Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman
An Excellent Interview
"In Somali, fierce clashes in Mogadishu are being described as some of the heaviest fighting in the city's history. Some 329 people have been killed over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least 1,000 lives. The United Nations says more people - over 350,000 - have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world....
The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the U.S. media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story......
Salim Lone is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He joins us today from London.....
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, you're now in London. The British think tank Chatham House criticized the US role in the war. The authors of the report write, “In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, general multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actors, especially Ethiopia and the United States.”
SALIM LONE: Well, you know, this is par for the course these days. What they also should have mentioned -- but it’s an excellent report, by the way. I really enjoyed reading it, and I’m so glad they were so candid. But one of the big issues here is not merely the unilateralism of the United States, but the inability of the international community and particularly the United Nations Security Council to try to play, if not an independent role, at least a moderating role. It is quite astonishing that for now three months, there has been terrible violence in Somalia, and yet we have not heard anything from the security council about how this carnage must stop. There is no interest whatsoever......
AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, your response?
SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, I’m very interested in the Iraq analogy, and it is really multiple, apart from what was already said there. The contrasts are striking, as well. But let me add to the analogy, actually, that May 1 is approaching. That was the day when on the -- right after the war, President Bush said that his mission had been accomplished. We have the same statement coming out of the prime minister of Somalia yesterday, that the mission has been accomplished and the insurgents have been wiped out.
But let's look at the other contrasts, which are very fascinating. In Iraq, the world body, the Security Council, for the first time in many years since the Soviet Union collapsed, stood up to the United States and refused, despite enormous pressure, to authorize a UN war in Iraq. In Somalia's case, it is precisely the opposite......
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General’s call for a coalition of the willing to go into Somalia? You’re a former UN official.
SALIM LONE: You know, it is so disgraceful. For him to try to get the Security Council -- that's what he proposes, the Security Council, in case there is no peace in Somalia in the meeting in June, in mid-June, to discuss it in the Security Council -- for him to propose that the UN should now go in to do what the US and Ethiopia have been unable to do, which is basically to impose a client regime on Somalia, it's just absolutely disgraceful......"
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