Ethiopia’s ‘Own Darfur’ As Villagers Flee Government-Backed
Violence
By Steve Bloomfield
Independent
October 17, 2007
Early one June morning, in Kamuda, a village of
200 families in the remote Ogaden region in eastern Ethiopia, 180
soldiers announced their arrival by firing guns in the air. The
village, they said, had been providing food and shelter for the
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), a separatist rebel group .
As the villagers froze in horror, the soldiers plucked out seven
young women, all aged between 15 and 18, and left. The following
morning the youngest girl was found. Her body, bloodied and beaten,
was hanging from a tree. The next day a second girl was found
hanging from the same tree. A third suffered the same fate. The
others were never seen again.
Shukri Abdullahi Mohammed, 48, a mother of seven
children, lived in Kamuda. As she describes the fate of the seven
girls – "the most beautiful girls in the village" – she tightens her
headscarf around her neck to indicate the way they were killed. "I
will not forget it," she says. Days later, a 12-year-old boy from
the same village was kidnapped by soldiers and gang-raped. Every
night, soldiers would knock on doors looking for women to rape. "I
did not want to wait until it happened to my family," said Mrs
Mohammed. They left Kamuda and made their way across the porous
border with Somalia, before travelling a further 300 miles by foot
to the hot and humid port town of Bosasso.
About 100 Ethiopians are now arriving here every
day. Their stories reveal the brutality of Ethiopia's hidden war, a
brutal counter-insurgency that some aid officials believe has
parallels with Darfur. Some estimates put the number of people
displaced by the violence at 200,000 already. According to accounts
from refugees, Ethiopian troops are burning villages, raping women
and killing civilians as part of a systematic campaign to drive them
from their homes. They reported dozens of villages destroyed and
accused the Ethiopian government of forcibly starving its own people
by preventing food convoys reaching villages and destroying crops
and livestock.
A former Ethiopian soldier who defected from the
army said how he had been ordered to burn villages and kill all
their inhabitants. He said the Ethiopian air force would bomb a
village before a unit of ground troops followed, firing
indiscriminately at civilians. "Men, women, children – we killed
them all," he said. "We were told we were fighting guerrillas – the
ONLF," he said. "But we were killing farmers – they were not ONLF."
Those who managed to escape are living in a
series of ramshackle refugee camps on the edge of Bosasso. Their
shelters are made from pieces of cardboard and old rags, scraps of
plastic sheeting and rusting corrugated iron. Sat outside the
shelters, on the grey expanse of dust and stone, voices overlap as
refugees list the villages that have been destroyed. Kor u Celista,
Gallaalshe, Fooldeex, Yoocaalle – places that were all once home to
hundreds of families, now abandoned and empty, the huts burnt to the
ground.
Abudllahi Shukri Mohammed, 30, a cattle herder
from Dega Bur province tells how he was forced at gunpoint to work
as a porter for a group of 300 soldiers. They took his 18 cows and
made him and five other nomads carry heavy loads. After three long
days marching through the Ogaden, Mr Mohammed tried to escape. "They
caught me and started beating me. They kicked me in the head and hit
me with the back of their guns." With his right arm he motions the
steady, repetitive smack of the guns against his body. His left arm
lies limp on his lap. He has been unable to move it since the
attack, his fingers fixed in an ugly formation. "They beat me for
two hours," he says, "then I fell unconscious. They thought I was
dead so they left me."
Ethiopia claims it is defending itself against an
insurgency launched by the ONLF in a region that has long been
marginalised. It claims villagers have been giving the fighters
shelter and food. Analysts say Ethiopia has been attempting to
reduce that support by emptying the countryside. Thousands have been
moved to towns heavily controlled by the military. Anyone left in
the villages is considered a possible ONLF supporter. The Ethiopian
military is not the only destructive force in the region. The ONLF
launched its most daring assault in April. The group attacked a
Chinese oil installation in Abole, killing nine Chinese and 65
Ethiopians.
It was that attack which sparked the fresh
counter-insurgency – a fierce scorched-earth policy. In the Ogaden's
main towns, Jijiga and Gode, the prisons are overflowing. "They are
arresting anyone who they think might have a connection with the
ONLF," says one human rights worker in Bosasso. "Some are being
killed if the security forces don't believe they are telling the
truth." Human rights investigators are gathering evidence of
widespread use of rape, with women reporting gang-rapes by up to a
dozen soldiers. In some villages, men have been abducted at night,
their bodies dumped in the village the next morning.
While in Darfur, aid agencies have been able to
establish camps and provide humanitarian support, they have been
blocked from setting up operations in the Ogaden. The International
Committee of the Red Cross has been thrown out and Medicins Sans
Frontieres has also been prevented from working. Journalists trying
to enter have also been banned – those that have tried have been
promptly arrested. A UN team was allowed into the Ogaden last month
to investigate allegations of abuse by Ethiopian troops. Its report
was not made public but the team called for an independent inquiry.
But while Khartoum's counter-insurgency in Darfur
has been described by the US as "genocide" and by the UN as "crimes
against humanity", international condemnation of Ethiopia has, so
far, been limited. Indeed, the US has given its backing to Ethiopia.
America's top official on African affairs, assistant secretary of
state, Jendayi Frazer, visited one town in the Ogaden last month. On
her return to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, she criticised the
rebels and said the reports of military abuses were merely
allegations. "We urge any and every government to respect human
rights and to try to avoid civilian casualties but that's difficult
in dealing with an insurgency," she said. America sees Ethiopia as
its principal Horn of Africa ally in the "war on terror". The US
gave tacit approval for Ethiopia's Christmas invasion of Somalia
which ousted the Union of Islamic Courts.
It also provided logistical and technical support
for the operation and continues to help co-ordinate a response to
the insurgency in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, which seeks to
destabilise the transitional government, propped up by Ethiopia. The
US provides some $283m (£140m) in military and humanitarian aid to
Ethiopia and has trained its military – one of the largest and
strongest in Africa. The Ogaden has become the latest flashpoint in
a broader conflict in the Horn of Africa. On one side is Ethiopia
and the weak transitional government of Somalia, on the other is
Eritrea and two insurgent groups, the ONLF and the Alliance for the
Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
From West's favourite leader to grave-digger
of democracy
Sat between a beaming Tony Blair and Sir Bob
Geldof, Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, could hardly have
wished for a stronger endorsement. The launch of Mr Blair's
Commission for Africa report in March 2005 in Ethiopia's capital,
Addis Ababa, enhanced Mr Meles's position as the British
Government's – and the West's – favourite African leader. Handpicked
by Mr Blair to sit on the commission, Mr Meles was viewed as the man
to lead the "African renaissance". He was seen as a leader committed
to development and democracy. But within two months of the
commission's report being published, Mr Meles's star began to fade.
Huge street protests erupted in Addis Ababa in May 2005 following a
general election which both the government and opposition claimed
they had won. Security forces opened fire on protesters, killing 193
people, and thousands of opposition supporters and leaders were
arrested.
More than 100 opposition leaders were put on
trial for treason while the police crackdown intensified. Text
messages, which had been used to organise the demonstrations in
2005, were banned. The next time Mr Meles and Mr Blair found
themselves sat next to each other, at a summit in South Africa, the
stiff body language and the lack of eye contact between the pair
underlined the deterioration in the relationship. Britain still
gives Ethiopia £130m in humanitarian aid each year – more than any
other African country. Like the US, Britain has tried to retain a
relatively close relationship with Ethiopia – one of its few allies
in a volatile Horn of Africa.
SOURCE:
Independent
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