Interview with Kinijit leaders Ato Assefa Hailu (a member of parliament form Ambassel Woreda, Wollo), and Ato Amaha Aba Mecha (Kinijit secretary general of North Gondar) who went to Eritrea to join the armed struggle against the Woyanne fascist regime.

Two Kinijit members of parliament gave up their peaceful struggle and left for Eritrea, source said. In a televised interview on Wednesday, February 13, the two individuals said peaceful struggle is considered a crime by the incumbent Woyanne regime in Ethiopia. They are among five Kinijit officials and members of parliament who recently left the country and are now working with the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front.. Read more at EMF >>

psychminded.co.uk
By staff reporter

A law graduate strangled a 59-year-old woman when they were both patients on a psychiatric ward in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Telahum Tedola (Tecola?) confessed to the killing and told a nurse he attacked Rosalyn McManus because she accused him of being a spy.

Tedola, 36, could face being sent to hospital for life after last week he admitted manslaughter at Manchester Crown Court, the Rochdale Observer newspaper reported.

Alistair Webster QC, who accepted Tedola’s plea of not guilty to murder, said it was clear from psychiatric reports that he was suffering from a serious mental illness.

Tedola, who is being held at Ashworth secure hospital, was remanded in custody until 14 March for sentence.

Judge Andrew Gilbart said: “I require reports from consultant psychiatrists about your condition but the result will be either a sentence of imprisonment or you will be committed to a secure mental hospital.”

At the time of the killing, Ms McManus was an in-patient on the psychiatric ward at Birch Hill Hospital where Tedola was also a patient.

Tedola was admitted as an emergency after staff at a hostel where he was living were concerned about his health and his claims he was being persecuted, the Rochdale Observer reported.

Tedola, who came to England in 2005 after getting a law degree in Ethiopia, strangled Ms McManus in the women’s TV lounge one evening last August.

Tedola was seen coming out of the lounge holding a black belt which was in a loop and told a nurse he killed Ms Manus after she called him a spy. (He must be Meles’ cousin.)

In recent military operations, the Tigray People’s Democratic Movement (TPDM) kill more than 100 Woyanne soldiers, and Ogaden Liberation Front (ONLF) fighters kill over 132 Woyannes soldiers.

COMMENTARY

My Position on the Involvement of Ethiopia in Somalia

By Melaku Tegegne

Meles Zenawi could have made a Rambo-style, quick and decisive victory in Somalia and got the job done. Instead, he decided that the Ethiopian soldiers continue for one year as an occupation force. As a result of this, thousands of innocent Somalis have been killed and a million Somalis have been displaced, causing untold suffering and the greatest human tragedy in the Horn of Africa. In this article, I strongly argue that the involvement of Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia is a naked aggression against a neighboring country.

As a high school student, I have witnessed the 1977-78 Ethio-Somalia war, the major regional war in the Horn of Africa then. I observed, for more than 3 hours, the military parade of 300,000 peasant militia trained in 3 month’s time and deployed to the eastern part of Ethiopia which was under the occupation of the forces of the Said Barre regime. The huge military parade took place in the capital city, Addis Ababa. That force had successfully dislodged and repulsed the aggression of Somalia. In that historic war of liberation, Russians, Cubans, and Yemeni troops had also participated. My second encounter with the Ethio-Somali affair was when I went as an assistant cameraman to the eastern part of the country in 1979. I helped the seasoned cameraman from Ethiopian TV to shoot films on the mock exercise of the dissident Somali group which finally ousted Said Barre from his power and liberated Somalia after a protracted decade-long war which lasted until 1991.

I never visited Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, when I was working as a desk officer in the Neighbouring Countries Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia in the early 1990s. However, I had the opportunity to share knowledge about Somalia in those days with a former colleague who was Somalia’s desk officer. Virtually, I had known the daily political, economic, social, and cultural situations in that poor country, which was torn apart by warlords.

Whenever I heard the daily clash between the various clans of Somalia (Darod, Isaac, Dulbahante,…), I was sympathetic to their plight, and the senseless fighting among themselves. Though they are intact in terms of ethnic group, one nation, same language, same religion, unlike Ethiopia, which is a multi-national country differing in religion and race, the Somalis, however, instead of forging national unity and establishing a central government, continued to fight each other for the last 16 years, dividing the country at least into three enclaves. One can recall the case of Puntland, the Mogadishu area, and the south divided and led by warlords. The warlords created havoc among their own different ethnic groups, fanning the glaring clan politics.

The Ethiopian officials, mainly led by the incumbent foreign minister and professor Kinfe Abraham, the president of the so-called Ethiopian International Institute of Peace and Development, encouraged and abetted the division of Somalia into North, South, East, and West enclaves with a sinister design to weaken the national unity of Somalia and impose an ethnic form of federalism as has been done in Ethiopia. Abdulahi Yusuf comes into the picture here. For the record, when I was in Addis Ababa, working at the Foreign Ministry 8 years ago, Abdulahi Yusuf made frequent visits, three times in less than six months. The reception given to him was very warm and he had cordial conversations with the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister. Abdulahi Yusuf was a favourite among the other warlords whose allegiance has been divided between Kenya, Eritrea, Yemen, Libya, and Saudi Arabia.

As if that were not enough, the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments interfered in Somalian internal affairs thereby opening up a proxy war which was initiated as result of the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Meles supported the group led by Abdullahi Yusuf, and Issais Afeworki (Eritrean president) supported the so-called Islamic Courts, a group of fanatics who wanted to establish an Islamic state rather than a secular state. Therefore Somalia became a showdown of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. The proxy war was made just only for two weeks culminating in a decisive and stunning victory by the Ethiopian troops against the Islamist forces and their Eritrean backers. The defeated army was disarrayed; some of the Eritrean high-ranking military officials were forced to flee Somalia through Kenya.

As I stated in the beginning of my article, the war, rather the proxy war, and the showdown of the Ethio-Eritrean forces should have culminated a year ago. But unfortunately, on the part of Ethiopia, the defeating party, it has dragged on until such time now that it has resulted in an unnecessary human tragedy which would have a long-lasting effect between the relations of the two neighbouring countries.

The latest figures indicate that about a million Somalis have been displaced as a result of the war. It is a very sad event in the political history of not only Ethio-Somalia but the Horn of Africa in general. Who is to blame? Abdullahi Yusuf, the Islamic Courts, Meles or Issais? I believe the responsibility should be shared equally by all four parties. It is a mix of pretexts, proxy war, fanaticism and a policy of appeasement. However, the main reasons, to my understanding, are the proxy war and the manoeuvres taken by the Meles regime to turn the attention of the Ethiopian people from his domestic problems to the war in Somalia.

Meles Zenawi’s rationale behind sending about 15,000 soldiers to Somalia in early 2007, was due mainly to a “threat” against the sovereignty of Ethiopia by the so-called Islamic Courts which are believed to have a connection to Al-Qaeda. Though the Islamic Courts might have a hostile attitude to Ethiopia as a historical enemy, in reality, this small fanatic group with a small number of soldiers cannot pose a major threat to a big country like Ethiopia, which has a strong defence force, and more than 70 million people. Therefore, Meles’ rhetoric, both at the rubber stamp Parliament of Ethiopia and with the international media, was simply a pretext for turning the attention of the people of Ethiopia away from the popular struggle for a radical change for democracy towards the war.

Therefore the objective of the invasion of Somalia was simply made for political expediency, i.e., to save the government of Meles Zenawi from the strong movement for democracy by the people of Ethiopia, who have shown strong support for the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party, commonly known as CUDP. After arresting the leaders and more than 50,000 supporters of the opposition party, the regime turned its attention to Somalia, an underdog in the Horn of Africa.

So now the CUDP is in disarray and the other smaller opposition parties are not faring well. The CUDP has shown a fractious situation by falling apart from each other because of one factor or another. This situation creates happiness on the part of the ruling party.

Turning back to the question under discussion, why doesn’t Meles pull out his forces from Somalia especially at this time when Somalia’s affairs have become an international tragedy? He has already shown his power, and achieved his goal, deterring a perceived enemy. So then why doesn’t he order his forces to pack and return to Addis Ababa? I am of the opinion that it would be unwise to stay in Somalia in such a miserable situation and under international outcry.

On the other hand, I would like to state that I am against terrorist activity in the Horn of Africa, in particular, the Middle East, and South Asia in general. I am a strong supporter of the war against terrorism. However, Meles could have attacked the Islamic Courts with a raid or two, making a surgical operation or a limited strike, and pull back.

The destruction of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001 has amply demonstrated that terrorism is a threat to world civilization. The bombings of the American embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi and the American naval ship at the Yemeni calling station have also demonstrated that the intention of the terrorists is to destroy, not construct.

To come to my final point, the case of Somalia versus Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi could have shown his strong support to the USA and NATO member countries by deploying a considerable number of forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, of course under the sanction of the United Nations. Ethiopia’s historic alliance with the USA and the west in general is a public secret. The international community knows very well the role played by the Ethiopian soldiers in both Korea and Congo in the 1960s. Their indefatigable spirit, enthusiasm, patriotism had been remarkably appreciated by the UN agencies and the western world.
_______________________
Melaku Tegegne is a former Ethiopian journalist and diplomat, now a peace and democracy activist and can be reached at [email protected]. Blog: Issues in Focus

Sidebar

“… The global communications greed now necessitates policy decisions, actions, and communications on an almost equal instantaneous basis. If a world leader, a leader of a country, delays in responding to a widely known crisis situation, perhaps made visible through television, as image of prisoner of war camps did in Bosnia in 1992, he or she will likely look indecisive, weak, or worse in the international media and court of public opinion. Moreover, lack of rapid policy making or public diplomacy in this hyper-information environment can have significant economic implication.”

source: New Media Technology: Cultural and Commercial Perspectives, page 355, by John V. Pavlik.

(Press TV) More than ten people have been killed across Mogadishu as the city walks on the verge a new fighting between rebels and Ethiopian Woyanne forces.

Press TV Somalia correspondent in Mogadishu said three civilians were targeted by Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers who did not allow medics to remove the dead bodies from the scene.

The Ethiopian Woyanne forces also opened fire on three passersby elsewhere as they were walking in an industrial street in the south of the capital.

Eyewitnesses said two more civilians were shot dead by Somali soldiers in Medina district in southern Mogadishu.

Government officer Abubakr Abdullahi Osman, a member of Yakhshiid district local government office, was also shot down near his house and two other people were killed by unknown gunmen.

Meanwhile, hundreds of heavily-armed Ethiopian Woyanne troops were heading for Helliwa district in north Mogadishu in what seems to be the biggest military movement in the region.

Insurgent forces armed with mortars and bazookas were also heading toward the same spot to face the foreign forces in a fighting that might break out any moment.