(Reuters) – U.N. undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes was on Tuesday in Ethiopia’s troubled southeastern Ogaden region where government forces are fighting separatist rebels.
The one-day visit is the most high profile since the ethnically Somali region made international headlines in April when Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels attacked a Chinese-owned oil exploration field and killed 74 people.
Holmes is due to meet the region’s president before inspecting U.N. relief operations that began a couple of weeks ago, after the international body said 953,000 people there needed food aid.
Holmes will also meet representatives of local herding communities but there has been no mention of him meeting rebels, who have welcomed the U.N. presence in the region.
The rebels accuse the government of human rights abuses in a crackdown that followed the April attack and both sides routinely claim to have inflicted huge casualties on the other.
Holmes will be accompanied by the head of Ethiopia’s Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Agency and by the heads of U.N. humanitarian operations in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian government Woyanne and the United Nations say emergency relief operations continue in the region and that 7,000 tonnes of food aid has now been delivered.
It has also pledged that 30 trucks of food a day will travel to Ogaden over the next two months until the estimated 17,407 tonnes needed are delivered.
The United Nations said last week 19 non-governmental organisations have been allowed to work in the Ogaden region following the expulsion from the region of some aid agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross in July.
Holmes will meet Ethiopian dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Wednesday before continuing his east African tour in Sudan and Kenya.
(Reporting by Barry Malone; Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Janet Lawrence))
Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again. Meles Zenawi.
Ethiopia Woyanne plays down war talk ahead of border deadline
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Three days before a deadline for demarcating their disputed border, Ethiopia Woyanne said on Tuesday it had no plans for another bout of fighting with arch-foe Eritrea but would crush any attempt by Asmara to invade.
Tensions between the Horn of African neighbours have ratcheted up in recent weeks with the approach of the Nov. 30 deadline set by an independent border commission to physically mark their disputed frontier.
“Ethiopia Woyanne has no reason to launch another war against Eritrea. Our intention has always been to resolve all outstanding border problems with Eritrea through peaceful means,” Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi told parliament.
“Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again,” he said.
Asmara and Addis Ababa Woyanne have been locked in a dispute over their shared frontier since a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission gave Eritrea the key town of Badme.
The commission was set up by a peace deal ending a 1998-2000 border war killing some 70,000 people.
Ethiopia Woyanne initially rejected the ruling, but now says it accepts it but wants more talks with Eritrea. Asmara rejects calls for dialogue, saying it wants full implementation.
Last November, the commission said it was fed up by the lack of progress with the border and gave both nations one year to make moves to mark the frontier or it would fix it on maps.
Analysts have warned of possible renewed hostilities between the two nations as the deadline approaches.
But both sides say they have no desire to go to war.
The United Nations says Eritrea and Ethiopia Woyanne have moved thousands of troops and heavy weapons to the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontier since the border commission gave its deadline.
The world body and the United States have urged both nations to show restraint.
Analysts say the border deadlock has been complicated by a war in Somalia where Eritrea is accused of backing Somali insurgents battling Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali government troops.
In the last month, Asmara has repeatedly accused Addis Ababa Woyanne of planning to invade.
On Tuesday, Meles said Eritrea was using rebels in Somalia to distract Ethiopia for an invasion from the north.
“Eritrea’s intention was that when rebels and terrorists it supports penetrate into Ethiopian territory from Somalia and create confusion, it was planning to invade the country from the north,” Meles said. “But we have crushed the rebel groups who were fighting a proxy war for Eritrea and as such its plan to invade us fizzled out.”
Eritrea has accused Ethiopia Woyanne of planning to invade. Both sides deny the others’ claims. (Editing by Jack Kimball and Janet Lawrence)
As tens of thousands more frightened and exhausted people fled the terrors of Mogadishu last week, a Somali community leader condemned the international community “for watching the cruelty in Somalia like a film and not bothering to help”. He was mistaken. The international community has barely been watching the cruelty in Somalia at all.
Life in Mogadishu has become even more intolerable since Ethiopia Woyanne intervened last Christmas to install the transitional government of President Abdullahi Yusuf. Ethiopia Woyanne had been alarmed by the aggressive rhetoric of the Islamic Courts government that had taken over the Somali capital. It had seen off the warlords and brought unprecedented order to Mogadishu. But threats of jihad against its powerful neighbour provoked a muscular response. The US stood by its regional ally, declaring that Somalia must not become a terrorist haven, and mounting a missile attack on the Islamist forces for good measure.
TheEthiopias Woyanne calculated a lesser risk in having Yusuf in charge. Having installed him, they promised to withdraw quickly, agreeing to remain only while an African peacekeeping force was mounted. Lord Triesman, the minister for Africa, praised Ethiopia for creating conditions for peace and stability. British ministers were pleased to describe the new state of affairs as a window of opportunity for Somalia.
The optimism rested on highly dubious assumptions. It presupposed that the transitional government possessed legitimacy, and had the capacity to govern. It also assumed too easily that an African peacekeeping force would materialise and Ethiopian Woyanne forces would leave. None of this has come to pass.
The core problem was that Somalis everywhere were appalled to see Ethiopian Woyanne troops on the streets of their capital. What kind of government, they asked, needed the protection of a foreign force against its own citizens? Opposition to the Ethiopian Woyanne military presence soon manifested itself and an insurgency was born.
Ethiopian Woyanne forces launched massive military attacks on various quarters of the city in March and April, designed to root out extremists. Their complete disregard, and that of the insurgents, for the population’s safety has been condemned by human rights organisations. But the international community took all too little notice of events in a city that was just too dangerous to visit or report on. Humanitarian organisations quietly started to provide for the 300,000 people who fled Mogadishu and established makeshift settlements under the trees. They are still there.
There were other consequences of Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s rampage through the city. It hardened the insurgents’ resolve, and made new enemies among the clans targeted; it deepened opposition to the transitional government, in whose name the operations were conducted; it prompted the flight of the business people so vital for any normalisation; and it alarmed African nations who might have considered joining the small Ugandan contingent to provide security and enable the Ethiopian forces to leave.
The insurgency has deepened and spread. The tactics are those of Iraq, but with more roadside bombs than suicide bombs, and a growing tally of assassinations – most directed against office holders of the transitional government, but journalists, humanitarian workers and civil society leaders are all at risk. A government-sponsored reconciliation conference came and went, without result. A prime minister has resigned. The transitional government seems not only powerless but irrelevant, and wholly dependent on Ethiopia.
A renewed crackdown in Mogadishu has caused hundreds more deaths and pushed another 200,000 people into destitution on the roadsides. Somalia is now the worst humanitarian situation in the world. The number of internally displaced has reached a million. Insecurity and extortion are putting untold strain on the efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.
We cannot say we were not warned. Six months ago the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs highlighted the deplorable conditions of the displaced. He observed that more people had been displaced from Mogadishu in the previous two months than anywhere else in the world, and that a political solution was the only way to resolve the crisis: “Otherwise I fear the worst.”
The worst has now come. What are we waiting for?
________________
Sally Healy OBE is an associate fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, the foreign affairs thinktank chathamhouse.org.uk
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US court sentenced a Somali man to 10 years in jail for conspiring to aid an extremist group planning an attack on US soil, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
Nouradin Abdi, 35, pleaded guilty in July this year to plotting attacks, the department said in a statement. He told the Federal of Bureau of Investigation during interrogation that he wanted to plant a bomb in a shopping center.
He lived in the midwestern state of Ohio after gaining asylum in the United States by making false statements and was arrested in 2003 after asking permission to travel to Germany and Saudi Arabia to visit his family and the Muslim holy site at Mecca.
Prosecutors say he was actually heading for Ethiopia to train for “violent jihad” and charged him with “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists,” the statement said.
“Abdi allegedly sought training in radio usage, guns, guerilla warfare and bombs,” it said.
An accomplice arrested with him is serving a 20-year sentence for aiding the Al-Qaeda extremist network, it added. A third was arrested in April.
Short wave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia in the Amharic and Afan Oromo languages have been jammed for the past two weeks. VOA Correspondent in Addis Ababa Peter Heinlein reports Ethiopia’s government denies responsibility for the interference.
Listeners to VOA’s Amharic Service began complaining about November 12 that they could not hear the one-hour nightly broadcast. Amharic is the language of commerce and the main official language in Ethiopia.
In recent days, the reports from listeners and monitors confirmed that all five short-wave frequencies used by VOA are being jammed. Broadcasts by the other major western broadcaster in Amharic, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, have also been blocked.
The BBC monitoring service says its experts have determined that the direction from which the jamming originates indicates the signals are being transmitted from within Ethiopia.
In a telephone interview with VOA, Ethiopia’s Information Ministry spokesman Zemedkun Tekle says he doubts the government is involved in jamming.
“I do not think this one is true. Of course I have seen the media reporting saying that, but we do not need, the government does not need to waste its time on doing so,” he said. “I myself have not come across audiences who are saying so, but the relevant body may speak on the details, but I do not think this story is true.”
The two Amharic Service broadcasts are known to have a substantial audience in the Ethiopian capital, which is a hot bed of anti-government sentiment.
Monitors also report jamming of VOA’s Oromo Service, which broadcasts on the same frequencies. Oromo is the language spoken by Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.
Ethiopia is known to be blocking broadcasts from its neighbor and rival Eritrea. Monitors report the jamming has intensified in recent weeks, as tensions have risen along their disputed border.
A status report issued by the umbrella organization that oversees Voice of America, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, says VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia have previously been jammed during civil unrest in 2005, but the jamming was stopped in mid-2006.
The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news and other programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.
A large delegation of Ogaden National Liberation Front, ONLF, officials led by their chairman have met with high-ranking French officials in the French foreign ministry offices in Paris. The ONLF delegation included the head of the Foreign Service honorable Cabdiraxmaan Mahdi and the ONLF European representative Mr. Axmed Gurxan.
It is reported that the same ONLF delegation also met high-ranking officials from independent French organizations. Sources present in the meeting between the ONLF delegation and the French foreign ministry officials indicated that discussions centered on the situation in the horn of Africa especially the state sponsored genocide that is taking place in Ogaden.
It is reported that the French officials indicated how they are mindful of the state sponsored genocide that has taken root in Ogaden. It is said that ONLF welcomed the position of the French foreign ministry officials on the dire human rights situation in Ogaden. It is also reported that the ONLF officials have asked the French officials to take an active role in the Ogaden issue as well as the increasing chaotic situation in the horn.
