“Much like in 1977, all the conditions have come together that could turn conflicting interests into ruinous warfare across the region.”
“The 1972 famine — also named the Dimbleby Famine by the international media after the British journalist Jonathan Dimbleby who brought it to Western attention — caused what I came to see as the most important political event in all of Eastern Africa for 50 years. Without that event, it is arguable that Eritrea may never have split from Ethiopia, Somalia might still be stable, Museveni would not be president and the Rwanda genocide of 1994 would not have happened.”
“Like in 1977, Ethiopia is at war. It might be a matter of time before dreams of Greater Somalia are revived, as Mogadishu once more watches Addis Ababa’s discomfiture.”
“Almost beyond belief, Russia, in the place of the Soviet Union, could very well join China and the USA in messing up the politics of the region, which mess is already in high gear. In 2022, there could well be more AK47s poured in, but there might be other weapons as well. ”
💭 Turkish embassy in Ethiopia forced to move to Kenya over insecurity
Turkey’s embassy in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa has been moved to neighboring Kenya due to threats after the deployment of Turkish drones by the Abiy Ahmed regime to suppress the Tigray rebellion, the T24 news website reported.
Although the Turkish government hadn’t made an official statement regarding the sale of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to the Ethiopian government, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had visited the country and met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan twice in the past six months, adding to the widespread belief that drones bought from Turkey, in addition to Iran and the United Arab Emirates, had changed the course of the civil war in Ethiopia, journalist Barçın Yinanç wrote in an article on the T24 news website on Monday.
“Turkey’s embassy in Addis Ababa cannot operate from the capital due to threats it has received. The ambassador and several embassy staff are serving from [neighboring] Kenya. There was no statement from the [Turkish] Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the matter,” the journalist said.
The conflict that has been going on for over a year in Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country and a linchpin of regional security, has left thousands dead, forced more than 2 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
Forces under Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian military, ethnic militias, and troops from neighboring Eritrea, are fighting to oust the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or T.P.L.F., from its stronghold in the northern region of Tigray.
In early November, the government teetered when fighters from Tigray surged south toward Addis Ababa, forcing the prime minister to declare a state of emergency. Foreigners fled the country and the government detained thousands of civilians from the Tigrayan ethnic group.
But weeks later Abiy pulled off a stunning military reversal, halting the rebel march less than 100 miles from the capital, then forcing them to retreat hundreds of miles to their mountainous stronghold in Tigray.
He succeeded partly by mobilizing ordinary citizens to take up arms to block the Tigrayan advance. However, his fortunes were greatly boosted by a fleet of armed drones, recently imported from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran, that pummeled the Tigrayan forces, according to a report by The New York Times last week.
A drone strike on a flour mill in May Tsebri, a town in the northwest of Ethiopia (Tigray region), reportedly killed 17 people on Monday January 10 and injured dozens more, according to eyewitnesses.
The January 10 bombings came just days after a similar attack on a camp for displaced persons in Dedebit killed 59 and injured nearly 140 on Friday January 7.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 20, 2022
New revelations about atrocities by Somali soldiers in Ethiopia’s Tigray war are casting a spotlight on an emerging military alliance that has reshaped the Horn of Africa, weakening Western influence in a strategically important region.
The Globe and Mail has obtained eyewitness accounts of massacres by Somali troops embedded with Eritrean forces in Tigray in the early months of the war. The new evidence raises disturbing questions about a covert military alliance between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia that has inflicted death and destruction on the rebellious Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.
Officially, the three governments have denied any alliance, and Somalia has denied that its troops were deployed in Tigray. But The Globe’s investigation has provided, for the first time, extensive details of civilian killings committed by Somali soldiers allied with Eritrean forces in the region.
Gebretsadik, a 52-year-old farmer from the village of Zebangedena in northwestern Tigray, said the dusty roads of his village were strewn with the bodies of decapitated clergymen in December, 2020, a few weeks after the beginning of the war.
Some of the priests and monks were people he recognized. Somali soldiers, working alongside Eritrean forces who had captured the village, had targeted churches and killed the clergymen, he said.
“They slaughtered them like chickens,” he told The Globe.
The Somali and Eritrean troops stayed in the village until late February, according to Gebretsadik, who often fled to the bushes and mountains around the village to escape attacks during that time.
The Globe talked to dozens of survivors who had witnessed atrocities in six Tigrayan villages where Somali troops had been stationed between early December, 2020 and late February, 2021. The Globe is not publishing their full names or their current locations because their lives could be in danger.
The survivors said the Somali troops were wearing Eritrean military uniforms, but they were clearly identifiable as Somali because of their language and their physical appearance. Unlike the Eritreans, they could not speak any Tigrinya, the language spoken in Tigray and much of Eritrea. The witnesses said they also heard the Eritrean troops referring to them as Somalis.
Last year, United Nations and U.S. officials said they had received information that Somali troops were present in Tigray, but few details were known. Somali parents held several protests in Mogadishu and other places in Somalia last year, complaining that their sons had been ordered to fight in Tigray after being originally sent to Eritrea for military training. Hundreds of Somali soldiers were reportedly killed in the fighting.
Up to 10,000 Somali troops were deployed in Tigray, according to current and former Ethiopian officials who spoke to The Globe. The Globe is not identifying the individuals because they face the threat of reprisals for their comments.
Until now, few details were known about the activities of the Somalis in Tigray. But the survivors told The Globe that the Somali troops had massacred hundreds of civilians in villages controlled by the Eritrean military, often beheading them. No Ethiopian troops were present in the villages, they said.
“They showed no mercy,” said Berket, a 32-year-old farmer in the Tigrayan village of Mai Harmaz. “The Eritreans interrogate you before they kill you. But the Somali troops were full of contempt for that.”
One of his neighbours, a 76-year-old priest, was among those killed by the Somali troops, he said.
Kibrom, a 37-year-old man who fled the village of Hamlo in January, said the beheadings by Somali troops became an “everyday reality” in his village.
“The churches were inhabited by the troops,” he said. “They burned the holy books and sacred objects. Churches became the most unsafe places. Villagers stopped going to churches because the Somali troops would kill anyone they found in churches.”
According to former Ethiopian officials, most of the Somali troops crossed the border from Eritrea into western Tigray in the early weeks of the war. They said the Somali troops, under the command of the Eritrean army, had already been stationed in trenches near the border before the war began.
“They undoubtedly have participated in the war,” said Gebremeskel Kassa, who was chief of staff in the interim administration in Tigray that the Ethiopian government appointed after seizing control of the region in the early months of the war. He later fled abroad, fearing for his safety when Ethiopian officials criticized him for Tigrayan military gains in the region.
Mr. Gebremeskel said he knew about the Somali deployment from his travels in Tigray and his private meetings with top Ethiopian officials and military generals.
“All of us who were top officials had knowledge of that,” he told The Globe. “The Somali troops took training in the Eritrean camp of Sawa as a result of a military deal between the three governments before the war started.”
When the deployment became politically controversial in Somalia, especially after the protests by the parents and questions by parliamentarians, the Somali soldiers were sent back to Eritrea, he said. They completed their withdrawal by March, the officials said.
The unofficial military alliance among Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, which is believed to date back to secret agreements after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in Ethiopia in 2018, is a further blow to the declining influence of Western governments in the Horn of Africa.
Eritrea had already been long isolated on the international stage, but Ethiopia and Somalia had close relations with the United States and other Western governments in the past. Ethiopia’s relations with the West have deteriorated since the Tigray war began, largely as a result of Western pressure to halt the war.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian ruler of his country for nearly three decades, is a key player in the three-country alliance. “He sees this as an opportunity to reshape the whole of the Horn of Africa in his direction,” said Martin Plaut, a British-based Eritrea expert and commentator.
“Getting these Somali troops involved was just the first instalment of this much longer, much more important relationship that he was trying to build in which he would be the king, with allies both in Somalia and Ethiopia,” Mr. Plaut told The Globe.
“He has pursued his ambition of destroying the Tigrayans since the 1970s. To achieve his ends, he would like to establish a transnational relationship in the Horn that allows the individual states to exist, but to support each other, while crushing local movements.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on November 24, 2021
💭 History repeating itself
Ethiopia’s border fight: The war against al-Shabaab
🔥 While Ethiopia’s conflict rages in the north of the country, another enemy is looking to exploit the situation in the east.
Somali militants from the Al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab are trying to expand their area of influence and they’ve increased their activity across Ethiopia’s border.
Locals want the government to provide resources and tighten up security to stop the militants entering the country.
👉 The handwriting is there on the wall for anyone who will see it.
It happened 500 years ago with the 1st Jihad campaign of Ahmed (Gragn) ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi and Ottoman Turkey, it’s happening now courtesy of Abiy Ahmed (Gragn) Ali. We won’t be surprised if the whole the massacre was planned and carried out with the help of Mohammed ‘Farmajo’ (Somali) + Mustafa Mohammed Omar (President of the Somali Regional State in Ethiopia, who is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and brother-in-Jihad to evil Abiy Ahmed) + Minnesotan Somali Jihadi Ilhan Omar who went to see cruel Isaias Afewerki in Eritrea, two years ago. She even visited the St. Mary Church of Asmara. Wow!
❖ It’s Jihad against Ethiopia’s Holy of the Hollies St. Mary of Zion Church:
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 9, 2021
My Note: The fact that a UAE news media is reporting this is very interesting. What are they up to, folks? The Oromos, Amharas and Afaris aren’t enough, The Evil Trio of Hades &Captain Hook a.k.a Isaias Afewerki + Abiy Ahmed + Mohammed ‘Farmajo’ are importing Muslim Ben Amir, Somalis and Emiratis to massacre and rape Christian Tigrayans – to destroy their body and soul. This is satanic Jihad
Report sounds alarm on grave human rights breaches committed by Eritrean army
A UN report due to be submitted to the General Assembly this month says Somali soldiers are fighting alongside Eritrean troops in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region.
The 17-page-document prepared by UN special rapporteur Mohamed Babiker discusses the presence of Somali troops in Tigray – an issue that adds another dimension to the continuing conflict and growing humanitarian crisis.
“In addition to reports of the involvement of Eritrean troops in the Tigray conflict, the special rapporteur also received information and reports that Somali soldiers were moved from military training camps in Eritrea to the front line in Tigray, where they accompanied Eritrean troops as they crossed the Ethiopian border,” the report said.
It also mentions the presence of Somali fighters near the Ethiopian city of Aksum, a Unesco World Heritage site that has been indiscriminately shelled since the fighting started last November.
The governments of Somalia and Eritrea have denied the participation of Somali soldiers in the conflict.
The UN report also points to grave abuses of human rights committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops in Tigray, including the looting of Saint Mary’s Hospital and Aksum University Referral Hospital.
The report says the Eritrean military has committed “deliberate attacks against civilians and summary executions, indiscriminate attacks, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary detention, destruction and looting of civilian property and displacement and abduction of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers”.
The report makes recommendations to the Eritrean government that includes providing information on the presence of its troops in Tigray and answering the allegations of human rights abuses.
It asks Asmara “to ensure that protective measures are taken in areas under its effective territorial control to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law by Eritrean troops present in Tigray”.
The fighting in Tigray began eight months ago when Ethiopian and Eritrean troops alongside allied militias began an offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
The conflict has displaced about two million civilians and left 5.2 million in urgent need, the US said.
Human rights organisations including Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International have documented incidents of sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and massacres in Tigray.
David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, said on Tuesday that “time is running out” and called on all parties to allow free humanitarian access to the region to avert a catastrophe.
Cameron Hudson, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre, said there had been rumours of a Somali military presence in the region for a while, but this was the first time the UN has mentioned them.
He said the allegations could not be fully investigated because the UN was unable to gain full access to the region.
Mr Hudson said the more concerning issue in the UN report was Eritrea’s defiance and desire to increase its political and military influence in the area.
This pointed to “behind-the-scenes efforts of [Eritrean President] Isaias Afwerki to increase his influence across the region and the talk of a formal confederation between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia”, Mr Hudson told The National.
“If this proves true, then it would demonstrate the dangerous power Isaias has to organise allies and direct them against his enemies, in this case the TPLF.”
He said such a development “would be very unsettling to Sudan, Djibouti and Kenya, specifically, all of whom are concerned by growing Eritrean influence in the region”.
Despite outside pressure and pledges by Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that Eritrean troops would withdraw from Tigray, Asmara has not pulled its fighters.
But the UN could exert pressure on Mogadishu to withdraw its forces.
“Somalia is the most susceptible to outside pressure given the budget support and security assistance it continues to get,” Mr Hudson said.
By choosing unilateralism over negotiation, Abiy may have cemented his legacy not as a Nobel Peace Laureate, but rather as the man who ended a country whose history dates back millennia.