Ethiopian Premier Admits Errors on Somalia

Taken from The Washington Post, Friday, June 29, 2007; Page A16
By Stephanie McCrummen

NAIROBI, June 28 -- Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Thursday that his government "made a wrong political calculation" when it intervened in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a fight against a growing insurgency.

Addressing Ethiopia's Parliament, Meles said his government incorrectly assumed that breaking up the Islamic movement that took control of most of Somalia in June 2006 would subdue the country. He also said he wrongly believed that Somali clan leaders would live up to unspecified "promises."

"We made these wrong assumptions," Meles said on a day when a roadside bomb killed two Ethiopian soldiers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and two aid workers were shot dead in northern Somalia.

Opposition members of Parliament have accused Meles of making the same mistake in Somalia that critics say the United States made in Iraq: launching a military intervention without having a political plan.

Many Ethiopian intellectuals and political leaders opposed the intervention because they said it would inevitably create the conditions for the sort of Somalia-based terrorist attacks that Meles intended to contain by invading the country.

In December, Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's transitional government dislodged the Islamic movement, which was popular for the relative security it had brought after years of brutal warlord rule.

Ethiopia and the United States said the Islamic movement had been hijacked by extremists and accused it of harboring terrorists, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a charge the Islamic leaders denied.

Since January, fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and Somali government troops has displaced more than half of Mogadishu's population while the humanitarian situation has deteriorated. On Thursday, Amnesty International accused Kenya of blocking 141 trucks of food and other aid headed for more than 200,000 displaced Somalis suffering from "alarming levels" of malnutrition.

Many businessmen and civil society leaders in Mogadishu say that over the past two weeks, they have been unjustly labeled "al-Qaeda" and their homes and offices have been ransacked by Ethiopian and Somali troops.

One internationally known civil society leader, Abdulkadir Nur, said that troops plundered equipment in his offices and that his colleagues and relatives had been arrested without charge.

Nur said he is simply against what he considers an Ethiopian occupation.

"I do have the right to express my personal views," he said in a statement. "And the transitional government has no right to abuse its power to destroy my livelihood, my personal property and abuse my colleagues and co-workers."

Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

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Like the WMD issue in Iraq, Eithopia (backed heavily by the US) assumed something that wasn't true. Without any proper evidence they launched a military intervention in an area of Sudan that had stability and law and order after decades of lawlessness and fighting between warlords. Yes it was a rival to the Federal Governmentval administration but it provided stability and hope to the people living in the region. Just because a political or social group has Islamic in it's title doesn't mean that they are a threat to society. When the UIC took over they opened the ports and airports -first time in decades and resumed commerce with other neighbouring countries. The only people threatened were the Warlords and the countries that were supported these warlords.

In an interview featured in the BBC Online Somali section in June 2006, Sheik Sharif Shaykh Ahmed said "the union of Islamic courts was established to ensure that Somali people suffering for 15 years would gain peace and full justice and freedom from the anarchic rule of warlords who refuted their people to no direction." After capturing Mogadishu, the Islamic Courts had enacted a series of decrees and laws that had temporarily brought hope for Somali expatriates, local minorities and women.

London Student’s Jungle War Escape Led To ‘Rendition’ Trap

Taken from The Times, UK, June 10, 2007
By Stephen Grey

A BRITISH student who was caught up in fighting in Somalia has described how he fled for his life only to be arrested as a suspected Al-Qaeda member and then rescued by a British consul from a secret operation to transfer terrorist suspects to Ethiopia for interrogation.

Reza Afsharzadagen, 25, from north London, was among hundreds of refugees forced to flee battles last December between Islamic radicals who had seized power in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and Ethiopian soldiers trying to install a rival United Nations-backed government.

After dodging bombs from American warplanes deployed in support of the Ethiopians and trekking through jungle for 13 days, Afsharzadagen reached safety in Kenya. But there he was detained as a suspected terrorist and questioned for nearly a month without being charged.

He and three other British Muslims who were arrested - Shahajan Janjua, Hamza Chent-ouf, and Mohammed Ezzoueck, all from London - were eventually returned home and cleared of any suspicion of terrorist activity after the intervention of the Foreign Office.

But more than 85 other captives who had fled Somalia were flown back to the war zone and later interrogated for weeks at a prison in Ethiopia. Among those transferred were women, and children as young as seven months old, who were alleged to be from the families of militants.

The mass transfers in East Africa were the first case to come to light of an “extraordinary rendition” - the covert transfer of terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation - involving children.

Afsharzadagen’s account, in an interview for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme tomorrow, emerged as arguments about the rendition programme intensified. The Council of Europe reported last Friday that the CIA had run secret prisons in Poland and Romania. The CIA said such claims were biased and distorted, and insisted it had operated lawfully.

Yesterday the Association of Chief Police Officers was accused by the human rights group Liberty of “spin” after it concluded in a separate inquiry that there was no evidence that British airports had been “used to transport people by the CIA for torture in other countries”.

Afsharzadagen says he travelled to Mogadishu last September after the radical Islamic Courts Union drove out war-lords who had ruled for 15 years. The US and other governments warned that the regime was establishing an extreme form of Islamic rule, sheltering Al-Qaeda members and creating jihadist training camps.

Some preachers in British mosques were urging young Muslims to travel to Somalia to help the Islamists. Afsharzadagen, who completed a computing degree at London Metropolitan University, claimed he had gone partly in search of “adventure” and partly to do voluntary work, teaching young Somalis computer skills.

When he arrived, he said, he found people revelling in their freedom to walk around the city for the first time in years without fear. “It wasn’t like the Taliban in Afghanistan,” he said. “There were women working and walking on the streets.”

Within three months, troops from Ethiopia entered Somalia with the aim of replacing the Islamic Courts Union with a government of national unity. As the bombs began to fall near Mogadishu, Afsharzadagen and many other foreigners fled.

Travelling south with convoys of refugees, he met the other Britons for the first time and they took a boat towards the Kenyan border. “It was like a big canoe - when we arrived we had to swim ashore - that’s when I lost all my money,” he said.

For several days they hid in the jungle as they watched US helicopters and warplanes seeking out Al-Qaeda fugitives and listened to the bombing. “We felt we were being hunted down.”
One morning Afsharzadagen woke to the sound of gunfire and explosions nearby. He was separated from his friends as they fled towards the Kenyan border. “I just got up and ran. I left my passport. I left my food rations. Everything.”

By the time the gunfire had died away he was lost in the jungle with 30 people, mostly strangers. As they trudged through the bush in search of help, they drank from puddles. By the 13th day many were close to collapse. Then someone heard a cock crow, indicating a settlement nearby.

The villagers gave them honey but Kenyan soldiers who turned up lashed out with kicks. “Some were telling us, ‘You’re Al-Qaeda, we’ve finally caught you’.” From the nearby town of Kiunga, where officers from Kenya’s counter-terrorism unit were waiting, they were flown to Nairobi, where they were held in crowded communal cells.

Afsharzadagen said he was asked if he had handled weapons or trained in a terrorist camp. “I said I hadn’t. But they would tell me, ‘You’re lying’.”

Requests to see a British diplomat were refused, but eventually Afsharzadagen and the others were taken to a hotel to meet some officers from MI5. The first one called himself Richard.
“He told me he was here to help me. But it wasn’t true. I knew they were there to trap us,” he said.

After returning to their cells, the Britons’ hopes of going home rose briefly when they were moved to the airport. Then they noticed cars and lorries carrying other prisoners.

Handcuffed and blindfolded, they were flown instead to an unknown city in Somalia and handed over to Ethiopian soldiers who locked them in a dark cell teeming with cockroaches.

But after two days, an official told them they were leaving. At the top of a flight of stairs, Afsharzadagen was introduced to a British consul who had flown to Somalia to bring them out.

An RAF plane took them from Kenya to Britain. No evidence was found of any terrorist connection to them.

For the other prisoners, including an American, a Frenchman and three Swedes, the ordeal was far from over. They were moved to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, for interrogation. Among the 85 transferred, according to flight manifests, were at least 11 women accompanied by 11 children.

One of them was a 25-year-old Tanzanian, Fatma Chande. After her release she alleged the police in Kenya had threatened to strangle her. “They tried to make me admit my husband was a member of Al-Qaeda,” she claimed.

“When we arrived at the airport, we were handcuffed and our headscarves were pulled down over our eyes. The men were hooded. The children were crying all the time saying, ‘We want to go home’.”

The prisoners transferred to Ethiopia were questioned by Americans. “They’ve concealed their role, but you can assume the Americans were behind all these renditions,” said a senior western diplomat in Nairobi. “By sending prisoners to Ethiopia, they had a convenient place to interrogate people.”

Africa Anger At US 'Rendition' Of Refugees Who Fled Somalia

Taken from The Independent, 23 March 2007
By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi

At least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons, human rights groups say.

It is alleged they were questioned by US and British officials.

Flight manifests seen by The Independent show that three charter planes left Nairobi for Somalia's capital Mogadishu, and Baidoa, the seat of parliament, in January and February, carrying around 80 people suspected of links with al-Qa'ida. The flights left at night, and the manifests appear to have been filled in hastily with many of the details, including the plane's destination, left blank.

Several of the suspects are understood to be held in underground prisons at Mogadishu airport where they are held shackled to the wall. Most have since been sent on to two detention facilities in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has been accused of routinely torturing political prisoners. A further 50 or 60 people accused of belonging to Ethiopian rebel groups fighting alongside Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts were sent directly to Ethiopia.

Fighting has reignited in Mogadishu this week following Ethiopia's lightning offensive at the end of last year, which drove the Somali Islamists from the capital. On Wednesday at least 21 people were killed and more than 120 wounded in clashes that led to the burning of five uniformed soldiers, who were either Somali or Ethiopian.

The televised incident was reminiscent of events of 1993 when Somalis dragged the corpses of US soldiers through the streets, hastening the US withdrawal from the country.

The suspects deported from Kenya were interrogated beforehand by American FBI officials in Kenyan prisons, where they were accused of having links with al-Qa'ida.

"This is extraordinary rendition," said Maini Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. "Britain and America are involved in interrogating suspects."

Following the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops, thousands of Somalis have tried to escape the violence by crossing the long, porous border with Kenya. Many of those caught on the Kenya-Somalia border were accused of belonging to the Islamic Courts and refused entry.

At least 150 of those who managed to get through were detained by Kenyan police, including 17 women and 12 children, one a baby of seven months. Many needed medical attention but did not receive it, including a pregnant Tunisian woman who had a bullet lodged in her back.

All were held in Kenyan prisons for several weeks without access to lawyers and family members. As well as being interrogated by the FBI, human rights groups in Nairobi also claimed British officials were involved.

"The Americans had direct access to the prisoners, one on one," said Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, adding that US diplomatic vehicles carried the suspects from Nairobi police stations to be questioned.

"Senior Kenyan police officers told us they had nothing to do with the operation," said Mr Kimathi. "It was out of their hands."

Four of the people taken to Somalia were British. But the day after they arrived in Mogadishu, they were questioned by British diplomats then released.

The US has claimed that Somalia's Islamic Courts, which controlled much of the country until December, was run by an al-Qa'ida cell. Ethiopian troops, backed by US intelligence and logistical support, overpowered the Islamic Courts within a few days of fighting at the end of last year. An interim Somali government, which had been confined to its base in Baidoa, has since taken control of Mogadishu, but guerrillas linked to the Islamic Courts have launched an insurgency with almost daily attacks against government and Ethiopian troops. Ugandan peacekeepers, operating under the auspices of the African Union (AU) have also been subjected to attacks since they arrived in the capital last week.

One diplomat who follows events in Somalia closely said reports of interrogation by US officials were "highly plausible". The deportation of the foreign nationals was "one of the prices we pay for the situation we are in".

Anger over the treatment of Kenyan Somalis trying to cross the border has intensified. Groups based in Mombasa have threatened to disrupt this weekend's world cross-country championships. The US embassy in Nairobi has issued a terror alert, warning that an attack may be carried out during the event.

Descent into chaos
# October 1993: Two US Black Hawk helicopters shot down over Mogadishu. Rescue leaves 18 # US soldiers dead. Images of dead Americansdragged through streets prompts pullout.
# August 2000: Abdulkassim Salat Hassan elected President by tribal leaders and senior figures. He appoints Ali Khalif Gelayadh as his Prime Minister. In October they arrive in Mogadishu.
# April 2001: Ethiopian-backed warlords announce intention to form government. More fighting ensues.
# August 2004: Transitional parliament inaugurated in Kenya. In October, Abdullahi Yusuf appointed President.
# November 2005: Assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi. Six die but the PM survives.
# February 2006: Transitional parliament meets for the first time since being appointed.
# March-May 2006: Fiercest fighting in almost a decade between rival militias in Mogadishu leaves dozens dead and hundreds injured.
# June-July 2006: Islamic militias seize control of the capital and southern parts of the country.
# December 2006: American-backed Ethiopian and government troops engage and defeat Islamic militias, driving them out of Mogadishu.
# March 2007: Pitched battles break out between insurgents and government and Ethiopian troops. Clashes in Mogadishu result in more pictures of the bodies of soldiers being dragged through the city.

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The following is a good explanation of what is happening in Somalia...

The Big Question: What's going on in Somalia, and is the Horn of Africa on the brink of war?
(from The Independent Published: 08 December 2006)

Why is this an issue now?
Because the UN security council unanimously adopted a resolution on Wednesday night providing for the dispatch of foreign peacekeepers to Somalia, which has triggered warnings that the move will spark all-out war and a regional conflagration. The peacekeepers were authorised to support the weak, unpopular transitional government which has international backing even though it only controls just one town in Somalia, Baidoa. The rest of the desperately poor Horn of Africa country, including the capital Mogadishu, is controlled by a loose coalition of Islamists known as the Union of Islamic Courts, whose fighters have swept across the country since June.

Is that a problem then?
The Americans and their Ethiopian allies think so because of their fear that al-Qa'ida is gaining a foothold in Somalia which had been in the grip of warlords since 1991, following the overthrow of the Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Washington says Somalia is a haven for those who carried out the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania. The transitional government, which was formed two years ago under UN auspices, says it has proof that Islamic radicals from such places as Yemen and Chechnya have been pouring into the country to fight on the side of the Islamic courts.

But the Islamic courts - a purely Somali movement - do include many moderates and have bolstered their popularity by establishing law and order in the regions of southern Somalia which they now control. (The hardliners have shut down some cinemas and told radio stations not to play foreign music.)

The UN itself further poured fuel on the fire when a report by an expert panel claimed that 720 fighters from the Islamic courts had fought alongside Hizbollah during the Lebanon war last summer. The same report also accused Iran of attempting to buy uranium from the Islamists in return for weapons. The report named 11 countries that had violated an arms embargo in force since 1992 by sending weapons to one side or the other. However some of these claims seemed far-fetched to say the least. It was unusual for a UN report, whose conclusions are usually authoritative, to be queried by experts as this one was. But the most dangerous development has been the intervention of outside forces in Somalia as the Islamic courts have gained territory.

Who's involved in the conflict?
Mainly Ethiopia and Eritrea so far. Ethiopia, a largely Christian country which is terrified of an Islamist state on its border, is reported to have deployed up to 8,000 troops in Somalia in defence of the transitional government. The Ethiopian government denies that troops are present and only admits to military advisers. However witnesses last month described the killing of six Ethiopian soldiers and wounding of 20 in a gun battle after Islamic fighters opened fire on a convoy of 80 trucks heading to Baidoa. Eritrea, which fought a bitter 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia, is believed to have a smaller number of troops supporting the Islamic courts.

How did the UN security council get involved?
The security council is supporting a peace process that is supposed to lead to a political settlement as a result of talks between the transitional government and the Islamists - which have so far gone precisely nowhere.

The US has been pressing for the UN partially to lift the arms embargo on the ground that the military expansion by the Islamic courts had created the need for a regional force to stabilise the situation inside the country. Resolution 1725 adopted on Wednesday authorised a regional force of 8,000 to protect the transitional government. It urged the Islamic courts to stop any further military expansion and carry on with the peace talks. It also specified that "those states that border Somalia would not deploy troops " to that country - thereby ensuring that neither Ethiopia nor Eritrea would be part of the peacekeeping force.

However it did not call on the foreign forces believed to be inside the country to pull out. The resolution threatened UN action against those who block peace efforts or attempt to overthrow the government, which could include targeted sanctions.

Britain, like the US a permanent member of the security council, voted in favour but did not join the US in co-sponsoring the resolution amid concerns that the Islamists would see the authorisation of peacekeepers as a provocation and intensify the conflict. Those concerns are shared by some members of the East African group Igad, which is sponsoring the Somalia peace process.

What has been the reaction to the UN decision?
Delight, as you might expect, in Baidoa where the transitional government is based. The Islamic courts were predictably furious. Ethiopia said that the peacekeeping force should have been authorised two years ago, when it was originally proposed, while Eritrea complained that the move was "an attack on the Somali people". The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, dismissed accusations that the foreign peacekeepers - expected to come from Uganda and possibly Sudan - would inflame tensions further. He said that the UN was always being accused of not acting in time, and that this is an opportunity to have a regional force in place to prevent the situation from getting worse.

Is there a danger of a wider war?
Very much so, and possibly as soon as the rainy season ends later this month. A likely scenario that has given diplomats the jitters is that the Islamic courts fighters move on Baidoa, which Ethiopia would take as a signal to invade in support of the transitional government and to prevent the Islamists from destabilising parts of Ethiopia. And behind Ethiopia stands America - although in the light of the 1993 US debacle in Somalia it can be safely assumed that no American troops will ever head back to Mogadishu.

The Horn of Africa has long been a cauldron of clan warfare and proxy wars, and nobody wants a return to the kind of conflict seen in 1977-78 between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ethiopian Ogaden region. The last thing the Somali people need is more outside intervention.

It is hoped, however, that instead of deepening the conflict, the UN move will heighten the political pressure on both sides in Somalia to reach a political settlement, as it will take many months before any foreign peacekeepers can be deployed. But diplomats admit that there is a question mark hanging over the continued international recognition of the transitional government.

Should peacekeeping forces intervene in Somalia?

Yes...
* The Somalis have known nothing but war, drought and famine for decades. The peace they deserve can only be imposed from outside
* Somalia could be a hot-bed of international terror unless foreign troops intervene
* African peacekeepers should be sent in as soon as possible to stop the conflict spreading and engulfing the region

No...
* Foreign intervention has, if anything, made Somalia's problems worse in the past rather than solving them
* The transitional government is deeply unpopular and deserves to be ousted by its Islamist rivals without external involvement
* It will take too long for peacekeepers to be deployed, so they will not be able to prevent the conflict from escalating