Wayane is playing Game

ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia has arrested suspects linked to last week’s bomb blast near the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa that killed six people, including a US national, state media reported yesterday.

Ethiopian police did not specify the number of arrests, but blamed the rebel Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and its arch-foe Eritrea for last Tuesday’s blast in a minibus near the entrance to the foreign ministry. Seven people were injured.

"Some of the alleged terrorists that blew a minibus taxi with an explosive on May 20 in Addis Ababa were put under custody," Ethiopian News Agency quoted police and security officials as saying.

Evidence indicates "that the terrorist act was coordinated by the Eritrean regime and the anti-peace group ’Oromo Liberation Front’ which is an instrument of the regime," it added.

The US victim was believed to be a teacher at the University of Addis Ababa, from which the minibus had originally departed.

Three people were killed and 18 wounded in bomb blasts at petrol stations in Addis Ababa on April 14.

The authorities routinely accuse OLF, the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front and Eritrea, for such attacks.

America is reluctant to put Oromo Liberation Front, as terrorists

Ethiopia and the United States (from the Economist)

Economist

A loveless liaison

Apr 3rd 2008

THE alliance between the United States and Ethiopia was born of pragmatism. In another time, they might have been enemies. Ethiopians do not like American soldiers tramping on their soil. Americans dislike Ethiopia’s bad human-rights record. Local elections due this month are a case in point. Ethiopia’s opposition, emasculated by the long imprisonment of its leaders (most of whom were pardoned last year) and weakened by its own divisions, will almost certainly be crushed in an unfair contest. “It’s going to be a stitch-up,” says a Western diplomat. “Control is what this government is all about.”

America jealously guards information about its more discreet military activities in Ethiopia, while advertising its soldiers’ do-gooding: digging wells, vaccinating animals and so on. Officially, it contributes only a sliver of Ethiopia’s $300m defence budget. Unofficially, it may have helped pay for the rising costs of Ethiopia’s army, one of Africa’s largest. Some say America has a secret base in eastern Ethiopia to move CIA, special forces and “friendlies” into next-door Somalia; America says not.

What is certain is that the closest military ties between the two countries involve Somalia, which America fears may have already become an incubator of Islamist terrorism. That is why America backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia at the end of 2006. Its own air raids on supposed terrorist targets in Somalia have relied on Ethiopian intelligence, though nearly all appear to have missed. American officials praise the Ethiopian troops who are still in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battered capital, as peacekeepers; most Somalis see them as occupiers.

Leftist hardliners in Ethiopia’s government think that its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is doing the Bush administration’s bidding. That is not how the Americans portray it. Regardless of Mr Zenawi, who must answer to his party’s central committee and is anyway due to step down in 2010, the Pentagon wants to make Ethiopia a bulwark in a region where Somalia is a dangerously failed state, Sudan and Eritrea are pariahs and Kenya has troubles of its own. Ethiopia has other selling points. The African Union is based there. Its ancient Christian history stirs American evangelicals. Its poverty and population (at 80m, Africa’s third-largest) attract development-minded foreigners.

But Ethiopia is too poor to be rated an A-list client state. Even American hawks admit that selling guns to one of the planet’s hungriest countries, the “cradle of humanity” to boot, would look bad. America says the little it gives Ethiopia’s forces is “non-lethal”: boots, night-vision goggles, medical kits and so forth. It would like to do more to train Ethiopian troops for peacekeeping work. A measure of America’s realism is the way it has allowed Ethiopia to buy arms from North Korea.

So differences remain. Many in Ethiopia’s 1.2m-strong diaspora in the United States have lobbied their congressional representatives to condemn Mr Zenawi’s government as tyrannical. A bill passed by the House of Representatives last year called for curbs on aid to Ethiopia, but is unlikely to be passed by the Senate. Yet it points to a division between those in Washington (mainly Republicans) wanting to reward Ethiopia for fighting terrorism in Somalia and those (mainly Democrats) wishing to punish it for its human-rights abuses at home.

Ethiopia, for its part, had hoped for stronger support from America over its border dispute with Eritrea. It wants the administration to list two Ethiopian separatist groups, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, as terrorists. America is reluctant. The process is complex; it has taken a long time to complete listing the Shabab, a Somali jihadist group. The Ogaden and Oromo fronts will go on fund-raising among their supporters in America, just as the Irish Republican Army once did.

Aid from European Union countries will probably keep flowing, however patent Ethiopia’s human-rights violations. China will invest more. But Ethiopia’s luck may run out. After several years of good harvests, a famine may set in this year. With 8m of its people likely to depend on food aid, much of it paid for by the Americans, Ethiopia still needs America a lot more than America needs it.

Hundred killed during clashes between Gumuz and Oromos in Ethiopia

Ethnic clashes erupted in Ethiopia between the neighboring Gumuz and Oromo leaving hundreds killed and thousands displaced in Eastern Wellag of Oromia state.

The clash started on Saturday May 18, 2008, when armed Gumuz crossed over from their regional state to Oromia State and attacked villages before day break”, residents told Sudan Tribune.

Government officials have declined giving the official number of the victims of the conflict so far. Residents said that over 130 people died and about 8000 people have been internally displaced.

People died from both sides of the tribes but eyewitnesses have said, "the attacks were preplanned and nocturnal and the Oromos were caught unprepared ; as result, the majority of the people who lost their lives and whose houses were burned down with children inside were Oromos."

Oromos further accused the federal government of manipulating and arming the Gumuz to attack their neighboring Oromo over land claim.

The Oromo residents also suspect both the regional sate of Benishangul Gumuz and central government have role in arming and mobilizing the Gumuz to attack them.

Benishangul Gumuz state is located in the border with the eastern Sudan state of Blue Nile.

The federal police and Oromia regional police have not intervened to avert the armed attacks, residents claimed. They further say that the conflict is still going on and people are dying, houses and properties are being burned down daily.

For over a century, the two tribes share the same history of repression under successive Ethiopian regimes and lived together peacefully.

The Oromo are the largest single ethnic group in Ethiopia, at 32.1% of the population according to the 1994 census, and today numbering around 25 million.

They are divided into two major branches that break down into an assortment of clan families, however a number of ethnic based political organizations have been formed to promote the interests of the Oromo. Some of it seek to create an independent Oromo nation, some using armed force.

Giving a land that belongs to one group to the other to incite conflict has been seen in many neighboring Southern region since the current regime came to power in 1991. Land is also the cause of the conflict between the invading Sudanese Army in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.

Dictator accused international media and human rights groups

Dictator Meles confined his remarks to six scripted questions submitted by lawmakers. An attempt by one opposition politician to raise another point was overruled.

Dictator gave a detailed defense of the behavior of Woyanne troops supporting Somalia’s transitional government.

Several human rights groups have accused the soldiers of numerous atrocities during their nearly 18 months in Somalia, including an attack on a Mogadishu mosque last month that left at least 10 people dead.

In an e-mail to reporters Wednesday, a group called the Ogden Human Rights Committee also charged that civilians from Ethiopia’s Somali region are being forcibly repatriated, after fleeing to Somalia to escape a harsh Ethiopian counterinsurgency campaign.

Dictator Meles dismissed those reports as part of a smear campaign aimed at forcing the troops to leave Somalia. He vowed to keep them there as long as necessary.

“The international media and so-called human rights organizations do say all sorts of things about our military and ourselves with a tremendous smear campaign,” he said. “They do tarnish our reputation, but we will not be able to get rid of these tarnishing and smears because we leave Somalia. We should know those smears are not happening because those organizations don’t know the truth, but it’s because they choose to do so.”

The Ethiopian leader also addressed other regional issues, including a border dispute with Sudan, the recent incursion by Eritrean soldiers into Djibouti, and a water shortage in the capital.

But opposition politicians, diplomatic observers and journalists expressed surprise that several critical issues on the minds of Ethiopians went unmentioned. Among them are the recent spate of terrorist bombings in Addis Ababa, and a rapidly developing food emergency threatening the lives of tens of thousands of children?

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF this week warned that as many as six million Ethiopian children are at risk of acute malnutrition, 126,000 of them in urgent need of therapeutic care to avoid starvation.

That word coincided with an announcement by the World Food Program that it is in danger of running out of emergency nutrition supplements, and word from the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA that the number of Ethiopians in urgent need of food aid has increased by one million over the past month.

Dictator Meles’s comments in parliament came little more than 12 hours after a terrorist bomb destroyed a taxi minivan outside Ethiopia’s foreign ministry building, killing at least five people. Last month, bombs at two gas stations in Addis killed a total of three people.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but police attribute all three attacks and at least two other bomb blasts in the capital in recent month to terrorists.

In his comments to lawmakers Wednesday, Mr. Meles said several groups are ‘bent on causing havoc in our country’. He mentioned Horn of Africa rival Eritrea, as well as rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the regional Oromo Liberation Front

Dictator Meles Zenawi has accused international media and human rights groups of conducting a smear campaign against Woyanne troops in Somalia. Speaking to parliament, dictator Meles vowed that the troops would remain as long as needed to support the transitional government in Mogadishu. VOA’s Peter Heinlein listened to the dictators’s remarks and reports they were notable as much for what was not said as for what was.

U.S. says own citizen killed in Ethiopian blast

WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. citizen died in an explosion aboard a minibus taxi in Addis Ababa that Ethiopian police are blaming on extremists, the State Department said on Wednesday.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed Tuesday's death but declined to provide the name of the victim or details because the person's family was still being notified.

"The embassy confirms one American citizen was killed in yesterday's minibus explosion. Apparently there was an explosion on a minibus that this person was on," said McCormack.

Asked whether foul play was suspected, McCormack said: "It sounds like there is something more than just a faulty gas line."

Police in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said a device had been planted by "suspected terrorists" on the minibus as it was traveling between the Hilton hotel and the foreign ministry.

It was the latest in a string of explosions in Addis Ababa that Ethiopia has blamed on extremists backed by its neighbor and rival Eritrea. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Sue Pleming; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Explosion rocks Ethiopian capital, three dead: police

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An explosion on a minibus shook central Addis Ababa on Tuesday, killing three people and wounding nine, Ethiopian police said.

All the dead and wounded were on the bus, police said.

"Three people were killed and nine seriously injured by an explosion from a device planted by suspected terrorists inside a minibus taxi," said Addis Ababa police spokesman Densash Hailu.

The blast on a road between the Hilton hotel and the foreign ministry was the latest in a string of explosions in Addis Ababa that Ethiopia has blamed on extremists backed by its neighbor and rival Eritrea.

Scores of policemen and soldiers rushed to the scene, cordoning off the area as fire engines arrived.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government routinely refers to the Eritrean government, with whom it fought a 1998-2000 border war, as terrorists.

Eritrea routinely denies the allegations, saying Meles faces an array of internal opponents.

A taxi driver who asked not to be named said he saw rescuers pulling out several dead people.

"I saw maybe 3 or 4 bodies taken away," the driver said.

Last month, Ethiopia blamed rebels backed by Eritrea when two bombs at petrol stations killed three people and wounded more than a dozen in the capital.

Eritrea and Ethiopia often trade accusations over their border dispute, in which some 70,000 died.

The two countries have been deadlocked over their 1,000 km (620-mile) frontier since a 2002 border ruling and analysts fear even small incidents could trigger renewed hostilities.

Earlier this year Eritrea obliged a U.N. peacekeeping force to quit the disputed border and on May 1 called on the Security Council to wind up the mission altogether.

The 1,700-strong force, known as UNMEE, had patrolled the border since 2000. It pulled out in February, saying Eritrea had cut off fuel supplies, and that most of its troops have returned to their countries of origin.

www.reuters.com

91 Ethiopian soldiers killed in Somalia

Roadside bombs and heavy clashes have reportedly killed at least 91 Ethiopian troops near Somalia's Lower Shabelle region, Weyne town.

Ethiopian soldiers, leaving Afgoye and Baidoa towns were targeted by roadside bombs planted earlier by the fighters of the Union of Islamic Courts, Press TV correspondent reported on Sunday.

The blasts left at least 60 Ethiopians killed and completely wrecked their three military vehicles, the report added.

The fighters then, using bazookas killed several others in a bloody battle which lasted for nearly 3 hours.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Abdi Rahim Isse Addow, confirmed that UIC fighters have seized the area. He claimed that more than 144 Ethiopian soldiers were killed in the clashes.

MP/RA

Children are dieing of hunger in Oromia

By Barry Malone

SIRARO, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopian mother Ayantu Tamon has lost a child to hunger every year for the last four and now cradles her severely malnourished and weakened three-year-old son Hirbu in her arms.

"I just hope God lets him live," she says. "I have only two children left."

Hirbu is being fed by drip at Rophi Catholic Church in Siraro, a remote farming area 350 km (220 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa.

He is one of 233 children who have been brought starving to the small Sisters of Mercy church in just the last three weeks.

The U.N. Children's Agency UNICEF says a recent drought in Ethiopia has caused a food crisis and estimates 126,000 children are suffering from severe malnutrition.

But the government and aid agencies are struggling to find money to help, with international food prices rising sharply.

UNICEF says 6 million Ethiopian children under the age of five may be at risk of malnutrition.

And the U.N. World Food Programme estimates 3.4 million of Ethiopia's more than 80 million people will need food relief from July to September.

"The great tragedy is that Ethiopia had been making some impressive improvements before this drought," said Viviane Van Steirteghem, UNICEF deputy representative in the country.

Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation, had been cited as an example to other African countries after reducing its infant mortality rate to 123 deaths from every 1,000 births from 166 in just five years.

"UNFORTUNATE CHAIN"

Innovative schemes to reduce the impact of drought and train local people as health workers were also introduced and much praised internationally.

"It's a chain of unfortunate events that has led to this," says Lisetta Trebbi, Head of Relief the United Nation's World Food Programme in Ethiopia.

"We have drought -- a really poor rainy season -- and, of course, we have high food prices worldwide."

The global rise in food prices has hit the WFP hard.

The organisation now needs to raise $147 million to tackle Ethiopia's needs. Aid workers say the money isn't coming in time, with donors concentrating on disaster-hit China and Myanmar.

At Rophi Catholic Church, mothers hold their sick children in their laps, sitting on dirty sheets sweltering in the heat inside makeshift tents. "It's not like the normal sound of children crying," said one nun. "It's desperate."

The Sisters of Mercy and the local government were caring for the children who started arriving at the rate of about 20 a day to a height of 74 last Friday alone.

"There are more people out there who would normally depend on a harvest in July," Trebbi said.

"But, because of the drought, they will not now get that harvest and their food reserves will be gone. This situation is deteriorating very rapidly."

Amnesty Intl: Ethiopian troops commit atrocities in Somalia

By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.

In a new report, Amnesty International detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in the Horn of Africa country and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed.

Ethiopia's government said the report was unbalanced and "categorically wrong."

The London-based rights group said testimony it received suggested all parties to Somalia's conflict have committed war crimes. But it singled out Ethiopian troops, who are in the country to back Somalia's U.N.-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations.

Somalia's shaky transitional government invited Ethiopian forces into the country to help it battle Islamic insurgents. Somalia has been torn apart by years of violence between the militias of rival clan warlords.

The rights group said it obtained scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops that Somalis have described as "slaughtering like goats." In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother," the report says.

Ethiopia's Information Minister Berhanu Hailu said the report was "totally unfounded."

"Normally when they report they do not balance it out. They have to go and see the reality for themselves. They shouldn't report from abroad saying this is happening," he told The Associated Press in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Amnesty said some 6,000 civilians were reported killed and more than 600,000 were forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year.

"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured. Looting is widespread and entire neighborhoods are being destroyed," Michelle Kagari, Amnesty's deputy director for Africa, said in a statement from Nairobi that accompanied the report.

The report quotes testimony from some 75 witnesses as well as scores of workers from non-governmental organizations. People are identified only by their first names to protect them from retaliation.

In one testimony, Haboon, 56, said her neighbor's 17-year-old daughter was raped by Ethiopian troops. The girl's brothers tried to defend their sister, but the soldiers beat them and gouged their eyes out with a bayonet, Haboon was quoted as telling Amnesty.

"The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable," Kagari said.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. Last year, Islamist militants took control of most of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu. Troops from neighboring Ethiopia deployed in December 2006 and ejected the Islamists from the capital.

But since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian allies and the Islamist insurgents.

Amnesty urged the U.N., African Union and others to act to halt the violence.