African Union Reaches the Height of Stupidity in Somalia

How in the hell did the African Union get caught in a U.S. created quagmire in Somalia? Was this the conception of a united Africa that Kwame Nkrumah spoke about in the early days of the then Organization of African Unity? When will African leaders tire of endless war and bloodshed? Maybe when the U.S. money and guns stop flowing.

The civil war in Somalia is not a war of necessity or an existential battle between good and evil but is the indiscriminate killing of Somali people by outsiders and a government in Mogadishu seen as illegitimate by the majority of the Somali people. Following a shocking suicide bombing by a Somalia insurgent group in Uganda during the World Cup Finals game, Guinea in West Africa has promised to send some of its troops into this mess. Isn't this the same military responsible for conducting a coup then raping and killing innocent Guineans in 2009? A perfect fit for the daily murder and destruction being rained on the Somali people day after day.

The U.S. military claims that the war in Somalia is a defensive action against Al-Qaeda Islamists. And the African Union has taken the bait (plus billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and cash). But a researcher at the the Council on Foreign Relations did an assessment of U.S. intelligence in 2007, that Somalia was actually under no threat whatsoever from foreign jihadist movements or from foreign terrorist groups. According to the intelligence reports at the time, Al-Qaeda's experience recruiting in Somalia was so terrible that U.S. intelligence basically said, "There's no way they can operate there." So what happened?

In 2006, a coalition of Somali leaders defeated US-backed warlords and established peace in the capital of Mogadishu for the first time in decades. The United States however, had other plans and exaggerated the threat of Al-Qaeda in order to build public support for an orchestrated Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Ethiopia and U.S. special forces led warlords in the violent removal of the moderate Islamist Somali government and worked to create civil war in Somalia. Thousands of of civilians including women and children were murdered sometimes targeted in their homes, schools and places of worship by the U.S.-instigated civil war. The violence of a newly installed regime of warlords in Somalia continued and eventually led to hardline factions with ties to other militias fighting in Afghanistan and Yemen resisting foreign occupation using terrorist tactics to fight back.

What the African Union fails to realize is that the most effective role that body can play in Somalia is as mediator between factions. Instead, the African Union has chosen to fight a war in defense of a government of mostly U.S.-backed warlords who have been the central impediment to peace in Somalia for several decades. The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece today documenting the problem African Union forces face as they shell civilians in Somalia and further feed the cynicism about external interference in the country. The African Union lead by Uganda has to be about the most gullible or greedy leaders on the planet.

Note: You can read a detailed breakdown here of how the bumbling idiots in the U.S. military created Islamic extremism in Somalia through its own interference and has facilitated a conflict that could send the whole region up in flames.

Muammar Al-Gaddafi, Italy, and the United States of Africa

All eyes have been on Libyan leader Muammar Al-Gaddafi during his first official visit to Libya's former colonial master, Italy. Per his usual eccentric style, there has been no shortage of controversy during his trip. Al-Gaddafi blasted the U.S. for hypocrisy in its war against terrorism, gave a well received speech to hundreds of well-clad Italian women, and suggested that Europe substitute representative democracy for a more direct democratic system along the lines of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.



When Gaddafi was elected in February as leader of the African Union, the drums began beating again for a United States of Africa. While discussion of such a Pan-African dream has taken place for decades, no concrete steps have been taken to make it reality.

Today, Africa yet remains fragmented into both large and small countries carved by former colonial powers. The artificial divisions have lead to an untold number of ethnic conflicts, resource wars and an inability for many small countries to compete in the global economy. My hope is that a United States of Africa like the ideal being pushed by Al- Gaddafi, can finally bring an era of peace and development to a continent that has been riddled with internal divisions and extreme poverty.

Of course, there are many skeptics who doubt the feasability of continental unity in our lifetimes. They say a slower unification plan is more likely. The first leader of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, is perhaps the most remembered for his unrivaled advocacy for a politically unified continent. His warning that a gradualist, regional approach to continental unification was impossible, has been adopted by Colonel Gadaffi as he makes his case before the African Union.

Kwame Nkrumah's vision was ahead of its time, but how far? Is the U.S.A. possible in my life time? For now, it remains a dream.