US army prepares for war against al-Shabab in Somalia: Report

US Army Maj. Gen. David Hogg (C) inspects Sierra Leone troops in Freetown during a deployment ceremony this year. (File photo)

Source: Press TV

A new report has unveiled that the US Army is “quietly equipping and training” thousands of African troops to prepare them for a war against al-Shabab fighters in Somalia.

“Officially, the troops are under the auspices of the African Union (AU). But in truth, according to interviews by US and African officials and senior military officers and budget documents, the 15,000-strong force pulled from five African countries is largely a creation of the State Department and Pentagon, trained and supplied by the US government,” Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

The report added that the American officers along with dozens of retired foreign military personnel, hired through private contractors, are guiding the African soldiers.

“Nearly 20 years after US Army Rangers suffered a bloody defeat in Somalia, losing 18 soldiers and two Black Hawk helicopters, Washington is once again heavily engaged in the chaotic country. Only this time, African troops are doing the fighting and dying,” the report said.

Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital is one of the bases the US army uses to train African soldiers, it said.

Through deploying African troops to Somalia, “the Obama administration is trying to achieve US military goals with minimal risk of American deaths and scant public debate,” the report added.

“The US can underwrite the war in Somalia for a relative pittance -- the cost over four years has been less than USD 700 million, a tenth of what the military spends in Afghanistan in a month -- but the price tag is growing. More than a third of the US assistance has been spent since early 2011,” the American newspaper said.

African forces are supplied “with surveillance drones, ammunition, small arms, armored personnel carriers, night-vision goggles, communications gear, medical equipment and other sophisticated aid and training,” the report added.

"The US government has done extremely well in providing for us and we are grateful for that, but they can do more," said Brig. Gen Komba Mondeh, Sierra Leone's chief of operations and plans.

"This is real war, and we expect to see the body bags coming back home," he said.

The report came as the US has recently stepped up its assassination drone operations in the famine-stricken Somalia.

The weak Western-backed transitional government in Mogadishu has been battling al-Shabab for the past five years and is propped up by a strong AU force from Uganda, Burundi, and Djibouti.

The country has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

US: Turning war-fear into warfare

U.S. Military Academy cadets wave a flag in the stands prior to the 112th Army-Navy football game in Landover, Maryland. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/america-warfare-militarized-society-251/

Ever since its creation, the US has had a role to play in combat operations worldwide. Today the country’s public opinion is dominated by warfare, making American society all-too-easily manipulated and turned against practically any country.

The US has a strong record of persuading the public that war is the only way.

A military industrial complex worth billions of dollars is largely America’s driving force. Deeply rooted in the system, it would serve no purpose if there was no one to fight.

“If there were no more enemies left, there would be a loss of a sense of mission,” anti-war activist and journalist Don Bebar told RT.

Serving Americans are on permanent stand-by to deploy to battle zones on command.

“The US army flag has 183 campaign ribbons on it. Those 183 ribbons each represent wars,” Iraq war veteran Matthis Chiroux from New York shared with RT.

“When you compare that to the 236 years that we’ve actually been around as a country, you’re talking about a war on average of once every year and three months,” he calculated.

As a consequence of the American bellicosity in general, Matthis Chiroux is now soothing his nerves in company with 170,000 American soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

The US always has a bone to pick with one enemy after another. For nearly half a century it was the Soviet Union.

“The communist threat was the most useful enemy. Where legitimate, and where completely fantastical, it was always available as a global conspiracy against which to justify anything,” Roots Action campaigner David Swanson told RT.

With the Cold War declared over, the list keeps expanding to smaller antagonists.

So it was with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991, when then President George H. W. Bush Sr. announced that “Allied forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.”

Or with the former Yugoslavia, to which former President Bill Clinton signed a sentence in 1999 by announcing that the American Air Force was conducting “Air strikes against Serbian forces.”

Then it was ex-President George W. Bush, who was let off the leash after 9/11 terror attacks and announced a global War on Terror symbolized by Al-Qaeda. He started by invading Afghanistan in 2001 and continued with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2003, the US Air Force was “Striking selective targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war,” announced George W. Bush, meaning that waging wars is an exclusive privilege of the chosen mighty ones.

Ultimately, it has been current President Barack Obama, who was elected on promises to end wars, but now looks forward to military conflict with Iran after lending a hand in toppling the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. As in previous cases, last spring he made a characteristic “We hit Gaddafi’s air defenses” statement on the American TV.

With a defense budget that surpasses the military expenditure of all other countries combined, no other nation drums up war as consistently as America.

“While people are still responding and recovering from the violence that’s been committed in one place, or even in the same place, we’re launching new operations and more atrocities in different parts of the world,” acknowledged war correspondent Keith Harmon Snow.

So Fox News cannot but reiterate that Iran is the biggest threat, Syria is a minor threat, Russia is a traditional threat and China is an emerging threat.

That makes America's top brass state that a strike on Tehran is in the planning stages.

It also makes the US President Obama latest quest for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program look derisive in the face of a pending military confrontation.

Year in, year out, Americans are convinced that the US has to remain on the defensive.

“We’re petrified of death by terrorism. Shoot, I think a lot of Americans wish we’d spend more money on war,” veteran Matthis Chiroux confessed.

Finding the next target is never difficult.

Campaigner David Swanson says “We are inventing the nation of Iran as an enemy, as a threat to the United States, as a possessor of nuclear weapons it does not possess, a nation that has not attacked another in literally centuries, and has no capability or desire to attack ours.”

RT's Anastasia Churkina asked people on the streets of New York “Which country is the US going to be in a war with next?”

The most common answer she got was “Iran.”

The US has been picking and choosing which countries to intervene in for centuries. As the list of nations the US loves to hate expands, the concept that no war at all is also an option seems to have been forgotten.

300,000 children starving in Horn of Africa

More than 300,000 children in the Horn of Africa are at risk of dying, the UNICEF says.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/194768.html

UNICEF says more than 300,000 children in the Horn of Africa suffer severe malnutrition and are in imminent risk of dying due to the worst drought and famine in decades.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said on Friday that the crisis in the Horn of Africa is “a human disaster becoming a human catastrophe,” the Associated Press reported.

In Somalia alone, around 1.4 million children are affected, an estimated 390,000 are suffering from malnutrition, and nearly 140,000 in the south-central region are facing imminent death from “severe acute malnutrition,” Lake added.

According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of people have already died in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea, and more than 12 million people in the region need food aid.

UNICEF has also said the combination of malnutrition, lack of clean water, and poor sanitation, along with the rush of thousands of people into the Somali capital Mogadishu in search of food, have had terrible consequences.

“There is no need for a child to die of diarrhea, yet this is a tragic reality for a Somali child, who is acutely malnourished. It is a lethal combination,” UNICEF Representative for Somalia Rozanne Chorlton said.

'Horn of Africa famine manmade'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/194347.html

The famine in the Horn of Africa is a result of artificially high prices for food and civil conflict than natural and environmental causes, a World Bank's expert says.

"This crisis is manmade," said lead economist for Kenya Wolfgang Fengler in a phone interview with Reuters on Tuesday. "Droughts have occurred over and again, but you need bad policymaking for that to lead to a famine."

The price of maize, or corn, was significantly higher in east Africa than in the rest of the world due to controls on local food markets, he noted. "Maize is cheaper in the United States and in Germany than it is in eastern Africa.”

"In Kenya, the price for corn is 60 to 70 percent above the world average at the moment," Fengler added. "A small number of farmers are controlling the market which is keeping prices artificially high."

The World Bank President Robert Zoellick had also warned that global food prices, which have reached near record highs, are threatening the lives of the poorest people around the globe.

Food prices around the world were 33 percent higher this July than in 2010, while oil prices have climbed 45 percent, ramping up the price of fertilizers, Zoellick said on Monday.

The drought and famine have affected more than 11.8 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Somalia has been the hardest-hit country in what is being described as the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years.

Over the last three months, reportedly 29,000 children under the age of five have died of malnutrition and starvation in Somalia while the lives of 600,000 children in the region remain at risk, the bank has revealed.

"Persistently high food prices and low food stocks indicate that we're still in the danger zone, with the most vulnerable people the least able to cope," World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced in a statement.

He also warned of the high volatility in goods markets, calling for international alertness to the possibility of widening crisis.

UN declares famine in south Somalia

Refugees and children wait to go to a refugee camp in the Ethiopian town of Dolo Ado, about 1 kilometer north of the border with Somalia, July 9, 2011.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189948.html

The United Nations has declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia as a severe drought is affecting more than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa.

"The United Nations declared today that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle," a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said on Wednesday.

The two regions have been affected by drought, conflict and poverty as tens of thousands of Somalis have already died in the worst hunger emergency in more than half a century.

Tens of thousands of desperate people are trying to flee their country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia.

The Kenyan Camp Dadaab has been overflowing with newly-arrived refugees who are forced into the camp due to the persisting drought and famine in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Officials have warned that famine could spread to all eight regions of southern Somalia within two months unless urgent action is taken.

The UK-based charity group Oxfam has criticized the European governments over their slow response to the drought in the Horn of Africa.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) in the world.

The United Nations refugee agency reported in April that the number of Somali refugees arriving in neighboring countries during the first quarter of 2011 has more than doubled in comparison to the same period in 2010.

Experts warn of Somalia catastrophe

A Somali woman hands her severely malnourished child to a Ugandan medical officer as she climbs out of an armored personnel carrier ambulance in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, July 15, 2011.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189305.html

A full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Somalia, experts say, as the African country suffers what the United Nations has described as the worst drought in decades.

"We are no longer talking about a humanitarian crisis or a humanitarian emergency," said Jens Oppermann, the country director of Action against Hunger (Action Contre La Faim).

"We are seeing this as a humanitarian catastrophe," he told AFP on Friday.

Tens of thousands of Somali refugees are flooding camps in Ethiopia and Kenya in search of food after several seasons without rain decimated livestock and killed crops in Somalia.

According to the UN, it is estimated that a quarter of Somalia's population of 7.5 million is now either internally displaced or living outside the country as refugees.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday issued an urgent call for aid amid the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Ban pointed out that more than 11 million people in the African state are facing the worst drought in decades.

The UN chief urged the countries of the world to donate over USD 1.5 billion to pay for life-saving programs in the region.

“We must do everything we can to prevent this crisis deepening. The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. We cannot afford to wait,” Ban further explained.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew the country's former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.

US conducts targeted killings in Somalia

American Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186878.html

The US military is reportedly making use of remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles in Somalia in order to conduct targeted killings in the Horn of Africa nation.

An unnamed senior US military official said on Wednesday that the United States carried out a drone attack in Somalia last week, The Washington Post reported.

The drone strike reportedly targeted two high-ranking members of al-Shabab group that allegedly had "direct ties" to 'anti-American cleric' Anwar Al Awlaki, who is on the CIA's list of 'suspected terrorists' and is reportedly hiding in Yemen.

In October 2009, al-Shabab fighters claimed they had shot down a US drone aircraft flying over Kismayo, a port town located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Last week's drone strike in Somalia makes the lawless state the sixth country where the US military has used drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks.

The United States has now employed drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen to launch aerial bomibings.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) in the world.

According to an annual account by the Foreign Policy magazine, Somalia tops the most 'failed' states on the 'Failed States Index.'

An estimated 1.4 million Somalis are displaced within the country while another 680,000 live as refugees in neighboring countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The UNHCR reported in April that the number of Somali refugees arriving to neighboring countries during the first quarter of 2011 has more than doubled in comparison to the same period in 2010.

Somalia names new prime minister

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (L) and his new Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali at a press conference at Mogadishu on June 23, 2011

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185945.html

Acting Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali has been announced as the country's new premier following Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed's resignation.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on Thursday mandated Ali with forming a government, Reuters reported.

“He is a good man and worked hard while he was the deputy for the former PM. I hope he will improve the situation of Somalia,” Sheikh Ahmed said at a news conference in the capital Mogadishu.

The former prime minister stepped down last week following a deal inked earlier in June between the president and Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The deal extended the embattled administration's mission by 12 months.

The Kampala agreement is to settle prolonged disputes between the two opponents, which have infuriated international donors pushing for immediate political reform and ending armed clashes between rival factions.

The Ahmed administration was to be dissolved in August and the president and the speaker, who have been vying for the top post, were wrangling over the next step.

Ali, who graduated in public administration from Harvard and in economics from Vanderbilt University, was a professor of economics in the United States before joining the Somali government. He also served as minister for planning and international cooperation.

“Somalia is in a difficult situation, there is an economic crisis and insecurity. I hope I will succeed in overcoming all these problems. I urge the entire government and Somalis to help me achieve this,” the technocrat new prime minister said.

Ali is expected to name his cabinet within the next few weeks following consultations with members of parliament and clan elders.

MPs killed in Somali hotel raid

al-Shabab fighters in 2008


Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/139885.html


Many Somali lawmakers have been killed after al-Shabab fighters raided a hotel in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, where government officials were staying.

Reuters quoted a legislator inside the Hotel as saying that 15 parliamentarians have been killed during the Tuesday attack.

"We have captured and killed 40 lawmakers" inside a Hotel named Weheliye, al-Shabab spokesman told a Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu.

Somali government officials have only confirmed the death of three lawmakers.

The report came a day after at least 38 people were killed and dozens injured in clashes between al-Shabab fighters and pro-government forces in Somalia.

Fierce clashes broke out in the capital city of Mogadishu on Monday after al-Shabab fighters attacked positions of pro-government forces backed by African Union (AU) forces, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Witnesses said nonstop shelling rocked the famous Bakara market, causing civilian casualties.

Mogadishu's Medina hospital reported receiving at least 75 wounded civilians.

An official from Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jama, a pro-government militia who requested not to be named, blamed rival fighters for starting the fighting.

"They attacked our bases in Dabka intersection but we repelled and pushed them further into Bakara, where they launch their offensives from," he said.

The Somali government condemned the latest offensives by the militant group.

"Al-Shabab spokesperson publicly declared war against the Somali people and government on Monday. This shows their lack of regards for the holy month of Ramadan. It is against Islam and the Somali culture to fight against another Somali," said a statement from Ministry of Information.

The latest skirmishes come after al-Shabab announced that it would be launching major offensives against the UN-backed government and African Union troops.

Iran ready to help establish peace in Somalia

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=117621&sectionid=351020101


Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says the Islamic Republic is ready to help efforts to establish peace in Somalia.

Mottaki made the remarks in a meeting with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on the sidelines of an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday.

The Iranian foreign minister also said Tehran is ready to send humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country.

He advised the Somali leader to enter into talks with opposition groups in order to bring peace to the country.

The opposition fighters have recently stepped up attacks against Somalia's UN-backed transitional government and African Union peacekeepers with the aim of toppling the embattled government.

The main armed opposition group in Somalia, Al-Shabab, is a military off-shoot of the Union of Islamic Courts.

They have been fighting Somali government troops and African Union peacekeepers in and around Mogadishu.

The Union of Islamic Courts came to power in southern Somalia in June 2006 after defeating Somali warlords. However, the UIC was forced out of power in December 2006 through an Ethiopian invasion aided by the United States.

Sheikh Ahmed also thanked Iran for its support of Somalia and said he would like to visit Iran in the near future.

Blackwater/Xe mercs arrive in Somalia, Al-Shabab says

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115922&sectionid=351020501

At least 18 people have been killed in clashes between rival factions in southern and central Somalia, and there are reports that Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have entered the country.

A battle broke out between the pro-government Ahlu Sunnah militia and Hizbul Islam fighters in the town of Baladwayne on Sunday and went well into Monday, during which at least 13 people lost their lives, witnesses said.

In addition, five people were killed when Hizbul Islam fighters engaged Al-Shabab fighters in the town of Dhobley near the Kenyan border, Reuters reported.

There are also allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in the capital.

The bombings will be carried out in order to create a pretext to launch a campaign against Al-Shabab, a spokesman of the group, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, told Reuters.

"We have discovered that US agencies are going to launch suicide bombings in public places in Mogadishu," he told reporters. "They have tried it in Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan… We warn of these disasters. They want to target Bakara Market and mosques, then use that to malign us."

At a meeting with tribal elders in Mogadishu on Monday, the Al-Shabab spokesman said that mercenaries of the Xe private security firm — formerly known as Blackwater — have arrived in the Somali capital, the Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu reported on Monday.

Blackwater/Xe mercenaries plan to carry out bombings in Mogadishu in order to accuse Al-Shabab of being the culprits in the attacks, the Al-Shabab spokesman added.

He went on to say that the Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have already recruited many lackeys to help them carry out bombings targeting prominent individuals and innocent civilians.

The Al-Shabab spokesman also told the tribal elders that a system based on Islam should be established in Somalia.