Somalia, Palestine, and France: Ghost Countries for Ghost Countries
On October 31, Somalia supported Palestine’s accession to full member of UNESCO. In other words, a state that vanished from the map twenty years ago and survives only as a diplomatic fiction was allowed to cast a vote for a non-state.
I can’t think of a better case to present against UNESCO, the UN, and the other world organizations. They are not just divorced from reality: they nurture it.
The Republic of Somalia existed for about thirty years, from 1960 to 1990. It was set up by UN experts as a merger of two former colonial territories: the Italian colony of Somalia, turned into a UN trusteeship in 1945 though still under Italian administration; and the British protectorate of Somaliland.
Indeed, Italian Somalia and British Somaliland looked like good matches. They shared a common language, Soomali, and a common religion, Islam.
What experts failed to understand, however, was that Soomali is a galaxy of related dialects rather than a functional vernacular language. They also failed to recognize that Somali Islam broke up — as Islam does everywhere — into many sects and subsects, Sunni, Shia, and Sufi, and that tribes or clans play more significant role in that part of the world than nation-building or anything related to Western-style nations-states.
Moreover, they underestimated the impact of colonization, especially among the elites: inasmuch as they were educated, former Italian subjects were Italianized, and former British protégés were Anglicized. Worlds apart.
For nine years, there was a serious attempt to make the Republic of Somalia work. Then in 1969, the Italian-educated second regularly elected president of the country, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, was shot by one of his bodyguards.
Within days, a military junta headed by General Mohamed Syad Barre took over and established a regime patterned after Soviet Russia and Communist China. Traditional Islam, Somali nationalism, and “scientific Marxism” were blended into a state-enforced ideology, backed by a single-party administration.
In 1977, Barre attacked Ethiopia — a neighboring country ridden by hunger, revolution, and civil war since 1973 — in a bid to liberate Ogaden, an ethnically Somali province, and incorporate it into a Greater Somalia. The attempt misfired: the USSR, which had hitherto supported Barre’s regime, sided with Ethiopia’s rising Red dictator General Mengistu Haile Mariam. Cuban Soviet proxies crushed the Somalian invaders and drove them back home. In order to survive, Barre mended fences with the United States, without relinquishing his Muslim National Socialism. Military campaigns against several rebellious clans took near genocidal dimensions.
In 1991, Barre was finally ousted. But Somalia collapsed as a state by the same token. Somaliland formally restored its independence and functioned again as a decently managed country: over the years it has won a measure of de facto international recognition, like, say, Taiwan, without being admitted to the UN or other similar organizations.
Puntland, the northern part of the former Italian Somalia, has gradually achieved de facto independence as well, except for one reservation: it claims to be merely an autonomous province within a still-to-be-created Federal Republic of Somalia. Several other Somalian provinces have more or less opted for a similar status.
As for the southern half of the former Italian Somalia, it has disintegrated over the years into one of the most chaotic places in the world.
Mogadishu, the capital city, and most of the coastline are ruled by warrior clans loosely affiliated to radical Islamist networks, including al-Qaeda. Piracy is endemic in what is supposed to be Somalian national waters or adjacent international waters. Inland Somalia has reverted to the Stone Age, except for some Sharia. Demography is exuberant: from 2.2 million in 1960 to 10 million now, and 45% of all Somalians are currently under 14. Hunger is rampant.
The U.S. and other countries attempted once — the Restore Hope operation in 1992-1993 — to bring back civilization (law, order, personal safety) to Somalia. It failed, naturally. Neither the U.S. nor its partners were willing to countenance the truth: civilization starts with a display of naked, brutish, power. First you break heads. Then, God willing, you may consider counting them. There is no other way. Since the U.S. and other countries were unwilling to break heads in Somalia, some locals took over the job.
And yet, there is something called the Government of Somalia which still enjoys full international recognition, maintains embassies and diplomatic representations (thanks to Western funding), and takes part in votes at the UN and at UNESCO. And Somalia voted for Palestine at UNESCO. And will vote again for it at the UN and anywhere else.
If Somalia is a failed state, or a collapsed state, or a former state, Palestine is as of today a non-state.
If you want to see another disaster created by the UN and NATO, take a look at Kosovo. Remember Kosovo? Yes, that little “skirmish” that involved Clinton bombing the crap out of Serbia as well as targets inside of Kosovo. Once the Serbs gave up, Kosovo turned into a UN protectorate, a piece of land that was basically protected by UN forces stationed there. Yes, few Americans know that the United States has a huge base in Kosovo, called Camp Bondsteel, and it’s still there, filled with American and NATO troops. Few people also know that this base has been there for well over 10 years now and has no indication of closing in the near future. And what of Kosovo, you say? It is a pathetic little non-country that would never survive without the financial support from either NATO or the UN. Just another example of another little piece of the world being totally screwed up by the “good” intentions of the UN and NATO. Is Libya next? Count on it.
As long as US ‘elites’ refuse to understand that Mohammedanism and Mohammedans are the enemy, we’ll keep on attacking our natural allies (Christian Serbs) and supporting our enemies (Mohammedan Kosovars). Oh, I’m the one who isn’t understanding — Americans are the enemies of both Mohammedans and of our ‘elites’. Now it all makes perfect sense.
The Blue UN helmits are not our/your friend, but, they make good aiming points.
“It was set up by UN experts as a merger of two former colonial territories…”
Yes, thereby replicating past failed mergers of people into arbitrary “nations,” who by virtue of religion, ethnicity, tribalism, or just plain mean, hate each other with deadly intent.
I always remember to point that out, when some British Yob starts to natter at me about America’s mistakes and how the Brits are “the Elder Statesmen.”
That’s exactly right.
And, about that spurious claim made by a few that the Brits are the “elder statesmen”….just look what they’ve (along with the French and Italians) wrought…inside North Africa and Central/West Asia where their still enduring artificial boundaries hand drawn in their Foreign Offices, overlapping and straddling the myriad ethnic and religious amd tribal areas, have bequeathed the rest of us as an enduring problem.
What irks me is that we Americans are the ones who are blamed in knee-jerk fashion when we find ourselves by reason of “entangling alliances” (that old phrase) caught right in the middle of their ancient Muslim/Islamic barbarous factions….after having got rid of Saddam and his WMD gassing of the Kurds and working on nuclear studies, forced his retreat from Kuwait, and yet find ourselves fighting whack-a-mole style in Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakistan to this day.
After ten years of suffering our young lives lost and uncounted billions evaporating into who-knows-where, we are now at long last starting our own “getting out”. Doesn’t this bring to mind the long term futility of Colonialism in that area and its legacy? The British/Italian/French withdrawal after the exhaustion of the Second World War? Doesn’t this recall the Soviet withdrawal after their own ten year “involvement” in that nasty area?
We indeed must face that elusive fact that Islamic/Muslim areas are ungovernable by our Western habitual measurements. They must be left to themselves to self-destruct according to their various preferred barbarities which they’ve honed so sharply over their fourteen centuries.
We Americans must stand aside, outside that evil area…albeit ever alert to militant Islam’s long standing threats to our physical well being so exemplified by their violent attacks on us over the years, chief of which was 9/11/01……and continuing to this day.
Charlie, you got what I meant precisely.
We do appear to have appointed ourselves to clean up messes around the world and the worst of them are those arbitrary nations. Ill-conceived, then thrown onto their own, unstable as raw Nitro. You leave a vacuum, something will fill it, and what that might be can be anything at all.
Personally, I would love to hear, finally, one of our statesman pointing all of that out to our erstwhile European friends, the next time they snipe at us for some action we’re taking around the world. Perhaps something polite, such as, “well they’re only the messes you left from your Colonialism. Since you have then failed utterly to exert yourself to repair the damage left by your meddling, now it’s time for us adults to do so. Thus, you have abrogated any right to lecture us on our mistakes – since you were so gosh-darned good at creating your own and then running away.”
Ah well, that’ll probably never happen. But it would certainly be the truth.
Dang, hit ‘submit’ to fast.
Yes, I have begun to believe this is the only sensible path – let them self-destruct by their own hands. That tendency has always been there, it’s bred into them. We need not expend one more soldier on their behalf and, as you point out, when we do, it never really ends.
Palestine as symbol: If Jewish Israel did not exist, then Palestine would be as insignificant as Kosovo or Yemen. Similarly, on the world stage, tiny Jewish Israel also does not actually deserve most of the importance it is given. It is only in our Orwellian world that Palestine and Jewish Israel are important, because they serve as symbolic stand-ins for larger interests. The anti-Jewish- Israel, pro-Palestinian crowd consists of the liberal-muslim alliance, whose ultimate enemy is conservative christian nationalism, and whose ultimate goal is a one-world liberal government. The pro-Jewish Israel group is more and more limited to white christian Republicans, who are desperately trying to preserve traditional America (although they do not realize it is already too late to do so).
Don’t worry: the West is just doing this because they feel guilty because they are so good at oppressing people and generally always effortlessly being in first place and so have decided to bankrupt themselves by providing aid and commit cultural suicide by importing en masse gigantic populations from the Third World.
It’s really nothing to get worked up about. Think how much money Americans will save using candles 200 years from now and using bows and arrows huddling in the ruins of those very clever and mysterious skyscrapers. And having various districts with warlords will shrink big gov’t.
This is probably the sharpest case ever against the UN and everything it stands for. By the way, Unesco’s headquarters are located in Paris, France. Mere coincidence.