Ethiopia war gets little attention

Hundreds have died as ethnic Somali rebels fight for autonomy for the Ogaden region. Government troops are accused of indiscriminate killings.

By Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 23, 2008

NAIROBI, KENYA — The teenager awoke under a pile of corpses to a pricking sensation on her face. Ants were biting her eyelids and the inside of her mouth.

The pain, however, brought relief to the 17-year-old.

"I thought, 'I'm alive,' " Ridwan Hassan Sahid remembers. She felt blood oozing from rope burns around her neck and the weight of a body against her back. But fearing that the Ethiopian soldiers who had left her for dead in a roadside ditch would return, she quickly brushed away the ants and shut her eyes, then slipped back into unconsciousness.

The brutal assault and her miraculous escape mark one of the most chilling stories to emerge from an unfolding tragedy in eastern Ethiopia that has largely escaped the attention of a world transfixed by the humanitarian crisis in neighboring Sudan's Darfur region.

Ever since exiting colonialists arbitrarily stuck a triangle-shaped wedge of land with 4 million ethnic Somalis inside Ethiopia's border, violence and suffering have plagued the region. Now, many of them have been caught up in a war between the Ethiopian government and a separatist group known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed and tens of thousands were displaced in the last year alone, though exact figures are unknown because the area is remote and Ethiopian officials restrict access for humanitarian groups and journalists.

Survivors such as Sahid offer the only glimpse of the tragedy. The petite young woman, who lives at a secret location, shared her story recently with The Times.

Now 18, Sahid at times seems to be an average teen, picking absent-mindedly at her henna-stained fingernails and blushing when strangers express interest in her.

But behind her soft brown eyes is a weariness that belies her age, and a necklace of scar tissue rings her throat where the rope cut into her skin.

She recounts her ordeal without emotion. Only occasionally does her veneer crack long enough for a tear to roll down her check, which she self-consciously laughs off and wipes away.

"I wonder sometimes," she says, "what kind of life I can have now."

She grew up in the village of Qorile with eight siblings. The family, like most everyone else in the area, were semi-nomadic cattle and sheep herders.

Ever since she can remember, Ethiopian authorities have been seen as the enemy.

"We feel as if we are living under occupation," she says. "We grew up afraid of them."

The Ogaden conflict dates to the 1940s, when, after World War II, European nations lost or began to relinquish their colonies in the Horn of Africa.

After some years under British administration, Ogaden and surrounding areas were placed under Ethiopian control, but the decision was never accepted by the ethnic Somalis living there, spurring two wars between Ethiopia and Somalia and spawning a string of rebel movements seeking autonomy or unification with Somalia.

Ethiopian officials accuse the Ogaden rebels of using terrorist tactics, including bombs, land mines and harassing the civilians it claims to represent. In April 2007, the rebels killed more than 70 people at a Chinese-run exploration facility in the region.

The attack prompted what aid groups and witnesses call a heavy-handed response by the Ethiopian government. Troops are accused of burning down villages believed to be rebel havens, raping women, forcibly recruiting young men into government militias and imposing a commercial blockade that sent food prices and malnutrition rates soaring.

"They used mass indiscriminate measures to collectively punish the entire population," Human Rights Watch researcher Leslie Lefkow said.

Ethiopian officials deny any widespread human rights abuses and blame rebels for the violence. "They are working with internationally known terrorists," said Zemedkun Tekle, spokesman for Ethiopia's Information Ministry.

Sahid says her family always tried to stay out of the fray: "We are not political people."

But she found herself caught in the middle in July, when several hundred Ethiopian troops surrounded her village. Her father was away tending animals in the fields and her mother was shopping in a nearby town. Sahid was washing her face when soldiers kicked in the door that morning.

"You are guerrillas," they shouted as they ransacked the house, stealing food and supplies, Sahid remembers. She escaped through a back door and huddled with other frightened villagers. Soon soldiers gathered them all at a well and read names from a list of "spies" and rebel sympathizers.

"Nobody knew who would be selected, but you knew if your name was called, you would be killed," says Fathi Abdulla, 22, a cousin of Sahid who lives in the same village. Sahid froze when she heard her name called. She and 10 others were taken to the school, which became a makeshift prison for interrogation and torture.

"They took us one by one," Sahid says.

Soldiers accused her of taking supplies to rebels. They tied her hands and legs together behind her back.

"They kicked me and stepped on my back," she says. "I told them that in my whole life, the only person I've ever helped was my mother."

The next morning, Sahid and the other prisoners were marched for hours to another village.

"They beat us like animals when we couldn't keep up," she says. "Mentally, I was already dead. I was just waiting to die."

Arriving at the village, Sahid says, she watched as soldiers looted the town and burned down all the huts. That night, none of the prisoners slept, fearing what the next day would bring.

At daybreak, without explanation, soldiers began executing them, Sahid says. Two villagers were hanged from trees. Two others were choked with metal rods and rope.

Sahid was the last attacked. She remembers hearing the others scream and beg for mercy, but couldn't move or make a sound herself.

"At that point, I was like a tree. I had no feeling. I was like a statue."

Two soldiers ordered her into the ditch, but she refused. Finally one pounced, choking Sahid with a metal rod used to clean guns. They struggled for a minute, but she did not lose consciousness and the soldier gave up.

Next, two exasperated soldiers grabbed the girl and tied a rope around her neck. They pulled in different directions until she collapsed into the ditch.

The next thing Sahid recalls are the ants. The midday sun was beating down and she felt disoriented. Blood flowed from her nose and neck. Her legs were trapped under a man's naked body. She says she closed her eyes again, uncertain whether she would live or die.

Back in her village, friends and family formed a search party, following the soldiers' footprints. They expected to recover nothing more than bodies.

After several hours of walking, they encountered a group of nomads who told them about a nearby field with some bodies. Remarkably, they said, a young girl was still alive.

"We rushed to the place," Abdulla says. The scene was grisly. Two men hung from nooses in a tree. Other victims lay naked, with belts and ropes still around their necks.

Sahid was in the ditch, under two bodies.

"As we came closer, she opened her eyes and looked at us! We were so shocked."

They moved her under a tree, but feared she would soon die. They buried the bodies and awaited help. Eventually camels were brought and friends began a weeks-long journey to secretly move Sahid out of the country.

She remembers little of the escape or her recovery. She still can't use her right hand because of nerve damage from the beatings.

With an uncertain future, Sahid spends most days indoors. Venturing outside sometimes brings panic attacks.

She says the quiet moments are the hardest to bear.

"Whenever I sit for even a minute, I draw my mind back to those events. And I start to cry."

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Chaotic Somalia keeps U.S. on terrorism watch

Latest missile strike at the East Africa nation, aimed at a suspected Al Qaeda operative, keeps terrorists off balance. But some say US should do more to nation-build in Somalia.
By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

In the ruined, chaotic state of Somalia the United States has long been engaged in a shadowy struggle with the forces of militant Islam. This US effort has two main goals: to prevent extremist groups from taking root in Somali society, and to counter notorious terrorist figures thought responsible for attacks throughout North and East Africa.

The US missile strike launched March 3 against the southern Somali town of Dobley was part of this larger fight. Whatever the attack's results – the Defense Department officially is keeping mum – US intelligence officials in recent weeks said they are generally pleased with their progress against terrorism in the region.

But is any such progress coming at the expense of Somalia itself?

Attacks against individual militants may frighten and anger ordinary Somalis, say some analysts, leading to something of a backlash against the US. Meanwhile, the US government in the area might be focusing on antiterrorism policy at the expense of nation-building efforts.

"I am concerned we are not helping the Somalis build even a minimally functional government," says Karin von Hippel, co-director of the post conflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The March 3 strike was carried out by at least two cruise missiles fired from a US Navy submarine. According to local news reports, the target was Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan who may have played a major role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Residents and police in Dobley said at least eight people were injured and a home destroyed in the attack. A radical Islamist movement that ruled much of southern Somalia throughout 2006 retook Dobley last week, according to wire service reports. On March 4 the town's streets were filled with hundreds of protesters shouting anti-American slogans, according to these reports.

At the height of its power, the radical movement, known as the Council of Islamic Courts, controlled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. But in early 2007, troops loyal to a UN-supported interim government, backed by the Ethiopian Army, ousted the Islamist group.

Of course, to call the elements currently in power in Mogadishu a "government" perhaps is to overstate the case. Since the early 1990s, Somalia has been a nation in name only. No group is in position to control its borders. No one watches its coastline. Yet it is only a relatively short boat trip across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.

The US has long kept its eye on Somalia as a possible haven for Al Qaeda, according to an International Crisis Group study of counterterrorism in the area. As early as 1998, when the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, US officials were concerned that Osama bin Laden might turn to Somalia as his next place of refuge, says the ICG study.

The Al Qaeda leadership decamped to the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead. Still, three extremist groups operating from Somalia "have chalked up a deadly track record," according to ICG.

Perhaps most notorious among them is an Al Qaeda cell made up of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and several other militants. This group is thought linked to the embassy bombings, as well as the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan hotel and an unsuccessful attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

The second group is a Somali nationalist and Islamist movement with long-standing links to Al Qaeda named al-Itihaad al-Islaami. During its 1990s heyday, the group had a militia of 1,000 fighters funded by Islamic charities from the Gulf states and maintained training camps staffed by foreign jihadis, says ICG.

The third group has emerged since 2003. It is a small but ruthless militant network led by Aden Hashi Ayro, a relatively young fighter reportedly trained in Al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps.

Lumped together, these organizations have given Somalia a reputation as a hotbed of Islamist extremism. But viewed from the perspective of the larger population, that may not be the case.

"In reality, jihadism is an unpopular, minority trend among Somali Islamists," concluded the ICG report.

This week's missile strike in Somalia was far from a first for the US. It carried out similar attacks at least three times last year.

Though those strikes were not all successful, the general antiterror effort in Somalia is going well, according to US intelligence.

A year or 18 months ago, Al Qaeda was establishing a foothold in Somalia that was on its way to becoming formidable, said Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell at a Feb. 27 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Since the Ethiopian Army rolled into Mogadishu, things have changed, said Director McConnell.

"For the most part, we've been able to keep it tamped down, or on the run. We've traced personalities," he told the Senate panel.

The concern of Karin von Hippel of CSIS and some other analysts is that the focus on personalities and security may distract the US from trying to rebuild the government and promoting higher levels of national reconciliation and reconstruction.

Americans Fire Missiles Into Somalia

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and ERIC SCHMITT

NAIROBI, Kenya — American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia on Monday, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets.

Residents reached by telephone said the only casualties were three wounded civilians, three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, said the target was a “known Al Qaeda terrorist,” and another American military official said the attack was carried out with at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine. The official said the missiles were believed to have hit their targets, but did not elaborate on the targets.

Witnesses on the ground, though, described the attack differently.

“I did not know from where they were launched, but what I know is that they hit a house in this town,” said Mohammed Amin Abdullahi Osman, a resident of Dhobley, a small town in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border.

Mr. Mohammed said two missiles crashed into the house around 3:30 a.m.

It was not the first time that American forces fired missiles into Somalia in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives in the country. They did so at least three times last year.

Dhobley lies in the growing swath of southern Somalia that seems to be falling under the control of the country’s Islamist movement once again. The Islamists rose to power in 2006 and brought a degree of law and order to Somalia for the first time since the central government collapsed in 1991.

But they were driven out of Somalia in late 2006 and early 2007 by a joint Ethiopian-American offensive. The Americans and Ethiopians suspected Somalia’s Islamists of harboring Qaeda terrorists, including men connected to the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Thousands of Ethiopian troops poured across the border, backed up by American airstrikes and American intelligence. The Islamist movement then went underground.

But in the past several months, the Islamists seem to be making a comeback, taking over towns in southern Somalia, including Dhobley, and inflicting a steady stream of casualties on Ethiopian forces with suicide bombs and hit-and-run attacks. Efforts by foreign diplomats and the United Nations to broker a truce have failed, and concerns are rising that Somalia could be headed toward another war-induced famine like the one it suffered in the early 1990s.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

Bombs, Bandits Hinder Aid to Somalia

By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; A11

Rising insecurity in Somalia is hampering delivery of humanitarian aid to people who need it most, an adviser to the Oxfam relief agency said Tuesday.

Roadside bombs, banditry and roadblock gunmen demanding $500 per truck of relief supplies have made "getting the right quantities to the right people a problem," said Robert Maletta. In some areas where displaced people are now living, few aid agencies are operating on the ground, he added.

In June and July, close to 7,000 people fled general insecurity and clashes in the capital, Mogadishu, he said. Of 404,000 people displaced within the country since February, only 125,000 have returned to their homes.

Last December, Ethiopian troops drove the radical Islamic Courts movement from Mogadishu and installed a U.N.-backed transitional government. Militiamen supporting the Islamic movement and some of the country's powerful clans have continued to harass the Ethiopians and their Somali allies.

Because of historical and cultural differences, many Somalis see Ethiopians as a hostile invading force, Maletta said: "The trick is how to get Ethiopia out while keeping the transitional government from collapsing." He suggested looking into integrated missions of several U.N. agencies.

The Mogadishu government has been under international pressure to convene a national reconciliation gathering. The meeting has already been postponed three times and it is unclear if the latest date of July 15 will begin a broad consensual effort toward national recovery and forgiveness.

Some groups have said they will not attend until Ethiopia pulls out its troops.

International observers and the transitional government say that hard-core Islamic Courts leaders and opposition figures including former members of parliament have gathered in Asmara, Eritrea, and have formed a loose alliance under the aegis of the Eritrean government.

A Human Rights Watch report last week said the Ethiopian military has forcibly displaced thousands of civilians in Ethiopia's eastern region in the course of escalating a campaign against the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali rebel group.

The action could be part of an effort to sever links among the rebels, the Islamic Courts and Eritrea, including arms and supply lines from Eritrea and Somalia to the rebels.

Maletta said Somalia needs help in building its institutions, but he emphasized that the solutions have to come from Somalis themselves. "Give them the tools and they will get out and fix it. Somalis are not passive victims," he said.

"The role of the international community would be to support Somali institutions without taking them over," said Maletta, who has spent time in Somalia before and during the current conflict.

U.S. Special Forces Attack in Somalia

Attacking what is believed to be an Al Qaeda stronghold, a U.S. AC-130 attacked a village in Somalia near the Kenya border, with many reported dead.

Somalis Fight for Hezbollah in Lebanon . . .

The lede from the New York Times article:

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 14 — More than 700 Islamic militants from Somalia traveled to Lebanon in July to fight alongside Hezbollah in its war against Israel, a United Nations report says. The militia in Lebanon returned the favor by providing training and — through its patrons Iran and Syria — weapons to the Islamic alliance struggling for control of Somalia, it adds.

. . . As Somalia's Islamists Helped by Outsiders

A confidential UN report states that Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Hezbollah helped the Somali Islamists who are gradually taking power away from the so-called "transitional" government in southern Somalia after capturing Mogadishu.