The top general of Woyanne’s occupation army in Somalia, Tagay Gabre (also known as “the Black Graziani“), might have been cowering under his desk tonight as Somali freedom fighters chased out his mercenary troops out of their Mogadishu military camp.

By Tesfa-Alem Tekle, Sudan Tribune

(ZALAMBESA) — Ethiopian Woyanne and Eritrean forces on Monday fought for about one hour on north Ethiopian Tigray region’s Zalambesa front on a specific place called Anbeset Geleba, military official said.

The clash comes after Eritrean forces approach Ethiopian border to return back two farmers who earlier to the clash fled to Ethiopian border driving 2 tractors, said Birhanu Hagezom, military chief of a regiment at Zalambesa front.

“Ethiopian Woyanne forces were forced to be engaged on a defensive military attack as the Eritrean solders continue attacking our military barracks using the incident of the fleeing Eritrean farmers as a means” Birhanu told reporters.

Birhanu rejected on some reports saying 2 Ethiopian Woyanne solders were killed on the clash.

“Our forces were not exposed to the attack but they were defending from their military barracks” he said adding “No soldier has died or injured from our side but the Eritrean forces were strike back with a heavy loss”. He said.

Some unconfirmed source from the battle area said that 5 Eritrean and 2 Ethiopian Woyanne solders have died while 7 Eritrean solders surrender as the result of the clash.

By Mohamed Olad Hassan, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Islamic militants in Somalia welcomed being added to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, saying Wednesday they only wished the designation had come sooner.

The State Department announced Tuesday that it added the military wing of the Council of Islamic Court to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. Some members of its military wing, called al-Shabab or “the youth,” are affiliated with the al-Qaida terror network, U.S. officials said.

“We are happy that the U.S. put us on its list of terrorists, a name given to pure Muslims who are strong and clear in their religious position,” Sheik Muqtar Robow, al-Shabab’s spokesman, told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location in Somalia. He said he was pleased to be on a list that included Islamic militants – “our brothers” – in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We would have been happy to be the first but now we are unhappy that we are the last,” Robow said.

He accused the United States of targeting his group because it is “fighting against Ethiopia, a Christian nation that had invaded our country.”

Mogadishu, the Somali capital, has been engulfed in an insurgency launched by Islamic militants from the movement, which controlled much of southern Somalia for six months before being driven out in December 2006 by the country’s western-backed government and its Ethiopian allies.
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On Wednesday, heavy fighting in Mogadishu killed at least eight people, including three Ethiopian soldiers, witnesses said.

Earlier Wednesday, top Council of Islamic Courts leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys denied links between terrorists and al-Shabab, and said the militants “are part of the coalition for the re-liberation of Somalia.”

“The U.S. policy toward Somalia is always wrong and twisted,” Aweys told the AP in a telephone interview. “They made the wrong decision in 2006 when they backed the Ethiopian invasion and they are wrong to designate part of the resistance as terrorists.”

Designated terror organizations cannot legally receive material or resources from Americans, and their property and interests in the U.S. are blocked.

Officials from Somalia’s transitional government say al-Shabab’s leader, Aden Hashi Ayro, was trained in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, and heads up al-Qaida’s cell in Somalia.

The United States repeatedly has accused Somalia’s Islamic movement of harbouring terrorists linked to al-Qaida and allegedly responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The U.S. military has staged several attacks on suspected extremists in Somalia over the past year. The navy’s most recent missile strike, earlier this month, targeted a Kenyan suspected in the 1998 embassy bombings. The United States also sent a small number of special operations troops to help the Ethiopian force that drove the Islamic movement into hiding.

The United States has avoided sustained military action in Somalia since leading a UN force that intervened in the early 1990s in an effort to fight famine. That mission led to clashes between UN forces and Somali warlords, including a battle in Mogadishu that killed 18 American soldiers.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on one another. The current transitional government – formed with UN help in 2004 – has struggled to assert any real control.

MOGADISHU (AFP) — At least eight people, including two civilians, were killed in heavy fighting between soldiers and insurgents Wednesday in northern Mogadishu, witnesses told AFP.

“I witnessed the death of three Ethiopian Woyanne troops. They were killed by bullets after being ambushed,” local resident Ali Dhaqane said of the clashes in the Suqaholaha neighbourhood.

“I was forced to flee the area where I lived because of the intensity of the violence. The ambush was carried out by heavily armed Somali gunmen,” he said.

Abdullahi Tahlil, another eyewitness, also gave a death toll of at least eight and said that three Somali insurgents were among the dead.

“Their guns were collected by fellow fighters,” he said. “The fighting was not far from my house.”

Islamist fighters seized control of Ethiopian a Woyanne military compound in northern Mogadishu after the fighting, the Islamists and an independent source told AFP.

“Maslah military compound that was used by the Ethiopian troops is now under our control. We fought fiercely against the enemy (and seized it),” one of the fighters told AFP.

Another source that requested anonymity confirmed the seizure, which is a setback to efforts to stabilize the troubled country.

A pro-Islamist website published a picture of the seized camp.

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Somali Insurgents force Ethiopian soldiers to vacate army base

MOGADISHU (Garowe Online) – Heavy fighting erupted in the Somali capital early Wednesday morning after Islamist rebels attacked an Ethiopian Woyanne army base in northern Mogadishu, our correspondent reported.

At least six people – three Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers and three insurgents – have been confirmed dead during the battle, which lasted for nearly five hours, according to witnesses.

More than 10 civilians were wounded during the onslaught. Locals who live in and around Mogadishu’s livestock market in Huriwa district said they could not leave their homes during the battle.

Ethiopian Woyanne troops stationed at the Maslah army camp spread into the livestock market and were reportedly moving equipment and other military materials to the ex-pasta factory when they came under gunfire.

The fighting started off slowly, but gradually strengthened as more insurgents joined the battle and Ethiopian soldiers left their barracks at the former pasta factory base to reinforce troops at Maslah.

The Ethiopian Woyanne army used tanks against insurgents who used mortars and rockets during the battle. Several shells hit neighborhoods but casualties could not be confirmed yet.

Military sources in Mogadishu tell Garowe Online that the Ethiopian Woyanne troops stationed at the Maslah camp were being relocated to the pasta factory, citing logistical difficulties that impacted the supply route.

The latest reports indicate that Islamist gunmen had successfully captured Maslah camp after the Ethiopian troops withdrew towards the ex-pasta factory.

A bloody insurgency has gripped Mogadishu since January 2007 when Ethiopian troops helped install the UN-backed Transitional Federal Government in the Somali capital.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than half a million civilians displaced from their homes in Mogadishu since, according to human rights groups.

Many of you may have seen the spider that has started crawling here. Some readers say it is creeping them out. Can any one guess why it is here?

Are We in the Gray Area?

By Afura Burtukana

Despotic governments all over the world almost always face resistance. The forms of resistance range from civil disobedience to armed struggle. Philosophers and activists have argued for and against both kind of resistance. Their bases for the argument are the severity of casualties, the length of time elapse, and requirement of resources among others. The objective is the effectiveness of the resistance which by itself is a base for the argument.

Civil disobedience is a type of passive resistance (some thinkers do not accept the passiveness of civil disobedience) which uses non-violent technique of refusal to obey civil laws or follow a policy believed to be unjust in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation. Practitioners of civil disobedience claim the moral high ground and base their action on moral rights to recruit followers. It includes forms of disobedience like demonstrations, strikes, sit-in, mass gathering, disseminating flyers, taking over buildings, chaining themselves with each other etc. The practitioners of civil disobedience include religious groups, labor movements, suffragists (political franchise/ voter’s right), feminists, war resisters and other dissenters.

The critiques of civil disobedience argue that the movement is against the status-quo which sets up the laws of the nation-state and thus that makes it loose the moral high ground and actually illegal. The resistance is also not as passive as it claims to be as the nature itself makes it active. The other case against civil disobedience is that it is rather violent and usually is followed by mass unrest. While many cast their doubt about the effectiveness of non-violent civil disobedience, other say even if it works, it is just too slow; many will be jailed, wounded, killed or forced to flee, in the mean time.

However, proponents for civil disobedience argue that it is against laws and policies which are unjust to their conscious and they primarily abide to their conscious than the rules of the government. Saint Augustine said that “An unjust law is no law at all one who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly… and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law. The movement is also passive, according to them, because they are reacting to atrocities committed by the government. By nature, civil disobedience is non-violent but of course, more often than not ends up with the violent action of the government which creates the unrest. The nonviolent activist had to be ready to pay the ultimate sacrifices for the cause. The nonviolent activist, while willing to die, should never kill. The beauty of it is, at the end of the struggle all sides will emerge as winners-a positive sum game unlike armed struggle where it leaves the losers as losers- zero-sum game. “Through our pain we will make them see their injustice” said Gandhi. And those who claim that non-violent way of struggle is too slow have to prove that the armed struggle is no slower.

The legendary freedom fighters Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Means Great Soul.) and Martin Luther King (MLK) are exemplifiers of using civil disobedience. The theory, however, dates back to 1849 long before the legendaries (it actually can be even traced in the Holy books of the Bible and Koran). In 1849 Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay titled On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. According to the essay it is individuals who, using their conscious, gave power to the state and that same conscious should be used to refute unjust laws dictated by the states. Foremost, people should abide to their own conscious before they do to their government. The essay contains his famous statement that ‘government is best which governs least’. The essay of Thoreau impacted the practices of both Gandhi and King.

Gandhi was able to implement the theory of Thoreau by developing the notion of Satyagraha (Sanskrit: holding to truth). He combined the theory with Indian tradition and added some self-discipline and moral standards. The civil disobedience compelled The British Empire to withdraw from India. Some activists argue in the line of the democratic nature of the then British Empire and question whether that would have worked if it was in different places and/or time. Like my History Professor used to say, It is hard to deal with the IFs of history.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1950s and 60s civil right movements in the United States of America. Just like Gandhi, his non-violent civil disobedience, though marred by massive government carnages, paid off by the passage of a civil rights legislation. On his famous letter from the Birmingham Jail, where he was arrested due to the movement he was leading, he wrote My friends I must say to you we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

As explained above non-violent civil disobedience is throbbing by nature. In due course re-thinking might emerge. The Great African Leader Nelson Mandela in his speech once said ‘As violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force’.

In our own countries case, the drums and tone of war are beginning to have higher pitch. Now-a-day the sounds of, we tried it and did not work or I told you so are becoming louder. The news of clashes here and there, this group captured/librated this and that area are becoming headlines. Zemual Goradew and like our own famous journalist and writer Zenaneh Mekkonen wrote in his book Netsannet 1987-88

Kermo Kermo Temelese
Wurse Huno Derese;
Denum Nafekew Mesel;
Wond Wondun Lememiret Sil.

The message is that, the non-violent civil disobedience method launched by parties opposing the ruling incumbent, at best are taking too long and the public is running out of patience or it totally failed. The reason, they attest, is mainly the nature of the EPRDF which at any rate does not give any room for a civilized non-violent method of protest. The academia behind these groups argues that Gandhi’s Satyagraha was a success because to an extent the British colonizer understood civility and hence was able to communicate in that language. To the contrary the EPRDF has not yet graduated from Gorilla to Statesmanship and has got to study the vocabularies. Hence, they continue, we have to talk to the government in the language it understands.

They also seem to be convinced that we have given the non-violent civil disobedience all it got but it was just a futile exercise. The majority of the leaders have been arrested, many have been killed and the rest have left either the country and/or the struggle. To the dismay of many, a few have betrayed. Accordingly, these have left the populous in despair and to be desperate. There is a power vacuum, and the room for civil disobedience hereafter is close to none.

Senior members of Kinijit, have time and again, asserted that their party will not abandon its peaceful way of struggling. The objective, they say, is not just a power transition from EPRDF to others but the bottom line is the process of transition. If the Dergue and EPRDF have shown the intention of being life time rulers of the country, by the virtue of the power thrown to them through the barrel of the gun, just like all other dictators through out the world, they ask, give us just one reason why we should trust others to be democratic and willing to give up power through the ballot? They again ask for a guarantee that the armed struggle will be less demanding in terms of resources and sacrifices. In fact, they say, the sacrifice is more sever on the non-violent method when it comes to the leadership level. The proponents of the armed struggle have got to guarantee, again, that their movement will be less time consuming, comparatively. From the outset, say Kinijit leaders, they knew what the price for a non-violent civil disobedience would be, and they were ready for it. When one group of leadership is out of function, the other takes over. And the seemingly No Action, No News, No Leadership Time Zone is just a natural component of the struggle.

The leaders of kinijit, who have lived up to their promises and are anguishing in jail, have twice sent a message to the people appealing to them to never give up hope and abandon the non-violent method, Fellow Ethiopians!! We the leaders, members and supporters of CUDP both inside and outside of prison will continue our peaceful struggle. Therefore, we respectfully call on you to stand with us and continue mobilizing for the peaceful, legal struggle both within and outside of the country until the ruling party comes to the table in search of a negotiated resolution of all outstanding issues that led up to the current crisis. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and nelson Mandela did the same years ago. The people of Ethiopia has shown to all political leaders, the incumbent and opposition alike, and to the whole wide world, during the 2005 National Election, that they are a civilized society who knew its democratic right and will settle for nothing less. They have what it takes to make that happen.

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The writer can be reached at [email protected]