American military wants Somali region of Ethiopia to be base for battling al-Qaida
BY ZOE ALSOP
Cox News Service
Sunday, May 06, 2007
To be sure, people are dying as violence from warring factions in the neighboring nation of Somalia spills over into Ethiopia.
"The worst are bullet injuries to the abdomen," said Solomon Muluneh, a 31-year-old Ethiopian general practitioner, one of only two doctors within 100 miles. "When you open the abdomenm, you pray, because it is a very difficult area."
Muluneh sees a few bullet wounds each week at his clinic and believes many insurgents afraid to show their faces in his state hospital seek treatment for similar injuries from traditional healers or in Somalia.
The bullet wounds are the product of fighting between Ethiopian government-sponsored militias and local rebels. Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia last year in an effort to counter the gains made by the Islamic Courts Union, which has been linked to al-Qaida. Ethiopia accuses the group of planning to invade this region and backing the local rebel force, known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
Washington sees this lawless region of the Horn of Africa, the continent's gateway to the Middle East, as a linchpin for regional security. U.S. military forces, working with Ethiopian troops, have used this region as a strategic base from which to gather intelligence and coordinate airstrikes on al-Qaida-related targets in Somalia.
Along the main road from Ethiopia's Somali region to Mogadishu, Gode has the hard-bitten feel of a frontier town. Aside from a handful of government buildings, it is a warren of rickety shelters patched together from mud, wattle and tarps bearing logos of international relief agencies. Beyond the town, tiny thatch dwellings of nomadic Somali herders dot the dusty plain.
But Gode, with a population of 100,000, is bigger than it seems - and more important. While it is at the heart of a region important to U.S. interests, experts say chronic neglect of the ethnic Somalis, including the dominant Ogaden clan, by the government in Addis Ababa has sown the kind of anarchy where terrorism thrives.
"That is a brilliant ground for terror because if you want to sustain terror, you will need to have recruits. When you have people who are idle and disorderly and poor and helpless, you have got free fodder," said Peter Edopu of South Africa's Institute for Security Studies.
There is no road connecting Gode directly to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, which lies about 400 miles to the northwest.
The government has left the surrounding region on its own to cope with a cycle of flood and famine that kills hundreds of people each year. Unemployment is estimated at well over 50 percent, and food costs three times what it does in the rest of Ethiopia.
The only things that come cheap are guns.
An array of rebel factions opposed to Ethiopian rule have operated here as part of a regional and cultural feud first fueled by British rule in the 19th century. Ever since British colonists begrudgingly bequeathed the Somali region to an Ethiopian emperor more than a century ago, Somalis here have fought with the "habeisha," or highlanders, as they call the non-Somali Ethiopians.
The rebels want independence for this region, where their Ogaden clan has traditionally lived. But they have formed an alliance of convenience with factions inside Somalia that still covet the region as part of what would be a "Greater Somalia" along with parts of Djibouti, Eritrea and Kenya, where ethnic Somalis live.
The strong U.S. interest in Gode is plain to see. Dirt-filled barriers block vehicle access to Gode's airstrip and a local hotel, where a U.S. Army civil affairs battalion camped out before they left the area last year.
In a campaign to win hearts and minds, U.S. soldiers drilled bore holes for water, vaccinated livestock and, according to local lore, barbecued a crocodile dragged from the muddy river.
Of the 5.5 million people living in the region, 90 percent are Somali-speaking Muslims and can trace their lineage more than a thousand years back to the same clans dominating Somalia today.
In the stalls at the market, everything from tins of pineapple and cooking oil to cellophane-wrapped shirts has been bought in Somalia. The cars here have Dubai plates and are illegal to drive elsewhere in the country - they've been shipped via Mogadishu, just a day's drive from here.
Whatever the Ethiopian government can't or won't provide, people find in Somalia.
"We don't get adequate drugs from the central government," said Muluneh, who earns less than $200 a month. "Since we have a shortage, we are forced to use the drugs coming from Somalia. There is no quality control. But you can find antibiotics, IVs, anti-malarials, any kind of drug."
Experts like Edopu of the South African institute say that the Ethiopian government and the United States would be wise to do more to help Gode instead of focusing on security issues alone. Otherwise, they risk pushing ordinary people into the arms of the insurgency.
Ethiopian officials, in turn, blame the rebels for the region's woes.
The size of the opposition is unclear, but the Ethiopian government says it has ties to extremists in Somalia. It has claimed responsibility for several attacks in recent months, including a devastating attack against Ethiopian soldiers guarding a Chinese-run oil field near the Somali border in late April. Rebels killed 65 troops and nine Chinese workers and took another seven Chinese hostage during the dawn raid. In a statement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front warned foreign oil companies not to operate in the region.
"The main problem in this region is the opposition," explained Gode's mayor, Sheik Moktar. "The Ogaden National Liberation Front is the only barrier for development in the region because they are burning everything that we build here."
Others in Gode said an intricate network of government-paid informants infiltrates everything from dusty coffee stalls to the compounds of international relief agencies.
But the Ethiopian administration claims it has good relations with the people of the Somali Region.
"Somali-speaking people inhabiting our region, they are Ethiopians, they have full rights," said Minister for Information Bereket Simon. "They can secede from Ethiopia if they want. Their right is respected to this level so they have never enjoyed better."
Washington sees this lawless region of the Horn of Africa, the continent's gateway to the Middle East, as a linchpin for regional security.
Source: Cox News Service, May 06, 2007