A Ministerial delegation consisting of several cabinet ministers and led by the Minister of Agriculture Prof. Farah Elmi Mahmoud (Geedoole) today embarked on inspection tour of government initiated development projects in Cadaadlay region.
Hon. Farah Elmi Mahmoud (Geedoole) handing over an assortment of seeds donations to local farmers said, “ We shall continue to boost agricultural empowerment in country by supplying good and quality seeds to the farmers in rural areas so as to increase the food production and farm incomes.
Hon. Farah Elmi Mahmoud (Geedoole) said, “The current government is ready to support sustainable development projects across the country and the purpose of our tour here today is to identify which areas require urgent attention so that we can be able address needs of the people of Cadaadlay region.
Some of the needs include health facilities, water wells, schools, police post, developing of livestock and farming in a productive and profitable way.
The Agriculture Minister was accompanied by the Minister of Education Madam Zam Zam Abdi Aden, Minister of Presidential Affairs Hon Hirsi Haji Ali Hassan and the Minister of Internal Affairs Hon Mohamed Ali Waran Cade.
Stabilizing one of the most dangerous regions in the world from the ground up
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Len Tiahlo vividly recalls a flight he took more than a decade ago that had to make an emergency landing on a dirt strip serving as a runway outside the tiny enclave of Jijiga in eastern Ethiopia.
A lone shack sat next to the runway amid the scrub; there was nowhere else to go. Tiahlo and his fellow passengers spent the night drinking Coca Cola, coffee and smoking cigarettes until the plane was able to depart.
Nowadays Tiahlo is a regular and more willing visitor to a very different and buzzing present-day Jijiga as director of London-based Horn Investment Development (HID), a British company which recently completed a trial run of the first inland trade of animal hides to Jijiga from neighbouring Somaliland.
“Animal hide startup” may not say instant wealth to Westerners raised on tales of Silicon Valley. Here, however, a simple cross-border trade of hides could mark the start of a boost to development and security in one of the poorest and most unstable regions of the world.
Ethiopia and Somalia, along with the self-declared state of Somaliland internationally recognized as an autonomous region within Somalia, lie on the infamous Horn of Africa. During the 1990s the Horn of Africa became synonymous with nightmarish uprisings and mass killings. The early and mid-2000s were dominated by piracy and hostage-taking in the waters off Somalia.
But increasingly, news is emerging of economic progress and tentative stability in the likes of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and across previously perilous border regions with other countries, such as Ethiopia. HID is one of many groups now looking to invest in the region while kick-starting development efforts.
Jijiga’s infrastructure has improved since Tiahlo’s first visit, but its economy is still underpinned by traditional livestock rearing and is primarily subsistence-based, as is the case across the majority of the Horn region.
As a community interest company — a category set up by the British government in 2005 — HID is a private, for-profit enterprise but with a built-in focus on a social objective. HID says it wants to attract international investment to transform pastoral livestock raising into modern industrial farming. Trading skins is the first phase. Next would come a factory that can produce frozen meat products both for Ethiopia’s domestic market and to export around the world. Meat consumption—especially of the frozen variety—is expected to increase due to Ethiopia’s growing middle class with more disposable income and increasing ownership of refrigerators.
It’s an idea that has already received praise, as well as $160,000 from UK government’s Department for International Development due to potential strategic benefits for this oft-times troubled region. British leather manufacturer Pittards is consulting with HID on the leather aspect of the plan, and received the first trial run of 5,000 at its Ethiopian factory, while London Business School is partnering HID and developing a business prospectus that it’s hoped will attract investors.
The presence of a hide and meat factory in Jijiga could end years of erratic income for farmers in the Ogaden region surrounding the town, as well as in Somaliland. These farmers have depended on fluctuating meat demand in the Middle East for religious festivals that only total a few months each year. HID’s factory would provide demand all year round.
It could also give farmers better prices for their livestock than they are currently getting from middle men in the Somaliland cities of Hargeisa and Burao, or from Arab traders in Berbera’s port, Tiahlo said.
“This would be a revolution for the agricultural industry of the region which 10 years ago didn’t even have electricity,” Tiahlo said.
Ethiopia’s government is interested in HID’s project, too, for several reasons.
Ethiopia is home to Africa’s largest livestock population, and is Africa’s top livestock exporter. Livestock exports constitute more than 5 percent of Ethiopia’s GDP — a figure that could be increased significantly if illegal trade were eliminated. The black market currently accounts for around 75% of the country’s overall foreign livestock trade, costing legitimate traders between $180m to $360m a year, according to Ethiopia’s agriculture ministry.
Tiahlo thinks the Jijiga factory would reduce illegal trade by providing an example of the benefits of legitimate business.
There could be a security payoff, as well.
Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region shares a border with Somalia and Somaliland, the autonomous region that declares itself a state. The ethnically Somali Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has been fighting a long-running insurgency against the Ethiopian government, seeking more autonomy for the underdeveloped region. Improving economic situation on the ground has clear advantages.
“Regional integration is very important,” said Mebrahtu Meles, state minister for Ethiopia’s Ministry of Industry, at a mid-February meeting with HID to discuss the project.
Challenges
The question is: Will these efforts be successful?
Many commentators also say there is patchy evidence of private sector development actually helping the indigent, even though, according to a leather consultant who has travelled extensively in Africa during his four decades in the industry, development and the private sector should be well matched.
“In theory it should be ideal,” said the consultant, who wished to remain anonymous due to current work commitments with an intergovernmental organization. “But it rarely works as advertised—if a project produces the anticipated results then the owners want to cash in on the project and that means the workers get peanuts.”
Furthermore, transforming pastoral farming traditions to modern industrial farming methods while being able to make money is a very tall order and an inherently fraught enterprise in a part of the world where pastoralism is the predominant mode of production, deeply entwined with ancient cultures.
Getting down to specifics, the leather consultant wishing to remain anonymous cautioned that managing to produce meat that corresponds to the international market standards can take years to achieve. Currently South Africa, Botswana and Namibia are the only African countries currently licensed to sell meat to any European country, he said, and face huge competition from Brazil, the world’s number one exporter of frozen meats.
Tiahlo counters such concerns by pointing to the expected growth in Ethiopia’s domestic meat market, which could help the factory maintain demand until the international standards are met. HID’s leaders also emphasize, in response to concerns about getting profits back to farmers, that their business model mandates that between 3% to 7% of net income—after recovery of investments, operating costs and repayment of HID costs—is distributed to the local community hosting the business. About 200 people would be employed at the planned Jijiga factory, they say.
A move towards Western investment in Africa
UK Foreign Office Minister Henry Bellingham arrives in Jijiga in the Somali region of Ethiopia in July, 2011. (Foreign & Commonwealth Office/Flickr Commons)
HID’s venture is a small one compared to others of its kind initiated in the past few years. Along with its grant to HID, the UK’s Department for International Development has promised up to $14.8 million to Novastar, an East Africa-based venture capital fund, to allow it to support more entrepreneurs and businesses in the region which provide low-cost schooling, healthcare, energy, housing and safe water.
Previously Western companies, unlike their Chinese counterparts, have remained nervous about participating in major projects in sub-Saharan Africa, said Manaye Ewunetu, managing director of London-based ME Consulting Engineers, which specialises in Africa and the Middle East.
They’ve been deterred by insufficient profits in the short term, along with high political risk due to rapidly changing governmental policies or even entire governments. Now, that appears to be changing.
Some big companies are coming and taking a bet on regions that previously would have been unimaginable for boards and directors.
Coca-Cola’s opening of a $17 million bottling plant outside the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa, represents the biggest private investment in the country to date.
Larger projects such as this and the size of capital they bring clearly have advantages, but smaller companies appear coveted by regional authorities, also, as evidenced by the Ethiopian government’s enthusiastic response to HID’s livestock plan.
Western governments are increasingly eager to encourage such initiatives, and to tie aid to business opportunities. The US-Africa Leaders Summit this August is intended to “advance the administration’s focus on trade and investment in Africa,” according to the White House. In January of 2014, British International Development Secretary Justine Greening announced that the UK would be devoting £1.8 billion to growth-boosting investments in 2015-2016. “Economic development is, without question,” Greening said, “the only way countries can leave behind enduring and chronic poverty for good.”
[they called me] you are a prostitute and you Somalis are all Al-Shabaab and terrorists, we don’t respect your religion or culture. This is Kenya. We can rape you if we want to.’ A Somalis refugee female told human right watch
In October 2011, Kenya deployed military troops in Somalia against the army group al-shabaab, they got massive retaliations from the al-shabaab combatants, vowed that they will bomb the high buildings in Nairobi and killing their citizens.
Since then, Kenya has faced over 30 attacks involving grenades and other explosives, which resulted in at least 76 deaths and hundreds of injuries Kenyan government officials have blamed Al-Shabaab and its sympathizers in Kenya for these attacks, although the Group has only claimed responsibility in a small number of cases.
Meanwhile, series deliberate attacks were happened in Kenya including improvised explosive device and grenades, In September, at least 67 people were killed after al-Shabaab militants took control of the Westgate shopping mall in the capital Nairobi for four days.
After that attack, Over the past two weeks Kenya had launched a sweeping security operations that targets the Somalis refugee and Somali Kenyans, the victims were among women’s and children’s, the last operation at least 4,000 people have been arrested in raids over the past week in the capital Nairobi, but police say only 447 people are still being detained.
Thus, the operation has been condemned by some leading Kenyan MPs and religious clerics who have accused the security forces of unfairly targeting Somalis. The question is why the federal government hadn’t given action response to this brutal action on Somalis refugees living in Nairobi?
‘For the last few months we’ve had heightened insecurity. Time has come for a mop up to restore order,” said Kenya’s Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku
What does it means mop up?
Refugees told Human Rights Watch that police who abused them in Eastleigh used the threat of arrest and prosecution on terror charges—calling them “terrorists”—as an excuse to abuse and extort money from them. Is this mop up?
The police kept saying you were Al-Shabaab terrorists and said ‘Somalis are like donkeys: they have no rights in Kenya. Is this mop up?
Kenyan High Court ordered the authorities to halt a proposed plan to relocate all urban refugees to refugee camps. Is this mop up?
Kenya has sent back 82 Somalis to Somalia after launching a massive security force operation to repatriation mixed legal and illegal immigrants, and many victims still detained were among children’s and women’s in sports stadium and various police stations more than 48 hour without charge. Is this mop up?
However, Kenyan police abuses against Somali refugees and Somali Kenyans are not new. In 2009, 2010 and 2012, Human Rights Watch reported on Kenyan security force abuses, including torture, rape, and other serious forms of violence, against Somali Kenyans and Somali
refugees throughout Kenya’s predominantly Somali inhabited North Eastern region, including in and around the Dadaab refugee camps sheltering almost half a million mostly Somali refugees.
‘Wolf in a room with a sheep’
On December 2012, Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs (DRA) announced that Kenya’s 55,000 registered urban refugees and asylum seekers were required to move to refugee camps in Kenya’s northeast and northwest and that all assistance to and registration of urban refugees and asylum seekers should end.
Kenya had abused or violation the Geneva Convention for human rights, they ignored for international refugee and human rights law; whether abuse or violation on human rights law our Somalis community living in Kenya must decide their future and do something forward.
This abuses on Somalis refugee’s rights is not new, it’s like ‘if you put a wolf in a room with a sheep and tell the wolf don’t eat this sheep of course the wolf will eat the sheep.’
The interior minister federal government of Somalia said ‘I told to the Kenya interior minister to save our Somalis refugees and send back illegal immigrants their country with save and dignity.’ Just like same Kenya is a wolf.
Thus, over the past two year Somalia had steadily progress in peace particular in the capital Mogadishu, recently, around many Somali Diaspora was immensely returned the country and made small business investments, including supermarkets, restaurants, and hotels.
So, these is good step for development and signal sent to Somalis community living in Nairobi isli, come here and make investment for this country in order to live dignity, proud and freedom from fear.
My own hunch, when these cruel operations had happened, thousands of Somalis are made demonstrations against this brutal actions and were gathered in the front of the Kenyan embassy in United state, United Kingdom, Sweden, they carry out slogans ‘no genocide in 2014, Kenya shame on you.’ This is really makes it Somalis people unity and brotherhood.
Byline: Hassan mudane, further more info. contact him via this email: mudaneo5@gmail.com
There is an open feud in Hargeisa between the Administration of President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo and the independent media in general and in particular between the Minister of Mineral Resources Hussein Duale and the owner of Haatuf newspapers, Yusuf Gabobe. Both sides can be faulted for making errors in judgment.
The Somaliland people expect the Administration to exercise the powers given to them by the people prudently and in a manner consistent with the constitution and the laws of the country.Somaliland is a constitutional democracy that protects the freedom of the press. That freedom extends to even when offensive information is disseminated. The government can not criminalize the act of publishing material that is offensive by putting journalists in jail or closing newspapers or denying the citizens to watch a certain TV station. The administration did this and they have to reverse those actions.
There have been palpable tensions between the press and successive administration-Egal, Rayale and Silanyo. It can said that while sitting presidents won battles by imprisoning journalistsor closing the operations of their newspapers, the media won the overall war because its still reporting aggressively and will continue to be here as long as Somaliland is constitutional democracy.
On the other side, journalists must exercise the right that was given to them by the constitution prudently. Yusuf Duhul, whose journal, DALKA, was the first independent journal in the 1960s, taught us that journalists need not be pro or against the government but just pursue the facts no matter where the facts leads them to. So it is important the material they publish is accurate and thoroughly vetted. While I’m not privy to what is happening in Hargeisa, I know some material published by Haatuf is inaccurate. This relates to the brother of the Minister of Mineral Resources. Mohamed is medical technologist and his wife, Fadumo earned a PhD in the US. They had been with us in Los Angeles until they sold their house here around 1998 and moved with their two small children to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dr. Fadumo is UAE national as are her sisters and mother and father. It is needless to say that UAE nationals because of the resources of their country have privileges and opportunities. To insinuate that a property owned by this family in the UAE is somehow linked to the minister is illogical and hurtful. .
If each Administration respects the constitutional guarantees of the freedom of the press and the journalist adhere to the ethical standard of their profession, we may see less and less of those tensions. It is in the interest of both parties to find a way out of this standoff so that at least the journalists who found themselves out of work can return to work to earn a living- in a place where there are many jobs anyway- and practice their profession.There is no justification for this irrational feud to continue.
Déjà vu 1994 Rwanda in 2014 Central African Republic
Last week, the people of Rwanda began a solemn week of official mourning to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide. On April 6, 1994, Hutu extremist leaders in government, their political supporters and organized militiamen coordinated a systematic killing spree, which lasted over 100 days and consumed the lives of more than 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In 1994, Rwanda had a population of 5.5 million, of which 14 percent were Tutsi. Today Rwanda has a population of 11.5 million, of which the Tutsi population is less than 10 percent.
Last week, the people of the Central African Republic (CAR) continued to face their own “Rwanda-esque” nightmare of unspeakable horror. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was so disheartened by the ongoing “ethno-religious cleansing” in CAR that he declared, “The international community failed the people of Rwanda 20 years ago… And we are at risk of not doing enough for the people of the CAR today . . . Some say this is a forgotten crisis. I am here to help make sure the world does not forget… And we are at risk of not doing enough for the people of the CAR today… Atrocity crimes are being committed in this country. Ethno-religious cleansing is a reality. Most members of the Muslim minority have fled. We cannot just continue to say ‘never again’. This, we have said so many times. We must act concertedly and now to avoid continued atrocities on a massive scale…”
Twenty years ago when Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, died after his plane was shot down, Hutu extremists who opposed a 1993 ceasefire agreement for power sharing Hutus and Tutsis for the creation of a power-sharing government launched their “final war” to “exterminate the [Tutsi] cockroaches.’ The “akazu” (top Hutu political leaders and elites) began hatching a concerted plan to exterminate Tutsis at least a year before the onset of the genocide. They set up their own radio station (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) and began a virulent and systematic campaign of demonization of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. At the onset of the genocide in April 1994, they used their radio station to embolden and encourage the killers. They read out the names of people to be killed and directed murderous militias (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi) to different locations to commit horrific crimes. They repeatedly proclaimed on radio, “In truth, all Tutsis will perish. They will vanish from this country … They are disappearing little by little thanks to the weapons hitting them, but also because they are being killed like rats.” In 1994, there were about 120,000 people living in Nyamata, the largest city in Rwanda located 30 miles from the capital Kigali. In less than a month and a half, only 50,000 were left. Five out of every six Tutsis had been killed.
Today, CAR has exploded into sectarian and communal strife and civil war. In 2013, Seleka militia (an alliance of rebel militia factions that overthrew the CAR government in March 2013) launched “a murderous rampage that started in the north-east and spread out across the country, seizing the capital Bangui and ousting then-President François Bozizé. Over the following 10 months, Seleka forces killed countless civilians, burned numerous villages, and looted thousands of homes.” Although an estimated 90 per cent of CAR’s population is Christian including the ousted president Bozizé, most of the Seleka forces and their leader Michel Djotodia are Muslims. According to Amnesty International, Seleka “abuses spurred the emergence of the loosely organized “anti-balaka” militia (“machete proof” in Sango), made up of Christians and animists. In the last four months of 2013, anti-balaka fighters carried out horrific attacks on Muslim communities, particularly in CAR’s northwest.” The violence has continued to intensify and currently international peacekeepers have “failed to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Muslim civilians in the western part of the Central African Republic.” In the town of Yaloke, less than 150 miles from the capital Bangui, there were an estimated 30,000 Muslims with 8 mosques a year ago . According to Human Rights Watch observers, today there are fewer than 500 Muslims and one mosque left.
For the past year, the international human rights organizations have been ringing the alarm bells over the impending “ethno-religious cleansing”-cum-genocide in the CAR. In October 2013, Amnesty International issued a report warning of the “human rights crisis in CAR is spiraling out of control.” As the violence and carnage increased, a token force of several thousand international peacekeepers (2,000 French troops and some 6,000 African Union forces) was sent to CAR. Last week, the U.N. authorized the deployment of 12,000 peacekeepers to CAR but that force will not arrive until September 2014. Human Rights Watch issued a dire warning indicating that the extreme level of violence in CAR is “forcing entire communities to leave the country. At this rate, if the targeted violence continues, there will be no Muslims left in much of the Central African Republic.”
The parallels between 1994 Rwanda and 2014 CAR are chilling. In 1994 Rwanda, the Organization of African Unity and the international community including the U.S. and the U.N. turned a blind eye to the spiraling genocide. In 2014 CAR, the international community is giving lip service and performing window dressing with token military presence as tens of thousands of innocent civilians are being massacred and hundreds of thousands displaced in “ethno-religious cleansing”. For a full year, it was manifest to the African Union and the international community that a backlash in CAR was foreseeable and preventable. Amnesty International noted, “In power for nearly 10 months, the Seleka were responsible for massacres, extrajudicial executions, rape, torture, and looting, as well as massive burning and destruction of Christian villages. As the Seleka withdrew, the international forces allowed the anti-balaka militias to take control of town after town. The resulting violence and forcible expulsion of Muslim communities were predictable.”
Doomed by history?
Has Africa learned its lessons from 1994 Rwanda? Does the world care about Africa? Is Africa condemned to live in the long shadow of Rwanda? Are we witnessing Rwanda 1994 in CAR 2014? What is the difference between “ethno-religious cleaning” and genocide (the same difference between tomAto and tomayto)? Is CAR Rwanda redux? Was Rwanda the future of CAR, and CAR the future of Africa?
There is not a single country in Africa that is immune from the Ebola virus of communalism and sectarianism. Like Ebola, the initial symptoms of communalism and sectarianism appear to be not out of the ordinary. Those who claim to struggle against ethnic and religious oppression often proclaim righteousness. When they become the victors, they commit equally or more atrocious crimes that make a travesty of their cause and causes the deaths and suffering of millions. Like the Ebola virus, communalism and sectarianism are a deadly combination in the body politics of Africa. A vaccine must be found soon if Africa is to be spared the scourge of sectarianism and communalism.
The specter of genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa
In his “Communist Manifesto”, Karl Marx announced to the world that “A spectre is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” In a metaphorical equivalent, “A specter is haunting Africa – the specter of genocide and crimes against humanity.” Marx declared, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Is the future of Africa going to be a struggle against genocide and crimes against humanity?
Article 5 (a) of the Rome Statute grants prosecutorial jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court over the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. Article 6 defines “genocide” to include specific “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These acts include, among others, “killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Article 7 defines crimes against humanity which includes “murder, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, rape, and persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender.
Crimes against humanity and mini-genocides are commonplace occurrences in Africa today. With the exception of the international human rights organizations, few Africans (including leaders and members of the African intelligentsia) and fewer Western media and diplomatic communities are prepared to talk about the genocide and crimes against humanity taking place in Africa. In April 1994, when the Clinton Administration pretended to be ignorant of the unspeakable massacres in Rwanda, Susan Rice, President Obama’s current national Security Advisor, casually inquired of her colleagues, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”
Beginning in 2003, the Sudanese government exploited tribal/ethnic differences in the Darfur region pitting nomadic Arab herders against pastoralist African groups. The Sudanese government armed ethnic Arab militia groups, known as the “Janjaweed,” (not unlike Rwanda’s Interahamwe) to attack the ethnic African groups. As the government rained bombs from the sky, the Janjaweed burned villages, poisoned wells, raped and massacred over one-half million people and displaced millions more. In 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and other officials for directing a campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage against civilians in Darfur. Bashir sneered at the ICC indictment, “Tell them all, the ICC prosecutor, the members of the court and everyone who supports this court that they are under my shoes.” Uhuru Kenyatta, along with other co-defendants including his deputy president William Ruto, is currently facing trial in the ICC for his alleged role in masterminding the post-election violence in Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008. Over 1,100 people are believed to have died in that violence and 600 thousand displaced. Kenyatta is charged in a five-count indictment under the Rome Statute for crimes against humanity including murder, deportation or forcible transfer, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts. However, Uhuru Kenyatta will never see the inside of the ICC courtroom in The Hague. Truth be told, it is not only Kenyatta and his partners in crimes against humanity who have escaped justice. Many other “genocidaires” and criminals against humanity in Africa have thumbed their noses on the ICC and other tribunals and gotten away. In southern Ethiopia, the indigenous people along the Omo River valley are facing extinction as a result of displacement and villagization caused by the construction of the so-called Gibe III dam. In August 2012, the world-renowned conservationist and paleoanthropologist Dr. Richard Leakey predicted that the Gibe III “dam will produce a broad range of negative effects, some of which would be catastrophic to both the environment and the indigenous communities living downstream.” Is the regime in Ethiopia culpable for genocide and crimes against humanity for constructing a dam that certainly damns the indigenous people of the Omo River Basin?
In western Ethiopia, the people of Gambella have lost their ancestral lands and homes to Indian multinationals. The regime in Ethiopia “leased” to an Indian corporation known as Karuturi “2,500 sq km of virgin, fertile land an area the size of Dorset, England” in Ethiopia for £150 a week ($USD245). To make way for Karuturi, tens of thousands of Ethiopians in Gambella were forced to move and become part of the regime’s villagization program. A UNICEF field study concluded: “ The deracination [uprooting from ancestral lands] of indigenous people that is evident in rural areas of Gambella is extreme. It is very likely that Anuak (and possibly other indigenous minorities) culture will completely disappear in the not-so-distant future.” Is the regime in Ethiopia responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in its use of villagization policy in Gambella?
For nearly a quarter of a century, the regime in Ethiopia has been repackaging an atavistic style of tribal politics in a fancy wrapper called “ethnic federalism.” The regime has managed to segregate the Ethiopian people by ethno-tribal classifications and corralled them like cattle into grotesque regional political units called “kilils” (literally means “reservation”; semantically, the word also suggests the notion of an exclusion zone, an enclave). The ideology of “kililism” shares many of the attributes of Apartheid’s “Bantustanism” (“black African tribal homelands”). Both ideologies aim to concentrate members of designated ethnic groups into “homelands” by creating ethno-linguistically homogenous territories which could ultimately morph into “autonomous” nation states. “Kililistization” is “villagization” on steroids; it reduces Ethiopia to a bunch of glorified villages. “Kilils” are basically a kinder-and-gentler form of Apartheid-style Bantustans. Is “kililism” the seedbed of genocide and crimes against humanity? Is the regime in Ethiopia responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity for its “kililization” policy? For over a decade, the regime in Ethiopia, despite claims of “ethnic federalism”, has mounted an indiscriminate counterinsurgency campaign in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia to suppress the Ogadenis basic demands for autonomy. The regime has adopted policies aimed at starving the Ogadeni population and economically blockade Ogadeni towns and villages. The regime has indiscriminately strafed and bombed Ogadeni civilians and cut off humanitarian aid to the region. Massacres, torture, rape and disappearances have been used as weapons of war by the regime against Ogadenis. Human Rights Watch issued a 130 page report entitled, “Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region” documenting the regime’s crimes. Is the regime in Ethiopia responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Ogaden?
In 2005, the regime in Ethiopia orchestrated the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters in the aftermath of parliamentary elections in May of that year. Police and security officials under the personal and direct command and control of the late Meles Zenawi and his top officials coordinated the massacres. An official Inquiry Commission appointed by Meles documented the extrajudicial killing of at least 193 unarmed protesters, wounding of 763 others and arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 30,000 persons. The Commission’s evidence further showed that nearly all of the 193 unarmed protesters were killed by the regime’s sharpshooters. The Commission further documented that on November 3, 2005, during an alleged disturbance at the infamous Kality prison near Addis Ababa, guards sprayed more than 1,500 bullets into inmate cells in 15 minutes, killing 17 and severely wounding 53. Was Meles personally responsible for crimes against humanity? Are those officials currently in the regime or others who participated but are no longer in the regime responsible for crimes against humanity in the 2005 massacres?
In May 2012, Meles hectored his rubberstamp parliament to justify his forced expulsion (or as some have described it “ethnic cleansing”) of Amharas from southern Ethiopia and zapped his critics for their irresponsibility in reporting and publicizing it. Meles said the “Amharas” or as he described them the “sefaris from North Gojam” (how humiliating to be called a “safari” or “squatter” in one’s own country!) had to be removed from their homesteads in the south purely out of environmental conservation concerns. There was not a scintilla of evidence that the removal was justified by environmental concerns. Was Meles personally responsible for crimes against humanity for forcibly removing thousands of “Amharas” from the southern part of their country?
Last April, the regime in Ethiopia authorized the forced removal of “Amharas” from the Benishangul-Gumuz region (one of the nine “kililistans” in Ethiopia) in act widely described as “ethnic cleansing”. Prof. Yacob Hailemariam, a prominent Ethiopian opposition leader and a former senior Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda commented that the expulsion of members of the Amhara ethnic group from Benishangul-Gumuz was a de facto ethnic cleansing. “The forceful deportation of people because they speak a certain language could destabilize a region, and if reported with tangible evidence, the UN Security Council could order the International Criminal Court to begin to examine the crimes.”
Large swaths of Ethiopia today are afflicted by famine and starvation which the regime has kept secret for a long time. In February of this year, the regime bureaucratically announced that 2.7 million of the 91 million people in Ethiopia are starving and in need of humanitarian aid. The total food requirement (which in the past the regime has low-balled) is estimated at 388,635 metric tons. The regions most affected by famine include Gambella (16.7%) , Somali (13.8%), Tigray (11.3%) and Afar (10%). The regime has budgeted only $51.6 million dollars, which represents only 12.8 percent of what is required. As the alarm over the impending famine was being broadcast, Hailemariam Desalegn, the ceremonial prime minster, was crowing about a “double digit economic growth”. Thousands of Ethiopians are dying from starvation every month unseen and unregistered because the regime maintains a complete chokehold on information coming from famine afflicted areas. Is the regime in Ethiopia responsible for genocide for the famine deaths by benign neglect and depravity for failing to properly budget when it had had full advance knowledge of the impending food catastrophe?
Since the regime in Ethiopia took power in May 1991, it has been engaged in inflammatory ethnic talk demonizing “Amharas” and others. As recently as a few months ago, the regime was coordinating and orchestrating a full-court press demonization and vilification campaign against Atse Menelik II, the Nineteenth Century Ethiopian emperor whose centennial is being celebrated this year (Ethiopian calendar). The regime was using Menelik as the straw man to methodically organize a campaign to incite hatred and ill-will between members of ethnic groups. The incitement campaign was conducted largely through regime lackey-proxies, stooges and puppets. Through its minions, the regime has used the most loathsome words, inflammatory rhetoric and repugnant imagery to describe Menelik’s alleged brutality. One hundred years after his death, the regime has tried to resurrect Menelik as the devil incarnate. What is the purpose of such propaganda? Is inflammatory rhetoric calculated to stoke the fires of ethnic strife a crime against humanity?
The late Meles Zenawi was a man of much intelligence (if his foreign cheerleaders including Susan Rice and Clare Short are to be believed) and little wisdom and common sense. He liked to play with the specter of genocide as much as little children like to invoke the mythical bogeyman to scare each other. In 2010, Meles not only defiled and desecrated the memory of the Rwandan Genocide victims but also tried to take political advantage by resurrecting through inflammatory rhetoric the ghastly ghosts of Rwanda comparing the Voice of America Amharic Service to Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda. Meles said, “We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing propaganda.” Zenawi used the bogus “genocide” excuse to spend millions of dollars to jam broadcasts of VOA Amharic into Ethiopia, precious resources that could have been used to aid famine victims and provide health care and education.
Such were the outrageous words that dripped from Meles’ mealy-mouth.When Meles said “the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines”, what was his real message, the message between the lines? Was he asserting that the Amharic service has called for a “final war” and the “extermination” of some Ethiopians like “cockroaches”, “vermins” and “rats”? Who are the “genocidaires” in the country being mobilized by the VOA transmissions? Was he saying that the Amharic service is directing and coordinating murderous militias and groups for genocidal activities to make sure that some Ethiopians “will perish and vanish from the country.” Meles was intentionally using the Rwanda Genocide for political purposes; in effect he was trying to convince Ethiopians and his foreign bankrollers that without him and his regime Ethiopia will be another Rwanda. Any regime that seeks to cling to power by invoking the specter of genocide must eternally be opposed!
Every African man and woman must struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope
Genocide and crimes against humanity in any African country must be regarded as genocide and crimes against humanity in every African country.The Rwanda genocide is an African genocide. It is not a crime inflicted against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It is a dastardly crime committed against all Africans and humanity. It is a crime that has left deep and indelible scars on the soul of every living African. Africans must remember, not despair. To paraphrase Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate, “All Africans must remember the killers. Each African must remember the victims, even as they individually struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope. Because we remember, we despair. Because we remember, we have the duty to reject despair. Hope is possible beyond despair.”
The crucible for genocide and crimes against humanity is the human heart
The genocide in Rwanda did not begin on April 6, 1994 when machete-wielding thugs began roaming the streets. The seeds of that genocide were planted decades before in the hearts of misguided and spiteful Rwandans regardless of ethnicity. Hate and bigotry have neither race nor religion. Genocide slowly germinates in the minds of men and women who nurse hatred and anger and silently sizzle in frustration. Like mushrooms that grow in the darkness of the cave, the seeds of the genocide mushroom in the darkness of the heart. Africans must not despair; they must remember the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Only the sunlight of truth can illuminate the dark heart.
Silence and indifference are the oxygen of genocide and crimes against humanity
Genocide and crimes against humanity are quintessentially crimes of silence and crimes of indifference. The great powers were silent witnesses to the genocide in Rwanda. They knew exactly what was going on beginning on April 6, 1994. They chose to remain silent. The African Union, the U.N and the European Union chose to remain silent, but they knew. The slaughter continued for over 100 days and cost the lives of 800 thousand people because those who could have stopped it did not care. Africans must not wait for others to save them. They must save themselves from themselves. That is why all Africans must be of a single mind in condemning those who promote ethnic hatred and religious intolerance; they must actively resist those who demonize individuals and groups on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language, gender or any other pernicious classification.
Truth and justice before reconciliation
Jean Bosco Mutangana, a Rwandan prosecutor in charge of that country’s international crimes unit recently said, “In our lifetime we shall continue to pursue them, and those who come after us will continue to pursue them. You cannot have reconciliation without real, true justice being done.” That is a message for all Africans. Justice and truth/reconciliation are two faces of the same coin. Whichever way the coin is tossed, it shows only one face of human rights. Nelson Mandela said, “Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” Past injustices are what cast long dark shadows on the future and fate of Africa.
The responsibility to educate
Commemorating the victims of genocide in Rwanda and Darfur and condemning “ethno-religious cleansing” in CAR is not enough. Africa’s young people must be educated about genocide and crimes against humanity. Such information must be part of the curriculum in every African school, college and university. Ignorance is the fertilizer of genocide and crimes against humanity. Ban Ki-moon told the people of Rwanda, “We must not be left to utter the words ‘never again’, again and again”. These are empty words that come too late to aid the innocent men, women and children of CAR who have already lost their lives and those desperately fleeing to save their lives.
Instead of criticizing and antagonizing the international human rights organizations, African leaders should invite and challenge them to help create human rights education for young Africans who could in turn use their training and knowledge to empower their peer groups and communities with knowledge, skills and attitudes that promote universally recognized human rights principles. Human rights education is the sine qua non and a prerequisite for the resolution of conflict in Africa. Those who do not learn from the genocide and crimes against humanity of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Africa’s short men and their long shadows
Scholars say the problem of governance in Africa is “Big Man” rule where leaders privatize the state and use state resources to service their clients in the general population who in turn help them cling to power. I believe the problem of African governance is the opposite. An old saying teaches, “You know it is near sunset when short men cast long shadows.” There are too many short men in high offices in Africa pretending to be Big Men and great leaders. The short men of Africa are in fact leaders of wolf packs who prey on the people. They are small men of little intelligence and boundless malevolence. They are short men with little vision and infinite power obsession. They are small men with little compassion; they brim with hate and aggression. These short men in Africa are not only bad leaders but also bad men, bad human beings. They cast long shadows and have made Africa a “dark continent”. “Old sins cast long shadows.” The sins of the small men cast long dark shadows of war, genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa. It is the duty of every African to stand tall over Africa’s short men and obliterate their long dark shadows with the bright sunlight of love, truth, tolerance, harmony, justice and reconciliation.
I remember Rwanda 1984. I remember the Central African Republic 2014. Hope is possible beyond despair.
Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.
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The Minster of Education and Higher learning Madam Zam Zam Abdi Aden said the raise in student’s tuition fees was justifiable, while responding to protests by University students which rocked the learning institution earlier yesterday said,
“The Rise in tuition fees goes towards improving the quality of the teaching at the institution”, she said.
Dr. Abdi Hussein Gaas the Vice Chancellor of the Hargeisa University has in the past stated that the university administration decision was due to rising administrative costs leave us no other choice but to increase the tuition fees so as to meet the ever sky rocketing expenses.
Similar moves by the University admiration to increase tuition fees were been met with fierce opposition by students at the university at the end of last Semester, the university administration had previously informed undergraduates about the changes in tuition fees.
Brigadier General Abdillahi Fadal Iman told protesting students to go back to the University and wait for authorities to address them but his attempts to negotiate with students proved futile after angry students became adamant on continuing with their demonstration into the city center.
Moments later riot police units were called in to block the students from reaching the second Hargeisa bridge this was followed by running battles between the anti-riot police units and students who later converged outside the university premises and started to burn tires.
The Minister of Education urged students to express their grievances in a peaceful manner and that the government is looking into the matter.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been invited to receive an honorary degree.
Somalia-born feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali has every right to criticize Islam, the faith into which she was born. But this right should not be confused with an entitlement to receive an honorary degree. Brandeis University, a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college, recently rescinded its invitation to honor her after understandable complaints by Muslim students who were offended by her blanket condemnation of their faith. Hirsi Ali is justified in feeling whipsawed by the university, which should have looked into her more extreme statements before now. But it made the right call in the end.
There is little doubt that Hirsi Ali has experienced the worst that religious fundamentalism has to offer: female genital mutilation, abuse in an arranged marriage, and death threats. After she wrote the script to a screenplay that portrayed the suffering of women in Islamic societies, an assassin killed the film’s producer and stabbed a note through his corpse threatening her life. These experiences, along with her eloquence and her status as a former Dutch parliamentarian, place her among the most compelling critics of Islam alive today. She argues that Islam, as practiced today, is inherently violent and that the Koran should be amended to comport with modern values. She has the right to make this argument, and has done so forcefully, declaring that Islam needs to be “defeated” before it “can mutate into something peaceful.”
While Hirsi Ali is rightly celebrated for her work investigating the religiously justified abuses of women and girls, the university should have known that she is far more famous for her unstinting critique of Islam as a religion. Indeed, Hirsi Ali expressed surprise at the university’s decision to honor her in the first place. It would have been far better to invite her to campus to participate in a debate about the future of political Islam than to receive an honorary degree.
Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Somaliland Minister of Foreign Affairs and international Relations Hon Mohamed Bihi Younis
By Goth Mohamed Goth
Somaliland Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hon Bihi Mohamed Yonis on behalf of the government of Somaliland apologized to the Ethiopian government regarding the recent incident involving Ethiopian external intelligence operatives.
The Foreign Affairs Minister speaking to the press said, “The government of Somaliland has submitted a letter of apology to the government of Ethiopia through the Ethiopian Counsel-General Brigadier General Berhe Tesfay in office this in regard to the misconduct of some Somaliland officials who failed to observe with normal procedures set for dealing with foreign diplomats.
“All those involved in this ugly incidence have being arrested and will be dealt with accordingly I would to assure our Ethiopian brothers such incidence won’t happen and he underlined Somaliland interest in fostering stronger relations with Ethiopian government , based on mutual benefit”, he said
On the other hand the FM warned the federal government of Somalia to refrain from action which may derail the ongoing talks between the two countries referring to recent allegations of some SFG officials supporting destabilizing forces in the eastern regions of Somaliland.
The Mayor of Hargeisa Hon Abdurrahman Mohamed Aideed (Solteco) presided over a ground breaking ceremony for a new 1 KM and 402M long tarmac road to be constructed in section B of Jig Jiga yar Koodbur district and which upon completion will connect with the existing main Jig Jiga yar tarmac road.
Hon Solteco speaking at the event also revealed plans by the city council to fund the construction of a new bridge in Jig jiga yar at the cost of $50, 000 this year.
“Roads are an integral part of the transport system; our capital road network should be efficient in order to maximize economic and social benefits but most of all they play a significant role in achieving national development and contributing to the overall performance and social functioning of the community, he said.
The Hargeisa City Council has for the past helped in the construction of almost all new tarmac roads although the Lack of access to good road networks is a major constraint on the incomes and welfare of the poor, quantifying the precise impact of this constraint is challenging.
The local government authorities have popularized this belief by emphasizing that for any economy to develop, transport must start off first for it to later stimulate other sectors to develop in an orderly fashion, with members of the public providing 40% of the funds used in construction of the new roads.
Somaliland’s claim for independence is based primarily on historical title – its separate colonial history, a brief period of independence in 1960, the fact that it voluntarily entered into its unhappy union with Somalia and the questionable legitimacy of the 1960 Act of Union.
Somaliland’s independence restores the colonial borders of the former British Protectorate of Somaliland and therefore does not violate the principle of uti possidetis – that former colonial borders should be maintained upon independence – which is enshrined in the Consultative Act of the African Union.
The separation of fused states into their former territories has precedents in Africa:
Egypt and Syria were joined as the United Arab Republic (1958 – 1971).
Senegal and Mali were united as the Fédération du Mali (1959 – 1960).
Senegal and Gambia were merged in the Sénégambia Confederation (1982 – 1989).
Eritrea officially separated from Ethiopia in 1993.
Britain granted and recognised the independence of Somaliland in 1960. On the basis that Somaliland voluntarily opted for unification with Somalia, Somaliland should also be allowed to opt out.
The validity of the 1960 Act of Union is highly questionable:
In June 1960, representatives from Somaliland and Somalia each signed different Acts of Union– agreeing to different terms of unification.
The official Act of Union was passed retrospectively in January 1961 by the new National Assembly.
In a referendum on the new Constitution of the Somali State, held in June 1961, a turnout of less than 17% in Somaliland, and an overwhelming rejection of the document by those that voted, demonstrates significant discontent with the union.
The unification of Somalia and Somaliland failed to meet domestic or international legal standards for treaty formation, and the Act of Union falls short of the Vienna Convention’s legal requirements for a valid international treaty.
Attributes of statehood
The main criteria for statehood remain those set by the 1933 Montevideo Convention, generally considered a norm of customary international law:
“The State as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:
a permanent population;
a defined territory;
government; and
capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”
Somaliland unequivocally meets each of these established legal criteria.
1. A permanent population
The Republic of Somaliland has a population of approximately 3.5 million. Its capital Hargeisa has a permanent estimated at 1.1 million.
The nomadic nature of many of Somaliland’s inhabitants, and the consequent flow of the population in and out of the territory, has no impact on the legal definition of permanent population.
2. A defined territory
The British protectorate established clearly defined borders for Somaliland by treaties in the 19th century. These borders were confirmed upon Somaliland’s declaration of independence in 1960.
The contestation of the eastern border does not invalidate statehood.
3. Effective government
Somaliland has a central government which exercises effective control over the majority of its territory. It has held internationally recognised free and fair election, most recently in June 2010, and has effective government institutions including a constitution approved by a popular vote, a democratically elected President, national parliament, local governments, and an independent judiciary.
4. Capacity to enter into relations with other States
Despite its unrecognised status, Somaliland has entered into informal and formal relationships with a number of other states, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. It has also achieved de facto recognition from a number of other nations around the world
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been invited to receive an honorary degree.
The legal case and Historical case