109 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
109 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
Libertarian Labor Review #14
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Winter 1992-93, pages 2, 36
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Editorial
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Somalia: Chaos or Anarchy
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The United States Marines have landed on the shores of
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Somalia. This is the third invasion carried out by the Bush
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administration. In each case the people of the U.S. have been
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subjected to sophisticated propaganda campaigns via the media to
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elicit popular support for these imperialist adventures. The
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invasion of Panama was justified as part of the "war on drugs"; the
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war on Iraq was supposed to punish aggression by "a fiend worse
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than Hitler"; now, in Somalia, the enemy is chaos and anarchy and
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the goal is a humanitarian one--to feed the starving masses.
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But, hold on. There's something wrong with this picture: since
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when is the U.S. military a humanitarian agency? Those guns aren't
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there for show, they're for killing. Of course, only those who
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resist U.S. beneficence will be blown away.
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The propaganda campaign that has accompanied the Somali
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operation has been slick. Pictures of starving children
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counterposed with those of drug-crazed gun slingers could do
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nothing but elicit sympathy for the victims and hatred for the
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victimizers. How could any decent human being oppose the use of
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force in such circumstances?
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Sure, the U.S. shares responsibility for the disaster. For a
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decade U.S. arms and food flooded Somalia in order to shore up the
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Barre dictatorship and subsidize his war with Soviet-backed
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Ethiopia over the Ogaden region. This "aid" destroyed agriculture
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in Somalia leading to the current famine. The fall of the Barre
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dictatorship in 1991, and the clan-based civil war that followed in
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its wake, has led to the current relief crisis. Surely the U.S., as
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the world's cop, has a responsibility to step in and put an end to
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this "anarchy."
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How could any decent person oppose the U.S.'s "humanitarian"
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intervention (and be assured that this is a U.S. operation, albeit
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behind a United Nations veil)?
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Now, nobody likes to see people starve to death and some way
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has to be found to get food to the people, and no one could
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possibly sympathize the gun thugs who are stealing food and selling
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it on the black market (that's capitalism at its rawest).
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But there are reasons for opposing the invasion. The most
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compelling reason being the precedent it sets for future
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interventions in the third world, both foreign and domestic.
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Liberia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Georgia, and other areas
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that are torn by civil strife have already been mentioned as areas
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that require the use of military force to shore up the nation-state
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against the disintegrating effects of ethnic strife. Strife that
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very often disguises class conflicts.
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Our own domestic third world, the inner cities of our
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metropolitan areas, could also become candidates for even greater
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military occupation in the name of the "war on drugs." No less a
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propagandist for the ruling class than Ted Koppel, in his first
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report live from Mogadishu, let the cat out of the bag when he made
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a comparison between the drug-crazed teens with guns terrorizing
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the streets of the Somali capital and the gang-bangers of the U.S.
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inner cities. The inference should not be lost here: just as
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military force was necessary to clean up the gangs in Somalia, it
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may also be the only viable solution to the gang problem in the
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U.S.
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The para-military operation of Darrel Gates' "operation clean
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sweep" in Los Angeles or the calls for the use of the National
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Guard to clear the gangs out of CHA housing projects in Chicago
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will now be made more palatable by referring to "operation restore
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hope." Another example of how a militaristic foreign policy
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inevitably rebounds on the domestic front.
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Much has been made of the "anarchy" that currently reigns in
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Somalia. But what exists in Somalia is not anarchy but chaos,
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engendered by the collapse of a central authority and the
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competition between rival gangs to fill in the power vacuum. What
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is needed in Somalia is not a central state authority but grass-
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roots organizations that can reorganize the economic life of
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society.
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Where are these organizations going to come from? Certainly
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not from the U.S. military or the UN. These bodies are interested
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in only one thing: restoring the national state known as Somalia,
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an artificial legacy of European colonialism. For the U.S. it's a
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question of restoring a stable client in the strategic Horn of
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Africa as an asset in its ongoing quest to control the world's oil
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supply; for the UN its a matter of upholding the very idea of the
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nation-state, its very reason for being (for without nation-states,
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why would you need a "United Nations"?).
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But, are a people on the verge of starvation capable of
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creating the necessary organs for survival? This is the crucial
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question for anarchists and, frankly, this writer doesn't know. All
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we do know is that the statists do not want such self-organization
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to come about and will do everything in their power to prevent it.
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We also know that the absolute dependence into which the Somali
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people have fallen makes for passivity rather than activism.
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The lesson in all this, for anarchists, is the absolute
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necessity to prepare grass-roots organizations: unions,
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cooperatives, agricultural collectives, self defense groups, etc.,
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in advance of any revolutionary crisis brought on by war or any
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other disaster so that the people will have the infrastructure of
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a new society in place before the collapse of the state comes
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about.
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It may be too late for the Somali people, their neo-
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colonialist subjugation appears inevitable. Perhaps the survivors
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will, at some future date, take up the struggle for freedom again.
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But for anarchists, particularly those of us in the U.S., the task
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is to point out the truth--that the U.S. is not a humanitarian
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agency, and its military adventure in Somalia is not for the
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benefit of the Somali people but to serve the long-term interests
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of the U.S. ruling class. U.S. get out of Somalia and North
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America!
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Mike
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