ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said on Wednesday he would keep troops inside neighbouring Somalia until “jihadists” were defeated.
In a move supported by the United States but providing a target for militants, Meles sent thousands of troops into Somalia in late 2006 to help the nation’s struggling government topple an Islamist movement that had captured most of the south.
Since then, allied Ethiopian Woyanne-Somali troops have faced near-daily attacks in an insurgency drawing comparisons with Iraq and undermining stability across east Africa.
“When we exit from Somalia, it will be at the time when we are convinced that there is no imminent danger to our country,” Meles told [the fake] parliament. Ethiopians are anxious about the financial and human cost of their intervention.
Both Ethiopia, which is the Horn of Africa’s main military power [with 6 million starving children] and sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, and Washington say Somali insurgents have links to al Qaeda.
“Ethiopian Woyanne forces did not enter Somalia to control the country, but to make sure that extremist forces will not be in power in that country,” Meles added lied.
“The Islamic Courts Union in Somalia declared jihad against Ethiopia twice along with all sorts of anti-peace forces… It was our responsibility to resolve the huge wave of jihadists.”
Meles, and U.S. officials, say foreign militants have poured into Somalia to join the conflict. The Ethiopian leader has in the past said Ethiopia has about 4,000 troops in Somalia, but locals say the real number is far higher.
REBELS “NEUTRALISED”
During a question-and-answer session in the Ethiopian legislature, Meles made no reference to an explosion that killed five people late on Tuesday in Addis Ababa.
Authorities said the blast on a minibus, the latest in a string of such explosions in the Ethiopia capital, was caused by “terrorists” but did not elaborate.
In the past, it has blamed neighbour and foe Eritrea for fomenting trouble inside Ethiopia, an accusation Asmara derides as a smokescreen to distract attention from internal problems.
Meles said Ethiopian Woyanne troop presence in Somalia was enabling the government to negotiate with clan leaders and hopefully bring reconciliation to a nation mired in conflict since the 1992 toppling of a military dictator.
Turning to domestic affairs, he said Ethiopian rebel group the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which operates in a region on the border with Somalia, had been largely “neutralised” by a military offensive going on for a year.
“There is no organised ONLF operation in the Somali region. It has been neutralised,” he said. “There may be a few individuals and we are picking them one-by-one.”
The ONLF denies that, saying despite a campaign of terror in the region, the army has not defeated it.
(Editing by Andrew Cawthorne) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on th e top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) ([email protected]; +254 20 2224 717)
To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice (Proverbs 21: 3).
Do Western donors know that their donated money to help the hungry in Ethiopia and other poor nations has been used to buy sophisticated weapons ‘to fight terrorism’ instead of preventing hunger, to buy bullets instead of medicine, and to build military barracks instead of shelters for the homeless?
Famine, poverty, and disease have gone rampant in Ethiopia but never terrorism. Ethiopia is blessed for not having foreign terrorism, but cursed for producing famine, poverty, disease, and home-grown terrorists such as Meles, a self-declared dictator who is terrorizing the Ethiopian people for almost twenty years.
Meles Seitanawi (Zenawi) has turned the good intention of the donors into evil acts by misappropriating the donated money into his personal use to buy weapons and to bully his neighbors and his own people. For this reason, donors must be aware of the evil act of Meles Seitanawi before they send their donation to help the Ethiopian hungry children.
The hungry children of Ethiopia may get only a fraction of the donated money, but the rest is gone to buying weapons and military gadgets to maim and kill or destroy the opposing parties. The donors do not understand what I and others have told them what their donated money is doing in Ethiopia: It is killing innocent Ethiopians instead of helping the hungry and the sick.
It is my hope these donor nations will read Dr. Loretta Napoleoni’s books, Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism and Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zareqawi and the New Generation, on the economics of terrorism. Donors must stop donating money to Ethiopia unless they are hundred percent sure that the children of Ethiopia get all the donated money without being siphoned off the government.
At this critical time, one cannot distinguish the difference between the donated money and the money given to a particular church at certain times. On both cases, auditing is lacking, and that is why we see extremely wealthy preachers in some churches and ruthless dictators in some countries like Ethiopia, Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Every Sunday, millions of Christians pour their money into the offering plates, but most of them do not really know where their money goes. In the same way, many celebrities and wealthy nations like the United States, Canada, England, and others donate their tax payers’ money to help the people of Ethiopia and other poor nations, but their money has become a deadly poison that has killed hundreds of innocent people Ethiopians in Somalia, Ogaden, Oromo, and the Amhara regions. Meles Seitanawi is using the donated money to buy weapons to destroy his opponents so that he could stay in power unopposed for ever and ever.
Ethiopia needs help from the West to overthrow dictator Meles Seitanawi, who has misused the donated money for his political survival instead of helping needy Ethiopians. For sure, Meles’ superficial government will collapse if the West and the World Bank stop supporting him, and instead turn their attention to helping Ethiopians to have a democratically elected government.
When Ethiopians tried to oust dictator Meles from his office by the ballot box at the 2005 elections, the West helped Meles by supporting him financially and politically, instead of condemning him publicly for over turning the people’s choice.
Even now, after Meles has slaughtered hundreds of Ethiopians, the fake election board has declared him a winner of last month’s local elections, which were boycotted by all opposition parties because of the rampant fraud. The West, I’m afraid, is going to repeat the same mistake by accepting the result of this farcical election.
In conclusion, the more money Meles gets from the West, the more harm he will continue to cause on the people of Ethiopia and people of the region.
Sources inside the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front (TPLF) in Ethiopia have disclosed that a secret military court has passed a death sentence on four air force pilots who sought political asylum in 2006 while on a training mission in Israel.
According to the sources, a TPLF-appointed court at the Air Force has passed a “guilty” verdict and a death sentence in absentia on Capt. Samuel Getachew, Lt. Himanot Gebre Mariam, Lt. Fikresleasie Feleke, and Lt. Yitabrek Takele.
The TPLF regime’s military is currently plagued with a series of defections. During the past few years, senior officers, including generals and colonels, as well as scores of junior officers and privates have defected to other countries seeking asylum.
It is also to be recalled that a few weeks following the May 2005 fraudulent elections, Lt. Behailu Gebre and Lt. Abiyot Manguday fled to Djibouti flying a military helicopter. Ethiopians around the world made a vigorous effort to rescue those officers from being handed over to Meles Zenawi’s regime while they remained in Djibouti. Reversing the initial promise it gave to provide them with protection, the Government of President Omar Gulleh sent them back to Ethiopia, to certain torture and death, in flagrant violation of international conventions and protocols that accord protection for political refugees. After their forcible return to Ethiopia, Lts. Behailu and Abiyot have disappeared without a trace. It’s believed that they have been executed.
Other Air force pilots who fled the country, including veterans such as Captain Teshome Tenkolu and eight pilots who were on a training mission in Belarus, have managed to resettle in European countries where they are protected and far away from the sad and cruel fate befallen Lts. Behilu and Abiyot.
Withing the past year, General Alemshet Degefe, head of the Air force, and his deputies were summarily dismissed after a fall out with officials of the ruling party, TPLF, and replaced with party loyalists from Tigray region, including, General Molla Hailemariam, head of the air force; General Tadesse Worede, head of Military Staff School; General Seyoum Hagos, chief for eastern command; and General Yohannes Gebremeskel, chief of central command. General Samora Yunus, a TPLF Central Committee member, remains Chief of Staff.
The TPLF regime’s military continues to face serious discontent and low morale, in part, due to lack of a merit-based system and professionalism. The crisis facing the military is compounded by the quagmire in Somalia.
Sources inside the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front (TPLF) in Ethiopia have disclosed that a secret military court has passed death sentences on four air force pilots who sought political asylum in 2006 while on a training mission in Israel.
According to the sources, a TPLF-appointed court at the Air Force has passed a “guilty” verdict and a death sentence in absentia on Capt. Samuel Getachew, Lt. Himanot Gebre Mariam, Lt. Fikresleasie Feleke, and Lt. Yitabrek Takele.
The TPLF regime’s military is currently plagued with a series of defections. During the past few years, senior officers, including generals and colonels, as well as scores of junior officers and privates have defected to other countries seeking asylum.
It is also to be recalled that a few weeks following the May 2005 fraudulent elections, Lt. Behailu Gebre and Lt. Abiyot Manguday fled to Djibouti flying a military helicopter. Ethiopians around the world made a vigorous effort to rescue those officers from being handed over to Meles Zenawi’s regime while they remained in Djibouti. Reversing the initial promise it gave to provide them with protection, the Government of President Omar Gulleh sent them back to Ethiopia, to certain torture and death, in flagrant violation of international conventions and protocols that accord protection for political refugees. After their forcible return to Ethiopia, Lts. Behailu and Abiyot have disappeared without a trace. It’s believed that they have been executed.
Other Air force pilots who fled the country, including veterans such as Captain Teshome Tenkolu and eight pilots who were on a training mission in Belarus, have managed to resettle in European countries where they are protected and far away from the sad and cruel fate befallen Lts. Behilu and Abiyot.
Withing the past year, General Alemshet Degefe, head of the Air force, and his deputies were summarily dismissed after a fall out with officials of the ruling party, TPLF, and replaced with party loyalists from Tigray region, including, General Molla Hailemariam, head of the air force; General Tadesse Worede, head of Military Staff School; General Seyoum Hagos, chief for eastern command; and General Yohannes Gebremeskel, chief of central command. General Samora Yunus, a TPLF Central Committee member, remains Chief of Staff.
The TPLF regime’s military continues to face serious discontent and low morale, in part, due to lack of a merit-based system and professionalism. The crisis facing the military is compounded by the quagmire in Somalia.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The ‘opposition’ won only one seat in Addis Ababa, and the guy is not even alive, as reported by The Reporter. The election was a total joke.
——————
By Tsegaye Tadesse (Reuters)
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s ruling party swept local polls largely boycotted by opposition parties who accused the government of intimidating voters and blocking their candidates, results released on Sunday showed.
The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) declared Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) victor of the first vote in the Horn of Africa nation since 2005 elections ended in deadly violence.
Out of 623 districts, the EPRDF won 559 seats and won all but one of 39 parliament seats up for grabs in by-elections, the board said.
The largest opposition party in parliament, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, pulled out three days before the April 13 start of the polls. The Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement pulled out before a second round was held a week later.
“The election in which a total of over 3.5 million candidates from 30 political parties participated were conducted in a free and peaceful manner and in accordance with the law of the country’, the Election Board said.
It said out of a total over 26 million registered voters, 24.5 million or 93 percent voted.
EPRDF also won all major seats in the administration of the capital Addis Ababa.
It had been run by caretaker administrators after opposition politicians who won most of the seats there were jailed on charges of usurping the state after the 2005 polls.
They have since been pardoned after a genocide and treason trial that dragged for two years and drew widespread criticism from human rights and democracy watchdogs.
Two rounds of post-election violence saw more than 200 people killed in battles between security forces and opposition protesters. The violence and an ensuing crackdown on opposition leaders tarnished Meles’ once-sterling Democratic credentials.
But analysts say the courtroom pursuit of the opposition effectively splintered its cohesion, just after it had made its biggest-ever political gains at the ballot box.
Endrias Eshete, who is known as the butcher of Addis Ababa University, has arrived at Dulles Airport in Washington DC today. He was taken to a van provided by the Woyanne embassy in a wheelchair. The tutor of Meles Zenawi’s daughter, Samuel Assefa, who also acts as an ambassador of Ethiopian in Washington DC, was at the air port to greet him.
Meles Zenawi appointed Endrias Eshete as head of the Addis Ababa University to stamp out any criticism of the Woyanne regime by the university’s faculty and students. Endrias allowed, and often invited, Meles’s death squads, the Agazi special forces, and the notorious Federal police to enter the AAU campus and attack the students. Under Endrias’s watch thousands of AAU students have been savagely attacked, tortured, imprisoned and killed.
Endrias Eshete and Ambassador Samuel Assefa are old time drinking buddies and close friends of Meles Zenawi’s family. Samuel is a personal tutor and chaperon of Meles’s older daughter. When she was admitted to Georgetown University in Washington DC about two years ago, Meles removed the previous ambassador, Kassahun Chekol, and sent Samuel Assefa, who has no diplomatic experience, to DC as an ambassador. Samuel’s main job, however, is not diplomacy. He is a personal servant to the dictator’s daughter.
Meles Zenawi appointed Endrias Eshete as head of the Addis Ababa University to stamp out any criticism of the Woyanne regime by the university’s faculty and students. Endrias allowed, and often invited, Meles’s death squads, the Agazi special forces, and the notorious Federal police to enter the AAU campus and attack the students. Under Endrias’s watch thousands of AAU students have been savagely attacked, tortured, imprisoned and killed.