The Pentagon has, astutely, chosen an African American as first chief of the new Africa Command [2], Gen. William "Kip" Ward—and his first official visit to the continent was, of course, to chief US ally Ethiopia. Meeting with African Union leaders in Addis Ababa Nov. 8, Ward explicitly addressed widespread fears of the US establishing a permanent military presence on the continent. "Any notion of a militarization of the continent because of this? Absolutely false; not the case," said Gen. Ward. "Africa Command is not here to build garrisons and military bases." (BBC [3], Reuters [4], Nov. 8)
That same day, Somali insurgents dragged the bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu, amid fighting that killed at least 20 and sparked a further exodus from the city. (Reuters [5], Nov. 8) "It is our belief that every individual in Somalia has to participate in the resistance and the defeat of the Ethiopian occupation," Somali opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told AFP from Eritrea [6]. (AFP [7], Nov. 8)
Given that the specter of foreign soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu is obviously redolent of the similar incident involving US troops there in 1993 (as CNN [8] recalls), Washington is wise to be using proxies this time around...
See our last posts on the Horn of Africa [9], Ethiopia [10], and the Africa Command [11].
