World Leaves Meles Zenawi To Feast On Somali Flesh
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By Jamal Madar
For the first time in months, a semblance of normalcy is beginning to return to the deserted neighborhoods of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, after weeks of intense aerial, artillery and tank shellings by Ethiopian troops into the densely populated areas of the city in a desperate attempt to quell the popular insurgency against the puppet Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia allied to the Ethiopian occupying forces.
In the course of this terror campaign, dubbed by some as Meles Zenawi’s version of operation ‘Shock and Awe’, 350,000 people mostly women and children fled the city to seek sanctuary in the outlying bushes, where many of them are still languishing under appalling conditions.
Up until now, the exact count for civilian death toll remains unclear but Associated Press (AP) estimated it at 1,400 at the end of March, and many corpses left to rot in the streets are still being collected by local aid workers.
‘Hospitals packed with civilians who had already been wounded in fighting were hit with missiles’; according to AP. Eyewitnesses say hospitals have been stripped of their medical equipments and subsequently shelled and destroyed. Hayat hospital is a case in point where Ethiopian troops have turned it into a command and control centre. And the city’s only two main hospitals are still overflowing to the brim with wounded civilians.
Shortly before this relative lull in fighting, medical supplies were deliberately prevented from reaching hospitals by the TFG and their Ethiopian allies.
According to a letter obtained by the AP, European and American officials said the Ethiopian-backed TFG was “holding up vital aid supplies to people fleeing the fighting. The government has been demanding to inspect all food and medical shipments, holding up potentially lifesaving aid”.
In spite of these gross human rights violations, there was no murmur of criticism from the US about the conduct of Ethiopian troops for using attack helicopters and heavy artillery and tank shellings against civilian neighborhoods that have been razed to the ground. By the same token, the EU, which provides formidable financial assistance to both Ethiopia and the TFG, did not publicly criticize Ethiopia’s actions for fear that they might anger American allies. And the Arab League’ criticism did not go far enough to stem the bloodshed and mayhem.
In a nutshell, the so-called civilized world leaves the Tigrayan-born Meles Zenawi and his troops to feast on the flesh of Muslim Somalis.
In a very peremptory manner, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he believed the exodus and the death toll had been exaggerated. It was even more ludicrous when his ambassador to the UK, Berhanu Kebede, wrote in The Guardian newspaper on 3rd May to say that a small sub-clan called Ayr was responsible for the humanitarian crises in Mogadishu including the downing of two planes ‘one serving the Africa peace-keeping forces and the other bringing humanitarian aid’. Ambassador Kebede was very economical with the truth that he did not even mention that the latter was, in fact, an Ethiopian attack helicopter as shown throughout the world media outlets.
In a letter sent to Eric van der Linden, the EU commission's head of delegation in Kenya, on April 2, Ethiopian and Somali troops were accused of “breaking international law by intentionally attacking civilians in Mogadishu and by ordering their displacement”.
The US backed Somali warlords caused so much death and destruction in Somalia for the last 16 years whereas the ascension of Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) to power brought about peace and stability that had not been seen since Mohamed Siyad Barre’s regime was toppled in 1991. When there a cause for celebration rather than concern among the Somalis, the US came up with a perfect excuse: the archetypal bogeyman, Al Qaeda, is lurking somewhere in Somalia. Zenawi was equally quick to capitalize on this and jumped on the bandwagon of America’s War on Terror by committing Ethiopian troops to do Washington’s bidding when in fact his real intention was to divert Ethiopian public’s attention from a vast array of internal problems and gross human rights violations committed by his pseudo-democratic regime.
In the aftermath of the bloodbath of May 15, 2005 parliamentary elections in Ethiopia, Zenawi plunged Ethiopia into ‘abyss of dictatorship’ by either killing his opponents or throwing them behind bars without due process of law. Dissenting voices in Somali, Oromia and Amhara regions had been ruthlessly silenced and a climate of fear pervades in every nook and cranny of the country.
According to an article by Stephanie McCrummen, which appeared in the Washington Post on December 20, 2006, ‘Meles has become so disliked’ in Ethiopia. A Passer-by at Victory Square in Addis Ababa offered his opinion about Zenawi’s regime.
"I believe the Dergue regime is better than this one, even if they killed people," he said, referring to Mengistu's rule. "This regime is democratic only in words. They kill people without any law, and they arrest people without a reason. This government is trying to stay in power by using different mechanisms, like claiming the Somalis are invading. But this is not the case. Meles is trying to externalize his problems”
Most Ethiopians are against the invasion of Somalia but are powerless to do anything about it because the voices of sanity are often brutally silenced.
In a country where clan allegiance takes precedence over religious belief, Ethiopia and its puppet TFG have been successful to paint Somalia as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists in order to attract support from the Islamphobic western world especially Washington and London.
In fact, Ethiopia has benefited from the lack of security on its southern border: it has been promoted to the status of strategic ally with Washington for that very reason, according to an article by Roland Marchal.
Most Somalis are fully aware that they are victims of Ethiopian aggression backed by the US but Jendayi Frazer, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, contends that Eritrea has a hand in the carnage and destruction that had befallen on Somalia.
" Eritrea has not been playing a constructive role in Somalia because they continue to fund, arm, train and advise the insurgents, especially the al-Shabab militia," she said in Washington recently, according to International Herald Tribune.
The brutal reality however is that Somalia has become part of “the grand chessboard” on which “the struggle for global primacy continues to be played,” as Brzezinski observed. These moves in the region are framed in ideological terms, as part of the global crusade against terrorism- but they rest on a classic geopolitical foundation.
Ethiopia can no longer have a free access to an Eritrean seaport, leaving it landlocked. Thus its strategic goals are: to ‘seize one or more deep-water ports, and turn Somalia into a protectorate’ and to ensure that a future Somali government must not have military capabilities that could threaten Ethiopia as in the case of the conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia in 1977.
The US and Ethiopia may have achieved quick military success over the UIC in Somalia but Eritrea reaped its political dividends by winning the hearts and minds of the Somali people in its uncompromising opposition of Ethiopian military occupation in Somalia.
There is already a simmering civil war within the ranks of the already fractured TFG. The powerful Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, former chair of the Executive Council of the UIC, the former parliamentary speaker of the TFG, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden and the deputy prime minister of Somalia, Hussein Aideed are all allied to the Eritrean camp.
A formidable faction of political heavyweights including significant number of TFG lawmakers is now allied to Asmara not to mention the public support.
Whether or not the US officials and their Ethiopian friends label Eritrea as regional spoiler, the reality is that Asmara, whatever its motives are, is absolutely right, at least in the eyes of the Somali people, in its implacable opposition to Ethiopian occupation in Somalia.
As for now, the security situation in Mogadishu is relatively calm but it is nothing more than a grand illusion to assume that the quick US-Ethiopian military victory will bring about any lasting peace. In a similar manner, no amount of UN or African-led peacekeeping forces will have any degree of success to bring together the warring Somali clans unless a genuine, all inclusive, credible and transparent process of reconciliation and political dialogue is held without foreign interference or influence.
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