Press Release

America Frees Pentagon Hand in Somalia

In Conjunction with a Severe Famine Threatening Thousands of People with Starvation

(Translated)

US President Donald Trump has said the US military will have more authority to pursue Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia and he will allow more "aggressive" air strikes at the Pentagon's request. Military Times Newspaper in its report translated by arabi21 (2/4/2017) stated that, "Trump’s new resolution allows US Special Forces to accompany the Somali National Army and others in the African Union in the fighting, which opens the door for the United States to launch air strikes". The head of US Africa Command, General Thomas Waldhauser, has refused to restrict the flexibility of his forces in operations inside Somalia, despite warnings of further civilian casualties.

The announcement to delegate more authority to the Pentagon in Somalia was preceded by news of the impact of drought, famine, cholera and conflicts on Somalia and that the world stands a chance of not more than three to four months to save millions of people in Yemen and Somalia from starvation. In the past few days, images of people affected by the drought that hit Somalia in the north and south have been overshadowed on all kinds of media. The world has witnessed the death of hundreds, the displacement of thousands, and the death of animals in vast numbers, and bodies scattered in open spaces appeared on screens. The images of empty wells, thirsty mouths, exhausted faces, and children and women in their last dying breaths echoed the famine that hit Somalia between 2010 and 2012, during which more than a quarter of a million people died because of the slackening international response to the famine alarm in Somalia.

The news of famine in Somalia is not hidden from anyone. The El Nino climatic phenomenon struck the East Africa region, which makes drought a recurrent phenomenon in Somalia. The world has known the impact of drought and dearth on the people of the country and their displacement to refugee camps in search of what fills their bellies and their children’s bellies. The United Nations has identified Somalia among the four countries threatened by famine, along with northern Nigeria, Yemen and southern Sudan, and have confined the four regions as war zones, where acute conflicts hinder aid access and impede development projects in those countries. Despite this, the United States chose this time to bomb the heads of the displaced innocent women and children under the pretext of persecuting extremist groups!

Somalia has been faltering for decades between a political vacuum, absence of the state, devastated economy, and foreign intervention that spreads chaos and did nothing for the benefit of the people, with forces of different nationalities ruled by those who do not observe any pact of kinship or covenant of protection. The tragedy of Somalia is not in the drought, famine and the failed harvest, rather it is in the political vacuum and the absence of the concept of one Ummah, strengthening one another. The crisis in Somalia has intensified and the rest of the Ummah has left it a victim of the foreign troops and of the greed of Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries. The relief campaigns have been limited to individual initiatives and good deeds by the sincere of the sons of our great Ummah while the idiots and the tyrants compete to waste the wealth of the Ummah.

The American escalation converts Somalia from an emergency zone and a humanitarian disaster into an "area of active hostilities" and people will not be spared from the accidental bombing incidents that leave women and children victims.

May Allah have mercy on the days when the rulers of the Ummah would sprinkle wheat on mountain peaks so that it would not be said that a bird is goes hungry in the Muslim lands...

﴿وَقَالُوا حَسْبُنَا اللَّهُ سَيُؤْتِينَا اللَّهُ مِنْ فَضْلِهِ وَرَسُولُهُ إِنَّا إِلَى اللَّهِ رَاغِبُونَ﴾

“and said, "Sufficient for us is Allah ; Allah will give us of His bounty, and [so will] His Messenger; indeed, we are desirous toward Allah," [it would have been better for them].” [At-Tawbah: 59]

Women’s Section

in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir