Vol. 73/No. 6      February 16, 2009

The warships will join others in a force sent by the governments of at least 16 countries—Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, India, Iran, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States—that have patrolled Somalia’s waters or are on their way.

Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, Washington imposed a constitution on the country that restricted its armed forces to defense purposes. A provision of that constitution expressly prohibited deployment of the Japanese military abroad.

Such restrictions severely weaken the ability of the Japanese rulers to use their army effectively abroad. In 2004 Tokyo sent combat troops to Iraq that were restricted to construction and development projects.

Washington is one of the biggest backers of the multinational force and played a key role in passage of a United Nations resolution authorizing foreign intervention in Somali airspace, waters, and territories. On January 26, Michael Ranneberger, U.S. ambassador to Kenya, announced that the Kenyan government had agreed to imprison and prosecute Somalis captured by U.S. forces.

More than 30 percent of the world’s oil is transported through the Gulf of Aden, which runs from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, bordered by Yemen to the north and Somalia to the south. Some 40 ships were hijacked off Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline in 2008.

Its social fabric torn after 18 years of civil wars between rival clans and U.S. and Ethiopian military intervention, one-third of Somalia’s population is dependent on aid from United Nations agencies and private charities. Somalia’s main exports are livestock, bananas, hides, and fish.

According to the New York Times, piracy began after the fall of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Siad Barre in 1991. Foreign capitalist fishing fleets took advantage of the ensuing chaos and plundered Somalia’s tuna-rich waters. Some fishermen armed themselves, confronting the illegal fishing boats and demanded they pay a “tax.”

BBC News describes how this grew and was transformed into a capitalist “piracy industry,” that is now a mainstay of the Puntland region in northeast Somalia. The port city of Eyl even has restaurants set up to prepare food for the crews of hijacked ships.

The imperialist-led naval intervention is not aimed just at defending oil and other shipments, but at finding a way to get a stable capitalist government in place in Somalia.

The president of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf, resigned in late December. His government—which never controlled much more than a few city blocks in Mogadishu, the capital—was put in power by a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that overthrew the Somali Islamic Courts Union.

After the last Ethiopian troops withdrew from Somalia on January 25, the Islamist Al-Shabab took over the town of Baidoa, which had been the seat of parliament, without resistance. It now controls much of the south and center of the country, where it has imposed its version of sharia law, including the destruction of shrines of traditional saints.

According to BBC News, “huge crowds in Mogadishu” celebrated the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

The parliament assembled not in Somalia, but in neighboring Djibouti to choose Yusuf’s replacement. On January 30 the politicians there voted to expand parliament from 275 seats to 550, with 275 members of the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia.

On February 1 they chose Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a leader of the Alliance and former head of the Islamic Courts Union, to be the new president.

Sharif defeated Maslah Mohamed Siad, the son of former dictator Siad Barre, in the second round of voting.

The U.S. embassy in Kenya issued a statement welcoming Sheikh Sharif’s election.  
 
 
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