Rising tensions in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, combined with chronic instability in neighbouring Somalia, Eritrean enmity, and human rights concerns, are testing US support for the Addis Ababa government led by Clinton-era good governance pin-up Meles Zenawi.
The Bush administration welcomed the recent release of 38 opposition politicians detained after violent protests over the conduct of elections in 2005. But it has kept quiet over Ethiopia’s subsequent expulsion of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) workers from Ogaden’s Somali regional state, following claims they were aiding Ogaden National Liberation Front separatists (ONLF).
The ICRC condemned Ethiopia’s action, warning it would have “an inevitable, negative impact” on an already impoverished, largely nomadic population. The ONLF claimed the expulsions, and a ban on foreign media, were an attempt to prevent the international community witnessing “the war crimes taking place against the civilians of Ogaden at the hands of the Ethiopian regime”.
The rebels also blamed Ethiopian government forces for the killing in a roadside attack on July 29 of two leaders of the main indigenous relief organisation, the Ogaden Welfare and Development Association. Despite Ethiopian denials, the ONLF says the government continues to enforce “a virtual blockade against aid and commercial goods in Ogaden”. It has repeatedly called for UN intervention.
Congress’s Africa committee endorsed legislation last month that could oblige President Bush to withhold US financial and military assistance to Ethiopia’s government unless all political prisoners are freed, freedom of speech and information are respected, and human rights groups can operate unhindered.
“Ethiopia’s authoritarian prime minister Meles Zenawi was once a darling of the Clinton administration and has forged close ties the Bush administration. With Washington’s blessing, Meles sent troops to Somalia in December to expel the radical Islamic Courts movement linked to al-Qaida,” a Washington Post editorial noted. But the paper said the “preposterous” charges against opposition activists, abuses in Somalia and reported atrocities in the “internal war” in Ogaden meant ties might have to be reviewed.
A recent report for the international watchdog Human Rights Watch quoted witnesses describing how Ethiopian troops burned homes and in some cases, killed fleeing civilians.
Human Rights Watch said the separatists were also guilty of serious abuses, a refrain vigorously pursued by the Ethiopian government. “The ONLF, a terrorist group acting in collaboration with the defunct Islamic Courts (in Somalia) and the Eritrean government, has been committing atrocities and human rights violations, including indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians,” the foreign ministry said.
Wider US interests in the Horn of Africa suggest Washington will be minded to continue to accept Addis Ababa’s side of the story, unless the situation grows egregious and the international community becomes more involved. Those US interests include Ethiopia’s role in supporting the enfeebled transitional government in Somalia and opposing the spread of Islamist extremism across the region.
Keeping a firm hand on ethnically Somali, Muslim Ogaden, the scene of a cold war-era proxy conflict, is a long-standing US objective. The US has also sought Ethiopia’s support in peacemaking in southern Sudan and Darfur.
But region-wide instability seems to be increasing. Nearly 30,000 Somalis were displaced from Mogadishu in July. Political reconciliation efforts have made no headway so far. Despite their political differences, many if not most Somalis regard the Ethiopian troops as a hostile occupation force.
Eritrea, its bitter border dispute with Ethiopia still simmering, is shipping “huge quantities of arms” to insurgents in Somalia, according to a UN report. Concerns about a spreading humanitarian and refugee emergency grow, even as international aid targets undershoot. And now, far from being “defunct”, Somalia’s Islamist movement may be gaining friends and influence in an increasingly isolated, radicalised Ogaden.
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 7, 2007 (AFP) – Ethiopia’s defence ministry [the Woyanne junta] Tuesday said government troops had killed 200 rebels and captured hundreds in the restive predominantly Somali southern region of Ogaden over the past month.
“Over 200 anti-peace elements have been killed by the military,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that militants had “been destroyed …in a successful operation.”
“All the elements belonged to the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front), OLF (Oromo Liberation Front), and Al-Ittihad,” the ministry said.
BERLIN, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Ethiopian distance champion Haile Gebrselassie will again attempt to break the world marathon record in Berlin next month after his narrow miss last year.
“My aim is to break the record”, the twice Olympic champion over 10,000 metres told a news conference in the German capital on Tuesday.
“Berlin will be the most important race of 2007 for me…sometimes there is one city where you feel something, a kind of confidence.
“The good thing about Berlin is the course,” he added about the Sept. 30 race. “I’m in good shape. It was very close last year. I’m looking forward to this year. Who knows?”
In 2006, Gebrselassie won the Berlin race in a personal best time of two hours, five minutes, 56 seconds — which was 61 seconds slower than his great track rival Paul Tergat’s world record set over the same course in 2003.
Tantalisingly, Gebrselassie was inside world record pace for much of the race on the flat, fast course through Berlin but he was slowed in the final kilometres by headwinds as he ran alone.
“The last part was the problem last year,” said Gebrselassie of the course that was hit by unusual winds from the east when it passed through the high-rise Potsdamer Platz square about two km from the finish at Brandenburg Gate.
“This year I’m doing a little bit of extra mileage and I do the last part a little faster in training,” he said.
Gebrselassie, 34, won four successive world titles over 10,000 metres and set numerous world records before he turned to road racing.
He won the Fukuoka marathon in Japan in December, but dropped out of the London marathon in April.
Ethiopia earned $40 million from the export of gold supplied by traditional small-scale miners during the past 11 months, Ethiopian Mines and Energy Minister said on Monday.
Alemayehu Tegenu told journalists in Addis Ababa that close two tons of gold were supplied by the artisanal miners and shipped to foreign markets.
It was the first time Ethiopia earned such amount of foreign exchange from the export of gold.
“This was achieved due to the technical and material support to make traditional miners engage in legal mining works rather than illegal ones,” Tegenu said.
Extensive efforts were launched to organize traditional miners living in every region into associations thereby helping them engage in legal trade, he said.
The spokesperson of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit), Dr Hailu Araya, has cleared the confusion about the party’s decision regarding Kinijit Diaspora. In an interview with VOA’s Addisu Abebe today, Dr Hailu said that both groups that tried to work on behalf of the top leadership have been dissolved by the executive committee’s decision.
A controversy arose when former Ethiopian Teachers Association president Dr Taye Woldesemayat, who helped create and became the chairman of the so-called Kinijit International Council (K.I.C.), said last week that the executive committee’s decision doesn’t apply to his group.
In the interview with the VOA, Dr Hailu made it clear that the decision applies to both the Kinijit International Leadership (K.I.L.), which has dissolved itself upon learning about the decision, and the K.I.C., which was created just three weeks before the Kinijit leaders were released from jail.
The K.I.C. headed by Dr Taye Woldesemayat was formed over the objection of all the Kinijit support committees in the Diaspora. Out of the 23 members who were invited to join the K.I.C., less than half have joined — many of whom have never been members of Kinijit. Dr Taye himself had made his anti-Kinijit stand public by declaring that he did not even vote for it in the 2005 elections. He has also never been to any Kinijit public meetings, and never spent one minute of his time in the past 22 months in the world-wide effort to secure the release of the Kinijit leaders.
It is now becoming clear that Dr Taye and members of the K.I.C. were hand-picked by Shaleqa Yoseph Yazew and his group of serial party-hoppers (EDU, EPDA, Tatek, AAPO, Kinijit, etc.) to split apart Kinijit and run away with a splinter group in order to cover up their theft and mismanagement.
The biggest fool in all this is the once-respected Dr Taye who is currently being used as a trojan horse by the corrupt shaleqa.
Most Kinijit members were willing to over look Dr Taye’s invective against Kinijit’s jailed leaders out of respect for the sacrifice he made in spending six years in Woyanne jail. But they consider what he is doing now to be anti-Kinijit. Those who are cheering him on are well-known anti-Kinijit web sites and radio programs.
The shaleqa and cohorts are able so far to create all this havoc using the good name of Ato Hailu Shawel, chairman of Kinijit. Their claim to any spec of legitimacy inside Kinijit is their close, personal relationship with Ato Hailu Shawel.
Ato Hailu Shawel will have to make a decision soon. He has to decide whether to continue allowing the shaleqa group to disrupt the organization using his name. Unlike Dr Taye, we are confident that Ato Hailu will make the right decision.
In the mean time, the executive committee’s spokesperson, Dr Hailu Araya, did the right thing today in clearing the confusion purposefully created by the shaleqa group and their puppet, Dr Taye. Listen Dr Hailu Araya’s interview here.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) — The Woyanne regime in Ethiopia executed a military officer convicted of killing the country’s former head of security and immigration, the federal prison service said.
Major Tsehai Wolde Selassie was convicted of shooting dead Kinfe Gebremedhin, a close ally of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, outside an officers’ club in 2001.
“Major Tsehai was executed after his appeal for clemency to the Supreme Court was turned down and his death sentence was approved by President Girma Wolde Giorgise,” the Federal Prison Administration said in a statement.
The FPA did not say how Tsehai was executed but soldiers are supposed to face a firing squad, according to Ethiopian law.
