Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

Somalia
A History of Imperialist Brutality
The occupation of Somalia by the troops of 12 countries, led by
the United States, is the latest chapter in more than a century
of imperialist military aggression against the peoples of the Horn of
Africa. Without a knowledge of this history, it is impossible to
understand the present crisis in Somalia or the responsibility of the
major capitalist powers for the conditions of starvation and civil war
which are the pretext for the UN-sponsored occupation.
The capitalist media, which has been mobilized along with the US
Marines and the French Foreign Legion as part of the imperialist
assault on Somalia, systematically avoids any serious examination of
the history of this region. Instead, it repeats the lie — peddled by the
Bush administration and taken up by Clinton — that Somalia has "no
strategic value" and that the sole reason for the occupation is to feed
starving people.
But from 1870 onwards, following the opening of the Suez Canal,
the Horn of Africa — and Somalia in particular — became the object
of a ferocious struggle among the imperialist powers. Each sought to
establish a position from which it could dominate the Red Sea, the
Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. The Horn of Africa was the object
of intense imperialist interest during the Cold War, when the United
States maintained military bases at various times in Eritrea, Ethiopia
First published in two parts in the Bulletin on December 18, 1992 and January 1, 1993
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