ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Woyanne blamed rebels backed by arch-foe Eritrea on Tuesday after two bombs killed three people and wounded more than a dozen in the capital.
The attacks in Addis Ababa late on Monday came a day after the nation held the first round of local, regional and federal elections that have prompted opposition claims of harassment.
“This is the work of the enemy, trying to disrupt Ethiopia’s ongoing democratic elections,” Information Minister Berhan Hailu told Reuters. No arrests have been made yet, police said.
Ethiopian state media said the explosions tore through two petrol stations in the city at the same time, killing and wounding residents who were queuing to buy fuel. Bloodstains and charred clothing lay at the scene of one of the blasts.
Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, blamed the attacks on separatist rebels.
“The early stages of our investigation indicate that organisations like the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, who are organised and financed by the Eritrean government, are responsible,” he told Reuters.
The government has often blamed rebels backed by Asmara for attacks in the past. Eritrea routinely rejects the charges.
(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Writing by Lisa Ntungicimpaye; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: A human rights group said Friday that attacks on opposition candidates in Ethiopia had doomed hopes for fair elections this month and it was now “too late to salvage” the vote.
Human Rights Watch said it found that candidates and prospective voters had been threatened, attacked and arrested in the lead-up to the elections. Ethiopia will hold local, regional and some federal elections on April 13 and 20. The main opposition party said this week it will boycott the polls.
“It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the (the ruling party’s) near-monopoly on power at the local level,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation.”
Findings from a two-week field study by the group in western Ethiopia support allegations made by the main opposition party, which says that 14,000 of its candidates have been forced to drop out of the race in western and southern Ethiopia because of intimidation, arrest and attempted murder.
Another opposition group says around 3,000 of its candidates have also had to drop out in similar circumstances.
The main opposition party announced Thursday it would boycott the elections. Opposition leader Bulcha Demeksa told The Associated Press that democracy has gotten worse since a 1991 coup brought Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to power.
“Democracy in Ethiopia is stillborn. It is not active now,” he said.
Officials from the National Election Board of Ethiopia denied allegations of irregularities, saying reports of threats and intimidation could not be proven.
“We have a vision as a board, and this vision is to see a valid democratic order in our country,” said deputy board chairman Addisu Gebreigzabhier.
Ethiopians will go to the polls over the next two Sundays, choosing among 4.5 million candidates for about 4 million seats at the local, regional and federal level. Nearly every open seat has a candidate from the ruling party, election officials said.
Election officials say there are 26 million registered voters, about a third of Ethiopia’s estimated population of 80 million.
Ethiopia has struggled with free elections and human rights issues in the past. In 2005, police shot 193 protesters in the aftermath of a hotly contested general election that was condemned for its irregularities by international observers. Zenawi, who was re-elected for his third five-year term, said he believed police were too forceful in controlling protesters but maintains the results were valid.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s [fake] opposition accused the government Woyanne of intimidation on Sunday as voters went to the polls for the first time since deadly post-election protests three years ago.
State radio said voters lined up peacefully from dawn to cast ballots. Prime Minister Dictator Meles Zenawi’s government is expecting a big win, having fielded 4 million candidates for some 3.8 million local council and parliamentary seats on offer.
All Ethiopia’s 32 opposition parties fools combined managed only to put forward a few thousand hopefuls.
Bulcha Demeksa, leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDP), said most of his party’s candidates had been threatened and forced to pull out of the race.
“We could only run 2 percent of the 6,000 candidates we wanted to,” he said. “And there is a very low turnout today, there is no interest. This is very far from democracy.”
The biggest parliamentary opposition party, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), had already withdrawn its 20,000 candidates before election day, saying many had been prevented from registering by the authorities.
Meles’ special adviser, Bereket Simon, denied there had been any political intimidation or harassment.
“The opposition’s complaints have been investigated by the National Electoral Board and none of them were valid,” he said.
“Despite what happened in 2005, Ethiopians have shown a high commitment to the democratization process,” he told Reuters.
Demonstrators took to the streets after polls in May 2005 that the opposition alleged were rigged. A parliamentary inquiry said 199 civilians and police were killed and 30,000 people arrested. The government denied rigging the ballot.
This week, a report on the current polls by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said its researchers noted “systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas”.
Election officials said 26 million people — about a third of Ethiopia’s 77 million population — were eligible to vote.
Casting her ballot in the capital Addis Ababa, 27-year-old secretary Senait Yoseph said she was voting for the government.
“This government is the best we have ever had for development,” she said. “We’ll have no more violence.”
But Eshetu Tsegaye, a 58-year-old shop owner sat smoking outside a school being used as a polling centre, said he would not be venturing inside.
“I don’t support the government and we have no real opposition running this year,” he said. “Who can I vote for?”
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Dawn in the Merkato breaks over a tangle of streets jammed with shouting hawkers and towering pyramids of ripe produce from Ethiopia’s fertile countryside. Today it is a popular destination for sunburnt foreign tourists, expensive cameras poised to capture lively scenes from one of Africa’s largest open-air markets.
Few of them, unloading from tour buses today, know that less then three years ago these bustling streets were stained with the blood of murdered citizens who had flooded into the center of Ethiopia’s capital city to protest the contested re-election of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
“People were pissed off,” says Eskinder Nega, who was a columnist and publisher for several Ethiopian newspapers during the 2005 protests. “It was the first time we really had hope, and when the elections were stolen, people were angry. … It wasn’t planned — people just started pouring into the streets,” Nega said.
The government reaction was swift. According to Amnesty International, 187 civilians were killed during those demonstrations and thousands of others arrested.
Protesters, mostly young people and students, fell in the streets of the Merkato with bullets through their hearts and foreheads, a detail that led many to believe they were purposefully killed by specially trained military snipers, not regular riot police.
Ethiopian publications and journalists that covered these events, especially those that focused on mounting human rights abuses, didn’t escape the wrath of the government either. At least 14 journalists, editors and publishers were arrested and all private newspapers that criticized government actions during or after the elections were shut down.
When they first saw their photos on the news, Nega and his wife, Serkalem Fasil, went underground. They were in hiding for almost a month until the authorities finally caught up with them in the fall of 2005. For Fasil, who was one month pregnant at the time, it was her first trip to jail for journalism deemed seditious by the Ethiopian government. It would be Nega’s seventh.
THE TORTURE CHAMBER
The police were angry when they first captured the couple, explains Nega, sitting in an airy cafe in Addis Ababa nine months after their acquittal and release. Both of them were roughed up during their
capture.
Nega recalls even harsher treatment during previous stints as a political prisoner in Ethiopia. “I was in an isolation cell at that time. They came for me in the middle of the night,” Nega recalls, calmly explaining how one night he was blindfolded and dragged by his armpits into another room he can only refer to as the “torture chamber.” “They flip you over onto your back with your feet in the air, and then hit you on the bottom of your feet, and everywhere with an electrical cord. I couldn’t move for weeks afterward.”
Nega’s story echoes accounts of intimidation, arrests and beatings recounted by journalists in many parts of the world. Alarmingly, these accounts of iron-fisted censorship emerge not only from the notoriously repressive regimes that often make the news such as North Korea, Burma or Iran. Just as often they come from the political darlings of the United States’ foreign policy; places like Pakistan, Egypt and more recently Ethiopia.
The “War on Terror” has allowed U.S. leaders to re-introduce a Cold War-style paradigm, in which countries slip simply into the categories of democratic and undemocratic. But most of the world eludes these dogmatic categorizations — with many countries caught in a web of geopolitical forces and troubled histories manipulated by authoritarian leaders who are tolerated, if not supported by the “democratic world.”
These countries linger in the great swath of gray ignored by the black and white rhetoric of the “War on Terror”; leaders here are often seen as strategic to the Western world in ways that allow for a blurring of democratic expectations. A kind of collective squinting obscures some of the brutal realities that threaten to muddy the path on the way to larger strategic goals.
DEMOCRATIC DREAMS DASHED
“I want a democratic country for Ethiopia, I want to contribute to that. I am a child of the First Amendment,” says Nega, who spent his formative years in Washington, D.C., after his parents fled the communist Derg regime that ruled Ethiopia during the 1970s and 1980s.
When the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by current Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, drove out the Derg in 1991, Nega returned armed with democratic values he says he picked up in the United States, and began a career in journalism. But the end of communisim, it turned out, did not automatically signal the beginning of democracy.
“[Before the 2005 elections] we had press freedom not because the ruling party wanted it, but because we paid the sacrifice” says Nega, referencing his previous stints in prison as well as those served by scores of fellow Ethiopian journalists. Those who dared to ask for more from their government, using the press to push for reforms, representation and accountability, or even tried to amuse readers by poking fun of their leaders in political cartoons, would often receive a late-night visit from the police.
Over the course of seven years Faisal and Nega owned three different Amharic-language papers all of which were criticized for having an “anti-government bias” and later even inciting violence. Nega rebuffs these claims, saying their papers were independent, having no association with specific opposition parties, and that they attacked the government primarily for its human rights record, which he insists is a nonpartisan issue.
But any illusions Nega might have still held that his country was on a rocky but progressive march toward democracy were shattered after the 2005 elections.
With political alliances and development aid from Western countries on the rise, the Ethiopian government was under pressure to produce internationally-endorsed election results. Ninety percent of registered voters in the country showed up eagerly at the polls in May 2005 — but how they actually voted is still a matter of contention.
When early returns indicated a surprising amount of support for the opposition, the vote counting was disrupted and eventually the ruling party declared itself the victor. Angry voters responded in two waves of protests that shook Addis Ababa over the course of the next six months.
As the blood of protesters was spilled in the streets of Addis, and many of their colleagues were swept up in mass arrests, Nega and Fasil knew this wasn’t just another routine round of political intimidation.
They hid, watching their photographs flash on the government TV station as charges of genocide and high treason were leveled against them. In fear for their lives, they tried to flee to Kenya, but their location was given away before the proper travel plans could be made.
As horrified as Nega was with the actions of his own government, his disillusionment was only deepened by the reinforcement the EPRDF received from the leaders of a country he’d admired for so long. While the European Union decried widespread irregularities in the 2005 elections and condemned violence and arrests, The Carter Center (officially representing the United States) expressed concerns over alleged irregularities but supported the National Election Board’s declared results.
As Nega and Fasil sat in prison over the next 17 months, Ethiopia’s relationship with the United States was only strengthened. Today, a year after their release, the ties that bind the two governments are as strong as ever.
PROXY WAR IN SOMALIA
The rise of the “War on Terror” has turned a nation of 77 million people defined in the West by poverty and famine into a powerful military force strategically situated in the tumultuous Horn of Africa. While Ethiopia received only $928,00 in military aid from the United States from 1999 to 2001, it received $16.8 million in assistance from 2002 to 2004, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
When Islamist judges in neighboring Somalia emerged from a decade of warlord driven chaos as a unified force in the summer of 2006, the United States and Ethiopia found themselves with a common enemy.
For the United Sates, still smarting from its military misadventure in Somalia in 1993, the idea of an Islamist government in the Horn of Africa, and a possible safe haven for terrorists, was unacceptable. For Ethiopia, looking to solidify its regional hegemony, and already battling an insurgency by its own Somali population in the Ogaden region, the reunification of Somalia under the banner of Islam was equally unpalatable.
Even with alleged support from Egypt, Eritrea and foreign Islamist fighters, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) government was easily driven out of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, within a matter of weeks by thousands of Ethiopian troops trained and supported by the U.S. military to an extent that neither government has disclosed to date. But in the year since, Ethiopia’s military dominance has proven susceptible to guerilla tactics in the same way American forces have in Iraq, and a continuing series of suicide bombings and insurgent attacks have led Mogadishu to be dubbed “Baghdad by the sea.”
Meanwhile, Ethiopian troops have also had their hands full on the other side of the border in the Somali region of their own country. Last April rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front attacked Chinese oil workers who were doing exploratory drilling in the region. In the ensuing military crackdown, Ethiopian forces have been accused of war crimes, including killing and raping civilians and burning villages thought to sympathize with the rebels.
But on the streets of Addis, it’s hard to imagine you’re in a country in the midst of two wars (and possibly on the verge of a third with neighboring Eritrea). Since the crackdown in 2005, the independent press has all but disappeared. The private newspapers that are left are careful to vet news of Ethiopia’s engagements in Somalia or Ogaden. Expatriate websites are blocked on the government controlled Internet server, so they can’t be accessed from inside the country without use of proxy servers.
A COUNTRY GRIPPED BY FEAR
But if Prime Minister Zenawi has been able to hide the realities of Ethiopia’s military entanglements, there is no mistaking that his is a country gripped by fear. In Addis Ababa, politics are spoken of in whispers, and many Ethiopians say they’d prefer to abstain from the topic entirely, at least for now.
Most attempts to engage Ethiopians in political conversations are rebuffed. The few willing to talk, such as a taxi driver who had been arrested during the 2005 protests or a young businessman trying to make enough money to start a family, did so only on repeated promises of complete anonymity.
Even once anonymity was guaranteed, their trepidation was palpable. In one case a young man reached for this reporter’s camera with shaking hands asking for reassurance that his picture had not been taken.
One of the elements most confounding to reporting on, or even just talking about, political issues in Ethiopia is determining how far the government’s reach really is into the private lives of citizens who disagree with its actions.
It’s unlikely that the government actually has the capacity to check up on random dissenting opinions, but, regardless, the effect is the same. Images of students shot dead in the streets and mass arrests have stifled political opposition in the population.
As one frustrated citizen admitted, “I don’t care for politics, politics is for only a few people in Ethiopia; 98 or 99 percent don’t have any say, so why should I extend my hand to politics?”
For Nega’s part, he says he still believes the United States could become a positive force in democratizing Ethiopia, and his unwavering faith in the democratic process strengthens his conclusion that he will see the pendulum swing back from the Bush administration’s hard-line “War on Terror” policies.
Still, he comes across as calmly disappointed with the political maneuvering that resulted in the double betrayal of being imprisoned by the country of his birth and overlooked by the country that nurtured his belief in democracy.
“The U.S. policy is a calculated complicity with tyranny because of the ‘War on Terror,'” he says. “Nothing matters except for the war. The democratic cause here is expendable.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa claims that the U.S. government is advocating press freedoms in Ethiopia through “ongoing human rights discussions with senior leaders.”
In the meantime Nega remains hopeful and sees signs that suggest the tide may be turning in America’s policy toward Ethiopia. A resolution calling for limited sanctions on Ethiopian officials involved in the 2005 killings has passed through the House, and is now under debate in the Senate.
Nega and Fasil’s tenacity stand in stark contrast to the disillusionment that hangs in the cool air of Addis Ababa. Following their eventual release from prison, they filed for a license to start two new papers, which was rejected by the government. Other Ethiopian newspapers won’t risk publishing their work. Fasil’s baby was born in jail in the summer of 2006, and their blacklisting has forced them to support the family on savings, as they refuse to be forced into exile.
To hear Nega tell it, speaking loudly in a café on Addis’ busy Bole Road, the struggle may be difficult, but the goal is inevitable: The people of Ethiopia will eventually win their freedom.
“Democracy is the destiny of all humans,” he smiles “That’s why I’m still here.”
Funding for this article provided by the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting, (pulitzercenter.org).
It was extremely gratifying for me to stir a lot of controversy with my last article on dechasa (welfare) addiction and its consequences. The issue at stake, being a thorny one that pricked the sensitivities of many especially those who have been deliberately caught by the benefit trap indefinitely, all the uproar and furore was understandable. As far as I am concerned, I have achieved my goal and set the agenda for sincere discussion on such an issue which has long been consigned as a taboo that nobody dares to talk about.
Let me make it clear from the outset once again that my criticism is by no means directed towards those who legitimately claim benefits as a result of some misfortunes. My criticism has targeted only those who have been deliberately avoiding opportunities so that they would stay on welfare for the rest of their lives without contributing anything valuable to make a real difference to themselves and others. Throughout this article, it must be noted that I have used the quantifier “some” to avoid the risk of making gross generalizations.
I have heard so many great sermons and moral teachings in Ethiopian churches in the Diaspora but I have never heard a preacher challenging the moral decadence attributable to welfare swindling, the resultant lack of work ethics, loss of direction and the distorted purpose of living in exile seeking a “better” life. If someone from your church catches you eating chicken on a Friday, your sin quickly becomes the talk of the whole congregation, some of whom even dare to share their benefit swindling techniques to others including conning benefit officers into believing that they are disabled or mentally retarded so that they would be guaranteed a place on the benefit system for life. Unfortunately, there are some who feel that their pathetic way of existence is a badge of honour to brag about. Surprisingly there are even those who earnestly believe that God is helping them in their dubious endeavours despite the widely known biblical adage which goes like: “He who doesn’t work does not eat.”
In spite of the fact that some supported my initiative to bring up the issue, there were equally resentful and suspicious views. Some even thought that I might be a Weyane cadre who is out to destroy the reputation of my fellow countrymen who are tactfully stuck in the welfare system. As a matter of fact, those who concocted such a conspiracy theory didn’t know the fact that I hold Weyane cadres and spies who are also artful benefit swindles with utmost contempt. This is because of the fact that they are the ones who are bankrolling the Meles regime with their money laundering businesses that stretch from Europe to North America. They spy on innocent Ethiopians, get paid by Weyane, drive their minibuses and run their businesses and yet you find them living rent free and claiming all sorts of benefits as expert freeloaders and free riders. Some of them are children and close relatives of high ranking officials of the Meles regime and its business associates who bogus refugees milking the nation at the detriment of the hunger stricken people of Ethiopia. Even Meles Zenawi’s London-based relatives, including his sister, are said to be expert benefit swindlers in spite of the fact that their man has been robbing Ethiopia for nearly three decades, as leader of a criminal ethnic syndicate called the Tigray Peope’s Liberation Front. This very ethnic front is an expert welfare cheat as it created a repressive kleptocracy propped up with foreign aid as the whole aid economy, which is said to grow by tenfold every year, survives on beggary.
Contrary to the suspicions of the conspiracy theorists who have gone as further as theorizing that I was motivated by envy, God knows what for, the main reason why I ventured out to speak loudly against deliberate welfare cheating is due to its long term impact among Ethiopians who have lost their sense of pride, purpose, direction and self-confidence. Let us assume that Ethiopia is liberated and the Diaspora is needed to reconstruct Ethiopia. Can the large army of benefit swindlers who have preferred to dodge work and education contribute anything valuable with their corrupt experience? Doubtful!
Before wading deeper into murky waters, let me praise those who have changed their lives through hard work and determination. Unlike the artful dodgers, there are a large number of Ethiopians who have started from the bottom to fulfil their dreams and made their way up the ladder of success. These are the kind of Ethiopians that can take home their valuable skills, experience and know-how to build a new Ethiopia that we will all be proud to call a country. They are well prepared to be trusted and make a difference as they know the value of independence that must be earned through hard work.
Though it is undeniable that immigrants face discrimination, compared to the natives, it cannot be a justification to swindle benefits forever as a way of tackling adversities. For the majority of able bodied Ethiopians caught up deliberately in the welfare system, there are some simple escape routes that can help many get out of the terrible dependency syndrome and declare independence as well as dignity.
Right attitude
Many Ethiopians in exile suffer from attitudinal problems that they imported from our backward culture. The worst attitudinal problem is lack of respect for all kinds of work. It is a shame for some Ethiopians to be seen in public doing blue collar and less privileged jobs. But these compatriots never feel ashamed to live at the expense others. There are even those who choose jobs without having the necessary skills and qualifications to their dream jobs. How can they fulfil their dreams without studying and working as hard as they possibly can?
Another misconception widely held among benefit cheats is that they feel certain that they would remain better off on welfare benefits than working legally, pay bills and taxes. To some extent that may be true, but this can go wrong in the long term. This is due to the fact that those who do not get qualifications and job experience become more and more marginalized from mainstream society. That would in turn make them disadvantaged as they cannot compete well in the job market without work experience and qualifications. So having the right attitude is the first step to escape from the welfare trap that kills the inner energy of any able bodied fellow Ethiopians who have deliberately surrendered their self-confidence to dependency syndrome.
It is ridiculous to see some Ethiopians engaged in hard fought fashion, furniture and car shows as well as wedding and birthday extravaganza while they are intently trapped in the welfare system, the prerequisite of which is supposed to be their claims of being poor and dispossessed.
Self-belief
As mentioned above, self-belief and self-confidence cannot be guaranteed when people adopt a self-defeatist attitude. Those who have lost their self-belief never believe that they have untapped potential that must be unlocked to their own good and the society at large. Therefore, self-confidence is an important asset that should not be compromised and sold out to welfare dependency that saps out one’s self-beliefs and inner strength.
Hard work
From Japan to Taiwan, from Singapore to Israel, from America to Europe, there is one dominant factor that has created a wider gap between affluent and poor nations. The level of hard work in the most affluent nations is incredible. While some of us spend hours making rounds of coffee smelling aromatic smokes of incense and backbiting our neighbours and friends, there are many around the world that have their coffee rushing to work or inventing something new. One can imagine how anyone with a lot of time to waste loses out because they are on welfare benefits with no significant experience and skills. Can they truly believe in hard work even if they work in the black labour market without securing their rights and dignity? The answer is a resounding no as such a belief entails the drive for success and the sweetness of honest gains.
Education
It would be stating the obvious to declare that education is a key to unlock our potentials. That being a universally accepted fact every society invests heavily on education. Every able bodied Ethiopian who lives in the Diaspora must aspire to get a qualification and skills. Those who are unable to be successful academically can do vocational qualifications. Professionals qualified in vocational skills like plumbing, electrical installations, vehicle maintenance, beauty therapy, hairdressing, social care, child care etc. are high in demand in many countries. The majority of Ethiopians who have completed secondary schools are able to gain vocational qualifications provided they have the determination to succeed. Why is it that some have never been to schools and colleges in their countries of refuge while they have been sitting comfortably on welfare? Can they legitimately complain about discrimination and other forms of disadvantages? Not at all!
Language
For the majority of Ethiopians language is a barrier that holds them back from being successful in exile. Those who live in Anglophone countries, like the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, have a relative advantage. But one should not discount the fact that in the majority of schools in Ethiopia, English is not taught properly. The majority of students, who even graduate from universities, may not have conversed in English until they “finish” their studies even if the medium of instruction in post-primary schools is said to be English. It is therefore imperative to learn languages seriously so as to integrate and succeed in foreign countries. There are some Ethiopians who think that it much better to speak in broken English and miscommunicate with native speakers rather than being seen around language schools.
Morality
The bases of morality, whether religious or not, are values and actions which have been widely accepted and endorsed as rightful and righteous. Being on welfare benefits with intent to cheat cannot be accepted as righteous by any moral or legal standards. Unless those who have been intently swindling benefits are making efforts to rectify their mistakes by working harder and earning their living in stead of being dependent on those who work hard and pay taxes, they find no moral excuse to challenge a burglar or a pickpocket. This may appear outrageous but the burglar or the pickpocket may also say it is difficult to work hard, pay tax and bills. “Why can’t I seek a shortcut to get better off?”
Success comes with pain
Unless one wins a lottery or inherits wealth that someone else has made, prospering in the right way has always been difficult. As the saying goes, success usually comes with pain. In stead of fending off criticism against welfare cheats and swindlers, we have to convince ourselves and children that working hard is the most important escape route from dependency and despondency, not only in exile but also back home where the regime seems to be helplessly addicted to foreign aid. If such a comment appears to be offensive, let it be. After all this is a legitimate discussion based on legitimate observation.
As a final note, I would like to conclude by calling on my fellow Ethiopians to continue the debate. I firmly believe that we need to have honest discussions on many thorny issues. I rest my case on welfare swindling and make a promise to come back with another upfront comment on some thorny issues. In the meantime, so long!
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The writer can be reached at [email protected]
This is all caused by the U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia by the butcher of east Africa, Meles Zenawi.
(The Associated Press) UNITED NATIONS: The humanitarian situation in Somalia is deteriorating faster than expected with the number of people in need of emergency aid increasing from 315,000 to 425,000, the U.N. humanitarian office said Friday, quoting two U.S.-funded groups that monitor food security.
The Nairobi-based Food Security Analysis Unit, which focuses on Somalia and is managed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a lead organization in predicting food security problems in sub-Saharan Africa, also reported that the number of newly displaced people in Somalia increased from 705,000 to 745,000, the U.N. office said.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said three key factors contributed to the deterioration: an extremely harsh dry season from January to March with higher temperatures than normal and unusually dry winds, the growing lack of security, and the increasingly high inflation rate.
The most severely affected areas are Galgaduud and Mudug in central Somalia, Hiraan and coastal Shabelle in the south, and pockets in Sool, Nugal and Hawd in the north, OCHA said.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the poverty-stricken nation of 7 million into chaos. Its weak U.N.-backed transitional government, supported by Ethiopian Woyanne troops, is struggling to quash an Islamic insurgency, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians.
OCHA said the deteriorating security situation all over the country is slowing the delivery of humanitarian aid and affecting the ability of aid agencies to help people in need. It cited clashes between Ethiopian Woyanne-backed government troops and anti-government forces in the past week in many parts of south central Somalia.
In the south central region, it said, the price of locally produced maize and sorghum has increased by 300-400 percent in the last 12 months and the price of imported food including rice and vegetable oil has gone up 150 percent. At the same time the value of the Somali shilling has depreciated by an average of 65 percent.
OCHA reported an outbreak of acute diarrhea in the Dhahar district of Sanaag in northern Somalia caused by contaminated underground water, resulting in 300 cases and 7 deaths since March 10. Diarrhea is now spreading to rural settlements in the district and health authorities are not able to deal with the caseload because of limited staff, it said.
“The situation in Somalia is part of the continuation of unusually dry conditions in the Horn of Africa in general, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and parts of Kenya which are further aggravating food insecurity, water and pasture shortages and outbreaks of drought associated diseases,” OCHA said.
Djibouti has declared a state of emergency due to high rates of malnutrition which exceed the critical threshold of 15 percent, it said.
But OCHA said the “full-blown impact of a drought” will only be felt in certain areas of the greater Horn of Africa in July and August, according to food security analysts and weather forecasters.
