Rebels stormed a Chinese-run oilfield in eastern Ethiopia yesterday, killing 74 workers and destroying the facility, guerrillas and government officials said.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group that has fought alongside insurgents in Somalia, also kidnapped seven Chinese workers, said an Ethiopian government official, Bereket Simon. “This was a cold blooded killing,” Mr Bereket, a special adviser to the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, told Associated Press. “This was organised.”
The rebel group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement sent to AP. It also warned all international oil companies not to operate in the region.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency identified the Chinese workers and Ethiopian guards as employees of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a division of a huge state-run oil company.
Xu Shuang, the general manager of Zhongyuan, based in Addis Ababa, said nine of its Chinese oil workers were killed, seven Chinese workers were kidnapped and 65 Ethiopians were killed.
The attack took place early on Tuesday morning in Abole, a small town 75 miles from the Somali regional state’s capital Jijiga, close to the Somali border. Mr Bereket said several Ethiopian soldiers were wounded in the gunbattle. “The army is pursuing them. We will track them down dead or alive. We will make sure these people will be hunted and be brought to justice.”
He said the group was also linked to the Eritrean government, which Ethiopia has repeatedly accused of waging terror attacks. Eritrea denies the claims.
The countries fought a border war that ended in 2000 and are accused of backing rival sides in the Somali conflict.
China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in the hunt for oil to fuel its rapidly growing economy. But forays into politically unstable areas have exposed Chinese workers to attacks.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front warned last year that it would not tolerate investment in the Ogaden area that also benefited the Ethiopian government.
Ghimbi, Ethiopia — First, the police threw Tesfaye into a dark cell. Then, each day for 17 days, it was the same routine: Electric shocks on his legs and back, followed by beatings with rubber truncheons. Four or five officers would then surround and kick him. At last, a large bottle of water would be tied around his testicles. He’d pass out.
Tesfaye’s crime? Maybe it’s that he refused to join the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He was accused of organizing street protests in late 2005. Police suspect he’s a member of a rebel group called the Oromo Liberation Front. Tesfaye doesn’t know for sure because no court ever charged him with a crime.
“They took us turn by turn to a dark place, and they would shock us and say, ‘What do you think now? You won’t change your ways now? Do you want to be a member of our party now?’ ” Tesfaye recalled of his time in prison early last year. He refused to give his last name for fear of being rearrested.
Accounts like this are common in today’s Ethiopia. Interviews with dozens of people across the country, coupled with testimony given to diplomats and human rights groups, paint a picture of a nation that jails its citizens without reason or trial, and tortures many of them — despite government claims to the contrary.
Such cases are especially troubling because the U.S. government, a key Ethiopian ally, has acknowledged interrogating terrorism suspects in Ethiopian prisons, where some detainees were sent after being arrested in connection with Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in December. There have been no reports that those jailed have been tortured. The invasion ousted an Islamic movement accused of having ties to al Qaeda that threatened to topple an interim Somali government struggling to control the country.
The Bush administration maintains that Meles’ government, a leading partner in its war on terror in East Africa, is committed to democratic and human rights reform. The government was severely criticized for a 2005 crackdown that saw tens of thousands of opposition members jailed and nearly 200 people killed following elections in which the opposition made major gains.
People across Ethiopia recounted stories of a government backsliding on human rights issues. They told of confinement for days in tiny, dark cells with their hands bound 24 hours a day; electric shocks; beatings with rubber clubs; police who held guns to prisoners’ heads; mutilation or pain inflicted on the genitals.
“If you think differently, that is enough to put you on the side of the opposition,” said 34-year-old Teferi, who recently was released from prison after two months without being charged with a crime. “If you say, ‘This is not right, this is right, it’s good to rule peacefully,’ if you talk something fair, it’s over for you because there is no fairness from them.”
Teferi said a police source told him that he was arrested because he played too much pingpong — and that police suspected he was recruiting people to a rebel group while he played. He said he was imprisoned at a police training camp called Sankele outside the city of Ambo, which the International Committee of the Red Cross has been barred from visiting.
Ethiopian officials dismiss stories of torture as lies, and have taken the further step of expelling everyone from foreign journalists to representatives of human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Ethiopian reporters for the U.S.-financed Voice of America must work in secret for fear of harassment.
Bereket Simon, a top adviser to Meles [and a psychopathic liar], said it’s in the interests of rights groups to lie about the situation, and he rejected the idea that torture occurs in Ethiopia.
“No way. No way. No way. I think you know, these are prohibited by laws, by Ethiopian laws — torture, any human treatments,” Bereket said. “In fact, we have been improving on our prison standards. We’ve been working hard to train the police forces, the interrogators.”
U.S. officials say Washington’s close alliance with the government in Addis Ababa allows it to raise concerns about Ethiopia’s record privately. The State Department is requesting more than $500 million for Ethiopian aid in fiscal 2008, almost all of it for HIV/AIDS relief. The United States trains Ethiopian troops, and the two governments have shared intelligence about Somalia.
U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto said he wants to investigate claims of abuse, but warned against making allegations about Ethiopia’s actions without proof.
“There’s a lot of misinformation about Ethiopia — I mean, it’s amazing,” Yamamoto said. “The problem comes in trying to divide or separate what is fact and what’s fiction, and trying to keep an open mind on every issue. … There are problems, and we’re free to admit that, and the Ethiopians are open to admitting that as well.”
Ethiopia’s critics are skeptical of the government’s promises to improve its human rights record.
“Over the years, the more I see, the more I become convinced that not only does the government tolerate it, but I think they direct this kind of behavior,” said Ethiopian-born Theodros Dagne, a senior aide to Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., a leading critic of Ethiopian practices on human rights.
European diplomats and employees of Western aid groups, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they keep quiet about abuses because they fear the government will freeze them out of aid work. About 2.8 million of Ethiopia’s 75 million people depend on foreign food aid.
Washington’s steadfast support has led some Ethiopian opposition leaders to assert that Meles’ government has only been emboldened.
“We fully believe that the international community is not going to democratize this place — it’s going to be the tough task of the Ethiopians,” said Beyene Petros, a lawmaker and leader of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a coalition of opposition groups. “Simply, the U.S. State Department’s or the U.S. government’s position on Ethiopia is that it’s a friendly government, and how can you go and quarrel with your friend because somebody told on him?”
Zoe Alsop contributed to this story, which was reported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
The scenes coming out of Mogadishu are so horrible that they are unbearable to watch. Civilians are lying dead in their homes and on the streets; there is no water; no electricity; hospitals have been shelled and one hospital has been partly destroyed and then taken over by Meles’ forces–a direct attack on the Geneva Conventions. Phalanxes of Meles’ tanks are firing shells on civilian targets; field artillery is being directed at whole neighborhoods. More than 100,000 have fled their homes in Mogadishu and are exposed to the elements in the countryside. These are all war crimes and crimes against humanity.
One would expect an outcry from the world; instead there is an awful silence. What has happened? Has the world become desensitized to the death of Somalis? How else can one explain this immoral silence coming from the rest of the world? For sure, the media is partly to blame because instead of exploring what the real issues are, they have fallen for the mantra of post-911—fighting ‘fundamentalist remnants’. Therefore, the thousands of victims in Mogadishu are supposedly ‘fundamentalist remnants’, or ‘remnants of the Islamic courts’, or ‘Islamist rebels’; so, the West and the AU have chosen to close their eyes while the ‘Islamist rebels’ are being taken care of by Meles’ Tigrean officered hordes (of course, the majority of Ethiopians do not agree with Meles on this and are sick and tired of the man’s endless wars while poor Ethiopians are dying of famine and diseases). That is the line of justification presented to the world by the media. But the truth is what we have now in Mogadishu is a popular resistance; calling it the remnants of the Islamic courts is nonsense; there may be Islamists in the ranks of the resistors but who said that Islamists have no right to life in their own country. The undeniable truth is that the city of Mogadishu is just full of the people of Mogadishu, whatever political convictions they may hold, and what should be clear to all by now is that they just do not want Meles’ forces and their collaborators–the TFG and its reptilian leader, Col. Abdullahi Yusuf.
The TFG is not a government to the people of Mogadishu nor to the vast majority of Somalis- To all intents and purposes, there is no government worthy of the name in Mogadishu or anyone’s support. The TFG, from the start, was farce foisted on the Somalis by Igad, led by Ethiopia and Kenya, while the funders, the EU and other interested foreign entities, chose to put on blinkers, while the farce was being prepared. However, it remained only a laughter inspiring farce until Meles of Ethiopia found an excuse to invade Somalia and install it in Mogadishu—delivering a modern day Vichy government for Somalia. Created in that despicable fashion, there is no chance that the TFG and its Meles picked leadership would initiate reconciliation and peace inside Somalia. If anything, the top leadership of the TFG, including the murderous colonel, are now party to the crimes being committed in Mogadishu, and should stand trail.
The question of the moment is who will bring justice to the people of Mogadishu? Will the US, party to the Meles’ intervention through funding, intelligence gathering and other actions, accept a resolution authorizing a war crimes probe in Mogadishu? It seems unlikely under the Bush regime, especially since US warplanes killed a lot of innocent nomad Somalis in the Kismayo area, the under the guise of the so-called ‘war on terror.’ Who else is out there? The Kenyans have imprisoned poor Somali refugees fleeing turmoil and handed them over to Meles’ forces, who made them disappear-what else can you expect from the man who has been tenaciously sitting at the helm in Ethiopia for the last 15 years and who resolutely clings to power at any prize, including massacring the students at Addis Ababa University in their dormitories. As for the African Union, it is supporting Meles’ actions in Mogadishu. The UN has also acquiesced to the presence of Meles’ forces and their Somali quislings. The Arab League is just too occupied with affairs closer to its center. Who remains then? Will the EU take the lead and call for an investigation?
In the end, it seems that one will help the poor Somalis to bring justice to those who have committed war crimes against them. So what else can be done? I urge all Somalis to start putting this issue forward, to gather all evidence, such as the time and place of crimes, who were the Ethiopian (Meles’) commanders and their Somali collaborators. We also should start collecting narratives from civilians. Additionally, diaspora Somalis should start putting pressure on their home governments.
We should, for a while at least, put away all our political differences and focus on this matter. I call upon Col. Yusuf’s supporters to join us in this effort-there can be no excuses for not condemning the massacres being committed in Mogadishu. At any rate, any sane person would figure out by now that Col. Abdullahi is well beyond the point of no return; so no one should entertain dreams of seeing him happily ensconced in Villa Somalia and profiting from being related to him or having supported him. Somali History shows that when one segment of the population is being massacred and the other segment stays silent, in the end, the fires will consume both segments. That is exactly what happened in Hargeisa (and all over Somaliland) in 1988. There were many side liners and many unspoken ‘kill them’ statements, from Barre’s supporters, back then. In the end, the fires ignited by Barre’s savagery consumed all Somalis. This time it is the people of Mogadishu who are being victimized by Meles and his henchman, col. Yusuf. To be silent is tantamount to being an accessory to the crimes.
__________________
Dr. Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi resides in Dubai, UAE, and can be reached at [email protected]
It’s Oct. 4, 1975. Getatchew is at home in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa. He knows the dictatorship government sees him, an outspoken critic, as a threat.
While his infant daughter sleeps in her crib and the rest of his family is at a party, Getatchew loads a .45-caliber revolver. It’s dinner time — 5 p.m.
Two men, one in a military uniform, see Getatchew waiting at his home’s gate with his revolver. They scurry away to call for assistance.
A group of 50 to 100 soldiers surround the home. Getatchew hears the whistle of bullets pass his ears and fires back.
Later he finds out the military shot 4,000 bullets into his house and considered demolishing it during the attack.
Getatchew runs out of ammunition. He tries to climb over the garden wall to escape.
He feels a bullet hit his back. He falls. A man with steel-toe boots kicks him in the head.
Where are the rest of them? he demands.
It’s just me, Getatchew utters, his mouth full of blood.
The man doesn’t believe him. He keeps kicking.
The military doesn’t know if they should leave Getatchew to die or take him to jail. The men shove him onto a truck bed and take him to the hospital.
That is the last time Getatchew sees his home in Ethiopia.
‘Like a movie’
The attack, and the incriminations that followed, pushed Getatchew out of his homeland, but his ties to a religious library brought him to a new home at St. John’s University.
Getatchew, now 75 and retired, sits in his lake home in Avon. He’s made Central Minnesota his home since 1976 — raising a family, working at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Collegeville for about 22 years and voicing his opposition to the communist influence on the Ethiopian government.
His expertise with Ethiopian manuscripts made him an invaluable resource at the library and the university. Getatchew also taught medieval studies.
Since 1973, he has spoken against the two communist governments that have run Ethiopia. He favors a democracy.
Even now, Ethiopian courts have charged Getatchew with treason for speaking out against the government in 2005. If he were ever to travel to Ethiopia, he would be jailed or hanged.
“My whole story is like a movie,” Getatchew says, sitting in his wheelchair, dressed in slacks and a warm sweater.
He now writes his life story for his family.
Hospital stay
After the attack, Getatchew lays for days on his back in the hospital. Doctors place him on a board with only a white bed sheet covering it.
He asks to be rolled over. Doctors move him.
The sheet, soaked with blood, sticks to his back. Doctors pull it off. The movement strips his back of skin.
The BBC and the Voice of America report Getatchew’s story that year.
Newspapers in England and the United States pick up the story. The international pressure proves too much for the government.
After a month in the Ethiopian hospital, Getatchew and his wife, Misrak, leave their three children to seek medical treatment near London.
When Getatchew arrives in London, hymn-singing choirs greet him at the gate. The choral salute was arranged by an organization he has served while in Ethiopia — the World Council of Churches. The organization pays for his medical bills.
“When you are rejected from your country and you are welcomed like this, what do you feel?” Getatchew asks rhetorically.
That winter, Julian Plante, then-executive director of the Hill library, visits Ethiopia’s manuscript preservation office in Addis Ababa. Getatchew, a deeply religious man, has worked with the Hill library in the past to preserve and record valuable Christian manuscripts.
Where’s Getatchew?, Plante asks.
Members of the Hill library’s Addis Abba’s office tell him what happened.
The director finds Getatchew in a London hospital.
Come to Collegeville when you are well, he says later. We have a position.
“The mercy was there,” Getatchew said. “The need was there. They had a job for me.”
Italian invasion Getatchew was born in 1931 in the Ethiopian countryside. As a boy, his parents divorce and he moves to Addis Ababa to be with his father.
Ethiopia is under Italian occupation in 1935. He and his father, who is educated as a priest in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, are homeless, living in a makeshift community in a local graveyard.
“It was almost an acropolis,” Getatchew said. His father teaches church lessons, reading and writing to the children living in the graveyard.
Italy withdraws from Ethiopia in 1941.
Getatchew studies theology and social sciences in Egypt. He then earns his doctorate in Semitic philology, the study of words, in Germany.
He settles in Addis Ababa and teaches at a university.
“That’s what I wanted to study,” Getatchew said of his love for language. “I was kidnapped by this discipline.”
Not again Getatchew sees hope when the army rebels against the Ethiopia monarchy in 1973. He wants the country’s people to have more freedom.
But the military starts ruling the country.
“There was no freedom. We wanted to have democracy, to make the monarchy a figurehead,” Getatchew said.
The government confiscates land. It stops newspapers. People starve.
The government creates a civil parliament; each major department and province appoints representatives. People in the province where Getatchew was born ask him to represent them. He sees it as a way to speak out.
“That revolution, I always compare it to a tsunami,” Getatchew said. “When a tsunami comes you run away. You can’t resist it.
Many of us tried to direct it — to redirect it. It didn’t work.”
Collegeville
Seven months after he was wheeled into a London airport on a stretcher, Getatchew contacts a travel agent.
I want to go to Collegeville, he says.
The agent scours maps. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.
The closest airport is in St. Paul. Is that OK?, she asks.
He receives a two-year visiting scholar visa.
He and Misrak discover a new home.
St. John’s gives Getatchew a job cataloging Ethiopian manuscripts.
He struggles to bring his children to the United States. Why do the children need to come if Getatchew plans to stay for only two years?, the U.S. government wonders.
St. John’s takes on his case. He will have to stay, they say. There is too much work, and he is the most qualified, they say.
Send the children, they plead.
A few months later, the family is reunited.
Getatchew still worries. St. John’s gives him one-year contracts. What if they don’t renew his work?, he wonders. He’s paralyzed. What kind of life can he give his family when he’s confined to a wheelchair? “This worry hangs around your neck,” he said.
After four or five years, he receives word the contract will not be renewed. There is no more money.
But before he can comprehend it, the university president finds him.
Don’t worry, says the Rev. Hilary Thimmesh, then-university president. Your work is not done, Thimmesh says. We will find the money.
Getatchew never worries again. His work is still not done. Although now technically retired, Getatchew continues to work at the Hill. He does research and writes about his experiences.
He also helps scholars who want to learn about his homeland. “(St. John’s) is hugely important to my family,” said Rebecca Haile, Getatchew’s oldest daughter. “For them, that’s where they came and set down roots.”
His co-workers call him an inspiration and a gift.
“He’s one of the most remarkable people I know,” said Columba Stewart, Order of St. Benedict, executive director for Hill. “I respect him. … There’s a personal story of survival, exile and making a new life in a very strange place.”
Study
Getatchew’s home office shows the luxuries of living in the United States. Hanging on his wall are the college diplomas of his six grown children from places such as Harvard and Yale. His room is filled with photos of his six grandchildren hugging him.
Despite the comforts of his current life, Getatchew watches the turmoil in his homeland. He still speaks out. His vocal opposition makes it impossible for him to go back. He visits his homeland mentally while reading its ancient manuscripts. He almost can hear the stories told in Ge’ez, a language spoken in Ethiopian churches. He becomes so immersed sometimes he forgets he’s at St. John’s. His scars from that 1975 attack are still evident. The mark where the bullet left his body still has an angry bump. His arms tell of him breaking through glass while trying to escape. His head still has a scar where the soldier kicked him. But never assume Getatchew carries pity for what has been taken away. His love for family, education and religion have
blessed him, Rebecca Haile said.
“He is able to see the joy in every (situation),” she said. “He has always been able to focus on the happiness and joyfulness. … He’s one in a million.”
By Mammo Muchie (Ethiopia) & Osman Abdulkadir Farah (Somalia)
Introduction
Once again the Horn of Africa is on the news radar screen with the usual nauseating projection and imaging of a region embroiled with a seemingly unending litany of violence, invasions, genocide, destruction, chaos, forced migration and a state of general insecurity. The recent socio-political upheavals and developments in the Horn of Africa region require deeper reflection why this state of unwholesome existence that continues to threaten life and well being persists with what appears to be a timeless abandon.
1. Each State in the Horn region is in a State!
Nearly all the states that constitute the wider Horn of Africa have one crisis or another. In Ethiopia we mention the recent setback of an election on May 15, 2005 that nearly got this ancient nation to come into the contemporary history of democracy only to frustrate the manifest will displayed by the people to self-govern by returning the incumbent in violation of what appeared on the whole to be an election result that favoured the opposition parties. It is an irony that those duly elected are in prison whilst some of those who have been de-elected are still in Government. Civil society leaders, journalists, scholars and human rights activists are still in jail even as the country is poised to celebrate its millennium on September 11, 2007! It is a real tragedy that Ethiopia may celebrate its millennium with its incumbent rulers at war with the neighbours of Eritrea and Somalia and forcing opposition leaders in jail to face grave charges of ’treason’ violating the rights of those who have been duly elected in what they believed to be a democratic process and election. Once again the enormous joy that people should have in reaching 2000 years after Christ may be eclipsed by the knowledge that the country is threatened by war that may have no end, starvation that continues to recur every year, and the ominous development more and more into repressive dictatorship. Moments like the millennium could have presented opportunities for the rulers not to be blinkered by failing to rise above the pettiness of politics to occupy the majestic height of historical imagination and presence. But in Africa we have rulers whose manner of ruling over people makes them behave like masters and not public servants, thus always falling fearful doing anything to keep their fear in abeyance by creating even more fear than learning to doing what is just and fair for people by engaging sincerely with democratic experimentation, dialogue, reconciliation, tolerance and empowering politics.
In Somalia the situation remains as chaotic as it has been since Said Barre left in haste in 1991. The breakdown of public authority and its dispersion into clan and warlordism has been the single most alarming development in Somalia. When the Islamic Union Courts (IUCs) appeared to have the upper hand in Mogadishu over the warlords, there seemed to be a sceptical reception of their role in warding off one undesirable and worse warlord groups for their own not as worse IUCs. The latter seemed to have been contaminated by some Jihadists in their midst at loggerheads with the secular Transitional Federal Government backed by Ethiopia and recognised by UN and AU. The invasion by Ethiopia backed by the current US Government against the IUCs opened the floodgate again for the warlords to resurface and embolden themselves in Somalia.
The violent overthrow of the IUCs was justified by the claim that they are ‘Islamist terrorists.’ By some accounts the IUCs were recognised to be near a delivery point of what is sorely lacking in Somalia, namely stability at least in Mogadishu if not in the whole of Somalia. By other accounts, the IUCs were part of the global terror network. However one looks at it, once again like in the Cold War period, the Horn of Africa is sadly incorporated as the African flank in the geo-politics of the so-called global war on extremism and terrorism. For the Horn of Africa to be at the forefront in the war on global terror in Africa, and play in US Government politics in its drastic compression and framing of the complexities of world politics to those who are for terror and those who fight it, means that the region is repeating the role it played during the Cold War. A region that has not learned the lessons from the cost to it of being embroiled in the Cold War is bound to repeat it in this new era of what has been described as the Global War on Terror.
In Sudan there is even more alarming development such as genocide and even modern day slavery in the Darfur area where apparently culturally ’Arabized Africans’ attack other Africans with the connivance if not active support of the militias by the Basher Government in Sudan that have been responsible for murdering and uprooting whole communities. The crises in Darfur continues to go on despite protests by the UN, EU, the Africa Union, USA, Britain and global civil society and human rights organisations. More worrying is the oft-repeated stories that practices and instances of slavery still exist in Sudan and Mauritania. The practice of selling humans in the 21st century is indeed one that Africans must never tolerate, as indeed they must never tolerate dictatorship.
In Eritrea, opposition is severely punished. Eritrea remains in a no-war, no-peace state with Ethiopia since the outbreak of the large scale war in 1998. Being together with Ethiopia or living separately did not seem to make any difference in relation to bringing about a normalised and peaceful relation amongst such geographically contiguous close neighbours. Each side accuses the other of supporting forces trying to destabilize it. It is thus one of the most confounding dilemmas trying to make sense and to searching for what would work to bring about an amicable relationship between the two warring regimes that continue to hurt the people by their inexplicable actions to stay belligerent for the long haul.. It is alarming to read the attitude of Issyas Afeworki and Meles Zenawi. Issays has been quoted to say that they have no resources to build a nation, they have no skill to build a nation, they have no knowledge to build a nation, but they are still determined to build a nation. It seems the only thing Issays seems to have is arrogance to make a nation if these quotes attributed to him are correct. And lo and behold, a nation built driven by arrogance or hubris may not endure unless there are impeccable reasons for its creation, which there may well be, that seems as yet not clear to the person who is the leader though!
Whilst Issays is determined to make a nation, Meles seems determined to ‘ethnicise’ an old nation and re- make it by parcelling it into vernacular-ethnic enclaves. Ethiopia has the history to make a nation. It has resources to make a nation, just as it has the arable land and the water to feed itself. It has the skills if not the social capital to make a nation. It has the knowledge to make a nation. Yet the current rulers are not determined to make the nation. They seem determined to parcel it into many ‘ nations, peoples and nationalities’ with ethnic-vernacular laws and grammar.
Djibouti has armies from France, and US anti-terror military contingent operating in its soil. Whilst it is not formally involved in disputes, it faces from the fallout from the region’s generalised instability. There are Afar based liberation movements operating in Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Kenya faces huge pressure from refugees and those who flee from all these numerous conflicts. It has its own ethnic tremor that may erupt into violence unless the democratic institutions outpace the ethnic agitators in the course of time. The democratic transition from KANU-dominated rule to the NRK coalition is a great historical achievement in democratic transition which none of the other states in the Horn of Africa region have attained. Whilst the issue in Kenya is sustaining democratic transition, the issue in the rest of the Horn of Africa is the rudimentary absence of any credible security order to experiment with democracy and development. The others have not yet fully emerged from being trapped in conflict.
Uganda has also faced election problems, involvement in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the destabilising armed resistance from the Lord Resistance Army, and its current involvement in the Somalia conflict by placing troops in support of the Ethiopian and American Governments’ pursuit to track Islamists in IUCs and their external allies.
What is common amongst these states is that they are to one degree or another involved in what is called the global war on terror on the side on the main protagonists consciously or unconsciously. They are also involved with each other’s problems. They provide facilities to opposition forces and refugees against each other. Recently we have seen the military intervention in Somalia .The existing pattern of relations need to change by encouraging a radically new perspective for the region’s states to move from a conflict community into a security community.
2. Negative Foreign Interventions Continue
The larger Horn of Africa region (consisting of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Sudan) has experienced greater (internal and external) political, social and economic upheavals since the 1960s. For mainly strategic reasons the region is currently considered (by the US and some European countries in the west) as an integrated part of confrontation against extremism. Here the region’s proximity to the Middle East and global shipping routes is considered vital.
Today it is no exaggeration to state that the Horn of Africa is one of the most volatile regions in the world. The region suffers from numerous political, socio-economic and cultural challenges. These problems affect not only the peoples and the countries in the regions but also the wider world. Issues such as political instability, economic and ecological degradation and cultural tensions contribute not only to the generalised state of underdevelopment but also to the numerous interlocking conflicts that have brought major regional and continental conflicts fuelling the rate of increase of regional and global migration and insecurity..
Perhaps where ‘God may fear to tread’; the Great Powers seemed willing to risk intervention. On the one hand the Great powers are openly involved militarily, on the other the fragility of the region can tempt in attracting jihads to operate wily- nilly in the region. The New World Order is becoming more like the new world and ecological disorder. There is a sigh of relief that the Cold War is not replaced by a Hot War. There is anxiety that the Cold War is not replaced by a peaceful, mature and sane world. We have now the current ruler of the major power drastically and radically reducing world politics to the simplicities of either for terror or against it, in the same way during the war the politics was reduced either for America or the Soviet Union. Once again our local elites have bought in this politics for reasons nothing to do with any grander purpose other than to address their immediate fears and concerns by tagging behind the current US Government’s formulation of the world disposition of forces for the 21st century.
3. Deadly Arms Continue to flow unregulated into the Region
The risk of a power vacuum is huge. The fact that Somalia has no state is a threat not only to the region but Africa and the world. The region continues to be awash with various types of deadly weapons, fuelled through endless conflicts rooted from the period of the European Scramble for Africa (indeed if not earlier!) to the period of de-colonisation in the 60s, and throughout the post-colonial period.
The region has been a victim of the arms race sponsored supplied to varied groups largely but not exclusively by the ex-colonial powers. And during the Cold War, the super powers who did a classic swap between Ethiopia (from USA to USSR) and Somalia( from USSR to USA) during the 1977-78 War dumped huge arms to a region whose poverty requires making arms and armies history to make poverty history!! The region does have the trained armies to use modern deadly weapons that cost millions of lives. In certain occasions rulers in the region received these weapons as an integrated part of the development aid from major powers. Warlords, for instance those in Somalia, used to purchase it from the numerous open markets in and around some Western and Eastern European countries. To the surprise of many, some of the notorious warlords in Mogadishu as late as last year terrorised innocent civilians with new weapons imported from the UK, a western country that officially supports the UN weapons embargo against Somalia. Thus, the flow of weaponry and easy accessibility appears to constitute one of the main challenges to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.
Small arms proliferation follows protracted conflict. The Horn of Africa can attract weapons of mass destruction. The fact that Somalia has no state with a regulatory power to enforce control on arms means that potentially any hazardous weapons can enter the region via this open border. Weapons that might seriously harm the people of the region and beyond can be shipped into it and may be used. Those evil and dark forces from outside can also use Somalia’s current chaotic situation to experiment with deadly weapons and virus. The longer Somali stays in a state of chaos, the more likely that the whole region and Africa can be a victim of yet untold perfidious evil. And all those who continue to unsettle Somalians to sort their affairs will go down in history for having brought untold suffering on the people of the region. This crime is way beyond anything that humanity can bear. It is this danger that must be stopped by finding a workable and stabilising settlement in Somalia without one internal and external group seeking exclusive control without the consent of the Somali people.
4. The Wars between Somalia and Ethiopia: Addressing the root cause
The X-Mas war is the third major war between Somalia and Ethiopia. Since the independence of Somalia, Ethiopia and Somalia had two major wars. The first took place in 1964 under the emperor four years after Somalia got its independence from Britain and Italy. The first war has been blamed on Somali irredentism due to the claim of the Ogaden region by the then Somali Government. The Ogaden is a semi desert region the British transferred to Ethiopia following the end of World War two.
The Second war was initiated by Said Barre’s Government in 1977. Receiving military aid from the Soviet Union and free oil from some Middle Eastern regimes, the dictatorial Barre regime confidently launched a surprise attack against Ethiopia in 1977. With free oil from Iraq and the Gulf, together with weapons from many countries, the Somali army captured a large portion of the Ogaden. Allies of then left-wing regime in Addis Ababa, Cuba, Yemen and the Soviets that mysteriously changed sides led one year after the start of the war the defeat of the Somali army. Returning to Somalia in disarray and demoralised, senior officers of the Somali army engaged in a failed coup led by, among other officers, president of the current transitional federal Somali government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Coup leaders that were captured were sentenced to death or sent to long term imprisonment.
Unlike the two earlier wars initiated by the Somalia side, this time the current Government in Ethiopia initiated the armed invasion based on the assumption of an IUC verbal declaration of war and invitation by the Transitional Federal Government. This makes it new. It looks the regime in Ethiopia is too embroiled and is not likely to extricate itself as it sought possible when it declared entry into the fray. The armed resistance is savagely flaring.
If the Ogaden is the reason for the conflict, the main culprit must be British imperialism that arranged to cede one of the ’stars’ to the Ethiopian emperor’s request whilst sections of the British foreign office upheld the ’five stars’ Somali nationalist position. Like Kashmir, the Balfour Declaration, the Skyes-Picot Agreement in dividing the Arab nation, it appears the same imperial trick or formula of setting up the natives to fight it out potentially igniting conflict later was left behind. And predictably the ensuing post- colonial state in Somali cannot have a five stars flag without having a five star territory. The wars ensued to match the stars of the flag to match with the territories making all now victims Somalians, Ethiopians and Africans as a whole, and others who sell the weapons reaped benefits.
How to address without inciting nationalist passion how this imperial formula is behind the reason that left the issue that deflected Somali and Ethiopia to address issues of development rather than settling borders is indeed an important question. If this issue can be confronted with reason and tolerance by demanding those who created the formula to pay for the way they set Ethiopia against Somalia and the vice versa would be the right approach. The Ethiopians and Somalias should not fight but they must unite to demand why this formula was created and what was the reason for this double standard of giving five stars to Somalia whilst giving one of the stars to Ethiopia at the same time?
Of course, the situation in Somalia has gone well out of control to bring back negotiation and dialogue to sort this vexing problem out. But if the true history of how this conflict was formed is known, perhaps the local actors can take note and use it to modify their behaviour with it.
5. Is there a way out?
The future of politics in this region is very difficult to predict. The worst case scenario will be if America and the regime in Addis Ababa continue to insist that the conflict in the Horn of Africa is part of the so-called global war against terrorism. Then prolonged suffering and hardship awaits the people in the region. There will be a war of religion and it will affect all countries in the region and beyond. Religious warlords will emerge. This can become a self- fulling prophecy internationalising the conflict and making it impossible to see a way out. This option is the worst one and unfortunately the logic of the conflict judging by recent events seem to go in this direction.
The preferred approach would be if the warlord led government in Mogadishu can engage with the principle of broad- based civic inclusion where they invite all relevant political and social actors, even the leadership of ICU to construct and find a comprehensive lasting solution to the Somali people and to the region as well. If this reconciliation approach is chosen internally, and if there is also a shared approach by all those who have one interest or another to support reconciliation rather than partisanship and belligerence, then a window of opportunity may be open… The problem is that the warlord government does not have the vision and means to host and undertake such process. In addition, large constituents of the Somali people do not have any respect for warlord members that dominate the government. This option will be very good, but its chance is not yet that realistic.
The role of mediators and honest peace brokers is very critical. But such honest mediators that can enjoy the respect from the various groups are not easy to deploy. The AU can emerge as one of such mediators. The EU can also if it plays that role. Even the USA and other states can. Norway has been quietly taking such roles and doing reasonably well in many difficult conflicts such as Sri Lanka, Sudan and others. Even those in the region can play a constructive role instead of being party to the wrong politics imported from outside and acting as warriors and compounding the difficulties a very difficult region.
If the AU takes its mediating role seriously, it needs to be prepared not to fail but succeed. The AU can unhinge the deadlock if it is backed by the resources and power of the major and pivotal African countries such as South Africa and Nigeria and others who are in the conflict already. Also Older and wiser statesmen like President Nelson Mandela and others who most Somalis even ICU members, have respect should be used by the AU to support its efforts.
The US and EU should support the AU. The current US posture does not seem able to bring peace to Somalia. Nonetheless, some surprising contacts between the US and IUC have taken place. The US embassy in Nairobi and its ambassador met the leader of ICU, whom the media claims to have sought refuge in Kenya. Surprisingly, the US diplomats are insisting that some in the ICU leadership should be included in the Transitional arrangement. It may after all appear that America may have learnt a lesson or two from the numerous mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq that it will not pay to isolate certain legitimate political groups in these countries. If the US Government begins to treat the Somali issue differently, this will hugely help to change the conflict environment into a security environment.
Another important aspect is that the EU, the UN and the US do not share a shared approach on how in the long term to solve the Somali conflict. As experiences in Puntland and Somaliland show Somalis will only enjoy viable peace when they are left alone, in combining traditional authorities with certain form of modern state governance. Any mediation intervention should be mindful of traditional sensibilities whilst addressing universal values of human rights, rule of law and democratic governance.
The Diaspora communities in the world from the region must play a constructive role to contribute for peace and stability in the Somalia and the wider Horn. There is a need to use modern technology to communicate and create shared values in order to address the specific problems of the region. The Diaspora can be a creative and regenerative force or can enter into the conflicts of the region. There must be an intelligent way to intervene to promote regional security, creativity by providing resources and knowledge.
It is increasingly becoming evident that through the internet and the extended mobility and communication opportunities, the Horn of African migrants scattered all over the world retains daily communication with those they have left behind. This communication can be constructive or destructive in a region with many intersecting and cross-cutting conflicts. The opportunity for transforming the destructive communication into constructive communication requires learning, knowledge, capacity and research. How to mediate the communication from the scattered migrants to those in the region by strengthening research, knowledge, training, learning, capacity building will constitute an important part of the strategy of intervention.
Concluding Remarks
We propose to bring together the region’s Diaspora communities to support a:
1. Horn of Africa Research Network on Regional Integration and Development (HANRID). This network will Undertake and build research and knowledge through analytical scrutiny on the dynamics of conflict and migration, underdevelopment, breakdown in governance, state collapse in creating new translational modes of production and relations calling for newer and sharper tools of social and economic analytical approaches and strategies to input knowledge and information into policy making and improving the quality of debate and engagement by fostering civically engaged citizens.
2. Tap into the global pool of Horn of Africa’s Diaspora as knowledge and resource bearers to connect their own activities and resources to the region’s conflict resolution efforts and shaping the productive power and development futures of the region and wider Africa. The objective is to found, design, and settle how a Horn of Africa Research Network that will create policy forums, knowledge production and outreach community activities.
3. We have published a book on Diaspora and State Reconstitution in Somalia that will provide information and help in communicating with the wider Diaspora and home communities. We provide the link for the book:
The book addresses empirical research on how the Diaspora lives, works and communicates with their own communities at home.
4. We have planned a workshop that will create a forum for the region’s researchers to present their research and network and develop a shared understanding and trust to support the region: see link at
www.ihis.aau.dk
www.ihis.aau.dk/development
www.ihis.aau.dk/ccis
There is more we can all do. Unless self- initiated, constructive and productive approaches are taken to bring the region to share a common approach to problems and conflict resolution, we will continue to experience problems. There is a need to build resources for the capacity to make it possible to negotiate out of any difficulty and conflict however difficult. This capacity building must be built on a sustainable basis not only in the Horn of Africa but all over Africa.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Kamilat Mehdi, 21, had a bright future ahead of her. She dreamt about doing a degree and becoming an air hostess.
All that changed one night when she was walking home from work with her two sisters and a stalker threw sulphuric acid in her face.
She is now lying in hospital disfigured beyond recognition.
Her skin is red raw, her eyelids have almost been entirely destroyed and her hairline has been burnt back.
“I feel very sick now. Every day they need to do something without anaesthetic so it is hard to accept and it is very painful,” says Kamilat.
Her sisters, Zeyneba and Zubyeda, escaped with lesser injuries but their faces were also burnt by the acid.
Shockwaves
“We were on our way home from our parents’ shop. I was with my sisters,” Kamilat says.
“One guy came and he looked like a drunkard but he wasn’t drunk. He forced us to go down a dark alley and then someone came and threw acid in our faces.”
Kamilat fell to the floor unconscious while her sisters tried to get help. She lay there until her brother Ismael arrived.
Ismael says his sister knew her attacker.
“He bothered her for a long time – at least four years,” he says.
“He gave her a hard time but she didn’t tell the family for fear that something would happen to them. He was always saying he would use a gun on them.”
This incident has sent shockwaves through the community in the capital, Addis Ababa, and amongst Ethiopians abroad.
Ismael says he has received calls from Ethiopians living around the world saying how angry and shocked they were about the attack.
Two men have appeared in court in Addis Ababa in connection with the attack.
Sexual harassment
“I hope the court will impose a proportional penalty within a short period of time,” Justice Minister Assefa Kiseto says.
“That could make others learn from this and refrain from committing this crime. I think this kind of crime is a crime against the whole nation not just a crime against Kamilat.”
Attacks like this are rare in Ethiopia but women’s groups in Addis Ababa say that stalking and sexual harassment are common problems.
The Ending Violence Against Women report published by the United Nations at the end of last year said almost 60% of Ethiopian women were subjected to sexual violence at some point in their lives.
Mahdere Paulos from the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association says they would like to see a specific provision in Ethiopian law that tackles stalking and harassment so that there is better protection for young girls like Kamilat in the future.
“The problem starts with stalking – the end result is something else,” she says.
“It might end in grave bodily injury, it might end in death and it might end in different difficult situations and that’s why we want it to be taken seriously.”
Following the uproar at Kamilat’s attack, the Supreme Court announced that it has put in place procedures to help pass verdicts on such cases within two days.
And Ms Mahdere says some progress has been made by the government over the last few years in tackling violence against women.
There is a newly established ministry of women’s affairs; there was a push before the 2005 election to get more women into parliament and there has been a complete overhaul of the penal code to beef up laws to protect women.
But in some rural areas, the traditional practice of abducting young girls and forcibly marrying them remains common – in one region it accounts for some 92% of all marriages, according to the most recent figures from 2003.
Kamilat and her sister have now flown to Paris for medical treatment, which is being financed by businessman Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi.
All that changed one night when she was walking home from work with her two sisters and a stalker threw sulphuric acid in her face.