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 gunships 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 forefather of today’s Government of Eritrea.
After World War II, 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 downhill 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 led 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.
Its well said. The problem of Africa: its sustainable backwardness,static development,war,famine and etc are always the inefficient African leaders and their amenability to western idiology, dependability on foreign aids and etc. All these mal leadership has cause sustainable wars and hostilities among countries, failed policies of its organization like AU. Its shame for Africa. And better to learn from Eritrean leadership than condumn and betraying for sanctions for its stand against foreign aids, policies and their involvement.
The OAU and now the AU’s failures are too much to mention. The sad part is that the organization is still being used to perpetuate misery to many Africans as it has allowed itself to be used as a tool to legitimatize misguided foreign polices of the west and primarily the US. The UN’s past intervention in Somalia ended in utter failures and now the same mistake is being repeated in the name of Africa and AU. During the public relations campaign before and after the UN imposed an unfair sanctions on Eritrea, the US ambassador to the UN attempted to present it as if it was an African initiative. The truth of the matter is that it was a drama orchestrated by Ethiopia in the name of IGAD and east African countries and “endorsed” by the AU. The “initiative” violated many of AU’s own rules. The AU has proved to be a toothless organization that will continue to be irrelevant when it comes to solving African problems. The worst part is that it is being used to put an “African face” to a misguided or ill intentioned policies of the west that is perpetuating misery to many Africans.
You can’t fool the people forever. The day will come when the people of Africa will start understanding what it means to hold these fools and puppets accountable for what they are doing to their own people.
why not to get experience from Europe, excluding their failures like the two world wars and other issues. Infact today is out of consideration to see that a nation invades to-another. Instead they help each-other, same policies, same monetary system, health insurance ect..
I wish that the corrupted humans nature will get rid of its unconscious state of being and improve what is seems lost the incomparable wisdom of “homo sapiens’s”.
dear writer
how much did you deal with the rouge state in Eritrea to produce a trash which is worth only for the ink it has been written.i my self is an Eritrean who is praying for the dictator to fall so that me and all my fellow Eritreans got back to Asmara and enjoy freedom.who are you to write on our behalf?
oh God this is one big trash.
Well-done Mister Mountain,what you said is for me right.
Keep writing I am one of your admires.
Naizgi! You never been Eritrean and please stop pretending like been an Eritrean. Eritrean and the government are fight for the unjust and violations commiting in Eritrea and Africa and beyond.
What a stupid writer! A primary school student in Africa has better knowledge about the history of Africa than you do. Mr Mountain, you are a mountain full of garbage. You don’t know what you are talking about or you are doing this for your devilish interests. Basically, you have the same satanic genetic background as the colonizers of Africa.
Mr. Mountain, what you have said about the history of OAU and Eritrea are absolutely right. I agree with you. The AU like the OAU has never lived to the expectations of the African continent. Nor did the Eritrean government lived to the expectation of the Eritrean people. I’m an Eritrean youth who still live inside Eritrea. I’m a living witness to all the crimes committed and still being committed by the Eritrean government. You should ask any ordinary Eritrean how they live politically and economically in Eritrea. They will all tell you that, Eritrea is “hell on Earth”.
Thomas C Mountain your articles actually show that you are a racist.
You pretend to speak in the intersts of the African people. However, you claim that they are too stupid to think, vote or politically organize themselves. Your stance is: “give these black people some food and water, than they will be happy”
But Human Rights and dignity? No required in your opinion. How else could your blind support for the regime in Eritrea be interpreted?
Thomas Mountain is a person whose track record shows that he has been consistent. To all those on this thread that lie about Eritrea, you are only doing so because you have a vested interest in the demise of a nation that will never KNEEL DOWN! Eritrea is for Eritreans who cherish it not for sellouts or those who are non-Eritreans that claim to be Eritreans. Like most who write here and are recent refugees that use the Eritrean identity to get social services. Eritrea has a great leader and rumors were spread about him recently that were very far off just like all the lies that will continue to be written about this great nations. As Eritrea is about to embark on it’s 21st year of independence, I am willing to bet if there is any other African or developing nation that can compete with it in terms of growth and development. It is also fair to acknowledge that Eritrea’s success is it’s self reliance and it’s UNITY of the majority people who keep it going on inside and outside Eritrea. No body can paint a picture that is based on lies, because if you go to ERITREA and witness for yourself, you will learn that Eritrea is one of the best places to live in but modestly as it is a place that is working on it’s economic growth which is slated to grow at a fast rate and very soon.
Thomas lives in Eritrea and he left Hawaii a haven for tourists and anyone living there to go and live in Eritrea because in Eritrea there is tranquility and hope and people that are building a nation from scratch.
ERITREA WILL PREVAIL!