Civil War and it is Consequences
Serial - 1
By Ercole Ercoli

According to the western media a civil war is war in which the competing parties within the same nation state or empire struggle for national control of state power and resources. Civil conflicts are often characterized in the form of religion, ethnic, distribution of wealth; and revolutionary movements, be it colonial peoples revolt against colonizers for independence, oppressed sections of a people against a political system or socio-political system in use in a given state.

In the case of revolutionary movements civil wars emerge due to differences over how the revolutionary movement should be organized or how political powers within the movement are assigned. In the course of world history there have been many instances were coup d' tats have been adorned, embellished or decorated as a revolution, while in essence the coup d' tats were military coups or an uprising by local military leaders in an attempt to seize state power. What's more, power hungry leaders with no intellectual power, or political charisma, have adopted and propagated separatists policies in an attempt to satisfy their selfish appetites, even incases where the citizenry of their nation states are of the same race, have the same language, the same religion and are sometimes tribally and ethnically linked to one another.

While civil wars are often over struggle for power and resources within a nation state, in many instances the causations of such conflicts have known to be external. Often-times civil conflicts are instigated by foreign powers that have economic or political interests in a specific country. Today civil wars generally explode in nations that are poor, who experience oppressive autocratic regimes and are racially, ethnically, and religiously divided, and many of these nation states are today located in the so-called Third World.

These circumstances have made it easy for the leaders of the contemporary neo-liberalism, global expansionists, to penetrate internal politics of these nations and through bribes and incentives have the politicians of a nation state undertake actions that are contrary to interest of the state and its citizenry. Especially, in economic contests foreign powers utilize civil wars as a tool to destabilize former third world states; using faction/factions they are supporting to realize their goals. As a result of the intensity, brutal and totality of the civil wars, along with the factional support from foreign powers reconciliation in these conflicts have proven to be impossible. On one part there are those that have lost relatives, friends, and livelihood, on the other, there are those that have perpetuated those inflictions and feel guilty, thus, making difficult or near impossible the reconciliation of the factions and their politicasters.

Warlords and War-Profiteers:

According to the international given definition, warlords are troop leaders in one or more regions of a nation state without reporting to a higher authority or national government. The term warlord is indicative of a person who has a de-facto and complete control of troops in a part of national territory, commanding arm units that are in service and obedient to such individual. Historically, warlords have existed in Japan, China, and in Europe in form of companies of mercenaries. Today, unlike war-profiteers, warlords are artificially created and found in different parts of the third world, especially in Africa and Asia.

A war-profiteer on the other hand is defined as anyone, person, or organization who profits from wars, by selling whole or retail weapons or other rare goods to one or both belligerent parties in their native or foreign countries. Most of these dealings take place in the black market, often during or after the war that war-profiteers have animated. To be concerned in creating conditions of war and undertaking activities for reasons of prolonging internal struggle to make vast profits at the detriment of the citizenry of a nation, the gains from such activities and dealings is inherently unethical, unpopular and at the very least criminal.

The war business profiteers have the signs of influencing and having power to continuously cause wars for personal gains, heedless of human suffering, destructions of the country and livelihoods in the pursuit of profit. Profits and prophets are both religions to worship. They call for and require a constant struggle from those who subscribe to them, as blood for oil is the slogan typical tendencies of these groups.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best during the Second World War when he declared: "I do not want to see a single millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster." It is apparent in this quote that President Roosevelt recognized that parties exist who utilize the tragedies of an entire people as an excuse to raid the wealth of peoples and their states.

Subsequently it is necessary to conduct a vigorous inquiry on those that are creating and prolonging wars internally and externally for the pursuit of profiteering. Such investigation will be necessary in the future in order to prevent, war profiteers from using part of the citizenry for their shady and not suspect, but real criminal and treasonable profits. While the acts are the same I believe that the warlords and war-profiteers in the so-called developed countries are not like the thieves and criminals of the Third World countries, they instead of bandits utilize big corporations, and organizations to extract large portions of war plunders or war spoils.

In the case of Somalia the strangest of the unfair, unjust acts, costumes and habits that warlords have introduced to the Somali Society; is that everyone have included himself or herself members of his own gentilitial group or members of his family.

Therefore, any attempts to attain employment from public administration or civil service one should belong to the clan of the warlord or that of the head of the particular office; regardless of the level of the position one is seeking. This new idea and practice have created a scarcity of trust and absolute indifference within the Somali citizenry. It is also known that, in this period of torment low-level officers, and corporals are promoted to higher military ranks without training and accomplishments. It has also been documented that many Somalis both civilian and former military personal have presented themselves as senior officers of the Somali army and police without ever serving and such claims were accepted without appropriate investigation.

In addition, today there are hundreds of university degrees that are fabricated and forged in Europe and in the United States which are taken to Somalia by expatriates who seek to obtain government employments based on these fabricated credentials. Another behavior that is detriment to the Somali citizenry and state is the underhanded awarding of public contracts by government administrations to relatives of the head of such administration without proper review or competition.

This system of handling public affairs will lead to the majority of citizens to view their tax money as enriching a certain family, or gentilitial group, while the rest of the citizenry are being interdicted and forbidden from government opportunities. In the long run these accumulated discontents would easily give rise to civil wrath and uprising, leading to an eradication of the recent strides and achievements reached in Somalia. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that citizens are treated equal; receive equal access and opportunities from the state.

In conclusion, the contributing factor to civil wars is that generally they become proxy wars for outside powers that fund their partisans and thus continue the circle of violence. In these cases the foreign powers behave as war profiteers that are interested in starting or in prolonging civil conflicts. In the particular case of the Somali civil war, we cannot speak of ethnic differences; we cannot speak of religious differences, we cannot speak of ideological differences, nor can we speak of differences on national demarcation lines.

Therefore, the sole reason for the violence in Somalia is that foreign financiers encourage such war, pushing the warlords to military action and often the bait to the hook is the seducing dollars and euros that continue to pour to the warlords. Thus, the question to be asked it seems is who should pay for the damages, which occurred to this unfortunate and ignored nation that have lost millions of souls? It will be seen at the end such activated initiated and inspired civil war.

Somali warlords act as marauding killers who prey upon the most capable of the Somali society: intellectuals, career professionals and decorated military and security officers. The warlords in turn, loot and usurp state powers and functions for individual use. They collect taxes, use public properties for personal and political gain; the warlords also forcefully, overwhelmingly and arrogantly take private property from their rightful owners to accommodate themselves, their relatives and supporters.

These usurped properties are often rented to various companies, non-governmental organizations, agents of foreign states including diplomats and concealed agents. Somali warlords have gone as far as to construct private commercial airports, seaports, and other facilities on ill begotten public and private property, where they collect untold amount of foreign currency without any benefits to the citizenry. In order to divert business to their private facilities, the Somali warlords have closed or destroyed national public airports, and seaports, as is the case in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Where the national airport and seaport have been closed for business since the early 1990s, while numerous small warlord owned airstrips and ports have flourished. Therefore, only blind eyes, who have particular interests in the currant situation may not see that the result of these actions by the warlords have been morning, starvation, tens of thousands permanently inabilited without hope, deprivation of all sorts, lawlessness, countless human rights violations, humiliation, rape, the unchecked spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and all imaginable human evils.

If sadism denotes cruelty, if an action from which the infliction of pain to others derives pleasure for the inflictor, those who observe indifferently such scenes must be sadists. Therefore, continually permitting the megalomaniac warlords to exercise their megalomania on the Somali nation must be viewed as sadism.

Furthermore, it is also strangely incomprehensible to expect that the marauding killers and looters of Somalia to renounce their ill begotten privileges, of which they have acquired through ravaging, pillaging and tormenting the Somali population. Such warlords and war-profiteers are additionally in political and economic positions today as a result of the power they gained in the present and previous anarchy and will not give up voluntarily such privileges.

The warlords and war profiteers are well aware that the Somali citizens would not and will not elect such human rights violators to a democratically elected representative government or allow them to be appointed to any local or national government positions. For these reasons, with support from foreign powers the warlords aim to keep the Somali state and citizens in a cruel and humiliating hostage situation that has inflicted so much pain and suffering on the Somali people.

It is morally reprehensible to observe such suffering with indifference; therefore, our national and spiritual task is to organize ourselves in order to struggle against these tyrants of the Somali state and citizenry, liberating ourselves, our state and our people. It is ghastly of us; to enjoy laughing, eating, drinking, loving and all other earthly pleasures, while our nation and people are subjected to the worst forms of cruelty known to men.

Therefore, in order to save our nation and people we as sons and daughters of the Somali nation must beware of and can no longer afford to appear apathetic, disinterested, and divided to the suffering of our people. With spirit of abnegation, we must fight against those armed vultures and criminals, who are utilizing clan sentiments among our people for their malevolence and personal goals.

That realization of such goals shall result in the elimination of Somali culture, traditions, and way of life. In fact, for the past 15 years we have witnessed and are witnessing today the demise of Somali society and nation, as we know it. We have for so long sat idle, watch and bear witness to the horrors that occurred and continue to take place in Somalia, and we can no longer remain to do so.