Not the Salvation Army
ALL good Western Christian souls will now be able to sit
December 21, 1992
SOMALIA August 1990 that the US has got the UN Security Council to legitimize its decision to send troops after the event. It is also the second time that the UN flag has been placed in the hands of US troops without even the formality of the latter donning blue down to their Christmas turkey in peace of mind. Instead of appalling images of Somali children reduced to skeletons, surrounded by flies, their TV screens will be filled with pictures of smiling United States Marines, cradling in their virile arms tiny Somali infants who have learnt once more to smile - at least for the duration of the shot.
SALAH JABER - December 10, 1992
W ment of the US intervention in Somalia is not the big scandal, it is nonetheless hard to stomach. Suddenly, there are far more reporters in Somalia to cover the arrival of the US troops than ever went there to report on the famine, despite the fact that famine has been endemic in the
Horn of Africa for several years.
But, now, of course, media coverage has a special function; not to alert the world to the suffering of Somalis, but to back up an
American military expedition, the third and last operation of its kind under George
Bush - after Panama and the Gulf.
The hypocrisy is hitting new heights.
"We wil not tolerate armed gangs...
condemning their own people to starvation", George Bush stated on December 4.
This from a man who has made the Iraqi people pay for the tyrant that oppresses them by an embargo whose results in terms of hunger and the death of children hardly get a mention in the media. And we may ask how many press teams have covered the human impact of the US blockade against Cuba, the first country in the Americas to have done away with illiteracy.
The word "humanitarian" is entering the lexicon of great power doublespeak alongside "pacification". For the benefit of those who be tempted by the sound of this word, here are some facts that reveal the real meaning of this new American intervention and its predictable consequences.
Bush inaugurates Clinton
• The rather unusual decision by an outgoing president, two months before the inauguration of his successor, to send troops abroad on a mission that is not gallant last stand without risks, is not the some may imagine. This is not how the
United States is run.
The operation has a far more devious motive: the military-industrial complex that Bush represents is uneasy at the coming into office of a man who has neither hidden, nor apologized for, his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Now, Clinton will take up office in the middle of a foreign military intervention, the main "achievement" of the Bush presidency having been the revival of such interventionism, after Reagan's rather unconvincing efforts in this direction. The pretext has been chosen with particular care and can be easily justified through a media blitz and the usual hypocritical speeches. The Somalia expedition has 66% public support, according to a Newsweek
The intervention in Somalia, a country in the forefront of the arc of crisis of which the Gulf is the main prize, is in strategic continuity with the Iraqi operation. Somalia is a Muslim country and borders on Sudan, a key ally of Iran, the stronghold of Islamic fundamentalism — the new bugbear of the West after the "collapse of Communism".
An intervention in Somalia is thus highly significant at a time when repeated high-level leaks to the media seem to be preparing for an attack on Iran (which has opposed the intervention.
### Consolidation of new world order
• The Somali expedition marks an important new step in the consolidation of the "new world order" inaugurated after the Gulf War. This has three key elements:
(1) The US is the global cop; (2) it acts under United Nations auspices and (3) gets others, and particularly rich allies who benefit from US armed protection, to pay for its military operations.
The first element is blatant: once again the US has been more ready to intervene than powers much closer to the theatre of operations - France, for example, which moreover has a base on the neighbouring territory of Djibouti.
The second element is becoming a reflex. This is the second time since helmets and with a highly elastic mandate, authorizing the use of force. This is also the first time that the "right to interference" in a country's internal affairs has been Once more, the US has imposed its will on the UN's member states. The latter had already decided to establish a 3,500 strong force entrusted with the job of protecting the distribution of food aid in Somalia. The deployment of this force, which did not include American troops, had just started.
The 500-strong Pakistani contingent had just arrived when Bush decided to move in. The African states, knowing that they cannot prevent the intervention (since only the five permanent members of the Security Council have the right to veto), have (vainly, of course) asked that the US troops be put under UN command.
Lastly, contributions are being collected. As in the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and Japan are first in line to pick up the bill. The cost of this expedition will surely be greater than that of the food aid sent to Somalia.
### Heavy civilian casualties likely
• Taking this into account, it is clear that an intervention by Third World troops under UN command would have been far less expensive, even if no more "disinterested". Quite possibly the 3,500 strong force already being organized by the UN would have been enough to assure to distribution of food. And it is also quite possible that the intervention itself will claim more lives than it saves.
Unlike in the Gulf War, where the disposition of forces allowed the massacre of
Iraqi forces and the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure without direct massacres of civilians, the Somali militias operate among the population and in the urban centres. The use of heavy weaponry by US troops in these conditions risks big losses and serious "mistakes", as was the case in
Panama.
The disquiet voiced by many in the humanitarian organizations has been hardly reported or actually repressed - this is the case with the Somali Rakiya Omaar who has been suspended from her post as director of the American organization Africa Watch.
In the current climate of systematic mystification, it is essential to relentlessly iemind people that the United States army 3 is not the Salvation Army! *
The tragedy at Ayodhya
ON December 6, in the city of Ayodhya in the northern state of
International Viewpoint # 241 • December 21, 1992
INDIA turbulent waters of economic liberalization, the Congress wants to harness the BJP's political authoritarianism, aggressive Indian nationalism, economic liberalism and social base among the rural and urban nouveaux
Uttar Pradesh, tens of thousands of Hindu extremists tore down the sixteenth century mosque - which they claim was built on the ruins of a temple commemorating the "birthplace" of the mythical Lord Rama.
Thus far, the ensuing violence across the country has claimed nearly 500 lives, mainly Muslims.
While the Congress) government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao has dismissed the Uttar Pradesh state government of the right-wing Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), arrested BJP leaders, pledged to rebuild the mosque and placed a ban on certain Hindu communalist organizations, its hands are far from clean in the matter.
riches to full effect.
While distancing itself from the BJP's more fanatically anti-Muslim tendencies -for fear of alienating the support of the country's Muslim elites and jeopardizing India's relations with the Muslim world - the Congress has shown that it is not averse to
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Muslim state of Pakistan, the assault on Ayodhya has provided some much-needed breathing space for the embattled government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was facing rising protests led by the opposition Pakistan People's Party of deposed Prime Minister
RAGHU KRISHNAN - December 8, 1992 U PON taking power in Uttar Pradesh and three other northern states in the 1991 elections, which also made it the official opposition in the Lok Sabha (the national parliament), the BJP leadership toned down its militant Hindu fundamentalist stand - in an attempt to make itself a "respectable"
candidate for power at the centre.
But faced with sagging popularity in the states it governs, internal divisions, and the spectre of the Hindu extremist Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Rashtriya
Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) pushing its own mass base to the right, the BJP joined its Hindu extremist allies in striking a belligerent posture over Ayodhya.
At the end of October - right in the middle of the third round of protracted government-sponsored talks on the dispute the VHP declared December 6 to be a kar seva, a call to its thousands of cadres to descend
One week later, the talks broke down, and those hoping for a peaceful outcome to the conflict were told to rely on Congress attempts to assuage the Hindu extremists and to pursue the matter through the Supreme
In the meantime, the VHP and the semi-fascist RSS carried out a nationwide campaign to ensure maximum participation at the Ayodhya kar seva; they expected a turnout of one million of their supporters.
Whatever the celestial pretensions of the VHP's saffron-clad holy men may be, the Ayodhya dispute has served an eminently political and social function in the recent period, for the BJP as for the Congress Party and their largely wealthy and upper caste social base. In the fall of 1990, the BJP made a triumphant entry onto the political scene with a 4 for the construction of a new temple at country-wide mobilization to collect bricks
Ayodhya. In the violence that accompanied the campaign several hundred Muslims were
The campaign was an obvious response to the decision two months earlier of the then
Janata Dal government of Prime Minister
V.P. Singh to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Report — which prescribed a system of "reservations" (quotas) for certain areas of public sector hiring, for a large part of the country's lower caste population not already covered by such legisla-
Upper caste backlash
The legislation sparked an uproar among the Hindu high and intermediate castes. The
BJP and Congress led a violent anti-Mandal agitation by upper caste students fearful that Mandal would further exacerbate their employment woes.