09/23/13 – Thomas C. Mountain – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright, our guest today is Thomas Mountain.
You can find him usually writing for Counterpunch.
He writes from Eritrea.
Welcome back to the show, how are you doing, Thomas?
Hey, Scott, great to be back.
Good deal.
Well, I'm watching CNN and they're talking all about, well, CNN International.
There's probably pop stars on the other channel, but CNN International, anyway.
They're continuing their coverage of the Kenya mall siege.
And I was just wondering if you can give us your update about what's going on, and then could you confirm for us whether, in fact, history began yesterday or whether there's anything we need to know about the past that might have anything to do with this story about what's happening right now.
Well, the big word is Al-Qaeda.
The secondary word is Al-Shabaab.
And if we want to really understand why it is that something like 10, you know, people who grew up, spent their younger days in diaspora were back taking over a mall and massacring so many people, we need to go back to how did this organization start?
Because as of December 2006, there really wasn't an independent organization calling itself Al-Shabaab that was claiming to be part of Al-Qaeda.
Alright, well, so take us back.
What happened in 2006?
Well, at the beginning of 2006, there was a movement called Union of Islamic Courts founded in Mogadishu, the former capital of what was once a state called Somalia.
And the Union of Islamic Courts, an Islamic-based organization, put safety back to Mogadishu for the first time in 15 years, opened up the port, planes were landing again, and Somalia had a functioning capital for the first time in 15 years.
But they were not going to kowtow to Pax Americana, so the Americans sent the Ethiopian army in to invade Somalia at the end of 2006 and drive the Union of Islamic Courts from power.
The senior members, the older guys that really held power, they fled the country, ended up eventually in Eritrea.
But it was the young guys, the Al-Shabaab, the youth that stayed and fought the Ethiopian occupation, which lasted two years, cost over 20,000 Ethiopian lives, caused at least a half a million Somali refugees and unknown thousands of dead Somalis.
And eventually the Ethiopians pulled out most of their army, not all, but most of their army, about a couple years later, who were replaced by African Union troops from primarily Uganda, but also Burundi and other countries.
And eventually they have today over 20,000, including Kenyan troops.
That brings us to Al-Shabaab.
They stuck around and they fought.
They led this anti-Ethiopian resistance, which every Somali is genetically opposed to in Ethiopian domination of their country going back millennium, and eventually got a lot of respect that way among the people.
But, see, the bottom line is a lot of people don't know.
This Al-Shabaab, the so-called terrorists, they're basically clan-based militias, and they're in it for the money.
A couple years ago a senior Somali leader told me that he was told that everybody, there's 10,000 Al-Shabaab confirmed fighters who get paid $200 a month.
That's $2 million a month.
If you got $2 million a month, Al-Shabaab will fight for you.
So these guys are mainly doing it because they got families to feed, the country's in economic disaster.
So, you know, if...
So that kind of pops the bubble of Al-Shabaab, the heroic resistance.
There are also Wahhabis.
The Wahhabi line is now pretty much dominant in Al-Shabaab.
Sheikh Alwais, the founder of the Union of Islamic Courts, is now in a Somali government prison, driven out from his safety, basically.
But he had to flee because the Wahhabis were out to kill him, as they've killed a whole lot of the top leadership recently.
See, the interesting thing is, Al-Shabaab's a Wahhabist organization.
They've come into Kenya because Kenya has invaded Somalia and took over the port of Kismayo, which used to be a major source of funds for Al-Shabaab in Somalia, through the charcoal trade.
So, you know, where Al-Shabaab's getting its money today is a good question.
They've got to have at least $2 million a month to pay the soldiers alone.
So, you know, we're wondering...
Now, if I could stop you for a second, I just want to clarify something.
When you're saying that the Al-Shabaab guys lately have succeeded in taking out some leaders of the Islamic Courts Union, these are the guys that they used to fight for, but then, what, since 2008 or so, they've been fighting against?
Can you explain that?
Well, see, Al-Shabaab is not a homogenous organization.
It was composed of very moderate elements, like Sheikh Alwais, who was the founder of the Union of Islamic Courts and wanted no foreign interference or ideology in Somalia whatsoever, all the way up to the hardline Wahhabists, who, if history is true, is funded by the Saudi royal family.
Now, I don't have any proof of that for Al-Shabaab, but every other organization I've ever investigated that was Wahhabist got its money from the Saudis.
Okay, so, interesting that Saudi money, well, you know, Saudi money and Al-Qaeda, nothing new there.
So, in any case, Al-Shabaab is now, they're saying that, you know, we've seen reports of Sheikh Alwais having to flee for his life and ended up almost seeking refuge from the new Somali government.
The interesting thing is, the new Somali government has expressed a desire to have reunified Somalia, and now even the regional government has come out and said, we are engaging with them.
Not recognizing, but engaging with them.
So, the former Union of Islamic Courts, many of their top leaders, were in exile, have now returned to their homes in Mogadishu.
So, there's been a major change there, going on, but the moderation in the Somali government's part and an extremism push on Al-Shabaab's part.
The bottom line is, Kenya army invaded southern Somalia, captured the town of Kismayo, has caused all kinds of chaos and infighting among the tribes, the clans there, people of Somalia have been killing each other, Somali blood in the streets of Kismayo as a direct result of the conniving of the corrupt and brutal Kenyan military.
So, we've got an example of chickens coming home to roost.
The Kenyan goes into Somalia, which the Kenyan people, if you ask them, I don't very few of them really think that they used to justify why the Kenyan army claimed the right to invade southern Somalia.
It's really dodgy evidence.
And a lot of it points to even kidnapping going on by Kenyan police and Kenyan army being involved in some of this stuff, ransom payments.
So, paramilitaries and other people.
So, Kenya's in there because the U.S. told them to go in, send their army in, to join the U.N. peacekeeping forces and pacify southern Somalia, shut down the port of Kismayo.
The 20,000 peacekeepers they have in Mogadishu can basically secure Mogadishu and some towns and roads around, but they're constant sniping and attacks against the AU peacekeepers in a regular loss in there, any case.
So, al-Shabaab's been carrying on effective resistance throughout southern Somalia.
Basically, the fighters, the Somali fighters under al-Shabaab and others that control the countryside, you get off the roads and out of the main towns, it's al-Shabaab country, and the government goes there only heavily armed.
So, this is punishing Kenya.
I mean, you know, this is like a big black eye to the International Criminal Court-indicted president of Kenya, Raila Uhuru Kenyatta.
He's saying, you know, the fact is that they could come in and attack a mall that's partly or if not in majority owned by an Israeli company in the middle of the capital and kill all these high-profile people, and the Kenyan government says, oh, we've got security in the country.
You know, I wrote an article.
You had me.
We talked about this some time back about Kenya's in trouble, serious trouble, and I predicted all this internal, you know, chaos and fighting, and this is just from Somalia in the north.
Because of the counterinsurgency that the Kenyan army's raising among the Somalis in the northern Kenya and in southern Somalia, there's this huge well of resentment building up and hatred toward the Kenyan government, because it's just their army's so brutal, the police is so brutal that they're just going in and murdering and pillaging and there's all this rape going on, and the Somali people are just really in an uproar about how they're being treated, in Kenya even, by their own government.
So this is going to launch a new, it's going to be a new round of programs against the Somalis and Kenyatta, the president, practically said so in his interviews, but he made it clear, you know, we're going to find these guys or there are police who are going to get in car blasters on the countryside and our death squads are going to be you know, so everybody's going underground.
But this isn't the only problem Kenya's facing, Kenya's facing an independence movement in the port city of Mombasa and the regions around there.
We talked about this last time as well, this independence movement in Mombasa, it's mainly a Muslim-based organization, includes a lot of Kenyan Somalis as well and it's got the potential to very much destabilize the Kenyan government, which is a model of Western-based democracy they stole the latest election fair and square like they've done every other one.
Well, you know, it's true that part of the definition of blowback is it's consequences of secret foreign policy, so it seems like those planes just came out of the clear blue sky with no explanation other than they hate us for being good or free or something like that but in the case of this attack on Kenya, ain't no mystery about it, right?
I mean, for the people of Kenya those who would say, for example, like to shop at that mall or who have in the past, they know why, they know what's led to this attack when their government is occupying the country next door, for crying out loud.
Well Malcolm X said, chickens coming home to roost, and it's no secret that Al-Shabaab has been threatening Kenya, and they're saying, look, if you don't get out of here we're going to come in and do something big in your country they've been saying it for two years now and they repeatedly have been saying it, and Kenya says oh, we don't, they can't do anything we're the bad boy on the block and they wouldn't dare, and boom, what happens?
You know what I'm saying?
Right in the center of their their most popular expat shopping mall, they can just ten guys with guns just come in there and start blasting away, you know, shades of Mumbai Well now yeah, and apparently, I mean do you have any idea what the body count is so far there, the estimated death toll?
Well, if they were listening to Red Cross, they're saying 69 the Kenyan government is saying less, but I don't know, I've you know, I'm going to wait until the smoke clears in the morning and see, because everything they say now, everything ends up being the opposite right, so you've got to wait for the smoke to clear after a couple of days when the real story comes out The problem is, it's too easy to imagine it's too easy to imagine a team of guys with machine guns in a mall and the kind of damage that they could do I mean, that's the definition of a soft target, you know The interesting thing is that Al-Shabaab tweeted the names of these guys and they're like, they're from Canada and the United States and Britain and Finland and you know what I mean, they're mostly outsiders they grew up outside, they're Somalis they grew up outside, they're recruited they probably got recruited by Wahhabi recruitment centers outside and sent inside here now how come they're not looking at these Wahhabi recruitment centers, and who's funding them?
Because it all leads back to the Saudi royal family, and this is something nobody's ever touched going back to when they took the Saudi family, the Bin Laden family and put them on a plane and flew them out of the United States within hours of the September 11th Yeah, the World Association of Muslim Youth Right?
Whammy and all that Well, the whole Bin Laden family got put on one big jumbo jet and sent out of town like, within hours I mean, it's like, you know there's a whole history of this involvement of the Saudi royal family I have no idea but the way, the ruthless ways that the Wahhabis are seizing power like Ansar al-Dinay did in Mali and you know, it's typical of this kind of Wahhabi movement that you see in in Syria even, right?
They kept eating the hearts out of Syrian soldiers Every time we looked at Wahhabism and this is what al-Shabaab is, they're out attacking Shia They regularly attack Shia villages and drive this big Shia refugee problem from the small Shia areas in Somalia You know what I mean?
You can't play football Doesn't this all ring a bell?
Where is this all coming from?
We've looked back in the past and seen Who's paying for it?
Show me the money That's what nobody's talking about Well, who's What's the only source of money over there other than the Americans?
It's the Saudis.
Nobody else has anything for sale worth a crap Well, the thing is when you see Wahhabi it's from someplace It's not some mystery It's got a homeland They like to call it Salafis now Wahhabi's gotten such a bad word they changed it to Salafis So, any case the whole reason out here I just read something about this the Ethiopian dam on the Nile River and how Egypt was threatening war with Ethiopia and there's this big problem about Ethiopia's going to build a huge dam on the Nile and it's seriously destabilizing Egypt The problem is if Egypt has a rapidly growing population they're already hungry if they take their water without the water of the Nile River and Ethiopia's saying, no, we've got a right to it The interesting thing is this dam is a huge dam It's going to plan to be 6,000 megawatts Now, Ethiopia 75% of the country doesn't have any electricity It's a rural agricultural based economy so even if they put electricity in which they don't have the billions of dollars to do it even though they're going to build a dam they're still going to take 2,000 megawatts so why are they building a 6,000 megawatt dam for Ethiopians owning 2,000 they could build smaller, cheaper dams without affecting the Nile River and the Because it's a Haliburton contract Well, this is something the World Bank, 51% owned by the United States has been the baby behind it all This dam is not really needed It's not going to benefit Ethiopian people Why are they building it in the first place?
It's going to destabilize Egypt It's part of crisis management in our region It's like why the U.S. sent the Ethiopian army in to destroy the first real government in Somalia was because the United States doesn't want peace they want war so that they're better to control In the case of Egypt, if they couldn't have Mubarak they have Mubarak too It's the brute force policy that the Americans support so any inklings of an independent leadership have to go That's the crisis management That's the strategy in Africa You see it creating a crisis and destabilizing the region between Egypt and Ethiopia Let me ask you, Thomas What's the Empire's interest in destabilizing Egypt now?
I mean, they've got their dictatorship back Well, they got it back but that's the thing They destabilize it by getting rid of of Morsi but what that does is leave the Egyptian people in control of the Suez Canal That's what they really matter and even if the Egyptian army were to crack up and not be very effective at killing its own people, they could bring peacekeepers into control of the Suez Canal The Americans would just as soon see the Egyptian people kill each other than see any sort of an independent government, even the beginnings of a transition to an independent government happen That's why Morsi had to go Right now, by putting the Iron Fist back in place after Morsi, it's inevitable They're not just going to go back into their homes and accept it all So, destabilizing the country I mean, economically, the Americans mainly give some wheat to Egypt but other than that the Suez Canal, they pay their billion and a half every year and the army's officers get their salaries and that's pretty much what's going on If the Egyptian people, who are 70% illiterate or 60% illiterate, kill themselves the Americans don't really care They've got the Suez Canal They don't care about anything Number one, control the Suez Canal Number two, pose no threat to Israel If Egypt's in that situation and they're killing each other, America's happy It's called crisis management It's like what's going on in Congo It's like what's going on in Somalia and so many parts of the world That's what we've got to expect The whole dam on the Nile River is just another example of how we're Africans in East Africa actually organizing an intergovernmental economic forum and trying to get independent, inter-regional trade going on and developing, strengthening economies through bilateral trade on favorable terms and the Americans don't want that So if Ethiopia and Egypt two of the biggest countries in Africa are going to get along that's a threat.
The Americans want them to fight What better way than to build this dam which nobody needs except 6,000 megawatts and where's the electricity going to go?
But we'll get a good war, maybe So back to the al-Shabaab attack in Kenya here What do you expect to be the consequences of this?
Like I was saying at the beginning here the American narrative is that history just began A program against the Somali population of Northern Kenya, for one thing I expect a lot of bodies dumped and a lot of people disappearing and a wave of persecution of the Somali community unheralded and unprecedented in the past I think Somalia is going to be like all considered terrorists It's going to be like we're in Sri Lanka That's how it's going to be for Somalis in Kenya It's going to be really bad The thing is this just shows that they're trying to claim al-Shabaab's on the run, al-Shabaab's being defeated al-Shabaab's about it and al-Shabaab pulls off this brilliant coup and comes in and massacres all these famous people in the center of a supposed secure capital of Kenya which is supposed to be like one of the shining examples of Western influence in the region and you know, it's like, whoa Well, you know it's interesting about that too because it seems like everybody knows not just foreign policy people, but just kind of everybody driving down the road everybody has heard, take Vietnam for example all the insurgency has to do is not lose they don't have to win anything they just have to outlast the occupier look at the last decade of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and then they turn right around and they go, wow, we took Kismayo hooray for us, al-Shabaab is no more and I wonder I mean, it does seem like to a degree at least, they base their policies on the smoke that they blow about what a great job they're doing when all they did was chase them out of Kismayo that doesn't mean anything other than that they chased them out of Kismayo Well, and what was really going on all along from 2011 up until 2012 was a great big great horn of African drought and the UN is announcing that they're they budgeted 10 cents a day to feed over a million Somali refugees and at least, according to the UN 250,000 Somalis starved to death when all of this fighting al-Shabaab is going on a quarter million Somalis starved to death on the UN watch under Anthony Lake and that's what's really going on in the region this is a huge crime, not the drones not the secret CIA headquarters a quarter million people starved to death at one point, 500 Somalis were dying a day and the world said nothing 500 a day and this went on for two years in some cases and that doesn't even include Ethiopia, where the Ramos are in Ethiopia, the Ogaden they're talking about up to 1,000 people were starving to death every day during this period, just within the last couple years and no one said anything instead, all we heard about was drones and secret wars and dirty wars and whatever you want to say about it, but this is the unknown crime that's going on the other big thing that's going on, everybody talks about Syrian refugees in the last 10 years, 10 million Ethiopians have fled Ethiopia, there's been a human tsunami from Ethiopia, 10 million, a million people a year, actually it goes on for more than 10 years you talk about 2 million people from Syria, 2.5 million people from Iraq, I'm talking about 10 million Ethiopians have left their country a million people a year this is a human tsunami, no one's talking about where have they all gone?that's what I'm saying a lot of them got massacred in Libya by the racist Arab militias they've gone to Yemen, they've gone to nowhere to get away from the war that's being waged on them because these are primarily either Somali or their cousin, the Oromo people or Muslim people, mainly Muslim people of southern Ethiopia and there's been a counterinsurgency being waged there, there's been a food and medical aid blockade since 2007 being implemented in these regions people are just, it's scorched earth policy being carried out by the Western Fund Ethiopian Army and everybody says, oh we don't know about it and then there's 10 million refugees we don't know about them either and then we've got a quarter million Somalis starving to death nobody knows about that either I'm saying, what's going on here?this is like huge crimes being committed and there's a big smokescreen going on well you know, the last thing you said there is the one that just, I can't get over it's the level of atrocity in Somalia compared to the coverage of it now, I don't know exactly maybe I could even keep you over time and talk more about America's role in Ethiopia but I'm very familiar with America's role in Somalia over the last 10 or 12 years and how that 250, 260,000 dead people and that famine is all George Bush and Barack Obama's fault and I'm painfully aware how little this is discussed in American media foreign policy circles or whatever at all you've got a hit movie that includes Somali you know, there's a big hit movie I saw it on CNN I saw people being interviewed on CNN talking about what was really going on in the Horn of Africa and not a mention of a quarter million people starving to death and that's just in Somalia never mind next door in Ethiopia so, you know what I'm saying is that wait a second, we know a lot of really sexy stories about drones and secret CIA bases and assassination programs and Obama on Tuesday morning getting all hyped up, who's going to kill today but you know, every day a thousand people dying of starvation and of course, it's the war that made the famine the drought you know, from Mother Nature ten times worse everybody's refugees, there's a million, two million three million Somali refugees there's 10 million Ethiopian refugees and more and you know that whole war there that's driving out this human tsunami and everybody says, oh yes, there's a problem how many Ethiopians have been driven out?well, you know, we hear a lot about two and a half million Syrian refugees but we don't hear anything about 10 million Ethiopian refugees that just dwarfs the problem that they created in Syria mainly external forces created in Syria and yet this Horn of Africa, you know what I'm saying why should they care about starving Horn of Africans oh jeez, I hate to go off on this tangent but you just reminded me whatever happened to all the Iraqi refugees that were living in Syria before we go, you know, I've got to tell you your listeners out there you guys have got to support guys like Scott Horton life is hard, we know everybody's pinching pennies but there's just few like Scott that's bringing voices way off in some exotic part of the world that's actually on the ground I'm going to tell you the truth and you guys have got to support Scott Horton, okay?well, thanks for saying that I appreciate that okay, Scott, good be on you, man alright, yeah, hey thanks very much, Thomas, appreciate it okay, Joe alright, that's Thomas Mountain perhaps a little miscommunication there I think he thought I was cutting him off but I wasn't, but anyway, that's okay Thomas Mountain, he writes for Counterpunch hey y'all, Scott here, hawking stickers for the back of your truck they've got some great ones 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