The minister for Mining and Energy in Ethiopia says the recent oil deals signed with international companies for exploration and mining across the country will bring much needed development to the poor East African country, despite opposition. Arjun Kohli has more on the story from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi.
A Chinese construction worker from supervises a Ethiopian worker on a building site, 27 Apr. 2007
A Chinese construction worker from supervises a Ethiopian worker on a building site, 27 Apr. 2007
Petroleum exploration is currently under way in the regions of Gambella, Ogaden, Southern Rift and Abay Basin. The Minister for Energy and Mining, Alemayeu Tegenu signed a $1.9 million dollar deal with Malasian company Petronas last month to develop natural gas in the Ogaden region.
Petronas is one of 66 companies licensed to mine for minerals in Ethiopia.
But, these regions have their problems.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) recently called for United Nations to investigate the region for possible human rights violations by the Ethiopian army, a charge the government has denied.
Ethiopia’s Ogaden region is a vast, oil-rich, but impoverished area, which shares a long and porous border with Somalia. Most of the people in the Ogaden are ethnic Somalis, who support the rebels’ 20-year-long fight for independence from Ethiopia. In an effort to stake their claim to the region, the ONLF in April killed more than 70 people, mostly Ethiopian guards, during a raid on a Chinese-run oil field in the Ogaden.
The Ethiopian government issued a statement that it has killed or captured over 700 rebels in the past two months. In an interview with VOA, Energy Minister Alemayeu Tegenu was confident that the ONLF would not stand in the way of development in the Ogaden region.
“This front is anti-development. They are resisting the development, they are anti-development. That is not a challenge for us,” he said. “We developed the Ogaden region and we will make the community benefit from this development. What impact it does have, [this] exploration in Ethiopia? Because after exploration when we get result we go to the development, as everybody knows when you get oil it will give revenue. This revenue will assist in the country’s development.”
Ethiopia has a low per-capita income and an illiteracy rate of about 60%. It remains one of Africa’s poorest countries and its economy is based on agriculture, which accounts for half of its GDP.
Tegenu says that while Ethiopia does not want to become dependent on oil, oil revenues could have a significant impact on the Ethiopian economy.
The fact that international journalists and human rights groups are now banned from entering Ogaden coupled with the expulsion of the ICRC on baseless grounds should be a clear warning sign to the world that yet another preventable African catastrophe is unfolding in Ogaden. Continued war crimes against our people valuing oil over human lives requires immediate international intervention coordinated by the United Nations in the form of a fact finding mission.
We are confident that the findings of such a mission will warrant holding Melez Zenawi and senior members of his regime personally responsible for war crimes in Ogaden.
If the Zenawi regime has nothing to hide in Ogaden it should immediately end the ban on international journalists and allow immediate United Nations verification of our claims. It should also overturn the expulsion of the ICRC.
Laughable claims by the Zenawi regime that they have killed hundreds of ONLF fighters does not change the fact that our forces are largely intact, operational and effective. As such, the Zenawi regime must be clear that oil exploration will not be allowed in Ogaden as long as our people are denied their legitimate rights.
A Somali soldier near a building destroyed in recent fighting
MOGADISHU (IRIN) – Armed opponents of Somalia’s transitional government attacked the police in the capital, Mogadishu, on 9 August, carrying out raids on five stations overnight, police said.
“They [insurgents] carried out one of their most deadly attacks last night. They attacked five locations, including Howlwadag police station, a former military base where police officers are stationed, and three other compounds where the police are camped,” the officer told IRIN. A grenade was thrown at another police unit on 10 August, but nobody was hurt, he added.
On the night of 8 August two other policemen were wounded when suspected insurgents fired a rocket at a police station in north Mogadishu, and a civilian was killed in an exchange of gunfire between government forces, backed by Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops, and the insurgents.
More police to be deployed
Abdullahi Hassan Barise, the Mogadishu police chief, said 300 more police would be deployed in the outskirts of north Mogadishu in a bid to prevent militias from carrying out attacks in the city. “We expect to reduce their planned attacks on government positions by stopping them from driving towards their intended targets,” he said.
It seems that the Woyanne regime is telling Somalis that it is the Amharas who are occupying their country, as the article below by Time Magazine shows. Ethiopians must inform the people of Somali that it is the Woyanne terrorist regime led by Meles Zenawi’s crime family that is occupying and pillaging their country. There are some hodam Amharas, Oromos, and others who are supporting the Woyanne regime, but as a people, Amharas have nothing to do with the invasion. In fact, most Amharas bitterly oppose the invasion of Somalia by the Woyanne regime acting as an Ethiopian government.
Black Hawk Down, and on Display
By Mayank Bubna/Mogadishu
“Close the door,” shouts the lady sitting in front of me. One of her grandchildren quickly obliges and the metal-sheeted door is shut with a squeak. It is mid-day in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu but there is little activity on the usually bustling streets of the neighboring market. Ethiopian soldiers are busy rooting out alleged al-Qaeda terrorists and members of the Islamic Courts Union, which held sway over the city and most of the country until the end of 2006. At the smallest hint of trouble, the soldiers are quick to respond with bursts of gunfire in all directions. The last thing my interviewee wants is lead pouring in through her front door.
Her name is Hawo Hussein Adan, more popularly known as “The Helicopter Woman.” She resides in a squalid two-room house with bullet-riddled walls but she prefers to live in its tiny courtyard amidst the chicken that scurry about at her feet. She hasn’t budged from this spot for 17 years. But despite a foot injury and her relatively run-down lifestyle, the helicopter woman is renowned here in Mogadishu as a symbol of defiance and resilience for many Somalis in the city. The Somalis who visit the helicopter w oman today see her as a symbol of nationalism — and her guardianship of the relic that provides her nickname resonates with Somali belief in their own courage in the face of foreign encroachment. Says one neighbor, “She is a strong woman.”
Adan won her strange appellation when one of the U.S. Black Hawk helicopters fell on her house in October 1993, in the middle of a U.N. humanitarian intervention gone disastrously awry. Adan managed to retain a part of the helicopter’s remains before everything else inside the aircraft was destroyed or looted. The piece sits in a corner of the courtyard as proof of what she has gone through and her small but emotional part in the country’s history.
During my visit, she recounted the fateful afternoon in October, 1993 when she lost her home. “We were 20 people inside the room when the helicopter fell on our house. Militia first attacked [it from the] Bakara market. It came down and fell among our houses. When the chopper fell, a wounded American jumped away. He along with others ran from the back of our house to the front and stood near us. When he came to the front of our house, he stopped there and he killed several people. He killed one man there, there and there,” she says, pointing around the neighborhood. “Everyone was afraid and ran away from him. When he did such a thing, some of our Somali men came from behind the trees and hiding, they caught the wounded man. When he was captured, some of the Somali men fought with each other about what to do with him. They said, ‘We should kill him’. Some said, ‘We should not kill him because some of our men are taken by the Americans. We should keep him to help us release them.'” The American, pilot Michael Durant, was held by the Somalis for 11 days.
Adan managed to escape from the conflagration unscathed but two of her children were killed under the falling debris. (She also lost 100 kilos of food and 11 of her goats). Her house was among several in the neighborhood consumed by the ensuing fire. “It was very troubling. I was afraid. We were afraid, all of us because our houses were destroyed, our people were killed, our land was captured, so that’s why we were afraid.”
Like many she sees what’s happening today as a continuation of the crisis from the early 90’s. Since the beginning of this year, Ethiopian troops have taken over the city in an attempt to rid the capital of remnants of the earlier Union of Islamic Courts. But Adan, again like the rest of her countrymen, sees nothing positive in this.”I’m praying to God to take those Amharra and Christians away from us,” she says. Amharra is a reference to the Ethiopians; Christians refers to all Westerners. “I don’t need any Amharra or Christians.” The best solution to all of Somalia’s problems, she feels, is in leaving Somalis alone. Declares the Helicopter Woman: “Allah can give us everything we need.”
Rebels have warned oil companies to stay away from the region. The Ogaden Basin, a gas-prolific area covering 350,000 square kilometres, is believed to contain gas reserves of some 4 trillion cubic feet.
Ethiopia’s dictatorship has signed a $1.9 million deal allowing Malaysian state oil firm Petronas to develop natural gas in its Ogaden region where rebels have warned oil companies to stay away, an official said on Friday.
“The agreement signed between Ethiopia and Petronas focuses on the development and marketing of Kalub and Hilal gas deposits in the Ogaden,” a Ministry of Mines and Energy official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Ethiopian Minister of Mines and Energy Alemayeu Tegenu signed the agreement with Petronas in Kuala Lumpur last month after the Malaysian firm won a tender for the Kalub and Hilal areas, the official added. The official said under the accord Petronas was expected to lay down a pipeline to transport the gas to a nearby port.
The Ogaden Basin, a gas-prolific area covering 350,000 square kilometres, is believed to contain gas reserves of some 4 trillion cubic feet, according to the government.
Woyanne says it has broken the backbone of the rebel Ogaden Nation Liberation Front (ONLF) which attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration field in April killing 74 people. But the separatist group denies that, and has repeatedly warned foreign energy firms from operating in the area which borders Somalia.
“Pursuing oil and natural gas exploration activities in Ogaden at this stage can only be characterised as gross corporate irresponsibility,” the ONLF said this week. Petronas is also engaged in the exploration of oil in the Gambella Basin in western Ethiopia.
A Bogus Victory Declaration of the TPLF/EPRDF Tyrannical Regime
The Oromo Liberation Front’s statement regarding the August 7, 2007, TPLF/EPRDF regime’s claim of victory
In our recent statement we have correctly stated that “the TPLF regime has shown itself to be the mother and father of all lies”. Indeed since the time of Nazi Germany, there has never been a regime like that of the TPLF, which has developed lies and deception into an art of governance. The regime has fabricated so much lies to confuse and victimize the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia. In the process the regime’s survival has totally depended on manufacturing lies and hate propaganda on those it believes threat to its multiple agendas.
The regime has been fabricating such baseless lies primarily for the consumption of its international financiers. Thus, over the years the regime has perfected the art of manufacturing lies for the purpose of obtaining financial and military support from its international backers.”
Continuing with tradition of fabrication of lies, on August 7, 2007, The TPLF/EPRDF’s regime’s Defense Ministry asserted that his forces killed several “rebels” and “captured hundreds in two months.” The Ministry further asserted, “All the elements belonged to the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front), OLF (Oromio Liberation Front), and Al-Ittihad.” The latter organization added to the list, because it serves the TPLF regime as its cash cow.
However, The TPLF/EPRD’s Defense Ministry’s victory declaration is a bogus claim. During the last two months despite the Ministry’s statement claim, the OLF did not operate in the Ogden. The joint operation of the OLF and OLNF took place in January and February 2007. In that joint operation the gallant Oromo Liberation Army and the ONLF Army caused heavy damage to the TPLF army. In their historic joint operation and victory over the enemy, the OLF and ONLF liberation armies captured military personnel, weapons and ammunitions. The OLF and ONLF successful joint operation was a military and political blow that shocked the TPLF army and leadership. The Oromo Liberation Front has no contact with Al-Ittihad and has never had a joint military operation with it. The TPLF’s regime’s implication that the OLF Army has jointly operated with the Al-Ittihad is a habitual malicious false accusation.
The Oromo Liberation Army has continued its operation in all corners of Oromia. The Oromo Liberation Army’s recent successful operations in Burqaa, Babile, etc. of Eastern Oromia have made many TPLF soldiers out of action and captured weapons and ammunitions.
The TPLF army did not and cannot defeat the Oromo Liberation Army. Contrary to the TPLF regime’s false assertions, the Oromo Liberation struggle is growing stronger and gathering momentum on each passing day. On the other side, the tyrannical TPLF regime is fast losing ground and being rejected by its international backers on each passing day, not to mention the internal legitimacy it never had. Had the TPLF victory propaganda of the last sixteen years been true, there would not have been a talk about the OLF now. A bogus victory declaration does not save the TPLF/EPRDF tyrannical regime from its inevitable downfall. This is the verdict of history from which the TPLF regime will never escape.
Finally, we would like to reiterate that the Oromo Liberation Army targets the TPLF army, its military installation and assets. The Oromo Liberation Army never targets the civilian population and property.
