Reality Check: Genuine Journalism Exposes Somali Horrors
Unlike Gettleman, Fletcher is actually on the scene in Mogadishu,
where the Bush-backed, American-trained Ethiopian invaders and their
Somali warlord allies are using tanks and artillery on residential
areas to crush the growing resistance to this latest "regime change"
operation in Bush's "War on Terror." Fletcher is an eyewitness to the
death, brutality, ruin and intense human suffering produced by Bush's
new war -- a war that was launched to overthrow the Islamic Courts
government, whose brief time in power last year is now looked back on
as a "golden age" of peace and stability by Somalis, as Reuters reports today.
The Times, of course, is a very conservative, pro-war, pro-Bush
paper -- owned by Rupert Murdoch, no less, the proprietor of the
war-porn factory known as Fox News. But although he has politicized and
polluted The Times as he does everything he touches, Murdoch is shrewd
enough to understand that the newpaper's centuries-old reputation for
journalistic excellence is part of its "brand value" and should not be
totally shredded. Thus you will often find excellent reportage buried
in its pages -- nuggets of truth and reality that totally contradict
the neo-fascist fantasies that Murdoch peddles on Fox and elsewhere.
And
so it is with Fletcher's report, which is excerpted extensively below,
and is taken from a prominent, two-page spread in The Times' print
edition. Be sure to read the whole thing, and as you do, ponder this
painful irony: An archconservative Murdoch paper in England can tell
the truth about Somalia -- but the most venerated bastion of America's
so-called "liberal media" cannot.
From The warlords of death return to steal city’s brief taste of peace (The Times):
Excerpts:
In five days spent in and around a city reverberating with the constant
thud of mortars and bursts of gunfire, The Times saw burnt-out slums,
huge refugee encampments, hospitals overflowing with the sick and
injured, and enough misery to last a lifetime.
It is hard to
overstate the suffering of this forgotten country. Last year Somalia
tasted peace for the first time in 15 years of bloody civil war when
the Islamic Courts movement drove out the warlords who had made their
country a byword for anarchy and mayhem. But Washington saw the Courts
as a new Taleban sympathetic to al-Qaeda, so it conspired with
neighbouring Ethiopia to remove them as part of its War on Terror.
In
December Ethiopia’s formidable army routed the Courts, and installed a
Somalian “transitional federal government†that includes some of the
very warlords the Courts had ousted, and depends for its survival on
thousands of soldiers provided by Somalia’s oldest and most bitter
enemy. The new Government is now battling against a growing insurgency,
and legions of petrified Somalis are caught in the crossfire.
On
our first afternoon in Mogadishu we were interviewing doctors at the
Madina hospital when we heard explosions. Minutes later a convoy of
cars, minibuses and trucks began delivering men, women and children —
all civilians — with blood pouring from shrapnel wounds.
They
were carried, wailing and moaning, into the casualty centre on
trolleys, in people’s arms, in crude stretchers fashioned from
blankets. They were laid on tables and the lino floor, soaked in their
own blood and vomit. The doctors and nurses were soon struggling to
cope, sweat coursing down their faces as they bandaged wounds and
rigged up intravenous drips in the intense heat. But still the injured
came — 30, 40, 50 of them. Amid the pandemonium a man with a stick
fought to restrain a mob of frantic relatives.
Survivors said
Ethiopian troops had fired three shells into a market in a
neighbourhood called al-Barakah packed with women buying fresh milk. A
dozen were killed outright...
In the past few days Ethiopian
shells have hit a mosque, a minibus, a hospital and HornAfric,
Somalia’s leading independent radio station. One night alone 73 people
were killed in northern Mogadishu, and in three days last weekend the
Madina treated 245 wounded civilians.
The casualties fill its
foetid wards, corridors and overflow tents, and lie under trees
outside. They are people like Ruqio Muse, a 22-year-old mother of three
young children who said her thigh was shattered by an Ethiopian
sniper’s bullet as she retrieved goods from her clothing stall in one
of the city’s battlegrounds. Next to her lie two semi-comatose girls —
16-year-old cousins — whose skin was burnt from their faces by a
landmine explosion. Ahmed, 14, has had a leg amputated.
...We
had first visited Mogadishu early last December, five months after the
Courts ousted the warlords, and found a city still rejoicing. Gone were
the ubiquitous checkpoints where the warlords’ militias killed,
extorted and stole. Gone were their “technicals†— Jeeps with heavy
machineguns mounted in the back. Hundreds of Somalis were returning
from foreign exile, businesses were reopening, and for the first time
in a generation people could walk around safely amid the ruins of their
once-fine capital, even at night.
The Courts’ leadership
undoubtedly contained Islamic extremists with dangerous connections and
intentions. They banned the narcotic qat, cinemas, Western music and
dancing. But the Courts also achieved the almost impossible task of
imposing order on one of the world’s most dangerous cities, and for
that most Somalis were content to accept their strict Islamic codes.
Today Mogadishu is a warzone once again...
An estimated 20,000
Ethiopian troops are battling against the insurgents — an alliance of
Islamic Court fighters and elements of Mogadishu’s dominant Hawiye clan
who control much of the outer city. The Government’s own army consists
of barely 5,000 “soldiers†— former members of the warlords’ militias
who inspire fear, not confidence. They man checkpoints and stand on
corners in central Mogadishu, flaunting their semi-automatics. Many
chew qat. Some steal and extort (we twice had to pay bribes at
checkpoints).
...On Industrial Road, a major thoroughfare, we
were shown trenches and barricades built to obstruct Ethiopian tanks,
burnt-out Ethiopian vehicles, and the charred remains of both a
charcoal market and a camp for 1,200 homeless families shelled by the
Ethiopians. More than 50 died as fire raged through the camp’s rickety
shelters made of wood and plastic sheeting. All that remains is an
expanse of ash littered with the blackened remains of cooking pots,
lamps and corrugated iron. “My family fled to the countryside,†said
Hussain Ibrahim Yusef, a young boy standing alone in the devastation.
“We were separated. I don’t know where to follow them.â€
...Another
day we drove south from Mogadishu towards Afgoye. The refugee camps
started about ten miles out and went on and on — thousands upon
thousands of families who are living out in the bush beneath orange
tarpaulins or in the open, sheltered from the blazing sun and
torrential rainstorms only by trees.
These people fled with
little more than sleeping mats and the clothes they wore. Food is
scarce. Vendors charge extortionate prices for water, so some refugees
are drinking from dirty rivers. There is no sanitation, and relief
efforts are hampered by the lack of security, poor infrastructure and
harassment by government soldiers...
In five days we spoke to
scores of ordinary Somalis. Overwhelmingly they loathed a government
they consider a puppet of the hated Ethiopians. “As long as the
Ethiopians are on Somali soil the insurgents will get support,†said
Muhammad Ibrahim, a gardener now living with his wife and three
children at the Lafole hospital. “In the six months the Islamic Courts
were here, less than 20 people lost their lives through violence. Now
that many die in ten minutes,†said Hussein Adow, a businessman waiting
outside the Madina hospital.
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Yesterday we examined the egregious distortions and outright 
