Tuesday - February 06, 2007

Out Of Africa

(1) Africans living in poverty, starving to death, suffering from disease and malnutrition, (2) Europeans go to Africa, open diamond and gold mines, introduce large-scale agriculture, long-term planning with global trade and modern health care, (3) Africans revolt against “white oppression”, pitch Europeans out, confiscate their lands, (4) Africans living in poverty, starving to death, suffering from disease and malnutrition.

Have I missed anything in this cycle? Is it safe to say that if the rest of the world sits back and just throws money at the African continent that nothing will change and that the misery will only increase? Was colonialism ever as bad as what is now going on as Africa reverts back to the Stone Age?

Zimbabwe Threatens White Farmers
_{JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (NEWSDAY)- February 5, 2007, 8:25 PM EST}

Zimbabwe’s national security minister has told the country’s last remaining white farmers that they will be jailed if they refuse to abide by a deadline that passed over the weekend for them to leave their farms, according to a newspaper report on Monday.

The official Chronicle newspaper quoted the minister Didymus Mutasa as saying police would be “unleashed” to deal with white farmers who ignored the eviction notice.

“Those farmers who do not comply with the orders to vacate the land will be dealt with severely,” said the minister, known to be close to President Robert Mugabe. The deadline was on Saturday. Farming officials said there were no immediate reports of arrests but they feared the worst.

Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence, with acute shortages of hard currency, food, gasoline, medicines and essential imports. The meltdown is blamed largely on disruptions to the agriculture-based economy after the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms began in 2000.

Annual inflation is running at more than 1,000 percent, the highest in the world. The U.S. State Department last year put Zimbabwe on a list of six countries where restrictions on rights were particularly severe, along with China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar and North Korea.

There were around 4,500 white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe in 2000, when Mugabe launched the program of land seizures that has seen agricultural production plummet. Now only around 400 white farmers remain—and at least 150 of them were handed eviction letters in December giving them just 45 days to leave their land to make way for new black farmers.

Mugabe says land reform was necessary to correct colonial-era imbalances in ownership. The longtime Zimbabwean leader blames the more-than-40-percent drop in production on repeated drought and Western sanctions.

Once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe has seen its status reduced to an importer of its staple maize crop since land reforms were launched. Critics say many of the new black farmers were allocated farms on the basis of political patronage rather than agricultural expertise, and lack the dedication and financial resources to make a success of farming.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/06/2007 at 01:12 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 17, 2007

Obamarama Storms Africa

You good folks will have to pardon me today if I seem a little out of sorts. You see, I caught this Reuters story a little while ago and have been totally incapable of stopping the giggling. Every time I look at this story I break out in snorts of laughter. My stomach hurts. Please make Obama go away ... just for a few days until I regain my composure!

Every time I see the quote “He has experienced a hard life as an African growing up in the United States” I crack up again. Barack “Ears” Obama is obviously being sold as a god in Africa. Africans everywhere, especially in Kenya, are overjoyed that “one of their own” will be in the White House and he will then proceed to solve all their problems.

Bwah-hah-hah-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha ......

Please ... can’t we have just one halfway serious day without the Obamarama Grand Celebration interrupting? I can’t take much more of this hoopla over a junior Senator from Ill-Annoys with no real government experience to speak of and nothing going for him other than the fact that he’s half-black half-African with adorable elephant ears.

Uh-oh! Here comes another attack .... Bwah-hah-hah-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha ....... 

Memo: Before any of you wankers accuse me of being racist, let me state clearly that I would welcome a black President ... provided it was someone like Alan Keyes, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell .... i.e., someone grownup, experienced and intelligent --- without big, goofy ears.

Kenyans Celebrate As Obama Eyes White House
_{NAIROBI (Reuters) - Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:49am ET145}

Kenyans rejoiced on Wednesday after Barack Obama plunged into the U.S. presidential race, saying if the youthful senator from Illinois wins the White House he will not forget his African roots.

Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American mother, was greeted like a long-lost son in August when he visited his ancestral village in the remote western Kenya.

His vow on Tuesday to “change our politics” with a campaign that could make him the first black president in U.S. history was greeted with cheers of joy and pride on the streets of the capital Nairobi. “Obama can win,” Giddings Ochanda, a trainee medical technician, told Reuters.

“He has experienced a hard life as an African growing up in the United States, and that experience will make him a good leader for everyone. It will be good for Kenya-U.S. relations.”

Others were overjoyed that someone they saw as a “fellow African” could aspire to the world’s top job. “If an African can make it into the White House, it will show Africans anywhere can make it,” said office worker Moreen Chirchir. “It will show we can make it.”

When the 45-year-old Obama visited Kenya last year, he was welcomed with a carnival atmosphere and cheering crowds thronging his motorcade. Despite his efforts to play down local expectations during that trip that his role as a U.S. senator would have an immediate impact in Kenya, many still revered him as one of their own who had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Obama’s father grew up herding goats before studying in America then returning to Kenya to become a noted economist. “He has the people at heart,” said Nairobi teacher Leah Alisa. “He will have American interests as his priority, and he should, but he will change their foreign policy,” she said.

“He won’t forget Africa.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/17/2007 at 08:39 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 10, 2007

Somalia Update: End Game

When I first saw this story in the NY TIMES, my first thought was a hysterical image of a front page headline in 1944 saying “US and British airstrikes on Dresden Rekindles Germans’ Anger at Allies.” After a few minutes of pondering the greater cosmic irony of such a headline I decided to read the article below.

First, the “general mood” of the populace in Mogadishu came from a single cab driver, who probably drove the reporter from the airport to a local bar before proceeding to his hotel. Second, the reports of civilian children being killed came from an unidentified “Islamic Courts source by phone and could not be verified”. Are you starting to get the picture yet?

It beats me where the TIMES gets these “reporters”. There must be a breeding farm somewhere in LaLaLand where they are hatched. The rest of the story (actual facts from the Somali government and American officials) tell of the complete and utter destruction of the insane IslamoNazis in the South of the country. It should also be noted that the reporter wants you to know that the IslamoNazis were surrounded and bogged down in the mud on the road and were “sitting ducks” for those mean Americans in choppers. What a pity.

Of course the requisite references to “Black Hawk Down” are included to make the bias complete. Well, almost complete. The reporter just had to make sure you know that the IslamoNazis did rule the country before they were ousted by “bringing a much needed semblance of peace.” Go ahead and read the piece and make note of the obvious anti-American bias .... and ask yourself the $64 million dollar question ... what’s up with this “white guy from Sweden” among the IslamoNazi fighters ... ?

Airstrike Rekindles Somalis’ Anger at the U.S.
_{MOGADISHU, Somalia (NY TIMES) - Jan. 9, 2007}

Somali officials said Tuesday that dozens of people were killed in an American airstrike on Sunday, most of them Islamist fighters fleeing in armed pickup trucks across a remote, muddy stretch of the Kenya/Somalia border.

American officials said terrorists from Al Qaeda had been the target of the strike, which they said had killed about a dozen people. But the officials acknowledged that the identities of the victims were still unknown.

Several residents of the area, in the southern part of the country, said dozens of civilians had been killed, and news of the attack immediately set off new waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scarred capital, where the United States has a complicated legacy.

“They’re just trying to get revenge for what we did to them in 1993,” said Deeq Salad Mursel, a taxi driver, referring to the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in which Somali gunmen killed 18 American soldiers and brought down two American helicopters during an intense battle in Mogadishu.

The country’s Islamist movement swiftly seized much of Somalia last year and ruled with mixed success, bringing a much desired semblance of peace but also a harsh brand of Islam.

Two weeks ago, that all changed after Ethiopian-led troops routed the Islamist forces and helped bring the Western-backed transitional government to Mogadishu. Ethiopian officials said the Islamists were a growing regional threat.

The last remnants of the Islamist forces fled to Ras Kamboni, an isolated fishing village on the Kenyan border that residents said had been used as a terrorist sanctuary before. Starting in the mid-1990s, they said, the Islamists built trenches, hospitals and special terrorist classrooms in the village and taxed local fisherman to pay the costs.

On Sunday, an American AC-130 gunship pounded the area around Ras Kamboni, and also a location father north where American officials said three ringleaders of the bombings in 1998 of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were hiding. Somali officials said those bombings had been planned in Ras Kamboni after a local Somali terrorist outfit invited Al Qaeda to use the village as a base.

According to Abdul Rashid Hidig, a member of Somalia’s transitional parliament who represents the border area, the American airstrike on Sunday wiped out a long convoy of Islamist leaders trying to flee deeper into the bush, though he said he did not know if the specific suspects singled out by the United States had been with them.

“Their trucks got stuck in the mud and they were easy targets,” he said.

Mr. Hidig toured the area with military officials on Tuesday and said he had met several captured foreign fighters who had come from Europe and the Middle East. “I saw two white guys and asked, Where are you from?” Mr. Hidig said. “One said Jordan, the other Sweden. Yeah, it was weird.”

Mr. Hidig said two civilians had been killed by the airstrike, but representatives of the Islamist forces said it had killed many more.

The Islamists’ health director said dozens of nomadic herdsmen and their families were grazing their animals in the same wet valley that the Islamists were trying to drive across. “Their donkeys, their camels, their cows — they’ve all been destroyed,” he said. “And many children were killed.”

He spoke by telephone from an undisclosed location; his account could not be independently verified.

Mustef Yunis Culusow, a former Islamist leader who abandoned the movement days ago, said the once-powerful Islamist movement’s top leaders were now trapped in a small village with Ethiopian soldiers in front of them, the Indian Ocean behind them and now American gunships circling above them.

“The leaders know they’re finished,” Mr. Culusow said in a telephone interview from Kismayo, a large town north of Ras Kamboni. “They’ve basically told the young fighters they can go, it’s over, and that anyone who stays behind should be resigned to die.”

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/10/2007 at 10:58 AM   
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   Tuesday - January 09, 2007

The Enemy Within

Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you are surprised by this news? I’m not. This is what we get for bowing to the whims of CAIR, the ACLU and other Islamist groups here in America who are trying to cover up the Islamic monster in our midst. They’re here and they are just waiting for the call to jihad. Some will join up and go overseas to fight and some will stay in sleeper cells here in the US.

Is it time to start building the internment camps and/or start the deportations yet? As far as I’m concerned we should have started a long time ago. These ratbag bastards hiding in our midst, plotting their attempt to overthrow Western civilization are only going to stab us in the back at the first opportunity.

Why isn’t Washington doing anything about this? Shut down CAIR and the ACLU. Now! Neither group has America’s interests in mind. Neither group has any reason for existing one minute further.

American Passports Found on Bodies of Al Qaeda Fighters in Somalia
_{(ABC NEWS) - January 05, 2007 2:46 PM}

A senior official in the Somali government’s new Ministry of the Interior told ABC News government forces had recovered “dozens of foreign passports,” including several American passports, on the bodies of al Qaeda fighters killed in combat between forces affiliated with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Ethiopian forces in Somalia.

According to the same source, most of the foreign passports were Sudanese, Pakistani and Yemeni, but several American, British and Australian passports were also recovered.

The senior Somali government official told ABC News that the American passports found on the dead bodies near Baidoa, in Somalia, would be turned over to the American government. The UIC, which took power in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu in June 2006, are believed to be linked to al Qaeda networks in Pakistan, the Sudan and Yemen.

Last summer, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told ABC News that his government had collected information on the movement of dozens of al Qaeda militants from Pakistan to Somalia, a migration Pakistani officials believe is part of an elaborate al Qaeda operation not only to provide military and financial resources to the UIC but also to establish bases and training facilities in Somalia.

Last October, Yemeni authorities arrested eight foreigners, including three Australians, a British national, a German and a Dane, for running an al Qaeda-sponsored weapons and human smuggling network to Somalia.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/09/2007 at 05:18 PM   
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The Exterminator

Ethiopian troops routed the Islamic Courts and their Al-Qaeda buddies in Somalia, flushing them out of Mogadishu and driving them south into the jungle. Finally cornering them in their base camp, it was time to call in ... THE EXTERMINATOR (a.k.a. “Puff, The Magic Dragon").

The AC-130 gunship flew from a US base in Djibouti and, lighting up the sky with its GAU-12 Equalizer 25mm Gatling Gun, nothing much was left on the ground in a breathing condition. Reports from the ground said bodies of IslamoNazis were scattered all over the scenery.

CBS has obviously never seen an AC-130 in action or they would know better than to say ”if the attack got the operatives it was aimed at”. Silly newsmen! When “Spooky” shows up overhead there is no place to hide. End of story.

U.S. Strikes Al Qaeda In Somalia
_{(CBS/AP) - January 9, 2007}

A U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports exclusively.

The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Martin reports. Those terror attacks killed more than 200 people.

The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no confirmation of the identities.

The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia, Martin reports, where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.

Once they started moving, the al Qaeda operatives became easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command.

If the attack got the operatives it was aimed at, reports Martin, it would deal a major blow to al Qaeda in East Africa. Meanwhile, a jungle hideout used by Islamic militants that is believed to be an al Qaeda base was on the verge of falling to Ethiopian and Somali troops, the defense minister said Monday.

While a lawmaker had earlier told The Associated Press that the base was captured, Somalia’s Defense Minister Col. Barre “Hirale” Aden Shire said troops had yet to enter it and that limited skirmishes were still ongoing, though troops were poised to take the base.

Ethiopian soldiers, tanks and warplanes were involved in the two-day attack, a government military commander told the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

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Posted by The Skipper     on 01/09/2007 at 01:22 AM   
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   Thursday - January 04, 2007

Operation Crushed Nuts: Custers Last Stand

Somalis, Ethiopians Engage Islamists
_{MOGADISHU, Somalia (ABC NEWS) - Jan 4, 2007}

Government troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers were fighting about 600 Islamic militiamen in the southern tip of Somalia, an official spokesman said Thursday. In the past 10 days, Ethiopian-backed government forces have driven out the Islamic movement that had controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for more than six months. The Islamic movement retreated to the southern tip of Somalia and vowed to keep fighting, raising the specter of an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

The Somali forces have surrounded the Islamic militiamen “from every direction” in the southwestern district of Badade, near the Kenyan border, government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told The Associated Press. “The fighting is going on,” Dinari said. “We hope they will either surrender or be killed by our troops.”

Kenya sent extra troops to the Somali frontier and closed its border, fearing an exodus of refugees and foreign fighters. Dinari said some Islamic militants have been trying to escape by sea. “But U.S. anti-terrorist forces have been deployed there to prevent them from escaping,” he added.

In Washington on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. Navy vessels were deployed off the Somali coast looking for al-Qaida and allied militants trying to escape. Dinari said the government believes foreign terrorist elements are among the Islamic militiamen fighting in Badade.

With the Islamic movement’s fighters on the run, concern has grown about extremists believed to be among them. Three al-Qaida suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Islamic movement. The movement denies having any links to al-Qaida.

Earlier Thursday, Somalia’s Interior Minister Hussein Aideed said there are about 3,500 Islamists hiding in the capital and they are “likely to destabilize the security of the city.”

Aideed did not explain the source of his information or what prompted his comments. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi later tried to play down the threat and disputed Aideed’s number of Islamists hiding in the capital, although he did not offer his own estimate. The Somali Islamic movement denies having any links to al-Qaida. Earlier Thursday, Somalia’s Interior Minister Hussein Aideed said there are about 3,500 Islamists hiding in the capital and they are “likely to destabilize the security of the city.”

Aideed did not explain the source of his information or what prompted his comments. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi later tried to play down the threat and disputed Aideed’s number of Islamists hiding in the capital, although he did not offer his own estimate.

Gedi said his government would begin efforts to disarm Somalis by seizing large arms caches located around Mogadishu. A house-by-house search will follow, the prime minister told journalists, without saying when that will happen.

Thursday was the deadline for people in Mogadishu to surrender their arms. Gedi said the disarmament program was progressing but offered no details. By Wednesday, only a handful of people had heeded Gedi’s demand and turned in any weapons in the capital. In Ethiopia, a top U.S. diplomat said that she hopes African peacekeepers will be in Somalia by the end of the month.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had promised President Bush in a recent phone call that he could supply between 1,000-2,000 troops to protect Somalia’s transitional government and train its troops, said Jendayi Frazer, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Africa, after meeting Museveni. Frazer said there had been no request for U.S. troops or military assistance so far.

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Posted by The Skipper     on 01/04/2007 at 05:42 PM   
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   Tuesday - January 02, 2007

Operation Crushed Nuts: Mopping Up

After 15 Years, Someone’s in Charge in Somalia, if Barely
_{ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (NY TIMES) - January 2, 2007}

After Somalia’s Islamist forces abandoned their final outpost on Monday, the transitional government moved aggressively to assert control, setting a three-day deadline for all weapons to be turned in and calling for international peacekeeping troops to be sent immediately.

Somalia was already a place where military-grade weaponry was casually flaunted on its streets, but the Islamists’ swift collapse has created such a surplus of guns that the average price of a Kalashnikov assault rifle, one of the world’s most popular killing machines, has dropped to $15.

Ali Mohammed Gedi, the former veterinarian who is the transitional prime minister, said at his daily news conference that he would not tolerate the situation and gave instructions for turning in the weapons.

“Individuals or groups of people who have trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns, known as ‘technicals,’ should bring those battlewagons to Mogadishu’s old port,” he said.

Clan leaders were skeptical about whether he would succeed, and many Somalis seemed dead set against it. “They’re trying to neuter us,” said Muhammad Duudo, an unemployed car mechanic. “And it’s not going to happen. Just wait until the full moon passes and the darkness comes.”

Whatever lies ahead, encouraging or ominous, most Somalis seemed to agree that after a week of fast-moving events, the rough outlines of a new reality were emerging. For the first time since the former dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the country in 1991, casting Somalia into 15 years of anarchy, there is a credible government based in Mogadishu, the capital, with serious outside support and no organized military threat from within.

True, countless gunmen still roam the streets, heavily armed warlords still command authority and the seeds of a possible guerrilla movement may be taking root.

But so far no major force has emerged to challenge the authority of the transitional government. The only rival, the Islamists, lost their last conventional military battle on Monday. The Islamists had steadily lost ground since Dec. 24, when Ethiopia unleashed a punishing series of airstrikes and pushed ground troops deep into Somali territory.

Ethiopian officials justified their intervention in Somalia’s messy, violent internal politics by saying the Islamist movement was a regional threat with terrorist connections and ambitions to invade their country. Ethiopia commands one of the most powerful militaries in Africa, and within days of its entrance into the war, Burhakaba, a pivotal inland town, fell from Islamist control — then Jowhar, another key town, and then Mogadishu, the Islamists’ former stronghold.

By Sunday, the last remnants of the Islamist forces, which just a few weeks ago controlled a large swath of Somalia, were cornered in Kismayo, a port city on the south Somali coast. Thousands of Ethiopian and transitional government troops were closing in on them, and on Sunday night, the Ethiopians began pounding away with heavy artillery.

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U.S. Trainers Prepare Ethiopians To Fight
_{DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia (STARS AND STRIPES) - Saturday, December 30, 2006}

As soldiers of Ethiopia’s Christian government continued to rout Islamist militiamen in southern Somalia this week, 2nd Cpl. Wonderfraw Niguse celebrated his own victory on the parched scrublands of eastern Ethiopia hundreds of kilometers to the north.

With the sporadic barking of baboons or braying of donkeys in the distance, the 25-year-old squad leader led two successful ambushes against simulated enemy forces here as his fellow trainees charged through thickets of needle-sharp thorn bushes and down dried river beds.

The feat, which Wonderfraw and his fellow soldiers cheered with songs of victory and courage, was accomplished during a three-month basic infantry skills course offered by the U.S. military at the sprawling Ethiopian Training Academy in Hurso.

“They are very good, these techniques that they are teaching us,” Wonderfraw said through an interpreter. “I appreciate everything they are teaching us, especially the ambush. They instruct us on how to establish it and provide security. The ambush is very interesting for me.”

Troops attached to the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa have been training Ethiopian soldiers in basic infantry tactics, officer logistics and maintenance since 2003, when the U.S. government identified the East African country as an ally in its global war on terror. Similar training programs are ongoing in Djibouti and Kenya.

In Hurso, the so-called military-to-military training has taken on a new urgency in the days following Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia on behalf of that collapsed nation’s embattled, albeit U.N.-sanctioned, government.

“Depending on whether things really kick off, it’s a very real possibility that some of these guys could find themselves using these skills very soon,” said Sgt. 1st Class Bill Flippo, an instructor based at Camp Hurso.

“You want to make sure you cover everything thoroughly,” the 27-year-old Winfield, Kan., native said. “The stuff you teach them could result in things working out really good for them, or really bad.”

Flippo is one of a handful of instructors here who belong to Company A, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. The instructors, who are three-quarters of the way through a yearlong deployment, are currently training more than three dozen Ethiopian army officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted from throughout the country.

“The majority of these guys are trainers themselves,” said 1st Lt. Ben Daughters, 24, of Chillicothe, Ohio. “The idea is that we train them and they go back and train their own.”

Roughly 60 U.S. personnel reside at Hurso, most of them soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 294th Infantry Regiment of the Guam Army National Guard. The guard unit is now on its third, yearlong rotation in the Horn of Africa, and is scheduled for a fourth.

“They love us here because we interact a lot with the locals,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Noel Camagaganacan, 40, of Dedeo, Guam.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/02/2007 at 04:27 AM   
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   Sunday - December 31, 2006

Operation Crushed Nuts: The Final Days

Somalia’s Islamists Vow Never to Surrender
_{ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - December 31, 2006}

A phalanx of Ethiopian tanks and armored personnel carriers chugged toward Kismayo, the last city occupied by Somalia’s diminished Islamist movement, witnesses said Saturday, while the Islamists inside the city dug in and vowed never to surrender.

According to residents along Somalia’s coast, the Ethiopian troops, with soldiers from Somalia’s transitional government, were preparing to seize Kismayo, a port city near the Kenyan border.

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a high-ranking cleric, emerged from a mosque in the city on Saturday, surrounded by gunmen, and told his followers that the Islamist leadership was not finished.

“The Islamic courts are still alive and ready to fight against the enemy of God,” Sheik Ahmed told residents of Kismayo in a speech on Saturday. “We left Mogadishu in order to prevent bloodshed in the capital, but that does not mean we lost the holy war against our enemy.”

Sheik Ahmed called on Somalis to begin an anti-Ethiopian insurgency. Already, several masked gunmen have surfaced on Mogadishu’s streets, suggesting a guerrilla movement may have begun.

Diplomats in Kenya, though, said that they were talking to moderate representatives of the Islamic movement on Saturday, trying to persuade them to back down. The Islamists are essentially cornered, hemmed in by the Indian Ocean, a sealed Kenyan border and thousands of troops headed their way. Their only route of escape may be to flee into the thickly forested area south of Kismayo, which Western intelligence officers suspect has been used before as a terrorist hide-out.

In Mogadishu, the presence of Ethiopian soldiers continued to spark scattered violence, with supporters of the Ethiopians battling street by street against the remaining Islamist partisans. Gunshots rang out, men and women battled with sticks and rocks and the thick black smoke of burning barricades lifted into the air.

Just two days ago, in a stunning reversal of fortune, Somalia’s transitional government, with the muscle of the Ethiopian military, reclaimed Mogadishu from the Islamist movement that had ruled large swaths of Somalia. Despite the Islamists’ repeated vows to fight to the death, their forces evaporated and Mogadishu fell without a shot. Many Somalis said Saturday that they hoped the same thing would happen in Kismayo.

More than a thousand people have been killed in fighting across the country since Dec. 20, and Somalia’s leaders now face the daunting task of trying to piece together a country that has not had a functioning central government for 15 years.

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/31/2006 at 11:33 AM   
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   Friday - December 29, 2006

Operation Crushed Nuts: Day 4

Here it is ... in a nutshell ....

Somalia Forces Retake Capital From Islamists

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 28 (NY TIMES) — Just hours after Islamist fighters abandoned Mogadishu, the capital from which they ruled much of Somalia, thousands of troops of the transitional government marched into the city on Thursday in a stunning reversal of fortune.

The government soldiers and the Ethiopian infantrymen who have been backing them poured in from the outskirts, residents said. The only gunshots fired were long celebratory bursts into the air.

Oh ... when the Saints ... go marchin’ in ... 

The Islamists, whom many Western nations had considered a grave and growing regional threat with terrorist connections, were vanquished faster than anyone had expected, or at least removed from power.

“We always knew these Islamists weren’t all they were cracked up to be,” said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for the transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. “And now we are where they used to be, in control of Mogadishu — well, as much as anyone can be in control of Mogadishu.”

Run away, little girls! Cowardly IslamoNazis! None of them are worth a bucket of warm spit.

By Wednesday, the Islamist military had been decimated by Ethiopian airstrikes and mass desertions. Clan elders, traditionally the pillars of Somali society, pulled their troops and firepower out of the Union of Islamic Courts, or U.I.C., after a string of back-to-back military loses in which more than 1,000 fighters, mostly teenage boys, were quickly mowed down by the better-trained and equipped Ethiopian-backed forces.

“Our children were getting annihilated,” said Abdi Hulow, an elder with the powerful Hawiye clan. “We couldn’t sustain it.”

That pretty much sums it up. The kids were cannon fodder. Typical IslamoNazi strategy.

Even before the government troops had planted themselves in downtown Mogadishu, the political negotiations began. Mr. Hulow and other elders said they had asked transitional leaders for positions in the new government in exchange for support. Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister, told the elders that first he needed help in disarming the militias.

Mr. Gedi also gave a short news conference on the outskirts of Mogadishu in which he reached out to the Somali diaspora, saying: “We need your help. It’s time to come home.” One group was noticeably absent from all these talks: conservative clerics, who seemed to have overplayed their cards.

You mean the Ratbag IslamoNazi Imams who preach jihad were suddenly silent? Go figure.

It seems that many people, inside Somalia and outside, overrated the Islamists’ strength and popularity. Part of the reason, analysts now say, is that the Islamists had an excellent propaganda machine, controlling most media outlets in Somalia.

Translation: these weren’t “holy warriors” - they were bullshit artists.

On Thursday, to celebrate the departure of the Islamists, many Mogadishu residents stuffed their mouths with khat, a mildly narcotic plant that the Islamists had outlawed, and cranked up Western music, which some clerics had tried to ban.

Things are now back to normal. Every body must get stoned.   

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/29/2006 at 01:21 PM   
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   Thursday - December 28, 2006

Operation Crushed Nuts: Day 3

Memo to Ethiopia: don’t stop now. Don’t go into Mogadishu either. Stand back and flatten the city from the air and with artillery. Leave no stone standing. Then burn the rubble. Then salt the ground. Shoot anything that is still moving. Then have a beer on us. Thanks.

The “brave” IslamoNazis have dropped their guns and are trying to hide. These ratbags are brave when they are beating up women for not praying five times a day but when faced with determined soldiers with real guns they pee their pants and run and hide under those same women’s skirts.

These mental retards are no different from the murderous bastards who flew planes into the WTC, killing 3,000 innocent civilians or the cowardly perverts who blew up the trains in Spain and the tube in London. This whole IslamoNazi movement is an abomination and there is only one solution - KILL ‘EM ALL AND LET ALLAH SORT ‘EM OUT! SCORCHED EARTH AND TOTAL ANNIHILATION! JUST DO IT!

 

Islamists Seem to Give Up Grip on Somali City
_{NAIROBI, Kenya (NY TIMES) — December 28, 2006}

The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.

In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.

Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.

Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said.

Many of the teenage troops who made up the backbone of the Islamist army had blended back into the civilian population, walking around without guns or their trademark green skullcaps.

The sudden reversal left it unclear whether a war that had threatened to consume the Horn of Africa had quickly ended, or the Islamists had merely gone underground, preparing to wage a guerrilla insurgency, as some leaders had threatened. “The whole city is just waiting,” said Sheik Ahmed Shiro, a Koranic teacher in Mogadishu.

At 10 p.m. on Wednesday, several Islamist leaders emerged to hold a news conference at their headquarters in Mogadishu. They did not explicitly concede defeat to the transitional government, but seemed to be preparing their forces for such an eventuality. “We need our soldiers to return to their positions for the sake of the people,” said Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, one of the leaders. “Even if your positions are transferred to the government, you must stay where you are and make sure Mogadishu is as safe as it was before.”

As he spoke, Mogadishu was rapidly descending back into the clan-based anarchy that had been its hallmark for most of the past 15 years, before the Islamists came to power and pacified the city.

Witnesses said bands of armed thugs swept through the markets, smashing and stealing at will. Gunfire rattled from neighborhood to neighborhood as the disparate clan-based militias that had joined forces to form the Islamist movement began to fragment and turn on one another.

With the war going badly for them, clan elders had been rapidly losing faith in the Islamist leaders, residents said. The quick defeat the Islamists suffered earlier on Wednesday at Jowhar, the last major town on the road to Mogadishu, seemed to be the final straw.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/28/2006 at 05:45 AM   
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   Wednesday - December 27, 2006

Somalia Update

The IslamoNazis are backpedaling as fast as they can and are beating a retreat back to Mogadishu. Some are melting into the jungle and are planning on waging a guerrilla war - provided the Ethiopian army doesn’t wipe them out first, like the vermin they are.

The US has pretty much given Ethiopia the diplomatic green light to go ahead and wipe out the Islamonazis but other than that is staying out of it. The United Nations is doing what they do best - absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, the Ethiopians are marching on Mogadishu. The civilian population of the former capitol have all packed up and left town, leaving the IslamoNazis to face the Ethiopians alone. For my money, I’d recommend Ethiopia just flatten Mogadishu to a pile of rubble with artillery and air bombardments. Sometimes you just have to burn the house down to get rid of all the cockroaches. To be continued ....

The Islamist forces once in control of much of Somalia are crumbling faster than anyone expected and beat a hasty retreat back to their stronghold in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scarred capital, on Tuesday.

By dawn, Buurhakaba, a large inland town, had fallen to the Islamists’ rivals, along with nearby Dinsoor and Bulo Burti, where just a few weeks ago the clerics in charge were threatening to behead people who did not pray five times a day.

The Islamist fighters, who had seemed invincible after taking Mogadishu from the city’s warlords in June, now seem powerless to stop the steady advance of the internationally recognized transitional government and the Ethiopian forces that are backing it.

By nightfall, the transitional government’s troops were 50 miles from Mogadishu, calling for the Islamists to surrender. The Islamist leaders refused, saying they would take their fight “everywhere,” possibly a threat to unleash guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers, which they have already used.

The fast-moving developments seemed to confirm what United Nations officials and witnesses in Somalia have been saying since the fighting erupted a week ago: that the teenage troops of the Islamists, however religiously inspired, were no match for the better-trained Ethiopian-backed force, with its tanks and fighter jets.

Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, said Tuesday that his soldiers and their Somali allies had “broken the back” of the Islamists and killed more than 1,000 fighters, though United Nations officials have put the toll substantially below that.

-- NY TIMES

As the fighting continued, members of the U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting in New York to discuss the conflict and consider a joint statement put forward by Qatar.

Ambassadors from the 15 countries on the council were briefed first by Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, and then began debating the text of a statement calling for the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from Somalia.

But U.S. diplomats said they would seek changes to the draft. “We don’t want to single out Ethiopia in that way and believe they have legitimate security concerns,” a U.S diplomat said. “Our position is that we need all parties to return to dialogue.”

The diplomat, who agreed to discuss aspects of the U.S. position in exchange for anonymity, said the United States would also push for a condemnation of the Islamic Courts’ use of child soldiers in the conflict.

It was unclear whether the Security Council would be able to reach consensus on the statement before Wednesday. Meanwhile, a Somali envoy to Ethiopia said Ethiopian troops could take over Mogadishu in 24 to 48 hours.

-- WASHINGTON POST

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/27/2006 at 05:52 AM   
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   Tuesday - December 26, 2006

Somalia Update

• “The African Union says Ethiopia has the right to intervene militarily in Somalia as it feels threatened by an Islamic militia operating there.”
  -- (BBC Africa)


• “Ethiopia sent fighter jets across the border Sunday to help Somalia’s U.N.-recognized government push back the Islamists. Ethiopia bombed the country’s two main airports and helped government forces capture several villages. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a senior leader of the Islamic group, said he asked his troops to tactically retreat in the face of superior Ethiopian firepower.”
  -- (CNN)


• “Ethiopian jets fired missiles on Somali Islamist fighters retreating on Tuesday from frontlines after a week of war in the Horn of Africa nation. Despite a retreat the government was already calling a partial victory, the Islamists insisted their withdrawal and re-grouping was a tactic in what they vowed would be a long war.”
  -- Khaleej Times


• “The European Union released a statement late Sunday, saying it is gravely concerned about the clashes between Ethiopia and Somalia’s Islamist movement. The EU condemned artillery battles it said could endanger civilians, and urged the parties to stop fighting and seek a peaceful solution.”
  -- VOA News


• “Somalia could be Ethiopia’s quagmire. A more involved military offensive might pose the same problems the U.S. is facing in Iraq, observers say.”
  -- LA Times

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/26/2006 at 12:52 PM   
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   Saturday - December 23, 2006

Road To Somalia

All hell is about to break loose in the Horn Of Afirca. But first, a little background ....

In 1991 dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown and the country fell into total chaos with fighting between seven or eight warlords for control. An interim government was appointed and support was provided by the UN. In the latter part of 1992, President Bush (41) tried to help hold the country together with aid and transport for Pakistani troops who comprised the main UN peacekeeping force.

In 1993, the UN asked the US to take over military operations and President Clinton sent in the troops. Then in October 1993, the Black Hawk Down incident took place and after seeing American soldiers bodies dragged through the streets on CNN, Clinton got cold feet and pulled all troops out. It was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time and a decision was made to cut-and-run. All US troops were out by mid-1995.

Oddly enough, John Kerry and the NY TIMES didn’t object to the intervention in Somalia and praised President Clinton for his wisdom while Secretary of Defense Les Aspin took the blame and resigned.

In recent years, a radical Islamic group, the Islamic Courts, has taken control of most of the country with the interim government boxed up in one small corner of the country next to Ethiopia. Ethiopia is providing aid and military advisers to the interim government as a sort of buffer between them and the Islamic militants because (1) Ethiopia is mostly Christian and (2) North of Ethiopia is Islamic-dominated Sudan and the holocaust in Darfur. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

Which brings us up to current events. Oh, did I forget to mention that Ethiopia has one of the most advanced armies and air force in Africa with thousands of tanks and jet fighters. They are being challenged by a ragtag “army” of teenage boys armed with AK-47’s and led by older warlords who have no qualms about throwing kids into the meat grinder. To further complicate matters, Islamic mercenaries are arriving on the beaches of Mogadishu in droves.

Like I said ... the Horn Of Africa is about to explode ....

In the Third Day of Fighting in Somalia,
Worries of a Sharp Escalation by Ethiopian Forces
_{ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (NY TIMES) — December 23, 2006}

Any hope of a quick peace in Somalia vanished in a burst of artillery shells on Friday, as fighting between rival forces raged for a third straight day. Residents of Baidoa, the seat of the internationally recognized transitional government, said they saw columns of Ethiopian tanks chugging toward the front lines, heightening worries that Somalia’s internal problems could soon become regional ones.

Meanwhile, residents in Mogadishu, the battle-scarred traditional capital and the base of Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement, said they saw sailboats packed with foreign mercenaries landing on the city’s beaches. According to United Nations officials, the transitional government, with the help of thousands of Ethiopian troops, has inflicted heavy losses on the Islamists, who rely on teenage boys to do much of their fighting. On Friday, the fighting was concentrated in towns ringing Baidoa, where witnesses said bodies were piling up in the streets.

As the two sides continued to blast each other with machine guns and artillery, an exodus began, with thousands of residents from the battle zone squeezing into aged trucks with pots, pans and sacks of clothes and fleeing to safer areas. Ethiopia has acknowledged that it has dispatched several hundred military advisers to help the transitional government repel the Islamists. But on Friday, Ethiopian officials continued to deny that their troops were engaged in combat.

“Tanks? What tanks?” said Zemedkun Tekle, spokesman for Ethiopia’s Information Ministry. “We have not sent any heavy arms into Somalia. Such talk is just propaganda to stir up the people.” The realities of waging war in a desperately poor country are setting in. At a hospital in Burhakaba, a town near Baidoa, a doctor stood in a filthy waiting room crowded with wounded and listed all the things he did not have: “No X-ray machines, no operating tables, no nothing.”

Islamist leaders have tried to frame the escalating conflict as a nationalist struggle, one aimed at evicting Ethiopian troops, whom they call infidel invaders. While Somalia is almost purely Muslim, neighboring Ethiopia has a strong Christian identity, even though it is actually about half Muslim. The two countries are longtime rivals and have fought over contested border areas before.

All schools in the Islamist-controlled areas have been closed indefinitely so more young people can be funneled to the front. On Friday, recruitment centers were swarming with teenage boys begging for guns. In Mogadishu, mosques blared out a call for retired soldiers to lend their expertise to the new jihad. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement late on Friday warning the Islamists to end their “hostile anti-Ethiopian activities. The situation in Somalia has turned from bad to worse,” the statement said. “Ethiopia has been patient so far. There is a limit to this.”

Ethiopia has the most powerful military in the region, and many analysts fear that Ethiopia may be only days away from unleashing its helicopter gunships and jet fighters. Somalia has been mired in crisis since 1991, when the central government collapsed, setting off a long, nasty interclan war. While the United Nations and donor countries have struggled to get a new government on its feet, a grass-roots movement of Islamic courts has steadily gained power.

The Islamist movement defeated the last of Mogadishu’s warlords in June and immediately restored a sense of law and order unheard of in the capital for 15 years. Then the Islamists began pushing outward, eventually reaching the outskirts of Baidoa, which their troops are now attacking from two sides. The transitional government, meanwhile, has never been popular and its leaders spend much of their time outside Somalia. American officials have said that if it were not for Ethiopian protection, the transitional government would have fallen months ago.

The fighting began near Baidoa on Wednesday, as European diplomats were meeting with leaders from both sides in an effort to strike a peace deal. The diplomats were initially upbeat. But as the fighting has intensified, the diplomats have become more pessimistic, saying that the rank-and-file Islamists seem bent on war even if their leaders are conciliatory.

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/23/2006 at 08:16 AM   
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   Monday - November 20, 2006

Unbelievable

An African nation that is predominantly Muslim ... which recognizes Israel ... and has banned Islamic political parties ... and is helping in the war on terror ... and has oil to sell. Somebody wake me up. I must be dreaming.

Of course you all know that once the Mad Mullahs in Iran and the WhackJob Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia get wind of this there will be hell to pay. I am going to make it my own personal JIHAD to keep an eye on this tiny little country and if anyone interferes with them I’m gonna scream from the rooftops and raise hell as loudly as I can. Anyone out there want to help?

Mauritania Stages Historic Poll
_{(BBC) - Sunday, 19 November 2006, 19:17 GMT}

Mauritanians have voted in the North African country’s first election since last year’s bloodless coup ended 20 years of authoritarian rule. Turnout was said to be high and long queues formed even before polls opened. Nearly one million people were eligible to vote in the national parliament and municipal council polls.

The military junta which took over after the ousting of President Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya had promised an early return to civilian government.

After casting his vote, the junta leader Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall said he was “satisfied to see Mauritanians embark on the road to democracy and consequently on the way to economic development and political stability.”

The first provisional results are expected late on Monday. This poll will be followed by elections for the senate in January and for the president two months later. The BBC’s North Africa correspondent Richard Hamilton says there seems to be a thirst for democracy.

In June, turnout was also high in a referendum on a new constitution which, among other things, put a two-term limit on any future president. Observers from the European Union were monitoring the elections and so far no problems have been reported.

At least 28 political parties were competing to be represented in the 95-member lower house of parliament, the National Assembly - although only five parties were considered to be front-runners.

But Islamist parties and movements, considered to be among the most popular in the country, have been banned. This has resulted in many Islamist candidates standing as independents.

Because Mauritania is home to a number of different racial groups from Arabs and Berbers to black sub-Saharan tribes, it is predicted that people may have voted along ethnic lines, our correspondent says.

The largely desert country started pumping oil in February this year, so how that could help development was one of the biggest issues facing voters. Mauritania is one of the few Arabic countries to have recognised Israel and has also co-operated in the US “war against terror”.

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/20/2006 at 03:24 PM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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