From Al Jazeera Online

Ethnic Ogaden fighters in Ethiopia have launched an offensive in the southeastern Somali region and claim to have recaptured seven towns from government forces.

In a statement released early on Saturday, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said its attacks were launched across a broad front and had begun on November 10.

“The operation involved thousands of ONLF troops and resulted in  two days of heavy fighting. A significant number of Ethiopian troops  have been killed and their military hardware captured or destroyed,”  it said.

The ONLF said its forces entered the towns of Obolka, Hamaro, Higlaaley, Yucub, Galadiid, Boodhaano and Gunogabo – where government forces had deployed troops and positioned military hardware.

“ONLF forces were warmly welcomed by the population in these  areas and are administering medical care to those civilians killed  by retreating Ethiopian occupation forces,” the statement claimed.

The Ethiopian government has not responded to the statement.

Formed in 1984, the ONLF is fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia’s oil-rich Ogaden region – which they say has been marginalised by the government in Addis Ababa.

The Ethiopian military launched a counter-offensive against ONLF rebels after they attacked a Chinese-run oil venture in Ogaden in April  2007, killing 74 people.

In April, Ethiopia said it had significantly weakened the the anti-government force, a claim ONLF rejects.

Comment from Leicester Islamic Standard’s Editor:

Most of you are by now stratching your heads and going Oga…where?

Ogaden! it is a region of Somalia or what was once Somali land before Somalia was invaded by Britain about a little over a century ago and it was carved up and given in little pieces to British Allies including this bit which went to Britains uncle Tom allies in Africa – Ethiopia.

The Somali Muslims in this region suffer terrible oppression, collective punishment including gang raping by Ethiopian soldiers but this is a forgotten war even amongst Muslims but the least we can do is remember these brothers and sisters in our Du’a and ask Allah to aid them and help them achieve victory over the Ethiopian Kuffar and their vile secular law.

The sooner Ash-Shabab are successful, the sooner they can help the rest of the Somali people free themselves from the oppression and kufr of man-made law and the Muslim children and women of Ogaden will be free from the risk of rape and murder.

For those into famines and famine politics, here’s one for you…

And more of the same

And here is more news on Ethiopia’s second insurgency waged by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). The Oromo Liberation Front in the southern parts of the country is the other major thorn in Addis Ababa’s flesh. For a man into military victories and invasion of other states I must say I am disappointed in how Zenawi has handled both so far.

By Douglas McGill

Okwa Omot is sleeping safely in a warm bed at his home in Washington, D.C. this week.

That is something of a miracle considering that only a week ago – and for 107 days before that – he was sleeping on freezing cold concrete floors in Ethiopian prisons, accused of treason and threatened with execution.

The 32-year-old hotel housekeeper and U.S. citizen had traveled to Ethiopia in July to visit family members he hadn’t seen for nine years.

Instead, he was arrested for inciting revolution and shut away in prison.

He was released last Tuesday after friends in Minnesota and U.S. Embassy officials in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopia capital, worked for weeks to convince Ethiopian authorities that Omot posed no threat to their country.

The prison system of Ethiopia is one of the world’s great, dark secrets.

The Ethiopian government denies that systematic human rights abuses occur there, even as human rights groups, with support from the U.S. State Department, claim that Ethiopia runs one of the most brutal penal systems on earth – a system that is a linchpin in a dictatorship that rules Ethiopia through raw fear under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Omot’s experience supports that bleak view of Ethiopia’s prisons, and the story of his three-month ordeal offers a rare inside glimpse into that world.

Ethnic Cleansing

On July 26, Omot was arrested near the village of Dimma, Ethiopia, by nine Ethiopian police who grabbed him under a tree where he was resting.

“We heard you were coming,” the police told him. “We know that in America you plot against Ethiopia, but we have our supporters in America too, and they told us to expect you.”

Omot is a member of the Anuak tribe, whose indigenous territory  straddles southeast Sudan and western Ethiopia. Since 1991, when the present Ethiopian regime took power, the Anuak have been the target of intense ethnic cleansing by the Ethiopian government according to Human Rights Watch and other groups.

Omot fled that ethnic cleansing in 1992, spending three years in refugee camps in Kenya before settling in the U.S. in 1995. He became a U.S. citizen last year.

Never politically active, Omot raised suspicions on his recent trip by entering Ethiopia not through airport customs in Addis Ababa, but rather by the traditional Anuak way, which is walking across the border from an Anuak village in Sudan, to the Ethiopian Anuak village of Dimma.

Old-Timers

Omot feared for his life every moment in prison.

‘“You will die like a dog now there is no one to defend you,”’ Omot recalls his jailers in Dimma taunting him. “They said, ‘In America, black people are treated like slaves and there are no white people who will come from America to save your life.’ I told them, ‘Did you see that in America we now have a black president?’ They said ‘Shut up!’”

After five days in Dimma, Omot was moved to a bigger prison in the town of Gambella, the capital of the western state of the same name, and the heart of the Anuak’s indigenous homeland.

The Gambella prison has for many years housed hundreds of Anuak men accused of plotting against Ethiopia.

Although Omot was not able to count the number of prisoners himself, old-timers in the prison told him there were 475 prisoners being held there, of whom only 20 or so were not Anuak.

“One night a group of soldiers came to me and said ‘We are going to teach you something,’” Omot recalls. “They blindfolded me and shoved me into a pickup truck. When they took off my blindfold they pushed me to the ground and I was surrounded by dead bodies. They were mostly skeletons but with pieces of clothing still stuck on.

‘The soldiers told me, ‘Unless you confess you will look like those bodies. You will die just like they did. We will kill you right now.’”

Independent Reports

Instead of collapsing, Omot became calm.

“‘A man can never live to 200 years,’” Omot told his captors. “‘Life comes to an end for everyone. I have nothing to tell you. If you want to kill me, kill me.’ They put the blindfold back on and drove me back to the prison.”

Another day in Gambella, Omot was snatched from his cell and taken to the office of Omot Olom, the governor of the region.

Olom is deeply feared among the Anuak as a planner of one of the worst massacres ever carried out against their tribe, on Dec. 13, 2003, when uniformed Ethiopian soldiers moving door to door executed some 425 Anuak men and boys in Gambella on a single day.

The fact of the massacre, and Olom’s involvement in it, have been corroborated by independent reports including a 2004 report by Genocide Watch, and a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch connecting Olom to “crimes against humanity” committed against the Anuak.

Now meeting Olom face-to-face, Omot again feared for his life.

“He called me an American terrorist,” Omot said. “He said, ‘Omot, we know your history. You killed Ethiopian people before you left to live in America, and you have been sending money from America to kill Ethiopians. And now you are coming back to support terrorists living in Gambella. We are either going to kill you or destroy your passport.’”

Maekelawi Prison

A ray of hope appeared for Omot when a consular official from the U.S. embassy, who had been alerted to Omot’s arrest by Anuak friends living in Minnesota, flew from Addis Ababa to visit him in the Gambella prison.

That visit saved his life, Omot said. Thanks to the embassy’s intervention, he was transferred to the Maekelawi federal prison in Addis Ababa, where U.S. embassy officials were able to visit him more often.

But his trials were not yet over, as Maekelawi is an infamous dungeon of horrors.

Tales of torture, extrajudicial execution, solitary confinement in shackles, and brutal conditions at Maekelawi are legion in Ethiopia.

Tens of thousands of street protestors, journalists, and opposition politicians over the years have spent long stretches in Maekelawi – sometimes never leaving.

Lights Off

At Maekelawi, Omot was thrown into a dark basement cell, which he shared with another inmate.

“It was cold as a refrigerator,” Omot said. “I thought I was going to die from the cold. I had one thin blanket but I needed much more to stay warm.”

In his 17 days underground, the dim overhead lights mysteriously went off on four different occasions, after which each time he heard shuffling sounds in the darkness.

His cellmate told him that when a person died in prison, the lights were turned off while the body was picked up and taken away.

Michael Gonzales, a U.S. embassy spokesman in Addis Ababa, confirmed that Omot is a U.S. citizen and that a consular official met with him in Gambella and the Maekelawi prison in Addis, to win his release last week. Senior U.S. embassy officials also contacted Ethiopian officials on Omot’s behalf, Gonzales said.

Apee Jobi, an Anuak American who lives in Brooklyn Park, MN first alerted the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia about Omot’s arrest in early August, and worked with embassy officials towards his release.

Jobi said Omot’s arrest and imprisonment was standard operating procedure today in Ethiopia, as part of the system of fear that supports the regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Many ethnic groups in Ethiopia are suppressed using these tactics, Jobi said.

“From the point of view of the government, loyalty means innocence,” Jobi said. “But if you are a stranger, you are guilty.  But it doesn’t mean you have committed a crime.”

Copyright @ 2009 The McGill Report

The buildup to Ethiopia’s 2010 parliamentary elections has drawn coverage here and elsewhere, but Ethiopian politics also involves armed conflict: in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, largely populated by ethnic Somalis, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) periodically mounts offensives against the government. Their latest campaign has, if reports are to be believed, turned into a serious rebellion.

Last week, ONLF fighters said they had captured seven towns in the Ogaden. The rebel movement claims local townspeople have welcomed their presence and that it has inflicted substantial casualties on Ethiopian government forces.

EthioBlog writes that western media sources have fallen victim to unsubstantiated ONLF propaganda, which is at least somewhat unfair considering that outlets like the BBC and AFP qualified their statements about ONLF victories. Whatever the case, EthioBlog reminds us that the story is still evolving, and that we should all be cautious about whose accounts we accept.

The situation in the Ogaden raises serious questions. What effects would instability in the Ogaden have? Would an active rebellion influence the election process in Ethiopia, either by causing a clampdown by the government or by exposing deeper fault lines in the country? Would increased violence near the border with Somalia stir up greater conflict inside Somalia, or raise hopes among hardline Somali groups that they might be able to unite ethnic Somalis into a broader polity? I’ve had difficulty getting reliable information about the ONLF, but all these issues are worth considering.

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ONLF: Ogaden Somali tortured to death in Puntland

Ogaden National Liberation Front Press Release

The Puntland Administration detained five Ogaden Somali civilians in Bassaso, who were travelling from Yemen to Ogaden on 18th October 2009.

Both the Puntland militia and Ethiopian Security extensively tortured the detainees and then one of the detainees was abducted and taken to a prison in Harar.

On November 2 2009, one of the prisoners in Bossaso died of internal wounds sustained during the extensive torture subjected to him.

This ill will towards Ogaden Somali people has being going on for a while in Puntland. On different occasions, the Puntland Administration had put in harm’s way civilians as ONLF members in violation of international law and customary laws among the Somali people. The Ogaden Somali people have

a right to wage a legitimate struggle to attain their rights from the Ethiopian regime, which is marginalizing and committing war crimes against them. Such cowardly acts by the likes of the Puntland administration will not deter the will of the Ogaden Somalis to attain their self-determinations and basic Human Rights.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Ogaden Somali people on those occasions had opted for restrain and dialogue in order to convince Puntland to act in a civilized manner and respect the right of the Ogaden people. Unfortunately, the Puntland Administration instead of mending its wayward ways, it further escalated its crimes by not only killing and torturing Ogaden civilians but publicly declaring its ill intentions towards the Ogaden Somalis.

Henceforth the Ogaden National Liberation Front will take all measures necessary to protect the lives and interests of the Ogaden Somali people while the Puntland Administration will be responsible for any dire consequences of its criminal acts.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front

Les rebelles du front national de libération de l’Ogaden, région très isolée dans l’est du pays, ont menacé les compagnies pétrolières qui souhaitent travailler dans cette région d’Ethiopie frontalière de la Somalie.Les rebelles ont déclarés que “L’ONLF rappelle fermement aux compagnies multinationales que l’Ogaden situé au sud du pays, est une zone de guerre et qu’elles ne doivent pas y conduire des affaires tant qu’il n’y a pas de solution politique au conflit et l’armée de l’ONLF ne sera responsable d’aucun dommage collatéral qui découlerait d’affrontements avec l’armée éthiopienne ou l’appareil sécuritaire”.

Carte de l’Ethiopie et région de l’Ogaden

Le gouvernement éthiopien avait exclu toute idée de négociation avec l’ONLF en avril 2009. L’ONLF rappele la convention de l’ONU sur les droits économiques, sociaux et culturels qui précise clairement que “tous les peuples ont droit à l’autodétermination et à disposer librement de leur richesses et ressources naturelles”. L’ONLF  demande à l’ONU de faire respecter ces droits fondamentaux.