From the archive, 20 May 1980: Ethiopia forces Ogaden exodus
Originally published in the Guardian on 20 May 1980
Victoria Brittain The Guardian, Thursday 20 May 2010 Article history
In what appears to be a deliberate act of policy, the Russian-backed Ethiopian Government is depopulating the southern Ogaden region of the country. Diplomats here are calling it the "final solution" to the problem of the Somali people in the area.
One person in four in Somalia is now a refugee from Ethiopia and it is clear that the authorities in Addis Ababa are enforcing the exodus as a way of ending the 20-year-old guerrilla war in the Ogaden.
In interviews during the past few days in camps and in the countryside along the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia and the Somali Republic, newly arrived refugees have told of Ethiopian and Cuban soldiers machine gunning herds of camels, robbing and burning fields, destroying settled farms, and taking away young men to fight in Eritrea.
Many of the refugees now arriving in south-western Somalia have walked for between one and two months, through Kenya, from the southern Ethiopian provinces of Bale and Sidamo hiding by day and travelling by night.
The present Ethiopian campaign to depopulate the troublesome Ogaden began after the defeat and withdrawal of the Somali army in March 1978. The Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) has continued the fight as guerrillas with arms from Egypt and Iraq. According to diplomatic sources in both Addis Ababa and here, the Ethiopian and Cuban losses from convoys supplying their garrisons have been such that all garrisons are now supplied by air.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopians have been hitting back inside Somalia: there have been nine Ethiopian bombing raids against Somali border towns this year – mostly retaliation against the activities of the WSLF. Some have followed guerrilla attacks on new Ethiopian settlements in areas previously populated by Somali tribesmen in the Ogaden.
In the north near Hargeisa hundreds of new refugees are coming over the border every day. Some have also been hit by the drought that has turned the northern region of Somalia into an animal graveyard.
Somali ministers here say a food shortage is affecting the whole country. The Government, they claim, is bereft of foreign exchange and the ability to bring food to its own people – let alone feed the hundreds of thousands of refugees.
No one knows how many refugee mouths the Somali Government may have to feed. The official figure is 1,400,000. Some 90 per cent of them are said to be women and children with roughly half accommodated in makeshift camps.
Victoria Brittain in Mogadishu
