The US and Ethiopian-backed comprador regime in Somalia is fast losing ground again to the Islamic Courts.
On 2 March, US naval forces fired at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles at houses in the Dhobley district of southern Somalia, which, according to the International Herald Tribune, “seems to be falling under the control of the country’s Islamist movement once again”.
The ‘excuse’ for this act of wanton imperialist aggression was that it was purportedly aimed at one ‘known al-Qaeda terrorist’, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, whom the FBI supposedly want to interrogate in relation to attacks that took place in Mombasa in 2002 on a hotel and on an Israeli airliner.
One assumes that even US imperialism has not degenerated into such an advanced form of madness that it uses cruise missiles for sniping at individuals. The truth is that the US is trying to soften up the ground for the puppet government to drive out the Islamic Courts again. Whatever the enormity of the weapons used, however, they are not having any success.
On 27 March, in Mogadishu, an incident took place which demonstrates that the Islamic Courts are really back in control everywhere. Government soldiers had gone into the market in order to loot sacks of grain at gunpoint but were driven out by Islamic insurgents.
Even the puppet government admits it has lost any control it ever had over the situation, and it is generally considered even in bourgeois circles that, by trying to drive out the government of the Islamic Courts and imposing a puppet government on Somalia by force, US imperialism has done itself a lot more harm than good. The Islamic Courts are said to be stronger than ever, and are inundated with thousands of new recruits.
On the night of 1 May, Somalia suffered further bombing at the hands of US imperialism, which claims to have killed an ‘Al Qaeda’ leader, ie, a Somali freedom fighter fighting back the US-backed Ethiopian troops which have invaded the country – a fight which the Somalis are slowly but surely winning.
Four AC-130 gunships dropped bombs on the small town of Dusamareb in the early hours of the morning, killing 30 people, including Aden Hashi Ayro – a leader of the al-Shabaab movement, which has been blamed for attacks on the puppet government’s troops and their Ethiopian allies.
This is only one of a whole series of US air strikes on Somalia over the last year. These cowardly strikes will not defeat the struggle of the Somali people to free their land of foreign aggressors:
“His elimination is very important,” said MJ Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security thinktank. “[But] he will be replaced. This is a setback [for the resistance], and it will be felt, but it’s not a mortal blow.”
It would seem to be only a matter of time, and not very long at that, before the Islamic Courts are able to establish themselves as the de jure, and not just the de facto, government of Somalia once again.
> Reconciliation conference unlikely to secure imperialist interests in Somalia – August 2007
