By Harvey Morris at the United Nations
Financial Times

The United Nations might be forced to evacuate its peacekeepers next month from the tense border zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea, removing the most visible deterrent to renewed warfare between the east African neighbours.

The UN Security Council was due on Wednesday to renew the mandate of the 1,700 peacekeepers for a further six months, despite the news that Eritrean restrictions on fuel supplies to the UN force made its situation untenable beyond February. Azouz Ennifar, UN special representative in the region, said last week the force would soon have only enough diesel stocks to stage a retreat.

The eight-year-old UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) was deployed after a 1998-2000 border war in which 70,000 people were killed. The crisis that has paralysed the mission is the latest sign of worsening relations between the two countries. It comes at a time when the outside world is preoccupied with the deteriorating situations in nearby Kenya and in Somalia, where both Ethiopia and Eritrea have a strategic interest.

The latest tension, in which thousands of troops from both sides have been deployed to the frontier zone in recent months, is ostensibly about implementation of an independent demarcation ruling on where the border lies. The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, based in The Hague, disbanded itself last November after saying a line it had drawn on maps in 2002 was the only valid border in the absence of the possibility of setting up physical markers in the disputed zone.

Eritrea accepted the ruling, which awarded it the village of Badme, a focal point of the border war. But Ethiopia demanded more talks, with Meles Zenawi, its prime minister, describing what he called the virtual demarcation of the border as “legal nonsense”.

Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean president, this month wrote to Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, saying that, since the border was now demarcated, the continued presence of UNMEE forces amounted to occupation. In December, Eritrea suspended all fuel supplies to the peacekeepers.

Underlying the dispute is the mutual distrust of the authoritarian regimes in Addis Ababa and Asmara about their wider strategies in the Horn of Africa. Each accuses the other of funding insurgencies aimed at unseating the rival regime, while Eritrea sees Ethiopia as seeking to establish its hegemony as a vanguard of US policy in the region.

Ethiopia lost its access to the Red Sea when Eritrea seceded in 1993 after a 30-year insurgency. Eritrea’s leaders fear its larger neighbour intends to re-establish its supremacy in the Horn by fostering the emergence of a more pliable regime in Asmara.

Their relations have deteriorated since Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to prop up its western-backed government, justifying the intervention in part as a response to Eritrea’s supply of weaponry to Somalia’s Islamic Courts movement. The US, which regards Ethiopia as an ally in its war on terror, recently warned that it might declare Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism because of its continued support for Somali insurgents.

”We believe the government in Asmara is well aware of our capabilities and another invasion would lead to their downfall,” Mr Meles told the Ethiopian parliament late last year.

Both sides have said they would not be the first to relaunch war. But international observers believe an isolated border incident could reignite the conflict.

The International Crisis Group estimated in November that the two sides had tens of thousands of troops dug in along their 620 mile frontier, inside a theoretical 25km-wide Temporary Security Zone that was to have been established following a peace agreement in 2000. It said some of the opposing forces were less than 100 yards apart.

Ethiopia last week said Eritrean forces opened fire on its own soldiers who were trying to defect to the Ethiopian lines, killing one and wounding another. The Ethiopian military reported the incident to UNMEE. Next time, the UN peacekeepers might not be there to deal with the complaint.

I am Blen Tamrat Layne, and I am writing on behalf of my family. My father, Tamrat Layne, was the former prime minister, and he has been in prison for more than eleven years. He got arrested when I was four years old and my sister was two months old. And we had to grow up with out a dad in our lives, especially my little sister. She was born the same year my dad got arrested and she hasn’t had a relationship with our dad her whole life. I can’t simply explain the pain of having to grow up with out a father. It is really hard to see other children with their father’s and my sister and I don’t even remember what his voice sounds like. We had to grow up with out our dad for many years and we miss him. When my sister was eight years old, we told her that our dad was in prison, and she was devastated. She cried for hours and hours. Every day she tells me that she misses him and she asks me when he’s coming home. Our mom tells us that he will be home soon and all we could do is hope and pray that our father would come home to us so we could be a family again. I remember when I was a child wondering why my dad wasn’t home, and I used to ask my mom where he was. When I finally found out that I wouldn’t see my dad at home, I was heart broken.

I remember seeing my mom cry, and I used to ask myself “Why did they take my dad?” Everybody knows after my dad got arrested, my sister, my mom, my auntie, and I left Ethiopia. It was very hard for my mom to leave our family and live in a foreign country, to get away from the hardships we had back home. Even though we were far from home I never forgot my dad and my family. I was hopeful that my dad would be released and come to us one day so we could be reunited and he could help my mom in raising us. I imagine what my dad was like and I dream that I woke up one day and I finally got to hear his voice. I dream that he would play with me and that he would go to my basketball games, I dream of having a loving dad. My sister tells me that she is Dad’s little princess and she wants to play with him, and she told me that she wants to tell our dad that she loves him and she wants to hear him say that he loves her.

I know that most of you have children and I know that you all want to be there to protect your son or daughter. But think of how your life would be or how your children’s life would be if they grew up with out a father. Imagine seeing their mom crying every night because she misses her husband. I know that when you get home from work you hug your children and tell them you love them. But we didn’t have that. I know that you put your children in to bed at night and show them you are always going to be there for them, but we didn’t have that. My sister and I are just children and we have suffered long enough, why for should we have to live without a father. We deserve a loving father for in our lives, we deserve our father to show us protection and to love us the same way you love your children.

I am writing this letter to ask you to please release our dad so we can live a life with a loving father and so he can be there when my sister and I grow up. During the Ethiopian millennium we heard that many prisoners were going to be released and we were hoping that our father would be one of them. But when we heard that he was not going to be released, we were very sad and very confused. Our dad has suffered enough and so have we, so please release him. I know that he has spent his adult years fighting with most of you for the Ethiopians. But he has been in prison for more than eleven years. When I think about his life it makes me sad, so please release him so we can be a family again.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Blen Tamrat Layne

You are invited to a fundraising event in Washington DC organized by Ethiopians for Obama in support of Senator Barack Obama’s historic candidacy for president of the United State of America. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate in this event. U.S. citizens and Green Card holders are permitted by law to contribute in a presidential election.
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(AP) MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somali [freedom fighters[ firing rockets and mortars clashed with [Woyanne occupying forces] in fighting that killed at least 17 civilians and two Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers in the capital, witnesses said Tuesday.

The fighting occurred late Monday as Ethiopian Woyanne troops conducted house-to-house searches in Mogadishu’s northern Hiliwa district, traditional elder Mohamud Haji Nur said.

Insurgents also fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at a former pasta factory where the Ethiopians Woyannes have a military base. The Ethiopians Woyannes responded with artillery shells that slammed into nearby residential areas, Nur said.

He said his men collected the bodies of 15 civilians.

“Some died while fleeing the fighting while others died in their homes when Ethiopian Woyanne mortars responding to insurgent attacks slammed into their houses,” Nur said.

Two Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers died in the clashes, said another elder, Ali Bashir Ahmed Siyad.

In a separate incident in the south of the capital, the bodies of two young men were retrieved from Monday fighting in which insurgents attacked government troops based at a key junction near the city’s main Bakara market.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991. Thousands of Somalis were killed last year in fighting between Islamic insurgents and a shaky transitional government supported by Ethiopian Woyanne forces.