Ogaden: The other looming genocide of Horn of Africa

By Farah A. Farah*

August 15, 2007 — Over the past decades, there has been a quiet revolution occurring in Africa. One of the biggest scourges facing Africa was the sub-continent’s violent conflicts and famines. Similarly, the military involvement of mass killing has nowadays become the norm of several African regimes. Nevertheless, with the world focuses on terrorism, the Iraq war and now Iran and Middle East crises, there are some hidden critical issues in Africa. This time is another catastrophic crisis underway in Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

As human rights organisations discover there have been the most systematic brutal ethnic cleansing a government army involved is unfolding here in the eastern fringes of the Ogaden desert. It’s a campaign of murder, rape and pillage, which has been carried out by Tigre dominated government troops. They have forced thousands people to flee from their villages.

According to eyewitness, the humanitarian catastrophe is widely seen several districts strewn with the carcasses of cattle and camels, as well as fresh graves that are covered with brush so wild animals will not dig them up. Displaced people are all over the place and around overused wells and grazing which now run dry, and they mourn loved ones whose bodies they could not recover.

While international community and African Union in particular are not doing acting to intervene urgently in Ethiopia, the culprit is the Ethiopia‘s TPLF ruthless regime, which is one of the world’s nastiest dictators have been oppressing aggressively civilians for more than 16 years to stay on power. Most recently, it have intervened the region with heavy army and daily killings of unarmed civilians is unimaginable. Many refugees have fled into neighbouring Somalia and their livelihoods are destroyed and uprooted .The army targeted the only sources of food – livestock; mainly camels and water reserves called Berkad.

The government army regularly chases nomads to seize cattle all the way inside Somalia border, similarly terrorising Ogaden nomads and civilians in 34 villages.

These skirmishes are taking place in a sparsely populated land of sand, shrubs and occasional oases. The only roads are mud tracks barely navigable by four-wheel-drive vehicles – except when the rainy season makes the area completely impassable.

Similarly the presence of the international organisations is almost limited and few operating in the areas like ICRC has been expelled from the region by the government and small local NGO’s are targeted by the army. In last week Mr Sulub a head of local charity called of OWDA, has been killed by the army, in his way back from cholera break out assessment in Dhegahmadaw town.

A senior New York Times journalist and other humanitarian agencies visited the region last month described the situation in an interview as humanitarian catastrophe of similar character, if not the scale to the Rwanda genocide of 1994. “This is an ethnic cleansing,” they said. “This is the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, and I don’t know why the world isn’t doing more about it.”

Countless of Ogaden civilians have been murdered and as many as 20.000 have fled to Somalia and other parts of Ethiopia and are suffering from torture and malnutrition. Those who have fled into Somalia are better off because of the magnificent response of the Somali nomads. Though are desperately poor themselves, they share what little food and water is available. “If we have food or water, we’ll share it with them,” said a fellow camel herder, Guure Cali. “We can’t leave them like this.”

Let’s hope that the United State of America (USA) and UN will show the same gumption and compassion they offered to the Darfurian people these days. The USA should call Ethiopian government to stop these acts and allow the right of Ogadeni –Somali people to live safely in their homeland. UN Security Council and European Union have moral duty to act now these inhumane actions. As President George W. Bush has already led the force for total peace and democratisation process in the other parts of the world, he should also show the same standard to press the regime stopping this genocide, which many Ethiopians will remember for ever..

In the 21st century no government should be allowed to carry out ethnic cleaning, driving innocent people from their homes, if the international community turn away simply because the victims are another Africans who have no phones and live in one of the most remote parts of the globe, then shame on all.

“The conflict in Eastern Ethiopia’s Ogaden region is developing from ethnic cleansing into genocide” many exiled rights activists claim. The Addis Ababa government allegedly did this Gambella and Oromia region and now their army are massacring Ogadens.

According to a statement by the CDRA, A human rights organisation based London “the long running humanitarian disaster in Ogaden “is precipitously worsening.” Pointing to new massacres in the region”.

Another statement issued by the Human Rights Watch says “Ethiopian troops are destroying villages and property, confiscating livestock and forcing civilians to relocate,”

Furthermore a field based Organisation called OHR also describes as this:

“What is going on in the Ogaden “is ethnic cleansing” occurred in Rwanda and ongoing presently in Darfur, which obscured genocide and justified international passivity until it become too late.”

The Addis Ababa government, which is dominated by Tigrayan minority, denies all reports about ethnic cleansing in Ogaden or army atrocities. al enemy tribes. In Misrak Iimey Woreda, the government was not doing its best to stop five year old tribal war going on and banditry raids, but watch and arms the minority tribes to fight against Ogaden. Speaking with the journalist CDRA researcher Isse “Tribal fighting is not new in this part of Ethiopia” he says”It is a fragile nomadic area were pastoralists are prone to conflict, because they share pasture and water resources, but never been this scale, unless the army are arming to fight each other”

The Majority of people in the Ogaden and Diaspora communities interviewed believe that the regime is planning “to systematically driving out of their land in punishment of ONLF’s opposition to the regime” according to Mr. Sadi, A former Regional President under the EPRDF regime, now living exile in London,

Since 2001, the Government army has been accused of killing innocent civilians and harshly torturing thousands for not cooperating with them or accusing rebel agents.

Diaspora groups believe that the regime is engaged state terrorism and are working out legal action against their senior officers in Europe and USA to stop daily civilian killings.

Ogaden has been neglected by more than a century of Ethiopian conquest, revolts against successive regimes, Cold War proxy battles that aborted 1977 hard won independence after Soviet and Russian rescued Military regime. The current cycle of violence began 17 years ago after Prime Minister Meles regime refused to include Ogadens in the Government.

Ogaden require an end to the discrimination that has virtually banned them from having any rights in the Ethiopian state. After so long a struggle, they also require a fair apportioning of power from Tigre minority rulers. Statistically Ogaden are third largest ethnic group after dominant groups of Oromo and Amhara and secondly largest region with full of natural gas

The Ogaden conflict has received very little international attention, compared to the conflict between the Sudan Government and Darfur. Unlike the Southern Sudan and Darfur, this region is extremely rich in Oil and Gas, perhaps it is not well known that there are some oil wells ready for production in the Ogaden Basin. This needs to be consigned for the local population benefit.

A racist attitude towards these peoples from many of the politically dominant Tigres has been documented on many occasions and exclusively excluded from the government. Mr Ruush of CDRA, Cenre for Development research and advocacy complains that the “UN and other human rights organisations shamefully” was silent “on what is going on in Ogaden” The international community needs to “take immediate action now, before it is too late to protect the poor people and other indigenous people of Oromo from the atrocities of the Ethiopian government and its brutal Army” the CDRA Researcher urged.

The genocide realities in Ogaden become a daily routine. Obviously, the urgency of a powerful international response to Meles’s policy of a deliberate destruction of the Ogaden nomads and Oromia region could not be greater than that in Darfur. And yet there continues to be no evidence that appropriate actions humanitarian and diplomatic are being contemplated by the international community. The ghastly history of genocide in this century is extending itself from Rwanda horrors to Darfur scandal and soon to another country of Horn Africa, where the familiar elements of convenient scepticism and moral hesitancy will soon be indissolubly linked to the culturally and ethnically motivated destruction of tens of thousands innocent civilians. It is certainly no strenuous inference from the available evidence to declare that many more than ten thousand human beings have already died or are in the last stages of death from military attacks and consequent exposure, disease, and starvation. However, whether one ignores it and be ineffective to take an action against these appauling mass killings, genocide is happening in the region and this deserves an international attention.

*The author is head of Centre for Development Research & Advocacy based in London. He can be reached [email protected]