Right Hook
MAWO'’'s Africa Campaign Hits a New Low

JJ McCullough, OP Columnist

lL, you're a left-winger, you
inevitably have to accept the fact that
some of your beliefs will bring you into
the company of some very unusual
bedfellows.

For example, if you believe the
United States should withdraw all of
their troops from Iraq post-haste, then
you will likewise have to make peace
with the fact that this is also the position
favored by al-Sadr, Bin Laden, and all
other fundamentalist extremists of their
ilk. This is not a partisan slander, it is
simply a fact. Now, a great many Liberals
are honestly troubled by collusions of
this sort, and rightfully so. Thus we get
elaborate justifications and clarifications;
statements that one can in fact “support
the troops” but not the war, and oppose
extremists even while appeasing their
demands. This philosophy is perhaps
muddled, but well-meaning none-the-less.

At the same time there is also another
sector of the left. One so firmly and
dogmatically affixed to the darkest
nether-regions of socialist ideology that
they will not only appease their extremist
bedfellows, but actively embrace them.

The MAWO (or “Mobilization
against War and Occupation”) people
would be easy to ignore if they weren’t
so omnipresent. I will at least give
them kudos for a brilliant propaganda
campaign. It seems like I can hardly walk
down a college or university hallway
or stand at a bus stop without coming
across some manifestation of their latest
low-budget Xerox poster campaign,
promoting another endless cycle of
forums, protests, and seminars. More
than any other group they represent the
clearest voice of the far-far-left in our
contemporary community, serving as a
clear and troubling reminder just how
dangerous this ideology can be. It is
breathtaking to observe the lengths this
group will go-to blindly oppose all things
western/capitalist/ American, and in turn
the degree in which they will gleefully
embrace some of the most reactionary
allies imaginable, so long as some abstract
socialist point is vaguely adhered to.

MAWO is a fan of telling us to
take our “hands off” various countries.
Usually it’s some communist country
like Cuba or Venezuela, whose socialist
tyrants they want to protect. But they’ve
also demanded we take our hands off
Iraq and Afghanistan, and now, in a
new A frica-centric campaign, they are
demanding “hands off Sudan” and
“hands off Somalia.” To understand the
context of these latest specific slogans, it
may be worthwhile to recount the recent
history of both sub-Saharan countries.

First, Sudan. For the last half-
decade or, Sudan’s Arab majority has
been engaged in an active campaign of

 

Photo credit: www.mawovancouver.org

systematic slaughter of the nation’s black
minority. To date, over 400,000 human
beings have been hacked, slashed, and
raped beyond recognition by the roving
Arab militias; groups which are in turn
actively backed by Sudan’s corrupt
military dictatorship.

All of this bloodletting has
understandably offended the sensibilities
of people in the west, many of whom
still bear guilty consciences over our
collective indifference to the gruesome
Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s.
There has been much talk of sending UN
peacekeepers to Sudan in an attempt to
straighten out the mess, but the Sudanese
government will have none of it. The
dictator of the Sudanese Republic, a
foolish, racist bigot named Field Marshal
al-Bashir, flew into an anti-Semitic rage
the last time the idea was proposed. A
UN peacekeeping mission was merely a
front for the Israelis to take control of
his country, he yelled. When asked to
explain the phenomenon of widespread

 

Sudan-awareness campaigns that have
sprung up all across the west, the Field
Marshall similarly dismissed them as
imperialistic “Jewish organizations.”

Given these facts, which side would
you choose to support? Well MAWO has
chosen to support Mr. al-Bashir and his
bloodthirsty militias. Is untamed genocide
still preferable to western boots on
African land?

Situation two is Somalia. Since 1994,
Somalia has had no effective government
to speak of, only civil war, violent
anarchy, and an ever-declining standard
of living. In the absence of a working
state, a number of thuggish groups have
sought to secure warlord rule over the
capital in order to further consolidate
their own tribal power plays.

In late 2006, Mogadishu was captured
by a particularly unpleasant gang known
as the Islamic Courts Union. Heavily
inspired by the Taliban in both theology
and governance style, the ICU seeks
to transform Somalia into the most

fundamentalist of fundamentalist Islamic
states.

During their brief tenure in power
we saw a glimpse of this, as they decreed
all sorts of deranged religious priorities.
Soccer was banned, beards were made
mandatory for men, and public stonings
were reintroduced as a part of the judicial
system. Like most fanatical Muslim
organizations, the ICU is also of the
belief that most existing national borders
are meaningless, and should be replaced
by religiously defined super-empires.
Thus, according to the ICU, the part of
the world that is presently divided into
Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia should be
reformed into a gigantic Islamic caliphate
of “Greater Somalia.” And there are
no prizes for guessing who would be
running shat.

The largely Christian nation of
neighboring Ethiopia understandably
feared what this sort of rhetoric would
mean for their own national security. So,
shortly after Christmas, the Ethiopian
army invaded Somalia, deposing the
Islamists after just a few months in
power. Ethiopia is hardly a country
without sins of its own, but most of the
international community was nevertheless
in agreement that the overthrow of
a gang of expansionist, Al-Qaeda-
sympathizing terrorist fanatics was
probably in everyone’s best interests.

MAWO disagrees of course. To them,
the Islamists are the true heroes of this
story—presumably because they have
suffered at the hands of those ever-
present demons of the far left: Christians
and western powers. An Islamist-run
Somalia is preferable simply on the basis
that western powers don’t approve of it.
This is the same reason why the MAWO
folks will tolerate other fascist rulers
like al-Bashir in Sudan, the Taliban in
Afghanistan, and Saddam in Iraq. The
enemy of my enemy is always, avays my
friend.

If 100 years ago, you were to
propose that in the future an ostensibly
Marxist organization would be willfully
allying itself with some of the most
fundamentalist, reactionary, fascist
religious groups on the planet, you would
likely have been jeered and mocked for
offering such a ridiculous premise. It
is a testament to just how thoroughly
ideologically bankrupt the so-called
socialist movement of today is that this is
now precisely what we are seeing.

People may dismiss members of
MAWO as a mostly harmless gang
of overzealous extremists, but more
than that, I think they serve as a truly
disturbing case study of the strange
places ideological dogmatism can take
you, if left unchecked for too long,

Pg7