On the front line of an invisible Ethiopian famine, government forces stand between the dying tribes scattered across a closed hinterland and outside aid.
The restrictive Ethiopian {www:Woyanne} security regime hiding the worsening crisis in the country’s southern Somali region has infuriated important donors. Western officials privately warn that a damaging stand-off with the country is unfolding.
[It is these same shameless U.K. and other Western officials who are bankrolling the unpopular regime of Meles Zenawi to steal elections and stay in power by committing unspeakable atrocities against the people of Ethiopia and Somalia.]
International relief agencies should be celebrating notable breakthroughs in the rush to stop a fresh wave of mass starvation in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa this week conceded that 6.4 million people were on the brink of death and agreed to open up the worst hit parts of the country to shipments of outside assistance.
But hard-won access to the bleak garrison town of Kebri Dehar in the Somali region, also known as the Ogaden, has unveiled the harsh realities of a regime determined to crush a rebel army.
The government strives to proclaim it has the upper-hand against the vicious insurgency waged by the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The desert raiders have waged a war of ethnic separation from Christian-dominated highlands since peace talks broken down in 2005.
In efforts to bolster its claims to have crushed the group, the government has staged Potemkin scenes in Kebri Dehar. Half-filled hospitals are marshalled by clean but uncrowded schools with plasma screen televisions. Meanwhile the streets appeared to have been emptied.
“The groups have been eradicated and the food is now moving freely,” declared local administrator, Bashir Ahmed Abdi.
Nothing rings true in the boast. Two aid workers were kidnapped near Kebri Dehar just this month and are thought to have been spirited over the border to Somalia. British officials in the town reported it was flooded with Kalashnikov-carrying soldiers as recently as Wednesday. Skirmishes between the army and rebel fighters take place with regularity in the surrounding bush.
Five brigades of the Ethiopian army are based in Kebri Dehar’s garrisons. Those caught in the middle of the war are too afraid to speak out against the government line.
School teacher Abdi Wahadi tried vainly to hide his embarrassment that his class size had been reduced to just six pupils, claiming that 70 were expected to enrol by the end of the week, even though the year started in September.
At the hospital the reluctance to acknowledge the impact of the war was clear in the maternity ward. One lone woman sat with a baby. An aid worker shamefacedly explained that two other women with far more malnourished children had disappeared.
“The others must be taken out,” she said. “I’m not sure where they could have gone because the children are severely malnourished. I hope they are within the city limits.”
A UN official went further. “The people’s movements are severely restricted by the government,” the official said. “If they are starving they get past the roadblocks to get into town; if they have any goats left they don’t go to the watering hole because the army targets these; if they are ill they can’t get into the hospitals to be treated.”
In the town’s market, there are hardly any goods. A diplomat in Addis Ababa said the overstretched Ethiopian army, which maintains an expeditionary force in neighbouring Somalia, has indiscriminately blocked movements in the region.
A government ban on truck has stopped food distribution efforts, according to World Food Programme officials. But it has also cut off supplies of consumer goods and durables that used to be imported from Somalia. “It’s difficult to come here,” said nomad Mohammad Farah, “when we get here we have nothing to sell and nothing to buy.”
Oxfam reported this week that two million people are on the brink of starvation in Ethiopia’s Somali region and that the long-term prospects of recovery were blighted by the loss of 60 per cent of cattle and 50 per cent of goats.
Frustrations over the Ethiopian government’s refusal to throw open the doors to foreign assistance threaten a schism between Addis Ababa and its Western allies. “The events in Somali demonstrate too clearly the flaws in Ethiopia’s willingness to engage with us as government and its actions on the ground,” said a European diplomat. “A lot of governments are awkward on both fronts but by mixing its messages Ethiopia has got away with too much, for too long.”
KEBRE DEHAR, ETHIOPIA – Britain is to withhold future aid commitments to Ethiopia over concerns that its Government is obstructing efforts to help millions at risk of famine in the drought-stricken Somali region in the east of the country.
Douglas Alexander, the Minister for International Development, flew to Ethiopia on Thursday with a proposal committing millions in funds to the vast African nation over several years.
After visiting the Somali region and hearing the testimony of aid organisations as well as evidence of attempts by the authorities to hide the scale of the crisis, Mr Alexander told the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, that he had reconsidered. “In light of our continued concerns, I said I was now not prepared to make a multi-annual commitment,” Mr Alexander said.
At the moment Britain gives Ethiopia £130 million a year in aid.
He characterised the Government’s reaction to the crisis as “deny and delay,” fuelled in part by Ethiopia’s extreme sensitivity to its global image as a famine-stricken nation, which the Government views as an impediment to foreign investment.
Mr Alexander saw the sensitivity at first-hand on his trip to Somali when he was taken to the infant malnutrition ward in Kebri Dehar hospital to see seriously ill mothers and babies being treated.
Aid workers were surprised to find that the most severely malnourished babies and their mothers had vanished from the ward where they had been for several days, leaving only one mother and her fast-recovering child.
The health worker who had taken them to the hospital expressed fears that the children had been spirited away before the minister’s arrival to avoid “embarrassing” press pictures of starving Ethiopian babies.
“I come here every day and they are always here,” the health worker said. “I don’t know where they are now.”
“They’ve hidden them,” an international aid worker with a lot of experience in the region said.
“The Government doesn’t want to acknowledge this crisis because it’s bad for their image. It’s not the image of Ethiopia they want to project. It doesn’t encourage investment.”
Mr Alexander raised the incident later in his meeting with Mr Zenawi. “If it’s true that they moved severely malnourished children, that is unconscionable,” he said. Mr Zenawi promised to investigate, calling the incident “despicable”.
In Kebri Dehar, Mr Alexander also heard concerns from local and international aid workers that the Ethiopian Government was actively frustrating efforts to reach the worst-affected areas of the region, using the insurgency as an excuse – an allegation that Mr Zenawi denied.
Aid agencies are unable to conduct surveys into the scale of need in the region because they require government permission and military escorts, which the Government is failing to provide.
NEW YORK – Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro will visit Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, this weekend to attend a development meeting and to hold talks with the Horn of Africa nation’s top officials.
She will chair a meeting of UN agencies working to support the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
That gathering which will focus on the theme “Delivering as one in support of Africa’s development at the regional and subregional levels.”
While in the Ethiopian city, Ms Migiro is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin.
Sometime late Wednesday, a man flagged down a cab, ordered the driver, Tekola Bekele, an immigrant from Ethiopia, to a quiet street, shot him in the back of the head, pulled his body to the pavement and drove away, police said yesterday.
At first, Prince George’s officers had no suspect in the homicide, the county’s 102nd this year, just the body of the cabbie.
But yesterday morning, county police say, an alert patrol officer six miles away spotted a cab matching the description of the one missing from the crime scene. When the officer tried to stop the car in Suitland, the driver fled and a high-speed chase ensued.
With the help of a woman who awoke to the sounds of a man breaking into her home, police caught Christian E. Brooks of Landover in a wooded area nearby.
Brooks, 25, of the 7700 block of Merrick Lane, was wanted on first-degree assault and attempted-murder charges in a recent shooting in the District, police said. He is charged with first-degree murder in Wednesday’s slaying.
Yesterday, cabdrivers and the manager of District Cab Associates, where the taxi driver had worked since 1982, remembered him as a friendly, responsible man who drove his silver 1996 Crown Victoria around Northwest Washington almost every night.
Ariel Emata said Tekola Bekele was the victim, adding that he last saw him Tuesday morning at the company’s Benning Road office, when he stopped by to pay his weekly $48 insurance charge — early, as usual.
“He came in and said, ‘My man, my man,’ ” Emata said. “He called all of us ‘my man, my man’ because he doesn’t know all of our names,” Emata said, chuckling as he recalled his brief visits with Bekele, 53, of Silver Spring.
“Shorty,” as he was known to fellow drivers, had trawled Georgetown and Dupont Circle for fares for more than 25 years.
Emata said Bekele owned his cab and was never required to report where he was working. Prince George’s police say they don’t know where the driver picked up his last customer Wednesday night, but they think the customer was carrying a black and silver semiautomatic handgun when he slid into the back seat. They recovered it when they arrested Brooks and planned to test whether it was used to kill the taxi driver.
Law enforcement sources said that about 11:23 p.m. Wednesday, along the 700 block of Avanti Place, a quiet residential street in Landover not far from FedEx Field, Brooks shot the cabdriver in the head at close range and then left his body on the street. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Prince George’s Officer Patrick Marron spotted the cab six miles away in Suitland and gave chase. According to police, Brooks bailed out of the cab in the 3600 block of Maywood Lane and fled into a wooded area.
About 1 a.m., a 911 call came from a woman who awoke and found a glass panel of her front door shattered. Luckily, she said, the deadbolt held.
“I heard a noise and thought my cats were creating some kind of commotion,” said the woman, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal. “Honestly, I must have been brain-dead. I didn’t even think about burglary.”
The woman said she thought one of her three cats had gotten outside.
“I was about to go outside, where the guy was,” she said. “It was terrifying. When my brain kicked in, I called 911. ”
It was unclear yesterday whether a public defender had been appointed for Brooks. Attempts to locate family members were unsuccessful.
District and Maryland court records show a number of arrests for Brooks from 2001 to this year on drug and firearm possession, assault and theft counts.
Douglas Wood, an attorney for Brooks when he was acquitted in Prince George’s in May on charges of possessing a handgun, PCP and marijuana, said the case against his client then was weak.
Brooks had been arrested when police responded to a call of someone selling drugs, Wood said. Police did not see the activity but frisked Brooks and found keys to a car in a parking lot nearby. In the glove compartment, which Woods said was searched without a warrant, police found the handgun.
“They took DNA tests from the gun but never bothered testing it,” Wood said.
The case of a Canadian citizen who has been held in an Ethiopian jail for almost two years — without trial or access to a lawyer — while other foreign prisoners are released is “hauntingly reminiscent” of Omar Khadr, says Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.
Bashir Makhtal, a former Toronto resident in his 40s, was fleeing from fighting in Somalia when he and dozens of other foreign nationals were arrested crossing into Kenya in late 2006. Mr. Makhtal was deported to Ethiopia, where he was born, though he has been a citizen since 1994.
Human rights advocates say Kenyan authorities illegally rendered approximately 90 foreign nationals from 18 countries to Ethiopia during two months in early 2007. Twenty-two have since disappeared. Ethiopia eventually admitted that it has the others in prison.
Most other foreign governments have successfully lobbied for the release of their citizens. Earlier this month, eight more prisoners were released, leaving Mr. Makhtal and a Kenyan man as the last remaining detainees.
“Bashir Makhtal and Omar Khadr share a very distressing similarity when it comes to the lack of willingness of the Canadian government to defend their rights,” Mr. Neve said. “Canada now stands as the only western country with a national still held at Guantanamo. All other western governments, like the U.K., Australia and France, who had nationals held at Guantanamo years ago, did the right thing — they spoke out about the injustice. They insisted their nationals be brought back home.”
Mr. Neve said aspects of the Makhtal case will be “sadly familiar” to Canadians who followed the story of Maher Arar, the Canadian computer engineer who was tortured in Syria after being rendered from the United States.
Ethiopia has accused Mr. Makhtal of terrorist activities, but has yet to present any evidence or bring formal charges.
A recent Human Rights Watch report on the Horn of Africa renditions quotes a detainee who saw Mr. Makhtal briefly in an Ethiopian prison in July 2007. He said the Canadian was being held in solitary confinement, looked very weak and “famished,” and had a deep cut on his leg.
Mr. Makhtal’s family believes he is in jail because he is the grandson of a founder of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which Canada says is a legal organization, but Ethiopia accuses of terrorist activities.
Said Maktal, who is Bashir’s cousin (but spells his surname differently) says their grandfather was deeply involved with the ONLF, but his cousin was too busy trading used clothing throughout the region to have any time for extremism.
“He’s a very hard-working person and he was supporting so many relatives back in the Ogaden,” said Mr. Maktal, 35, who lives in Hamilton. “I don’t believe that he had any involvement” with the ONLF.
In April 2007, Ethiopian authorities admitted they were holding Mr. Makhtal, but refused to allow Canadian diplomats to visit him until July 2008, after Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai went to Ethiopia to lobby for access. All subsequent requests for consular visits or access to the Ethiopian lawyer hired by Mr. Makhtal’s family have been refused.
“Bashir Makhtal has essentially been held in incommunicado for almost two years now,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch in New York. “It’s absolutely essential that the Canadian government start making some noise and demanding loud and clear that the Ethiopian government must either transfer his case to a fair trial system and let him be represented by a lawyer and have consular rights, or they should immediately release him and repatriate him to Canada.”
Said Maktal has met officials from Foreign Affairs and lobbied politicians, including Ottawa MP John Baird. So far, Mr. Maktal said, he has heard promises the case will become “high profile,” but hasn’t seen any evidence the government is taking it seriously.
“I want the prime minister of Canada to make a personal intervention before it’s too late,” said Mr. Maktal, who believes the Ethiopian government will not feel pressured to act unless it hears directly from the prime minister. “Bashir’s condition is going down. This is unacceptable. How can you not have authority to visit your own citizen?”
Heavy fighting has broken out in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, leaving at least 18 people dead, many of them civilians.
The fighting began when insurgents attacked African Union Dictators-R-Us and Ethiopian troops Woyanne thugs Thursday, drawing retaliatory fire. During the battle, heavy artillery hit the populous Bakara Market.
The fighting also drew in forces from the transitional Somali government. The government is backed by Ethiopia TPLF, which is believed to have more than 10,000 troops in the country.
Thursday, Ethiopia’s prime minister the leader of TPLF dismissed opposition calls for a timetable to withdraw his country’s troops from Somalia.
Addressing parliament, Meles Zenawi Dictator Zenawi, said troops would remain in Somalia until a credible international force can take over and Somalia’s stability is assured.
Ethiopian troops TPLF Thugs entered Somalia in 2006 to help the government oust an Islamist movement that had seized power throughout much of the country.
U.N.-backed reconciliation talks between the Somali government and some of its opponents have achieved little, while a bloody Islamist insurgency rages on.
In New York Tuesday, a U.N. official said the Somali government and opposition groups would meet for a third round of talks October 25-26 in Djibouti.
The official, Amadou Oul Abdallah, also said the U.N. and World Bank are planning a donor conference to assist Somalia, where millions are in need of aid because of fighting and drought. He said a preliminary meeting for the conference will take place Monday in Stockholm.
International relief agencies should be celebrating notable breakthroughs in the rush to stop a fresh wave of mass starvation in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa this week conceded that 6.4 million people were on the brink of death and agreed to open up the worst hit parts of the country to shipments of outside assistance.