By Yassin M. Ismail, Kent UK
28 July 2007

Last week Ethiopia ordered the representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) out of Ogaden region amidst military operations by Ethiopian army to curb spread of violence and sporadic attacks of the OLNF insurgents on Ethiopia military positions. The new military crackdown was the response of recent OLF attack in which dozens of Chinese workers at an Oil drill were kidnapped and many others killed by the OLF fighters.

Ethiopia’s retaliation to the assault came fast and heavy as anticipated as columns of its troops carried out sweeping campaigns in the Ogaden region in which scores of people have been killed. Human rights advocacy groups reported Ethiopian attacks were heavy and indiscriminate. They accused Ethiopian army of using brute force against innocent civilians and the extent of human suffering caused as a result is said to be genocidal.

Some groups described the scale and magnitude of the human right violations in Ogaden as well as the tactic and measures employed by the army, including mass killing and displacement, as reminiscent to what is happening in Dafur Sudan: destruction of entire villages, burning of farmland and crops and forcing thousands of innocent Somali nomadic communities to flee their homes and grazing lands for fears of Ethiopian troops devastating their livelihood in the way they did elsewhere.

Meanwhile the International Community to look in gaze of apathy as the suffering of the Ogaden people unfolds.

The ICRC was the only neutral organization who could give an unbiased picture to the extent of the ‘genocide’. But their expulsion was to conceal the actions of the Ethiopian troops from the international world.

Ethiopia , a country with horrendous Human Rights records both inside and outside, continues to enjoy the support of the Western powers, particularly the US who regard Ethiopia as a strategic partner against terrorists.

For the Somalis in Ogaden and other Somali inhabited regions of Ogaden, the only ‘terrorists’ that causes terror and mayhem amongst their people is the Ethiopian State Army with license to kill, Thanks to the US.

Elsewhere in Somalia, a single day does not pass without dozens of innocent Somalis being killed by Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. During the fighting between the TFG and the Islamic Courts Union, Ethiopia has been criticized for indiscriminate artillery shelling of civilian targets in which thousands of civilians died and millions of dollars worth of properties were obliterated. Over the past few weeks the Bakara Market in Mogadishu has been under siege as Ethiopian troops supported by the TFG military stormed the Market. Reports of widespread looting have been confirmed by the local media and commentators described the attack on the Bakara Market to be a part and parcel of a devious strategy to rob Somalis off their wealth, national identity and eventually their sovereignty. Jama Mohamed Ghalib, a senior politician and former commander of Somalia National Police who is based in Mogadishu wrote an article on the Somaliland Times’ Last week. In his piece Mr. Ghalib argued that the nature of the rampant looting of the Bakara Market by Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu has passing resemblance to the booty collection raids and looting expedition of the Abyssinian army during Emperor Menelik II’s reign of terror. Mr. Ghalib’s description is fitting throughout the history of Ethiopia-Somali encounters in Ogaden and elsewhere.

Many analysts also believe looting is the easiest part of the Ethiopian long term political strategy towards Somalia and predict that Ethiopia’s ultimate goal is to deepen the crisis in Somalia to ensure Somalia never recovers from the anarchic state of being. But one would ask why Ethiopia wants to do that/ what is the logical gain from having a troubled neighbor? The answer is simple: the deeper and more perpetual the crisis the more impossible and distant it becomes for Somalis to reach political solution. Give few years more and Somalia will fit the US criteria of so-called ‘ Failed State.’ Ethiopia, already a strategic partner of Washington in the region, is well aware that the next chapter of US Foreign Policy after the ‘Regime Change’ as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, will be ‘Liquidation of Failed States’. Addis Ababa also knows that Somalia is most likely case scenario for Washington’s fore coming new foreign policy. Darfur will be made a new country, Congo is likely to be divided in two or more countries and Somalia might be annexed to Ethiopia they predict. Accordingly Ethiopia is alighting itself with the US politically with the intent to become a benefactor from the liquidation of Somalia’s sovereignty. We already know Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia was aimed to ascertain Ethiopia’s candidacy for the take over of Somalia. The strategy is somewhat similar to that of Emperor Menelik II during the Colonial scramble of Africa.

During his reign as Emperor (1889-1913), Menelik II vastly expanded the frontiers of Abyssinia and laid the basis of what would later become modern "Ethiopian" state through a combination of local conquests and international diplomatic maneuvers with European powers. The military success and socio-political dominance of this expansive state by the Amharic feudal class depended significantly on their unrestricted access to modern weaponry guaranteed by Abyssinia's exemption from the Brussels General Act of 1890, which otherwise prohibited the sale of firearms to Africans.

The fact that Ethiopia was able to purchase arms from North Korea in the run up to the fighting with the Islamic Courts in January 2007 is a vivid reminder of the political bias that enabled Abyssinia to militarily dominate the region

The suggestion is that Ethiopia is once again favored by the World’s only surviving superpower, the US and Meles Zenawi’s actions seem to be true to that of his historic ruler. The only difference this time is that the stakes are raised even higher. Access to the Indian Ocean and maritime resources is central to Ethiopia’s strategic goals. Already certain chapters of Ethiopia’s history have been updated to include bold claims that argue Ethiopia’s access to the Somali seas is a ‘natural right.’

In 1897 as part of the 1897 Ethio-French Treaty Ethiopia explicitly claimed access to the Former French Somaliland seaports as natural Ethiopian outlet.

Charles Gashekter once described Ethiopia "the only African state below the Sahara whose boundaries have been determined by an internally induced process of expansion. And lessons learnt from the past are not different.

As a result of the colonial "share-out" of the 1890s, the Ogaden was encroached upon by armed Ethiopian soldiers before the turn of the century. Charles Gashekter wrote in his paper providing detailed accounts of mass massacre of innocent Somalis, looting, starvation, displacement and other kinds of inhumane treatments perpetrated by the Abyssinians from time immemorial.

In 1892, the British Consul for the Somali Coast Protectorate reported that: ‘a large Abyssinian expedition returning from Ogaden and brought with them as booty thousands of camels and cattle and property of all descriptions.’ The Consular further confirmed ‘hearing from other sources that Abyssinians have devastated the people .... Many people are dying of starvation and an epidemic said to be cholera, but which may be "starvation fever" has broken out, and carried off numerous victims daily.... This state of affairs is attributed entirely to the conduct of the Abyssinian soldiery who eat up everything.

In 1901, Captain R.B. Cobbold accompanied an Abyssinian expeditionary force across the Ogaden. The following represent a small selection of events Cobbold recorded in his diary during his three month sojourn and the scale and magnitude of the human suffering he has witnessed world give the reader a sense of the devastation the Somalis have endured at the hands of the Abyssinian military. It is also evident in Cobbold’s report that the British colonial administration had given the green light for the Abyssinians to have carried out such atrocities:

May 28th. Along the Tug Fafan. …the Commander sent some mounted men to loot a village of the Sheikh Asha; they returned today with much plunder. Much grain and household utensils besides many sheep and goats had been captured. The Somalis were very indignant about it, and it certainly is a great shame the way in which the Abyssinians loot the villages lying within twenty miles on either side of the line of march. It matters not whether these tribes are friendly to the Abyssinians and are none the less subject to plunder as the army has to live on the country through which it passes.

May 31st. (Sassamini) "In front," the Abyssinian interpreter explained, "everyone is our enemy and when we have passed from here all these people also will be our enemies." This I observed was hardly a matter for surprise seeing how persistently and indiscriminately the army looted all the villages on the line of March.
June 5th. (Warandad) The soil of the country we passed through today seemed of unusual richness, being of the ruddy color so prevalent in Harar and the Ogaden. There was much cultivation of dhourra and traces of a large population but now not a village or a sign of humanity was to be seen. All had fled at the approach of the army, knowing from bitter experience that to stay behind was to be robbed and possibly killed, certainly ill-treated.

June 22nd (Gerlogubi) Singing their hateful songs of murder and rapine and bearing aloft the trophies taken from the bodies of the unfortunate Somalis they had killed. How hateful and disgusting it is to think of these brutes with their rifles, shooting down these poor villagers who cannot defend themselves.... We cannot help thinking that H.M. Government will hardly wish us to continue passive spectators of this horrible carnage going on before our eyes.

June 24th (Gerlogubi) Halted. The camp here now resembles a gigantic farmyard after the late raiding expedition. Dotted about are small herds of camels in zaribas ... numberless cows and sheep and goats.... Strings of raw meat hanging on lines, stretched between the tents and handy trees show that the men have now got plenty of food.

Cobbold's sense of outrage rose markedly day by day until on 11 July 1901, while at Hanemleh in the central Ogaden, he made the following entry in his diary:

The horrible looting of the friendly villages goes on. Today for some three hours a constant stream of camels, cows, sheep, and goats passed. The Abyssinians estimate the number of camels at 2000 and probably half the Rer Augaz tribe is now completely destitute. It makes one's blood boil to see such a crime perpetrated by these Abyssinians who set themselves up as being on a par with European nations and fit to treat with them. What will be done with all these camels, goodness only knows, for they are of no use in Abyssinia, the King and Ras already possessing thousands for which they have little use.

All this cruel and barbarous treatment which the Somalis undergo at the hands of the Abyssinians and which, being unarmed (thanks to the British Government) they have to endure without a murmur.

From the 1890s until the late 1940s, Ethiopian troops seldom ventured far from their Ogaden garrisons except to conduct haphazard raids to capture Somali livestock as tribute. "The sovereignty of the Ethiopians over the Somalis was expressed chiefly by means of intermittent expeditions, not far removed from raids," wrote Margery Perham.

In the early 1930s, Colonel (then Major) A.T. Curle served alternately as a British consular official and a political officer with the Somaliland Camel Corps. "The Ethiopians have always had an acute inferiority complex regarding the Ogaden," he recalled in an interview shortly before his death in 1981. "They didn't tax the Ogaden normally; the Governor-General of Harar would go down with a large force every three or four years and seize camels and cattle.

Curle's private correspondence makes it clear that Ethiopian authorities were unwilling even to discuss with him Somali grievances about animal seizures in the Ogaden and within British Somaliland. Curle further wrote "Last week, the Abyssinian Government sent a punitive patrol against some people over the west end of our Somaliland border they killed and burnt everything, 111 men, women, and children were shot regardless of who or what they were. After a similar incident nine months later (in September 1930), the Ethiopian commander denied any wrongdoing and disavowed responsibility for the death of eighteen more Somalis. Curle expressed his anger and frustrations in a letter to his father:

If you could possibly see the vile rabble which composes the Ethiopian army without discipline or control one realizes how foolish this contention is - we have some empty cases of their rifles which prove that they did fire. The more I have to do with them the more hopeless and rotten crowd they seem to be. We have been trying to fix up some agreement with them to respect a certain frontier line but it is hopeless - they are each afraid of being accused of giving away Ethiopia.

Such has been the experiences of the Somalis in the Somali inhabited at the hands of the Ethiopians during the past century and now in the turn of the twenty first century the killing and devastation of ethnically Somali villagers and pastoralists in the eastern provinces of Ethiopia still continue at a wider and more systematical scale. The only difference this time is that it sometimes gets meager attention from the world media and human right groups. But with powerful countries not showing a least sign of objection to Ethiopia’s killing and ill-treatment of innocent civilians, or in the recent cases being in support of it, the way is still clear for Addis Ababa to continue murdering innocent Somali civilians and inflict further devastation at any given time of their choosing.

Or at least for the time being that is inevitable.

Yassin M. Ismail is an independent journalist based in UK