IRIN Special Report on the Ogaden,

Introduction Conflict and political marginalisation has plagued the Ogaden since it formally became part of Ethiopia after World War II, increasing poverty and hardship in one of the most isolated and unforgiving desert environments in the Horn of Africa. With its capital, Gode, closer to the Somali capital Mogadishu than to Addis Ababa, the southeastern Ogaden has always had an ambiguous political identity, and a strong sentiment for secession remains alive among its ethnic Somali population. Cyclical climatic extremes of drought and floods have regularly pushed struggling pastoralists to the very edge; and civil wars in Somalia and Ethiopia have propelled huge numbers of refugees and returnees over the common border. While receiving only intermittent deliveries of emergency food aid, insurgencies and military operations under successive Ethiopian regimes have prevented the most basic development. As a result, the Horn of Africa drought has hit the vulnerable Ogaden hard. Background history The entire Ogaden region was ceded by the British to Ethiopia by 1955 despite protests by the Ogadeni Somalis, who saw the region as a geographical and political continuation of a wider Somalia. Dissent was put down harshly by Imperial Ethiopian troops, establishing a backdrop of military intervention and insurgency which has continued to the present day. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), supported by the Somali government, waged armed struggle from the region along with a number of ethnic Oromo movements. This also set a pattern of occasional and opportunistic alliances between Ogadeni and Oromo movements, which continue to affect access to the region. Literature and information on the Ogaden is very scarce, reflecting the degree of marginalisation in a nation where the centre of power has always been dominated by northern Amhara and Tigrayan groups. The US-based Human Rights Watch book, “Evil Days”, on famine and human rights abuses under Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, said the response to insurrection in the Ogaden included “indiscriminate violence against civilians and war against the economic base - killing animals, poisoning wells, cutting food supplies, and restricting movements”. It was a strategy instrumental in creating famine in the area in 1973-4. In 1977 the Ogaden suffered one of the worst Cold War battles on African turf, after the Somali army invaded eastern Ethiopia. Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose military Junta took over in 1974, switched at that time from US patronage to Soviet and Cuban support, leading to large-scale conventional warfare in the Ogaden, in which both armies committed abuses largely hidden - or ignored - by the outside world. Mengistu defeated the Somali forces with a massively enlarged and re-equipped army; and then followed with “six years of intense counter-insurgency warfare” against Somalis and Oromo rebels, says Human Rights Watch. The policy included bombardment of villages, forcible relocation, and the resettlement of thousands of ethnic Amharas from the north. This “Amharisation” policy remains a source of tension, with local Somalis complaining the settlers had access to better economic and political resources. Violence against what activists have termed “outsiders” and “aliens”, has at times included killing. Low-level but widespread violence continued in an area where pastoralists had become well-armed but frustrated and impoverished. The Cold War legacy of small arms and heavy weapons moved across the porous borders and transformed traditional clan hostilities into small-scale battles. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) was formed in 1984, advocating complete separation. The central government continued military reprisals as rebels mounted ambushes along the few roads and trade routes in the area. Military action included reprisals against villagers, livestock confiscation and restricted movements. These were life-threatening tactics for the vulnerable pastoralist communities who depended, particularly during times of drought, on livestock, access to water-holes, and cross-border migration. By the 1980s thousands of Ogadenis chose to live in refugee camps in Somalia, where many were later armed by the Somali government and used as militia in growing civil conflict. The use of armed Ogadenis from camps in southern Somalia in the late 1980s to suppress a rebellion in northern Somalia - now Somaliland - created substantial ill-feeling between the Isaaq clan (from northern Somalia) and the Ogadeni. According to one regional analyst “it still lingers today and colours political relations”. President Mengistu provided a crucial base for the Isaaq Somali National Movement from northern Somalia. He finally negotiated a formal peace with Somalia’s President Siad Barre in 1988, primarily because of Ethiopia’s need to transfer troops out of the Ogaden to Eritrea - then an Ethiopian province waging an increasingly successful secession war. Ethiopia and Somalia agreed to end assistance for insurgent groups operating out of each other’s territory, and the repatriation of refugees began. President Mengistu also attempted to reduce the need for troops in Ogaden by making it an Autonomous Region - a concession toward local secessionist sentiment. About 20,000 refugees returned to Ethiopia, primarily around Gode, but about 400,000 northern Somalis fled to camps near Jijiga - now the regional capital of Ethiopia’s Somali Region, of which the Ogaden is a part. Humanitarian crises In May 1991, the Tigrayan-dominated Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) marched into Addis Ababa, and formed a new coalition government headed by Meles Zenawi. From 1991, a relief operation of unprecedented size developed in the Ogaden to deal with hundreds of thousands of returnees from Somalia, as well as about 80,000 Somali refugees fleeing civil war and the collapse of the Somali state. Humanitarian agencies estimated the Ogaden population swelled by about 30 percent. Many returned without livestock and were dependent on similarly impoverished family and clan members. It came at a time when the effects of prolonged drought were compounded by the breakdown of Somali’s economy, destroying vital trade. Many areas in the Ogaden still exclusively use the Somali shilling, being tied more into the economics of Somalia than of Ethiopia. With a weakened population, widespread cattle loss, and the knock-on effects of economic and political problems in Somalia, the Ogaden was declared a humanitarian crisis. By October 1992 humanitarian agencies agreed that up to 30 people a day were dying of starvation in Gode. Among those who fled back into Ethiopia were many of the armed Ogadenis who fled from bases in Somaliland and eventually congregated around the main towns in the Ogaden. Insecurity, including the killing of aid staff, limited the presence of aid agencies, and inaccessibility meant the delivery of emergency aid by air was expensive and difficult to sustain. But the international focus on Somalia at the time meant the crisis in the Ogaden went virtually un-noticed - even though the death and malnutrition rates exceeded those which sparked the media scramble this April. In the southern tip of the Ogaden, Dolo, aid workers reported more than thirty dead a day during spot-check grave counts. As Somali faction leader General Aideed moved his operations closer to the Ethiopian border, destroying the southern Somali Rahanweyn farms, thousands more were forced to flee empty-handed into Ethiopia. The arrival of the refugees and returnees put the local population under enormous strain. Later, continued insurgencies and expanding military operations in the Somali area also contributed significantly to the vulnerability of the Ogadenis. The New Government The EPRDF took time to assert itself in eastern Ethiopia. Many of the soldiers sent to the Ogaden were Tigrayans from northern Ethiopia with no familiarity with the territory or culture. Only a skeleton of governmental institutions existed. Opportunistic attacks from former soldiers and bandits kept the area insecure, while influential locals and EPRDF commanders established a governing relationship. The new Transitional Government had inherited a nation which had been kept together by force since Haile Selassie’s feudal empire. The new regime decided to deal with the issue of nationalities by regionalisation through democratic elections, and introduced a constitutional option of self-determination by popular referendum. The self-determination clause was essential to the eventual secession of Eritrea in 1993. Regional elections for Somali Region 5 went ahead in 1993, and brought local Somalis to power in the area for the first time. Now known as the Somali National Regional State, Somali Region 5 encompassed the arid lowland areas between Dire Dawa and Djibouti, but not the highlands around Harar which are part of the Oromo Region. Ogaden is just one political and geographical component of this region, with its own unique history. But initially, by virtue of their numbers, Ogadenis won the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the new Regional Government and Gode was established as the capital. Despite an inherent suspicion of central government, the Ogaden region was politically invigorated for a while by regional power and the apparent promise of self-determination. This had a profound affect on the Ogaden, whose history and insurgencies were intimately tied into the issue of identity and secession. But the newly elected regional government proved unstable, and the strength of the Ogadenis was diluted as smaller, pro-central government clan members were given power. By 1994 the ONLF call for an independent “Ogadenia” was dismissed by members of the central government as “unrepresentative” of popular sentiment. The government focused attention on backing or creating “friendly” Somali parties, who increasingly distanced themselves from the ONLF, and the regional capital was moved to Jijiga. Security in the Ogaden became a major preoccupation for the central government. Apart from arrests and detentions of activists, the military began to drive out an Islamic fundamentalist party operating in the Ogaden, Al-Ittihad Al-Islam. Gode and the Ogaden became the focus of a large military campaign. In April 1994, Ethiopia’s Minister of Defence, Siye Abraha declared the military operation “successful”, and called Al-Ittihad “the most fanatical and destabilising group in the region”. He said Ethiopia had asked the US for military aid to “stabilise” the area, and revealed that US “non-lethal” military aid had already provided trucks. A military presence remained in the Ogaden, with the central government eventually spreading operations across the border into southern Somalia. It has justified the action as “defensive” and “protective”, in the continued absence of a central Somali government. Complaining Ogadenis were once more under “military occupation”, the ONLF signed an “agreement of cooperation” with one of the main armed opposition groups in Ethiopia, the Oromo Liberation Front. Local insurgency continued in the Ogaden and in the adjacent Oromo areas. The “Secret War” Regional parties in the Somali Region of Ethiopia also periodically claimed the army had taken control of the Ogaden and were guilty of abuses, including summary executions. In 1999, the Ogaden Human Rights Committee protested that the Ogaden had become “a virtually closed military zone” where the Ethiopian military carried out “illegal imprisonments” and human rights abuses, including cutting off access to water-holes. In the isolated and restricted region, complaints of abuses were difficult to verify or refute - but local and international human rights organisations concurred that more than 50 people were massacred by the army in Warder in February 1994 while pursuing the leader of an Oromo Islamic party. By 1999, there were also complaints, recorded by international journalists, that young men from the Somali Region and the Ogaden were being forcibly recruited to fight in the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. Security in the Ogaden and in Somalia had come back to haunt the new government in ways it had in the past, and was intimately linked to foreign policy in war-shattered Somalia. Military operations against insurgents and Islamic extremists in the Ogaden and southern Somalia has become been the ruling EPRDF’s longest running battle, though the Eritrean-Ethiopian war has the highest profile. This “secret war”, according to one regional analyst, is ignored by the international community primarily because of the isolation of the Ogaden and its lack of strategic importance, and because there is no central government in Somalia to protest territorial invasion. The EPRDF initially hoped to stabilise the border region by taking the initiative with internationally-supported Somali peace talks in Addis Ababa in 1992 and 1993. But by 1994 an increasing number of Somali leaders and factions were accusing the Ethiopian government of interference. By 1997, Ethiopia effectively abandoned any appearance of neutrality and increasingly pushed “border operations” further inside southern Somalia to secure its objectives. According to diplomatic sources, the Ethiopian military have had a great deal of success in limiting the movement of armed extremist groups from Somalia, and within the Ogaden. There have, however, been a number of bombings and shootings in Addis Ababa which have been attributed to both local and external Somali and Islamic groups. From bases in the Ogaden, the Ethiopian military moved into southern Somalia in 1997 and pursued Al-Ittihad using heavy weapons, aerial bombardment, troop incursions and arrests. These operations increased in frequency during 1998 and 1999 and incorporated friendly factional forces within Somalia, notably the Rahanweyn Resistance Army. Faction leaders in Mogadishu protested in 1999 and 2000 to international bodies, including the OAU and the UN Security Council, that Ethiopia was invading Somali territory, as well as arming and training militia. The Ethiopian government defended its action as a necessary containment of extremist groups in the absence of a central Somalia government. The hunger cycle The broader effect of Ethiopia’s operations in the Ogaden and Somalia region has been, according to one regional analyst, to put additional pressure on populations “already destitute by decades of conflict in the region, who lack livestock, who are unable to rely on local clan support, and who have been recently impoverished by fighting”. Since the early 1990s, some of the Ogadeni returnees from Somalia have been well-integrated although a proportion have remained dependent on food aid and the local population. Not all were without resources, and according to one aid worker, there was evidence early on that some of the returnees in camps were maintaining livestock through clan members in Somalia. But many remained destitute and dependent. An experienced humanitarian worker in Ethiopia, involved with the Ogaden since 1990, told IRIN “I think reintegration of the returnees from 1991-92 has been slow and extremely difficult for many. There were huge encampments of some 70,000 around Dolo, 45,000 around Gode and more than 20,000 in Kelafo at that time. While some may have moved into the local environs around the towns, many also remain on the periphery exactly where they were nearly ten years ago”. On top of this, points out another source familiar with the region, sporadic military crackdowns in the Ogaden result in “uncertainty and restrictions”, which impinges on basic assistance and development. The Ogaden does have economic potential, but vast reserves of natural gas have remained unexploited because of insecurity. Russian experts conducted exploratory missions in the 1980s and estimated the natural gas reserves to be over 35 billion cubic metres. In 1997 a Chinese firm won a contract to produce condensate gas within a year under an agreement signed with a local firm, Kalub Gas Share Company, formed in 1996 with a US $66.6 million loan from the World Bank. Continuing political instability and insecurity remains an obstacle, even though recent reports suggest new investors have been secured along with a plan to build a pipeline from the Ogaden, through Haraghe and down to Awash where a refinery is to be built. Shifting the regional capital to Jijiga - which has better communications than Gode’s one satellite dish - has also increased the marginalisation of the Ogaden, because, as one analyst observed, “Jijiga, on the very periphery of the Ogaden, is now centre stage”. The feeling of political and economic isolation makes, in turn, decades of discontent self-fulfilling. The ethnic Somali population in the Ogaden generally remains suspicious of the intentions of a central government and tends to remain outside the mainstream political process in the country. The central government, on its part, views the migratory, pastoralist Somalis in the Ogaden “as a headache” says one observer - apart from an ambiguous national identity, “intense clan loyalties make it difficult to superimpose transcending political structures”. For humanitarian workers in Ethiopia, the recent media focus on drought and hunger in the Ogaden was a small episode in an otherwise long and tragic history which remains largely invisible to the world. “I believe many of the people drifting into Gode this year and seen by the cameras are the same displaced and dispossessed people we have been dealing with for a decade” said one aid worker.