|
Hundreds
have died as ethnic Somali rebels fight for
autonomy for the Ogaden region. Government
troops are accused of indiscriminate
killings
By Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 23, 2008
NAIROBI, KENYA — The teenager awoke under a
pile of corpses to a pricking sensation on
her face. Ants were biting her eyelids and
the inside of her mouth.
The pain, however, brought relief to the
17-year-old.
"I thought, 'I'm alive,' " Ridwan Hassan
Sahid remembers. She felt blood oozing from
rope burns around her neck and the weight of
a body against her back. But fearing that
the Ethiopian soldiers who had left her for
dead in a roadside ditch would return, she
quickly brushed away the ants and shut her
eyes, then slipped back into
unconsciousness.
Abukar Albadri / For The Times
SURVIVOR: Ridwan Hassan Sahid says Ethiopian troops rounded up people in her village, accusing them of being rebels. All were killed but Sahid, who survived among a heap of corpses.
The
brutal assault and her miraculous escape
mark one of the most chilling stories to
emerge from an unfolding tragedy in eastern
Ethiopia that has largely escaped the
attention of a world transfixed by the
humanitarian crisis in neighboring Sudan's
Darfur region.
Ever since exiting colonialists arbitrarily
stuck a triangle-shaped wedge of land with 4
million ethnic Somalis inside Ethiopia's
border, violence and suffering have plagued
the region. Now, many of them have been
caught up in a war between the Ethiopian
government and a separatist group known as
the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed and
tens of thousands were displaced in the last
year alone, though exact figures are unknown
because the area is remote and Ethiopian
officials restrict access for humanitarian
groups and journalists.
Survivors such as Sahid offer the only
glimpse of the tragedy. The petite young
woman, who lives at a secret location,
shared her story recently with The Times.
Now 18, Sahid at times seems to be an
average teen, picking absent-mindedly at her
henna-stained fingernails and blushing when
strangers express interest in her.
But behind her soft brown eyes is a
weariness that belies her age, and a
necklace of scar tissue rings her throat
where the rope cut into her skin.
She recounts her ordeal without emotion.
Only occasionally does her veneer crack long
enough for a tear to roll down her check,
which she self-consciously laughs off and
wipes away.
"I wonder sometimes," she says, "what kind
of life I can have now."
She grew up in the village of Qorile with
eight siblings. The family, like most
everyone else in the area, were semi-nomadic
cattle and sheep herders.
Ever since she can remember, Ethiopian
authorities have been seen as the enemy.
"We feel as if we are living under
occupation," she says. "We grew up afraid of
them."
The Ogaden conflict dates to the 1940s,
when, after World War II, European nations
lost or began to relinquish their colonies
in the Horn of Africa.
After some years under British
administration, Ogaden and surrounding areas
were placed under Ethiopian control, but the
decision was never accepted by the ethnic
Somalis living there, spurring two wars
between Ethiopia and Somalia and spawning a
string of rebel movements seeking autonomy
or unification with Somalia.
Ethiopian officials accuse the Ogaden rebels
of using terrorist tactics, including bombs,
land mines and harassing the civilians it
claims to represent. In April 2007, the
rebels killed more than 70 people at a
Chinese-run exploration facility in the
region.
The attack prompted what aid groups and
witnesses call a heavy-handed response by
the Ethiopian government. Troops are accused
of burning down villages believed to be
rebel havens, raping women, forcibly
recruiting young men into government
militias and imposing a commercial blockade
that sent food prices and malnutrition rates
soaring.
"They used mass indiscriminate measures to
collectively punish the entire population,"
Human Rights Watch researcher Leslie Lefkow
said.
Ethiopian officials deny any widespread
human rights abuses and blame rebels for the
violence. "They are working with
internationally known terrorists," said
Zemedkun Tekle, spokesman for Ethiopia's
Information Ministry.
Sahid says her family always tried to stay
out of the fray: "We are not political
people."
But she found herself caught in the middle
in July, when several hundred Ethiopian
troops surrounded her village. Her father
was away tending animals in the fields and
her mother was shopping in a nearby town.
Sahid was washing her face when soldiers
kicked in the door that morning.
"You are guerrillas," they shouted as they
ransacked the house, stealing food and
supplies, Sahid remembers. She escaped
through a back door and huddled with other
frightened villagers. Soon soldiers gathered
them all at a well and read names from a
list of "spies" and rebel sympathizers.
"Nobody knew who would be selected, but you
knew if your name was called, you would be
killed," says Fathi Abdulla, 22, a cousin of
Sahid who lives in the same village. Sahid
froze when she heard her name called. She
and 10 others were taken to the school,
which became a makeshift prison for
interrogation and torture.
"They took us one by one," Sahid says.
Soldiers accused her of taking supplies to
rebels. They tied her hands and legs
together behind her back.
"They kicked me and stepped on my back," she
says. "I told them that in my whole life,
the only person I've ever helped was my
mother."
The next morning, Sahid and the other
prisoners were marched for hours to another
village.
"They beat us like animals when we couldn't
keep up," she says. "Mentally, I was already
dead. I was just waiting to die."
Arriving at the village, Sahid says, she
watched as soldiers looted the town and
burned down all the huts. That night, none
of the prisoners slept, fearing what the
next day would bring.
At daybreak, without explanation, soldiers
began executing them, Sahid says. Two
villagers were hanged from trees. Two others
were choked with metal rods and rope.
Sahid was the last attacked. She remembers
hearing the others scream and beg for mercy,
but couldn't move or make a sound herself.
"At that point, I was like a tree. I had no
feeling. I was like a statue."
Two soldiers ordered her into the ditch, but
she refused. Finally one pounced, choking
Sahid with a metal rod used to clean guns.
They struggled for a minute, but she did not
lose consciousness and the soldier gave up.
Next, two exasperated soldiers grabbed the
girl and tied a rope around her neck. They
pulled in different directions until she
collapsed into the ditch.
The next thing Sahid recalls are the ants.
The midday sun was beating down and she felt
disoriented. Blood flowed from her nose and
neck. Her legs were trapped under a man's
naked body. She says she closed her eyes
again, uncertain whether she would live or
die.
Back in her village, friends and family
formed a search party, following the
soldiers' footprints. They expected to
recover nothing more than bodies.
After several hours of walking, they
encountered a group of nomads who told them
about a nearby field with some bodies.
Remarkably, they said, a young girl was
still alive.
"We rushed to the place," Abdulla says. The
scene was grisly. Two men hung from nooses
in a tree. Other victims lay naked, with
belts and ropes still around their necks.
Sahid was in the ditch, under two bodies.
"As we came closer, she opened her eyes and
looked at us! We were so shocked."
They moved her under a tree, but feared she
would soon die. They buried the bodies and
awaited help. Eventually camels were brought
and friends began a weeks-long journey to
secretly move Sahid out of the country.
She remembers little of the escape or her
recovery. She still can't use her right hand
because of nerve damage from the beatings.
With an uncertain future, Sahid spends most
days indoors. Venturing outside sometimes
brings panic attacks.
She says the quiet moments are the hardest
to bear.
"Whenever I sit for even a minute, I draw my
mind back to those events. And I start to
cry."
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-survive23mar23,1,6081499,print.story
Related Story:
http://www.ogaden.com/ethnws270707.htm |
