London Al-Quds al-Arabi (in Arabic), pg. 11

(Article by “Palestinian researcher” Dr. Hatim al-Husayni: “Somalia: New Imperialism and Arab and Islamic Failure”)

Somalia is an Arab Islamic state and a member of the Arab League and the Islamic group but soon it will be under U.S. and international tutelage. It will be occupied by over 30,000 U.S. troops to provide some security and ensure delivery of food to millions of Muslims in danger of death by starvation.

This U.S. military intervention, on the pretext of humanitarian aid for the hungry, will consolidate the U.S. military presence in a new strategic region and strengthen the U.S. military presence in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf.

The direct cause of this U.S. military intervention is the Arab and Islamic failure to solve the problems of the Arab and Islamic nations.

The Arab League, the Islamic states, and the Arab regional groupings such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), in cooperation with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), could have put an end to the Somali tragedy, and they could have ensured delivery of food and medical aid, and could have provided military protection.

These Arab, Islamic, and African states have the military, political, and financial resources to do that but they turned their backs on that political and human tragedy and let Somalia collapse as a state and its people die. They acted as if the matter did not concern them and as if Somalia was not a part of the Arab and Islamic nations.

That is why some American Jewish writers derive satisfaction from that Arab and Islamic failure. That is why Jewish author Steven Rosenfield asks what has Islam done about these catastrophes and why have the Islamic states left the Bosnian Muslims to face annihilation and starvation without extending the slightest aid? He adds that the Bosnian Muslims are second-class citizens and are not accepted in the Islamic world. Such is that author’s effrontery to Islam and Islamic ideology.

No wonder, because the Islamic governments these days do not care about the Muslims’ interests, misery, and struggle for survival, be it in Bosnia or Somalia.

It is really an Arab and Islamic tragedy which began in Palestine early in the 20th century when the Arab and Muslim rulers left the people of Palestine to face the British occupation and the Zionist invasion alone. The result was the creation of the Zionist entity and the displacement of the Palestinian people, followed by four devastating wars which enlarged that entity at the expense of the Arab states.

The matter reached a point where such Islamic states as Turkey and Iran entered into an alliance with the new Israeli state against the other Islamic and Arab states.

It was not strange, therefore, that the United States based its planning for the destructive Gulf war on Arab and Islamic differences and on the willingness of Arab and Muslim rulers to fight one another in cooperation with the United States to protect their regional interests.

The condition of the Muslims in Somalia and Bosnia is therefore a result of all that and so is the action of the United States and its allies to put an end to the death, torture, and killing in these Islamic areas.

It is a return of Western imperialism against a background of Islamic and Arab differences and backwardness. It is a new Western direct military control of important and sensitive areas in the heart of the Islamic nation. It is a new proof of the Arab and Islamic governments’ failure to solve the Islamic nation’s problems through joint unified action.

So long as these governments continue on the road of conflict and collision, the new imperialism will continue to impose its will on the Arab and Islamic region and to control its fate under humanitarian pretexts.

There will be other Somalias in new areas of the great Arab and Islamic homeland.