US Encourages Ethiopia War With Somalia in Pressing for Resolution

In an attempt to strengthen the CENTCOM region under US zionist control, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is pushing a new U.N. Security Council resolution that experts in the region believe could spark a wider war in the Horn of Africa.

The US-sponsored UN resolution, which would exempt a proposed African "peace support" force from a longstanding arms embargo on Somalia, is due to be taken up by the UN Security Council this week despite warnings by the powerful Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that it will oppose any deployment of foreign forces on behalf of the Ethiopia-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which controls limited parts of the country.

Somali observers point out that Somalis have been at war for 30 years without a common enemy, and the US-Ethiopian moves against Somalia would provide one, giving an opportunity to unite the war-torn nation and extend a common Somali territory over Ogaden, Djibouti and other somali ethnic areas of the neighboring countries.

Given that Somalis have already succeeded in driving US troops from their soil during operations that were carried out under the guise of humanitarian aid under Clinton, the possibility that the US will yet again embroil itself directly or by proxy in the creation of a war deemed to be in US interests but that will ultimately backfire, is not to be taken lightly.

The International Crisis Group has already warned that "the draft resolution the U.S. intends to present to the U.N. Security Council... could trigger all-out war in Somalia and destabilise the entire Horn of Africa region by escalating the proxy conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea to dangerous new levels."

The ICU, which gained control of most of Somalia after defeating the forces of U.S.-backed warlords in Somalia last summer is sure to take the passing of any such resolution as a serious provocation. The unpopular Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawi, backed by Britain's Tony Blair, has a history of generating conflicts with Eritrea to divert attention from his regime, and is threatening Somalia while also conducting violent crackdowns in the Ogaden region bordering Somalia.

The ICU has popular support from the Somalis in the areas they control, while the one entity that the U.S. supports, the TFG, doesn't have control of anything beyond Baidowa, its interim capital, where Ethiopia, according to diplomatic sources, already has between 2,000 and 8,000 troops protecting the TFG and training its security forces in and around Baidowa.

The United States of America's State Department's top Africa official, Assistant Secretary Jendayi Frazer, has long championed a hard line against the ICU, believing them all to be "terrorists, and you can't deal with them", according to a diplomatic source quoted by IPS.

The ICU denies that there are any "Al Qaida" operatives in the country, while internationally there is yet little hard evidence that Al Qaida exists outside of US media and as a CIA creation in the past, leading some US analysts to term the alleged organisation "Al-Ciaduh".

Source: http://mathaba.net/news/?x=546789