NAIROBI (Reuters) – Nearly two years after being driven from Mogadishu, Islamists have re-taken swathes of south Somalia and may have their sights again on the capital.
The insurgents’ push is being led by Al Shabaab, or “Youth” in Arabic, the most militant in a wide array of groups opposed to the Somali government and military backers from Ethiopia, an ally in Washington’s “War on Terror”.
“Shabaab are winning. They have pursued a startlingly successful two-pronged strategy — chase all the internationals from the scene, and shift tactics from provocation to conquest,” said a veteran Somali analyst in the region. “Before it was ‘hit-and-run’ guerrilla warfare. Now it’s a case of ‘we’re here to stay’,” he added, noting Shabaab was “flooded with money” from foreign backers.
The Islamist insurgency since early 2007, the latest instalment in Somalia’s 17-year civil conflict, has worsened one of Africa’s worst humanitarian crises and fomented instability around the already chronically volatile Horn region.
Shabaab’s advances are galling to Washington, which says the group is linked to al Qaeda and has put it on its terrorism list. Western security services have long worried about Somalia becoming a haven for extremists, though critics — and the Islamists — say that threat has been fabricated to disguise U.S. aims to keep control, via Ethiopia Woyanne, in the region.
Some compare the Somali quagmire to Iraq in character, if not scale, given its appeal to jihadists, the involvement of foreign troops and the tactics used by the rebels.
In August, in its most significant grab of a gradual territorial encroachment, Shabaab spearheaded the takeover of Kismayu, a strategic port and south Somalia’s second city.
This month, its threats to shoot down planes have largely paralysed Mogadishu airport. And in recent days, its fighters have been targeting African peacekeepers. “The only question is ‘what next?” said a diplomat, predicting Shabaab would next seek to close Mogadishu port and take control of Baidoa town, the seat of parliament.
Analysts say Islamists or Islamist-allied groups now control most of south Somalia, with the exception of Mogadishu, Baidoa where parliament is protected by Ethiopian troops, and Baladwayne near the border where Addis Ababa garrisons soldiers.
That is a remarkable turnaround from the end of 2006, when allied Somali-Ethiopian Woyanne troops chased the Islamists out of Mogadishu after a six-month rule of south Somalia, scattering them to sea, remote hills and the Kenyan border.
The Islamists regrouped to begin an insurgency that has killed nearly 10,000 civilians. Military discipline, grassroots political work, youth recruitment and an anti-Ethiopian Woyanne rallying cry have underpinned their return, analysts say.
With the Islamists split into many rival factions, it is impossible to tell if an offensive against Mogadishu is imminent. Analysts say Shabaab and other Islamist militants may not want an all-out confrontation with Ethiopian troops, preferring to wait until Addis Ababa Woyanne withdraws forces.
WORLD “NUMB” TO SOMALIA
Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi is fed up with the human, political and financial cost of his Somalia intervention, but knows withdrawal could hasten the fall of Mogadishu.
The insurgents may also resist the temptation to launch an offensive on Mogadishu until their own ranks are united. “Opposition forces at the moment are internally debating whether or not it’s time for a major push,” the diplomat said.
Meanwhile, the rebels attack government and Ethiopian Woyanne targets in the city seemingly at will. Of late, they have also been hitting African Union (AU) peacekeepers, who number just 2,200, possibly to warn the world against more intervention.
Estimates vary but experts think Ethiopia Woyanne has about 10,000 soldiers in Somalia, the government about 10,000 police and soldiers. Islamist fighter numbers are fluid but may match that.
The Islamists’ growth in power has gone largely unnoticed outside Somalia by all but experts. For the wider world, Somalia’s daily news of bombs, assassinations, piracy and kidnappings has blurred into an impression of violence-as-usual.
Even this week’s horrors, including shells slicing up 30 civilians in a market, registered barely a blip outside. “The world has grown numb to Somalia’s seemingly endless crises,” said analyst Ken Menkhaus.
But “much is new this time, and it would be a dangerous error of judgement to brush off Somalia’s current crisis as more of the same,” he said. “Seismic political, social, and security changes are occurring in the country.”
The United Nations has been pushing a peace agreement in neighbouring Djibouti that would see a ceasefire, a pull-back of Ethiopian Woyanne troops — the insurgents’ main bone of contention — then some sort of power-sharing arrangement.
Diplomats see that as the main hope for stability, and moderates on both sides support it in principle. But Islamist fighters on the ground have rejected the process, and negotiators failed to agree on details last week.
A U.S. expert on Somalia, John Prendergast, said the world had taken its eyes off the conflict at its peril. “Somalia truly is the one place in Africa where you have a potential cauldron of recruitment and extremism that, left to its own devices, will only increase in terms of the danger it presents to the region, and to American and Western interests.”
One effect of the conflict impinging on the outside world is rampant piracy off Somalia. Gangs have captured some 30 boats this year, and still hold a dozen ships with 200 or so hostages.
The violence is also impeding relief groups from helping Somalia’s several million hungry. Foreign investors, interested in principle in Somalia’s hydrocarbon and fishing resources, barely give the place a second thought in the current climate.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said on Saturday he was concerned by the seizure of a Ukrainian ship off Somalia carrying military supplies and feared they would be used to further destabilize the region.
Speaking before a meeting in New York with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Meles said piracy off the coast of Somalia was a “very hard problem” and he hoped the international community would respond.
“We are very concerned about the level of piracy on the seas. It is related to the instability in Somalia,” he told reporters.
Somali pirates have demanded a $35-million ransom for the Ukrainian ship they had seized which was carrying 33 tanks, grenade launchers, ammunition and other military supplies destined for Kenya.
“They could be used to destabilize the region and the whole situation on the high seas is a matter of great concern for all of us,” Meles said.
“We very much hope the international community will respond.”
Pirates have captured more than 30 vessels off Somalia this year, making its waters the most dangerous in the world and threatening a major international shipping lane between Europe and Asia. The gangs seek, and often receive, large ransoms.
An Islamist insurgence in the south of Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for 17 years, has made it difficult for the struggling interim government to police the waters. Russia said on Friday it was sending a warship to the region to protect Russian ships and citizens.
(Reporting by Sue Pleming, Editing by Sandra Maler)
ADDIS ABABA (ST) – The state owned Ethiopian radio and TV agency (ERTA) reduced drastically earlier this month the majority of airtime of the Affaan Oromo TV program. The decision left some 60 Oromo journalist jobless and raised anger.
The Tigriga and the Afaan Oromo TV programs, which were run through the federal TV on a separate desk within the only national TV station, were made their airtimes shrunken on September 12 and transferred to the hands of regional states under a new agendum called “localizing” TV programs that allows regional governments to take control of the medias.
Two Oromo opposition groups told Sudan Tribune by telephone from Addis Ababa that the move is politically motivated and violates the ruling party’s, self own constitution and to the international treaties it has ratified too.
“This is a political motivated action of the ruling party which targets to put the Oromo people’s national political role out of the game by weakening their role from every angle by such undemocratic acts” Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement(OFDM) Chairman and parliament member, Bulcha Demeksa told Sudan Tribune.
“We are talking about the liberty of a language of more than 40 million people” Bulcha said. “This once again reveals the at most hatred and contempt the regime has for the Oromo people and their language Afan Oromo” he added.
The Oromo oppositions believes that the regular Oromiga programme was deliberately replaced by a local program known as STVO, which completely prepared by OPDO — one wing of the ruling coalition — cadres and used by the regime to broadcast propagandas of Meles-led government.
The Oromo People’s Congress (OPC) echoes the action as discriminatory and as having political agenda.
“The ruling party of Ethiopia has taken the Afaan Oromoo TV programme off the air without any consultation or prior notice” OPC chairman and MP Merrara Gudina said.
“The Oromo people were not given a chance for self-consultation ahead of practicing the so-called ‘localizing’ policy” he underscored.
“The ruling party fears that offering the huge Oromo people a wide and strong voices to the public will heighten political consciousness” Merrara said. He added that “the move as it, is clear like a crystal is aimed to paralyze the propagandas of the Oromo people by silencing them from every possible doors.”
The opposition groups said shrinking little of the Tigriga programme is to pretend that the measure doesn’t target only to the Oromos.
The Afaan Oromoo TV programme was launched in 1991 following the toppling of the Communist Derg regime as a part of the package of the then newly introduced democracy and freedom of expression.
As a result of the pressure from the Oromo people in general and the OLF in particular, the regime opened a one hour TV program for Afan Oromo as a gesture of attempting to restore freedom and justice for the suppressed Oromo nation.
Although this was seen as one positive step forward when compared to the previous Ethiopian regimes, it was clear for the Oromo people that this was no justice yet since the same amount of air time was given to the Tigriga language which is spoken by less than 7% of the population of the empire simply because the current rulers come from Tigray region.
A real justice for the Oromo people is to give the maximum air time for Afan Oromo, radio or TV, than any other language.Oromo oppositions strongly argue.
The fate of the former 60 employees of the Afan Oromo desk, who were said to have been laid off and have been holding demonstrations in protest at the action, is not known. Most of them have been placed under surveillance and their movements have been restricted within the Capital.
Opposing to the unjust decision the journalists, now off duty, have appealed to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s office, to the Ethiopian Parliament, to the OPDO office and to the so called Oromian president for the reversal of the decision.
Afan Oromo, is spoken by over 40% of the entire population of the nation. The Oromiya region is believed to house about 80 or so different languages.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia- The list of honours Ethiopian runner Tirunesh Dibaba has earned in her short, but illustrious career already has many of her rivals running for minor positions when they line up against the double Olympic 5000m/10,000m champion: double World 5000m and 10000m champion; world indoor and outdoor 5000m record holder; and three-time World Cross Country long course champion.
The latest addition to Dibaba’s incredible CV came yesterday evening when her club, the Prisons Police, bestowed the rank of Chief Superintendent for her services to club and country.
Aged just 23, Dibaba, who will this year marry long-time fiancée and fellow club mate Sileshi Sihine, has not only amassed major titles and World records, but has also quickly risen up prisons police ranks.
She may be nicknamed the Baby Faced Destroyer, but there was nothing “baby faced” about the manner in which Dibaba received her latest honour.
Dibaba marched all the way from her seat to the podium at a ceremony held on Thursday evening saluted Maeregu Habtemariam, State Minister for Federal Affairs, who bestowed the new rank on her shoulders. She then saluted Habtemariam and marched back to her seat to the amusement of guests and the media.
She has now surpassed distance running ace Haile Gebrselassie, who is a Major with the Omedla Police club, and is equal in rank with Derartu Tulu, who is also a chief superintendent. Sihine, meanwhile, also moved up a rank going up to Major Officer. She has also achieved more in six years than both Tulu and Gebrselassie managed in careers spanning two decades.
Also included in the awards were other athletes who represented the Prisons Police club at the 29th Beijing Olympics. African 1500m champion Gelete Burka rose to Deputy Officer, African 3000m steeplechase silver medallist Mekdes Bekele and Yacob Jarso, fourth in the men’s 3000m Steeplechase final in Beijing, both move up to Warden. Their club coach Hussein Shebo, who is also the assistant coach of the national team, moved up to Superintendent.
A week earlier, Tsegaye Kebede, bronze medallist in the Olympic marathon and winner of this year’s Paris Marathon, earned the military rank Deputy Sergeant from his club, Defence forces.
In a busy week of awards and commemorations, Ethiopia’s Olympic double 5000m/10,000m champion Kenenisa Bekele had an avenue in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa named after him by the city’s administration. “The Kenenisa Avenue” will run in one of the city’s major sections and will bear his name for visitors.
On the other hand, Dibaba has a hospital on the outskirts of the city named after her. “The Tirunesh Dibaba Hospital” is currently under construction in a joint collaboration between the Ethiopian and Chinese governments and is located in the Akaki-Kaliti sub-city in the suburbs of Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia’s Beijing medallists have also been raking up cash prizes and gifts over the past week. Both Bekele and Dibaba received a Toyota Corolla 2000 (current market value USD 40,000) each from the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi two weeks ago. In addition, Bekele was awarded ETB 100,000 (USD 10,000) from his club Muger Cement for his outstanding services to the club.
The awards ceremonies are expected to continue with regions and regional administrations across the country also awarding the athletes.
Concerned Ethiopians in Seattle have forced the cancellation of an event at the Seattle University where Woyanne ambassador and full time drunkard Samuel Assafa was scheduled to speak. It was rumored dictator Meles Zenawi might also appear at the event.
The event, which was named “Understanding Ethiopia,” was scheduled to coincide with the exhibition of Lucy (Dinknesh).
The University has canceled the meeting after Dr Shakespear Feyissa, a prominent Ethiopian attorney in Seattle, demanded a meeting with the president and other high level officials of the university to lodge a complaint. Shakespear, on behalf of the Ethiopian community in Seattle, informed the university about the atrocities of the Woyanne regime and appealed that the prestigious Seattle University should not provide a forum to mass murderers.
The University agreed and has canceled the meeting as shows below.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Source: World Affairs Council
Understanding Ethiopia Today – Cancelled!
His Excellency Dr. Samuel Assefa, Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States
This event has been cancelled.
What ties exist between the Northwest and Ethiopia and how are they changing? What role is Ethiopia playing in the War on Terror? What is the significance for Ethiopia of the exhibit “Lucy’s Legacy: Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia” on display at Pacific Science Center? In what ways are trade and investment between the Pacific Northwest and Ethiopia making us more connected?
The World Affairs Council presents His Excellency, Dr. Samuel Assefa, Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States. Dr. Samuel Assefa, a well-known academic and public figure in Ethiopia, was Vice-President of Addis Ababa University, the country’s leading institution of higher education, prior to his appointment as Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States on January 9, 2006.
Dr. Assefa pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in the United States. He taught at Williams College and Rutgers University before returning to Ethiopia in 1994, where he held teaching and leadership positions at Addis Ababa University. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the military regime, he took a leave of absence from his teaching duties and returned to Ethiopia to work closely with the Chair of the Constitutional Commission in deliberations toward the framing of the new Ethiopian Constitution. In 1996, Dr. Assefa also helped found the African Institute for Democratic Deliberation and Action (AIDDA), a non-government organization dedicated to research and public deliberation on the problems and possibilities of transitional democracy in Africa.
A Private Members-only reception will be held at 6:00 pm. Location information will be sent to reception attendees prior to the event. Registration for the reception includes admission to the evening lecture.
Co-sponsored by Seattle University, Pacific Science Center, PATH.
Once again, the twin spectres of drought and starvation stalk the land of Ethiopia. UN sources suggest that four million Ethiopians now need what they call “emergency assistance,” while another eight million need what is more vaguely described as “food relief.”
Already, thousands of people are dying. The first to expire are the very young and the very old. In some areas of the country, people are dying of starvation and malnutrition while their goats and sheep get fat eating crops that will not be harvested until late September.
Few saw this coming. Two years ago, Ethiopian officials boasted that food surpluses would allow their country to sell corn to neighbouring Sudan. The government has been investing more than a sixth of its budget in agricultural development, far above the average in other African countries. Child mortality has been reduced by 40%, and the agricultural sector has been growing by 10% annually over the last few years.
But in this part of the world, as Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said, “one unexpected weather event can push us over the precipice.” Only 1% of Ethiopia is irrigated, meaning that a lack of rainfall can produce catastrophic results for the five-out-of-six Ethiopians who eke out a living through subsistence agriculture.
Famine-relief food distribution is never a straightforward affair in an African country. Those (mostly southern) regions where voters did not support the regime in recent elections typically complain that they are cheated of food aid at the expense of more “loyal’ parts of the country in the north.
Inter-regional friction is no stranger to Ethiopia. Five hundred years ago, Cushitic-speaking Muslim tribesmen from the desert plains of (what is now) southeastern Ethiopia and the borderlands of Somalia declared a jihad and attacked the Semitic-speaking Christian highland kingdoms whose emperors claimed descent from Solomon and Sheba. With the timely help of Portuguese musketeers under the leadership of the son of Vasco da Gama, the southerners were repelled. The next 400 years of Ethiopian history led to a gradual domination and conquest of these southern tribes, who were vanquished once and for all by the last Emperor of Ethiopia, Hailie Selassie.
Selassie himself was overthrown by a group of Marxist revolutionaries, who plunged Ethiopia into a brutal civil war. Then came the famous drought of 1984, which brought us We Are the World.
One of the reasons so many people starved in Ethiopia during that time was that the ruling regime would not let food from food-rich areas go to food-poor areas — because the latter were dominated by opponents of the government. Nor would they allow people to migrate from food-poor to food-rich districts. “Starve or submit” became the watchword of this new regime.
The Derg, as this new regime called itself, was then ousted by a coalition of central and northern Semitic-speaking Ethiopians who considered themselves Marxists. But when they came to power, the Berlin wall had fallen already — so they made peace with the West, joined the war on terror, and started taking baby steps toward liberal democracy and the liberalization of their economy.
Nevertheless, the country remains riven by old conflicts. The governing elites are suspicious of the southerners, especially their newfound interest in radical Islam.
It comes as no surprise that, in the current crisis, some of the worst-affected and most neglected areas are in the southeast corner of the country, where Muslim peasants have been in open rebellion for over a decade.
According to “Radio Freedom” — operated by the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Army — on July 4, 2008, at least 13 Ethiopian government soldiers were killed; 15 others were reportedly killed in an attack in the Galalshe district. The Ethiopian government claims these rebels get support from sympathetic Arabs, and has accused Qatar of meddling in Ethiopia’s internal affairs. (Qatar, for its own reasons, supports the neighbouring Red Sea state of Eritrea, which just a few years ago fought a border war with Ethiopia and expresses support for Ethiopian rebels of Somali ethnicity in the southeast of the country.)
Ethiopia has neither confirmed nor denied that such attacks have taken place on its soldiers. But either way, it is understandable that Ethiopian government employees may be less than enthusiastic about personally overseeing food aid in the southern parts of the country.
Exacerbating these regional frictions, and this year’s extreme weather events, are what may be considered the two root causes of the famine: population growth and land tenure.
In 1984, during the height of the drought and civil war, Ethiopia had just under 34 million inhabitants. The population now stands at 77 million: In just more than one generation, the population of the country has doubled. Despite the government’s investment in agriculture, overall investment in education has gone down, which stifles the possibility of rural innovation. And, although overall food production has increased, the World Bank has noted that per capita production has declined. That is to say, each peasant produces less food than he once did. Even during good years, 6% of the rural peasantry is supported by government-and donor-delivered food relief.
After the murder of Hailie Selassie by the Derg in the early ’80s, the government revolutionized the land-tenure system by giving peasants enough land to till according to the number of children they then had. This simplistic tenure system has been kept intact by the present government. Peasants do not have title to their own plots, and there is an incentive to get more land by having more children to till it. But there is little incentive to make that land more productive: Farmers are fearful that if they invest in any aspect of land improvement they could lose their plots to local elites with political connections.
As peasants do not own their own land, they cannot use it as collateral to get loans they need to buy seed or fertilizer, which could in turn be used to create a food surplus to be used in case of drought. They also are denied the right to sell their land and move somewhere else– to a more fertile region or to the city to try their luck in urban occupations.
More food aid will help prevent mass starvation in Ethiopia in the short term. But in the long-run, it needs something else: a peasantry with the same right to own and control their land that most farmers in the world take for granted. Freed from government shackles, they will unleash a green revolution that will feed their families.
(Geoffrey Clarfield, a Toronto-based writer, can be reached at [email protected])
