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

Imperialism's Drive
to Reenslave Africa
It is now two months since Washington launched its Operation
Restore Hope. In a dispatch buried by the capitalist press last week,
it was reported that hundreds of Somali youths battled US troops in
the port of Mogadishu, confronting combat-equipped marines with
stones and their bare hands. The youth set up barricades of burning
tires, following the latest of many incidents in which US forces shot
and killed Somalis.
The US military intervention in Somalia was begun with great
fanfare and supported by a media campaign exploiting heart-wrenching
images of starving Somali children and touting the supposed
humanitarian capacities of the Pentagon. With each passing day,
however, Restore Hope emerges more clearly as a dirty colonial
occupation, part of imperialism's resubjugation of the African continent.
In the first days of the US invasion of Somalia, the Bulletin rejected
the official propaganda portraying it as a "humanitarian mission." In
the issue of December 11, 1992, we wrote: "The American invasion
of Somalia marks the onset of a new imperialist drive to carve up
Africa and the rest of the former colonial world. The countries of
Africa and Asia which achieved political independence after World
War II from the old colonial empires of Europe are once again to be
First published in the Bulletin on February 12, 1993
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