The Dominion - Somalia

Events in April

dru — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:37:28 +0000

Direct actions in Vancouver, mining strike in Peru, Immokalee workers, Somalia, and more

Montreal-based multinational aluminum processor Alcan pulled out of a contentious mining project in Kashipur, in the Indian state of Orissa. The company held a 45 per cent stake. The Montreal solidarity group Alcan't in India had previously undertaken a multi-year campaign against the project, gaining the support of several union locals representing Alcan workers, who said they would refuse to smelt aluminum from the proposed mine. The mine faced fierce resistance from local indigenous groups, who said that the resulting destruction and pollution would destroy their way of life. Alcan is the second investor that has divested its shares, and a renewed battle is expected with whoever buys Alcan's shares.

Members of immigrant rights group No One Is Illegal Vancouver staged an occupation of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) offices for several hours on April 23, and demanded a meeting with Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley. In a statement, the group said that it intended to challenge Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and CBSA employees to account for their participation in "the destruction of the lives of those deported and detained every day." Group members and supporters returned two days later and shut down the CBSA building, blocking the entrance and placing a lock on the front doors before police threatened arrests and the demonstrators agreed to leave. The group said that about 500,000 people live without official status in Canada, and an estimated 13,000 are deported annually.

In Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a major victory in their campaign to force McDonald's to raise the price it pays for tomatoes by 32 cents per packet. The price had not been raised since 1978. A spokesperson for the Coalition said that McDonald's was "just trying to find another way to find a solution, but without necessarily including us in that process." The Coalition previously forced Taco Bell to negotiate a price increase, and now sets its sights on Burger King.

Journalists in Guangzhou, China found that fast food chains like McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut are using loopholes to exploit service industry workers. While the part time minimum wage is officially 7.5 yuan per hour in large cities, loopholes are used to pay part-timers between 5 and 6 yuan per hour.

Anti-poverty activists besieged a meeting of the Non Partisan Association (NPA), the ruling political party in Vancouver. The demonstration, organized by the Anti-Poverty Committee (APC), attempted to breach police lines to gain access to the meeting three times, and used whistles and loudspeakers to disrupt the proceedings. "The NPA's political vision is social cleansing and they conduct their brutal business with no real significant 'official' opposition," APC members wrote on their web site. 22 police officers were reported to be working overtime to keep the demonstrators out.

A delegation of 44 poor people and Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) organizers disrupted the AGM of the riding association of Provincial community services minister Judy Streatch. " We felt that it was necessary for Streatch to come face-to-face with poor people in Nova Scotia, the people who live with the day-to-day reality of the deplorably low rates of social assistance in Nova Scotia," said HCAP member Susan LeFort. HCAP is demanding that the Department of Community Services double income assistance rates and peg these income assistance rates to inflation.

Organizers from the Bay of Quinte Mohawk community in Ontario promised more "economic disruptions" after ending a blockade of train tracks between Montreal and Toronto. The community members, who are operating outside of the government-run band council system, are targeting a gravel pit that is operating on disputed land. The operation should be shut down until land claim negotiations are concluded, spokesperson Shawn Brant told journalists.

Deh Cho Grand Chief Herb Norwegian announced that Canadian troops would "not be welcomed" in Fort Simpson. Forty military personnel were scheduled to arrive in Fort Simpson as a part of Operation Narwhal, billed as a security exercise to prevent terrorist attacks against the proposed Mackenzie Gas Pipeline. The Deh Cho are currently in negotiations over a land-use plan, which they say must be adopted before they grant permission for the pipeline to cross their land. "We have our own sovereignty over this land and do not intend to be intimidated by soldiers of a government using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to show their flag on our land," said Norwegian. Defence officials later met with Norwegian, who said that the Deh Cho feel the "pressure of Canada, the psychological pressure of their presence on our territory."

"Military intervention won't stop the killing. Those who are clamouring for troops to fight their way into Darfur are suffering from a salvation delusion." Those were the opening words of a review of recent peace talks in Sudan by Alex de Waal, published by the London Review of Books. In an extensive description of peace talks around conflict in Sudan, de Waal writes that the "crisis in Darfur is political. It's a civil war, and like all wars it needs a political settlement."

Fighting in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu was described as the heaviest warfare in the city's history, as occupying US-backed Ethiopian soldiers battled forces aligned with the Islamic Courts. According to the UN, roughly a third of Mogadishu's population has fled the fighting. Most observers note that Islamic Courts had restored stability to the war-torn country, while introducing unpopular bans on movies and televised soccer. The US-backed invasion by Ethiopia overthrew the Islamic Courts and created Somalia's largest humanitarian crisis in a decade, observers say. The US has said that it will not call for a ceasefire, saying it doesn't want to "leave the field to violent extremists who do not have an interest in building up the institutions of a democratic state." Canada has said little about the crisis, though Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has publicly speculated that Canadian troops could invade Somalia or Sudan in the future. In January, hundreds of members of the Somali diaspora denounced the invasion, in which US Special Forces also participated.

Fourteen people were arrested during a protest inside a US Senate office building on the same day that Senators voted 51 to 46 to approve $95 billion in funding for the occupation of Iraq. Demonstrators from a group known as Artists Against War unfurled a banner inside the building, which read "your silence, your legacy." The largest banner contained the full text of Article II Section 4 of the US Constitution, which defines the conditions under which a President can be impeached, provoking chants of "impeach now."

Unions in Russia are reckoning with declining membership and pressure from the country's political class to avoid participation in political struggles, IPS News reported. "I urge trade unions to carry out stable and balanced work which is not timed to political events in the country," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to union delegates. "Many institutions' management are unprepared to see such bodies standing in opposition to their capitalist policies," one Russian academic was quoted as saying.

UBC professor of international law Michael Byers and Irish professor of human rights William Schabas sent a letter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requesting an investigation of possible war crimes. The letter indicates that Canada's General Rick Hillier and Minister Gordon O'Connor appear to have allowed Afghan detainees to be handed over to the Afghan government "despite an apparent risk of torture," and chose "not to take reasonable and readily apparent steps to protect detainees against torture." If the evidence is shown to be accurate, the law professors argue, Hillier, O'Connor and other Canadian officials would be in contravention of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was drafted in 1998 and ratified by Canada's parliament in 2000. According to the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs, "Canada supported the ICC effort from the very beginning and continues to support the ICC with crucial leadership, advocacy and resources."

The "One Laptop Per Child Project" announced that rising costs of materials would result in an increase from $100 dollars per laptop to $175. The non-profit project aimed to provide low-cost access to technology for children in the developing world.

The US military announced the creation of a new command centre in Africa, known as AFRICOM. In a news release, a State Department spokesperson denied that the US was taking a military leadership role in Africa. The report also denied claims that the US was responding to a larger Chinese presence in Africa, or was seeking influence over natural resources. AFRICOM is "not being stood up in order to secure resources such as oil," the briefing said.

The Associated Press reported that the Japanese government's practice of coercing women into prostitution continued after US troops occupied Japan. "Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to US troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down," the report said. According to a recently released official police history, "police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops... The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls."

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician and whistleblower who revealed the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal to the world public, was convicted of violating a court order forbidding him to communicate with non-Israelis. After he told journalists that Israel possessed an estimated 100 nuclear warheads, Israeli agents kidnapped him in Rome and brought him to Israel. He subsequently spent 18 years in prison, 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Facing massive protests, military recruiters announced their withdrawal from a job fair at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "If every school prevented recruitment, if every port stopped shipping weapons, if every community refused to accept war profiteers as neighbors, war would be impossible," said student organizer Natalie MacIntyre.

Several groups, including Jews for a Just Peace and the Canada Palestine Association, staged a protest at the annual dinner of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Vancouver on April 29. Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery recently called for the abolition of the JNF. Avnery wrote that the fund, which holds 13 per cent of all land in Israel, has an explicit mandate to "prohibit the sale or rental of land to non-Jews," and as a result, is inherently racist. Donations to the JNF are tax-deductible charitable donations under Canadian law.

A global day of action against Toronto-based Barrick Gold is planned for May 2. The company, which is considered the largest gold mining company in the world, is facing increasing resistance to its projects worldwide. Simultaneous actions will be held in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Europe. In Peru, protesters opposing a Barrick Gold project in the province of Àncash have been killed by paramilitary groups. In Australia, aboriginal groups have targeted a planned mine at Lake Cowal with a direct action campaign, and the massive Pascua Lama project in Chile and Argentina has faced significant local opposition.

Mine workers in Peru are gearing up for a major strike over wages, benefits and labour rights. The Peruvian government has declared the strike illegal. In the early 1990s, the World Bank established a "structural reform" program designed to make conditions favourable for mining. Peruvian critics say that under current laws, the mines provide very little benefit for Peru, despite rising commodity prices. Canadian firms' investments in Peru reached $2.3 billion in 2005, with the vast majority of investments going towards mining. Canada and Peru signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2006, which then Trade Minister David Emerson said would "help companies by creating a predictable environment for Canadian investors." Canadian companies have faced resistance from mine workers in Peru before. During a strike in 1999, a protest against the Canadian companies Barrick Gold and Antamina was broken up by the Peruvian army.

Worldwide demand for uranium is outstripping supply, and a flood at a major mining operation in northern Saskatchewan has pushed prices up. According to Bloomberg news service, a "rock fall" at Cigar Lake rendered 10 per cent of the anticipated world supply of uranium inaccessible for the time being. The current shortage "could limit the nuclear power industry's plans to develop 168 new nuclear plants worldwide by 2020," Bloomberg reported. Rising prices have set off a wave of uranium speculation in New Brunswick. Canada is the world's largest supplier of mined uranium, accounting for 28 per cent of world supply. Critics have long opposed uranium mining for its adverse effects on health and ecology, and Canada's history of using indigenous workers to mine and haul the uranium used to create the first atomic bombs continues to affect northern communities.

NOII Demonstration in Vancouver

CIW in Chicago

Protesters Denounce Illegal Occupation of Somalia

dru — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 22:28:12 +0000

Coalition of Concerned Somali-Canadians calls for immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops

On January 20, several hundred people protested in front of the US consulate in Toronto to demand the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia. “Somalia should not be a theatre of proxy wars and the hidden agenda of Ethiopia and its American allies,” said Shukria Dini, an organizer with the Coalition of Concerned Somali-Canadians (CCSC), the group that organized the demonstration. The CCSC emphasizes the illegality of the occupation, which violates the principle of state sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter, as well as UN Resolution 1725, which forbids neighbouring states from deploying troops to Somalia. The occupation is also a violation of the African Union Charter. Dini emphasizes the gendered impact of the occupation, citing reports of Ethiopian soldiers raping women in Somali towns and villages.

CCSC demands an immediate end to US diplomatic and military support for the occupation, and a halt to the US bombing of Somalia. The coalition also demands that the Canadian government join the international community in denouncing this illegal aggression against Somalia.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not made any official statements about Ethiopia's occupation of Somalia.

The rally included speakers from the Trade Unions Against the War, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, the Canadian Peace Alliance and the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, as well as an anti-occupation coalition of people from one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups, Oromos Against the Ethiopian Invasion of Somalia.

Acting with US support and funding, Ethiopia invaded Somalia in the last days of 2006, replacing the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) with a government led by US-backed warlords. The ICU, which took power in Somalia six months before the Ethiopian invasion, were credited with restoring stability for the first time since civil war tore the country apart in the early 1990s. The ICU had been criticized for imposing unpopular religious rules in the country, but remained popular for its stabilizing effect; during its brief reign, the Mogadishu airport had been opened for the first time in over a decade.

Former CNN and BBC producer Tim Lister reported that, "When the Islamic Courts were expelled, some residents of the capital were relieved that strict Sharia law, which had forbidden movies, televised soccer and the chewing of the narcotic qat leaf, was gone. But for most, apprehension was the dominant sentiment."

Last week, the Washington Post reported that US Special Forces had participated in the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

Immediately following the invasion, US-backed warlords staged a crackdown on media outlets, including one founded by Somali refugees who lived in Canada but who returned in 1999.

US planes bombed Somalia several times, claiming to target Islamic terrorists. A reported 70 people were killed by the air-strikes, with hundreds reported injured. Hundreds of families have fled the area of the bombings, fearing more attacks.

"The answer to terrorism is stable, democratic states, not rule by army warlords," Africa Action director Nii Akuetteh told the New York radio and television show Democracy Now! "Some of these people that the US has armed are actually terrorists, so even if the US is trying to protect its interests in the region, it is going about it in a terrible way... It seems to me it will make the situation much worse."

Speaking on the same program, Salim Lone, former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq, said that, "The US has been trying for many months now to try to undermine the Islamic Courts Union. They have been violating the existing UN resolutions since 1992, which forbid any armed assistance to Somalia... the US has been violating the arms embargo, over the UN, and using private contractors to funnel arms to the warlords."

In 1993, Canadian troops operating in Somalia tortured and killed Shidane Arone, a 16-year-old Somali, and tortured several other Somalis, many of them children. The ensuing scandal was known as the Somalia Affair, but a commission charged with investigating the incidents was shut down before it finished its work. No one was ever officially held responsible.

It is estimated that 100,000 Somalis now live in Canada.

Background:

» Dominion: Whose Trauma? The "Somalia Affair" and Canadian mythology

» Democracy Now: Conflict in Somalia

» World Politics Watch: Is Somalia Doomed to Repeat History?

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia #3

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia #2

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia #3

dru — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:42:31 +0000

Toronto, January 20, 2006--A demonstration organized by the Coalition of Concerned Somali-Canadians against the US-sponsored occupation of Somalia.

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia #2

dru — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:38:11 +0000

Toronto, January 20, 2006--A demonstration organized by the Coalition of Concerned Somali-Canadians against the US-sponsored occupation of Somalia.

Toronto: Protesting Proxy War in Somalia

dru — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:35:07 +0000

Toronto, January 20, 2006--A demonstration organized by the Coalition of Concerned Somali-Canadians against the US-sponsored occupation of Somalia.

Abandoning Hypocrisy

dru — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:44:06 +0000

Canada's foreign policy and Afghanistan

The following remarks are based on a talk delivered in September 2006.

Canada is fighting a counternarcotics campaign and a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Afghanistan currently supplies 90 per cent of the world's heroin. The narcotics Canada is fighting are a product of the occupation. They are a product of the alliances the Afghan government has made with the warlords who actually control the country. They are a product of the falsehood that Canada or the US is interested in 'development' in Afghanistan. They are a product of fact that the only hope a farmer has of earning a livelihood is through this crop that can bring a little cash (not a lot of cash, because no peasant ever gets rich from growing poppy in Afghanistan).

The Taliban, who ruled the country before the US and Canadian occupation, had banned the poppy. That's not praise for the Taliban -- they also banned music, sports, television and laughter. That isn't the solution to the problem either –- it can't be a solution to the livelihood of 2.3 million people, the 10 per cent of the Afghan population who rely on the poppy. Solutions to drug problems are clear enough and well-enough known: treatment for addiction; legalization and control; education; and support for the agrarian economy. But the drug war is a useful pretext for other agendas.

As for the counterinsurgency, the question of how Canada came to be involved in it is important. It is part of an evolution in Canadian foreign policy in recent years.

Canadian foreign policy used to be based on hypocrisy. Canada's leaders have always seen themselves, and presented themselves, as men of the West, involved in the wars the West was involved in, including colonial wars. But Canada has also tried to present itself as a country without a colonial history, an honest broker and peacekeeper that has, and deserves, the trust of the world.

From America's war against the Vietnamese and before, Canada has been a supply centre, a diplomatic supporter and a training ground (see Canada, Empire), but it shied away from direct military participation in colonial wars.

That started to change in the 1990s, for various reasons. Canada was in the process of adopting a "free trade" agreement that was integrating the economies of Canada and the US in new ways. Neo-liberalism was locking other countries into weakness and dependency on the US. Everywhere, the segment of the elite that sought a degree of independence was weakened. People who tried to fight back were told they were on the wrong side of history.

There are three stories about Canadian foreign policy during this period that illustrate the drift from hypocrisy.

Back in the 1980s, there was a little 'blip' in Canadian support for Israel against the Palestinians. During the initial expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948, Canada followed Britain. During the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Canada followed the US. But in the 1980s, when Israel invaded Lebanon, when Israel was crushing the first Palestinian Intifada, some Canadian leaders -- Trudeau and Clark -- actually criticized Israel. But in the 1990s, when the Oslo Accords brought a phony "peace" to Palestine, Canada was able to return to its hypocritical role; supporting "peace" publicly, while supporting Israel privately -- and moving towards increasingly public support.

In 1990 and 1991, Mulroney rushed to Bush Sr.'s side when Bush ordered the beginning of the destruction of Iraq. Canada made sure that its warplanes and ships were active, involved in bombing the relatively defenceless Iraqi military and the completely defenceless Iraqi population. That campaign killed hundreds of thousands of people and was followed by sanctions against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands more -- sanctions Canada participated in. The sanctions were followed by another invasion that has killed over a hundred thousand more, according to conservative and not-very-recent estimates.

In 1993, the Canadian Airborne Regiment was sent to Somalia. Here, too, Canada went with the US. The US was there to "Restore Hope," and killed several hundred (or was it several thousand?) Somalis in the process, before leaving ignominiously. Canada went along to support the mission. The story was familiar. Somalia was a "failed state." Canada had a "responsibility to protect" the people from evil. So Canada set up a base in a town called Belet Huen. The armed forces set up a well-supplied base in the middle of a miserably poor country, a country of desperate shortages and starving people. Some of those people started to sneak onto the base and steal supplies. If the Canadians were to lock them up, they'd have to lock up a lot of them. So they came up with a series of humiliating punishments: keeping them out under the sun under armed guard, tying them up, beating them up, shooting them, or torturing them. This culminated in a group of Canadian soldiers torturing a 16-year-old child to death over the course of a whole night. The child's name was Shidane Arone and his murder was recorded in a series of gruesome photographs that came to appear in the Canadian press. Today, Canadian commentators talk about the "Somalia Affair" as a national trauma -- for Canadians. This is narcissism. We focus on ourselves, rather than the victims of our actions. The same is true in Afghanistan.

The last hiccup of hypocrisy in Canadian foreign policy was the second destruction of Iraq in 2003. Canada performed, and continues to perform, its historical services of supply centre, training ground and diplomatic supporter. But the US wanted more from its allies and that meant Canada had to 'mend fences,' and it did so on the bones of Haitians, Palestinians, the Lebanese and Afghans. The primary way Canada helped the US invasion of Iraq was by relieving the US in Afghanistan. It isn't much relief: 2,200 troops in a mission that involves some 36,000 troops, including 20,000 Americans. But it goes some way, presumably, to 'mending fences.'

This 'fence-mending' began the new period of Canadian foreign policy, in which Canada has abandoned hypocrisy outright.

Canada's first move towards abandoning hypocrisy was joining the invasion of Afghanistan; until recently, Canada was pretending that the Afghan mission was of the innocent peacekeeping variety that was done in Somalia.

The second move towards abandoning hypocrisy happened in December 2004, on the heels of Bush Jr.'s visit to Ottawa. Previously, Canada had abstained from several votes requiring Israel to comply with its obligations under international law by withdrawing from the territories it occupied in 1967. Canada's Ambassador to the UN at the time, Allan Rock, said that the "value added" of the committees trying to put Palestinian rights on the agenda at the UN was "questionable" and that the process was biased –- against Israel. So Canada started to vote against Palestinian rights.

Next, six months later, in July 2005, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier put the "peacekeeping" and "failed states" story to bed with a rhetorical flourish. Talking about the Afghans on the receiving end of Canada's military, he said: "These are detestable murderers and scumbags. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties... We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people." Hillier was concentrating his fire directly on the Canadian myth that we are innocent peacekeepers. He was doing that because he wants to see Canada involved in a counterinsurgency that he knows is going to be bloody and brutal. Like Harper, he hopes that by talking tough he can increase the public's tolerance for blood.

These moves by the Liberals preceding the Tories' rise to power set Harper up nicely. He was the first to cut all aid to the Palestinians earlier this year, to starve them for the election they held shortly after the one that brought him to power. This summer, when Israel destroyed Gaza's power plant and massacred hundreds of Palestinians from the air, Harper called the response "measured." While Israel was massacring civilians in Lebanon, suffering largely military casualties at the hands of Hezbollah, Peter MacKay was calling the resistance "cold-blooded killers" and a "cancer on Lebanon."

The abandonment of hypocrisy led Canada directly into this counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan. The escalation of the war in recent months is probably because the many promises made of development and peace in Afghanistan were demonstrated to be lies. Having demonstrated that its interest in Afghanistan is "to be able to kill people," Canada ought to have been able to anticipate the consequences.

Since 2001, the 'international community' has spent $82.5 billion on military operations and $7.3 billion on aid and development. The Canadian figures are similarly skewed. The CIDA aid figures are in the hundreds of millions and most of it has not actually been spent. The military budgets are in the billions and forever rising. Canada has set up Tim Horton's in its well-equipped camps in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. This is an affront and an insult to starving people. Canadian soldiers follow the US Air Force, "mopping up" people who are called "suspected Taliban" when they are killed by the dozen or hundred. Major General Andrew Leslie earlier this year told reporters that, "every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you." Despite demonstrating this understanding, the Major General's military machine continues to kill.

By any decent measure, Canada's mission in Afghanistan is an outrage. By the measures claimed by Canada and the US, the mission is a failure. Canada's counternarcotics have placed Afghanistan at the centre of the world's opium trade. Canada's counterinsurgency has the Taliban controlling half the country and going from strength to strength. Canada's development program has led to massive hunger and starvation, right under the noses of the Canadian military presence in the south and within a distance to smell Tim Horton's coffee and donuts. With Canada guaranteeing security, schools are being burned all over the south.

Canada should leave; should apologize for what it has done and make amends; should stop killing people and calling whoever is killed 'Taliban'; and should stop letting young Canadians who have no idea kill and get killed so that colonial powers can 'mend fences.'

And Canada will leave. For all the bluster of Harper and Hillier, the military realities are stark and there are at least some, even in Canada, who know it. It would be tragic if Canadians come to think of Afghanistan as a 'national trauma' in which we were scarred, forgetting our victims like we did in Somalia. If, instead, Canadians could learn that Canada is not an innocent peacekeeper and never was, that the traumas we cause are worse than the ones we suffer and that our place isn't cheering for slaughter but fighting against it, we could actually make the world safer.

Tim Horton's in Kandahar

M777 artillery gun

Whose Trauma?

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:50:35 +0000

The "Somalia Affair" and Canadian mythology

From the cover of Dark Threats and White Nights. During the "Somalia Affair," Canadian soldiers captured and tortured Somalis from Belet Huen.

During Canada's 1993 peacekeeping mission in Belet Huen, Somalia, Canadian soldiers captured impoverished Somalis who were said to have stolen food and supplies from the Canadian military encampment. The captives were subjected to beatings, torture and public humiliation. Most victims were children, many of whom were tied to one another around posts in the street, blindfolded and left next to signs that read 'thief' for all passers by to see. On March 4 of the same year, two Somalis were shot in the back by Canadian soldiers, one fatally. In what came to be known as the "Somalia Affair," 16-year-old Shidane Arone was tortured over the course of an entire night before being killed by Canadian soldiers barely two weeks after the shooting. Six Somalis were killed in total. A series of shocking "trophy photos" of detainees were later exposed, often depicting children detainees being degraded by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. In the case of Shidane Arone, an infamous series of photos of the boy at various stages of his torture was revealed, including one of a Canadian soldier using a baton to hold up his head, which is covered in blood. The soldier is grinning at the camera. A video of soldiers on the base making blatantly racist comments about Somalis was discovered a little later, in January of 1995. In it, one of the soldiers announces to the camera that their Somalia operation is called 'Operation "Snatch Nig-Nog."'

The revelations came as a shock to Canadians accustomed to a steady image of armed forces dedicated to benevolent and competent "peacekeeping." Canada's "national mythology" is a central focus in Sherene Razack's study of the official response to the "Somalia Affair." The result was her 2004 book Dark Threats and White Nights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism. Razack writes that with the exposure of torture by Canadian soldiers, "modern peacekeeping revealed its sordid colonial origins. Soldiers had acted more like conquerors than humanitarians."

In response, Canadian officials instituted a Commission of Inquiry. The Canadian government, however, shut down the Commission, before it could fully investigate the murders or the potential complicity of military leaders in these acts. What the Commission did have time to convey was closer in form to an acquittal. In the opening lines of its report, the Commission said that "The soldiers, with some notable exceptions, did their best. But ill-prepared and rudderless, they fell invariably into the mire that became the Somalia debacle. As a result, a proud legacy was dishonoured...the leadership errors in the Somalia mission were manifold and fundamental." Despite this acknowledgement, the Commission stopped short of holding specific leaders accountable, while maintaining that the troops were not to blame for the torture and murder they committed.

Media reports, says Razack, were "reporting with sympathy the animosity Canadian soldiers were feeling towards rock-throwing Somalis" long after Arone's murder.

"Many soldiers say privately they wish they could shoot more often," Paul Watson reported in the Toronto Star in a story describing the "rough life" of the soldiers in Belet Huen. But it wasn't as though the media were not interested in the "Somalia Affair" as a scandal. Razack asks us to look at the particular kind of attention that it was paid, however; the violence against Somalis didn't interest the media, but the "cover-up of that violence by the military did."

Canadians "believe we were duped by our own, and that it was our very niceness and national naivete that led to the debacle in Somalia." Even though Canada was clearly responsible for the killings, what the media and the government chose to focus most on was a "nice" Canadian character that had been tainted by a few rogue soldiers. On Razack's account, Canada has integrated the "Somalia Affair" into its national understanding in a narcissistic fashion.

To recap, violent acts of an inarguably and fundamentally racist character were committed and six human beings were killed and several more were tortured. But to the Commission--as was the dominant public interpretation--it was Canada that had been betrayed. This betrayal, however, was committed by an anonymous institution, conspiring with the "mire" of Somalia, which was never held accountable, either for its murder and torture or for its betrayal of Canadian self-perception.

Racism slid out the back door of Canada's collective interpretation. Heroism took its place.

"The hold that mythologies have should not be underestimated," writes Razack. "They have the power to make a nation replace tortured and dead bodies with traumatized soldiers." The prevailing account stressed that "our mythological virtues as a nation that is somehow too gentle, too bureaucratic, and too given to navel-gazing," Razack argues, "enabled us to look at racism in the Somalia Affair and still not really see it."

It is the mythology itself, Canadian identity, which acted to enable the conclusion that the racist torture and murder committed by members of the airborne division was exceptional. In fact, several witnesses suggested to the Inquiry that if there were racists in the military, it was unlikely to be a number higher than existed in "Canadian society as a whole."

What, Razack asks, does Canadian identity mean in terms of self? "A Canadian knows herself or himself as... a modest, self-deprecating individual who is able to gently teach Third World Others about civility." At bottom, she argues, this is a fundamentally colonial mindset that renders "any sort of personhood" of those being taught "inconceivable." At home, Canada's mythology covers over 200 years of remarkably frank attempts to eliminate the existence of the country's original inhabitants, a fact that in part explains the sophistication and deep-rootedness of the mythology in the relatively new context of "peacekeeping."

Dark Threats and White Knights offers an in-depth and subtle analysis of the mentality of a nation that wants to "weep and to collectively remember, but...not to probe too deeply into the difference between looking on and direct suffering." In essence, Razack provides an extensive inventory of the colonial mindset that the Canadian public has not yet recognized or begun to address.

The book's concluding sentence enjoins us to "look critically at who we are." To bring Razack's injunction to bear on ongoing Canadian interventions abroad means to insist, first of all, that Canada's identity--as a peacekeeper, as well-meaning, or as nice-- not be allowed to supersede what Canada is in fact doing abroad. Only by holding mythology at bay can we begin to form a critical understanding of ourselves.

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie explores the place of the "Somalia Affair" in Canadian mythology.

Daunting Task for New Somalia Government

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 03:51:54 +0000

Following his own appointment in October as president, former warlord Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has named Ali Mohamed Ghedi as prime minister and has given him a month to name a cabinet.

A member of the Darol clan, Yusuf's decision to appoint a Hawiye to the position is the first step in attempting to reconcile the clan-based divisions that have plagued the Somali peace process. Since the downfall of Siad Barre in 1991, the country has been without an effective central government, having been ruled by competing regional warlords backed by armed militias. Up to 300 000 people have been killed, and over two million displaced.

Thirteen previous peace initiatives and two attempts to establish a new government have failed to bring lasting peace. With virtually no infrastructure and no established revenue, no civil service, nor any buildings for officials to meet in, the new government faces overwhelming logistical obstacles to establishing itself in Mogadishu. The security situation in the country remains volatile to the extent that the new government must currently operate out of Nairobi in neighboring Kenya - host of the peace process over the last two years. Estimates suggest that over 55 000 militia remain throughout the country, carrying more than two million small arms.

Yusuf has called for significant help in both resources and peacekeeping forces so as to speed up the process of pacifying the country. While regional leaders and foreign observers agree that military help from African countries would be politically preferable, it is questionable whether the continent could provide the 20 000 peacekeepers Yusuf has requested. With growing crises in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other countries on the continent, resources are already stretched thin. And with the memories of the last UN peacekeeping effort in Somalia still lingering, the international community will likely be cautious about mandating the deployment of troops from outside Africa.

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