Pirates of the Horn: U.S. Backs Reign of Crime and Death in Somalia

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

Written by Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
The civilian death count from the American-backed "regime change" operation in Somalia is approaching 10,000, with more than 800 killed in the Terror War slaughter since June.

The figures, compiled by the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization in Mogadishu, are almost certainly an undercount, given the rampant chaos that has ravaged the country in the wake of the Ethiopian invasion, and the Muslim practice of quick burial of the dead. But they are horrific enough, especially when added to another statistic released by the United Nations last month: 3.7 million Somalis are now in need of outside aid in order to survive. This is more than one-third of the entire population.

I have written often of what is happening in Somalia, and the American government's direct role in it, and the total silence of America's bipartisan political establishment about this vast atrocity. I won't recapitulate the horror and terror -- and American complicity -- here at the moment, but links to many of these pieces can be found in this recent post.

Meanwhile, a new piece in The Times is worth noting. It is offered as a sidebar to a larger story on the continuing plague of piracy based in Somalia, but it contains some telling facts and a good capsule description of the origins of the Terror War operation.

For one thing, it notes something that is almost never mentioned in any story about Somalia, neither in the very rare stories about the conflict itself or the rather more numerous stories about piracy and its effects on commercial shipping (an issue far more important that the lives of 10,000 innocent human beings, of course): the fact that the main backers and bankrollers of the vicious pirate gangs "are linked to the Western-backed government."