Bye Bye Barakaat

The US has destroyed Somalia’s only functioning financial system, the Barakaat, claiming that it finances terrorism. Probably true, in part, but I’m sure Bin Laden and his cohorts funneled money through Fedwire but I don’t see that being shut down.

It’s now impossible to find any direct Barakaat websites — these are all from Google’s cache. Barakaat deny any allegations of direct links with Al Qaeda.

As this article points out, Barakaat is virtually the only way for Somalis abroad to transfer money back to their families. Coupled with the arrival of US Special Forces and the eerily timely new jingostic Black Hawk Down propaganda movie about the 1992 debacle that omits tales of military stupidity and culbability, it’s seems as if Bush Jnr wants to see if he can really make those wagons roll better than Clinton ever did. Of course, Clinton did bomb the shit out of a Somalian aspirin factory so maybe Bush should hit a Prozac factory or something more symbolic?

18 US soldiers were killed that night, but I wonder will the movie show how terrible the US revenge was: between 500 and 1000 dead Somalis in one night. Same kind of ratio as that Jail massacre: Afghans:200 CIA:1.