Alliance With Atrocity: Bush's Terror War Partners in Ethiopia
by Chris Floyd.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/061907Floyd.shtml
"Though he ties the Bush Administration directly to atrocities, Gettleman still totes White House water by retailing the baseless charge that the overthrown Somali regime was a "potential terrorist threat".
18 June 2007—The New York Times paints a pretty picture of George W. Bush's bosom pals in Ethiopia, in an important story that once again gives the howling lie to the Bushists' pretensions of advancing freedom and democracy in their world-encircling Terror War.
Of course, the story itself, by Jeffrey Gettleman, is marred by the usual uncritical acceptance of Administration spin on its key role in aiding the Ethiopian dictatorship's aggression in Somalia, and ignores entirely the American airstrikes during the invasion that killed scores of civilians (and are still going on in the Somali hinterland). This is not surprising, given that Gettleman's last big piece from the region was a truly odious bit of propaganda hackwork that essentially painted the victims of the aggression as greedy, worthless, anarchic trash who got what was coming to them. (See "The Lies of the Times: NYT Pushes Bush Line on Somalia.")
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1125&Itemid=135
Still, the new article is a vast improvement on its predecessor, employing a journalistic device that is increasingly rare in the higher circles of the coporate media: reportage. Gettleman has actually gone to the Ogaden desert to talk with victims of the Ethiopian dictatorships's savage internal repression. He actually details Ethiopia's brutal crackdown on its nascent democracy movement, and its strangling of free elections in 2005 -- and even compares it to the murderous Chinese reaction to the historic Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
(Of course, Bush only increased American military aid to Ethiopia after the 2005 repression -- just as his father never let the Tiananmen massacre derail his courtship of China's leaders, which has paid off so handsomely for America's ruling family, with fat Chinese contracts for son Neil and lucre aplenty for George I's brother, Prescott Jr., long-time head of the Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce. Who wants to bet that Ethiopia will soon adopt Neil's latest wheeze, a"computer learning" gizmo he is marketing with business partners like Boris Berezovsky and Sun Myung Moon? For more on the Warbuckian Bushes, see "Uncle Sugar" and "Buried Treasure.)
So let's give credit where it's due. Although Gettleman downplays the American partnership with Ethiopia's conquest of Somalia -- and takes 40 paragraphs before he mentions that the European Commission is now investigating Bush's partner for war crimes "in connection to hundreds of Somali civilians killed by Ethiopian troops" -- he does bring in a Democratic congressman to decry the U.S. military alliance with Ethiopia, and its bitter fruit in Somalia. I believe this is the first time I've seen such a criticism aired by an elected official in a story from the major corporate media since the attack on Somalia last December.
What's more, the Timesman admirably puts the suffering of the persecuted ethnic Somalis of Ethiopia's Ogaden desert front and center in the story. And he makes an explicit connection between the perpetrators of these atrocities and their staunch supporters in the Bush Administration:
In village after village, people said they had been brutalized by government troops. They described a widespread and longstanding reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers gang-raping women, burning down huts and killing civilians at will.
It is the same military that the American government helps train and equip — and provides with prized intelligence. The two nations have been allies for years, but recently they have grown especially close, teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic movement that controlled much of Somalia and rid the region of a potential terrorist threat.
Of course, even in making this connection, which ties the Bush Administration directly to the atrocities detailed in the story, Gettleman still totes White House water by retailing, as unqualified fact, the baseless charge that the overthrown Somali regime was a "potential terrorist threat" -- and thus a legitimate target for the Terror War treatment. (Then again, you could say that any group or any person is a "potential" terrorist threat. If that's your basis for "intervention," then you can invade, detain or kill anyone you like. Which, as we have often pointed out here, is actually the operating philosophy of the Bush Regime.) But let's brush aside Gettleman's knee-jerk spin, and return to the facts and testimonies he unearths.
- Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too frightened, like many others, to give her last name, said soldiers took her to a police station, put her in a cell and twisted her nipples with pliers. She said government security forces routinely rounded up young women under the pretext that they were rebel supporters so they could bring them to jail and rape them. “Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”
...Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2005 that documented a rampage by government troops against members of the Anuak, a minority tribe in western Ethiopia, in which soldiers ransacked homes, beat villagers to death with iron bars and in one case, according to a witness, tied up a prisoner and ran over him with a military truck.
...[Ethiopia's] leaders...had promised to let some air into a very stultified political system during the national elections of 2005, which were billed as a milestone on the road to democracy. Instead, they turned into Ethiopia’s version of Tiananmen Square. With the opposition poised to win a record number of seats in Parliament, the government cracked down brutally, opening fire on demonstrators, rounding up tens of thousands of opposition supporters and students and leveling charges of treason and even attempted to kill top opposition leaders, including the man elected mayor of Addis Ababa.
As everywhere in the world where violence and repression flourish, women have been particular victims. (Of course, given the Administration's proven track record of callous disregard for the world's most vulnerable women, the fate of the Ogaden women is not likely to trouble the White House very much.)
- Asma, 19, who now lives in neighboring Somaliland, said she was stuck in an underground cell for more than six months last year, raped and tortured. “They beat me on the feet and breasts,” she said. She was freed only after her father paid the soldiers ransom, she said, though she did not know how much.
- Ambaro, 25, now living in Addis Ababa, said she was gang-raped by five Ethiopian soldiers in January near the town of Fik. She said troops came to her village every night to pluck another young woman. “I’m in pain now, all over my body,” she said. “ I’m worried that I’ll become crazy because of what happened.”
- Raping women and beating villagers to death, that's just background noise; but messing with the sacred crude -- now, that's serious. As Gettleman notes, the struggle in the Ogaden was simply ignored by the Bush Adminstration -- until a rebel Ogaden faction staged a bloody attack on an oilfield in Ethiopia last April. Raping women and beating villagers to death, that's just background noise; but messing with the sacred crude -- now, that's serious. So now the Bush administration is seriously considering Ethiopia's oft-repeated request for Washington "to add the Ogaden National Liberation Front to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations." That could open the spigot to even more U.S. military aid for the dictatorship, and perhaps even bring America's secret Terror Warriors -- such as the Special Forces units operating in Somalia today -- into the Ogaden.
After all, for America's war-profiteering ruling family, and its many like-minded barons among the respectable elite, you can never have too many killing fields to play upon -- just as your proxies can never be brutal enough to forfeit your aid...as long as they keep doing your bidding.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist.
A U.N. Report on Somalia Accuses Eritrea of Adding to the Chaos
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: July 27, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya, July 26 — Eritrea has covertly shipped “huge quantities of arms,” possibly including suicide bomb belts and missiles that can shoot down planes, to insurgents in Somalia in an effort to torpedo Somalia’s fledgling government, a new United Nations report says.
According to the report, delivered to the Security Council last Friday, United Nations monitors tracked a cargo jet that made at least 13 flights from Eritrea into Somalia to unload fighters and weapons.
The Eritrean government denied all accusations and accused the arms monitors of being “misused and abused by some countries who have created quagmire in Somalia.”
The report comes at a crucial time for Somalia, which is still steeped in chaos, awash in arms and struggling to establish a permanent government. Many people fear that the country could become the new battleground between Ethiopia and Eritrea, neighboring nations that fought a costly border war in the late 1990s. Thousands of Ethiopian troops rearranged the power dynamic in Somalia late last year, ousting an Islamic movement that had controlled considerable territory and helping to install in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, a Western-backed transitional government that had limited influence inside the country.
Since then, Ethiopian troops have been facing an insurgency in Somalia that appears to be a mix of clan militias, disgruntled businessmen and remnants of the Islamist forces.
The United Nations report accused the Ethiopian military of using white phosphorous bombs to kill 15 insurgents and 35 civilians in Mogadishu in April; residents said the bombs literally melted people.
The Ethiopian government denied this and called the accusation “baseless,” though United Nation monitors provided bomb scene photographs and evidence from soil samples indicating that the soil at the impact area had 117 times the normal amount of phosphorous.
The report also detailed a large suicide attack on an Ethiopian Army base near Mogadishu in March that killed 63 soldiers and wounded 50, making it one of the deadliest single strikes in Somalia in recent memory but one that had been significantly played down at the time.
Over all, the report painted a picture of the conflict in Somalia that was much more intense and grim than most outsiders knew. But some Somalia analysts were cautious. A previous United Nations arms report on Somalia, issued in November, had made some claims — including one that said 700 Somali jihadists traveled to Lebanon to fight alongside Hezbollah — that were roundly dismissed as inaccurate.
The recommendations at the end of the most recent report had familiar United Nations prescriptions for Somalia: more police officers, better disarmament and establishing a viable government. Transitional leaders are holding a reconciliation conference in Mogadishu, and this week, government officials invited Islamist leaders. Several have replied that they are not interested in coming.
Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations
BBC, 27 July 2007
Eritrea 'arming' Somali militia
Ugandan African Union troops destroy weapons near Mogadishu
Insurgents in Somalia have received huge numbers of weapons in secret shipments from Eritrea, the UN says.
There are now more arms in Somalia than at any time since the civil war started in 1991, the UN report says.
Eritrea, which has repeatedly denied aiding the insurgents, dismissed the report as a "total fabrication".
Meanwhile, three people have been killed in a hand grenade blast at a restaurant in the Somali capital. It is not known who carried out the attack.
It is the first time civilians have been targeted in the current conflict.
'Missile cache'
In its report to the UN Security Council, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia said Islamic Courts Union militias - known as the Shabab - had an unknown number of surface-to-air missiles, suicide belts and explosives with timers and detonators.
"The intention of the report is to depict it as if there is a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia", Ali Abdu, Eritrean Information Minister
It said Eritrea had sent at least six SA-18 surface-to-air missiles to the Shabab.
The accusations centre on a chartered Boeing 707 cargo plane that made at least 13 trips from the Eritrean capital, Asmara, to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, sometimes filing false flight plans.
Eritrea denied the flights but the International Civil Aviation Organisation confirmed them, the report said.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Associated Press news agency his country had not provided any assistance to the Shabab.
"It is a total fabrication and the intention of the report is to depict it as if there is a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia," Mr Abdu said.
There are more arms in Somalia than ever before
The presence of government-backed Ethiopian troops in Somalia had only managed to disperse the Islamist fighters and they still posed a serious threat, the report said.
The Islamic Courts Union ruled much of southern Somalia until it was ousted by government-backed Ethiopian troops last year.
Violence has surged since the recent launch of national reconciliation talks and has prompted a fresh exodus of people from Mogadishu. More than 10,000 have fled violence in the past 10 days, the UN says.
An estimated 400,000 people fled the capital during clashes between February and May.
The UN refugee agency says attacks by anti-government elements wound and kill civilians daily.
Somalia has been without a functioning government for 16 years since the start of the civil war.
Eritrea: Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia
26 July 2007
By its letter of 27 June 2007 and pursuant to to resolution 751 (1992) concerning Somalia, and in accordance with paragraph 3 (i) of Security Council resolution 1724 (2006), the Monitoring Group on Somalia transmitted its report to UN Security Council that was distributed on 17 July 2007. Following is an excerpt from the report regarding Eritrea:
On Arms embargo violations
Eritrea
11. Based on information reflected both in past reports and in the current report, the Monitoring Group has observed a clear pattern of involvement by theGovernment of Eritrea in arms embargo violations. The Monitoring Group alsoconcludes that the Government of Eritrea has made deliberate attempts to hide itsactivities and mislead the international community about its involvement.
12. When using aircraft to violate the arms embargo, the Government of Eritrea has variously applied different techniques, including: (a) creation of business frontcompanies for the sole purpose of hiding government activity; (b) use of different existing, or legitimate, airline companies; (c) creation and fabrication of false documentation, that is, filing of false flight plans indicating flights to third countries that never took place and the unauthorized use of registration numbers and call signs.
The case of the IL-76 operated by Eriko Enterprise, Asmara
13. In its previous report (see S/2006/913), the Monitoring Group provided detailed information concerning an IL-76 cargo plane transporting arms and fighters from Eritrea to Mogadishu (paras. 43-53). When presented with the foregoing information by the Monitoring Group, the Government of Eritrea denied that the flights had taken place.
14. During the current mandate, the Monitoring Group obtained a copy of the contract of sale (annex I) of the IL-76 aircraft to a company in Eritrea. A person intimately familiar with the transaction confirmed the information contained in the previous report of the Group added that the company that had purchased the aircraft was a front for the Eritrean Government. The person also indicated that a downpayment of US$ 200,000 had been paid by Eritrean diplomats based in a Gulf country to the seller of the aircraft.
The case of the Boeing 707 of Aerogem Aviation Ltd, operated by Fab Air
15. During the current mandate, the Monitoring Group received information that in November and December 2006 a Boeing 707 aircraft, using registration number 9G-OAL, call signs FBA2515 and FBA2516, and owned by Aerogem Aviation Ltd, based in Ghana, departed from the airports of Asmara and Assab, Eritrea, destined for Somalia (see annex II). Furthermore, reported to be on board the aircraft, and intended for delivery to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), were a variety of arms.
Read full report at:
http://www.eritreadaily.net/News0307/RPRTSOMMNGRP.pdf
Reported by Berhane M Tekeste.
http://www.eritreadaily.net/News0307/article0707261.htm
Eritrea rejects U.N. arms report on Somalia
By Jack Kimball
ASMARA (Reuters 27 Jul 2007) - Eritrea denied on Friday a report by a U.N. monitoring group that said it was sending huge quantities of weapons to Islamic insurgents in Somalia.
The report to the Security Council said Somalia was awash with more weapons than at any time since civil war broke out and the Horn of Africa nation slid into chaos in the early 1990s after the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
And it was the second in less than a year accusing Asmara of flouting a 1992 embargo by supplying rebels fighting the Somali government, which is backed by Eritrea's arch-foe Ethiopia.
"The intention is to fabricate a pretext for an Ethiopian invasion (of Eritrea) and to cover up the failures made by the United States and the United Nations," Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters. "It is known which corners this smear campaign is coming from."
The U.N. monitors' report said most weapons had been brought into Somalia via clandestine routes and many had reached the Shabab, the fighting wing of the militant Islamic Courts Union.
"Huge quantities of arms have been provided to the Shabab by and through Eritrea," the report said, adding that the Islamists had "an unknown number of surface-to-air missiles, suicide belts and explosive with timers and detonators".
Diplomats say Eritrea and Ethiopia have been waging a proxy war in Somalia since last year when Asmara backed the hardline Islamists against the country's fledgling government. Ethiopia sent in troops to support the U.N.-backed government and chase the Islamists out of the capital Mogadishu.
"As with the story of 2,000 Eritreans in Somalia, this is again a total fabrication," Abdu said, referring to accusations in the last U.N. monitors' report that accused Eritrea of having had 2,000 troops fighting in Somalia.
Eritrea -- long suspicious of the international community -- routinely accuses the United States of manipulating the United Nations to serve its interests in the region.
Ethiopia is also not exempt from the arms embargo. Only Uganda is exempt because about 1,600 of its soldiers are serving in Mogadishu as peacekeepers under an African Union mandate.
Despite defeats by the Ethiopians, the Shabab, which often attacks Ethiopian and government troops, has hidden arms caches for future use and scattered their fighters, the report said.
Other weapons have found their way through arms dealers operating in a large arms market in Mogadishu, which sells to warlords scattered in central and southern Somalia and "is doing a brisk and lucrative business in arms sales".
Is Somalia a Proxy War Between Ethiopia and Eritrea?
By Joe De Capua, Washington, 27 July 2007.
http://www.voanews.com/
The tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia may be playing themselves out in part in Somalia. Some observers say the violence in Somalia may be a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Timothy Othieno is a senior researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue in Midrand, South Africa. He spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about whether he thinks Somalia is a proxy war.
“Yes, it can be construed as that based on the fact that if one goes with the allegations that Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia were being funded, armed and also had the political support of the Eritrean government in its fight against the Ethiopian-backed TFG. So in that case, yes, I could argue it is an extended confrontation Ethiopia and Eritrea…but to go into more detail…the unresolved border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia actually can be explained and one can argue that what we’re seeing today in Somalia is actually an extension of that. Because a UN boundary commission ruling in favor of Eritrea has not been implemented to date in favor of Eritrea. Ethiopia has refused to give back the (border town) of Badme to Eritrea as the boundary commission had decided…and that is actually an extension of the current problem that we’re seeing today,” he says.
Eritrea’s information minister, Ali Abdu, is quoted as saying the allegations are a “smear campaign.” He describes them as a “fabricated pretext for an Ethiopian invasion and to cover up the failures made by the United States and the United Nations.”
Othieno says, “To a certain extent I would agree with the Eritrean minister in the sense Ethiopian troops and tanks at international airport in Mogadishu 29 Dec 2006 that the onus was on the United Nations to enforce, to implement its own ruling. I mean you cannot have a UN ruling being ignored, if I may use that word, by a government such as Ethiopia.” He says that the United States and other nations “should have impressed upon Ethiopia to abide by that ruling.”
He says Eritrea and the Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia currently have a common enemy in Ethiopia. He says that he doubts there will be peace in Somalia until tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia are resolved and that includes the border dispute.
Young Mujahideen Movement in Somalia Refuses Negotiations with the Enemy, Claims “Significant” Operation Against Ethiopian Forces
By SITE Intelligence Group, July 26, 2007.
http://www.siteinstitute.org
The Young Mujahideen Movement in Somalia issued two communiqués through the Global Islamic Media Front to jihadist forums today, Thursday, July 26, 2007, declaring that it refuses to negotiate with the enemy to reach peace and claiming a “significant” operation against Ethiopian forces. Responding to enemy leaders for discussions, the Movement states that their discussions are only with “blood and destruction”, and explains that their sole goal is the establishment of Islamic Shari’a, making Islam supreme over the land. They add: “so dig your graves because with the permission of Allah, death is coming.”
Regarding the claimed bombing, which occurred yesterday in an unidentified location, the Young Mujahideen Movement alleges to have killed dozens from an Ethiopian infantry, but the significance comes from the similarity of their strategy to that of the Mujahideen in Iraq. Rendering the site an “Ethiopian hell”, the group remarks that the enemy’s fate is similar to the American soldiers in Baquba, where glory is imminent with the victory of the Islamic State of Iraq.
A translation of the two messages is provided to our Monitoring Service subscribers.
Ethiopia town 'fodder' for terror
By Zoe Alsop, COX NEWS SERVICE, May 17, 2007
GODE, Ethiopia -- This town is located on an arid plain of brittle yellow scrub brush in Ethiopia's eastern Somali region. It looks like a place where a John Wayne character might live and die.
And to be sure, people are dying here as violence from warring factions in neighboring Somalia spills over into Ethiopia.
"The worst are bullet injuries to the abdomen," said Dr. Solomon Muluneh, 31, an Ethiopian general practitioner -- one of only two physicians in 100 miles. "When you open the abdomen, you pray, because it is a very difficult area." Dr. Muluneh sees a few bullet wounds each week at his clinic and thinks many insurgents afraid to show their faces in his state hospital seek treatment for similar injuries from traditional healers or in Somalia.
The bullet wounds are the product of fighting between local rebels and militias sponsored by the Ethiopian government. Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia last year in a continuing effort to counter gains made by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which has been linked to al Qaeda. Ethiopia accuses the ICU of planning to invade this region and backing the local rebel force, known as the Ogaden National Liberation
Front (ONLF).
Washington sees this barren and lawless region of the Horn of Africa, the continent's gateway to the Middle East, as a linchpin for regional security. U.S. military forces, working with Ethiopian
troops, have used this region as a strategic base from which to gather intelligence and coordinate air strikes on al Qaeda-related targets in Somalia.
Along the main road from Ethiopia's Somali region to Mogadishu, Gode has the hard-bitten feel of a frontier town. Aside from a handful of government buildings, it is a warren of rickety shelters patched together from mud, wattle and tarps bearing logos of international relief agencies. Beyond the town, tiny thatch dwellings of nomadic Somali herders dot the dusty plain.
But Gode, with a population of 100,000, is bigger than it seems -- and more important. While it is at the heart of a region important to U.S. interests, analysts say chronic neglect of the ethnic Somalis, including the dominant Ogaden clan, by the government in Addis Ababa has sown the kind of anarchy where terrorism thrives.
"That is a brilliant ground for terror, because if you want to sustain terror, you will need to have recruits. When you have people who are idle and disorderly and poor and helpless, you have got free fodder," said Peter Edopu of South Africa's Institute for Security Studies.
On its own
There is no road connecting Gode directly to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, about 400 miles to the northwest. The government has left the surrounding region on its own to cope with a cycle of flood and famine that kills hundreds of people each year.
Unemployment is estimated at well over 50 percent, and food here costs three times what it does in the rest of Ethiopia. The only things that come cheap are guns.
Rebel factions opposed to Ethiopian rule have operated here as part of a regional and cultural feud fueled by British rule in the 19th century. Ever since British colonists grudgingly bequeathed the Somali region to an Ethiopian emperor more than a century ago, Somalis here have fought with the "habeisha" - highlanders as they call the non-Somali Ethiopians.
The ONLF rebels want independence for this region, where their Ogaden clan has long lived. But they have formed an alliance of convenience with factions inside Somalia that still covet the region as part of a "Greater Somalia" along with parts of Djibouti, Eritrea and Kenya, where ethnic Somalis live.
The strong U.S. interest in Gode is plain to see. Dirt-filled barriers block vehicle access to Gode's airstrip and a local hotel, where a U.S. Army civil affairs battalion camped out before leaving the region last year.
In a campaign to win hearts and minds, U.S. troops drilled bore holes for water, vaccinated livestock and, according to local lore, barbecued a crocodile dragged from the muddy river.
The U.S. military shares intelligence and expertise with Ethiopia's army and used Ethiopian airstrips to send air strikes on suspected al Qaeda redoubts in southern Somalia in January. U.S.
officials have acknowledged questioning suspected terrorists in Ethiopian prisons.
'Special relationship'
"We have a very special relationship with this country because of the things we share," said U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto. "Ethiopia and the U.S. have a commonality of issues. And it's not only the war on terrorism. I mean, that's only one of many areas - It's fighting poverty, it's fighting HIV/AIDS, it's fighting malaria."
So far, such pronouncements have meant little to people in Gode. They may live in Ethiopia, but they consider themselves Somalis.
Of the 5.5 million people living in the region, 90 percent are Somali-speaking Muslims, and can trace their lineage more than a thousand years back to the same clans dominating Somalia today.
In the stalls at the market, everything from tins of pineapple and cooking oil to cellophane-wrapped shirts has been bought in Somalia. The cars here have Dubai plates and are not allowed to drive elsewhere in the country - they've been shipped via Mogadishu, just a day's drive from here.
Whatever the Ethiopian government can't or won't provide, people find in Somalia.
"We don't get adequate drugs from the central government," said Dr. Muluneh, the Ethiopian physician, who earns less than $200 a month. "Since we have a shortage, we are forced to use the drugs coming from Somalia. There is no quality control, but you can find antibiotics, IVs, anti-malarials, any kind of drug."
Finger-pointing
Analysts like Mr. Edopu say the Ethiopian government and the United States would be wise to do more to help Gode, instead of focusing on security issues alone. Otherwise, they risk pushing
ordinary people into the arms of the insurgency.
Ethiopian officials, in turn, blame the Ogaden National Liberation Front for the region's woes.
The size of the ONLF is not clear, but the Ethiopian government says it has ties to extremists in Somalia. It has claimed responsibility for several attacks in recent months, including a
devastating attack against Ethiopian soldiers guarding a Chinese-run oil field near the Somali border late last month.
Rebels killed 65 troops and nine Chinese workers and took another seven Chinese hostage during the dawn raid. In a statement, the ONLF warned foreign oil companies not to operate in the region.
Two weeks after Ethiopian troops invaded Mogadishu in late December, the Ethiopian Red Cross reported more than 200 casualties from fighting between the ONLF and government-backed militias. The ONLF itself claimed to have taken control of more than two dozen towns in the region during the same period.
In the remote town of Degebhur, rebels killed 26 officials and lynched the chief of police within days of the Ethiopian army's occupation of Mogadishu, according to international aid groups.
"The main problem in this region is the opposition," said Gode's mayor, Sheik Moktar. "The ONLF is the only barrier for development in the region because they are burning everything that we build here."
Others in Gode said an intricate network of government-paid informants infiltrates everything from dusty coffee stalls to the compounds of international relief agencies. One trader said district
officials have warned Gode's merchants not to talk to American journalists visiting the region.
But the Ethiopian administration claims it has good relations with the people of the Somali region.
"Somali-speaking people inhabiting our region, they are Ethiopians, they have full rights," said Information Minister Bereket Simon. "They can secede from Ethiopia if they want. Their right is respected to this level, so they have never enjoyed better."
Ethiopia: Government Denies Looming Humanitarian Crisis in Somali Region
UN IRIN 26 July 2007
The Ethiopian government has denied blocking aid and trade to parts of its southeastern Somali region but analysts and aid agencies say humanitarian access is limited and rising prices of food are evidence of security-related restrictions.
"It is a lie. It is far from the truth. There is no humanitarian operation we have banned. We are not closing any route of humanitarian operation; however, we closed the illegal trade routes crossing the border," Jama Ahmed Jama, vice-president of the Somali regional state, told IRIN.
Since May, analysts and media reports say the government has stepped up security operations to combat the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), including tightening controls on the flow of goods and people within the region, with neighbouring Somalia and with the rest of Ethiopia.
The Ogaden area is in the southern part of the Somali region. Ethiopian security forces have been accused of a range of serious human rights abuses in the operation. Peter Takirambudde, Africa director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), is quoted in a 4 July report saying: "Ethiopian troops are destroying villages and property, confiscating livestock and forcing civilians to relocate. Whatever the military strategy behind them, these abuses violate the laws of war."
The alleged relocation of civilians, said a regional analyst speaking to IRIN from the UK, was part of a "classic counter-insurgency" campaign to deny rebels access to support from the civilian population. HRW said: "The attacks on villages and the economic blockade may be part of a strategy to force thousands of people from rural areas to larger towns and deny the ONLF a support base."
Media access has also been restricted, with New York Times journalists reporting in the region detained and questioned for five days in May.
Warnings of 'crisis'
The combination of restrictions on trade and movement, the high risk of flooding between July and September reported by the National Meteorological Agency and the progression of the dry season, means there is a high risk that the food security situation could deteriorate into a severe humanitarian crisis in the second half of 2007, according to a statement issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Five zones in the Somali region - Fik, Degehabur, Warder, Korahe and Gode (in the Ogaden ) - are under "military operation", according to UN reports. Restrictions on food aid to those zones were lifted in principle on 21 July, according to an announcement by the regional state authorities, said OCHA, but not yet realised.
Food aid is being distributed to three of the region's nine zones.
Emergency food aid allocations are based on estimates of 530,000 people in need across the Somali region. Food and other humanitarian needs are being reassessed by aid agencies and the government in a joint process following the Gu season rains.
Only a few humanitarian agencies are active in the Ogaden region. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was given seven days' notice to leave the area this week, and issued a statement on 26 July "deploring" the decision and underlining all parties' "obligation to comply with international humanitarian law, in particular with that law's prohibition of attacks against people not or no longer taking direct part in hostilities and the right guaranteed by that law to civilians to receive the humanitarian assistance essential to their survival".
The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) said in a 19 July report that markets had been affected since mid-June, with food prices doubling in Warder and Korahe from May to June. As an example, 50kg of rice had risen to 500 Ethiopian birr (US$55) in June from 220 birr ($24) in May.
The region, which has faced conflict, drought and floods over recent years, is poor and vulnerable: "Even small shocks can quickly result in extreme food insecurity," said FEWS Net. The largely pastoralist region depends on livestock for barter and trade. "At the same time, because the normal market for livestock in these areas is outside the areas where movement is restricted, herders are unable to access the markets and sell their livestock," reported FEWS Net.
Rebel allegations
The ONLF accused the government of using food as a weapon.
ONLF spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi told IRIN on 24 July there was a total blockade of the region by the Ethiopian government. "Nothing is entering the region whether it is commercial or aid. The situation is most desperate in Warder, Korahey, Dagahabur, Fik, Dhuxun and Gode."
He alleged the Ethiopian military was taking or destroying what little food stocks the people had. "Villages and nomadic homes have been torched by the Ethiopian forces. They want to starve the people into submission. Food donated by western taxpayers is being used as weapon of war by the Ethiopian regime."
He called on the international community, particularly the UN, "to act now to avert a catastrophe or they will be complicit in the crimes being committed by the Ethiopian government in the Ogaden".
Vice-president Jama, however, denied there was any food crisis in the region. "The food aid is currently in distribution. We do not have any report on hand that showed any type of food crisis in the region.
"We are trying to alleviate our people from poverty not push them into suffering," he added.
Somalia: Demonstrators Accuse Gov Troops of Raping Five Refugee Women
Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu) 26 July 2007
Aweys Osman Yusuf, Mogadishu
Some of Mogadishu's Internally Displaced People in Heliwa district staged a huge protest against Somali government troops who raided a refugee camp and raped at least five refugee women including a teenage a girl.
The demonstration which was orchestrated by the relatives and neighbors of the victims took place in north of the capital with protestors chanting anti-government troops slogans.
Aden Osman, the husband of one the raped women, said he was taken out with a gun point by the troops, while butting him. "They were several men armed with AK 47 guns and they said they were searching for insurgents and they began beating me until I went out conscious and then went for the women in the camp, raping them," he said.
Mumino Mohammed, one of the victims, told Shabelle that she had 15 days old baby. "I gave birth a baby 15 days ago, I told them, three soldiers who came into my shelter, that I have very small child but they raped me the three of them, despite my screams and begging that should leave me alone," she said.
Osman said they even raped 15 year old girl in the camp. "No one came to help us. All women in the camp were crying and screaming for help. They beat every single man in the camp," he said.
Nourto Haji, one of the victimized women, also said she was tortured before the troops raped her. "I am a mother of four children, and they beat my husband ordering him that he and the children get out," she said.
In the protest, they asked Somalia's transitional government to do something about their complaints and punish the soldiers who commited the cruel acts against them.
On Wednesday a demonstration against government troops also took place in north of the capital. Protesters were complaining that troops robbed their properties.
Hundreds of Somali businessmen and women were chanting anti-government slogans, marching inside Karan district for hours.
Some of them told Shabelle that the market in the area was raided and robbed twice in this week, demanding that the government should release one of their fellow traders.
Mohamoud Hassan Kulmiye, one of the rally-makers, said that they will continue staging demonstrations against the government until Aweys Mohammed Gaal, a shopkeeper, who was apprehended by Somali troops is released.
Abdifitah Nour Sabriye, the deputy of Mogadishu mayor, told Shabelle after he was contacted on Thursday that there were no government troops who raped IDPs.
"First, no group can stage a demonstration in Mogadishu without our knowledge and there are no government forces that raped women," he said.
More civilians fleeing Mogadishu violence - U.N.
23 Jul. Source: Reuters
Somalia troubles
By Claudia Parsons
UNITED NATIONS, July 23 (Reuters) - Security in Mogadishu has worsened since peace talks started a week ago and, for the first time since early June, more people have left the Somali capital than returned, the United Nations said on Monday.
Reconciling clan rivalries is a key aim of the National Reconciliation Conference which the interim government hopes will bolster its legitimacy and win it the support it needs to bring peace among Somalia's myriad factions.
The reconciliation meeting opened in Mogadishu on July 15 but was marred by mortar bombs attacks.
A U.N. statement said more than 10,000 people fled Mogadishu last week. Since government troops began securing the city at the start of June, some 21,000 people have left Mogadishu and around 20,000 have returned, it said.
"The continuing violence is again driving civilians from their homes and making life extremely difficult for those who remain," John Holmes, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said in the statement.
U.N. agencies estimated the number of Somalis internally displaced in 2007 at 400,000.
"Restrictions on daily activities for most people in Mogadishu have jeopardized the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people within the city," the statement said, adding that the closure of the Bakara market was causing hardship.
Somali government forces and allied Ethiopian troops have been a target of regular attacks in the Bakara market, which is home to one of the world's biggest open-air weapons markets and is suspected of being a hideout for insurgents.
"Security in Mogadishu deteriorated with the start of the National Reconciliation Conference," the statement said.
The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution on Monday extending the mandate of a monitoring group that oversees compliance with an international arms embargo on Somalia.
At the end of 2006, Somali forces backed by Ethiopia's military routed Islamist troops in a two-week war in the country which has been in chaos since 1991 when it became a patchwork of feuding warlords after a dictator was ousted.
But persistent attacks blamed on ousted Islamist hard-liners have kept up the pressure on the interim government, which has urged the United Nations to send peacekeepers to reinforce an African Union force.
Somalia: Another Chance at Peace? [listen]
http://www.irinnews.org/audiofiles/19072007.rm
SOMALIA: IDPs in dire need as more flee violence
Displaced people taking shelter under a tree after fleeing Mogadishu
NAIROBI, 23 July 2007 (IRIN) - Local authorities in Belet Hawo, Gedo region, on the southwestern border with Kenya, are urging international aid agencies to help up to 18,000 displaced people who have sought refuge there.
"We have registered about 3,000 families [18,000 people] from March to June. There was a lull when the number of arrivals almost stopped in late May, but since the beginning of July close to 1,000 families [6,000 individuals] have arrived and they continue to arrive," Ahmed Mohamed Burkuus, Belet Hawo District Commissioner, told IRIN on 23 July.
He said every vehicle arriving in the town in July was bringing more people fleeing the fighting in Mogadishu. The fighting pits Ethiopian-backed government troops against insurgents.
He said those arriving were in two categories: "Those who want a safe haven from the violence in Mogadishu and those who want to enter Kenya."
Burkuus said life in Belet Hawo was becoming very difficult due to the large numbers of displaced people and the closure of the Kenyan border.
He said the violence in Mogadishu and the closure of the border had disrupted trading, leading to severe food price increases. "The prices of basic goods have gone up by sometimes more than 100 percent."
"People [both IDPs and locals] are desperate and need immediate assistance,” he added.
The local people have done all they can for those displaced, "but they are not any better off than IDPs", said Burkuus. He said everyone needed help with shelter material, food and medicine.
He also urged the Kenyan authorities to reopen the border to allow agencies to deliver aid. "Since the closure of the border not much has come in, in terms of aid or trade," he added. Kenya closed the border with Somalia in January 2007, fearing that armed groups fleeing from Somalia would enter the country.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Somalia) said the closure continued to delay cross-border movement of relief supplies. Up to 8,500 tonnes of food and 25 tonnes of supplementary food for malnourished children were held up on the Kenyan side of the border, according to OCHA's latest update on 20 July.
The supplies were offloaded from 290 lorries and put in warehouses. The consignment was intended for 140,000 beneficiaries in Bay and Gedo regions, it added.
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that at least 10,000 people had fled fresh violence in Mogadishu during the past week.
UNHCR said violence had escalated since the national reconciliation conference began in Mogadishu on 19 July.
At least 1,000 people have reportedly been killed and more than 400,000 displaced since fighting between Ethiopian-backed government troops and insurgents erupted in February 2007.
Somalia: Islamist Leader Blames Govt. of Daily Bombings
Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu) 22 July 2007
Aweys Osman Yusuf, Mogadishu
The chairman of the defeated Union of Islamic Courts, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who is Asmara, Eritrea, accused the Somali transitional government of being responsible for the daily bombings in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
He told Shabelle that Somali troops hurl grenades to kill a lot of Somalis. "They hurl the bombs to kill people and then they tell the world that insurgents have been responsible for the incidents. They are the murderers and the Somalis and the world should understand that," he said.
He said the government was meaning to make the population hate what he called "those who object to the Ethiopian occupying forces".
On July 12, opponents of the Somali transitional government in Eritrea announced they would hold a conference on September to form a coalition whose main objective is to end Ethiopia's occupation of Somalia.
In late December, Ethiopia led the massive military offensive that ended the six-month rule of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union and enabled the interim government to move in Mogadishu.
In recent months, the Islamists and former parliament members have issued joint statements against Ethiopia and the interim government from their opposition base in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
The West accuses Eritrea of fighting a proxy war against its long time enemy, Ethiopia, by funding and facilitating actions to undermine Somalia's interim government in Mogadishu.
Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991 when warlords toppled former president, Siad Barre.
Ethiopia rebels warn catastrophe looming in Ogaden
Rebels call for a U.N. investigation into alleged government blocking of food aid
The Ogaden National Liberation Front says "man-made famine" being created
NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- Ogaden rebels warned of a looming "man-made famine" in Ethiopia's remote area bordering Somalia and called on Monday for a U.N. investigation into accusations the government was blocking food aid to the region.
On Sunday, a New York Times report quoted Western diplomats and relief officials as saying Ethiopia's government was blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to Ogaden.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front, which is seeking more autonomy for its homeland but which Addis Ababa says it is a terrorist group bankrolled by Eritrea, called for a U.N. fact-finding mission.
"The ONLF wishes to affirm to the international community that if there is no immediate intervention in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Ogaden, there will be a man-made famine created by the current regime of Meles Zenawi," the ONLF said in a statement.
Ethiopian government officials were not immediately available to comment.
On Monday, the ONLF said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's administration was engaged in a systematic and deliberate campaign of violence against its people.
"These war crimes include diverting humanitarian assistance for use by the regime's armed forces ... deliberate burning of villages, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, torture, a blockade on food aid as well as other commercial goods and other forms of collective punishment," the ONLF said in a statement.
Ethiopia frees 38 opposition members
"The United Nations bears a particular responsibility to investigate war crimes in Ogaden given recent reports that its humanitarian assistance is deliberately being diverted to armed forces and militias responsible for these war crimes," it said.
The ONLF itself has been accused of carrying out atrocities, including an April raid on a Chinese-run oil field in which 74 people were killed and seven Chinese workers taken hostage.
They were later freed but in the wake of the attack, Meles announced a crackdown on the rebels.
It is difficult to get independent information out of the desolate region, which is ethnically Somali. E-mail to a friend
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