[ 2012-05-06 ]

Africa's AU; A Tool of Western Rule
The African Union (AU) has mutated into a
particularly corrupt and brutal enforcer of
western rule in Africa. When it comes to the
interests of Pax Americana you must start with the
crimes committed in the AU's “War on Terror” in
Somalia a.k.a. The War on the Somali people.

In 2006 the Somalis themselves under the umbrella
of the Union of Islamic Courts brought about a
miracle in many observers eyes and established a
functioning government in the former capital of
Mogadishu bringing peace and security to the
region for the first time in 15 years.

The diktats of Pax Americana's International War
on Terror require that any truly popular
government, especially with the word Islamic in
its name, must not be, and the USA soon dispatched
its Ethiopian gendarmes to put fire and sword to
peace in Somalia.

This was all done with the official blessing and
support of the AU and its big brothers in the UN.
Unfortunately for them the brutal nature of the
Ethiopian invasion and occupation began a massive
upswell of Somali nationalism and the gendarmes
from Addis Ababa were forced to flee the land of
their historic enemies for no Ethiopian leader in
their right mind had ever picked a fight with the
Somalis.

Up stepped the AU in the form of what is today
over 20,000 heavily armed soldiers, mainly some
15,000 from Uganda. These mercenaries invaded
Somalia in 2008 and quickly turned Mogadishu into
a high explosive inferno, destroying much of the
city, 30 square miles or so and creating half a
million refugees on top of the half a million
Ethiopia had already caused.

The AU troops prefer heavy artillery, tanks, heavy
armored vehicles and helicopter gun ships when
dealing with the Somali resistance. The AU has had
no qualms about shelling Somali neighborhoods and
markets and the monthly lists of dead and wounded
residents of Mogadishu swelled into the thousands
before the Al Shabab resistance finally withdrew
from the city.

And all the while no one seems to ask why? What
gives the Ugandan army the right to be fighting a
war against Somalis? How does the AU get away with
massacring tens of thousands of the Somali people?
Or creating a million refugees who are left to
slow starvation in the long overflowing refugee
camps?

To understand how this has come to be, how a lofty
sounding Organization for African Unity became the
African Union and started killing tens of
thousands of Africans, one must go back to the
miscarriage that brought this organization into
existence.

In the early 1960's and the birth of what quickly
became Neocolonialism in Africa the Organization
for African Unity (OAU) was born. Despite all the
idealist rhetoric of building a truly Pan-African
union the very birth of the organization took
place amidst a contradiction so overwhelming that
all good intent was stillborn.

Instead of supporting African Liberation the OAU
located its headquarters in Ethiopia which was
already involved in a counterinsurgency against
the Eritrean Liberation Front, the independence
movement that became the forefathers of today's
Government of Eritrea.

After WW2 Ethiopia had colonized Eritrea, with the
blessing of the USA, instead of Eritrea getting
its independence like the rest of Africa.

A supposedly anti-colonial organization, the OAU,
with its headquarters in Ethiopia, a country
colonizing another African country?

This was a complete abandonment of any principle
and doomed all further prospects for the OAU to
help the African people.

As such, matters have been pretty much all down
hill ever since. The OAU morphed into the AU as
neocolonialism completed its complete sweep of the
newly “independent” African nations. Except one
that is, Eritrea and it wasn't liberated until
1991.

For the first three decades of its existence the
OAU/AU stood by and let the Eritrean people fight
their own battles, come USA or Soviet Union
interference. And for the first three decades of
its existence the OAU/AU gave open support for the
Ethiopian colonial regime occupying Eritrea.

Again, things have only gotten worse since 1991
and Eritrean independence.

Now one must not forget that only one country in
Africa is lead by a government that came to power
by the military defeat and expulsion of their
colonizers. Many African independence movements
picked up the gun and fought their colonizers at
some point, some for many years. But only one
actually defeated their colonizers on the field of
battle and took power not by negotiation and
elections but via the barrel of a gun.

And that country is Eritrea, which today stands as
the only African voice in opposition to the crimes
of the AU in Africa.

Today the AU is in the midst of its latest “surge”
in Somalia and just as the USA did in Iraq and
Afghanistan, it is increasing its occupation army
in size and just as in Iraq and Afghanistan,
insisting it is “winning the war on terror” in
Somalia.

And just as Pax Americana has had to do in Iraq
and Afghanistan the AU and its African mercenaries
will inevitably one day have to admit defeat and
leave Somalia for history has shown no one can
defeat an entire people. Though not before causing
untold suffering to the Somali people and exposing
the AU as the tool of western rule in Africa.

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western
journalist in the horn of Africa, living and
reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be
reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

Source - Thomas C. Mountain

... go Back