All right, my friends, welcome back to Antiwar Radio, it's Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're also streaming live on the internet, ChaosRadioAustin.org and Antiwar.com slash radio.
And introducing our next guest, his name is Abdul Qadir Abdirahman.
He is the chair of a group called Somali Cause.
They're an umbrella organization that organizes aid from Berlin, America, to people in Somalia.
And boy, do they need it lately.
The website is Somalicause.org.
Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
Thank you, Scott.
I'm very happy to have you here.
And now a little bit of background for people who aren't familiar, as I'm sure you know, there is a terrible blackout on this story in the American media.
But back in December of 2006, the Bush regime hired the Ethiopian army and had them invade Somalia in order to install a U.S. slash U.N. created government in exile.
And the place has been at bloody war ever since.
The last I saw, and I admit to you that this is a story that I have a lot of trouble keeping up with.
There's just very little coverage of it even to speak of.
But the last I saw, they said that the humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia was now the worst in Africa, worse than Darfur, worse than the Congo, as as many as 700,000 people have been made refugees from Mogadishu.
I guess organizing aid for the people of Somalia back home is a full-time task for you, my friend.
That's correct, Scott.
The situation in Somalia is so dire that the people are really crying for assistance and help.
And there's a continuous shelling and bombardment by Ethiopian forces.
And there's a severe humanitarian crisis, and the hospitals, schools, mosques did not escape this indiscriminate bombing.
And as you said, the whole world recognizes the issue of Somalia as worse than Darfur.
But that story is not shining on the U.S. media.
And we are facing a huge task as Somali-Americans to convey the message of our disaster in Somalia to our fellow Americans.
And getting assistance to Somalia is very, very, very difficult.
And what makes it difficult is that there's a roadblock established by Ethiopian forces the humanitarian assistance from the U.N., such as WSB and UNICEF, to get to the displaced people of Mogadishu.
Right outside of Mogadishu, there's about 2 million people who left when Ethiopians came.
They left with nothing in their hands.
They walked more than 40, 50 miles just to get away from this bombardment that was continuous on them.
So the situation is very severe, Scott, and the description is very difficult to even describe it.
Wow.
So 700,000 refugees is a low estimate.
It's actually more than a million people who have fled Mogadishu and surrounding areas.
That's correct.
It's actually the latest estimate from the United Nations said 1.5 million people left outside that was displaced from Mogadishu.
And 10,000 were killed, and the wounded are over 15,000 to 20,000.
And that's the estimate from the U.N. itself.
And other organizations such as Amnesty International and Refugee International, they have also have estimates which are very close to that, if not higher than that.
So a very severe situation, malnourishment, bombardment, and no one can describe what's happening in Somalia.
And now you're saying that the gunmen, the warlords actually, the so-called bad guys from the days of Black Hawk Down, they're now the good guys that America has installed in power, and these thugs on the road will not let the Red Cross pass?
That's correct.
The warlords are the ones who used to cause torture, killing, rape, and all that, and somehow our government trusted them, and because of the so-called war on terror, hired them to do the job.
And what they do is basically terrorize the community, and they tell that they are good friends with the United States.
And they, when we are telling to our fellow Americans that's not so, because we as a nation are a freedom-loving nation, we are inspired for human rights.
But these warlords who are inspired by dollars from the U.S. government and from the Ethiopian military tanks are terrorizing the civilian population of Somalia.
And just outside of Mogadishu, people are living without shelter, without food, without water, without medical care.
There's no sanitation facilities.
Diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, are rapidly spreading.
And particularly vulnerable are displaced children, the sick, the elderly.
The cities are devastated.
There are corpuses that are rotting, and some dismemberment of people.
And all these things are happening in the name of, nobody knows in the name of what, but these are committed by the warlords.
The government that are there now, they're called transitional federal government, are composed, compromised of former warlords.
They basically change shirts.
Now they're wearing the shirt of a minister before they were a warlord, and they are all getting help and assistance from Ethiopia, which was brought and supported their invasion by our government.
Right.
I mean, that's really the key here, is that this is an American invasion.
The Ethiopian army at this point is simply a division of the American Pentagon.
And I think, you know, most Americans are probably used to hearing about terrible wars and violence and displacements in Africa.
But this one is our government's fault.
And our responsibility.
That's correct, Scott.
That's why what we are trying to do as American citizens to contact our congressmen here and also the Senate, and also write letters to our government, U.S. government and State Department, and to please, you know, explain to them, you know, things are getting worse.
And we need a complete change of U.S. policy towards Somalia.
The policy so far has only been concentrated on the war on terror, no regard to human suffering.
As a result of that, Ethiopia was invited.
And Ethiopia is run by a dictator called Mela Zenawi.
He is killing and torturing and bombarding our women, children.
And it's not something that I'm saying, just go check any U.N. human, any humanitarian organization, whether the U.N. or the Amnesty International, just go visit their website and you will see the reports that's coming from day after day of the suffering of the Somalis that's taken place as a result of our ill-advised policy towards Somalia.
You know, it almost seems like, and don't get me wrong, because I'm sure there are terrible cynical reasons behind this, like oil and that kind of thing, but I can almost see the simplistic narrative, you know, as the gears turn in the minds of American policy makers.
They have this guy, Melas, in Ethiopia, who used to be the Soviet dictator of that country and is now the American dictator of that country.
You see the turn toward this former communist dictator, toward the son of Adid, the warlord from Black Hawk Down, and it's pretty easy to see the calculation here.
The people who had created a more or less government there in Somalia, I guess less, but it was something, the Islamic Courts Union had the word Islamic right in their name.
And communists aren't Muslims, and warlords like Adid and his guys, their only god is money.
And so that became apparently the choice.
Communists all of a sudden aren't so bad as long as they're helping us fight the Islamic right, which is of course the exact opposite of the equation from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
That's correct.
And as you said, Melas was a Marxist rebel who came to power by the barrel of a gun.
And when he came to Ethiopia, basically what he did was he befriended the United States.
And in order for him to be supported, to stay in power, he sent all false messages to the United States saying that there are bad people, bad terrorists in Somalia.
And because of that, he wanted some funding and he wanted to stay in power.
And as far as what you hear about the Islamic courts, after 18 years of civil war in Somalia, where warlords were running and killing and raping women, some people came and got together.
And Somalias, you know, they are 100% Muslim.
They are very moderate Muslims, which pray five times, which help the poor and all those things that the Islamic teachings require us to perform.
But no radical.
There's no radicalism in Somalia at the time.
But when they cleaned the city of Mogadishu, got rid of the warlords, and the women started going to the market.
Before women could not even go outside of their home, the women were shopping, kids were outside, life came back to Somalia, all the diasporas started going back to Somalia.
The airports and ports were open.
When all those things happened, and this is something that is said, even admitted by the United States government and other agencies like the EU and everybody, the peace was there.
Then the Ethiopians came, they brought the warlords on top of a tank.
For example, the president, the current president of Somalia, he's a former warlord.
They came back and then the killing started again.
So now the last two years was the worst two years that Somalia has ever experienced.
The killing is continuous.
As we speak now, they bombard the biggest Somali market called Bakara Market in Mogadishu.
They rape women.
They do whatever they want.
So malice is basically, this occupation must end in order to move forward.
We need and request the international community, especially our government, to pressure the Ethiopians to withdraw from Somalia and bring a UN troops who can relate to Somali people, who can help and bring peace to Somalia, not those who can bring destruction and killing to Somalia.
I'd like you to elaborate a little bit more about the situation before December 2006 and Dick Cheney's regime change operation there.
As you said, the place had been, I guess, a warring place of death and pain pretty much since the end of the colonial era.
Certainly American intervention in the early 90s didn't help, but what had happened was the place had finally come to some sort of monopoly on power.
This Islamic Courts Union.
I want to know more about, as you said, the economy flourishing.
I remember reading that the cell phone business was doing absolutely great in Somalia, that the ports in Mogadishu had never been so busy.
There were no tariffs at all and no tax men at the port and everybody was just making a killing and Somalia had actually finally attained peace and prosperity, relatively speaking anyway, after just decades of war.
First thing America does is come in there and turn the whole place upside down.
It's amazing that you say that, and that's correct.
I met Congressman Donald Payne in Minneapolis with Congressman Keith Ellison and he just returned.
Donald Payne just returned from Africa, including the whole Horn of Africa, and he was given Ellison's report based on his trip and he basically said, when I went there, there was no terrorist in Somalia.
He said that the Islamic Courts has brought peace and stability in Somalia and simply instead of bringing negotiations and facilitating dialogue among Somalis, what we do, we bring a few of you to come and invade and cause a huge destruction, infrastructure destruction, human life destruction that you can never imagine.
That Congressman who even saying that, I mean the whole world, there was a report issued also in London which said that they call that the Golden Age, Golden Period, which means that there was a peace.
After 18 years of rape, torture by the warlords, all the warlords were driven out.
And there was a peace and stability.
Of course, you always find some radicals in every society, but the radicals at the time needed to be dialogued, needed to be discussed.
But what happened now, when the Ethiopians invaded, now we have more radicals than we had before.
There was a report by Los Angeles Times yesterday which said that when the Ethiopians arrived in Somalia, there were more people being radicalized because they see the destruction that is being caused by Ethiopia and who do they blame?
They blame the United States.
So we are here as American citizens trying to bring closer to the Somali people and the American people, trying to refocus our policy, change it for the better.
Somali people and American people are the same.
I participated during Operation Restore Hope when the United States went to Somalia and it helped feed all the starving people.
I was there helping the United States.
I left my work, spent six months just to be with the Marines, to be with the Army, to help Somalis feed.
That was successful, even though later on the thing was mismanaged.
But before it was very helpful, successful, it helped and saved many, many, many lives.
So what we are saying now to our government, please stop supporting Ethiopian occupation in Somalia.
They are killing our women, they are killing our children, they are radicalizing the Somali society.
We want Somalis to have freedom like all of us here in America.
We want them to enjoy democracy like all of us in America.
Why impose a dictator to the people of Somalia?
Please stop Ethiopian occupation.
Well, you know, if we leave out anything about, you know, oil in the ground or just the strategic position of having a military footprint in that part of Eastern Africa and those kinds of things, and we just take this as the, you know, so-called war on terrorism debate.
They invaded this country, according to the Washington Post, in search of three Al-Qaeda suspects.
And these were guys from back before the Bush administration, you know, post-9-11.
This is a military war, not a criminal matter type thing.
These guys had all been indicted.
They were wanted for questioning.
I don't even know if they'd been indicted.
They were wanted for questioning by the FBI as suspects in the Africa Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.
And this was the excuse for the war, to catch three Al-Qaeda guys.
And of course, there was a story in the Los Angeles Times, I think it was yesterday, it may have been the day before yesterday, I think it was yesterday's, L.A.
Times has said that the, you know, intelligence experts are worried that Somalia is now turning into a land ripe for Al-Qaeda.
Yeah.
And then you made that analogy here, that those three individuals are not Somalis.
We have to underline that.
Those are non-Somalis.
So, but Somalis are being punished.
Somali people are being punished.
So what we are saying here is that in order to reach a solution, a warlord cannot bring peace in Somalia.
A warlord brought destruction to Somalia.
So we ask our government to disassociate itself from these bad guys.
Because what they're going to do is basically, they're going to, whatever they do, they will do it in the name of America.
They will say, because we are being supported by the United States.
So the best way to, for us, is that to have, change our policy, help the civilian population, try to bring the UN United Nations troops to Somalia, have election, have people who can lead Somalia, not warlords.
Warlords will never lead Somalia, will never bring a solution.
They will cause destruction, and then say that because we did it in the name of the United States.
And then that brings the animosity between the Somali people and America.
And I can assure you that Somalis love America, they have good feelings for the United States.
We have a huge population of Somalis in Minneapolis and in Columbus, Ohio, and we are excited about the coming election.
We are voting.
We are participating.
Most of us are workers, some of us work for the government, some of us work for private.
So we are taxpayers.
So we need our voice to be heard.
We need our advice to go to the White House and our advice to go to the State Department.
Please change your policy.
This European occupation is causing, radicalizing the Somali population.
We don't need that.
Somali people are good people.
They love Americans.
But when they see planes coming and bombing them, when they see Ethiopian tanks killing their children, that will cause, that will have an effect, an impact of future relationship between Somalia and America.
So our job is to bring the two people together, to cause friendship, and we ask the United States government to change its policy towards Somalia.
Well good luck with that.
I don't know if anybody can ever get them to change their policy from anything.
I would hazard to guess, sir, that most people in the U.S. Congress have no idea that there's an American-backed regime change mission in Somalia.
Have they ever held a single hearing in the House or the Senate about this?
They did.
The Senate held several hearings, especially by Senator Feingold from Wisconsin, and also Donald Payne, Congressman from New Jersey, also held hearings.
But the hearings usually focus on the, they never focus on the issue of an occupation.
They focus on humanitarian side of the issue, but while ignoring the cause of the humanitarian crisis.
And Jandai Fraser, who is the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, testified on those, and she always gives a rosy picture of things.
Things are doing well.
There's no problem.
Ethiopians are helping Somalis.
And all these, you know, statements which are impractical, which are untrue.
But they do have hearings, and the good thing about it, Somalipe, Somali-Americans, they are writing to their congressman.
We are explaining to them.
We are knocking doors in Washington, D.C., telling them, you know, this is what's happening in Somalia.
What are you going to do about it?
If we need our vote in this come November, we need an action here.
So we are approaching also the same thing, that we're hoping that new administration who takes over January 20th will change its policy to Somali.
So our advocacy is continuing, and we are knocking doors.
But you're right, there's not too much emphasis.
There's hearings, but the hearings seem to be how to cure things, not to how fundamentally change, not to underline what causes the problem.
Well, you know, I have to tell you, if the Democrats do take power, I fear that we'll see even more military intervention in Africa, in Sudan, as well as probably in Somalia.
We'll see actual American boots on the ground, not just flying overhead in C-130s, blasting people from the air.
And of course, the excuse will be that, oh, well, you know, the Somali-Americans asked us to do something about it.
And they'll just take the pressure that you're putting on them and use it for their own evil ends.
Yeah, we hope, we hope that any administration that takes over January 20th will evaluate the U.S. policy toward that region, the whole of East Africa, or the whole of Africa.
And we hope that definitely the Somali policy is not working, and that can be seen from what's happening on the ground.
And we hope that, and I pray that there will be some change.
If there's no change, then there will be more death, more destruction, more women and children will suffer because of the Ethiopian occupation.
And we are just doing our best to engage with current campaigns to have some kind of vision that includes humanitarian vision, not only just war on terror vision.
We should have a stick and carrot, bring solution, and look at people-oriented policy, not policy driven by any particular group or any particular ideology, but people-driven agenda where you save lives, where you save kids, where you have some kind of system to bring in Somalia which can have a fair election for democracy, no occupation.
That's what we expect.
Well, it's going to be hard, you know, because in a sense you are asking for somebody to come in and hold that election from outside the country, isn't that right?
No, what we are actually asking is that, first of all we are asking Ethiopians to withdraw, because their presidency is not conducive to have any sort of negotiations even among Somalis, because what they do, they're supporting warlords, and warlords are doing the killing.
Once you remove the Ethiopians, we are asking the UN peacekeeping troops to come in so they can establish some kind of peace, and once that's established, we are asking for elections as mandated by the UN federal, as mandated by the federal charter, transitional federal charter.
Once that election is held, then the Somalis, then we should support, international community including the United States should support that system of government that comes out of that election.
And I think the Somali people have had long years of civil war and occupation by Ethiopia, now they are very optimistic and they want to move forward.
Once this occupation ends, we think that the crisis, the Somali crisis will be much less than the way they are now, because there won't be new Ethiopian tanks, there will be the UN tanks which can facilitate dialogue among Somalis.
We don't want anything imposed from outside, we want the Somalis to stop themselves and bring solutions.
Alright, well, I would be careful about asking for the right kind of intervention instead of the wrong kind, and maybe just stick to asking for the intervention to stop, please.
But you know, that's up to you to decide.
Yeah, well, that's actually our organization, Somali Causes.
We have to have some kind of peace and stability, because the UN is demanding that even if we bring peace ourselves, there is a tendency that people are now being paid to call someone else a terrorist.
So even if we all get together and bring some kind of government, like it happened within the Somali courts, some people will tend to sell that and say that, oh, these are radicals, so we cannot call them government.
So I think just to make everybody happy, if the UN comes in, we don't want a UN force that kills people, but we want a UN force that brings them and keeps peace, and I think that will facilitate, we're looking for the right kind of intervention, we don't want the wrong kind of intervention.
I agree.
I agree.
All right, now, if any other anti-war activists want to get involved with Somali Cause, the website is somalicause.org, tell us about what it is that you could do and how other people could help.
What we ask our fellow Americans is that if you can emphasize, when you communicate to your congressman and senator, on the plight of Somali people, and just start explaining to them that, you know, that situation must end, the Ethiopian occupation must end, and we need an immediate humanitarian assistance to the Somali people.
We have close to 2 million people outside of Mogadishu who have no food, no shelter, no health, and we are busy not looking into their needs, and this is the place called the worst in Darfur.
Imagine, Somalia is now called the worst in Darfur, and so humanitarian crisis basically surpasses that of Darfur, so we have to bring the same attention, the same spirit of attention that we give to Darfur, to Somali people, and I plead and I ask everyone who's listening to this show to please call and contact your congressman and ask the Somali people to be helped by withdrawing Ethiopian forces, because Ethiopian forces are the ones who are causing all this humanitarian crisis.
And then we ask our government also to be fair, to be very kind to the Somali people.
The Somali people are, you know, they are peace-loving people, and if they are looking for some bad people, please do it while not incurring what they call collateral damage, with the killing of the whole village, being wiped out.
So we ask you to contact the congressman and ask him, please take Ethiopians out of Somalia.
All right, everybody, that is Abdul Qadir Abdirahman from Somalicaws.org.
Thank you very much for your time on the show today.
Thanks, Scott.
