts without any significant insight into who he was, how he did it, or why. To this day the unexplained transmission of 22 November 1987 remains an historic curiosity, since it represents the last such signal of its kind… no other instance of a complete hijacking of a commercial broadcast has occurred in the US in the twenty years since. For now the mysterious masked Max Headroom lookalike remains at large, but his backside may never truly be safe from the mighty flyswatter of justice.

Suggested by: ESJ

Press Association / January 10, 2007

The Foreign Office is investigating reports of British casualties in US air strikes on al Qaida suspects in Somalia.

The attacks came amid claims that support for the Islamic militant movement had come from the UK.

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ new secretary general Ban Ki-moon voiced fears on Wednesday that the air strikes could increase hostilities and harm civilians.

Following days of fierce fighting in the African country, the United States launched a series of air strikes against Islamic extremists it suspects of having links to al Qaida.

Ethiopia’s prime minister has said that many international terrorists had been killed, injured or captured in the fighting - including Britons.

“Notwithstanding the motives for this reported military action,” Ban’s spokeswoman Michele Montas said, “the secretary general is concerned about the new dimension this kind of action could introduce to the conflict and the possible escalation of hostilities that may result.”

Somalia’s deputy prime minister has claimed that much of the funding for the Islamist militants was coming from Britain and that some of their fighters were British and American passport holders.

There was also condemnation from British-based Islamic groups of the US intervention in the conflict.

Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia, a largely Muslim country, last month to prevent an Islamic movement from ousting the weak, internationally recognised government from its lone stronghold in the west of the country.

Leaders of the Islamic movement have vowed to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war in Somalia, and al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden’s deputy has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on the Ethiopian troops. There were reports at the weekend that British passport holders were involved in the fighting, which has claimed scores of lives.

TIME / January 10, 2007

Said Ali, 21, is a volunteer fighter for the Shabab militia, the feared enforcers of the Islamic Courts Union. The U.S. brands the organization as an ally of al-Qaeda; in reality, it is also a nationalist anti-warlord movement that contains many Muslim moderates and has no international ambitions. He was 11 when he left his village in southern Somalia and traveled to Mogadishu to look for an education. But all public education had collapsed with the last functioning government in 1991, leaving private school the only option. And Said Ali, like most of his generation, was unable to afford the fees. Instead, he found a job as a porter, and then graduated to selling shirts and kikoi wraps by the side of the road. In time, he was given a job inside a clothes store in Bakara Market, where he earned about 10,000 Somali shillings (80 cents) a day. But often he would be forced to hand over his earnings to armed militias blocking the roads on his way home. He came out of hiding in central Mogadishu to meet TIME’s Alex Perry.

TIME: How did you join the Shabab?

Ali: I was very angry with the militias. I decided to go to the training camps because I was tired of being robbed at roadblocks. At that time, before the Courts came to power, you could see someone kill a friend of yours, you could see a friend of yours robbed, the situation was as bad as that. The Shabab were good people. They trained you to defend your people…. There were reserve troops and frontline troops. And after 2004, we fought against the warlords and thankfully we were successful.

TIME: What sort of training did you get?

Ali: How to handle a gun, how to defend, how to attack, how to drive a car, first aid, how to repair a weapon and endurance exercises. I would end my work then go for training from 4 o’clock until midnight. We were trained at a base in Mogadishu.

TIME: Tell me about the war these past few weeks against Ethiopia.

Ali: My position was at the front. Our plan was to sandwich the Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) at their base in Baidoa (in southwest Somalia). But then the Ethiopians crossed the border behind us. We fought them, but there were bad people helping us, gangsters and thugs, there was misinformation, and this caused our defeat.

TIME: Was it hard fighting?

Ali: Many died from their injuries. It was hand to hand fighting. You have to kill people with your knife. One of my group climbed onto an Ethiopian tank and dropped a grenade inside the tank, but there was no blast and the tank just drove away. It was our duty to die at the front instead of being under occupation here in Mogadishu. Everyone prayed they would be killed at the front.

TIME: Did you have any doubts about what you were doing?

Ali: No, it was excellent. To defend your religion and your country — which is the same thing — was excellent. It wasn’t our intention to fight Ethiopia; our purpose was to defend the people from the warlords. But it was excellent.

TIME: How did you get away?

Ali: We threw our guns down and took off our uniforms and set off on foot for the city. A friend sold his gun to some local people and paid for a bus ride for three of us back to Mogadishu. I went back to my workplace — now I work in a public telephone booth, connecting calls and selling pre-paid cards.

TIME: What’s the plan now?

Ali: We want the Ethiopians out and we are preparing to fight them. We are ready, we are in Mogadishu. A few pockets of us are outside. We have a full connection with our leaders, and they are also inside Mogadishu. And when we start to fight, other people will come from Mogadishu to join us. We will come back more powerful than before, and we will clean those traitors among us away.

TIME: Some people believe you have connections with al Qaeda.

Ali: The warlords used to send people out of the country, saying there were al-Qaeda. They took one of my neighbors to Addis Ababa and said he was an al-Qaeda terrorist. But the Ethiopians said he was not, and they did not want him. And the man came back to Mogadishu and told us what had happened to him. That’s why we know that we have to defend our religion against Ethiopia.

TIME: What do you make of [al-Qaeda leader] Ayman al-Zawahiri’s call for Somalis to rise up against Ethiopia?

Ali: We are not a special group. We are the Somali people. What we’re doing is in the interests of all Somalis. People used to criticize the Courts when they were in power, saying they pressured people and did not allow this or that. But now people will see what happens without the Courts. If the Ethiopians go away, the Courts will come back and peace will come. I cannot speak English or Arabic — the warlords did that to me. I’ve never seen a government in my life, and the Ethiopians took away the only security I’ve ever experienced. People think our group is something else — al-Qaeda. We’re not. We fight for the people. We fight for Somalia. If this government understands that its people need security, then that will be ok. But security has to come. And if al-Zawahiri says the people should do this or that, it could be right or wrong. He is not from here.

TIME: Have you ever seen any foreigners working with the Courts? [Reliable witness reports estimate that several hundred foreign jihadi fighters helped the Courts. ]

Ali: I have been with Sheikh [Ahmed] Sharif and Sheikh [Hassan Dahir] Aweys and I also heard that al-Qaeda foreigners were fighting in Somalia. But I have not seen any.

TIME: What do you make of the U.S. role in the region?

Ali: It’s Americans who are now attacking us. Americans are using Ethiopians to kill us. If America is an enemy of Islam, then I am an enemy of America — and America does many things against Islam. When the warlords were here, America wasn’t around. So when we defeated the warlords, why did they come back? But the Ethiopians are not just coming to kill Muslims. They also want our long coast. This is the game.

TIME: Isn’t the need of the hour to unite and back a national government?

Ali: I do not see any government here. I see only Ethiopians. I don’t see a single Somali soldier.

TIME: You’re not going to give the new government a chance?

Ali: Their chance is over. [Prime Minister Ali Mohammed] Gedi and [President Abduallah] Yusuf are nothing. They never get out of their pick-ups. What chance can they have after this?

TIME: What the plan for starting the rebellion?

Ali: The people and the Ethiopians will clash. [Hours after this interview, Somali demonstrators did fight Ethiopian troops at several points across the city.] And at that time, we will attack. We want the people to face the Ethiopians and when the people are ready, we will take action.

 
Jeffrey Gettleman

IHT / January 10, 2007

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Mogadishu exploded in violence Wednesday morning after insurgents attacked a government barracks during the night and soldiers responded by sealing off large swaths of the city and searching house to house for weapons.

The raids immediately sparked resistance, and squads of Ethiopian soldiers and troops loyal to the transitional government poured into the streets, where they battled outraged residents and a handful of masked insurgents.

From dawn through early afternoon, the pop of gunfire and the boom of explosives echoed across Mogadishu, Somalia’s chaotic capital. But it is difficult to tell how many people here actually support the growing insurgency against Somalia’s transitional government and the Ethiopian troops backing it up.

On Wednesday, a group of masked men stood on the steps of a Mogadishu mosque and announced that they were Somalia’s new freedom fighters. They were met by jeers.

“Why can’t you hit anything then?” shouted a woman, referring to a botched grenade attack earlier in the day that completely missed an Ethiopian patrol and destroyed a house instead. “Were you scared? Were your fingers trembling?”

Regardless of the insurgents’ popularity or lack of it, violence is increasing. And the transitional government, which entered the capital two weeks ago for the first time since it was formed in 2004, now faces a critical test: how quickly, if at all, can it pacify a notoriously dangerous city, bristling with guns and split by deep clan divisions?

Most of the violence on Wednesday was concentrated in strongholds of the Ayr sub clan, a powerful lineage group closely connected to Somalia’s Islamist movement that had controlled much of the country until Ethiopia got heavily involved last month.

On the other hand, neighborhoods of the Darod clan of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the transitional president, were quiet. Many Darod members said they were happy about the weapons raids, especially the ones in Ayr neighborhoods.

Clan rivalries have long been the curse of Somalia, the cause of its civil wars, its famines and its state of suspended decay. It seems that this new chapter is no different.

The insurgents are still a mysterious bunch, but many people suspect they are members of the Islamist movement. After getting routed by Ethiopian-led forces in a conventional military matchup, the Islamists vowed to fight on as an underground army.

As each night passes, more and more government troops are getting hit. On Tuesday night, insurgents launched one of their boldest attacks yet, firing rocket-propelled grenades from two pickup trucks at an army barracks in central Mogadishu. Initial reports indicated that several soldiers were killed and that the insurgents escaped.

Doctors at Medina hospital said Wednesday afternoon that 15 people were admitted for gunshot wounds in 24 hours, including 3 government soldiers. The violence from the past week has filled the hospital’s 65 beds, leaving bleeding men and women curled up on the floor and under acacia trees in the courtyard.

“This is not something that is going to stop,” said Dahir Mohammed, head of medical department. “Until the Ethiopians leave, people will be determined to kill them.”

The Islamist leaders, meanwhile, have fled to a jungle in southern Somalia along the Kenyan border where they are being hunted down by Ethiopian troops, with the help of American forces.

Somali officials on Wednesday said that Abdallah Mohammed Fazul, a suspected terrorist accused of planning the bombings against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, had been killed in recent American airstrikes in southern Somalia.

But U.S. officials quickly distanced themselves from that claim, saying on Wednesday that they had no such evidence and were not even sure Fazul was among the terrorist suspects hiding in the jungle with the Islamists.

An American AC-130 gunship pounded the area Sunday, the first time U.S. forces have been publicly deployed in Somalia since 1994.

Since June, when the Islamist movement rose to power, U.S. officials have complained that Islamist leaders were sheltering terrorists connected to the embassy bombings, which killed more than 200 people.

On Wednesday, residents in southern Somalia said the warplanes returned, though those reports could not be independently verified. The Ethiopian Air Force has also been pummeling the area for much of the past week.

Thousands of Ethiopian troops are essentially occupying Somalia and many Somalis are increasingly beginning to resent it.

Barwaqho Mohammed Osman, a mother of two, stood in a central Mogadishu street Wednesday with plastic bags of groceries in her hands and no way to get home. Ethiopian soldiers told her that her neighborhood had been sealed off because of the raids.

When Osman tried to plead with them, witnesses said, the soldiers clicked the safeties off their guns and told her to go.

“Why did our president bring in these people?” she asked. “They are occupiers, and if they keep this up, they will fail at every step.”

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu.

 
TERENCE HUNT

AP / January 10, 2007

Unswayed by anti-war passions, President Bush to say Wednesday he will send 21,500 additional U.S. forces to Iraq to break the cycle of violence and “hasten the day our troops begin coming home.”

He acknowledged making mistakes in earlier security efforts in Baghdad.
The troop buildup will push the American presence in Iraq toward its highest level and put Bush on a collision course with the new Democratic Congress. It also runs counter to advice from some generals.

Bush was to announce the buildup in a prime-time speech to the nation. Excerpts of his remarks were released in advance by the White House.

The president was to say Iraq must meet its responsibilities, too _ but he put no deadlines on Baghdad to do so.

“America’s commitment is not open-ended,” he planned to say. “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people.”

Bush readily acknowledged making mistakes in previous efforts to quell the near-anarchy in Baghdad. “There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents,” the president said. “And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.”

He said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had promised that U.S. forces would have a free hand and that “political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.”

Neocons are backing the same warlords that slaughtered US troops in 1993

Steve Watson

Infowars.net / January 10, 2007

This week has seen the latest example of the US power elite bombing a broken-backed country in the name of the global ‘war on terror’. The phantom menace of ‘Al Qaeda’ has again provided a pretext for the further destruction and destabilization of struggling state, this time Somalia, in order that the Western elite power-mongers can move in and control its valuable resources.

The Bush Administration is essentially asking us to expect to believe that it is bombing a country in an attempt to kill three terrorists– Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people, and accomplices Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Talha al-Sudani.

The Somali government has today claimed that four more airstrikes have been carried out, killing more innocent people. The US has denied this. Also today, a senior Somali politician said US troops were needed on the ground to fight a Muslim extremist threat.

Monday’s strike reportedly killed around 200 people, including Canadian and British citizens.

Critics of the action have said it could misfire by creating strong Somali resentment and feeding Islamist militancy. Analysts fear that US interfering and backing of one Somali faction against another could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swath of East Africa.

There is no doubt that this is a part of the escalation of the wider war of aggression planned and executed by the neoconservatives who published their Project For the New American Century before they came to power.

“Before this, it was just tacit support for Ethiopia. Now the U.S. has fingerprints on the intervention and is going to be held more accountable,” said Horn of Africa expert Ken Menkhaus. “This has the potential for a backlash both in Somalia and the region.”

The truth is that, once again, the terror myth is being promulgated as an excuse to unleash violence against a largely innocent Muslim population, and one that has struggled for a peaceful existence for decades.

As prominent blogger Kurt Nimmo has stated:

“In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Shariah, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.”

Last December, the popular ICU lost control of the country after a short lived form of peace. The UIC had controlled Mogadishu and other areas of the country after defeating several local warlords who held Somalia in the grip of terror since the collapse of central rule in 1991. The Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

15,000 Ethiopian troops, with U.S. backing, invaded in an illegal war of aggression and ousted the IUC leaders who fled to the southern-most tip of the country.

Many Somalis in areas controlled by the UIC welcomed the security and order that the Islamists brought to the country. The Bush Administration is playing on reports that the Islamists are ‘Taliban like’ and is lumping them in with ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists.

But the UIC does not appear to be a monolithic organization and seems split between moderates who want peace and dialogue and more right wing Muslims who want to impose Muslim Sharia law. In any case neither have the means or the desire to commit an almighty Jihad against the West, they are simply concerned with creating some kind of law and order within Somalia.

The US response has been to provide major funding to the warlord groupings, via the Ethiopian army, that are opposed to the UIC. Before bombing the hell out of villages on Monday, the Bush Administration has long been providing backing to ruthless killers intent on keeping Somalia in civil strife because it benefits each warlord’s plundering rule to keep the nation carved up.

These are the same marauding warlords who drove out American forces in 1993, killing and maiming 18 US troops in the streets then dragging their bodies around in celebration.

Many of these warlords were part of the puppet regime transitional “government” that had been organized in Kenya in 2004. But the “government” was so devoid of internal support that it had to turn to Somalia’s arch enemy, Ethiopia, to maintain control.

So why are the US power elite funding sectarian warlords in Somalia and now bombing Islamist areas of the country?

Because the control of Somalia via puppet government, just like in Iraq, is a key factor in the Neocon plan to “shrink the non-integrating gap” of the new world order, as Thomas Barnett’s ‘New Map’ of the world has it.

As with Iraq, the real agenda is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea.

Click to enlarge

Not surprising then that multiple US warships and Ticonderoga-class cruisers are now stalking the coastline off Somalia and routinely sending intelligence-gathering flights over the country. The location is also prime in order to be able to instantly mobilize forces for any conflict with Iran at the drop of a hat.

The American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips also hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” - i.e. kill the “Islamofascists” and install a weak and pandering government that could never control its own resources well enough to compete with the Western global elite.

“Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001,” writes Larry Chin. “This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.”

“A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia,” notes F. William Engdahl. “Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.”

Of course the American public will simply be told that we’re after ‘Al Qaeda’ because of 9/11, and they will buy it again. No matter that operatives involved in the African bombings at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were admittedly working for the CIA. Nah, that’s a side issue, LOOK AMERICA, Al Zawahiri said Somalia is Islamofascist, so we gotta bomb the hell out of it and control it’s oil - just get used to it.