Years of conflict in Somalia have left large parts of the country in the hands of warlords while its capital, Mogadishu, is contested by Ethiopian TPLF-backed government forces and armed insurgents.
The city has been abandoned by at least half of its residents. The BBC’s World Affairs Correspondent, Mark Doyle, sent this report from a war zone few Western journalists dare to visit.
The bombed-out buildings are shocking enough.
There are street after ruined street of them in the centre of Mogadishu.
Some have been reduced by shellfire to rubble. Others retain a building-like shape – the rough skeletons of once-ornate Italian colonial apartment blocks or shopping arcades.
But the really eerie side to many parts of Mogadishu is the lack of people.
The last 18 months of fighting have seen the population plummet in a way that even the infamous Black Hawk Down year – 1993 – did not achieve.
According to the United Nations, at least half of Mogadishu’s population – perhaps 500,000 people – have fled.
In 1993 a joint United States/United Nations aid effort descended into war. Somali warlords resisted the international force partly because it reduced their racketeering of food aid.
The Americans then fell into the trap of thinking the flip flop-wearing “Skinnies”, as the Marines disparagingly called Somalis, would be a pushover.
However, the “Skinnies” could fight, and fight well. The US and the UN withdrew in disarray.
But even back then – when tracer fire lit up the sky every night – the streets were still full of people.
Not any more. Parts of Mogadishu are now a ghost city.
The new situation has an intensity of street shelling and military atrocities that even this veteran war city has never seen before.
The latest conflict is between a weak, though internationally-recognized Somali government, backed by troops from neighboring Ethiopia – and armed insurgents who are a mixture of Islamists and nationalists.
The United States is still a key player, backing the Ethiopians Woyane. It accuses the Islamists of having links to al-Qaeda.
“Its getting worse and worse,” said Sophia Hussein, a housewife turned refugee. “Now foreign governments are involved” – a reference to the Ethiopian Woyane presence.
Mrs Hussein was speaking in a Kenyan refugee camp, surrounded by nine children she had rescued from Mogadishu.
Grafted onto the traditional clan wars in Somalia are new disputes that pit Islamists and nationalists against the Ethiopians TPLF and their US allies.
These new wars may explain why Mogadishu has been emptied of people like never before.
The political landscape began changing in 2005 when armed Islamists joined forces with businessmen to oust a chaotic collection of warlords from Mogadishu.
By 2006 the Islamists/businessmen had won and a group known as the Union of Islamic Courts ran the capital.
“They were efficient; they ran the city quite well,” said a senior Somali official with an international aid agency who requested anonymity.
In late 2006, the army of neighbouring Ethiopia Dictator Meles Zenawi intervened to oust the Courts and install the internationally-recognised government in Mogadishu.
It is widely believed that the US encouraged or participated in this move because of fears that the Courts had links to al-Qaeda.
Certainly, there was a long-range US missile attack at the time on fleeing Courts officials. The US later mounted other attacks on what it said were al-Qaeda operatives, and American drones still regularly buzz the skies of Somalia.
The Ethiopian Woyane army easily routed the Courts regime. But, in an echo of the early US military success in Baghdad, the Ethiopians TPLF Donkeys then appeared unsure what to do next.
Gradually, the Islamists and nationalists regrouped.
There was a traditional clan aspect to the new war. But what might be called the “Islamist/nationalist clan” to some extent transcended this in the face of what many Somalis saw as “Ethiopian Woyane occupation”.
‘Indiscriminate reprisals’
Today the remnants of the Courts administration, backed by Islamist fighters known as al-Shabaab (Somali for “The Lads”), have made much of south and central Somalia a no-go area for the government and the Ethiopians TPLF.
Al-Shabaab and related fighters mount hit-and-run attacks aimed at government forces but which often also kill civilians.
However, a more common complaint among ordinary Somalis I spoke to is that the Ethiopians TPLF thugs are “indiscriminate” in their reprisals – and that this is why Mogadishu has been emptied of people.
Stuck in the middle, and trying to inject some sanity into the situation, is the small and beleaguered 2,700-strong African Union Dictators Union peacekeeping Mission in Somalia, Amisom.
Its commander is Ugandan Major General, Francis Okello.
“I need more troops, I need more equipment,” he said, repeating the common refrain of peacekeeping commanders.
But the diplomat-general was wise enough to add: “I also need more political support, I need more diplomatic support. You cannot impose a solution on Somalis, you can only encourage peace”.
Tentative peace talks are taking place under a UN initiative but – as so often with peace processes – the talks are dominated by the moderates, not the radicals on all sides who are fighting on the ground.
(APA) – Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia on Thursday observed the International Day of Non-violence and 139th birth day of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, with a call to end violence from Africa.
Prime Minister Monster Meles Zenawi said Gandhi gave practical shape to the reality of passive resistance, non-cooperation and truth to fight tyranny and turned non-violence into an effective political tool. [This is coming from a dictator and a mass murderer who orders the shooting down of pro-democracy protectors.]
“We have witnessed events in recent years which demonstrate just how this philosophy—Gandhi’s non-violence— can be abused in Africa and else where. The concepts of non-violence and Gandhi’s aims and values have been twisted far away from reality and truth,” he said.
He said Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence is particularly relevant to Africa, which suffers from violence more than other continent.
“Violence has become almost a habit, with all-too-many benefiting from [violence] as, for example in Somalia,” he said.
The United Nations general assembly passed resolution in June 2007 to commemorate October 2 as the birth day of Mahatma Gandhi and the International Day of Non-violence, thus recognizing his lasting impact on the world.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia on Saturday denied claims by Human Rights Watch that it tortured terror suspects held in prisons since 2006 when Addis Ababa despatched troops to neighbouring Somalia to quell Islamist rebels.
The New York-based rights watchdog said Wednesday that at least 90 people were rendered from Kenya to Somalia and then to Ethiopia in the aftermath of Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s 2006 invasion of Somalia.
Several detainees were housed in solitary cells with their hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and their feet tied, it said in a report. It added that many were held incommunicado and without charge.
“Despite HRW’s claims none of these people has been maltreated,” Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “In fact many of the details claimed by HRW are unsubstantiated and most are simply untrue.”
The ministry added that the suspects were not “arbitrarily” arrested, but “were found in a theatre of war or trying to cross the Somali-Kenya border.”
“There were strong grounds for suspicion of terrorist involvement. Under the circumstances of the time, it would have been irresponsible to leave them at large,” it said, adding that Mogadishu lacked secure and acceptable prisons.
“Ethiopia Woyanne has not hidden the identity, fate or whereabouts of anyone brought from Somalia for investigation,” it said.
But the rights group said that at least 10 suspects are still languishing in Ethiopian Woyanne jails some 15 to 21 months after they were first arrested and that the wherabouts of 22 others remained unknown.
It also said US intelligence agencies had questioned the suspects during their captivity in Ethiopia.
Eight Kenyans among dozens who had been rendered to Ethiopia returned home overnight, government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Saturday, adding that the suspects had initially denied being Kenyan.
“The government never deported any known Kenyans from from this country,” Mutua said in a statement.
Kenya sent a team to Addis Ababa in August to negotiate their release amid mounting pressure from the detainees’ families and rights groups.
According to Kenyan security sources, some of the eight are suspected of links to Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the region.
Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia release eight of nine Kenyans detained in secret jails since 2006 for questioning–some of them by US agents–return home.
The suspects were under arrest in Ethiopia without charge for one-and-half-years on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda-linked groups. They were among a group of at least 150 who were arrested in late 2006 by Kenyan forces on its border with Somalia as they fled Ethiopia’s war with Somali rebels.
Later they were handed over to the EthiopianWoyanne military and transferred to several detention facilities in Ethiopia, Ali-Amin Kimathi, the chairman of Kenya’s Muslim Human Rights Forum (MHRF), told AFP.
Kimathi said the ninth suspect, Abdulkadir Mohamed Aden, who worked with Somalia Red Crescent when arrested, remains in Ethiopian Woyanne custody for unknown reasons. A number of the detainees are said to have been interrogated by US agents in an aggressive manner.
MHRF and other rights groups said several of them were tortured, and accused Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia of breaking humanitarian laws.
Kimathi also accused Washington of pressuring these African governments to violate human rights.
US and other intelligence services interrogated several foreign nationals – including men, women and children – in detention in Nairobi and Ethiopia. The detainees were also denied access to legal counsel and their consular representatives, rights groups have said.
The detainees were from more than 18 countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Other detainees included Somalis, Ethiopian Ogadenis and Eritreans.
An Ethiopian journalist accompanying Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi defected to seek asylum.
Shewangizaw Kassahun, special journalist at the Prime Minister’s office, national palace and parliament, who was also head of the Audio Visual department at the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), came to the US with premier to attend the annual global initiative of the Clinton Foundation and UN general assembly.
The journalist has attended the six days meeting with the premier and finished his final mission before leaving the group for good. Anonymous sources at the News Agency say Shewangizaw was a photo journalist and web editor very close to the palace. His defection has stunned the premiers group including his fellow journalists who never suspect him of failing to return home. His reason of defection is yet not known.
It is known that journalists working for government owned media ENA, ETV, Ethiopian Radio and Ethiopian Press Agency fail to return home if they get the chance to go abroad. This year alone not less than 10 journalists sought asylum in South Africa, Japan, England and USA. Shewangizaw adds the immigrating journalist number to over a dozen.
At the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, the African Union [of thieves and murderers] reaffirmed its opposition to issuing an arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court for Sudan’s president, in connection with crimes committed in the conflict in the country’s Darfur region. Some observers have raised concern that the episode could create difficulty for future cooperation between Africa and the ICC, but other supporters of the court attribute less significance to the dispute. Derek Kilner has more from VOA’s East Africa bureau in Nairobi.
Since even before the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced in July that he would seek an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese government has been working to rally diplomatic support against such a move, and in favor of the U.N. Security Council issuing a deferral of the warrant request, a provision allowed for under article 16 of the International Criminal Court’s charter.
Sudan had already secured the support of the African Union, as well as the Arab League, but the Sudanese delegation gave the move for a deferral a high profile at the recent General Assembly meeting. The country’s vice-president, Ali Osman Taha, called the attempt to pursue President Bashir “a failed attempt at political and moral assassination.”
Following a meeting on September 22, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council issued a second communique, reiterating its support for deferring the warrant.
Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, the chairman of the African Union, conveyed the group’s position in his address to the General Assembly the following day. “It is the considered view of the African Union that the indictment of President Omar al-Bashir at this point in time will complicate the deployment of UNAMID and the management of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. It is for this reason that the African Union sees deferment as the most expedient thing to do now. We are simply concerned with the best possible sequencing of measures so that the most immediate matters of saving lives and easing the sufferings of the people of Darfur are taken care of first,” he said.
So far, the Security Council has taken no action. Deferral of the warrant request requires the approval of nine of the 15 members of the UN Security Council. Permanent members China and Russia have been supportive of Sudan’s position, as have nonpermanent members from Africa, including South Africa, Burkina Faso, and Libya. But attaining the remaining required votes may prove difficult.
A vote for deferral will also have to escape a veto by one of the permanent members of the council. Western human rights activists have pounced on recent statements from France and Britain, indicating that they would support a deferral, but both countries have said this would require substantial changes in Sudan’s behavior. The United States has expressed a similar position, but with harsher rhetoric towards Sudan.
Some observers have cautioned that the pursuit of President Bashir, in the face of African resistance, could threaten future African cooperation with the court.
One concern is that the court is giving the impression that it is unfairly targeting Africa. The cases it has taken up to date: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and Sudan are all in Africa. The head of the AU’s Peace and Security Council Jean Ping, complained in an interview with the BBC this week that the court seemed to
be singling out Africa. Benin’s President expressed a similar sentiment to Radio France International.
But Priscilla Nyokabi, the acting executive director of the Kenya chapter of the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights organization, rejects such reasoning.
“We think it’s just a historical coincidence rather than a targeting of African states,” she said. “Recently the ICC newsletter also said they are looking at Georgia and other countries. So it’s not a deliberate attempt, so we human rights groups don’t feel that way. And also in terms of human rights violations, you can’t say if we get to you as a violator, you cannot say we should get other violators as well, you should answer to the violations that speak to you and not worry about who other people have been gotten by the ICC. So we don’t think that that is a valid argument.”
While there have been reports of some African countries threatening to pull out of the International Criminal Court, Issaka Souaré, a researcher on international law with the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, says the African Union has gone out of its way to signal its support for international justice, while raising problems with the particular issue of a warrant for Mr. Bashir.
“If you look at the facts, of the 106 members of the ICC, 30 are from Africa, the largest single region in that regard. So I would not read much into such arguments unless they have been officially and expressly stated as such. African countries are not against the ICC. Even in its communique. The Peace and Security Council reiterates the AU’s commitment to combating impunity. No one condones this. The issue is about the timing and the implications for this move on the peace process so there is no antagonism per se against the ICC,” Souaré said.
Some observers have also warned that the case of Sudan will make those African countries that have not yet signed on to the ICC, Ethiopia and Rwanda, for example, even less likely to do so in the future. But Souaré points out that cases can still be brought in the ICC against countries that are not members of the court. “For this to prevent other African countries to join, it might, in the case of some countries, but it doesn’t make much difference for you to be a signatory or not, because Sudan after all is not a signatory,” Souaré said.
Nyokabi says that the leaders of such countries, many of whom have been accused of rights violations in their countries, were already hostile to the court, and would have been unlikely to join regardless of President Bashir’s indictment.
“As to the leadership, they have their own individual reasons why they don’t support the ICC. And each African country I believe has its own historical concerns. And you can give examples of them. You can give, say, the examples of President Kagame, or Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, the political elite, it is not even a case of losing confidence, they just did not want the ICC from the beginning.”
Perhaps of more concern is the possibility that African countries that have joined the court will be less inclined to actively support it in the future. Nyokabi says that there are challenges to getting Kenya, which has joined the court, to implement the legislation in Kenyan law, but says these have little to do with the case of Sudan. “The speed with which we are getting into the ICC jurisprudence needs to improve, but we are not sure that the Bashir case is going to slow it in any way. Kenya was slow even before [Mr.] Bashir, we are still slow. So it is not the Bashir case that is making us any slower.”
Nyokabi points out that Kenyan rights activists are particularly concerned about keeping the International Criminal Court as a viable option in Africa, given the rights violations committed in the aftermath of last year’s disputed presidential election, and the potential for future ethnic and political violence.
Shewangizaw Kassahun, special journalist at the Prime Minister’s office, national palace and parliament, who was also head of the Audio Visual department at the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), came to the US with premier to attend the annual global initiative of the Clinton Foundation and UN general assembly.