Workers World, Vol. 19, No. 40
New York, Oct. 19 – It was no “miracle at Mogadishu” – as the capitalist press here is universally playing it up. Nor was it really a “merciful rescue mission” based on humanitarian considerations. Saving the lives of the passengers in the hijacked Lufthansa, history will show, was a peripheral issue.
Where were the “humanitarian considerations,” the “merciful rescue missions” just a year ago when CIA agents, under instructions from Washington, blew up a Cuban airliner, killing all 73 passengers and crew members? No tears were shed by the imperialists, no commotion was raised. And to this day no condolences have been sent to the Cuban government by the U.S.
What was really involved in Mogadishu was a worldwide demonstration of NATO capability to carry out a counter-insurgency blitzkrieg attack in the face of a restless, dissatisfied, and frustrated European working class which is on the road to a militant resurgence as a result of the intractable worldwide capitalist crisis.
There is a multiplicity of ramifications to the so-called rescue mission. Some pertain to the domestic situation in capitalist West Germany, others to the working class in other parts of Europe, particularly Italy. But there are also worldwide implications that are of a fundamental character. These are no less significant than the internal situation that the capitalist class faces in Europe.
Most of all, there are profound implications for the African people. What took place at Mogadishu was a brazen military intervention against an oppressed country. It is the second such military intervention in a short time in Africa, the first, at Entebbe, being no less of a military aggression on the territory of an oppressed African country, Uganda.
But the latest intervention has far-reaching significance that overshadows the Israeli-imperialist adventure in Uganda. First of all, Somalia is a well-armed country which has an army highly trained and equipped by the Soviet Union for purposes of defense against imperialist aggression and intrusion into its territory.
This military intervention was admittedly coordinated by the leading imperialist powers, including the U.S., Britain, and of course West Germany. (Other imperialist powers, particularly France, have not yet admitted to the conspiracy.) This is in flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations, of which Somalia is a member. The charter supposedly prohibits the violation of the “territorial integrity of a member state.”
But when has the UN ever really taken such matters into account?
The Somali government, of course, was entrusted by the Somali people to train and develop an army and a militia precisely for the purpose of protecting and defending its “territorial integrity” against foreign imperialist intrusion.
The mere fact that the head of the Somali state, President Siad Barre, was cajoled or pressured, capitulated to, or was in downright complicity with the imperialists, does not materially alter the character of the military intervention. It does, however, throw a powerful searchlight on the Somali government’s much vaunted independence from imperialism. It is a sad commentary on the character of the so-called Revolutionary Socialist Party of which Siad Barre is the head.
In fact, his role in the flagrant aggression puts him and his party far to the right of Ugandan President Idi Amin; indeed, the latter assumes positively heroic stature by comparison.
The revelation that President Carter had sent a secret message to President Siad the day before the attack indicates, at the minimum, collusion with the Somali authorities. British Prime Minister Callaghan’s boast after the assault on the plane that he had “leaned on the Somali ambassador” also indicates severe pressure. These plus that fact that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt profusely thanked Siad Barre and promised “never to forget” the services rendered to German imperialism all add up to how dependent the Somali government has become on the goodwill of the imperialists.
And why? Because instead of defending its territorial integrity against imperialism, for which the Soviet Union had trained the Somali military forces, it is conducting a full-scale war against its neighbor, the revolutionary government of Ethiopia. Therein lies the basis for Siad’s capitulation and complicity with the brigands of international finance capital.
This is not to say that it isn’t understandable for the Somali authorities to have refused landing rights to the Lufthansa jet, or to have asked it to leave expeditiously once it had landed without permission (as the Somali authorities say). The Somali authorities had tremendous persuasive power to make the hijacked plane leave since Somalia is engaged in a war with a neighboring state. And the plane had already left Cyprus and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (south Yemen).
But when the Somali government permitted an ill-disguised military intervention, a counter-insurgency attack, to be carried out on its territory, it went far beyond “the call of duty” to so-called world public opinion, a section of which may have been genuinely concerned with the fate of the passengers. The grim reality, however, it that there was really not much concern by the fascist intruders, or by those who engineered the raid – the heads of the metropolitan imperialist countries.
What was the real character of this so-called elite military rescue mission?
These troops are not ordinary German soldiers. They are a post-war variant of the Nazi stormtroopers who are trained in civil war against the working class and the oppressed.
Under no circumstances are they just “good-hearted Boy Scouts” who have learned the skill of sharpshooting. On the contrary, they are part and parcel of a worldwide imperialist militarism. They are specially trained not to rescue people but to kill them. They are assassination squads par excellence, trained in the traditions of the Hitler attack missions.
Not without justification have the newspapers called attention to the fact that the Mogadishu and Entebbe operations were based on the strategy of the blitzkrieg of Hitler infamy. The neo-Nazi element in the German army are proudly recalling Hitler’s “Operation Oscar X-Ray” (on which the Mogadishu and Entebbe operations were based) when Nazi SS commandos landed a glider atop an Italian mountain and rescued imprisoned fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
It is no wonder that the German left referred to these “rescue missionaries” as Green Berets in disguise, stormtroopers without uniforms. It should be noted that the NATO military command had precisely such a “rescue mission” in mind during the critical days in Portugal when it was still possible that a revolutionary overturn of the imperialist-satellite Soares-Eanes government might take place.
And this is precisely what they have in mind in the event of a revolutionary overthrow of any one of the imperialist stooges, whether it be King Hussein, President Sadat, General Mobutu, or the royalist riff-raff in Saudi Arabia who act as trustees for the imperialist oil monopolies.
Every concerned observer on the African continent, and everywhere throughout the world, knows what a dangerous precedent Siad Barre of Somalia has set in allowing a military intervention by the imperialists, who at any time may send in a place, presumably hijacked, and under such cover carry out an attack against the very government which has invited them in.
In West Germany itself, the consequences of the killing of the anarchists, both those in prison and those on the plane, go far beyond the ruthless murders themselves.
The coordinated strategy of the imperialists carried out by the Schmidt regime in West Germany has raised the “morale” (that is, the impudence and insolence) of the already far-reaching revival of neo-Nazism in West Germany; it has given a lift to the so-called “Hitler boom” which is gathering momentum.
Even the Wall Street Journal of Oct. 19 has had to admit in its story on the Lufthansa that the anarchists were “merely trying to sound a warning of the re-birth of Nazism and the growing political shift to the right.”
Of course! The anarchist tactics are merely a symptomatic response to the extreme right-wing pressure and repression which has been born anew in the last few years, and which took on an accelerated tempo with the ouster of Willie Brandt and the rightward shift to Schmidt. Behind this lies the growing concern by the imperialists that the anticipated radicalization of the broad masses all over Europe and even in West Germany, the citadel of blatant reaction in Western Europe, may be at hand and needs to be met head-on.
International finance capital headed by the U.S. is gleeful at the phenomenon of Eurocommunism and the virtual decay of the working class leadership on the continent and in Britain as well. But it looks with fear at the growing restlessness, frustration, and accumulating militancy of the popular masses of the workers which can bring about their long-delayed intervention into the political arena under their own momentum and over the heads of their current leadership.
All of these considerations lie behind the need for NATO to have organized a worldwide counter-revolutionary detachment, supported, coordinated, and trained by all the imperialists, and operated on the basis of mutual aid and cooperation against their class enemy, the workers and oppressed.
The fascist military detachment and its so-called civilian counterpart, Interpol (the international secret police which operates against all working class organizations), exchange information, disrupt working class organizations, and carry out sabotage and wrecking activities – all notwithstanding the mask of democracy the imperialists wear and notwithstanding the sharp inter-imperialist antagonisms of an economic, commercial, and military character.
These are some of the elements behind the far-flung ramifications of the military intervention in Somalia.
Last updated: 11 May 2026