It’s Oct. 4, 1975. Getatchew is at home in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa. He knows the dictatorship government sees him, an outspoken critic, as a threat.
While his infant daughter sleeps in her crib and the rest of his family is at a party, Getatchew loads a .45-caliber revolver. It’s dinner time — 5 p.m.
Two men, one in a military uniform, see Getatchew waiting at his home’s gate with his revolver. They scurry away to call for assistance.
A group of 50 to 100 soldiers surround the home. Getatchew hears the whistle of bullets pass his ears and fires back.
Later he finds out the military shot 4,000 bullets into his house and considered demolishing it during the attack.
Getatchew runs out of ammunition. He tries to climb over the garden wall to escape.
He feels a bullet hit his back. He falls. A man with steel-toe boots kicks him in the head.
Where are the rest of them? he demands.
It’s just me, Getatchew utters, his mouth full of blood.
The man doesn’t believe him. He keeps kicking.
The military doesn’t know if they should leave Getatchew to die or take him to jail. The men shove him onto a truck bed and take him to the hospital.
That is the last time Getatchew sees his home in Ethiopia.
‘Like a movie’
The attack, and the incriminations that followed, pushed Getatchew out of his homeland, but his ties to a religious library brought him to a new home at St. John’s University.
Getatchew, now 75 and retired, sits in his lake home in Avon. He’s made Central Minnesota his home since 1976 — raising a family, working at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Collegeville for about 22 years and voicing his opposition to the communist influence on the Ethiopian government.
His expertise with Ethiopian manuscripts made him an invaluable resource at the library and the university. Getatchew also taught medieval studies.
Since 1973, he has spoken against the two communist governments that have run Ethiopia. He favors a democracy.
Even now, Ethiopian courts have charged Getatchew with treason for speaking out against the government in 2005. If he were ever to travel to Ethiopia, he would be jailed or hanged.
“My whole story is like a movie,” Getatchew says, sitting in his wheelchair, dressed in slacks and a warm sweater.
He now writes his life story for his family.
Hospital stay
After the attack, Getatchew lays for days on his back in the hospital. Doctors place him on a board with only a white bed sheet covering it.
He asks to be rolled over. Doctors move him.
The sheet, soaked with blood, sticks to his back. Doctors pull it off. The movement strips his back of skin.
The BBC and the Voice of America report Getatchew’s story that year.
Newspapers in England and the United States pick up the story. The international pressure proves too much for the government.
After a month in the Ethiopian hospital, Getatchew and his wife, Misrak, leave their three children to seek medical treatment near London.
When Getatchew arrives in London, hymn-singing choirs greet him at the gate. The choral salute was arranged by an organization he has served while in Ethiopia — the World Council of Churches. The organization pays for his medical bills.
“When you are rejected from your country and you are welcomed like this, what do you feel?” Getatchew asks rhetorically.
That winter, Julian Plante, then-executive director of the Hill library, visits Ethiopia’s manuscript preservation office in Addis Ababa. Getatchew, a deeply religious man, has worked with the Hill library in the past to preserve and record valuable Christian manuscripts.
Where’s Getatchew?, Plante asks.
Members of the Hill library’s Addis Abba’s office tell him what happened.
The director finds Getatchew in a London hospital.
Come to Collegeville when you are well, he says later. We have a position.
“The mercy was there,” Getatchew said. “The need was there. They had a job for me.”
Italian invasion Getatchew was born in 1931 in the Ethiopian countryside. As a boy, his parents divorce and he moves to Addis Ababa to be with his father.
Ethiopia is under Italian occupation in 1935. He and his father, who is educated as a priest in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, are homeless, living in a makeshift community in a local graveyard.
“It was almost an acropolis,” Getatchew said. His father teaches church lessons, reading and writing to the children living in the graveyard.
Italy withdraws from Ethiopia in 1941.
Getatchew studies theology and social sciences in Egypt. He then earns his doctorate in Semitic philology, the study of words, in Germany.
He settles in Addis Ababa and teaches at a university.
“That’s what I wanted to study,” Getatchew said of his love for language. “I was kidnapped by this discipline.”
Not again Getatchew sees hope when the army rebels against the Ethiopia monarchy in 1973. He wants the country’s people to have more freedom.
But the military starts ruling the country.
“There was no freedom. We wanted to have democracy, to make the monarchy a figurehead,” Getatchew said.
The government confiscates land. It stops newspapers. People starve.
The government creates a civil parliament; each major department and province appoints representatives. People in the province where Getatchew was born ask him to represent them. He sees it as a way to speak out.
“That revolution, I always compare it to a tsunami,” Getatchew said. “When a tsunami comes you run away. You can’t resist it.
Many of us tried to direct it — to redirect it. It didn’t work.”
Collegeville
Seven months after he was wheeled into a London airport on a stretcher, Getatchew contacts a travel agent.
I want to go to Collegeville, he says.
The agent scours maps. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.
The closest airport is in St. Paul. Is that OK?, she asks.
He receives a two-year visiting scholar visa.
He and Misrak discover a new home.
St. John’s gives Getatchew a job cataloging Ethiopian manuscripts.
He struggles to bring his children to the United States. Why do the children need to come if Getatchew plans to stay for only two years?, the U.S. government wonders.
St. John’s takes on his case. He will have to stay, they say. There is too much work, and he is the most qualified, they say.
Send the children, they plead.
A few months later, the family is reunited.
Getatchew still worries. St. John’s gives him one-year contracts. What if they don’t renew his work?, he wonders. He’s paralyzed. What kind of life can he give his family when he’s confined to a wheelchair? “This worry hangs around your neck,” he said.
After four or five years, he receives word the contract will not be renewed. There is no more money.
But before he can comprehend it, the university president finds him.
Don’t worry, says the Rev. Hilary Thimmesh, then-university president. Your work is not done, Thimmesh says. We will find the money.
Getatchew never worries again. His work is still not done. Although now technically retired, Getatchew continues to work at the Hill. He does research and writes about his experiences.
He also helps scholars who want to learn about his homeland. “(St. John’s) is hugely important to my family,” said Rebecca Haile, Getatchew’s oldest daughter. “For them, that’s where they came and set down roots.”
His co-workers call him an inspiration and a gift.
“He’s one of the most remarkable people I know,” said Columba Stewart, Order of St. Benedict, executive director for Hill. “I respect him. … There’s a personal story of survival, exile and making a new life in a very strange place.”
Study
Getatchew’s home office shows the luxuries of living in the United States. Hanging on his wall are the college diplomas of his six grown children from places such as Harvard and Yale. His room is filled with photos of his six grandchildren hugging him.
Despite the comforts of his current life, Getatchew watches the turmoil in his homeland. He still speaks out. His vocal opposition makes it impossible for him to go back. He visits his homeland mentally while reading its ancient manuscripts. He almost can hear the stories told in Ge’ez, a language spoken in Ethiopian churches. He becomes so immersed sometimes he forgets he’s at St. John’s. His scars from that 1975 attack are still evident. The mark where the bullet left his body still has an angry bump. His arms tell of him breaking through glass while trying to escape. His head still has a scar where the soldier kicked him. But never assume Getatchew carries pity for what has been taken away. His love for family, education and religion have
blessed him, Rebecca Haile said.
“He is able to see the joy in every (situation),” she said. “He has always been able to focus on the happiness and joyfulness. … He’s one in a million.”
By Mammo Muchie (Ethiopia) & Osman Abdulkadir Farah (Somalia)
Introduction
Once again the Horn of Africa is on the news radar screen with the usual nauseating projection and imaging of a region embroiled with a seemingly unending litany of violence, invasions, genocide, destruction, chaos, forced migration and a state of general insecurity. The recent socio-political upheavals and developments in the Horn of Africa region require deeper reflection why this state of unwholesome existence that continues to threaten life and well being persists with what appears to be a timeless abandon.
1. Each State in the Horn region is in a State!
Nearly all the states that constitute the wider Horn of Africa have one crisis or another. In Ethiopia we mention the recent setback of an election on May 15, 2005 that nearly got this ancient nation to come into the contemporary history of democracy only to frustrate the manifest will displayed by the people to self-govern by returning the incumbent in violation of what appeared on the whole to be an election result that favoured the opposition parties. It is an irony that those duly elected are in prison whilst some of those who have been de-elected are still in Government. Civil society leaders, journalists, scholars and human rights activists are still in jail even as the country is poised to celebrate its millennium on September 11, 2007! It is a real tragedy that Ethiopia may celebrate its millennium with its incumbent rulers at war with the neighbours of Eritrea and Somalia and forcing opposition leaders in jail to face grave charges of ’treason’ violating the rights of those who have been duly elected in what they believed to be a democratic process and election. Once again the enormous joy that people should have in reaching 2000 years after Christ may be eclipsed by the knowledge that the country is threatened by war that may have no end, starvation that continues to recur every year, and the ominous development more and more into repressive dictatorship. Moments like the millennium could have presented opportunities for the rulers not to be blinkered by failing to rise above the pettiness of politics to occupy the majestic height of historical imagination and presence. But in Africa we have rulers whose manner of ruling over people makes them behave like masters and not public servants, thus always falling fearful doing anything to keep their fear in abeyance by creating even more fear than learning to doing what is just and fair for people by engaging sincerely with democratic experimentation, dialogue, reconciliation, tolerance and empowering politics.
In Somalia the situation remains as chaotic as it has been since Said Barre left in haste in 1991. The breakdown of public authority and its dispersion into clan and warlordism has been the single most alarming development in Somalia. When the Islamic Union Courts (IUCs) appeared to have the upper hand in Mogadishu over the warlords, there seemed to be a sceptical reception of their role in warding off one undesirable and worse warlord groups for their own not as worse IUCs. The latter seemed to have been contaminated by some Jihadists in their midst at loggerheads with the secular Transitional Federal Government backed by Ethiopia and recognised by UN and AU. The invasion by Ethiopia backed by the current US Government against the IUCs opened the floodgate again for the warlords to resurface and embolden themselves in Somalia.
The violent overthrow of the IUCs was justified by the claim that they are ‘Islamist terrorists.’ By some accounts the IUCs were recognised to be near a delivery point of what is sorely lacking in Somalia, namely stability at least in Mogadishu if not in the whole of Somalia. By other accounts, the IUCs were part of the global terror network. However one looks at it, once again like in the Cold War period, the Horn of Africa is sadly incorporated as the African flank in the geo-politics of the so-called global war on extremism and terrorism. For the Horn of Africa to be at the forefront in the war on global terror in Africa, and play in US Government politics in its drastic compression and framing of the complexities of world politics to those who are for terror and those who fight it, means that the region is repeating the role it played during the Cold War. A region that has not learned the lessons from the cost to it of being embroiled in the Cold War is bound to repeat it in this new era of what has been described as the Global War on Terror.
In Sudan there is even more alarming development such as genocide and even modern day slavery in the Darfur area where apparently culturally ’Arabized Africans’ attack other Africans with the connivance if not active support of the militias by the Basher Government in Sudan that have been responsible for murdering and uprooting whole communities. The crises in Darfur continues to go on despite protests by the UN, EU, the Africa Union, USA, Britain and global civil society and human rights organisations. More worrying is the oft-repeated stories that practices and instances of slavery still exist in Sudan and Mauritania. The practice of selling humans in the 21st century is indeed one that Africans must never tolerate, as indeed they must never tolerate dictatorship.
In Eritrea, opposition is severely punished. Eritrea remains in a no-war, no-peace state with Ethiopia since the outbreak of the large scale war in 1998. Being together with Ethiopia or living separately did not seem to make any difference in relation to bringing about a normalised and peaceful relation amongst such geographically contiguous close neighbours. Each side accuses the other of supporting forces trying to destabilize it. It is thus one of the most confounding dilemmas trying to make sense and to searching for what would work to bring about an amicable relationship between the two warring regimes that continue to hurt the people by their inexplicable actions to stay belligerent for the long haul.. It is alarming to read the attitude of Issyas Afeworki and Meles Zenawi. Issays has been quoted to say that they have no resources to build a nation, they have no skill to build a nation, they have no knowledge to build a nation, but they are still determined to build a nation. It seems the only thing Issays seems to have is arrogance to make a nation if these quotes attributed to him are correct. And lo and behold, a nation built driven by arrogance or hubris may not endure unless there are impeccable reasons for its creation, which there may well be, that seems as yet not clear to the person who is the leader though!
Whilst Issays is determined to make a nation, Meles seems determined to ‘ethnicise’ an old nation and re- make it by parcelling it into vernacular-ethnic enclaves. Ethiopia has the history to make a nation. It has resources to make a nation, just as it has the arable land and the water to feed itself. It has the skills if not the social capital to make a nation. It has the knowledge to make a nation. Yet the current rulers are not determined to make the nation. They seem determined to parcel it into many ‘ nations, peoples and nationalities’ with ethnic-vernacular laws and grammar.
Djibouti has armies from France, and US anti-terror military contingent operating in its soil. Whilst it is not formally involved in disputes, it faces from the fallout from the region’s generalised instability. There are Afar based liberation movements operating in Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Kenya faces huge pressure from refugees and those who flee from all these numerous conflicts. It has its own ethnic tremor that may erupt into violence unless the democratic institutions outpace the ethnic agitators in the course of time. The democratic transition from KANU-dominated rule to the NRK coalition is a great historical achievement in democratic transition which none of the other states in the Horn of Africa region have attained. Whilst the issue in Kenya is sustaining democratic transition, the issue in the rest of the Horn of Africa is the rudimentary absence of any credible security order to experiment with democracy and development. The others have not yet fully emerged from being trapped in conflict.
Uganda has also faced election problems, involvement in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the destabilising armed resistance from the Lord Resistance Army, and its current involvement in the Somalia conflict by placing troops in support of the Ethiopian and American Governments’ pursuit to track Islamists in IUCs and their external allies.
What is common amongst these states is that they are to one degree or another involved in what is called the global war on terror on the side on the main protagonists consciously or unconsciously. They are also involved with each other’s problems. They provide facilities to opposition forces and refugees against each other. Recently we have seen the military intervention in Somalia .The existing pattern of relations need to change by encouraging a radically new perspective for the region’s states to move from a conflict community into a security community.
2. Negative Foreign Interventions Continue
The larger Horn of Africa region (consisting of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Sudan) has experienced greater (internal and external) political, social and economic upheavals since the 1960s. For mainly strategic reasons the region is currently considered (by the US and some European countries in the west) as an integrated part of confrontation against extremism. Here the region’s proximity to the Middle East and global shipping routes is considered vital.
Today it is no exaggeration to state that the Horn of Africa is one of the most volatile regions in the world. The region suffers from numerous political, socio-economic and cultural challenges. These problems affect not only the peoples and the countries in the regions but also the wider world. Issues such as political instability, economic and ecological degradation and cultural tensions contribute not only to the generalised state of underdevelopment but also to the numerous interlocking conflicts that have brought major regional and continental conflicts fuelling the rate of increase of regional and global migration and insecurity..
Perhaps where ‘God may fear to tread’; the Great Powers seemed willing to risk intervention. On the one hand the Great powers are openly involved militarily, on the other the fragility of the region can tempt in attracting jihads to operate wily- nilly in the region. The New World Order is becoming more like the new world and ecological disorder. There is a sigh of relief that the Cold War is not replaced by a Hot War. There is anxiety that the Cold War is not replaced by a peaceful, mature and sane world. We have now the current ruler of the major power drastically and radically reducing world politics to the simplicities of either for terror or against it, in the same way during the war the politics was reduced either for America or the Soviet Union. Once again our local elites have bought in this politics for reasons nothing to do with any grander purpose other than to address their immediate fears and concerns by tagging behind the current US Government’s formulation of the world disposition of forces for the 21st century.
3. Deadly Arms Continue to flow unregulated into the Region
The risk of a power vacuum is huge. The fact that Somalia has no state is a threat not only to the region but Africa and the world. The region continues to be awash with various types of deadly weapons, fuelled through endless conflicts rooted from the period of the European Scramble for Africa (indeed if not earlier!) to the period of de-colonisation in the 60s, and throughout the post-colonial period.
The region has been a victim of the arms race sponsored supplied to varied groups largely but not exclusively by the ex-colonial powers. And during the Cold War, the super powers who did a classic swap between Ethiopia (from USA to USSR) and Somalia( from USSR to USA) during the 1977-78 War dumped huge arms to a region whose poverty requires making arms and armies history to make poverty history!! The region does have the trained armies to use modern deadly weapons that cost millions of lives. In certain occasions rulers in the region received these weapons as an integrated part of the development aid from major powers. Warlords, for instance those in Somalia, used to purchase it from the numerous open markets in and around some Western and Eastern European countries. To the surprise of many, some of the notorious warlords in Mogadishu as late as last year terrorised innocent civilians with new weapons imported from the UK, a western country that officially supports the UN weapons embargo against Somalia. Thus, the flow of weaponry and easy accessibility appears to constitute one of the main challenges to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.
Small arms proliferation follows protracted conflict. The Horn of Africa can attract weapons of mass destruction. The fact that Somalia has no state with a regulatory power to enforce control on arms means that potentially any hazardous weapons can enter the region via this open border. Weapons that might seriously harm the people of the region and beyond can be shipped into it and may be used. Those evil and dark forces from outside can also use Somalia’s current chaotic situation to experiment with deadly weapons and virus. The longer Somali stays in a state of chaos, the more likely that the whole region and Africa can be a victim of yet untold perfidious evil. And all those who continue to unsettle Somalians to sort their affairs will go down in history for having brought untold suffering on the people of the region. This crime is way beyond anything that humanity can bear. It is this danger that must be stopped by finding a workable and stabilising settlement in Somalia without one internal and external group seeking exclusive control without the consent of the Somali people.
4. The Wars between Somalia and Ethiopia: Addressing the root cause
The X-Mas war is the third major war between Somalia and Ethiopia. Since the independence of Somalia, Ethiopia and Somalia had two major wars. The first took place in 1964 under the emperor four years after Somalia got its independence from Britain and Italy. The first war has been blamed on Somali irredentism due to the claim of the Ogaden region by the then Somali Government. The Ogaden is a semi desert region the British transferred to Ethiopia following the end of World War two.
The Second war was initiated by Said Barre’s Government in 1977. Receiving military aid from the Soviet Union and free oil from some Middle Eastern regimes, the dictatorial Barre regime confidently launched a surprise attack against Ethiopia in 1977. With free oil from Iraq and the Gulf, together with weapons from many countries, the Somali army captured a large portion of the Ogaden. Allies of then left-wing regime in Addis Ababa, Cuba, Yemen and the Soviets that mysteriously changed sides led one year after the start of the war the defeat of the Somali army. Returning to Somalia in disarray and demoralised, senior officers of the Somali army engaged in a failed coup led by, among other officers, president of the current transitional federal Somali government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Coup leaders that were captured were sentenced to death or sent to long term imprisonment.
Unlike the two earlier wars initiated by the Somalia side, this time the current Government in Ethiopia initiated the armed invasion based on the assumption of an IUC verbal declaration of war and invitation by the Transitional Federal Government. This makes it new. It looks the regime in Ethiopia is too embroiled and is not likely to extricate itself as it sought possible when it declared entry into the fray. The armed resistance is savagely flaring.
If the Ogaden is the reason for the conflict, the main culprit must be British imperialism that arranged to cede one of the ’stars’ to the Ethiopian emperor’s request whilst sections of the British foreign office upheld the ’five stars’ Somali nationalist position. Like Kashmir, the Balfour Declaration, the Skyes-Picot Agreement in dividing the Arab nation, it appears the same imperial trick or formula of setting up the natives to fight it out potentially igniting conflict later was left behind. And predictably the ensuing post- colonial state in Somali cannot have a five stars flag without having a five star territory. The wars ensued to match the stars of the flag to match with the territories making all now victims Somalians, Ethiopians and Africans as a whole, and others who sell the weapons reaped benefits.
How to address without inciting nationalist passion how this imperial formula is behind the reason that left the issue that deflected Somali and Ethiopia to address issues of development rather than settling borders is indeed an important question. If this issue can be confronted with reason and tolerance by demanding those who created the formula to pay for the way they set Ethiopia against Somalia and the vice versa would be the right approach. The Ethiopians and Somalias should not fight but they must unite to demand why this formula was created and what was the reason for this double standard of giving five stars to Somalia whilst giving one of the stars to Ethiopia at the same time?
Of course, the situation in Somalia has gone well out of control to bring back negotiation and dialogue to sort this vexing problem out. But if the true history of how this conflict was formed is known, perhaps the local actors can take note and use it to modify their behaviour with it.
5. Is there a way out?
The future of politics in this region is very difficult to predict. The worst case scenario will be if America and the regime in Addis Ababa continue to insist that the conflict in the Horn of Africa is part of the so-called global war against terrorism. Then prolonged suffering and hardship awaits the people in the region. There will be a war of religion and it will affect all countries in the region and beyond. Religious warlords will emerge. This can become a self- fulling prophecy internationalising the conflict and making it impossible to see a way out. This option is the worst one and unfortunately the logic of the conflict judging by recent events seem to go in this direction.
The preferred approach would be if the warlord led government in Mogadishu can engage with the principle of broad- based civic inclusion where they invite all relevant political and social actors, even the leadership of ICU to construct and find a comprehensive lasting solution to the Somali people and to the region as well. If this reconciliation approach is chosen internally, and if there is also a shared approach by all those who have one interest or another to support reconciliation rather than partisanship and belligerence, then a window of opportunity may be open… The problem is that the warlord government does not have the vision and means to host and undertake such process. In addition, large constituents of the Somali people do not have any respect for warlord members that dominate the government. This option will be very good, but its chance is not yet that realistic.
The role of mediators and honest peace brokers is very critical. But such honest mediators that can enjoy the respect from the various groups are not easy to deploy. The AU can emerge as one of such mediators. The EU can also if it plays that role. Even the USA and other states can. Norway has been quietly taking such roles and doing reasonably well in many difficult conflicts such as Sri Lanka, Sudan and others. Even those in the region can play a constructive role instead of being party to the wrong politics imported from outside and acting as warriors and compounding the difficulties a very difficult region.
If the AU takes its mediating role seriously, it needs to be prepared not to fail but succeed. The AU can unhinge the deadlock if it is backed by the resources and power of the major and pivotal African countries such as South Africa and Nigeria and others who are in the conflict already. Also Older and wiser statesmen like President Nelson Mandela and others who most Somalis even ICU members, have respect should be used by the AU to support its efforts.
The US and EU should support the AU. The current US posture does not seem able to bring peace to Somalia. Nonetheless, some surprising contacts between the US and IUC have taken place. The US embassy in Nairobi and its ambassador met the leader of ICU, whom the media claims to have sought refuge in Kenya. Surprisingly, the US diplomats are insisting that some in the ICU leadership should be included in the Transitional arrangement. It may after all appear that America may have learnt a lesson or two from the numerous mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq that it will not pay to isolate certain legitimate political groups in these countries. If the US Government begins to treat the Somali issue differently, this will hugely help to change the conflict environment into a security environment.
Another important aspect is that the EU, the UN and the US do not share a shared approach on how in the long term to solve the Somali conflict. As experiences in Puntland and Somaliland show Somalis will only enjoy viable peace when they are left alone, in combining traditional authorities with certain form of modern state governance. Any mediation intervention should be mindful of traditional sensibilities whilst addressing universal values of human rights, rule of law and democratic governance.
The Diaspora communities in the world from the region must play a constructive role to contribute for peace and stability in the Somalia and the wider Horn. There is a need to use modern technology to communicate and create shared values in order to address the specific problems of the region. The Diaspora can be a creative and regenerative force or can enter into the conflicts of the region. There must be an intelligent way to intervene to promote regional security, creativity by providing resources and knowledge.
It is increasingly becoming evident that through the internet and the extended mobility and communication opportunities, the Horn of African migrants scattered all over the world retains daily communication with those they have left behind. This communication can be constructive or destructive in a region with many intersecting and cross-cutting conflicts. The opportunity for transforming the destructive communication into constructive communication requires learning, knowledge, capacity and research. How to mediate the communication from the scattered migrants to those in the region by strengthening research, knowledge, training, learning, capacity building will constitute an important part of the strategy of intervention.
Concluding Remarks
We propose to bring together the region’s Diaspora communities to support a:
1. Horn of Africa Research Network on Regional Integration and Development (HANRID). This network will Undertake and build research and knowledge through analytical scrutiny on the dynamics of conflict and migration, underdevelopment, breakdown in governance, state collapse in creating new translational modes of production and relations calling for newer and sharper tools of social and economic analytical approaches and strategies to input knowledge and information into policy making and improving the quality of debate and engagement by fostering civically engaged citizens.
2. Tap into the global pool of Horn of Africa’s Diaspora as knowledge and resource bearers to connect their own activities and resources to the region’s conflict resolution efforts and shaping the productive power and development futures of the region and wider Africa. The objective is to found, design, and settle how a Horn of Africa Research Network that will create policy forums, knowledge production and outreach community activities.
3. We have published a book on Diaspora and State Reconstitution in Somalia that will provide information and help in communicating with the wider Diaspora and home communities. We provide the link for the book:
The book addresses empirical research on how the Diaspora lives, works and communicates with their own communities at home.
4. We have planned a workshop that will create a forum for the region’s researchers to present their research and network and develop a shared understanding and trust to support the region: see link at
www.ihis.aau.dk
www.ihis.aau.dk/development
www.ihis.aau.dk/ccis
There is more we can all do. Unless self- initiated, constructive and productive approaches are taken to bring the region to share a common approach to problems and conflict resolution, we will continue to experience problems. There is a need to build resources for the capacity to make it possible to negotiate out of any difficulty and conflict however difficult. This capacity building must be built on a sustainable basis not only in the Horn of Africa but all over Africa.
Mogadishu 15, April.07 (Sh.M.Network) Speaking with journalists, an 18 year old Somali girl said she was raped by Ethiopian [Woyanne] soldiers in Mogadishu’s Hamar Bille neighborhood.
Fardowsa Abdi Hashi told local stringers that she was tortured and raped by more than 10 Ethiopian soldiers.
Fardowsa Abdi Hashi
“To my knowledge 12 Ethiopians raped me. I went unconscious,” she said.
She is the second woman raped by Ethiopian soldiers based in Mogadishu so far. Suban Moalim Ali was raped by Ethiopian soldiers based around El-Arfid on the suburb of Mogadishu on early March.
Spokesman for Mogadishu powerful Hawiye clan, Derie Ali, condemned the incident calling it a violation against humanity.
He called on the international community to do something about Ethiopian human rights violations against the Somali people.
In a remarkable precedent in Ethiopian legal history, the court in charge of the treason trial of CUD leaders, independent journalists and civil society members ruled today that Andargachew Tsgie, Mesfin Aman and Elias Kifle are guilty of outrage against the constitutional order even before they are given a chance to defend their case. Although both of them are tried in absentia, they still have a constitutional right to defend their case.
The court either dropped or dismissed the case against other defendants who are tried in diaspora including Tamagne Beyene, Negede Gobeze, Abreha Belai and Brehane Mewa.
Civil society leaders Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie were also ordered to defend their case. Kassahun Kebede, however, was set free.
Ethiopia’s greatest civil rights advocate Professor Mesfin Woldemariam was also ordered to defend the charge of outrage against the constitutional order. The court reasoned that eventhough as a non-member of the CUD council he didn’t have collective responsiblity, professor Mesfin had made speeches advocating the dismantling of the constitutional order and institutions.
“Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.” Francis Bacon
The successful rally led by Oromo youth on Saturday March 31, 2007 in Washington DC marked the Oromo youth fulfillment of Sir Francis Bacon’s depiction of the youth. The rally was organized by the International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA), an umbrella organization of all Oromo Youth Associations and Student Unions which was founded in 2006 with the vision of engaging in a multifaceted struggle to bring freedom and justice to the Oromo people. In addition, IOYA is committed to working to alleviate the economic, social, and human rights deprivations of the Oromo nation at no cost to any other nation or country. We, the IOYA, are committed to achieving these goals by investing our time, energy, wealth, and lives. The Oromo youth, want to reaffirm that we are highly committed to the well-being of the Oromo people and will not stop until our people’s destiny rests in their own hands.
The Oromo people are at a critical juncture in our history in which the century-old repression and persecution of our people has surpassed the boundaries of the Ethiopian Empire, and is now rampant in neighboring countries, particularly Somalia. Since the U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia by the so-called Ethiopian Defense Force, the repressive Tigrean minority regime has become emboldened due to the United State’s unconditional support. Lack of media coverage of the atrocities committed by TPLF-regime in Oromia as well as in Somalia has only allowed this situation to worsen.
Alarmed by the irresponsible support by the United States, and by the consequent flagrant acts of ethnic-cleansing operations being carried out by the ethnocentric Ethiopia’s Tigrean minority regime, IOYA organized the rally in the Nation’s capital to bring the issue to the attention of the international community. Young and old, women, men, and friends of the Oromo people from all parts of the country flocked to Washington DC to participate in this historic rally. Hundreds of people drove for days from as far away as Minnesota, California, and Seattle to show their solidarity for the just cause of our people, and echoed our calls for an end to the persecution of the Oromo people in Oromia and Somalia. The crowd also demanded the United States to be more accountable for their support to the repressive regime in Ethiopia.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all who participated in the rally. We want to affirm our commitment to organizing similar marches for peace and justice for Oromo people. We call on all Oromos, friends of Oromo, and all peace-loving people to join our second rally on Thursday, July 26, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We thank all organizations and individuals who supported the efforts in making this rally a success.
MOGADISHU, March 29 (Reuters) – Fighting erupted across the Somali capital on Thursday when allied Ethiopian [Woyanne] and Somali government troops poured onto the streets with tanks in what appeared to be a major push against insurgents, witnesses said.
Breaking a shaky ceasefire in place since the weekend, the Ethiopian and Somali soldiers launched a two-pronged attack from early morning on insurgents’ strongholds in the Ramadan area of north Mogadishu and around the main soccer stadium.
Explosions and gunfire rattled around the streets, sending residents running for cover in their homes, witnesses said.
“Early in the morning, the government troops and Ethiopians attacked us at the Ramadan Hotel,” one Islamist source involved in the fighting told Reuters by telephone.
Casualty figures were not immediately clear, but there were reports of mass injuries.
“Patients are coming to us by the minute, it is too much,” one harried doctor at Madina hospital told Reuters by telephone. “I cannot given you numbers now, we are too busy.”
“We are seeing smoke from explosions,” said Reuters cameraman Farah Roble, who could not leave his Mogadishu office due to gunfire. “There are helicopters flying around. We haven’t seen that before.”
The Ethiopians [Woyannes] had brokered a truce at the weekend with the city’s dominant Hawiye clan after a week that saw at least 20 people killed, soldiers’ bodies dragged in streets, and a plane crash probably due to a missile.
That fighting was the worst since the war over the New Year to kick out the Islamists and put President Abdullahi Yusuf’s interim government in the capital. The government represents the 14th attempt at restoring
