Nine months of illegal occupation by the U.S.-backed Ethiopian military has left over 400,000 Somali people displaced with no access to food, clean water, shelter or medicine. The danger of a cholera epidemic threatens tens of thousands.
Last May, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said, “In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year.”
The U.S.-financed and trained Ethiopian army opened up a ferocious attack against resistance forces in southern Somalia in January 2007. This was part of Washington’s regime-change operation aimed at overthrowing the widely popular Union of Islamic Courts. The U.S. also carried out bombing raids and participating in the post-invasion slaughter of civilians.
The U.S. and Ethiopian invaders have galvanized the nationalist feelings of the Somali people. In mid-September, exiled members of the UIC joined with other Somali politicians, religious leaders, business people, intellectuals and military officials to form the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia—the first national liberation occurred in 1960 from under British and Italian colonial rule.
The ARS has declared to wage a war of liberation against the occupying forces. Recent uprisings and mass demonstrations in Mogadishu against the occupation have already forced Washington and their stooges to send thousands of Ethiopian reinforcements.
