|
|
|
|
|
Waging war
under the Guise of Wanting Peace |
Meles Zenawi, The head of the current regime
in Addis Ababa, for the first time announced
publicly
that he was ready to start peace
negotiations with Ogaden National Liberation
Front (ONLF) early last year. People of
Ogaden who yawned for peace since 1890s
welcomed this peace initiative.
ONLF, although suspicious of Meles’s motives
and timing, still were the first to respond
positively to the peace pronouncements from
Addis Ababa and did so through official
press releases and media interviews.
Instead of engaging reputable countries with
conflict resolution and peace negotiation
expertise, Meles proposed that Ogaden
elders, who are stakeholder in the Ogaden
issue and do not have any power to enforce
the outcome of the peaceful negotiations
should they succeed, to be the mediating
third party. While the elders were busy
abroad in Europe and North America preaching
to the Ogaden community in the Diaspora the
viability of peace in Ogaden, Meles ordered
the deployment of more than seven thousand
Tigrey militias to wage a renewed war in
Ogaden.
These newly deployed militias have been
waging a brutal war in Ogaden since the end
of April this year. Having failed miserably
in the fierce firefights they have engaged
with ONLF troops, they, militias, started
revenge killings and gutting campaigns to
destroy the meager belongs of the Ogaden
civilians who are nursing from the effects
of the droughts and famines of the past
couple of years.
Seeing the silence of the world community
about the plight of the Ogaden civilians
only encourages Meles and his minions to
persist with these wars. Deploying militias
under the explicit orders to kill and maim
innocent civilians in Ogaden should give the
world community a glimpse of Meles’s mind.
It vindicates those who have said all along
that peace pronouncements from the regime in
Addis Ababa should be considered only as
propaganda on the part of the regime to give
itself a grace period to get into the good
books of the developed world. It also
betrays those who were naively convinced
that Meles was rehabilitated by the failed
wars he has engaged in the past decade and
that he was finally ready to resolve the
Ogaden issue through peaceful negations.
We, the Ogden Online Editorial board, ask
the world community to condemn the renewed
fighting initiated by Meles’s deployment of
militias in Ogaden. The world community
should send observers to assess the extent
of the death and destruction caused by these
marauding militias. The world community
should take an active role in resolving the
Ogaden issue through dialogue. On a final
note, we ask ONLF leadership to spare the
lives of the many militia prisoners who were
taken alive during these firefights. ONLF
should give save passage to the militia
conscripts who are reported ready to lay
down their weapons.
editorial@ogaden.com
Ogaden Online Editorial
May 14, 2006 |
|
|
|
|
