MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Ethiopian Woyanne invaders withdrew completely from Mogadishu Thursday [after a humiliating defeat at the hands of Somali patriotic forces], witnesses and a local government official said.
“I confirm that there are no Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers in the capital. They emptied all their bases and moved overnight onto the southern road to Baidoa,” Abdifatah Ibrahim Shaaweye, deputy governor of Banadir Region, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Ibrahim Mohamed; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Somali freedom fighters busted the myth about the fighting capacity of Woyanne’s military. These blood sucking vampires will be brought to justice by Ethiopia’s freedom fighters. Ethiopian Review congratulates Somali patriots for a job well done!
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali insurgents fired mortars at Mogadishu’s presidential palace and ambushed departing Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers on Wednesday, underlining fears of more bloodshed in Somalia after the Ethiopian regime’s pullout. Witnesses said security forces including African Union (AU) peacekeepers guarding the hill-top palace compound in the coastal capital responded with volleys of artillery shells, shaking the city for several hours.
Then suspected militants from the al Shabaab group ambushed a convoy of departing Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers on a street not far from the palace. The Ethiopians Woyanne invaders fought back with a tank.
Some analysts say the ongoing withdrawal of some 3,000 Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers will leave a vacuum, triggering more violence by rebels who have battled the U.N.-backed administration for two years, and are now increasingly fighting each other.
Others believe the Ethiopian Woyanne exit could remove forces seen by many locals as occupiers and spur more moderate Islamist factions to participate in forming a new, inclusive government.
After vacating four bases on Tuesday, the Ethiopians Woyannes left two more on Wednesday, one at a football stadium.
“The Ethiopians Woyannes have deserted the stadium and many residents have come to watch,” witness Abdullahi Hassan told Reuters.
“We see only chairs and their footprints.”
The Ethiopian Woyanne have eight other bases in Mogadishu and face a 500 km (300 mile) journey through Somalia to the border.
Somalis are pessimistic about a return to peace in a nation that has suffered 18 years of incessant civil conflict.
“No Somali wants the Ethiopians Woyannes to stay, but there will be chaos whether they withdraw or not,” said a spokesman of Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, a government-allied Sunni Islamist group.
Hardliners Plan Atacks
He said hardliners like al Shabaab—which Washington says has links to al Qaeda—and militants backed by Somali exiles in Eritrea planned to fight the government and moderate groups like his if they tried to form a power-sharing administration.
Al Shabaab’s national spokesman, Sheikh Muktar Robow Mansoor, told a news conference in Mogadishu his group would focus on attacking AU troops and government targets.
“Now that the Ethiopians Woyannes have left the bases we used to attack, we shall launch attacks on (AU mission) AMISOM, the government and the airport,” he said.
The AU has 3,500 soldiers in Somalia and wants to reinforce.
Fighting has killed more than 16,000 civilians since the start of 2007, after the Meles regime in Ethiopia sent military forces to help the government drive an Islamist movement out of the capital. One million people have been forced from their homes.
Ethiopia’s regime, frustrated by rifts in the Somali administration and the cost of its operation, began dismantling its main bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday.
Ethiopians residing in the Washington DC area held a protest rally in front of the State Department today demanding freedom for political prisoners, including Teddy Afro, Birtukan Mideksa, Bekele Jirata and thousands of others who are languishing in Woyanne jails.
Similar protests were held in several other cities around the world.
Addis Dimts Radio reports that some 500 Ethiopians participated in today’s Washington DC rally. Representatives of the protesters briefly met with a State Department official during the rally and handed him a prepared statement.
Walk with me down memory lane. The time: 1968. In 30 months, one million dead. The setting: a dusty camp in Biafra where survivors waited and hoped for peace. The survivors: Refugees fleeing from the “Dance of Death.” My mentor: One of the refugee camp directors, whom I called “Teacher” out of respect.
“Martin Luther King has been killed,” Teacher said, with a pained voice and vacant eyes. I looked towards Teacher, wondering: “Who is Martin Luther King?” I was a 13-year-old refugee in the west African nation of Nigeria, a land then called Biafra. Martin Luther King. What did that name mean?
Eight out of ten Biafrans were refugees exiled from their own country. Two years earlier, Christian army officers had staged a bloody coup killing Muslim leaders. The Muslims felt the coup was a tribal mutiny of Christian Igbos against their beloved leaders. The aggrieved Muslims went on a killing rampage, chanting: “Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of Nigeria!” In the days that followed, 50,000 Igbos were killed in street uprisings.
Killing was not new to us in Biafra. I was 13, but I knew much of killing. Widows and orphans were most of the refugees in our camp. They had survived the Igbo “Dance of Death” — a euphemism for the mass executions. One thousand men at gunpoint forced to dance a public dance. Seven hundred were then shot and buried en masse in shallow graves. When told to hurry up and return to his regular duty, one of the murderers said: “The graves are not yet full.”
A few days later, with only the clothes on our backs, we fled from this “Dance of Death.” That was six months before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Teacher and I were eventually conscripted into the Biafran army and sent to the front, two years after our escape.
After the war, Teacher – who had taught me the name of Martin Luther King — was among the one million who had died. I — a child soldier – was one of the fifteen million who survived.
Africa is committing suicide: a two-decade war in Sudan, genocidal killings in Rwanda, scorched-earth conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Liberia. The wars in modern Africa are the largest global-scale loss of life since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave trade, which uprooted and scattered Africa’s sons and daughters across the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil.
Africa’s wars are steering the continent toward a sea of self-destruction so deep that even the greatest horror writers are unable to fathom its depths. So, given our circumstances, Martin Luther King was a name unknown, a dead man among millions, with a message that never reached the shores of Biafra.
Neither did his message reach the ears of “The Black Scorpion,” Benjamin Adekunle, a tough Nigerian army commander, whose credo of ethnic cleansing knew nothing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces move into Igbo territory, we even shoot things that do not move.”
As we heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call, and march together across the world stage, let us never forget that we who have witnessed and survived the injustice of such nonsensical wars are the torchbearers of his legacy of peace for our world, our nation, and our children.
(Transcribed from speech delivered by Philip Emeagwali on April 4, 2008 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia at the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The entire transcript and video are posted at emeagwali.com.)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The former residence of the first post-imperial acting head of state of Ethiopia, General Aman Mikael Andom, was partially demolished on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, in an Addis Ababa City Road Authority (AACRA) expansion project.
General Aman Mikael Andom
The house, located in the western part of the city behind the Ministry of National Defense Hospital, partly lies in the space where China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) is constructing a roundabout.
Fekade Hailu, head of AACRA, told Capital that demolition was carried out in accordance with the master plan and no objections had previously been raised.
“Though 1.5 million birr was offered to the current owner of the house, she is complaining it is not enough,” said Fekade.
Aman Mikael Andom (1924 -1974) was appointed head of state following the coup d’etat that deposed Emperor Haile Selasse on September 12, 1974, and served until his death in a shootout with his former supporters.
His official title was ‘Chairman of the Provisional Military Administrative Council’ (better known as the Derg), and he held the position in an acting capacity as the military regime had officially proclaimed Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen as “King Designate” (an act that would later be rescinded by the Derg, and which was never accepted by the prince as legitimate).
As commander of the Third Division, General Aman had been beating back the encroachments of the Somali army on the eastern border earning him the nickname “Desert Lion.” However, in 1964 the Emperor dismissed him when he began to advance inside Somalia in violation of his order and Aman afterwards served in the Ethiopian Senate in “political exile”.
History books indicate General Aman had contacts with the officers of the junta as early as February and March of 1974, but by July he was appointed chief of staff to the military junta. Three days after the junta removed the Emperor from his palace to imprisonment at the headquarters of the Fourth Division; this group appointed him their chairman and president of Ethiopia. At the same time, this group of soldiers assumed the name “Provisional Military Administrative Council” Derg.
From the first day of his presidency, the general found himself at odds with a majority of the Derg’s members over most major issues, including whether he was ‘chairman’ of the ruling military body or simply its ‘spokesman. Aman fought the majority of the Derg over three central issues: the size of the Derg, which he felt was too large and unwieldy; the policy to be taken towards the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF); and over the punishment of the numerous aristocrats and former government officials in the Derg’s custody.
His refusal to sanction the execution of former high officials, including two former prime ministers and several royal family members and relatives, put his relations with the majority of the Derg on bitter footing.
As an Eritrean, General Aman found himself fiercely at odds with the Derg leadership. He wanted to negotiate a peaceful settlement; his opponents hoped to crush the ELF by military force. Aman went as far as making two personal visits to Eritrea giving speeches stating that the end of the Imperial Regime was also the end of old practices towards Eritrea, that a government dedicated to national unity and progress would restore peace and prosperity to Eritrea, and lastly that he would begin investigations concerning crimes that the army had perpetrated on Eritreans and punish the guilty.
However, at the same time the Derg had begun eliminating opponents within the military. The three significant units were the Imperial Bodyguard, the Air Force, and the Corp of Engineers; of the three, the most recalcitrant were the Engineers.
Eventually, soldiers loyal to the Derg stormed the Engineers’ camp, killing five, wounding several and detaining the rest.
General Aman died in a battle with troops sent to his home to arrest him. The actual cause of his death remains unclear, whether he was killed or committed suicide.
That same night, the political prisoners that the Derg had marked for execution were taken from Menelik prison, where they had been held, to the Akaki Central Prison where they were executed and buried in a mass grave.
Duguma Hunde, a prominent Ethiopian businessman who founded DH Geda Industrial Business Group, passed away of sudden natural causes, around midnight last Friday, January 09, 2008. Duguma was immediately taken to Tezena, a hospital near his house around Old Airport area, after he collapsed of stroke; he did not survive the incident, according to family members.
Duguma was born in a small village Kesht, Sedin Sodo Wereda, in Shewa, Oromia Regional State, in 1948. He came to Addis Abeba in 1964, and began his business career selling secondhand clothes while attending night school at Lideta Catholic Cathedral School. Over the years he grew into prominence in the Ethiopian business community.
DH GEDA is one of the fastest growing business enterprises in Ethiopia, involved in manufacturing, trading, real estate and import-export. Duguma established about nine companies active in various sectors. These include manufacturing plants for the production of paints, adhesives and printing inks, dry cell batteries, personal and household care products, blankets, wheat flour, corrugated iron sheets and profiles, acrylic dyeing and cotton bleaching. His companies have, in aggregate, created more than 750 permanent jobs.
Duguma was known among his friends as a sociable person. Getu Gelete, major shareholder and general manager of Get-As International, who knew him since childhood, described Duguma as “a hard working man who was resourceful to other businesspeople.”
Duguma was also a shareholder in about seven private banks and insurance companies, including the latest entrant to the industry, Oromia International Bank (OIB).
“He was a very humble person who could easily establish good relations with people around him” Worku Lema, chief executive officer of the OIB, told Fortune.
Married to Meselech Obisie in 1966, Duguma survived by his 10 children and 11 grandchildren. Funeral service is to be held at the Trinity Cathedral Chruch on January 11, 2009, at 12:00 noon.
[Photo: Addis Dimts]