Thu. May 31, 2007 07:15 pm
By Bonny Apunyu
SomaliNet
Somalia: Bomb hits Ethiopian army convoy, four killed when a remote-controlled roadside bomb tore into an Ethiopian army convoy in Somalia on Thursday wounding five soldiers, locals and a security source said.
The attack is the latest in a wave of Iraq-style insurgent strikes rocking the Horn of Africa nation.
“An Ethiopian truck was blown up,” resident Osman Adan said by telephone. “The Ethiopian troops immediately opened fire indiscriminately with heavy machine-guns.”
Seven locals were caught in the cross-fire, but local journalist Ali Dahir said he had been able to verify four civilian fatalities, Adan said.
“Two seriously injured soldiers were being removed from the truck. There was a lot of blood at the scene,” Mr Dahir added.
“Nobody knows whether the Ethiopian soldiers died or not.”
Witnesses said Ethiopian soldiers, in Somalia in a bid to help the government fight an insurgency led by militant Islamists, cordoned off the area after the blast and carried out door-to-door searches in nearby streets.
The security source in Mogadishu said one Ethiopian truck was destroyed by an anti-tank mine set off by remote control – a new tactic being used by the insurgents.
Meanwhile, Nato allies are studying a request from the African Union to provide air transport for its troops in Somalia, an alliance official said today.
“We are seeking military advice on how to respond to the request. There is an intention among allies to help,” said the official of an AU request he said Nato received in recent days.
The official said he understood the support would be similar to that provided to AU peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region, where Nato planes have since 2005 helped troop reinforcements and rotations.
The Nato official said he understood the AU wanted help “relatively quickly”.
At present the AU force is made up of just 1,600 Ugandans. Other African nations have been wary of sending more soldiers, especially after four Ugandan peacekeepers were killed two weeks ago by a roadside bomb targeting their convoy.
Nato’s air transport mission in Darfur was launched in July 2005 and was its first operation on a continent previously off limits to the Western military alliance.
It says it has provided air transport to some 24,000 AU peacekeepers and civilian police officers since then.
May 31, 2007
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A thousand rare black-mane lions — an Ethiopian national symbol — and some 300 elephants are in danger after a swathe of forest that was part of their sanctuary was cut down, a wildlife expert said on Thursday.
The land was cleared from a designated conservation area at Midiga Tola, adjacent to the Babile Elephant Sanctuary located 557 km (346 miles) east of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Wildlife Association President Yirmed Demeke said.
Flora EcoPower Holding AG, a German biodiesel producer, cleared the forest after it was granted 10,000 hectares of land, Yirmed said.
“The company has continued to clear the forested land without any concern for the wild anmials threatened by the destruction of an internationally recognized conservation area,” Yirmed said.
Munich-based Flora EcoPower’s chief operations officer for Ethiopia said the company met wildlife experts and government officials over the past few days to solve the problem.
“We are not touching one area where there are elephants,” said Alon Hovev, adding that the area they were working in was 30 km from the elephants’ habitat.
The problem, he said, arose from a lack of communication between the company and conservation groups, which had been solved by the meetings.
“No one can tell us we are not taking care of animals. Anything they will tell us to do, we will do and we will contribute money,” he said.
Wildlife experts who visited the forest lodged protests with the regional and federal governments, saying the company had not conducted the legally required environmental impact assessment before cutting the forest down.
Tadesse Hailu, head of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Wildlife Protection Department, said local authorities must make sure that investment does not harm conservation areas, wildlife or the environment.
The 7,000 square-kilometer (4,350 square mile) sanctuary is the only one of its kind in Ethiopia, and is home to about 300 elephants, 1,000 black-mane lions and 250 bird and plant species endemic to the Horn of Africa nation.
The black-mane lions are revered as a national symbol in Ethiopia, where they are on the national currency and are often depicted in statues.
Scores of the black-maned lions are kept in a zoo in the capital Addis Ababa. Wildlife experts estimate that only about 1,000 remain in the wild.
(Additional reporting by Bryson Hull in Nairobi)
WashingtonPost.com
By Eve Zibart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 1, 2007; Page WE19
It has been a long time since Adams Morgan could claim exclusive rights to Washington’s Ethiopian culinary community — and in any case that longtime “Little Ethiopia” has been superseded by the cluster of restaurants around 14th and U streets NW — but it’s still relatively unusual to find Ethiopian establishments in the outer suburbs. So Herndon’s Warka, though small (perhaps three dozen seats, counting the bar), would seem to have a fairly wide area from which to attract its clientele. As it happens, the clientele is generally mixed, with non-Ethiopian fans of the fare happy to avoid the Dulles Toll Road or Beltway commute.
Some days, in fact, the customers are so “mixed” that only the carryout patrons and the music video stars speak Amharic. (Indeed, the little industrial park, off Spring Street between the Herndon and Reston parkways, is a melting pot of dining options: a pho shop, a kebab kitchen, a Japanese-Chinese restaurant, a Chinese one, an Indian cafe, an ambitious pan-Asian/Caribbean fusion restaurant, an elaborate bakery, an Asian grocery and a luncheonette.)Visually, Warka could be almost any flavor of restaurant; it is painted a foliage green and decorated with botanical prints, and the tables are ordinary square-tops. In fact, in some ways Warka could be described as an Ethiopian restaurant for Americans (or Americanized Ethiopians): The meat dishes and the fine house-made chili sauces are prime; the vegetarian ones are just pedestrian.
Ethiopians eat a lot of meat, and with gusto, especially as it relates to seasoning. One of the best dishes on the menu is gored gored, a heaping portion of high-quality raw beef cut into large chunks and generously seasoned with berbere and a little spiced clarified butter. (Berbere is one of the great spicy addictions in life, a combination of ground chilies, paprika, black pepper, salt, onions, garlic, salt and ginger, along with any number of other brown spices, such as nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom or allspice.) Kitfo, the smaller minced beef often referred to as Ethiopian tartare and generally available raw or cooked, here is served cooked only.
Yebeg tibs is cubed lamb — leg sirloin, by the taste — cooked with jalapeños, tomatoes and sprigs of fresh rosemary and served with awaze sauce, a pureed sauce like thick marinara. (You can get a hotter dip on the side if you like.) Yesega tibs is beef. Ingredients in tibs are generally cooked first and then hot-sauced, while those in wots are braised in berbere, sort of like the difference between dry and wet barbecue.
An even more delicious dish, for those who appreciate offal, is dullet, lamb tripe and liver (here mixed with meat), a gamier and more aromatic dish than the tibs; unfortunately, the kitchen can’t always obtain the ingredients.
Warka’s version of doro wot has more punch than many versions: The chicken (two drumsticks to a portion) is marinated in lemon juice, seared in spiced niter kibbeh and braised in red pepper sauce.
There are several versions of firfir or fitfit, a homey dish in which pieces of injera are cooked in the dish; there are lamb and two beef versions and one with fresh tomatoes, the Ethiopian version of panzanella. The injera here, incidentally, is very thin and light and only mildly sour.
On the other hand, though vegetarian dishes are among an Ethiopian restaurant’s strong draws, especially for younger diners, here they seem rather offhand or just palate-cleansers for the meats. On more than one occasion, the lentils and the cabbage were undercooked, and the lentils and chickpeas were bland, although described as spicy. (The lentils in the sambusas were also half-hard and tasteless, and the pastry, though crisp, hadn’t been blotted of its oil.) The greens, chopped kale or collards, were dull; the green beans with carrots somewhat better. And even when they were part of a veggie-only combo, the portions were restrained.
Even stranger, after a fine and seriously spicy first night’s dinner, a second night’s meal — one that happened to coincide with a room full of other non-Ethiopian customers — was surprisingly cautious, and the orders came out not joined on the injera-draped basket but separately on plates, which took away much of the fun and a good deal of flavor. (This seems especially odd since Warka’s Web site emphasizes the communal nature of Ethiopian dining.) It was a Saturday, with live music scheduled, and whether the kitchen was expecting a late crowd and feared running short of injera or just condescending to some perceived notion of American habits wasn’t clear. It would have been an aberration, however, as the staff is extremely pleasant and obliging.
In addition to a full bar, Warka offers a couple of Ethiopian beers and four Ethiopian wines: tej, the honey wine; a sweet red; a drier, rather thin red; and a light, somewhat floral white, which turned out to be a rather nice match for the spices. (The house wines are from California.) Though short, the wine list provides what could be a fine romantic opening: Tej, the menu says, goes back to the reign of “the Queen of Shebs-Saba,” or as she is known in the United States, the Queen of Sheba. According to legend, the founder of Ethiopia, Menelik I, was the child of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whose beauty some people believe inspired the erotic flights of “The Song of Solomon.” Maybe it’s more potent than you think.
Note: Although the restrooms have wide doors and support bars for patrons in wheelchairs, there are several steps at the entrance, and the two doors in the foyer are set at right angles.
Warka 275 Sunset Park Dr., Herndon Phone:703-435-2166 Kitchen hours: Sunday-Thursday 10-10; Fridays and Saturdays 11-11 Prices: Sambusa $1.50; entrees $7.99-$12.99 Wheelchair access: Limited
The City Administration’s campaign to dismantles houses it deems illegal settlements has begun. More than 205 residents in the Bole district have seen their dwellings destroyed as the city attempts to shape the Capital according to the Master Plan.
Addis Fortune
FORTUNE STAFF WRITER WUDINEH ZENEBE chronicles the plight of those left in the wake of the operation.
Etenesh Yemane, 35, is a mother of four who raises her children without a father. She is employed at a community recreation centrein Kebele 01 of Bole district where she earns a monthly salary of 150 Br. In 1991 she built a mud house at a cost of 7,000 Br in Bole district, which was demolished in 2002 by the City Administration, having been designated illegal. But she stubbornly argued with the Administration, which, according to her, admitted that her house had indeed been built on legally secured land. She has since rebuilt a four-room residence on the same place, having been given the green light from officials of the district.
She reminisces about the misery her family of five went through when her house was demolished five years ago.
“We used to live in plastic huts on the same place where our demolished house lays,” she told
Last week Etenesh and other dwellers living in Bole district, Kebele 01, in a place commonly called silsa sidist, had to relive that misery as the Caretaker Administration demolished 205 houses that were considered to have been built on illegally obtained land. The campaign, headed by Berhane Deressa, mayor of the Addis Abeba City Caretaker Administration (AACCA), launched on Thursday, May 24, 2007, is demolishing homes declared illegal.
There are over 50,000 homes built by squatters in the city, Bole district sources told. The targets of the first round of the campaign would be homes built after May 2005, as envisaged in the city’s campaign document.
“We were told to immediately extricate our goods on Thursday morning, 6:00am, the same day our homes were demolished by earth moving machinery,” said Mulugeta Mekonnen, who had a home demolished by the Administration.
Another victim of this campaign is Legesse Geletu, who lives with his wife and two children. Legesse, a former soldier, earns 25-30 Br a day working as a daily labourer on construction sites.
As the military disbanded, I came to this place and built the house at a cost of 20,000 Br,” he told. “The place, 321sqm, was full of garbage at the time; I cleaned the area, planted trees and breathed life into the place,” he added.
After years of stable living, Legesse is understandably dismayed with the letter he received on, May 17, 2007, which ordered him and 205 other homeowners in the Kebele to demolish their houses in seven days. The letter, signed by Izra Beyene, head of Land Development and Administration Office at Bole district, gave the inhabitants seven days to appeal the decision.
Accordingly, the homeowners, including Legesse protested to the decision. They argued that they lived on the sites for a long time, and have made considerable investments on the lands, and thus do not deserve to be evicted. They also argued that they deserved to be provided replacement lands to build their own houses.
However, their plea could not save their homes as they do not appear on the Master Plan. Moreover, the area has been designated an aviation security zone on the Plan. Hence, 203 families, including Etenesh and Legesse had to lose their homes.
Their plight is an outcome of a campaign on squatting that will last from May 9 to September 2007. The campaign, according to the City Administration, will mainly focus on constructions on illegally obtained land, unlawful appropriation of government houses, land lease and sale of property in violation of applicable laws, including brokers who facilitate such illegal activities. Moreover people who break into condominiums of the Housing Agency will be the target of this campaign.
The other challenges are the Administration’s workers who are collaborators in these illegal acts. It believes the illegal acquisitions and unlawful appropriations of homes are made with the consent of some staff in the Administration, a member toldFortune . The restructuring of the Administration several times has created loopholes which were exploited by these employees, he admitted.
The Ministry of Works and Urban Development (MoWUD) previously handled land related issues in Addis Abeba before the mandate was transferred to the Addis Ababa City Work and Urban Development Bureau. This Bureau has four divisions: Land Administration, Land Development Authority, Infrastructure and Construction Permit Authority and Housing Agency. Certain activities of the Bureau, including the management of documents related to houses, were later decentralised to 10 districts after the merger of the Land Development Authority and Land Administration.
In all this restructuring, due attention was not given to the security of these documents, a veteran who worked in the city administration for over 20 years toldFortune . This has created a suitable condition for some workers of the City Administration to abuse their position to advance their own interests by illegally authenticating documents, and by transferring and selling files to a third party, he added.
A conspiracy detected in Bole district two weeks ago was revealing of the extent of underhandedness in the district administrations and the City Administration. This conspiracy aimed at transferring 40 plots with 175sqm each to a non-existent association. The plots were to be sold at 250,000 Br each. The campaign also targets these corrupt workers.
In the first round of the campaign, 2,400 homes built by squatters in the Yeka distict, and 3,000 in Nifas Silk Lafto, will be demolished. Out of this, 400 homes were demolished in March to April, 2007. In Bole district 20,000 homes are planed for demolition, a Bole district official toldFortune. The district started demolishing 205 houses built by squatters in Kebele 01 and the measure will continue, the source told Fortune.
Kebede Desta, a law enforcement department head in the Lafto district told Fortune that 200 houses built by squatters in Kebele 02 in the area known as Koshe were rebuilt to a better standard within two days after their demolition. Kebede said the capacity of the local security forces to control the construction of houses by squatters is limited.
The district deployed 94 federal and city police officers during the campaign, but they were redeployed four days later. Squatters built seven ‘moonlight houses’ (houses built in the middle of the night) every day, Kebede said.
Action Professionals Association for the People (APAP) has condemned the actions of the city administration.
“Such an act is illegal and unconstitutional and goes against the letter and spirit of all international conventions and agreements to which Ethiopia is a party,” APAP stated in a press release.
It further said that having gone through the documents of the evicted families, it has found that “not all of the legal conditions and requirements for the forceful evictions of these families have been met and as such the eviction is a violation of the laws of the land.”
AACCA issued a 20-page working plan which states the roles and responsibilities of the participants in the campaign. The participants are the Mayor’s Office, Manager of the city, Law and Justice Bureau, Addis Abeba Police Commission, the Federal Police and 11 subordinate agencies of the city, districts and kebeles. There are only 10-15 law enforcement agents in the each of the 99 districts, making the federal police and the city police necessary to handle security incidents that may occur in the course of the campaign.
An appeal hearing bench, headed by Ayalew Melaku, president of the Land Clearance Appeals Commission, has been set up to address the complaints tenants might have. The Legal and Justice Bureau has also established a bench to address complaints by people who claim to have been unlawfully victimised by the campaign. Muluneh Wordofa, head of the Bureau, declined to comment on the campaign.
But such compensatory measures have not given solace to all those affected by the campaign.
The demolition drove some dwellers into tears, after they saw their houses turned into piles of junk in hours.
“I have no friend or relative whom I can depend on,” Etenesh said. tenesh Yemane, 35, is a mother of four who raises her children without a father. She is employed at a community recreation centrein Kebele 01 of Bole district where she earns a monthly salary of 150 Br. In 1991 she built a mud house at a cost of 7,000 Br in Bole district, which was demolished in 2002 by the City Administration, having been designated illegal. But she stubbornly argued with the Administration, which, according to her, admitted that her house had indeed been built on legally secured land. She has since rebuilt a four-room residence on the same place, having been given the green light from officials of the district.
She reminisces about the misery her family of five went through when her house was demolished five years ago.
“We used to live in plastic huts on the same place where our demolished house lays,” she told Fortune.
Last week Etenesh and other dwellers living in Bole district, Kebele 01, in a place commonly called silsa sidist, had to relive that misery as the Caretaker Administration demolished 205 houses that were considered to have been built on illegally obtained land. The campaign, headed by Berhane Deressa, mayor of the Addis Abeba City Caretaker Administration (AACCA), launched on Thursday, May 24, 2007, is demolishing homes declared illegal.
There are over 50,000 homes built by squatters in the city, Bole district sources told Fortune. The targets of the first round of the campaign would be homes built after May 2005, as envisaged in the city’s campaign document.
“We were told to immediately extricate our goods on Thursday morning, 6:00am, the same day our homes were demolished by earth moving machinery,” said Mulugeta Mekonnen, who had a home demolished by the Administration.
Another victim of this campaign is Legesse Geletu, who lives with his wife and two children. Legesse, a former soldier, earns 25-30 Br a day working as a daily labourer on construction sites.
“As the military disbanded, I came to this place and built the house at a cost of 20,000 Br,” he told Fortune. “The place, 321sqm, was full of garbage at the time; I cleaned the area, planted trees and breathed life into the place,” he added.
After years of stable living, Legesse is understandably dismayed with the letter he received on, May 17, 2007, which ordered him and 205 other homeowners in the Kebele to demolish their houses in seven days. The letter, signed by Izra Beyene, head of Land Development and Administration Office at Bole district, gave the inhabitants seven days to appeal the decision.
Accordingly, the homeowners, including Legesse protested to the decision. They argued that they lived on the sites for a long time, and have made considerable investments on the lands, and thus do not deserve to be evicted. They also argued that they deserved to be provided replacement lands to build their own houses.
However, their plea could not save their homes as they do not appear on the Master Plan. Moreover, the area has been designated an aviation security zone on the Plan. Hence, 203 families, including Etenesh and Legesse had to lose their homes.
Their plight is an outcome of a campaign on squatting that will last from May 9 to September 2007. The campaign, according to the City Administration, will mainly focus on constructions on illegally obtained land, unlawful appropriation of government houses, land lease and sale of property in violation of applicable laws, including brokers who facilitate such illegal activities. Moreover people who break into condominiums of the Housing Agency will be the target of this campaign.
The other challenges are the Administration’s workers who are collaborators in these illegal acts. It believes the illegal acquisitions and unlawful appropriations of homes are made with the consent of some staff in the Administration, a member toldFortune . The restructuring of the Administration several times has created loopholes which were exploited by these employees, he admitted.
The Ministry of Works and Urban Development (MoWUD) previously handled land related issues in Addis Abeba before the mandate was transferred to the Addis Ababa City Work and Urban Development Bureau. This Bureau has four divisions: Land Administration, Land Development Authority, Infrastructure and Construction Permit Authority and Housing Agency. Certain activities of the Bureau, including the management of documents related to houses, were later decentralised to 10 districts after the merger of the Land Development Authority and Land Administration.
In all this restructuring, due attention was not given to the security of these documents, a veteran who worked in the city administration for over 20 years toldFortune . This has created a suitable condition for some workers of the City Administration to abuse their position to advance their own interests by illegally authenticating documents, and by transferring and selling files to a third party, he added.
A conspiracy detected in Bole district two weeks ago was revealing of the extent of underhandedness in the district administrations and the City Administration. This conspiracy aimed at transferring 40 plots with 175sqm each to a non-existent association. The plots were to be sold at 250,000 Br each. The campaign also targets these corrupt workers.
In the first round of the campaign, 2,400 homes built by squatters in the Yeka distict, and 3,000 in Nifas Silk Lafto, will be demolished. Out of this, 400 homes were demolished in March to April, 2007. In Bole district 20,000 homes are planed for demolition, a Bole district official toldFortune. The district started demolishing 205 houses built by squatters in Kebele 01 and the measure will continue, the source told Fortune.
Kebede Desta, a law enforcement department head in the Lafto district told Fortune that 200 houses built by squatters in Kebele 02 in the area known as Koshe were rebuilt to a better standard within two days after their demolition. Kebede said the capacity of the local security forces to control the construction of houses by squatters is limited.
The district deployed 94 federal and city police officers during the campaign, but they were redeployed four days later. Squatters built seven ‘moonlight houses’ (houses built in the middle of the night) every day, Kebede said.
Action Professionals Association for the People (APAP) has condemned the actions of the city administration.
“Such an act is illegal and unconstitutional and goes against the letter and spirit of all international conventions and agreements to which Ethiopia is a party,” APAP stated in a press release.
It further said that having gone through the documents of the evicted families, it has found that “not all of the legal conditions and requirements for the forceful evictions of these families have been met and as such the eviction is a violation of the laws of the land.”
AACCA issued a 20-page working plan which states the roles and responsibilities of the participants in the campaign. The participants are the Mayor’s Office, Manager of the city, Law and Justice Bureau, Addis Abeba Police Commission, the Federal Police and 11 subordinate agencies of the city, districts and kebeles. There are only 10-15 law enforcement agents in the each of the 99 districts, making the federal police and the city police necessary to handle security incidents that may occur in the course of the campaign.
An appeal hearing bench, headed by Ayalew Melaku, president of the Land Clearance Appeals Commission, has been set up to address the complaints tenants might have. The Legal and Justice Bureau has also established a bench to address complaints by people who claim to have been unlawfully victimised by the campaign. Muluneh Wordofa, head of the Bureau, declined to comment on the campaign.
But such compensatory measures have not given solace to all those affected by the campaign.
The demolition drove some dwellers into tears, after they saw their houses turned into piles of junk in hours.
“I have no friend or relative whom I can depend on,” Etenesh said.
Editor’s Note:
The result of the Woyanne regime’s callus action in the name of city planning is this gut-wrenching report by BBC on street children
.
Written by: Jeffrey Wolf, Web Producer and Shawn Patrick, Reporter
Last updated: 5/31/2007 6:20:56 AM
………………..
Boy pulled out of pool not expected to survive. 9NEWS at 10 p.m.
Aurora Police believe his sister died while trying to save him.
It happened Monday afternoon in the Rain Tree East subdivision in the 9900 block of East Evans Avenue, which is near Iliff and Havana in Aurora.
Sixteen-year-old Bethlehem Kahsay and her 11-year-old brother, Yacob Kahsay, were pulled out of the water. Efforts to revive the girl failed.
Yacob is in the pediatric intensive care unit after being airlifted to Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Yacob’s father, Gezaee Kahsay, says his son is still in critical condition and the outlook for him is not positive.
“The doctor said the brain is almost gone,” said Gezaee. “He’s very bad, he can’t survive now.”
Their neighbor, and father of another 11-year-old boy, is losing sleep after the incident pool.
Ron Burney’s son and his wife found the two in the pool.
“I took off running out the door. I said, ‘Grab my phone.’ I thought it was kids playing a joke or something, but it wasn’t a joke,” said Burney.
Burney called 911 to get help.
“There’s two dead kids in the pool, please hurry,” he told the 911 dispatcher. “There are two children in the pool, they are floating, one is at the bottom. It looks like two young kids. Oh Lord, have mercy. They’re dead, they’re both dead.”
Gezaee says he is now praying for a miracle for his son. The doctors told him his son is brain dead and his organs have shut down.
He emigrated to the U.S. from Ethiopia 10 years ago.
“We worked so hard to bring them here for education and to get a college degree, and now we have nothing left,” Gezaee said.
He plans to move back to Ethiopia for the burial of his children and the family is trying to raise money for the services.
If you would like to help, contact the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, at 574 Pennsylvania Street in Denver. You can call them at 303-698-9957.
Both Gezaee and his wife were at work on Wednesday. Burney says he did not realize who the children were until he saw their faces on the news.
“These people worked. I pray to God they don’t think they did something wrong, it was just God’s plan,” said Burney.
