Zimbabwe: The Other Side of the Story

by Tony Black
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)

According to the Western mainstream media, Robert Mugabe is another ‘pariah’ or ‘monster’ of the nature of (the former Yugoslavia’s) Slobodan Milosevic. However, just as in the case of Milosevic, the Western portrayal of Mugabe is largely a piece of pure propaganda. To understand why we first need to examine a bit of historical context.

The problems of modern Zimbabwe started at the very outset of independence in 1979. At that time the vast majority of the country’s arable land was held by a few thousand white farmers, mostly descendants of the original British settlers who had taken the land by force a century earlier. Under pressure, the fledgling independent state agreed to a land transfer agreement that was called ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ whereby the British government would put up monies to help poor, black Zimbabweans (many being veterans of the independence struggle) buy back the land from white farmers – when and if, of course, the latter chose to sell. However, even this agreement was considered too radical for the likes of Britain, which in 1997 reneged on its financial commitments.

The slow pace of ‘land reform’, then, was a sore that continued to fester until Mugabe, under pressure from the veterans, finally passed legislation in 1997 that led to the seizure of nearly 1,500 farms owned by white Zimbabweans. At that point all hell broke loose and Mugabe became the overnight international pariah we all love to hate.

But, of course, there is much more beneath the surface of this political iceberg than just a few confiscated farms. Both Washington and London hate Mugabe on a number of counts among which include: 1) his abandonment in the late ‘90’s of International Monetary Fund (IMF)-mandated ‘structural adjustment programs’ (which take money away from public programs like health and education to pay rich, foreign investors etc); 2) his refusal to privatize every national institution in sight; 3) the fact that he sent troops to support Laurent Kabila’s government in the Congo (which the US was attempting to overthrow); 4) the threat he poses to vested British economic interests and companies; and, finally, the fact that his fast track land reform is a deeply troubling symbol to neighbouring countries like South Africa which, despite the fall of apartheid, has done virtually nothing to redistribute wealth or land to its people.

Moreover, the economic disarray of the country is, in large part, a direct result of the ‘international community’s’ deliberate undermining of the economy. Thus, the IMF, the World Bank and the International Development Association have waged an extensive campaign of economic warfare against Zimbabwe by freezing loans, denying credit vital to its food and energy security, and engaging in undeclared economic sanctions. In December, 2001 the US passed its ‘Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act’ which further tightened the screws on a nation already reeling under what amounts, in essence, to a form of collective punishment. Considering that Zimbabwe imports 100% of its oil, and 40% of its electrical equipment and spare parts, these sanctions and interferences have, single-handedly, destroyed much of the country’s industrial and agricultural sectors.

None of this is to say that Mugabe isn’t corrupt or hasn’t acted harshly to crack down on internal dissent. But one must immediately counter with the fact that Zimbabwe is very much the subject of extensive foreign subversion. Much like the so-called ‘colour revolutions’ in Serbia, Belarus, Georgia, and the Ukraine – and numerous other attempted such ‘revolutions’ across the globe – Zimbabwe’s ‘independent’ oppositional groups have received extensive funds, equipment, and organizational support from the likes of the US State Dept., USAID and the ubiquitous US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (essentially the civilian arm of the CIA). And, of course, the corporate media can be relied upon to conjure their usual bang-up demonization campaign.

Meanwhile, right next door in places like Tanzania - concerning which we hear not a peep from the media - even the barest hint of a strike is met with state violence and imprisonment; or like Rwanda, where under the Western-backed Kagame dictatorship, thousands are routinely ‘disappeared’; or in Uganda where there has not been a free election since the U.S.-backed Museveni came to power in 1986.

Then again, according to a recent update by the Oxford Research Bureau, the US and Britain (with extensive support from Canada through its sub-imperial role in Afghanistan) are now responsible for the deaths, since 2003, of 1.3 million people in Iraq.

‘Pariahs’ and ‘monsters’, it seems, are very much in the eye of the beholder.

Somali People Resist Attacks

Somalis at home and abroad struggle for independence.

Towards the end of 2006, US-backed Ethiopian force rolled into Somalia to overthrow the popular Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The UIC had restored peace and security in much of southern Somalia during their brief reign of power. The illegal Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia, with the installation of a puppet government, marks a new phase of US imperialism in Somalia.

Somalia has endured a long history of foreign domination, both at the hands of European colonial powers and the US. During the colonial era, Somalia was curved up into five territories; Italian Somaliland in the south, British Somaliland in the north, French Somaliland in Djbouti, Ogaden (Western Somalia), annexed to Ethiopia and the Northern Frontier Division (NFD), ceded to Kenya.

In 1960, European colonizers were eventually defeated when Somalia attained its national independence. In the early 1980s US imperialism gradually took hold in Somalia as the US administration propped up the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre through financial aid and the massive transfer of weapons. Working in collusion with Barre, US destabilization in this era was aimed at suppressing and dividing the Somali people, thereby making Washington directly responsible for state collapse in Somalia.

The primary objective of the US in Somalia is access to Somalia’s untapped but massive oil reserves and vast uranium deposits. In geopolitical terms, Somalia is strategically located where the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea converge. It oversees the daily passage of oil tankers that go through the Suez Canal, while its close proximity to the Middle East and Sudan makes it an ideal territory to launch US military attacks against the perceived “Islamist threat” in the region. Worse still, the US plans to use the strategic town of Berbera as the base of its newly launched ‘AFRICOM’ (Africa Command), an American military scheme aimed at the militarizing the entire African continent.

Just as the Somali people rallied hard to defeat the US occupation of 1993 during the so-called “Operation Restore Hope”, Somali resistance to the Ethiopian occupation has been unrelenting and fierce. All the while, the humanitarian crisis in Somalia worsens: hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been displaced by the Ethiopian army, while the Western corporate press completely ignores the issue.

Abroad, Somalis have begun to wage their own peaceful resistance. On November 16, the Somali Canadian Diaspora Alliance (SDA) of Toronto organized a demo outside the U.S. embassy, attended by at least 200. This demo came at a time when a large umbrella organization of progressive Somali Diaspora organizations from across Canada and the U.S. was formed. The mandate of the new organization, known as Somali Cause, is to demand an immediate end to the Ethiopian occupation and war crimes, promote an all inclusive national reconciliation process, and call for the establishment of an International War Crimes Tribunal for Somalia. The main objective of all these pro-people Somali organizations is to forge a united front to peacefully free Somalia from occupation and oppression, and to bring lasting liberation and real democracy to the Somali people.

The Problem with “Save Darfur”

Is calling for a military invasion the answer to civil war in Darfur?

In July, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved what is expected to be the largest Peace-keeping Mission in the world. The 26,000-strong United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, or UNAMID force will be deployed to the western region of Sudan next year, the region infamous for violence between government and rebel forces which has killed and displaced thousands since 2003. Cheering on the resolution are the US and Canadian governments, the mainstream media and the vocal Save Darfur movement - a massive and well-funded campaign with such notable celebrity public faces as George Clooney and Kanye West. The Save Darfur movement goes even further and calls for the direct military intervention into the Sudan - up to and including invasion and occupation by American, Canadian and European troops.

However, the analysis of the Save Darfur campaign contains a number of gaping holes because it refuses to acknowledge a number of hugely important questions. Does the “official version” of the Sudan story relect reality? Are we witnessing a desire to stop “genocide” in Darfur or, as other African and Arab countries have put it, yet another attempted invasion of a Muslim country? And, with the UN’s history throughout the world, and on the African continent in particular, is Peacekeeping the solution to the conlict in Sudan?

Sudan is Africa’s largest country, with a population of around 40 million, 70% of whom are Muslim. The current Islamic government of Sudan, under President Omar Al-Bashir has been in power since 1989 and has been on the US ‘hit list’ for overthrow since the Clinton presidency. The Americans bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant in 1998 - destroying the country’s major source of desperately needed medicine. The US has also been pumping money into countries bordering Sudan since the 1980s in order to destabilize the government.

The US also financed and armed rebels fighting against the government in the second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). The Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the main faction in the conlict, was headed by John Garang who was trained for many years in a US military base at Fort Benning Georgia. The Save Darfur movement makes little attempt to remind us of these important historical facts.

Currently, the two main rebel factions fighting the government in Darfur are the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA). US-allies in the region, particularly Uganda and Chad, are providing these and other rebels with weapons, equipment, money and bases - some rebel factions are actually better armed than the Sudanese army.

Any look at a natural resource map of Africa should immediately give the answer to why the US is interested in the Sudan: the region is swimming in oil and other resources that American, Canadian and British companies cannot currently access. The contracts are held mainly by Chinese and European companies. Sudan and Darfur also contain a number of other resources, including uranium (reserves coveted by Israel, another loud voice for intervention in Darfur).

Save Darfur claims that what is happening in Darfur is a “genocide” in which over 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed. To date however, only the Bush regime has made the same charge of “genocide” and the figure of 400,000 deaths has been exposed as being a deliberate exaggeration. The igure the US General Accountability Office has found to be most un-biased is 120,000 dead and includes those who died of illness and starvation as well as fighters from all sides killed in combat.

It is important to recall the history of peacekeeping in other parts of Africa to judge what kind of role such a force would play in Darfur. Somali Canadians remember the “peacekeeping” mission
to Somalia (1993-95), during which Canadian soldiers murdered at least 6 innocent Somalis and whose participation prolonged and aggravated the conlict. Currently, the UN General Assembly has given its full support to the hated warlord government in Somalia that was installed by the US and Ethiopia after the overthrow of the Islamic Courts Union. Meanwhile, in the Congo, just south of Sudan, the UN force has allowed and sometimes assisted American proxy forces in the killing of an estimated 10 million people!

Clearly, foreign troops cannot be trusted to put the interests of local people irst. The civil wars in Africa will end when Western governments stop using Africa as their plaything. People in Canada must call on their government to respect the sovereignty of poor countries and stop interfering in Africa!

Somalia: More African Blood For Oil?

While receiving much less publicity and scrutiny than the interference and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the interference in the affairs of Somalia has a similar history and the same motive – oil and profits.
The war currently raging in Somalia is not simply one of one African peoples against another, Ethiopians against Somalis. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia on December 28, 2006, it was the interest of transnational companies represented by the United States government who were calling the shots.
In the 1980s nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips by the pro-American President Mohamed Siad Barre. In 1991, Siad Barre was overthrown and the country was left without a central government and in certain disorder. The all but Conoco left the country at that point, although many of those companies had eyes towards returning.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton authorized a 30,000 troop invasion into Somalia, but fled not long after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident left eighteen Americans dead at the hands of local Somali forces. At this time, Canada also had directly military presence as ‘Peacekeeper’s in Somalia, culminating in the highly publicized murder and torture of a Somali male by Canadian soldiers who were permitted into the military despite their obvious white supremacists tendencies such as having swastika tattoos.
Somalia remained without a central government and in a state of instability until 2006 when a grass-roots Islamic movement consolidated into the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took over two-thirds of Somalia, including Mogadishu. Within 6 months the United States conspired with its ally, Ethiopian dictator President Meles Zinawi, to overthrow the local government and restore a foreign-backed regime.
On the 4th of December 2006, a US military official met with the Ethiopian president to decide the fate of Somalia. Two days later the United Nations recognized the illegitimate ‘transitional government’ in exile in its attempt to undermine international recognition for the government of the UIC in Somalia. Within days Ethiopia began attacks within Somali against the UIC, eventually leading to a full-scale invasion of some 15,000 troops bound for Mogadishu.
By January 8, the United States was also fully engaging in the illegal war, launching air strikes killing many people in the various parts of the country. All told, many thousands of Somalis have died at the hands of the Ethiopian, American, and transitional government forces since December.
In April 2007 alone, as many as 2000 Somalis were killed by brutal military attacks and The United Nations Human Rights Commission – an arm of the same international body which helped orchestrate the current chaos in Somalia – has recently reported that more than 400,000 people have been internally displaced. Indeed, Somalia’s humanitarian crisis on a similar scale as Iraq today, and all within a matter of a few months.
So why are Western countries and their companies interested in Somalia? Somalia is not only a potential source of hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas), but the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia is a vital shipping route for Saudi oil. Canada was one of a number of nations and oil companies who participated in a World Bank/UN Development Programme study of the petroleum potential of the area.
Given this history and as a partner in the brutal campaign to secure resources and profit from working people across the World (ie. Afghanistan, Haiti) it’s no surprise that Canada has, through its support for the illegitimate government installed by the US-backed Ethiopian government once again brought instability and violence to the Somali people.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter McKay safely expressed his approval for the United Nations resolutions which were designed to only strengthen the power of foreign forces in Somalia. More recently, Liberal Members of Parliament in Toronto including Judy Sgro have been canvassing support for the Ethiopian-backed government.
Working people in Toronto, not only those of Somali descent need to speak out against the Government of Canada’s role in supporting and carrying out oppression and bloodshed to fuel the pockets of the wealthy. Its our young people that they send to kill and die, and its our money that they use to fund their projects.