By Messay Kebede

The current leadership split within the CUD has become the object of an intensive and partisan quarrel among the supporters of each faction. The divided Ethiopian diaspora wallows in the exercise of one-sidedly blaming one faction for the split, while little effort is made to know its real cause. As is usual among Ethiopian political activists, what prevails is not the need to get correct information before taking side, but rather the propensity to support one side to the discredit of the other. Unfortunately, such an approach neither brings about reconciliation nor gathers momentum for the prevalence of one faction. On the contrary, it simply widens the split with further misunderstandings and confusions. Yet owing to its remoteness from the actual battle field, the Ethiopian diaspora should have refrained from taking side so as to emerge as a force of reconciliation.

In view of the fact that the split seriously undermines the effort to bring positive change in Ethiopia, all the more distressingly since the outcomes of the last national election seemed to show the end of the tunnel, I have painstakingly endeavored to understand the real causes of the split. This explains my silence in the face of the debacle of the great hope that the Kinijit movement had generated. Despite my sustained effort to understand by extensively reading whatever is posted on the web regarding the split as well as talking to influential people, I am little advanced. Where I long for reasons and analyses, I find venomous attacks, name callings, character assassinations in the outdated style of Leninist political discourse.

Yet only three months ago, most activists and observers had just praises and concern for the jailed leaders of the CUD without any distinction. How could one smear so vehemently what one had admired recently without a moment of pause to allow reflection and critical assessment to take place? Worse yet, I read here and there complaints of individuals blaming some websites for refusing to post their articles. Nothing is more distressing than to see the ugly face of censorship reappearing at the very time when we need information and open debate. Crises do not disappear because we silence people; instead, animosity and biased outlooks grow and spread.

Several people have suggested that the deep cause of the split is power conflict among the top leadership of the movement. I don’t rule out the explanation, even though I don’t understand how leaders would go to the extent of wrecking a movement that they have worked so hard to create even as the violent reaction of the present regime shows clearly that victory will require more sacrifices and greater unity and mobilization. The only way the suggested explanation makes sense is through the assumption that one faction considers the other faction as a weak partner. In thus thinking that it can go on without the other party, the major party can opt for the breakup, especially if the partnership only results in the marginalization of its leaders.

We need to understand this concern and especially refrain from alluding to a concealed dictatorial tendency. What the crisis shows is that the CUD has a structural problem that must be resolved. We need to find a democratic framework for reconciliation based on a fair assessment of the respective strength of each partner while carrying a provision for the protection of the rights of minority parties. But it serves no purpose other than division to ignore the forces in presence in the name of an abstract and, for that matter, illusory unity, just as it is useless to call for a return to unity so long as the problems persist. Needless to say, the concern should also include Lidetu and his faction, since his volte-face was actually the first expression of a burgeoning crisis.

That is why I place this plea for an honest and instructive debate. I ask all those who have first-hand information or knowledge about the crisis to speak up, not for the sake of blaming one faction, but for the sake of informing us. I implore that those who write cease to assign a hidden intention to this or that leader so as to reflect on the structural issues with an eye to proposing solutions. I invite those who run the popular websites to open a chapter for this kind of assessment. My belief is that if we do this review well, that is, if the diaspora conducts an honest and fair analysis of the crisis, the exchange could result in a rapprochement, perhaps even recommend an inclusive conference with the promise that the correct appraisal of problems could turn the diaspora into a force of reconciliation. The correct approach is not to blame individuals, but to alter the structural conditions that created the crisis in the first place.
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Prof. Messay Kebede can be reached at [email protected]

The atrocities of Meles Zenawi and his Woyanne thugs in Somalia

Ethiopian Interview with Tegbar spokesperson Ato Tsegaye Shimeles. Click below to listen: Click here to listen

By SALAD DUHUL AND ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY
The Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A radical Islamic group that was driven from power a year ago by a Western-supported offensive is making a significant comeback in Somalia, and the government can do little to stop it, officials said Thursday, as shelling and gunbattles in the capital killed at least 17 people.

Sheik Qasim Ibrahim Nur, director of security at Somalia’s National Security Ministry, said the government has no power to resist the Council of Islamic Courts, which the United States has accused of having ties to al-Qaida.

He said the fighters had regrouped and were poised to launch a massive attack.

Mortar rounds slammed into the biggest market in Mogadishu, killing 12 people and wounding more than 40 others. Five others were killed in a separate gunbattle in the city. The death toll was expected to rise from the latest bloodshed blamed on Islamic insurgents.

The Council of Islamic Courts has been waging an Iraq-style insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year.

“About 80 percent of Somalia is not safe and is not under control of the government,” Nur said. “Islamists are planning to launch a massive attack against the [government] and its allied troops.”

Nur appealed for international support, saying Islamic fighters “are everywhere.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged more African nations to send peacekeepers to Somalia, perhaps the most strategically located nation in the Horn of Africa. At a crossroads between the Middle East and Africa, Somalia dominates vital sea lanes, although rampant piracy has made the waters treacherous.

About 1,800 Ugandan peacekeepers are in Somalia, officially as the vanguard of a larger African Union peacekeeping force, although no other countries have sent reinforcements. Ethiopia, which sent soldiers to Somalia last year to back the government in its fight against the Islamic militants, is not part of the peacekeeping force.

The United States can do little by itself in Somalia. An intervention in the early 1990s left 18 U.S. servicemen dead, and the legacy of the “Black Hawk Down” battle still weighs heavily on both countries. But Western powers long have been concerned that the lawless country could become a breeding ground for terror.

Presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed Mohamud also said that the Muslim fighters were regrouping, and said they have “a lot of weapons and foreign fighters.”

The Council of Islamic Courts was driven from power last year when Ethiopia Woyanne intervened, with the tacit approval of the United States, backing the government with soldiers and fighter jets.

Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the Congress’ research arm, said the Islamic leadership was never truly gone and merely went underground.

“The Somali and Ethiopian Woyanne governments may have underestimated the level of organization and determination on the part of the Islamic courts,” Dagne said in a telephone interview from Washington.

He added that many people look back on the group’s six months in power and conclude the country then “was relatively peaceful and gave hope to the people of Somalia that after over a decade of violence, they can live in peace.”

After the council was ousted, remnants launched an Iraq-style insurgency, causing more bloodshed and throwing this already-beleaguered nation into chaos.

President Abdullahi Yusuf is in London for what his aides described as a regular medical checkup. On Thursday, the 73-year-old president was said to be well, but uncertainty over his condition persists, adding to the tension in his homeland.

Officials from Ethiopia Woyanne , which has troops in Somalia backing the government, denied there is any Islamic resurgence.

“The facts on the ground tell you that they are in bad shape and having serious difficulties,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Woyanne dictator Meles Zenawi.

But there are increasing signs that the Islamic extremist group that controlled much of southern Somalia last year again is gaining power.

Members of the group and the feared Shabab — its military wing — have been spotted with increasing frequency throughout central Somalia.

In Kismayo, Somalia’s third-largest city and located about 310 miles south of the capital, a member of the Shabab said his group was sending soldiers to the capital daily to fight the Ethiopians Woyannes. The fighter asked that his name not be published for fear of reprisals.

Over the weekend, about 50 heavily armed militiamen briefly overran Bula Burte town in central Somalia, about 130 miles north of the capital, said the regional Gov. Yusuf Dabaged.

“The so-called insurgents are increasing in the region,” Dabaged said. “From now on we will fight them ruthlessly.”

The country faces what the United Nations says is the biggest humanitarian crisis in Africa, and a local aid group says 6,000 civilians have been killed in fighting this year. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes to squalid refugee camps.

Associated Press writers Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, and Nasteex Dahir Farah in Kismayo, Somalia, contributed to this report.

SAN’A, Yemen (AP) – An international aid group said Sunday that it discovered the bodies of 56 men, women and children on Yemen’s southern coast who perished trying to emigrate illegally from Africa.
Medecins Sans Frontieres’ team in Yemen found the victims along a 5-kilometer (3-mile) stretch of coast near the town of al-Irqah on Saturday, along with 49 survivors who said they left the Somali port city of Bossasso three days earlier in an attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden.

The survivors said the 8-meter (26-foot) fiberglass boat set off with a total of 148 Somalians and Ethiopians on board, including some 40 women and five children _ the youngest eight months old. The group had no food or water, and at least four people died during the trip from the harsh conditions, MSF quoted the survivors as saying in a statement.

The boat arrived off the Yemeni coast in the middle of the night, and the passengers were forced to jump into the water or suffer a severe beating. During the ensuing panic, the passengers rushed to one side of the boat, and the vessel capsized. The fate of those not found dead or alive on the Yemeni coast is unknown.

The MSF team provided medical assistance and offered counseling to the survivors, many of whom had lost multiple relatives or friends.

One 25-year-old Somali man told MSF that he lost his wife, two children and two other close relatives.
Another Somali man said he understood the risk of the journey but had no choice.
«Even if I die in the sea, I need to get to Yemen,» MSF quoted him as saying. «Maybe I have a chance to survive, but if I go back to Mogadishu, I will die.

MSF has been providing medical and humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants who arrive on the Yemeni coast since September 2007, the statement said. Since the beginning of 2007, 27,960 people have crossed the Gulf of Aden to land in Yemen, while 593 have died and another 659 have gone missing.