Ratification of Lisbon is an attempt to tie Ireland into the war on terror in a new way, writes VINCENT BROWNE.
IRELAND'S FOREMOST foreign ally, the US, is bombing towns in southern Somalia, killing civilians, obliterating homes and driving thousands of people into refugee camps. No war has been declared on Somalia. No United Nations Security Council resolution has authorised military action against Somalia. No justification for these actions has been offered by the US administration, save for the generalised "cover" of the "war on terror".
Last Sunday, two towns in southern Somalia were bombed by the US. The US has confirmed responsibility for several airstrikes on Somalia over the last few months in which more than 100 civilians have been killed. But aside from these military excursions, the US has backed a neighbouring state in its invasion of Somalia and has aided and abetted actions of the army of this neighbouring country, characterised as "war crimes" by human rights organisations.
The neighbouring country is Ethiopia, which invaded Somalia in December 2006, backed up by the US with military assistance and military intelligence. Thousands of Ethiopian troops remain in Somalia.
Just last week, Amnesty International issued a report on Somalia documenting atrocities against Somali civilians by Ethiopian troops and troops of the Somali "government"ie, the faction recognised by the US as the government. The report includes interviews with Somali refugees who describe Ethiopian and "government" troops routinely slitting the throats of civilians, carrying out gang rapes, conducting house-to-house searches in Mogadishu and summarily killing residents, and blasting entire neighbourhoods suspected of being sympathetic to Islamic insurgents.
The report states: "There is a dire human rights situation in southern and central Somalia, which has largely contributed to the current humanitarian emergency. One million Somalis are internally displaced; hundreds of thousands are newly displaced refugees; journalists and human rights defenders fear each day for their lives and many are fleeing the country, some 6,000 civilians were killed in attacks in 2007 and the entire population of Mogadishu carries the scars of having witnessed or experienced egregious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. In addition, all parties to the conflict have committed human rights violations or abuses, which included unlawful killings, extrajudicial executions, torture and other ill-treatment, including rape and beatings, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances."
The US has a special responsibility for what has happened. The former dictator of Somalia, Said Barre, who came to power in 1976, first sided with the Soviet Union in the cold war, but then switched support to the US. However, with the end of the cold war in 1990, US support vanished and Barre was overthrown by warlords, who, since then, have ravaged the country and were the major contributory factor to a famine that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
In December 1992, the US intervened, sending troops into Somalia to create a secure environment, mainly to take on the warlords. But in response to the killings of US troops and the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident, president Clinton withdrew troops in 1993. Since 9/11, the US has supported the very warlords US troops targeted in 1992/93. This has been mainly due to apprehension that al-Qaeda had secured a base in Somalia and that an organisation known as the Islamic Courts Union was gradually assuming control of the country, seeking to institute Islamic law.
While there were human rights abuses perpetrated by the Islamic Courts Union militia, for the first time in over a decade there was a semblance of peace and order in Somalia and, in particular, in Mogadishu in 1996. But then Ethiopian troops intervened, partly arising from a civil war in Ethiopia but mainly to support those warlords that opposed the Islamic Courts Union. This initiative was supported by the US, which gave air support and special ground units.
Amnesty International reported there was a marked increase in executions of civilians by Ethiopian troops in the last two months of 2007. Amnesty said it obtained numerous reports of killings by Ethiopian troops in which Somali civilians were, according to witnesses, "slaughtered like goats".
This is significant for Ireland for two reasons. One is whether Shannon airport is being used to facilitate this slaughter. This may be unlikely for there are no US troops on the ground in Somalia and the bombing by US aircraft is probably undertaken by aircraft from carriers in the Red Sea or Indian Ocean. But nonetheless, it would be reassuring to know that Ireland was in no way facilitating these alleged war crimes.
The second is that the Lisbon Treaty attempts, in my view, to tie us into a war on terror in a way that never previously arose. While Ireland's involvement in this war could be vetoed by the government of the day, the panic of the current Government that the electorate might take a stance on the treaty that would annoy our allies, suggests that if it were put up to then, the Government would balk at opting out of "the war on terror". And then of course we already have signed up to that war via Shannon.