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In Ethiopian
Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality |
June 18, 2007
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
IN THE OGADEN DESERT, Ethiopia — The
rebels march 300 strong across the crunchy
earth, young men with dreadlocks and AK-47s
slung over their shoulders.
Often when they pass through a village, the
entire village lines up, one sunken
cheekbone to the next, to squint at them.
“May God bring you victory,” one woman
whispered.
This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner
of Ethiopia that the urbane officials in
Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather
outsiders never see. It is the epicenter of
a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads
against one of the biggest armies in Africa.
What goes on here seems to be starkly
different from the carefully constructed
up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a
country that the United States increasingly
relies on to fight militant Islam in the
Horn of Africa — tries to project.
In village after village, people said they
had been brutalized by government troops.
They described a widespread and longstanding
reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers
gang-raping women, burning down huts and
killing civilians at will.
It is the same military that the American
government helps train and equip — and
provides with prized intelligence. The two
nations have been allies for years, but
recently they have grown especially close,
teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic
movement that controlled much of Somalia and
rid the region of a potential terrorist
threat.
The Bush administration, particularly the
military, considers Ethiopia its best bet in
the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan,
Somalia and Eritrea, is fast becoming
intensely violent, virulently anti-American
and an incubator for terrorism.
But an emerging concern for American
officials is the way that the Ethiopian
military operates inside its own borders,
especially in war zones like the Ogaden.
Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too
frightened, like many others, to give her
last name, said soldiers took her to a
police station, put her in a cell and
twisted her nipples with pliers. She said
government security forces routinely rounded
up young women under the pretext that they
were rebel supporters so they could bring
them to jail and rape them.
“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped
me, too.”
Moualin, a rheumy-eyed elder, said Ethiopian
troops stormed his village, Sasabene, in
January looking for rebels and burned much
of it down. “They hit us in the face with
the hardest part of their guns,” he said.
The villagers said the abuses had
intensified since April, when the rebels
attacked a Chinese-run oil field, killing
nine Chinese workers and more than 60
Ethiopian soldiers and employees. The
Ethiopian government has vowed to crush the
rebels but rejects all claims that it abuses
civilians.
“Our soldiers are not allowed to do these
kinds of things,” said Nur Abdi Mohammed, a
government spokesman. “This is only
propaganda and cannot be justified. If a
government soldier did this type of thing
they would be brought before the courts.”
Even so, the State Department, the European
Parliament and many human rights groups,
mostly outside Ethiopia, have cited
thousands of cases of torture, arbitrary
detention and extrajudicial killings —
enough to raise questions in Congress about
American support of the Ethiopian
government.
“This is a country that is abusing its own
people and has no respect for democracy,”
said Representative Donald M. Payne,
Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa
and global health.
“We’ve not only looked the other way but
we’ve pushed them to intrude in other
sovereign nations,” he added, referring to
the satellite images and other strategic
help the American military gave Ethiopia in
December, when thousands of Ethiopian troops
poured into Somalia and overthrew the
Islamist leadership.
According to Georgette Gagnon, deputy
director for the Africa division of Human
Rights Watch, Ethiopia is one of the most
repressive countries in Africa.
“What the Ethiopian security forces are
doing,” she said, “may amount to crimes
against humanity.”
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2005
that documented a rampage by government
troops against members of the Anuak, a
minority tribe in western Ethiopia, in which
soldiers ransacked homes, beat villagers to
death with iron bars and in one case,
according to a witness, tied up a prisoner
and ran over him with a military truck.
After the report came out, the researcher
who wrote it was banned by the Ethiopian
government from returning to the country.
Similarly, three New York Times journalists
who visited the Ogaden to cover this story
were imprisoned for five days and had all
their equipment confiscated before being
released without charges.
Ethiopia’s Tiananmen Square
In many ways, Ethiopia has a lot going for
it these days: new buildings, new roads, low
crime and a booming trade in cut flowers and
coffee. It is the second most populous
country in sub-Saharan Africa, behind
Nigeria, with 77 million people.
Its leaders, many whom were once rebels
themselves, from a neglected patch of
northern Ethiopia, are widely known as some
of the savviest officials on the continent.
They had promised to let some air into a
very stultified political system during the
national elections of 2005, which were
billed as a milestone on the road to
democracy.
Instead, they turned into Ethiopia’s version
of Tiananmen Square. With the opposition
poised to win a record number of seats in
Parliament, the government cracked down
brutally, opening fire on demonstrators,
rounding up tens of thousands of opposition
supporters and students and leveling charges
of treason and even attempted to kill top
opposition leaders, including the man
elected mayor of Addis Ababa.
Many opposition members are now in jail
or in exile. The rest seem demoralized.
“There are no real steps toward democracy,”
said Merera Gudina, vice president of the
United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a
leading opposition party. “No real steps
toward opening up space, no real steps
toward ending repression.”
Ethiopian officials have routinely dismissed
such complaints, accusing political
protesters of stoking civil unrest and
poking their finger into a well-known sore
spot. Ethiopia has always had an
authoritarian streak. This is a country,
after all, where until the 1970s rulers
claimed to be direct descendants of King
Solomon. It is big, poor, famine-stricken,
about half-Christian and half-Muslim,
surrounded by hostile enemies and full of
heavily armed separatist factions. As one
high-ranking Ethiopian official put it,
“This country has never been easy to rule.”
That has certainly been true for the Ogaden
desert, a huge, dagger-shaped chunk of
territory between the highlands of Ethiopia
and the border of Somalia. The people here
are mostly ethnic Somalis, and they have
been chafing against Ethiopian rule since
1897, when the British ceded their claims to
the area.
The colonial officials did not think the
Ogaden was worth much. They saw thorny hills
and thirsty people. Even today, it is still
like that. What passes for a town is a
huddle of bubble-shaped huts, the movable
homes of camel-thwacking nomads who somehow
survive out here. For roads, picture Tonka
truck tracks running through a sandbox. The
primary elements in this world are skin and
bone and sun and rock. And guns. Loads of
them.
Camel herders carry rifles to protect their
animals. Young women carry pistols to
protect their bodies. And then there is the
Ogaden National Liberation Front, the
machine-gun-toting rebels fighting for
control of this desiccated wasteland.
Rebels Live Off the Land
Lion. Radio. Fearless. Peacock. Most of the
men have nicknames that conceal their real
identities. Peacock, who spoke some English,
served as a guide. He shared the bitter
little plums the soldiers pick from thorn
bushes — “Ogaden chocolate,” he called them.
He showed the way to gently skim water from
the top of a mud puddle to minimize the
amount of dirt that ends up in your stomach
— even in the rainy season this is all there
is to drink.
He pointed out the anthills, the coming
storm clouds, the especially ruthless thorn
trees and even a graveyard that stood
incongruously in the middle of the desert.
The graves — crude pyramids of stones — were
from the war in 1977-78, when Somalia tried,
disastrously, to pry the Ogaden out of
Ethiopia’s hands and lost thousands of men.
“It’s up to us now,” Peacock said.
Peacock was typical of the rebels. He was
driven by anger. He said Ethiopian soldiers
hanged his mother, raped his sister and beat
his father. “I know, it’s hard to believe,”
he said. “But it’s true.”
He had the hunch of a broken man and a voice
that seemed far too tired for his 28 years.
“It’s not that I like living in the bush,”
he said. “But I have nowhere else to go.”
The armed resistance began in 1994, after
the Ogaden National Liberation Front, then a
political organization, broached the idea of
splitting off from Ethiopia. The central
government responded by imprisoning Ogadeni
leaders, and according to academics and
human rights groups, assassinating others.
The Ogaden is part of the Somali National
Regional State, one of nine ethnic-based
states within Ethiopia’s unusual
ethnic-based federal system. On paper, all
states have the right to secede, if they
follow the proper procedures. But it seemed
that the government feared that if the
Somalis broke away, so too would the Oromos,
the Afar and many other ethnic groups pining
for a country of their own.
The Ethiopian government calls the Ogaden
rebels terrorists and says they are armed
and trained by Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor
and bitter enemy. One of the reasons
Ethiopia decided to invade Somalia was to
prevent the rebels from using it as a base.
The government blames them for a string of
recent bombings and assassinations and says
they often single out rival clan members.
Ethiopian officials have been pressuring the
State Department to add the Ogaden National
Liberation Front to its list of designated
foreign terrorist organizations. Until
recently, American officials refused, saying
the rebels had not threatened civilians or
American interests.
“But after the oil field attack in April,”
said one American official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, “we are reassessing
that.”
American policy toward Ethiopia seems to be
in flux. Administration officials are trying
to increase the amount of non humanitarian
aid to Ethiopia to $481 million next year,
from $284 million this year. But key
Democrats in Congress, including Mr. Payne,
are questioning this, saying that because of
Ethiopia’s human rights record, it is time
to stop writing the country a blank check.
In April, European Commission officials
began investigating Ethiopia for war crimes
in connection to hundreds of Somali
civilians killed by Ethiopian troops during
heavy fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s
capital.
Women Are Suffering the Most
In the Ogaden, it is not clear how many
people are dying. The vast area is
essentially a no-go zone for most human
rights workers and journalists and where the
Ethiopian military, by its own admission, is
waging an intense counterinsurgency
campaign.
The violence has been particularly acute
against women, villagers said, and many have
recently fled.
Asma, 19, who now lives in neighboring
Somaliland, said she was stuck in an
underground cell for more than six months
last year, raped and tortured. “They beat me
on the feet and breasts,” she said. She was
freed only after her father paid the
soldiers ransom, she said, though she did
not know how much.
Ambaro, 25, now living in Addis Ababa, said
she was gang-raped by five Ethiopian
soldiers in January near the town of Fik.
She said troops came to her village every
night to pluck another young woman.
“I’m in pain now, all over my body,” she
said. “ I’m worried that I’ll become crazy
because of what happened.”
Many Ogaden villagers said that when they
tried to bring up abuses with clan chiefs or
local authorities, they were told it was
better to keep quiet.
The rebels said thats was precisely why they
attacked the Chinese oil field: to get
publicity for their cause and the plight of
their region (and to discourage foreign
companies from exploiting local resources).
According to them, they strike freely in the
Ogaden all the time, ambushing military
convoys and raiding police stations.
Mr. Mohammed, the government spokesman,
denied that, saying the rebels “will not
confront Ethiopian military forces because
they are not well trained.”
Expert or not, they are determined. They
march for hours powered by a few handfuls of
rice. They travel extremely light, carrying
only their guns, two clips of bullets, a
grenade and a tarp. They brag about how many
Ethiopians they have killed, and every piece
of their camouflage, they say, is pulled off
dead soldiers. They joke about slaughtering
Ethiopian troops the same way they slaughter
goats.
Their morale seems high, especially for men
who sleep in the dirt every night. Their
throats are constantly dry, but they like to
sing.
“A camel is delivering a baby today and the
milk of the camel is coming,” goes one
campfire song. “Who is the owner of this
land?”
Will Connors contributed reporting from
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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