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

Italian rule.
Following the Italian victory, the full force of the fascist dictatorship
was unleashed in the new colony, Italian East Africa, which
combined Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Interracial marriage was
forbidden and the inhabitants of all three territories were subjected
to institutionalized oppression. They resisted fiercely. In 1937 an
attempt was made to assassinate the Italian governor at Addis Ababa
and a reign of terror followed, with widespread arrests and summary
executions. But the unrest became even more intense until in 1941,
the Italian territories were invaded by a combined force of British and
Ethiopian exile troops. From then on, they were controlled by Britain
until the end of the war.
The Legacy of Imperialist Domination
The carve-up of the Horn of Africa during and after World War
II provides further proof that this imperialist bloodbath was not a war
against fascism or for democracy and self-determination. Like the
first global conflagration which broke out in 1914, World War II was
essentially a struggle among the imperialist powers over control of
markets, colonies and strategic positions.
The main line of the conflict was between the Allied imperialist
powers — the US, Britain and the French exile forces of de Gaulle —
and the Axis powers — Germany, Italy and Japan. 8
But the struggle
for colonial influence went on in a different form within the camps
and political overtures were made from time to time between the
camps. This internecine conflict was especially sharp over the question
of the British and French colonial empires.
In 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter,
which supposedly upheld the right of all peoples to choose their own
government. 9
American imperialism sought to wrap itself in the
mantle of anticolonialism and democracy, intending that her own
commercial interests would fill the gap left by the former colonial
powers. Churchill, for his part, insisted that promises of self-determination
applied only to the conquered nations of Europe, not British
colonies. "We mean to hold our own," he insisted in 1942. "I did not
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