ABC News Talks With Aidan Hartley, the Man Behind ‘Warlords Next Door?’
By DANA HUGHES, ABC News
British author and journalist Aidan Hartley has been covering Somalia for nearly 20 years. He recently released a TV documentary called “Warlords Next Door?” which spawned controversy when it aired last month on the Britain’s Channel 4.
“Warlords” focuses on the relationship between the British government and four prominent politicians in the current Somali government, including the provisional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
Among other things, Hartley reports that these leaders have been granted British or EU passports that allow their families to live comfortable lives in the U.K., while the horrors faced by Somali civilians continue, under their watch.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991.
The country’s transitional government, along with troops from Ethiopia and backing from Western governments like the United States and Britain, is mired in a guerilla war with Islamic insurgents who supported the previous Islamic leadership.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, and the security situation is so bad that the United Nations calls the country “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.”
Few Western journalists even venture to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.
Hartley went to the city to interview Somalis who have been victims of the war, and to question Somali politicians about their alleged ties with Britain. He talked to ABC News about his experience.
What drew you to make “Warlords Next Door?”
HARTLEY: I’ve been reporting on Somalia since the beginning of the civil war in 1991. I always felt it wasn’t receiving enough international coverage. I’ve been pushing to get this film made more than a year ago, after the Ethiopian invasion that seized the city and installed the new government. It is very difficult to get Somalia on the international news agenda.
Why do you think Somalia is not covered as much as other conflicts?
HARTLEY: One is a logistical and security reason. It’s incredibly dangerous for journalists to be in Mogadishu — several have been killed in recent years. There’s no international presence or diplomats or aid workers to speak of in the city, so there’s no green zone, there’s no refuge to go to for journalists when they are in the city.
Another reason is that it’s like other African countries. Somehow far away and forgotten, and so it’s difficult to get the international focus it deserves.
How much time did you spend inside Mogadishu?
HARTLEY: Well a relatively short time, only two weeks. But in Mogadishu you count your time very, very carefully.”
“I’d say the average period for a Western correspondent in the city would be one, two, three days at the most, to be safe.”
The problem is when you’re making a TV program, obviously you have to get the pictures … I was a little worried that we weren’t going to be able to get all the material that we needed …
But the fact is some terrible and dramatic things happened while we were there so we were able to get the material.
One of your guards was killed while you were there?
HARTLEY: Yes. Towards the end of January we were exiting villa Somalia, which is the presidential palace complex where we had been interviewing members of the government and we were passing down a road into the old city towards the port.
We were traveling in the lead car and our security escorts were about 100 feet behind us. We passed through an area where there was a lot of build up of rubbish in the street and I heard the loudest bang that I ever in my life…”
“We turned around and although we hadn’t taken any shrapnel, the escort car behind us had taken the full force of the blast, which killed one of our guards, a 21-year-old man named Abdi who’d recently become a father.”
“It also killed two civilian bystanders in the street and wounded three of them horribly.”
“And this is a very common occurrence in Mogadishu. On the same day, there were two other bombs that went off in nearby streets. It is a terrifying aspect of the city at the moment.”
Why would you risk your life to go to Somalia to tell this story?
HARTLEY: “It’s because it’s what I do. I’ve covered the conflict in Somalia since its beginnings.”
“I love Somalia, I love Mogadishu, I greatly admire Somali people and I hope that their nightmare ends at some point.”
And I think that the conflict is based on so many misconceptions that I think it’s the obligation of correspondents, aid workers, diplomats who have had contact with Somalia over the years to try and do everything they can to enlighten the outside world.
It would be very, very dangerous to ignore it because I don’t think Somali people will tolerate for long the behavior that some neighboring countries and perhaps Western countries have inflicted on the country. And I think Somalia is a problem that could bite back.
In what way?
HARTLEY: Well look at Afghanistan, which for many years was like Somalia: a forgotten conflict, people just didn’t care … there didn’t seem to be anything the West could do to help. They provided humanitarian relief, as they are doing in Somalia today, but they didn’t come up with solutions or anything with the urgency that was required.
Look what happened to Afghanistan … Al Qaeda took hold, the country had to be invaded by Western troops. Now you have a protracted and very difficult conflict to resolve.
The West and the international community would be well warned to look at the Somali situation and try to urgently come up with solutions, which many believe should be Somali, but with international neutral support for diplomacy and humanitarian relief rather than military intervention.
Somalia’s been considered a failed state for years with no end in sight. Why should the world care what’s happening?
HARTLEY: It is very true to say in a globalized world that there are no far-away local stories that can be ignored.
First of all you have hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees who’ve had to flee for their lives, many of them live in the United States and other Western countries, many of them have become citizens. And for them it is an important reason why they vote for the government that they do. They are demanding international action to assist with the situation there.
Another reason is because of the terrible events that have happened in the world since 9/11 and the fact that the West has concerns about the growth of militant Islamist forces in Somalia. The United States is deeply involved in this conflict; it’s backing the government there.
We were very aware of the U.S. presence while we were there because at all times of day and night you look up and you can see a spy plane circling in the sky. And there’s been … U.S. air-strike … so it is one of the theaters in the so-called “War on Terror.”
And third it is unacceptable in 2008 to see the kinds of humanitarian disasters that you see in places like Darfur, and now Somalia. And Somalia is a worse situation than Darfur.
You’ve got several hundred thousand people who are in a desperate condition. They’re civilians, they’re victims of war, they’re beyond medical care, and now they’re going hungry, and the world has an obligation to stop it.
NAIROBI, June 17 (Reuters) – The armies of feuding Horn of Africa neighbours Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea are “less than a football pitch” apart, risking a catastrophic new war on their border, a think-tank warned on Tuesday. The latest in a string of recent international warnings over tensions between Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea — who fought a 1998-2000 war that killed at least 70,000 people — came from the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG).
“Neither regime wants war at present. Both prefer to keep tensions simmering, giving them an excuse to maintain authoritarian rule,” ICG senior Africa adviser Andebrhan Giorgis said in a report titled “Averting New War.”
“But a minor border incident or miscalculation could produce a disastrous return to conflict,” the report added. “The troops face each other often at less than a football pitch’s distance.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also warned in April that the withdrawal of most of the world body’s 1,700 peacekeepers on the border, following a fuel cutoff by Asmara, risked new hostilities on the 1,000-km (620 mile) frontier.
Asmara says a November 2007 “virtual demarcation” of the border by a now-defunct independent boundary commission has ended the issue, and Ethiopia Woyanne must pull its troops back from areas designated to Eritrea.
Ethiopia Woyanne says Eritrea is illegally massing troops on the border in a supposedly demilitarised zone, and it wants to discuss the border demarcation further.
“The departure of the Boundary Commission and the U.N. peacekeepers has made this conflict much more dangerous, removing the means both for dialogue between the parties and for stopping small problems from escalating,” ICG’s Giorgis said.
Some regional diplomats, however, believe that both sides may be restrained by the prospect of world condemnation, their already stretched economies, and the past cost to both nations in terms of human lives and finances.
ICG called on Ethiopia Woyanne to withdraw soldiers from territory awarded to Eritrea by the boundary commission, on Eritrea to leave the Temporary Security Zone, and on the international community to provide “carrots and sticks” for that.
Both Ethiopian Prime Minister Woyanne dictator Meles Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki use the border as an excuse to enhance their power and stifle democracy, the report said.
“The stalemate on the border feeds and, in turn, is fed by growing authoritarianism in both states. The ruling regimes rely on military power and restrictions on civil liberties to retain their dominant positions.”
ICG said border tensions were “as high as they have ever been” since the war, with “constant shooting incidents and other tense episodes.”
Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Matthew Tostevin
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The few newspapers that are struggling to survive in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa under constant harassement from security forces of the Meles dictatorship have found a way to thrive in the past few weeks: Put Berhanu Nega’s photo on their front page.
Last week’s editions of Fitih, Awramba and Enbilta newspapers were sold out the same day they were printed. Each of them had published photos of Dr Berhanu and reports about the newly launched organization, Ginbot 7 for Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy.
According to ER sources, the newspapers will double their printed copies this week and all of them will have extensive coverage of Dr Berhanu’s ongoing European tour.
The newspapers’ circulation is limited to Addis Ababa. They are not allowed to distribute any copy outside of the Addis Ababa area. On top of that, every week, the reporters and editors of these few newspapers, who are carefull not to criticize the Meles dictatorship, are harassed, detained, and verbally abused by Woyanne security forces. Through all this they have found a way to survive, even thrive — that is until Woyanne decides to shut them all down again.
By Hanna Tamrat
We all talk about owning a piece of Obama’s campaign. But that kind of talk didn’t hit home with me until my sister a few days after Obama’s historic nomination speech called me and left a voicemail message saying: “Congratulations!”
For a split of a second while listening to the message, I thought I won some kind of award of which I wasn’t aware of. Then, the message continued: “…Obama Selashenefe!” (…because Obama won!)
Frankly, I haven’t spent more than a couple of hours per week (except for those days I just get carried away…) volunteering for the campaign. But, that was all it took for my family to know I was invested in it.
So, whatever amount of time and energy we have put into it, we each own a piece of this campaign. Why is that important? It means we had a say in the direction of this country–a country we call home. As immigrants with a second generation of American-born Ethiopians coming of age, not only is it a privilege but it is a huge responsibility.
With Obama running for President, we have a prime opportunity to have our voice heard in unison and as one of the constituencies politicians would look to for generations to come for policy directions, be it domestic or foreign.
Ethiopians for Obama seized this opportunity like no other that I have known, at least not at a multi-state level. It is the first movement in my opinion that strives on ensuring that we count, primarily through our votes. And the best part about it is that we don’t even have to be “politicians” or political-savvy people or even that much interested in politics, really. We are just exercising our rights and our duties as citizens by voting and ensuring our families, community members and more also vote.
Every time I hear pundits talk about “record number of new voters,” I smile to myself thinking “…and we represent a chunk of that!” Not only do we represent a good number of first-time voters, but we had something to do with it as volunteers, whether it is reaching out to Ethiopian-Americans or other Americans.
To some, the idea of a nation-wide unified Ethiopian political force may seem too ambitious and remote, but great things start with great vision! I am sure I heard or read this great wisdom somewhere, but I certainly also saw it happen in the past few months culminating towards the nomination a couple of weeks ago.
A man, who against, absolutely, all odds, became the first black Democratic nominee for President in the history of this country. Now, that’s a big deal!
But his vision didn’t end there and neither has ours! Our success, as Ethiopians, who seek visibility, and as Americans, who are not immune to the day-to-day struggles we experience in this country, is closely related to Obama’s success. And, even though at this point even a failure would be translated into success for both him and the entire country, we still owe it to Obama and, frankly, to ourselves to see this through!
We owe to him because he led us on an inclusive, irreplaceable and irreversible journey which we took and will continue to take along side all our fellow Americans. We owe it to him for allowing us to forge within our Ethiopian community a movement which will highlight our unified potential in this great nation. We owe it to him for validating our own hopes and dreams for our future and the future of our children and their children, simply by living his hope and achieving his dream.
All this should be reason enough to support him. If not, keep tuning in! Better yet, I challenge all the 80+ members in this group to give me the reasons we should continue or start to support Obama. Let us inspire one another with our stories, our visions and our wisdom! As I always tell even my Ethiopian brothers and sisters who are not U.S. citizens, don’t undermine what you have to offer.
Yes, we can! Yes, we did!
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Hanna Tamrat is a dedicated Ethiopians for Obama member and a brillian author.
Join Ethiopians for Obama at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group /ethiopiansforobama/
