Ethiopian troops vanquish US-backed Tigray rebels (File photo)Chinese foreign ministers have traditionally marked the new year by visiting the African continent. Wang Yi’s 2022 African tour begins with Eritrea against the backdrop of the US strategy in the Horn of Africa to gain control of the strategically vital Red Sea that connects Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal.
1 July 2021 — — Origin: New Eastern Outlook
The Biden State Department has just named career diplomat Jeffrey Feltman to be Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa. Given the geopolitical powder keg in the region and given the dark history of Feltman, especially in Lebanon and during the infamous CIA Arab Spring interventions after 2009, the relevant question is whether Washington has decided to explode the entire region from Ethiopia down to Egypt into a repeat of the Syria chaos only far more dangerous. And it’s not only the US which is active in the region.
28 November 2020 — The Ghion Journal
Evelyn Waugh would have a field day with what’s happening in Ethiopia right now. The talented author of Brideshead Revisited and Scoop was a racist little creep sent out by a rightwing, pro-Fascist newspaper in 1935 to cover Mussolini’s invasion. Just to give you an idea of the man, he wrote home to a friend, “I have got to hate the ethiopians more each day goodness they are lousy & i hope the organmen gas them to buggery [sic].”
9 December 2013 — Global Research
When one thinks of the word ’agenda’ a few obvious meanings may come to mind – a list of things to do, a plan for a meeting, a goal to achieve or perhaps even an ideology. In the context of international development aid an agenda often means something altogether very different – a plan or goal that guides someone’s behaviour and is often not explicitly stated. Development aid agendas do not always reflect the needs and desires of the people they propose to serve. More often than not development agendas serve those who institute and organise them. Be it international development donors or governments who receive billions in aid subsidies, development aid and assistance is hardly ever free from condition or expectation on either the donor or receiver side.
6 February 2013 — Black Agenda Report
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
U.S. drone bases are multiplying on the African continent. Niger has just “given the green light to accepting American surveillance drones on its soil”; neighboring Burkina Faso already has one; two new drone facilities are opening in Ethiopia and the Seychelles; and UN peacekeepers in Congo want U.S. drones. Drones have terrorized Somalia from AFRICOM’s base in Djibouti for the past seven years. Continue reading
23 March 2012 — Pambazuka
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23 March 2012 — Pambazuka
The authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa
Pambazuka News is delivered free to you with the support of donations from Friends of Pambazuka.
18 March 2012— Information Clearing House
Up to 20 US Troops Behind Kandahar Bloodbath/Rape – Afghan Probe
By RT
He appealed to the international community to ensure that the responsible parties were brought to justice, stressing the Afghan parliament would not rest until the killers were prosecuted.
20 November 2011 — Stop NATO
28 October 2011 — Stop NATO
24 July, 2010 — Black Agenda Report
The U.S. war against Somalia expands outwards and “has now blown back to Uganda,” the U.S. ally that, “along with the minority Tutsi dictatorship in Rwanda, is America’s most reliable mercenary force in Black Africa.” Ethiopia and Kenya prepare to join Uganda in an offensive against the Somali resistance, to save America’s puppet mini-state in Mogadishu.
The bombing in Kampala must be understood in the context of the planned expansion of the war in Somalia.”
The bombs that exploded in Kampala earlier this month, killing 76 people and unleashing a wave of arrests and deportations by the Ugandan regime, are chickens coming home to roost from the U.S.-sponsored war in Somalia. U.S. corporate media routinely fail to note that the Ugandan military and other U.S. African allies are all that prevent the farcical U.S.-backed mini-government in Somalia from being evicted from the few neighborhoods it still controls in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. The rest of south and central Somalia belongs to the Shabab and another Islamist group, that earned their nationalist credentials in fighting Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia with full U.S. backing in late 2006. The invasion interrupted a brief period of relative peace in Somalia and plunged the country into what United Nations officials called the “worst humanitarian crisis in Africa – worse than Darfur.”
12 March, 2010 — Mail & Guardian
20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
March 11, 2010 “Mail & Guardian” — Awassa, Ethiopia — We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* — the size of 20 soccer fields.
The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.
14 August, 2009 — Atlantic Free Press
There is apparently no path blazed by George W. Bush that Barack Obama will not eagerly follow. Surges, assassinations, indefinite detention, defense of torture, senseless wars and rampant militarism — in just a few short months, we’ve seen it all.
To this dismaying record of complicity and continuity, we can add an increasing direct involvement in the horrific, hydra-headed conflict in Somalia, whose latest round of fiery hell was instigated by the American-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in late 2006. Under Bush, U.S. forces were deeply and directly enmeshed in the murderous action, dropping bombs on fleeing refugees, ‘renditioning’ other refugees to the tender mercies of Ethiopia’s notorious prisons, and even sending in death squads to clean up after missile strikes and bombings. (For background, see ‘Silent Surge: Bipartisan Terror War Intensifies in Somalia.’)
6 July, 2009 — Foreign Policy In Focus
It’s time for some straight talk on U.S. foreign policy as it relates to Africa. While Obama administration officials and the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) representatives insist that U.S. foreign policy towards Africa isn’t being militarized, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. While Africans condemned U.S. military policy in Africa under the Bush administration, the Obama administration has not only mirrored Bush’s approach, but has in fact enhanced it. President George W. Bush established Africa as a foreign policy priority in 2003, when he announced that 25% of oil imported to the United States should come from Africa. Like the Cold War, the Global War on Terror establishes a rationale for bolstering U.S. military presence and support in Africa. Yet official pronouncement of U.S. policy is routinely presented as if neither of these two developments occurred. Unfortunately, the more evasive we are about our intentions on the continent, the more we invite not only skepticism, but even resistance.
Africa has historically been less of a priority to U.S. foreign policy planners than other regions, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. This was certainly the case when George W. Bush took office in 2001. But during the course of his tenure, ‘Africa’s position in the U.S. strategic spectrum . . . moved from peripheral to central.'[1] There is no better evidence for this development than the most recent and significant change to the U.S. military structure — the establishment of the U.S. Africa command, commonly referred to as AFRICOM.
So what is AFRICOM? To answer this question, we need to understand one of the principal means of organizing the U.S. military’s global presence. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has carved the globe into regions, and these regions fall under the ‘area of responsibility’ of geographic combatant commands, the ‘prisms through which the Pentagon views the world.'[2] The function of these combatant commands is to coordinate, integrate, and manage all U.S. defense assets and operations for their respective regions.[3] Until recently the globe was covered by five U.S. combatant commands: European (EUCOM), Pacific (PACOM), Northern (NORTHCOM), Southern (SOUTHCOM), and Central (CENTOCOM).[4] On October 1, 2008 AFRICOM was added as the sixth U.S. combatant command, its area of responsibility being the continent of Africa, with the exception of Egypt.
2 December, 2008 Global Research,
‘The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population has built for the last fifteen years.’ — Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, Democracy Now
Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that’s all changed and there’s talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdraw all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
May 13, 2008
On May 1, the BBC website reported an attack on Somalia with the words:
“Air raid kills Somali militants.â€
One might think the BBC’s headline would identify the agency responsible for the bombing, but the first few sentences also shed no light:
“The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an overnight air strike.
“Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab’s military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.
“Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.†(news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7376760.stm)
Only in the fourth sentence, was responsibility ascribed:
“A US military spokesman told the BBC that it had attacked what he called a known al-Qaeda target in Somalia.â€
27 July 2004
Have you noticed something missing in the media of late? Have you noticed how Iraq has virtually disappeared from front-page coverage to be replaced by the latest ‘Third World disaster’ – Sudan?
Conspiracy? Well if redirecting people’s concerns to something less ‘controversial’ than Iraq can be a considered a conspiracy, then yes it’s a conspiracy. After all, who can’t fail to be moved by the obligatory images of starving Africans and the predictable headlines eg “Congress presses for armed action to halt Sudan ‘genocide’” (London’s Telegraph 24/07/04). Millions have been raised for the ‘victims’ by an online Website for the latest catastrophe to beset yet another African ‘basket case’.
The New Dark Age 