EDITOR’S NOTE: This is what the U.S. ambassador in Ethiopia calls “stability” in Somalia.
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By Abdi Sheikh
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – At least 53 people were killed in Somalia when insurgents clashed with Ethiopian Woyanne troops and Ugandan peacekeepers in separate battles, a human rights group said on Wednesday.
The latest flare-up in the 18-month-old insurgency came a week before a U.N.-mediated ceasefire between an Islamist faction and the interim Somali government is to take effect.
The interim government and Ethiopia Woyanne both declined comment on the clashes or any casualties.
Hardline Islamists have been waging an almost daily insurgency against the interim government and its Ethiopia Woyanne backers since they were ousted from Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in 2007.
“A total of 47 people died yesterday in central Somalia and in the capital Mogadishu last night,”
Ahmed Sudan, chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights organisation, told Reuters 47 people were killed on Tuesday and overnight in central Somalia and Mogadishu. He said six more had since died of their wounds.
Sudan said 11 civilians were killed when insurgents ambushed Ethiopia Woyanne troops and Ugandan peacekeepers in the capital Mogadishu overnight, while dozens of others were wounded.
Another 36 people, including civilians and insurgents, were killed when rebels struck an Ethiopia Woyanne troop convoy in Mataban, 410 km (255 miles) north of the Somali capital Mogadishu.
Among the dead on Tuesday were Moalim Farhan, commander of the militant group that attacked the convoy, and Abdullahi Ali Farah, also known as Sheikh Aspro, a spokesman for the insurgents told Reuters.
Aspro is deputy to hardline Islamist Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda associates.
“We buried 27 Somalis,” shopkeeper Ismail Olad told Reuters from Mataban. “We do not know the number of Ethiopians Woyannes killed.”
Somalia has been mired in anarchy, functioning without a central government since the fall of a dictator in 1991. Piracy has become an increasing problem in its waters.
A Somali ship was hijacked on Sunday near El-Ma’an sea port, close to Mogadishu.
“The ship, MV Solsea, was on its way to tow another Somali fishing vessel which developed mechanical problems near El-Ma’an when pirates seized it,” Andrew Mwangura, director of the Kenyan Seafarers Assistance Programme, told Reuters.
Three Germans are still held captive by Somali pirates in a forest near the Gulf of Aden in the northern Puntland region, while five Somalis working for an Italian aid agency, who were seized on Monday, are still in captivity.
The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF called on the world to act to avert famine in Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa. It said acute malnutrition rates in Somalia were now above 20 percent.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The U.S. ambassador tries to portray the Meles brutal dictatorship in Ethiopia as a role model even as the rubber-stamp parliament today passed a highly restrictive press law and just two weeks ago, human rights organizations provided evidences supported by satellite photos of incredible atrocities in the country. That’s why the U.S. State Department has no moral authority to talk about Zimbabwe and any other country. By continuing to defend the Meles dictatorship, the U.S. ambassador has turned himself into a collaborator in the crimes against humanity that are being committed by the regime against Ethiopians and people of the Horn of Africa. Hopefully, the new U.S. administration that is coming next year will clean up the mess in the State Department and dismiss its corrupt diplomats.
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US Envoy Describes Ethiopia’s Role as ‘Very Positive’
By Abdinasir Mohamed Guled
(Shabelle Media Network) — US ambassador to Ethiopia, Donald Yamamoto, says the United States recognizes Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s contribution in various peacekeeping operations in the region and other areas of conflict in Africa.
“Ethiopia Woyanne is right now, I think, the second largest troops contributing country in peacekeeping operations in Sub-Saharan Africa and probably has the most disciplined and qualified troops,” Yamamoto said.
[Yamamoto is a disgusting human being. He calls these murderers and rapists “disciplined and qualified troops.”]
Ethiopia Woyanne has been playing a very positive role in regional peace and security, Yamamoto said at a press briefing he gave on Tuesday [1 July] at the US embassy.
The US government is working closely with Ethiopia Woyanne and other countries with a view to helping enhance peace and security in the Horn of Africa, he said.
According to the ambassador, the US government looks at the peace and security situation in the region with due concern.
Yamamoto said the mandate of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia will expire and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Sudan will have to be fully implemented in 2009 and elections are to be held.
“The year 2009 is going to be a watershed, because we are going to have stability or instability or we are going to have directions towards regional security or not,” he said.
With regard to Somalia, the United States appreciates Ethiopia’s concerns. For Ethiopia, the issue in Somalia is particularly the security issue just as was the stability issue.
“If you don’t have stability in Somalia you never have stability in your borders.” He added.
[The stupid ambassador calls the destroying of a country and displacing most of its population “stability.”]
“On the other hand, it is also a regional issue, because we can see the influx of foreign fighters and other extremists coming to Somalia,” he said.
[There is no evidence of foreign fighters in Somalia, other than Woyannes.]
“And these are all concerns that affect not only Ethiopia but also Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti and all the people who live in the region, he said.”So we need to work together with Ethiopia Woyanne and the neighbouring countries to carry out objectives on how to enhance security,” he said.
The shaky transitional government invited Ethiopian Woyanne forces into the country to help it battle Islamic insurgents. Somalia has been torn apart by years of violence between the militias of rival clan warlords.
The rights group said it had scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops. In one case, “a young child’s throat was slit by Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers in front of the child’s mother,” the report says.
Amnesty said about 6,000 civilians had been reported killed and more than 600,000 had been forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year.
“The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, and tortured. Looting is widespread and entire neighborhoods are being destroyed,” Michelle Kagari, the Amnesty deputy director for Africa, said in a statement from Nairobi that accompanied the report.
The report quotes testimony from 75 witnesses as well as scores of workers from nongovernmental organizations. People are identified only by first name to protect them from retaliation.
In one testimony, Haboon, 56, said her neighbor’s 17-year-old daughter had been raped by Ethiopian Woyanne troops. The girl’s brothers tried to defend their sister, but the soldiers beat them and gouged their eyes out with a bayonet, Haboon was quoted as telling Amnesty.
“The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable,” Kagari said.
Amnesty urged the United Nations, the African Union and other groups to halt the violence.
I understand some of you might get confused with my name; I am an Ethiopian from Italian father and an Ethiopian mother.
I grew up and completed my high school education in Dessie and later at Menilik II comprehensive high school in Addis Ababa, before I left for Italy to complete my higher education. I speak a somewhat good Amharic and these few years I went to Ethiopia twice in the hope of returning something back to the country which gave me a lot. I traveled for the millennium celebration and again this year before the drought become headline news in Italy.
I am writing my eye witness account and relate it to the recent categorization of Ethiopia as a failed state, under ‘Failed States Index Scores 2008’ by The Mission of The Fund for Peace group.
I have interviewed many people and seen multiple places and based on my personal assessment, Ethiopia is a failed state only a single disaster away.
It is futile to compare Ethiopia with Zimbabwe or Eretria and try to present it in a fair light, but the fact of the matter is we Ethiopians do not enjoy the homogeneity that is prevalent in those countries. President Mugabe’s party may collapse next month but Zimbabwe will be available for its citizens after the dust settles.
Ethiopia is a unique country and if and when TPLF decides to call it a day and becomes an independent African state, Ethiopia, as we know it today, would struggle to exist. I do apologize for my conspiratorial claims but here are a few facts I have gathered in those two visits to the country.
EPRDF or TPLF is a party which has been working to weaken the rest of the country through various policies. If you pick the education policy alone, one cannot fail to notice the rest of the country has never produced a viable Economic force for the last two decades due to their insistence of higher emphasis to local languages, as a result of which, only students from Tigray region can speak English to qualify for any type of scholarship or have an opportunity to work in foreign legions and they are the ones welding power in every region in the name of ‘federal officers assisting the regional government’.
The local Universities are also designed to cripple the new generation by producing “PhDs and Masters” by quota system out of the thin air, in great disregard to the quality of a human work force, and it is a sad reality to see policy makers talking about meaningless statistics by comparing the number of PhDs before and after EPRDF. This coupled with contestant harassment of intellectuals, who are challenging these failed policies, into leaving the country is another way to the realization of a government force full of mediocre talents only guided by hate and greed.
I met a number of people with Ph.D. working for the government offices which has nothing to do with their field of studies. This failure is not by lack of manpower or understanding. It looks like it is by a careful design to weaken the next generation.
Before visiting Ethiopia, I always thought that, there got to be a misunderstanding somewhere and the government needed some logistical support to make things better. I myself with a company in Barri- Italy, volunteered for a water resource developing project in the central Amhara region. The drinking water, fetched from a mile away transported by the backs of women and small children, was a source of many bacterial contaminations, but it did not take us to know that no such efforts are needed anywhere unless we pass a rigorous test of bribes equal to Mafioso extortions. We left the country after being ransacked through endless bribery.
The other main issue is the TPLF total disregard to the rule of law and contempt to the Parliament members and the people in general. A case in point is the recent border treaty with Sudan. If there was an independent jury in that country, the Premier would have been impeached for such conduct and the whole cabinet would have been dissolved. But unfortunately the same people are prosecutors, jury and executioners in that country with no check and balance whatsoever. Besides, there has been too much admiration to some of these politicians who have shown particular skill in lying, so much so that, they have now institutionalized the destruction of public ethics, elevating deceit to a statecraft or a talent required to lead that country.
Tigray, which was once a land-locked state, now has extended its border to Sudan by taking some fertile land from Gondar, and according to some information, that is the contingency plan or the end goal if their days of glory comes to an end. It is believed to be a carefully crafted path to their next move after throwing flames to the rest of the country.
In this whole mischievous game, the innocent Tigray people are victims of few high-powered TPLF cadres. The case in point is Seye Abraha, who has never failed in pointing out the problem with the TPLF. He recently spoke heroically on the unilateral border deal with the government of Sudan sighting shortsightedness on the part of the prime minister. Again, he was talking to group of journalists a few days ago, on the importance of working with the coalition of opposition parties to council and save the country from a planned destruction by TPLF. If he survives the next two years, Seye Abraha would be the only chance for the Tigray population to live with the rest of Ethiopians in dignity.
I have followed very interesting interviews on VOA regarding the border deal with Sudan, but there was no reaction from the Diaspora Ethiopians.
If it continues this on this path, the country would become another Yugoslavia. Currently the government of Ethiopia is in big trouble. Their dollar reserve is low, mainly because of unabated corruption and illegal export of wealth. The country is going down the path of abject poverty and the only people whom you see eating 3 times a day are those who have relatives in the west or those who are entitled to stealing from the public fund. They are currently trying to convert the draught into gaining some form of sympathy for themselves, but it did not work so far. There is no one in the world who has not been fooled by TPLF, at least twice. They have over used every card known in politics and now they have to hire a lobbyists abroad to defend themselves; which is a sign of desperation and inability to stand on their own.
I am also aware of a group in Italy who are currently tracking the country’s wealth in foreign banks under the assumed names/numbers of these corrupt individuals and it won’t be long before we hear a full disclosure on this matter.
It is only in Ethiopia you hear a theft of national gold reserve from a bank vault and it is treated as a normal ‘burglary’. If it was anywhere else in the world, you would have seen the whole cabinet dissolving through a vote of no-confidence. Not in Ethiopia.
It is only the government in the world, whose official delegations are still defecting. After being in power for two decades, it cannot convince anyone to stay aboard and work toward a common ideal. Because, there is no common ideal. Only the TPLF agenda served at all the embassies and foreign legions are filled with ailing and mentally decapitated ambassadors who cannot engage the Ethiopians in Diaspora, or bring a change on foreign relations other than serving the TPLF dignitaries and their royal followers to enrich themselves.
The regional elected officials, which are effectively hostages of TPLF cadres in those areas, have been crippled through blackmail and intimidation and do not have any choice but to turn a blind eye for organized robbery by TPLF cadres sitting in those regions as ‘federal officers’. This is what would be fueling the secession movements in every part of the country, in the coming years, which is, of course, seems a part of the end game for the EPRDF/TPLF.
During my last visit I met this loan officer from Ethiopian National Bank and he told me his frustration with the whole system. According to this Ethiopian, the TPLF cadres and their subordinates owe millions of dollars in debt and there is no end to their demand for additional loans and his strict obligation to approve which comes to his desk through certain channels, regardless of their defaults. There is no concern of inflation/deflation and above all there is no public accounting office to explain which wealth belongs to the country and which belongs to the party. TPLF, I learned, ordered confiscations of all vehicles, including type writers from the offices of the City Hall in Addis Ababa, when they lost the election in 2005.
This time, with the heroic engagement from such people like Seye, Berhanu, Negasso, Bertukan and the likes we have that rare chance in history to save that country from becoming a history. We should not fail these individuals or the people just by becoming spectators. There is too much at stake. It is not which party is ruling when, it is a matter of having a country for your children or not.
I want to tell those of you who advocate peaceful negations with the current TPLF rulers: They lived by the sword and they would rather die by the sword than working for a peaceful means. Unless you force them through various ways, including intensive campaigns in the Senates and Congress of these donor nations and keep on exposing their sham rules, it is futile to expect anything Ethiopians from them.
If you love your country like I do, let us march and support all campaigns and initiatives to remove these hateful and deceitful people from power. My father fought Mussolini and lived in Ethiopia until his death and there was nothing gratifying for him to have seen the defeat of Mussolini and fascism in his lifetime; and to me EPRDF/TPLF is no better than Mussolini and they deserve our unified efforts in exposing and removing their grip on Tigray and their planned destruction of Ethiopia as we know it today.
Ethiopia is a failed state and accepting its failed status is the first thing on our part, which would give us a clear vision to engage the real enemy. It also help us to understand the capacity and goal of these mediocre over-appraised tyrants who have been in power for two decades through deception and sheer luck of having a very fragmented opposition. From now on, it should not matter who rules Ethiopia next, as long as there is an Ethiopia!
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I have plans to visit some Italian-American congress members in New York area for this July 4th celebration and in the coming weeks and I will be passing my messages to all that I come in contact with. I want to show some of my materials to the U.S. Senators who are in the way of HR 2003 to bring them aboard. You can reach me at [email protected].
Sanitation in Ethiopia’s capital city leaves a lot to be desired – and it is the poor who are most vulnerable as a result.
In a small shack made of iron sheets and pieces of clothing in the slums of Addis Ababa live the Alemu family – Abiy, Marasit Bishaw, and the couple’s three-year-old son and 25-day-old baby daughter Yanit.
And just a few metres from their one-room home is a mass of sewage and garbage, mixed with the carcasses of dead chickens and cow and goat skulls.
The Alemus live near the gully where the Kabena river used to meander gracefully through the Ethiopian capital.
But the river is now full of the city’s waste, and a stench of sewage is the first thing that hits.
During the rainy season, the filth and sewage from the skyscrapers up the hill flows freely onto the floor of the house.
A sewer by the entrance jets waste water incessantly, sending a gush of greying liquid down into the river.
The situation is typical of many in the slums of Ethiopia’s capital, and highlights a desperate need for clean water.
Defecating outside
The government is aware of the problem, admitting that dilapidated sewers, a lack of toilet facilities and general poor sanitation in the city are some of the leading causes of disease and death in the country.
The World Health Organization estimates that 64% of people in Ethiopia defecate in the open – although this is down from 91% in 1990.
Water is critical. With a new baby, the Alumus’ household water needs have increased – they spend the equivalent of 10 US cents a day to buy 50 litres of water which has to be fetched from a kilometre across the river.
But even the water they buy may not be clean enough to keep the family healthy. Burst pipes or a lack of constant pressure in the pipes can contaminate the water.
And the jerry cans used to fetch the water are often unclean, says Gadissa Hailu, a project officer for Water and Sanitation for Africa Medical and Research Foundation (Amref).
“People need to be educated on how to take good care of the water they fetch to avoid contamination,” he says.
Worryingly, though, the Alemus do not boil the water since they believe that it is clean simply because it is piped.
But they fear for the health of their children, especially the infant.
Yosef Asfau, a general practitioner working at a hospital in the city, says that the constant stench hanging over the house is likely to cause rhinitis (allergy of the nose), sinusitis (allergy of the sinus) and an even more serious condition called bronchial asthma.
Just next to the Alemu household, young men openly bathe in the filthy water, scooping it with their hands. For those even worse off, there is no way of accessing piped water – the river is their only option to attempt to keep clean.
No man’s land
Further downstream lies a settlement called Gorgorios. At the bottom of a quick-sloping hill, numerous tributaries of sewage have joined the river and turned it into a raging and black mass of water.
Here no-one has a toilet.
Children and adults relieve themselves in the open by the river, adding to the furious flow of filth that is carried to other communities downstream.
Endale Asmare, a lab technician with Amref in the slum, says that waterborne diseases such as typhoid and parasites that cause dysentery consistently show up in his laboratory tests – a clear manifestation of poor sanitation in the area.
In the town of Kechene, a little further downstream, is Amleworke Wordfa – an 80-year-old woman who shoulders the difficult task of raising her four grandchildren alone.
A year ago she lost one of her granddaughters to illness resulting from contaminated water.
“It was so hard for me to see her die,” she says.
“She was so beautiful.”
Now Wordfa attempts to boil all the water she gives to the younger two of her four surviving grandchildren, who are under five years of age.
Nonetheless, fuel to do so is scarce. At times she just trusts their immunity, acquired through time, to keep them from getting sick.
The government says the situation is steadily improving: regional heath authorities are reporting better access to sanitation, while 30,000 key health workers are expected to be deployed in 2009 to promote personal hygiene as part of a campaign by the health department.
The UN has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, and Amref is working on a plan to provide water and sanitation facilities to the people of Kechene.
But as long as extreme poverty in this country persists, families like the Alemus and the Wordfas will continue to live in a filthy no man’s land on the banks of Addis Ababa’s rivers.
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Ernest Waititu is the editor-in-chief of the Afrikanews group based in Nairobi.
