Africa's `vanished' people in the war on terror

Xan Rice
The Hindu, April 24

Prisoners accused of supporting terrorists in Somalia were secretly transferred from country to country for interrogation outside the boundaries of domestic or international law.

FATMA AHMED Chande was cold. It was 3 a.m. and raining. The 25-year-old Tanzanian woman was kneeling on the taxiway at Nairobi's international airport. Headlights from a convoy of police vehicles punched holes in the darkness. She saw a group of blindfolded men being led towards a plane. She recognised some of the shackled women and children who followed them.

A policeman jerked Ms. Ahmed's scarf over her eyes. He tied her hands behind her back with a pair of plastic handcuffs that cut into her wrists. It was the same man who had threatened to kill her if she did not admit that her husband had supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. "This is it," she thought. "I am going to die."

The quiet 25-year-old from Moshi, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, did not die in the early hours of January 27. But the ordeal that had begun when she was arrested at Kenya's northern border three weeks before while fleeing the war in Somalia was far from over.

Bundled aboard African Express flight AXK-527 she was about to become part of the first mass "renditions" in Africa, where prisoners accused of supporting terrorists in Somalia were secretly transferred from country to country for interrogation outside the boundaries of domestic or international law.

Along with at least 85 others from 20 countries, she was flown back to Somalia — a war zone with no effective government or law — and on to Ethiopia. There, American intelligence agents joined the interrogations — photographing and taking DNA samples, even from the children.

On April 7, three months after her arrest, Ms. Ahmed was released. Salim Awadh Salim, her husband and father of her unborn baby, is still in detention. So, too, are 78 of the other passengers aboard the three secret rendition flights. At least 18 are children under 15.

Recuperating at her parents' house in Moshi, Ms. Ahmed made her allegations to The Guardian in the hope that it would pressure Ethiopia into releasing her husband and the other prisoners. She described how she had married in 2000 and moved to the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa, where her husband ran a mobile phone repair shop. When his business soured last year, he decided to try his luck in the Somali capital Mogadishu, where a loose coalition of clan-based courts had established law and order for the first time since 1991. She joined him in August.

War was brewing. Ethiopia, backed by the U.S., accused the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) of links to Al-Qaeda. As Ethiopian troops pushed towards Mogadishu in late December, the couple joined thousands of people fleeing south by road.

They joined two Swahili-speaking women who were also trying to reach Kenya. Halima Badroudine had three young children. Fatma Ahmed Abdulrahman had a son aged about six. "They told us that their husbands were Somalis who had stayed behind in Mogadishu," said Ms. Ahmed.

Complex truth

The truth was more complicated. Ms. Badroudine is married to Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comorian; Ms. Abdulrahman to a Kenyan called Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. Both men are Al-Qaeda members accused of prominent roles in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. When the group crossed into Kenya at Kiunga, on Somalia's southern tip, Ms. Ahmed thought she was safe.

But Kenyan anti-terror police identified and detained Ms. Badroudine and Ms. Abdulrahman. The problem for Ms. Ahmed and her husband, and dozens of others detained at the border at the same time, was that they too were presumed "guilty" of supporting the Islamists.

They were separated and repeatedly interrogated. After 10 days, Ms. Ahmed was flown to Nairobi. The aggressive questioning continued.

One Kenyan interrogator asked if she was willing to separate from Salim.

When she said no, he beat his fist on the table. "He wanted to make me admit that my husband was a member of Al-Qaeda," she said. "He said he would strangle me if I did not tell the truth."

She insists Salim had never had close contact with the SCIC in Mogadishu — or with Al-Qaeda members anywhere.

Though she had her Tanzanian passport with her, the police refused to acknowledge her nationality. Her husband, who had since also been flown to Nairobi, had his Kenyan passport and birth certificate, but was also documented as an "illegal immigrant."

Pressure was building on the Kenyan government to lay formal charges or release the prisoners. Kenya's Muslim Human Rights Forum filed an application to force the government to produce them in court. Instead, it produced three flight manifests.

The first two were African Express charters to Mogadishu on January 20 and 27, one showing Ms. Ahmed and her husband among the passengers. A third, operated by Blue Bird Aviation, had flown to Baidoa, Somalia's temporary capital, on February 10.

In Mogadishu, where insurgents were already beginning to ambush Ethiopian troops, Ms. Ahmed was held in a tiny cell with about 20 other women and children, including a Swede, a Sudanese, and a pregnant Yemeni. After nine days, they were flown to Addis Ababa.

On April 7, Ms. Ahmed was put on a flight to Kilimanjaro. Her escort promised that her husband and the others would be released with a week. It has now been 16 days. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

US attack in Somalia

U.S. Strike in Somalia Targets Al-Qaeda Figure

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post, January 9

A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure.

The strike took place near the Kenyan border, according to a senior officer at the Pentagon. Other sources said it was launched at night from the U.S. military facility in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the border area.

It was the first acknowledged U.S. military action inside Somalia since 1994, when President Bill Clinton withdrew U.S. troops after a failed operation in Mogadishu that led to the deaths of 18 Army Rangers and Delta Force special operations soldiers.

Sources said last night that initial reports indicated the attack had been successful, although information was still scanty.

"You had some figures on the move in a relatively unpopulated part of the country," said one source confirming the attack, who, like several others, would discuss the operation only on the condition of anonymity. "It was a confluence of information and circumstances," he said. The attack was first reported by CBS News.

One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 -- the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader.

More recently, Sudani was identified by U.S. intelligence as a close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, head of a Mogadishu-based network that operated in support of al-Qaeda in Somalia. Dourad is one of 14 "high-value" prisoners transferred last September from CIA "black sites" to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence then disclosed that Dourad "worked for the East African al-Qaeda cell led by . . . al-Sudani" and carried out at least one mission for him, related to a plan to bomb the U.S. military base in Djibouti.

Others have identified Sudani as the financier for Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed responsible for the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. All are among the senior al-Qaeda operatives the Bush administration has charged were sheltered by Somalian Islamic fundamentalists controlling Mogadishu, the country's capital. They are believed to have fled late last month when Ethiopian troops drove the fundamentalists out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.

[In an interview early Tuesday, Abdirizak Hassan, chief of staff for Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, confirmed the strike. Hassan said he heard from American officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed had been killed, although U.S. officials said he had not been in their immediate sights. "Among the targets was Fazul," he said, "and we understand that Fazul is no more."

Hassan also said Somali officials authorized the strike. "We gave permission for actions that are more than airstrikes," Hassan said. "Whatever it means to rout these people out, we have given them permission."]

The Bush administration has been leading an international diplomatic effort to stabilize Somalia, including organizing an African peacekeeping force. It has called on leaders of Somalia's new transitional government to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with moderate members of the Islamic leadership who are not seen as terrorist facilitators and who are supported by a significant segment of Somali clans.

Neither effort has met with much success. African countries have been reluctant to offer troops and the new Somalian leaders have resisted negotiations.

Sources would not confirm that U.S. forces are operating on the ground along the border between Somalia and Kenya, although one emphasized that "we are working very, very closely" with Kenyan forces.

The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower was deployed in the Indian Ocean to provide air cover for the operation and, if needed, to evacuate downed airmen and other casualties. It joined several Navy ships from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, that have been patrolling the area to prevent al-Qaeda members from fleeing Somalia by sea, a Navy spokesman said. Approximately 1,500 U.S. personnel, including Special Operations forces, are assigned to the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed aircraft, with four cannons and a six-barrel Gatling gun capable of firing 1,800 rounds a minute. But its most striking weapon is a computer-operated 105mm howitzer that juts sideways from the middle of the aircraft. An offensive behemoth that is relatively defenseless against counterattack, it is flown only at night.
The Bush administration has long claimed the right to launch discrete military attacks in other countries when terrorist targets have been identified.

A strike by a U.S. Predator drone was ordered by the CIA last January in response to intelligence placing Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-ranking al-Qaeda leader and bin Laden's chief deputy, at a compound near the Afghanistan border in Pakistan. The attack killed a reported 17 people, including six women and six children, but not Zawahiri, who apparently was not at the compound at the time.

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright, correspondent Stephanie McCrummen in Nairobi and staff researchers Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling


U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia

DAVID S. CLOUD
NYT, January 8

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — A United States Air Force gunship carried out a strike Sunday night against suspected operatives of Al Qaeda in southern Somalia, a senior Pentagon official said Monday night.

The attack by an AC-130 gunship, which is operated by the Special Forces Command, is believed to have produced multiple casualties, the official said. It was not known Monday night whether the casualties included members of a Qaeda cell that American officials have long suspected was hiding in Somalia.

Special Forces units operating from an American base in Djibouti are conducting a hunt for Qaeda operatives who have been forced to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital, since Islamic militants were driven from there by an Ethiopian military offensive last month.

The American attack was first reported by CBS News.

The Special Forces attack is the first military action in Somalia that Pentagon officials have acknowledged since American troops departed the lawless country in the wake of the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in street fighting in Mogadishu.

American officials have long suspected that a handful of Qaeda suspects responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding inside Somalia, a country that has not had a central government since 1991.

The search for the terrorist suspects has driven American policy toward Somalia for several years.

Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency began making cash payments to a group of Somali warlords who pledged to help hunt down members of the Qaeda cell.

After Islamist militias took control of Mogadishu in the summer, officials in Washington charged that the Islamists had ties to the terror suspects, and made demands for their handover to American custody.

The Ethiopian military offensive that began last month recently drove the Islamists from the seaside Somali capital, raising hopes within Washington that the Qaeda operatives might surface as they fled the protection of the Islamists. The Islamists have retreated to areas around the southern port city of Kismayo. Ethiopian officials have said they have intelligence reports that members of the Qaeda cell were hiding near the city.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed propeller plane that, because of its slow speed, operates primarily at night and can direct an immense barrage of gunfire onto a target as it circles overhead.

The attack against suspected Qaeda operatives is the sort of targeted operation that senior Bush administration officials have been pressing the Special Operation Command, based in Tampa, Fla., to undertake in recent years.

But officials have said that Special Operations forces have had difficulty carrying out targeted strikes in the past because of the difficulty establishing the whereabouts of wanted terrorists or getting forces in place when a suspected militant is located.

The Central Intelligence Agency has killed a small number of suspected Qaeda members, using a pilotless drone armed with a missile. Among them were five people killed in Yemen in 2002.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

Quick Deployment of Peacekeepers Urged for Somalia; Aid Pledged

Karen DeYoung
Washington Post, January 6

Western and African diplomats meeting yesterday in Nairobi urged the quick deployment of an African peacekeeping force in Somalia, as the United States pledged $40 million to assist the mission and provide humanitarian aid.

In a communique peppered with references to the urgency of the situation, the Somalia Contact Group called for "immediate support for the stabilization of Somalia," noted an imperative to launch a political reconciliation process "without delay" and cited the need for "immediate concrete assistance."

"The group clearly felt it was important that there not be a security vacuum," Jendayi E. Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who chaired the meeting, told reporters in Nairobi.

Ethiopia has said its military force, which drove out the Islamic movement that controlled the southern part of the country and installed a weak, internationally backed transitional government, would stay only a short time.

If money were the only problem, Somalia would be on its way to stability, noted a diplomat from one of the countries involved in the group, whose membership includes the United States and several European countries as well as the European Union, Kenya and Tanzania, with participation from the United Nations and the African Union.

So far, only one African country has agreed to contribute troops to the force. Uganda has offered a 1,200-member contingent that Frazer said she hoped would be deployed by the end of January but that is only about a tenth of what is seen as necessary. The contact group communique said that Kenya's foreign minister would begin a mission to "explore additional troop contributions."

Of the $40 million pledged by the United States, $16 million is designated for peacekeeping support. The E.U. has pledged $47 million, of which $19.5 million is to go to the force.

U.S. Army Gen. William E. Ward, the deputy commander of the U.S.

European Command, told reporters in Washington that there are no plans to deploy American military personnel. Other U.S. officials said that possible U.S. assistance would include airlift, logistical and intelligence support.

The Europeans are similarly loath to send troops to Somalia, where a U.N. humanitarian force was withdrawn in 1995 following the deaths of numerous soldiers, including 18 Americans killed in a single battle.

Equally problematic is the reconciliation of Somali clans whose loyalty is distributed among the transitional government, a divided Islamic leadership and myriad other warlords. Western aid pledges are contingent on the warring groups -- with the exception of the Islamic leaders the United States says are harboring al-Qaeda suspects -- agreeing to a political accommodation.

If an international force were to enter the country before a political deal is made, the European diplomat said, it would be seen as supporting only one faction.

In Somalia, Confusion Remains in Command

Premier Exhorts Revived, Ragtag Army

Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post, January 6

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Jan. 5 -- The revived Somali national army assembled here Friday in the sand-blown yard of the former parliament, a hollowed-out building splashed with grenade blasts and scrawled with apocalyptic graffiti.

About 1,000 men sat in the sun, soldiers who had been inactive for 15 years, old men with graying beards wearing whatever shade of camouflage they found at the market or dug out of storage. Few had boots; most wore leather loafers, sandals or thin-soled tennis shoes. They squinted at the newly ascendant prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, who was swept into power last week on the strength of Ethiopian soldiers now pointing machine guns at the crowd.

"As prime minister, I say let us go back to our national interests," said Gedi, a former veterinarian. "This capital of Somalia is not for clans or tribes. It's for all Somalis. Is this clear? Will I repeat it, or have you got it?"

They all stood to sing the Somali national anthem, with many soldiers simply moving their lips, having forgotten the words. When it was over, 100 or so civilians heckled the new force -- "Traitors!" -- and Gedi zipped off in a convoy.

Even at such orchestrated events in Mogadishu, it is unclear who is in control, and the same could be said of Somalia itself.

Candidates for the title include the heavily armed Ethiopian forces stationed at strategic points around the city, without which Gedi's government would have failed to take the country from the popular Islamic Courts movement. There is Gedi himself, who leads an internationally recognized government but is perceived by many Somalis as a puppet of the Ethiopians.

The Ethiopians, in turn, are perceived as closely tied to the United States, which has expressed concern that Somalia could become a stronghold for terrorists. There is the fractious parliament, which Gedi is set to meet with in the next few days and whose members include warlords formerly backed by the United States, and others tied to webs of clans, sub-clans and sub-sub-clans, most with their own militias.

And somewhere in the oceanside city of sand, goats, poetry and barbed wire, an estimated 3,500 former Islamic Courts fighters who shed their uniforms are thought to be awaiting instructions to attack the Ethiopian troops. On Friday, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, posted a message on the Internet calling on the fighters and other Muslims to attack the invading "crusader" force, Ethiopia, which has a government and army dominated by Christians and a population that is nearly half Muslim.

All week, pamphlets circulating in the city have warned residents to stay away from Ethiopian soldiers.

"This is a funny question," said Gedi, when asked who is controlling Somalia. "The transitional federal government. It's a fully inclusive and representative government. This is my commitment, this is my responsibility as a prime minister to lead the Somali people."

Gedi's government is frail, however. He has not reached out to any moderate Islamic Courts leaders, widely credited with bringing security to Mogadishu, choosing to provide amnesty instead of inclusion in the government. A process of disarming the city is going badly, and Gedi said this week that he has only half the security forces he needs. Although the United States pledged $40 million in aid Friday, the government has practically no revenue to pay soldiers and set up ministries, or to assist thousands whose farms were ruined by recent floods.

Somalia's parliament, where representation is based on clan and sub-clan, includes many of the old warlords who had organized as an "anti-terrorism coalition" funded by the U.S. government, and otherwise made money by setting up roadblocks across the country to extract bribes.

They were defeated by the Islamic Courts in June and are now seeking to wield power again, with some, such as Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, growing impatient with Gedi, whom they accuse of favoring his own people.

"They don't have any real power or any real authority," Qanyare said of the government. "My people want a government of national unity, not a government of certain clans, and that is what this government looks like."

Qanyare, a charismatic man known as the founder of the anti-terrorism coalition, sat in his armed compound on a hill at the city's crumbled edge, a place that seemed more like a military position than a home. He is from a sub-clan that is a rival of Gedi's.

A fleet of trucks was parked behind a wall, and militiamen armed with AK-47 assault rifles clustered at the door. Qanyare wore a bright yellow shirt with an abstract print, his hair wild and gray, and compared the prime minister and the various clans to a man with many unequally loved wives.

"If you don't love them, they will get a divorce," said Qanyare, adding that, at the moment, he is reading a book titled "Global Intelligence."

Ordinary Somalis are not sure who is in charge: the Ethiopians, the government, the warlords or the exiled Islamic Courts leaders and their underground fighters. Asked who he thought was wielding the most power, Amir Sheihk Elmi, who is in the cellphone business, said, "Allah."

Security continues to be the main concern in Mogadishu, where many residents fear that without an effective government force, authority in the country is reverting to the old collection of warlords and freelance militiamen.

Former Islamic Courts fighters in the city are hoping to harness those fears, along with resentment toward the Ethiopian troops, to reassert control.

"We are in Mogadishu, and we will challenge anyone to get security back," said Ali, a 21-year-old former fighter who declined to be identified further.

Late Friday afternoon, Ali said he had not heard about Zawahiri's Internet message. But he said that "shebab" fighters -- the young volunteer core of the Islamic Courts militia thought to be the most serious fighters -- were in "full contact" with Islamic Courts leaders who had fled the city last week. Asked whether he had a weapon, Ali shrugged and said insouciantly: "I have an AK-47 at home."

"When I hear about disarmament, I laugh," he said. "Who is supposed to take the guns? Who will be doing this?"

Asked who was in control of Somalia, he said without hesitation, "Sheik Sharif," referring to Sharif Ahmed, a top Islamic Courts leader reportedly among those on the run along the Somali coast.

The United States and Ethiopia have accused the Islamic Courts leaders of harboring three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of cooperating with al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts disagree over the extent to which al-Qaeda has influenced leaders in the Islamic movement, if at all, and whether the three terrorism suspects were in hiding in Somalia or being sheltered.

On Friday, U.S. Navy warships patrolled off the Somali coast to prevent suspects from escaping by sea. And Ethiopian troops were preparing for a major attack on Ras Kamboni, a town near the Kenyan border that is thought to be the last stronghold of fleeing Islamic Courts fighters.

Somalia’s Islamists Vow Never to Surrender

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NYT, December 31

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 30 — A phalanx of Ethiopian tanks and armored personnel carriers chugged toward Kismayo, the last city occupied by Somalia’s diminished Islamist movement, witnesses said Saturday, while the Islamists inside the city dug in and vowed never to surrender.

According to residents along Somalia’s coast, the Ethiopian troops, with soldiers from Somalia’s transitional government, were preparing to seize Kismayo, a port city near the Kenyan border.

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a high-ranking cleric, emerged from a mosque in the city on Saturday, surrounded by gunmen, and told his followers that the Islamist leadership was not finished.

“The Islamic courts are still alive and ready to fight against the enemy of God,” Sheik Ahmed told residents of Kismayo in a speech on Saturday. “We left Mogadishu in order to prevent bloodshed in the capital, but that does not mean we lost the holy war against our enemy.”

Sheik Ahmed called on Somalis to begin an anti-Ethiopian insurgency. Already, several masked gunmen have surfaced on Mogadishu’s streets, suggesting a guerrilla movement may have begun.

Diplomats in Kenya, though, said that they were talking to moderate representatives of the Islamic movement on Saturday, trying to persuade them to back down. The Islamists are essentially cornered, hemmed in by the Indian Ocean, a sealed Kenyan border and thousands of troops headed their way. Their only route of escape may be to flee into the thickly forested area south of Kismayo, which Western intelligence officers suspect has been used before as a terrorist hide-out.

In Mogadishu, the presence of Ethiopian soldiers continued to spark scattered violence, with supporters of the Ethiopians battling street by street against the remaining Islamist partisans. Gunshots rang out, men and women battled with sticks and rocks and the thick black smoke of burning barricades lifted into the air.

Just two days ago, in a stunning reversal of fortune, Somalia’s transitional government, with the muscle of the Ethiopian military, reclaimed Mogadishu from the Islamist movement that had ruled large swaths of Somalia. Despite the Islamists’ repeated vows to fight to the death, their forces evaporated and Mogadishu fell without a shot. Many Somalis said Saturday that they hoped the same thing would happen in Kismayo.

More than a thousand people have been killed in fighting across the country since Dec. 20, and Somalia’s leaders now face the daunting task of trying to piece together a country that has not had a functioning central government for 15 years.

Sheikhdon Salad Elmi, the director of a large hospital in the Medina neighborhood of Mogadishu, said the prospects for stability depended on how long the Ethiopian troops stayed. “I think it’s naïve for them to go right now,” Dr. Elmi said. “We need them for security. But they are very visible and most people don’t like them. The longer they stay, the more resentment that will come.”

Somalia has fought, and lost, two wars with Ethiopia, but never before have Ethiopian troops occupied the capital. On Saturday, some supporters of the Ethiopians waved pictures of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister. “It’s very humiliating,” Dr. Elmi said.

Ethiopian officials have said that they plan to withdraw troops in a matter of weeks but not before neutralizing the Islamists, who declared a holy war against Ethiopia, a country with a long Christian history and Somalia’s larger and more powerful neighbor.

The Ethiopian military, with tacit American approval, unleashed a fierce attack against the Islamists last Sunday, bombarding their positions with jet fighters and pushing tanks deep into Somali territory.

Since then, the Islamists have been steadily on the run, their teenage troops no match for Ethiopia’s well-equipped modern army.

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

War in Somalia

Another front in the fight against terrorism has exploded.

Washington Post, 27 December

IN THE PAST week a dangerous round of warfare has erupted in Somalia, a failed state in the Horn of Africa that the United States tried in vain to rebuild in the early 1990s. Troops from neighboring Ethiopia who were defending a U.N.-backed transitional government were attacked by forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which for the past six months has controlled much of the southern part of the country. Ethiopia responded by launching a full-scale offensive against the Islamists; by yesterday its forces had captured several towns and were said to be advancing toward Mogadishu, the capital.

For the Bush administration there was both good and bad news in these developments. The Islamic Courts movement poses a potentially serious security threat to the United States: Its leadership includes a U.S.-designated terrorist, and it is known to be harboring al-Qaeda militants, including several who helped carry out the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In recent months it has been inviting radical Muslims to Somalia, and thousands have reportedly arrived from such countries as Syria, Yemen and Libya. In short, the Courts-controlled portion of Somalia has begun to look a lot like Afghanistan under the Taliban before Sept. 11, 2001.

Ethiopia's actions, however, are problematic. The country's autocratic government and a slight majority of its population are Christian; this has fueled resistance to its intervention from Somalis and Muslim governments that might not otherwise support the fundamentalist Courts. According to U.S. and U.N. reports, millions of dollars in funding and arms have flowed to the Islamists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab states, while neighboring Eritrea, a bitter adversary of Ethiopia, has deployed its own troops. Some experts warn that the fighting could morph into a regional war; others say Ethiopia could get bogged down in a prolonged guerrilla war with local and foreign Muslim insurgents.

Having floundered through a series of failed Somalia strategies, the administration appears to have a somewhat confused view of the latest fighting. Earlier this month it pushed for a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for an end to foreign intervention, the deployment of a peacekeeping force and negotiations between the rival Somali governments. President Bush spoke yesterday with the president of Uganda, which had offered peacekeepers. Yet even while reiterating its call for negotiations, the administration also appears to be supporting the Ethiopian offensive: The State Department said that Ethiopia had a right to defend itself against the Islamists and that its troops were there at the invitation of a legitimate authority, the transitional government.

Maybe the Ethiopian forces will crush the Islamists and their al-Qaeda allies and thereby rescue the United States from its predicament. More likely, the administration will have to prepare for much more active U.S. engagement in what is emerging as a hot new front in the war on terrorism.

Ethiopian Aircraft Bomb Somali Towns In Escalating Conflict

Troops Hit Islamic Forces on Four Fronts

Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post , 25 December

LONDON, Dec. 24 -- Ethiopian troops attacked Somalia's Islamic Courts movement on four fronts, Ethiopian officials said Sunday, with jets bombing several towns in a significant escalation of fighting that threatens to spill across the Horn of Africa.

It was the first time the Ethiopian government had acknowledged having troops in Somalia to protect the interim Somali government against the Islamic movement, which has taken over most of the southern part of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu. The United Nations had estimated that at least 8,000 Ethiopian troops were in Somalia, but Ethiopia previously said it had only a few hundred military trainers there.

As he has previously stated, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced on a televised broadcast that his country was at war with the Islamic Courts.

"Our defense force has been forced to enter a war to defend (against) the attacks from extremists and anti-Ethiopian forces and to protect the sovereignty of the land," Meles said a few hours after the airstrikes.

For a sixth day, the heaviest fighting took place outside the southern town of Baidoa, the government's only stronghold, and sources said the Ethiopians were close to taking the town of Beledweyne, about 150 miles to the northeast.

Fighting was also reported around the town of Gaalkacyo, near the Ethiopian border along a main supply route to the north.

Meanwhile, thousands of Somalis, who have endured decades of war and deprivation, fled their homes to escape bullets, rockets and mortar fire, while others were trapped by the two sides' advance.

Sources said casualties probably numbered in the hundreds, although U.N. officials said it was unclear how many were fighters and how many civilians.

In Mogadishu, Islamic movement leaders, who have received support from Ethiopia's bitter enemy, Eritrea, and other countries, called on foreign fighters to join a holy war against Ethiopian troops.

This week and all day Sunday, young men in the battered capital have signed up for war and AK-47 assault rifles, Somali sources said.

Meles, an increasingly authoritarian leader, has said that the United States supports his country's right to protect itself. For months, he has characterized any possible Ethiopian military action in Somalia as motivated by self-defense.

As fighter jets streaked across Somalia on Sunday, Ethiopian officials on state-run television again accused the Islamic movement of supporting ethnic Somali insurgent groups in Ethiopia, a charge that Ethiopian opposition leaders have said was overblown and out of date.

The United States and Ethiopia have also accused the Islamic movement of harboring terrorists, a charge it has repeatedly denied.

The Islamic movement, in turn, has accused the United States of tacitly giving Ethiopia a green light to invade. In a recent interview, Ibrahim Hassan Addou, foreign minister for the Islamic Courts, said that even if the movement was harboring terrorists, the United States should pursue them lawfully by presenting evidence, rather than "by threats and intimidation."

"If war breaks out, the U.S. is siding with Ethiopia . . . and the consequences of war will be because of Ethiopia and the U.S.," he said.
Ethiopia is dominated by Christian leaders and a Christian army, although Muslims now make up nearly half the population. The Courts movement has highlighted that in its efforts to recruit Muslim fighters.

Somalia, a clan-based society that has been without a central government since 1991, has historically been of great strategic importance to the United States because of its proximity to the Middle East and Red Sea oil-shipping routes.

But U.S. policy there has failed to do much more than incur the antipathy of ordinary Somalis.

Earlier this year, the CIA financed warlords who called themselves an "anti-terrorism coalition" but mostly terrorized ordinary Somalis, who came to hate them. It was in that context that the Courts came to power in June.

Initially a grouping of local clerics, the Courts imposed Islamic law village by village, and by most accounts established a sense of order, although many Somalis have expressed discomfort with the harsher aspects of Islamic law.

Analysts and diplomats fear that even if Ethiopia initially routs the Courts, a regional war of terrorist-style attacks would follow. Already, car bomb attacks in Baidoa have killed several people, although no one has asserted responsibility.

Somalia / Anti-American sentiment is sweeping across Africa

Jeffrey Gettleman
Sunday, 24 December

MOGADISHU, Somalia: The rally was supposed to be against Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor and historic archenemy, which in the past few weeks had sent troops streaming across the border in an attempt to check the power of the increasingly powerful Islamists who rule Mogadishu.

But the cheers that shook the stadium (which had no roof, by the way, and was riddled with bullet holes) were about another country, far, far away.

"Down, down U.S.A.!" thousands of Somalis yelled, many of them waving cocked Kalashnikovs. "Slit the throats of the Americans!"

Not exactly soothing words, especially when the passport in your pocket has one of those golden eagles on it.

Somalia may be the place that best illustrates a trend sweeping across the African continent: After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States concluded that anarchy and misery aid terrorism, and so it tried to re-engage Africa. But anti-American sentiment on the continent has only grown, and become increasingly nasty. And the United States seems unable to do much about it.

A number of experts on Africa trace those developments to a sense not of American power, but of its decline — a perception that the United States is no longer the only power that counts, that it is too bogged down in the Middle East to be a real threat here, and so it can be ignored or defied with impunity.

American officials, for example, acknowledge that they are at a loss about what to do about the on-again, off-again Somali crisis, which cracked open last week when the two forces dueling for power blasted away at each other in their first major confrontation. In this case, there are a lot of reasons why many of the people don't like Americans, starting with the United States' botched efforts to play peacemaker in the early 1990s to its current support for Ethiopia, which is taking sides in Somalia's internal politics.

But the broader issue playing out here — the sense that the United States is not the kingmaker it once was — goes beyond Mogadishu. It is Africa-wide. And it is based on a changed reality: the emergence of other customers for Africa's resources and the tying down of American military forces in Iraq have combined to reduce American clout in sub-Saharan Africa, even as the United States pumps in more financial aid than ever — about $4 billion per year — and can still claim to be the one superpower left standing.

"The actual ability of the U.S. to influence circumstances on the ground in Africa has declined dramatically," said Michael Clough, a former director of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the symbolic significance of the United States is still there. So we become the perfect target."

For proof, please see Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, northern Nigeria to a lesser extent, and even South Africa.

Chester A. Crocker, who was an assistant secretary of state for Africa under President Ronald Reagan, says the drop in American influence began when the cold war ended. He argues that despite all the complaints about fickle cold war Africa policy, which critics say propped up one corrupt dictator after another under the rationale of containing Communism, the United States was at least paying attention to Africa, and its efforts may have saved millions of lives.

It was the decade immediately after the cold war, Mr. Crocker said, when the United States disengaged from much of the continent, that Africa fell apart. Cataclysmic wars swept through Somalia, Rwanda, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo. More Africans were slaughtered in the 1990s than in any other recent decade.

Now, as the United States resumes its interest in Africa, it faces a new, more pixilated landscape. "Africa is in play again," Mr. Crocker said. "It is a more competitive playing field which gives greater influence to African leaders as well as to potential competitors or 'balancers' of U.S. diplomatic leverage. It is not just China: it is Brazil, the Europeans, Malaysia, Korea, Russia, India."

"Inevitably," he concluded, "this dilutes somewhat U.S. ability to call the shots, define the agenda and mobilize coherent international action."

For example, there is Sudan, a country that the West, and the United States in particular, has desperately tried to isolate. First, it was because of Sudan's links to terrorists. Then came reports that the government was tied to genocide in Darfur. Sanctions have been imposed, almost embarrassing amounts of diplomatic pressure have been exerted and now military threats are being made. The result: even more anti-American hatred, which plays straight into the hand of the hard-line Khartoum regime.

Why are the results of American policy in Sudan so meager? Two reasons stand out above others: oil and Asia.

Sudan is flush with a booming supply of crude, and it has turned from West to East for trade partners: to China, India, Malaysia and the Arab world. That means American economic leverage doesn't work as it once did. Consider how little effect the sanctions have had on Sudan's economy — it's one of the fastest growing in the world, even as Darfur burns.
"We learned that we don't need the Americans anymore," said Lam Akol, Sudan's foreign minister. "We found other avenues."

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Crocker said, there were few other avenues. In those cold war days, he said, sustained, patient, high-level American involvement helped end wars from Angola to Mozambique and helped to bring South Africa's brutal apartheid system to its knees.

In the 1990s, with the Soviet Union gone, aid to Africa dipped; Americans were turning inward, and foreign policy focused far more on building trade relations with dynamic new partners, especially in Asia and Eastern Europe.

But then came 9-11.

"And suddenly poor, nasty, weak places mattered," said Steve Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In an effort to reduce the conditions in which terrorism is thought to thrive, American foreign aid to Africa surged, with much of the money going to health programs (especially AIDS prevention), and peacekeeping. Private Western efforts to alleviate suffering also increased. Just ask Bill Gates. Or Bill Clinton.

TODAY, in Congo, the United States spends more than $200 million supporting a United Nations peacekeeping mission that has barely kept that unruly, violent, continent-sized country intact.

But Ted Dagne, a specialist in African affairs for the Congressional Research Service, said that such concern about security in Africa "has not led to expansion of relations in other areas and did not increase American influence in Africa."

One reason, he argued, was that American policy these days does not necessarily mean sustained, patient, high-level attention. Instead, it emphasizes the role that Africans themselves can play (supported by American money and advice, of course). More and more, Africans are mediating their own conflicts, from the border disputes between Ethiopia and Eritrea to the civil wars in Burundi and Sudan.

Another reason is Iraq. The ceaselessness of Baghdad's bloodshed has greatly undermined the United States' credibility, fanned anti-American feelings in Muslim regions like the Horn of Africa, and drained resources that might otherwise have been available to address other problems.

"There is significant blowback coming from our catastrophic decisions in Iraq that is affecting our ability to do anything about Sudan or Somalia," Mr. Morrison said.

Even so, many Africa experts say there are countries — Kenya is one — where the American message still matters. There, the United States is generally credited, along with other Western countries, with exerting crucial diplomatic leverage that helped Kenya make the peaceful transition in 2002 from a one-party state to a genuine multiparty democracy.

"America still has a lot of influence," said S. O. Mageto, a former Kenyan ambassador to Washington. "But not like it used to."

Africa / Regional War May Loom in Africa

Strife Between Ethiopia, Islamic Group in Somalia Intensifies

By Stephanie McCrummen

Washington Post , December 14

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 13 -- With the Ethiopian government saying it is technically at war with Somalia's Islamic Courts movement, and the movement having declared holy war against Ethiopia, there is fear that an all-out conflict in the Horn of Africa may be unavoidable.

In the past week, several skirmishes have broken out between militias loyal to Ethiopia and those loyal to the Council of Islamic Courts, the movement that has taken control of the southern region of the country, including Mogadishu, the capital.

The fighting has occurred around the southern town of Baidoa, seat of Somalia's fragile but internationally recognized transitional government. Ethiopia considers the interim government a buffer against Islamic Courts leaders who have long expressed desire to create a "Greater Somalia," including ethnically Somali portions of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday rejected a declaration by a leader of the Islamic movement that Ethiopia withdraw its troops or face war. Though the Ethiopian government has repeatedly denied having more than several hundred military trainers in Somalia, diplomats in the region estimate that at least 8,000 troops have poured in around Baidoa and that thousands more are gathering along the Somali border.

"This declaration is based on falsehoods," Meles said in an interview, adding that the movement, also known as the Islamic Courts Union, is "hellbent" on controlling all of Somalia. "Now, if the transitional government doesn't want our trainers, we're happy to withdraw them at any moment," he said.

The weak transitional government has made no such request.

For now, hopes for a peaceful resolution are pinned on a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last week, authorizing deployment of an African Union force, excluding troops from neighboring states, to Baidoa. In theory, the resolution would remove Ethiopia from the volatile equation and encourage more moderate leaders within the Islamic movement to join the transitional government.

Some analysts, however, contend that the measure has already prompted the Islamic Courts to push toward Baidoa and will ultimately serve as a rallying point for the movement's more radical factions, which have said they would consider any African Union force a foreign invasion.
In any case, deployment could take months. The president of the transitional government has requested 8,000 African Union troops, though only one battalion of about 800 Ugandan troops is ready, according to African Union officials.

In question at the moment is whether the Islamic movement or Ethiopia will mount a full-fledged offensive before the African Union soldiers deploy, and whether the transitional government, which has spent much of its time exiled at the InterContinental Hotel in Nairobi, will simply disintegrate, leaving no internationally recognized government for the United Nations, or Ethiopia, to support.

"My feeling is that Ethiopia will go to war. . . . Their own security is at stake," a senior Kenyan diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. "Unfortunately, the [U.N.] resolution was sponsored by the United States, and it will be used by the Courts as a propaganda tool. But at least there's a window."

Besides fear of an Islamic government on its border, an increasingly authoritarian Ethiopian government is also concerned about radicalization of its own Muslim citizens, who now account for nearly 50 percent of the population. The government has accused the Islamic Courts of training and arming insurgent groups in the ethnically Somali region of Ethiopia called the Ogaden. The two countries have been to war over the area three times since Somalia's independence in 1960.

The situation unfolding in Somalia, a society of warring clans and sub-clans without a central government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fell in 1991, is one in which diplomats, analysts and others involved tend to agree on one point: that war would be disastrous, threatening to destabilize a region of great strategic import not only to Africa but also to the United States, because of its proximity to the Middle East and Red Sea shipping lanes.

A triple car bombing at a checkpoint outside Baidoa last month heightened those fears, with the transitional government blaming the attack on al-Qaeda sympathizers within the Islamic Courts, which denied responsibility. Some analysts say that even if Ethiopia, which has a predominantly Christian army, initially trounces Islamic Courts fighters in a war, the movement's more radical members might retaliate with suicide bombings and other terrorist-style attacks in neighboring countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the United States has a significant military presence.

"I think if the ICU [Islamic Courts Union] suffers from defeat, it will only take months for them to regroup and it would strengthen them internally," said Matt Bryden, a consultant with the International Crisis Group, a policy research group. "If they are hit, there is a risk they would come back on steroids and pose a threat to the whole region."

Meles rejected that argument, saying the policy of dialogue and engagement has only bought the Islamic Courts movement time to expand its control.

"It surprises me that intelligent people at the dawn of the 21st century could claim that if you respond to terrorism with force, you spawn terrorism," he said. "But that if you appease them, you somehow tame them."

Since 1991, Somalia has held no fewer than 15 peace conferences aimed at cobbling together some sort of central government.

A U.S.-led attempt to stabilize the country led to the deaths of 18 American troops in an October 1993 battle depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down." After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government was accused of bungling Somalia policy again by supporting warlords marketing themselves as an "anti-terrorism coalition," who generally terrorized Somalis who came to hate them.

The Islamic Courts, initially a grouping of local clerics, offered an alternative to that lawlessness, establishing an order based on Islamic law village by village, often persuading local militias to join them.

A recent U.N. study found that although the transitional government is supported by Ethiopia, among other countries, the Islamic Courts are receiving substantial assistance from Iran and Hezbollah, a claim some regional analysts contend is exaggerated.

Support for the Islamic movement by Eritrea, Ethiopia's neighbor and rival, appears to be a big part of Ethiopia's motivation. The Ethiopia-Eritrea proxy conflict in Somalia could ignite a regional conflagration and threaten U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa, according to a report due out this week from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. It describes "a general unraveling of U.S. foreign policy" in the region and calls for the United States to exert stronger pressure on the two countries to implement a U.S.-brokered border agreement.

The U.N. study found that the Islamic Courts group has also raised money from various Arab states and the Somali diaspora. Relatively quickly, the movement established an efficient system of taxation and social welfare programs that enabled businesses to function and that seem to have earned support among Somalis, even if many in the traditionally moderate country are uneasy with the harsher aspects of Islamic law. At the same time, the movement has been backed by a more radical military wing called the shebab, made up of young men raised in a chaotic country awash with weapons, and indoctrinated with the ideology of holy war.

Both the United States and Ethiopia have accused the Islamic Courts of harboring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and other attacks. Movement officials have denied that, accusing both countries of waging a propaganda war.

Diplomats and analysts differ sharply on whether Islamic Courts leaders such as Sheik Hassan Aweys are genuinely striving for legitimacy or cynically concealing a radical agenda.

"The Courts are not monolithic" said Mario Raffaelli, an Italian diplomat working in Somalia. "In my experience, the majority is not following this extreme approach."

Raffaelli said the Courts group has an incentive to negotiate even with a weak transitional government because doing so would provide the movement with legitimacy.

Some observers, including Ethiopians opposed to war, are convinced that the United States is tacitly giving a green light to Ethiopia to attack. That, they say, would amount to the worst U.S. policy blunder yet in Somalia. Beyene Petros, an opposition leader in Ethiopia's parliament, questioned the wisdom of a visit that Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, paid Meles in Ethiopia last week.

"If there is disapproval, you don't pay visits, right?" he said. "We used to see this call for restraint, but I have not seen that lately."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

Africa / Ethiopia-US: Outsourcing the Somali War

Sunday 26 November 2006, Sudan Tribune
By Haile Kassahun

Nov 25, 2006 — War in the Horn of Africa appears imminent. If large-scale violence breaks out, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and the Bush administration will bear major responsibility for the ensuing chaos and human suffering.

Zenawi, who already has at least 8,000 troops in Somalia, just declared his readiness to widen the war.

There is a marriage of convenience between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister and the Bush Administration. Zenawi is desperate to divert attention from his internal troubles and human rights abuses. An overextended Bush administration finds it cost-effective and expedient to outsource the Somali war to an eager, yet repugnant local tyrant.

Zenawi is a polished Tigrian warlord in an Armani suit. He is an Albanian-style Marxist turned Christian crusader, a ruthless megalomaniac perfectly willing to burn down the neighborhood to stay in power.

Ethiopia’s ruling Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) has devised a grand internal and external strategy to stay in power. Creating Christian-Moslem conflict is the weapon to be used on the domestic front. This is designed to create a wedge between regime opponents who have united without regard to religion or ethnicity.

The recent religious violence that took the lives of some 19 people in the South West of the country appears to be the work of regime agents. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwSYIHlQ5ZI&eurl .)

There is an active domestic propaganda campaign about the danger of jihadists and Islamic extremists. The campaign aims to confuse the issues, to hoodwink the country’s Christian population and to garner its support. Such a situation will create a Christian-Moslem rift, virtually assuring the continuing rule of the ruling minority group. Sadly, such poison is being introduced to a population that has had unprecedented religious tolerance.

The bond between Christians and Moslems goes back to the beginnings of Islam. The prophet Mohammed sent his followers to Ethiopia when they fled persecution in Arabia. Ethiopia’s Christian king received Mohammed’s followers as honored guests and treated them with civility.
Although there were periods of contention, the early history of tolerance created a precedent for mutual respect and coexistence. It will therefore be an unforgivable crime to introduce religious conflict to an otherwise harmonious society.

Zenawi’s external survival strategy depends on currying favor with the United States. Towards that end, he continues to fabricate intelligence reports about the danger Somali Islamists pose to Ethiopia and the United States.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister says the Somali Islamic Courts Council (ICC) is a terrorist organization that has to be stopped in its tracks. He provides no proof beyond accusations and name calling.

"I think the U.S. government panicked. They saw Islamic group; they said, ’Taliban is coming," said Herman Cohen, former Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, in a recent interview with Margaret Warner of PBS. Cohen continued, "also, there are friends in the region, like the Ethiopians, who probably are feeding false intelligence about terrorists being hidden and that sort of thing…. So they want to keep the Islamists out of power, and they will bring the U.S. into it, if they can." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june06/somalia_06-06.html

Ironically, this same grandstanding Zenawi and his organization were classified as terrorists by the United States not long ago. (See, for example, US Homeland Security’s database for terrorist organizations at http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=4287 . See also http://www.ethiogermany.de/tplfTerror.pdf .)

Somalia’s Islamic Courts Council poses a "clear and present danger," Ethiopia’s strong man said during a recent, carefully-orchestrated speech to his rubber-stamp parliament. Again, he provided no proof.

Many Ethiopians would beg to disagree. What poses a "clear and present danger" is a
homegrown rogue minority regime that refuses to respect election results, shoots opponents at will, throws tens of thousands in jail without respect for due process of law. The "clear and present danger" comes from the ruling Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front that runs away from solving domestic post-election problems, pimps the country for political gain and starts an unprovoked war with a neighboring country.

No matter how much one disagrees with the religious bent of the Islamic Courts Council, they have brought a modicum of stability to Mogadishu and other areas they control.

This is in contrast to the incompetence of the so-called Transitional Government of Somalia which has failed to show any popular support. President Abdullahi Yusuf has little credibility with his own people, spending most of his time in Ethiopia. It is reported that he has been in the service of Ethiopian security services going at least as far back as a decade. Even his kidney operation a few years ago was paid for by Ethiopia.

A Bush administration preoccupied with Iraq appears to have decided to let Ethiopians do the fighting. US policy in Ethiopia and Somalia has been relegated to low-level, inexperienced officials.

It’s the same folks who lent American support to unsavory Somali warlords, leading to an embarrassing foreign policy debacle in June. The public face of this rookie team is Jendayi Frazer, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs. Frazer is reportedly close to the Zenawi regime and relies heavily on the EPRDF’s self-serving intelligence feed.

Incidentally, some of the pro-US warlords may be among those responsible for the killing of US rangers during the "Blackhawk" incident. According to a Washington Post dispatch of May 17, 2006, some of the warlords "reportedly fought against the United States in 1993 during street battles that culminated in an attack that downed two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and left 18 Army Rangers dead.." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601625_pf.html

These warlords continue to spend a great deal of time in Addis Ababa, chewing the narcotic Khat, driving expensive cars, guzzling top-shelf whiskey and frequenting whorehouses - all courtesy of the American tax-payer.

Zenawi is eager to keep the focus away from his domestic troubles at all costs. In the past, he had no qualms sacrificing at least 50,000 Ethiopian troops during the Ethio-Ertrean war of 1998 -2000. The war was allegedly fought over a barren border area called Badme.

Incomprehensibly, he was quick to give up Badme — land over which so much blood was shed. When ceding territory became domestically unpopular, he began backtracking and flip flopping, making border demarcation a permanent thorny issue that continues to this day.

Zenawi also had no problem giving orders for the shooting of civilians protesting the stealing of the 2005 elections. Over 193 civilians were murdered in broad daylight and upwards of 30,000 jailed in a post-election reign of terror, according to a commission established by the regime. Among those arrested are almost all elected leaders of the opposition party, including the mayor of Addis Ababa, human rights advocates, journalists and civic society leaders ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6064638.stm .)

There is no rule of law or an independent judiciary to dispense justice. Prisoners are guilty until proven innocent. Even when the court releases prisoners the security forces rearrest them. Long imprisonment without any evidence —sometime lasting as long as 10 or 15 years – is common.

Beyond imprisonment, the autocrat’s 15-year rule has been marred by a systemic pattern of human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings.

A few additional examples of the regime’s violent rule include the following: At least 30 helpless prisoners in Kaliti were shot dead last year; 424 ethnic Anuaks war massacred by the Ethiopian army in 2003 to make way for oil exploration by a Malaysian company; 66 protesters were gunned down in Awassa and Addis Ababa in 2002; 40 students were murdered in 2001; and another group of 19 students were killed in Addis Ababa in 1993.

Widespread killings and mass arrests have been common in regions inhabitted by the majority Oromos. Some 15,000 to 20,000 people have been killed in the Oromia region alone, according to a former judge who recently defected to the West. This disturbing information was revealed in a recent interview the judge, Teshale Abera, gave to the Mail and Guardian newspaper. According to the judge, Ethiopia’s current regime is as bad as the Mengistu regime it replaced. (http://www.unpo.org/article.php?id=5826 .)

Ethiopia is also gripped by an economic crisis, contrary to the government’s Orwellian propaganda. Regime cadres are increasingly squeezing peasants. Urban unemployment is still upwards of 50 percent. The cost of living has skyrocketed, making life unbearable for the ordinary person.

Upwards of four million Ethiopians need ongoing international food handouts. Over three million are infected with HIV/AIDS. (The only sector doing well is party-owned businesses and the few parasites that benefit from ethnic patronage.) Add to that mass arrests and the continuing intimidation of all opponents. A state of fear pervades the country. All is not well behind the façade of a few high rises that have cropped up on Bole Road.

The Bush administration has made a Faustian bargain with the Zenawi regime. It has downplayed widespread killings and egregious human rights violations in exchange for Zenawi’s services in the war against terror.

The same administration that has refused to speak up against the massacre of Ethiopians wants Ethiopia to sacrifice its sons and daughters fighting Somalis in pursuit of a big power’s muddled, questionable strategic goal.

U.S. troops stationed in Djibout and Camp Hurso in Ethiopia appear to be directly involved in the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The US has also been actively spreading disinformation that demonizes the Islamic Council while creating sympathy for the Ethiopian invasion. For example, the dubious document recently leaked to the media and purportedly prepared by UN experts has all the markings of a US disinformation campaign to justify a war against the Islamic Courts.
Ethiopia and Somalia are among the poorest countries in the world. Both people have experienced tremendous suffering in the last thirty years.

Where’s the morality in pitting one poor African country against another? Where is justice? Where is the morality in coddling a tyrant once labeled terrorist by the United States? Why is it acceptable for the United States to ally with a murderous regime that has massacred at least 193 civilians and arrested over 30,000 in secret concentration camps? Why is such immorality being perpetrated in the name of the war against terror?

Congressman Donald Payne said the following during a recent briefing on the situation in Ethiopia: "…During the Cold War, United States supported dictators like Mobutu and never really condemned South Africa’s apartheid government because they were anti-communists, and we were fighting the communists in the U.S. And so we’re not going to repeat those mistakes," Payne said.

Thousands will die, tens of thousands will be maimed and millions will be made refugees. Just as in Iraq, when the mess gets to be too much to handle, the US will walk away under one pretext or another, leaving the local people holding the bag. There will be so much suffering that no amount of international handout will make a dent.

The Islamic Council has invited the US to come to Mogadishu, to engage in dialogue and observe first hand the situation on the ground. This is a good gesture that the United States and Ethiopia should take advantage of. The parties need to resolve all issues through dialogue. The misery and mayhem a new war brings, nor matter what the pretext, is not worth the cost to the people on the receiving end.

It’s still not too late to stop this madness.

* The author is the chairperson of Ethiopian Americans for Justice . He can be reached at ethiojustice@gmail.com

Africa / Somamli Islamists threatened by Ethiopian military presence

Amadou Ly

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, said on Saturday 23 November that they had abandoned their military plans against Somalia, in order combat the Somali Islamist force. He proclaimed before the Parliament that the crisis would rather be better solved through dialogues. Although the Somali Islamist Courts that took over a part of the country, a real threat for Ethiopia at present, are reported to be ready to fight back in case of any military intervention from Ethiopia.

The Somali Islamic spokesman, Abdurahim Ali Muddey, however refuted any possibility of causing threat to the Ethiopians. Rather, on his turn, he made reference to the threatening presence of the Ethiopian troops on their territory.

Addis Abeba rejected the Somali accusation of Ethiopian military presence on Somali territory, admitting nonetheless that they have only sent a group of military advisers to help the transitional Somali government they openly support.

Somalia is going through a civil war since 1991. The history of Somalia and Ethiopia is littered with distrust, animosity and war. Suspicion of neighbouring expansionism and political extremism is deeply rooted in both states. However, Somalia's disappearance into a political abyss over the last 15 years opened a new chapter.

Meles Zenawi came to power with the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPDRF) in 1991, in the same year the Somali government collapsed. Initially, the events in the two countries seemed to break the mould. Meles knew Somalia very well, as he lived in Mogadishu when he was a liberation leader in the 1980s. He was, at that time, also handled by the National Security Service, provided with travel documents and Somali passports, trained and given a Tigrayan radio frequency.

Ethiopia got international commendation when it managed to bring the main Somali factions together for the first time in Addis Ababa in 1992 for peace talks. But the honeymoon was not to last for long. Ethiopia's pivotal role in Somali peace talks was over by 1993, with many of the faction leaders claiming it was forcibly pursuing its own agenda. The new Ethiopian government, moreover, was increasingly influenced by events in its own Somali region - which has a large ethnic Somali population and close economic and political links with neighbouring Somalia.

Somali irredentist movements in this part of Ethiopia, particularly the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), which were seeking to establish a "Greater Somalia" to incorporate all territories containing Somali populations, led to the Ethiopian-Somali Ogaden war in 1977. There are few in the Ogaden who would want to join Somalia now, though they might want an independent Ogadenia.

The EPRDF found it difficult to establish itself in the Somali region, which remains one of the most unstable areas in the country. A strong military presence has remained in the Ethiopian Ogaden area, and has provoked accusations of repression and abuse, documented by international and local human rights organisations.

Having introduced a form of democracy based on ethnic regionalism, the Ethiopian central government found itself struggling to establish an "obedient" Somali party. In the areas contiguous with Somalia, the Ogadeni National Liberation Front (ONLF) agitated for regional independence, while armed opposition groups included cells of the Islamic extremist movement, Al-Ittihad. Ethiopia's population is generally believed to comprise about 50 percent Muslim and 50 percent Christian, but the ratio was roughly 60 percent Christian to 40 percent Muslim.

Ethiopian public foreign policy became increasingly defined by the threat of "Islamic fundamentalism". Meles Zenawi said in an interview in December 2000: "What concerns us first and last is what the government [of Somalia] and the different parties and organisations do inside Ethiopia. Some of the extremist organisations did not limit their activities inside Somalia and went to destabilise Ethiopia."

By the mid-1990s, Ethiopia, the US, and the UN had failed to facilitate effective peace talks in Somalia, and international intervention brought disastrous consequences, with the deaths of UN and US peacekeepers, as well as hundreds of Somalis. There was increasing bitterness in Somalia towards what was perceived as external opportunism and negligence. Somalia became a free-for-all. Any State and organisation could interfere in any way they liked.

It seemed that the distrustful relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia had changed very little. While in the past, Ethiopian governments had felt threatened by a strong, united Somalia, the absence of any state at all was just as bad. In the name of national defence, Ethiopia went ahead and pursued a policy of backing and creating "friendly forces" in Somalia.

The transitional ruling bodies that took over the country since 2004 are all found to have failed to bring the country back to the normalcy because of the spectacular rise of Islamist forces since 2006. Since then, a large part of the south of the country including its Capital Mogadiscio is under the siege of the Islamist groups.

Security experts and diplomats say roughly 5,000 Ethiopian troops crossed the border into Somalia earlier this month and another 20,000 have massed along the frontier so they can move in swiftly. Ethiopia and the Somali government deny any troops have entered Somalia, but Addis Ababa has said it will attack the Islamists if they advance on the government seat in aidoa.

Updates : December 10

Heavy clashes between Islamist militiamen and forces loyal to Somalia's government continued for a second day on December 9, as fears of an imminent war in the Horn of Africa mounted.

The fighting centred around Maddoy, 25 miles south of Baidoa, the temporary capital and the only town that the weak transitional federal government controls. Witnesses who reported heavy shelling said Ethiopian troops formed part of the government contingent.

While information remains sketchy - due to the dangers in Somalia even local correspondents for the international news agencies are reporting on the clashes from Mogadishu, 150 miles to the east - both sides suffered casualties, perhaps more than two dozen.

The fighting appear to be the fiercest yet between militiamen allied to the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), which controls most of south-central Somalia, and Ethiopian-backed government troops. The SCIC has been steadily approaching Baidoa in recent weeks and has taken most of the surrounding towns and villages.

Salad Ali Jelle, the government's Deputy Defence Minister, told Reuters yesterday that 'war could start any minute because we are so close to each other'.

Many analysts and diplomats in Nairobi see a full-scale conflict in the coming weeks and months as inevitable. Though peace talks are scheduled to resume in Khartoum on Friday, a government spokesman said that they were 'a waste of time' and both sides have continued preparing for war.

With Ethiopia firmly backing the government - it has sent at least 6,000 troops into the country, analysts believe - and Eritrea taking the side of the Courts, the looming conflict could plunge the entire region into turmoil.

The latest clashes came two days after a controversial United Nations security council resolution authorising the deployment of African troops to protect the government. President Abdullahi Yusuf's regime remains fragile and fractured, and has been unable to win over the Somali population since its formation two years ago. Its position has been made increasingly tenuous by the rise in power of the Courts, which took control of the capital, Mogadishu, last June, ending 15 years of rule by warlords and bringing law and order.

Though they were set up to dispense justice and carry out social programmes, the Courts soon proved a strong political force. The SCIC contains moderate clerics seeking a stable Islamic state as well as hardliners whose goal is to reunite a 'greater Somalia' that includes parts of Kenya and Ethiopia.

The SCIC are also protecting terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda, although the number and provenance of the jihadists is unknown. For the US, however, their presence is a sign that the Courts are a threat to world peace that must be contained. Washington helped the Mogadishu warlords in their failed struggle against the SCIC earlier this year, a strategy that unwittingly helped the SCIC. In Somalia the warlords and the concept of foreign intervention arouse similar loathing.

The US strategy has attracted similar controversy. Despite warnings from analysts that the deployment of foreign peacekeepers would be viewed as taking sides and could trigger a war, America pushed strongly for last Wednesday's security council resolution. European Union countries, which are sceptical about whether deployment is wise, or even feasible, demanded that the peacekeeping force exclude front line states such as Ethiopia.

Even so the reaction from the Courts was immediate. Condemning the resolution, the SCIC vowed to fight any foreign troops and to remove the Ethiopians by force. While troops from Ethiopia have the clear advantage militarily - the Courts do not have an air force or tanks - analysts say any conflict is likely to be protracted because the Islamist militias will adopt guerrilla tactics.