AT THE FRONTIER
Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:58 pm
AT THE FRONTIER
M. ADOW
Focus On Africa
The Ethiopian government is concerned that SomaliaÂ’s Islamists could try to capture the disputed Ogaden region. Mohammed Adow went there to gauge the mood
"Drought, war and darkness" are the three words 56-year-old Mohammed Ali Hassan, a resident of Degeh Bur town, uses to summarise the situation in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Mohammed, like many other pastoral nomads who live there, is exhausted by the cycles of famine, drought, war and underdevelopment that have characterised the region as long as he can remember.
"We want a change to this,” he says. “We would like a life we can predict, without conflict, so we can give our children what has existed only in our dreams – peace and tranquility."
But change in the Somali region of Ethiopia, known as Ogaden by most people of Somali origin, may be some time coming. For the region is once again at the centre of international tension.
Its recent history is clouded by conflict. Ceded to Ethiopia by the British in 1954, the region has twice since been fought over by Ethiopia and Somalia, which – under the government of Siad Barre – claimed Ogaden was part of Greater Somalia.
For the past 20 years, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has waged a rebellion, fighting for independence from Ethiopia.
This year, there has been heightened military activity. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian troops have been sent in to fight the rebels, but also to secure the border and counter what is perceived as a threat by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia.
Having backed the formation of the transitional government in Somalia, with its close ally Abdullahi Yusuf as president, Ethiopia has been alarmed by the rise of the Islamic courts and their militia.
One of the UICÂ’s top leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has made it clear that the two countries have unfinished business.
"The land taken by Ethiopia cannot be forgotten because it is attached to our blood and nationalists," he said back in July, referring to troops and civilians who died during the 1977/78 war.
"Ethiopia mistreats the Somalis under their administration. The land was given to them by colonialists and we will seek justice to resolve the crisis that is dividing the two countries."
Sheikh Aweys added, however, that he was ready to negotiate with Ethiopia on the status of the contested Ogaden region.
The last thing Ethiopia wants is trouble along its long border with Somalia. Still nervous about internal dissent following last yearÂ’s post-election violence, it is wary about unrest being stoked up among its ethnic Somalis.
Ethiopia is alleged to have responded by sending troops to protect the Somali interim government in Baidoa and issued warnings of dire consequences for the Islamists if they attacked the town.
Reports that Eritrea, EthiopiaÂ’s enemy to the north, had been arming the Islamist militia, has led analysts to warn in turn that instability in Somalia could lead to a wider, regional conflict.
All this is no comfort to the people who live in the Somali region of Ethiopia, one of the least developed corners of the earth. They often joke that “if Adam returns he will definitely recognise our land”.
My flight was to Jijiga, the regional capital. But it had rained the previous night and the plane could not risk landing on the dilapidated airstrip that had turned into a pool of water.
So having been diverted to Dire Dawa, we made the journey by road. Dire Dawa is the last main city in eastern Ethiopia before the empty, flat wilderness of the Ogaden desert. It feels like a frontier town, as you leave behind the gentle farming highlands of ‘Christian Ethiopia’, and enter the flat, dry, hot plains of the Muslim, Somali region.
In between Dire Dawa and Jijiga is the ancient and walled city of Harar. It is here that the tarmacked road ends and the rough, 100-kilometre-long track that links Jijiga to the highlands begins. This point is referred to as “out of civilisation” or “into civilisation” depending on the direction one is traveling.
Jijiga itself is a jumble of villages with a few pompous administrative buildings; shabby hotels and bars; a busy market and a military station – all stuck together by countless mud houses with corrugated-iron roofs.
Many people who fled the hinterland and the battlefields have sought refuge here. Military jeeps share the streets with squeaky horse-drawn carts that act as taxis. Nomads can be seen driving their herds of camels through the streets of the low-built town.
The Somali border is two hours away by car. Smuggling flourishes – rice, sugar, utensils, furniture, electronic goods and even industrial machinery. The military posts, that check every vehicle moving in the direction of Somalia, do nothing to change the fact.
Roads throughout EthiopiaÂ’s Somali region are in a deplorable condition, forcing vehicles to traverse the bush. During the rainy season entire districts and provinces can be cut off from one another for weeks, leaving people stranded.
Educational opportunities are also extremely limited. Informal estimates suggest that roughly 15 per cent of youth attend school, the majority of them in urban areas or settled rural communities. Islamic Koranic schools are more numerous than secular schools, with most children attending a Koranic school before they attend secular school, if they do so at all.
A dearth of skilled manpower, inadequate infrastructure and acute shortage of communication facilities constitute formidable constraints to developing the region. This dismal situation could largely be attributed to neglect by previous regimes and the conflicts that engulfed the region.
"We would very much like to be Ethiopians, but is not that easy. We have been fighting for secession for close to fifty years now, and I think it will take another 50 years of armed struggle for us to get recognition or to be accepted as Ethiopians," Ali Hassan Ali told me.
The weak regional administration has done very little to help the situation. The regional government has endured substantial political turmoil; and has struggled at times to gain legitimacy or implement any effective policies.
Given the absence of effective modern administration outside the main urban centres, nomadic groups in the remote pastoral areas rely upon traditional systems of governance in which elders regulate affairs.
At midday in Jijiga, the temperature can rise to over 40°C. To while away the afternoons, many people in the region – mostly men – have taken to the practice of chewing khat, the leafy narcotic brought from the highlands. A visitor would be surprised by the sudden commotion on the dusty and at times muddy streets as a cacophony of car horns, screeching brakes and shouting herald the marvelous news that the khat has arrived.
In the afternoons, Jijiga becomes a ghost town, abandoned to the camels and cats. Locals are firmly ensconced behind closed doors in the sacred confines of the Mabraz, the khat den.
Here a minimum of five hours is spent reclining on cushions, smoking cigarettes and sipping tea while grazing on the leaves. Later, after the drug takes its effect, lively debates and heated discussions break out, and the Mabraz becomes, perhaps, the region's real parliament.
From their conversations, it is clear that most Ethiopian Somalis feel culturally and socially closer to their kin in Somalia and northern Kenya than they do to the Ethiopian highlanders. On the economic side, trade with and through Somalia is many times greater than trade with the rest of Ethiopia, even given the difficulties of doing business with a failed state such as Somalia. The Somali shilling is the main currency in some areas in the region.
Many Ethiopian Somalis do not trust the government soldiers, who are mainly from northern Ethiopia, with no familiarity with the territory or culture, sent to the region.
Human rights groups say they receive frequent reports of extra-judicial executions and torture from the Somali region, but because access to it is severely restricted by the military, these reports have been impossible to confirm. EthiopiaÂ’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi denies his soldiers have killed innocent civilians, but accuses the ONLF rebels of killing Somali-speaking people for supporting the government.
Ethiopian Somalis are traditionally nomadic pastoralists, and have been so for centuries. Life and survival revolves around livestock, with people constantly moving about in the interests of their livestock. But as a result of increasingly frequent drought and chronic overgrazing, the region is facing serious environmental degradation.
The barren land is littered with remnants of past conflict, including dilapidated military equipment and rusted weaponry, such as tanks, armed personnel carriers and disused fighter jets. The people have indeed plenty to remind them of the wars Ethiopia and Somalia fought over the ownership of their region.
Mohamed Mohammed Adow
the BBC East Africa deputy editor
Nairobi
M. ADOW
Focus On Africa
The Ethiopian government is concerned that SomaliaÂ’s Islamists could try to capture the disputed Ogaden region. Mohammed Adow went there to gauge the mood
"Drought, war and darkness" are the three words 56-year-old Mohammed Ali Hassan, a resident of Degeh Bur town, uses to summarise the situation in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Mohammed, like many other pastoral nomads who live there, is exhausted by the cycles of famine, drought, war and underdevelopment that have characterised the region as long as he can remember.
"We want a change to this,” he says. “We would like a life we can predict, without conflict, so we can give our children what has existed only in our dreams – peace and tranquility."
But change in the Somali region of Ethiopia, known as Ogaden by most people of Somali origin, may be some time coming. For the region is once again at the centre of international tension.
Its recent history is clouded by conflict. Ceded to Ethiopia by the British in 1954, the region has twice since been fought over by Ethiopia and Somalia, which – under the government of Siad Barre – claimed Ogaden was part of Greater Somalia.
For the past 20 years, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has waged a rebellion, fighting for independence from Ethiopia.
This year, there has been heightened military activity. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian troops have been sent in to fight the rebels, but also to secure the border and counter what is perceived as a threat by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia.
Having backed the formation of the transitional government in Somalia, with its close ally Abdullahi Yusuf as president, Ethiopia has been alarmed by the rise of the Islamic courts and their militia.
One of the UICÂ’s top leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has made it clear that the two countries have unfinished business.
"The land taken by Ethiopia cannot be forgotten because it is attached to our blood and nationalists," he said back in July, referring to troops and civilians who died during the 1977/78 war.
"Ethiopia mistreats the Somalis under their administration. The land was given to them by colonialists and we will seek justice to resolve the crisis that is dividing the two countries."
Sheikh Aweys added, however, that he was ready to negotiate with Ethiopia on the status of the contested Ogaden region.
The last thing Ethiopia wants is trouble along its long border with Somalia. Still nervous about internal dissent following last yearÂ’s post-election violence, it is wary about unrest being stoked up among its ethnic Somalis.
Ethiopia is alleged to have responded by sending troops to protect the Somali interim government in Baidoa and issued warnings of dire consequences for the Islamists if they attacked the town.
Reports that Eritrea, EthiopiaÂ’s enemy to the north, had been arming the Islamist militia, has led analysts to warn in turn that instability in Somalia could lead to a wider, regional conflict.
All this is no comfort to the people who live in the Somali region of Ethiopia, one of the least developed corners of the earth. They often joke that “if Adam returns he will definitely recognise our land”.
My flight was to Jijiga, the regional capital. But it had rained the previous night and the plane could not risk landing on the dilapidated airstrip that had turned into a pool of water.
So having been diverted to Dire Dawa, we made the journey by road. Dire Dawa is the last main city in eastern Ethiopia before the empty, flat wilderness of the Ogaden desert. It feels like a frontier town, as you leave behind the gentle farming highlands of ‘Christian Ethiopia’, and enter the flat, dry, hot plains of the Muslim, Somali region.
In between Dire Dawa and Jijiga is the ancient and walled city of Harar. It is here that the tarmacked road ends and the rough, 100-kilometre-long track that links Jijiga to the highlands begins. This point is referred to as “out of civilisation” or “into civilisation” depending on the direction one is traveling.
Jijiga itself is a jumble of villages with a few pompous administrative buildings; shabby hotels and bars; a busy market and a military station – all stuck together by countless mud houses with corrugated-iron roofs.
Many people who fled the hinterland and the battlefields have sought refuge here. Military jeeps share the streets with squeaky horse-drawn carts that act as taxis. Nomads can be seen driving their herds of camels through the streets of the low-built town.
The Somali border is two hours away by car. Smuggling flourishes – rice, sugar, utensils, furniture, electronic goods and even industrial machinery. The military posts, that check every vehicle moving in the direction of Somalia, do nothing to change the fact.
Roads throughout EthiopiaÂ’s Somali region are in a deplorable condition, forcing vehicles to traverse the bush. During the rainy season entire districts and provinces can be cut off from one another for weeks, leaving people stranded.
Educational opportunities are also extremely limited. Informal estimates suggest that roughly 15 per cent of youth attend school, the majority of them in urban areas or settled rural communities. Islamic Koranic schools are more numerous than secular schools, with most children attending a Koranic school before they attend secular school, if they do so at all.
A dearth of skilled manpower, inadequate infrastructure and acute shortage of communication facilities constitute formidable constraints to developing the region. This dismal situation could largely be attributed to neglect by previous regimes and the conflicts that engulfed the region.
"We would very much like to be Ethiopians, but is not that easy. We have been fighting for secession for close to fifty years now, and I think it will take another 50 years of armed struggle for us to get recognition or to be accepted as Ethiopians," Ali Hassan Ali told me.
The weak regional administration has done very little to help the situation. The regional government has endured substantial political turmoil; and has struggled at times to gain legitimacy or implement any effective policies.
Given the absence of effective modern administration outside the main urban centres, nomadic groups in the remote pastoral areas rely upon traditional systems of governance in which elders regulate affairs.
At midday in Jijiga, the temperature can rise to over 40°C. To while away the afternoons, many people in the region – mostly men – have taken to the practice of chewing khat, the leafy narcotic brought from the highlands. A visitor would be surprised by the sudden commotion on the dusty and at times muddy streets as a cacophony of car horns, screeching brakes and shouting herald the marvelous news that the khat has arrived.
In the afternoons, Jijiga becomes a ghost town, abandoned to the camels and cats. Locals are firmly ensconced behind closed doors in the sacred confines of the Mabraz, the khat den.
Here a minimum of five hours is spent reclining on cushions, smoking cigarettes and sipping tea while grazing on the leaves. Later, after the drug takes its effect, lively debates and heated discussions break out, and the Mabraz becomes, perhaps, the region's real parliament.
From their conversations, it is clear that most Ethiopian Somalis feel culturally and socially closer to their kin in Somalia and northern Kenya than they do to the Ethiopian highlanders. On the economic side, trade with and through Somalia is many times greater than trade with the rest of Ethiopia, even given the difficulties of doing business with a failed state such as Somalia. The Somali shilling is the main currency in some areas in the region.
Many Ethiopian Somalis do not trust the government soldiers, who are mainly from northern Ethiopia, with no familiarity with the territory or culture, sent to the region.
Human rights groups say they receive frequent reports of extra-judicial executions and torture from the Somali region, but because access to it is severely restricted by the military, these reports have been impossible to confirm. EthiopiaÂ’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi denies his soldiers have killed innocent civilians, but accuses the ONLF rebels of killing Somali-speaking people for supporting the government.
Ethiopian Somalis are traditionally nomadic pastoralists, and have been so for centuries. Life and survival revolves around livestock, with people constantly moving about in the interests of their livestock. But as a result of increasingly frequent drought and chronic overgrazing, the region is facing serious environmental degradation.
The barren land is littered with remnants of past conflict, including dilapidated military equipment and rusted weaponry, such as tanks, armed personnel carriers and disused fighter jets. The people have indeed plenty to remind them of the wars Ethiopia and Somalia fought over the ownership of their region.
Mohamed Mohammed Adow
the BBC East Africa deputy editor
Nairobi