SOMALI LINKS
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In Ethiopia, Fear and Cries
of Army Brutality - By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN(NYT)
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24/06/09,
Often when they pass through a village, the entire village lines up,
one sunken cheekbone to the next, to squint at them.
“May God bring you victory,” one woman whispered.
This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner of Ethiopia that the urbane
officials in Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather outsiders never see. It
is the epicenter of a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads against one
of the biggest armies in Africa.
What goes on here seems to be starkly different from the carefully
constructed up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a country that the United
States increasingly relies on to fight militant Islam in the Horn of Africa
— tries to project.
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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.
The Bush administration, particularly the military, considers Ethiopia its
best bet in the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, is
fast becoming intensely violent, virulently anti-American and an incubator
for terrorism.
But an emerging concern for American officials is the way that the Ethiopian
military operates inside its own borders, especially in war zones like the
Ogaden.
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.”
Moualin, a rheumy-eyed elder, said Ethiopian troops stormed his village,
Sasabene, in January looking for rebels and burned much of it down. “They
hit us in the face with the hardest part of their guns,” he said.
The villagers said the abuses had intensified since April, when the rebels
attacked a Chinese-run oil field, killing nine Chinese workers and more than
60 Ethiopian soldiers and employees. The Ethiopian government has vowed to
crush the rebels but rejects all claims that it abuses civilians.
“Our soldiers are not allowed to do these kinds of things,” said Nur Abdi
Mohammed, a government spokesman. “This is only propaganda and cannot be
justified. If a government soldier did this type of thing they would be
brought before the courts.”
Even so, the State Department, the European Parliament and many human rights
groups, mostly outside Ethiopia, have cited thousands of cases of torture,
arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings — enough to raise questions
in Congress about American support of the Ethiopian government.
“This is a country that is abusing its own people and has no respect for
democracy,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey and
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa and global
health.
“We’ve not only looked the other way but we’ve pushed them to intrude in
other sovereign nations,” he added, referring to the satellite images and
other strategic help the American military gave Ethiopia in December, when
thousands of Ethiopian troops poured into Somalia and overthrew the Islamist
leadership.
According to Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of
Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia is one of the most repressive countries in
Africa.
“What the Ethiopian security forces are doing,” she said, “may amount to
crimes against humanity.”
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.
After the report came out, the researcher who wrote it was banned by the
Ethiopian government from returning to the country. Similarly, three New
York Times journalists who visited the Ogaden to cover this story were
imprisoned for five days and had all their equipment confiscated before
being released without charges.
Ethiopia’s Tiananmen Square
In many ways, Ethiopia has a lot going for it these days: new buildings, new
roads, low crime and a booming trade in cut flowers and coffee. It is the
second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria, with 77
million people.
Its leaders, many whom were once rebels themselves, from a neglected patch
of northern Ethiopia, are widely known as some of the savviest officials on
the continent. They 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.
Many opposition members are now in jail or in exile. The rest seem
demoralized.
“There are no real steps toward democracy,” said Merera Gudina, vice
president of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a leading opposition
party. “No real steps toward opening up space, no real steps toward ending
repression.”
Ethiopian officials have routinely dismissed such complaints, accusing
political protesters of stoking civil unrest and poking their finger into a
well-known sore spot. Ethiopia has always had an authoritarian streak. This
is a country, after all, where until the 1970s rulers claimed to be direct
descendants of King Solomon. It is big, poor, famine-stricken, about
half-Christian and half-Muslim, surrounded by hostile enemies and full of
heavily armed separatist factions. As one high-ranking Ethiopian official
put it, “This country has never been easy to rule.”
That has certainly been true for the Ogaden desert, a huge, dagger-shaped
chunk of territory between the highlands of Ethiopia and the border of
Somalia. The people here are mostly ethnic Somalis, and they have been
chafing against Ethiopian rule since 1897, when the British ceded their
claims to the area.
The colonial officials did not think the Ogaden was worth much. They saw
thorny hills and thirsty people. Even today, it is still like that. What
passes for a town is a huddle of bubble-shaped huts, the movable homes of
camel-thwacking nomads who somehow survive out here. For roads, picture
Tonka truck tracks running through a sandbox. The primary elements in this
world are skin and bone and sun and rock. And guns. Loads of them.
Camel herders carry rifles to protect their animals. Young women carry
pistols to protect their bodies. And then there is the Ogaden National
Liberation Front, the machine-gun-toting rebels fighting for control of this
desiccated wasteland.
Rebels Live Off the Land
Lion. Radio. Fearless. Peacock. Most of the men have nicknames that conceal
their real identities. Peacock, who spoke some English, served as a guide.
He shared the bitter little plums the soldiers pick from thorn bushes —
“Ogaden chocolate,” he called them. He showed the way to gently skim water
from the top of a mud puddle to minimize the amount of dirt that ends up in
your stomach — even in the rainy season this is all there is to drink.
He pointed out the anthills, the coming storm clouds, the especially
ruthless thorn trees and even a graveyard that stood incongruously in the
middle of the desert. The graves — crude pyramids of stones — were from the
war in 1977-78, when Somalia tried, disastrously, to pry the Ogaden out of
Ethiopia’s hands and lost thousands of men. “It’s up to us now,” Peacock
said.
Peacock was typical of the rebels. He was driven by anger. He said Ethiopian
soldiers hanged his mother, raped his sister and beat his father. “I know,
it’s hard to believe,” he said. “But it’s true.”
He had the hunch of a broken man and a voice that seemed far too tired for
his 28 years. “It’s not that I like living in the bush,” he said. “But I
have nowhere else to go.”
The armed resistance began in 1994, after the Ogaden National Liberation
Front, then a political organization, broached the idea of splitting off
from Ethiopia. The central government responded by imprisoning Ogadeni
leaders, and according to academics and human rights groups, assassinating
others. The Ogaden is part of the Somali National Regional State, one of
nine ethnic-based states within Ethiopia’s unusual ethnic-based federal
system. On paper, all states have the right to secede, if they follow the
proper procedures. But it seemed that the government feared that if the
Somalis broke away, so too would the Oromos, the Afar and many other ethnic
groups pining for a country of their own.
The Ethiopian government calls the Ogaden rebels terrorists and says they
are armed and trained by Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor and bitter enemy. One
of the reasons Ethiopia decided to invade Somalia was to prevent the rebels
from using it as a base.
The government blames them for a string of recent bombings and
assassinations and says they often single out rival clan members. Ethiopian
officials have been pressuring the State Department to add the Ogaden
National Liberation Front to its list of designated foreign terrorist
organizations. Until recently, American officials refused, saying the rebels
had not threatened civilians or American interests.
“But after the oil field attack in April,” said one American official who
spoke on the condition of anonymity, “we are reassessing that.”
American policy toward Ethiopia seems to be in flux. Administration
officials are trying to increase the amount of nonhumanitarian aid to
Ethiopia to $481 million next year, from $284 million this year. But key
Democrats in Congress, including Mr. Payne, are questioning this, saying
that because of Ethiopia’s human rights record, it is time to stop writing
the country a blank check.
In April, European Commission officials began investigating Ethiopia for war
crimes in connection to hundreds of Somali civilians killed by Ethiopian
troops during heavy fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.
Women Are Suffering the Most
In the Ogaden, it is not clear how many people are dying. The vast area is
essentially a no-go zone for most human rights workers and journalists and
where the Ethiopian military, by its own admission, is waging an intense
counterinsurgency campaign.
The violence has been particularly acute against women, villagers said, and
many have recently fled.
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.”
Many Ogaden villagers said that when they tried to bring up abuses with clan
chiefs or local authorities, they were told it was better to keep quiet.
The rebels said thats was precisely why they attacked the Chinese oil field:
to get publicity for their cause and the plight of their region (and to
discourage foreign companies from exploiting local resources). According to
them, they strike freely in the Ogaden all the time, ambushing military
convoys and raiding police stations.
Mr. Mohammed, the government spokesman, denied that, saying the rebels “will
not confront Ethiopian military forces because they are not well trained.”
Expert or not, they are determined. They march for hours powered by a few
handfuls of rice. They travel extremely light, carrying only their guns, two
clips of bullets, a grenade and a tarp. They brag about how many Ethiopians
they have killed, and every piece of their camouflage, they say, is pulled
off dead soldiers. They joke about slaughtering Ethiopian troops the same
way they slaughter goats.
Their morale seems high, especially for men who sleep in the dirt every
night. Their throats are constantly dry, but they like to sing.
“A camel is delivering a baby today and the milk of the camel is coming,”
goes one campfire song. “Who is the owner of this land?”
Will Connors contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Source:http://www.abugidainfo.com/?p=9906
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