Somalia $ Ethiopia: 1996 2006, Call on Jihad

[Xudeedi]

The last Call for "Jihad" was on December 2006 but you will be suprised to learn the first one was on December 1996 when Ethiopia made repeated forays into our territories in direct violation of our sovereignty. What difference in both accounts of the recent and past history is important for us to notice and glean from this archived news from Reuters?

This time, America has bankrolled and physically aided this brutal occupation of Somalia and its after-effect of mass displacement that created this slow Darfur-type of a genocide. Ethiopia knows that it can't sustain a long hard battle with Somalis as it is evident in the occupied territory inside artificial Ethiopia.

 

 

Somali Moslem leaders call for "jihad" on Ethiopia.

By Mohamed Guled

 

27 December 1996

 

MOGADISHU, Dec 27 (Reuter) - Somali Moslem clerics called on Friday for "jihad" or holy war against Ethiopia and young men in the capital volunteered to fight Ethiopian forces in southwest Somalia.

 

"This (invasion) is the latest step in the plan by Christian fundamentalists to destroy Islam in Somalia," said Sheikh Mohamed Oromo in south Mogadishu's the al-Salama (Peace) mosque.

 

Oromo, like several other clerics at Mogadishu mosques during Friday prayers, called for holy war against Ethiopia for sending its troops into southwest Somalia last week.

 

In Sheikh Muhsin mosque in north Mogadishu, Sheikh Ali Dhere said the Ethiopian army would destroy mosques in Somali towns unless they were stopped and wanted to secede parts of Somalia.

 

In Sheikh Ali Sufi mosque, the largest in the southern part of the city, clerics called on young men to take up arms and said those who could should pay money for the warriors.

 

Moslem fundamentalist supporters drove around Mogadishu urging people to volunteer to sacrifice their lives for Islam.

 

In the busy Bakara market, the largest in the capital, youths lined up -- some paying donations and others volunteering to head to the front as Moslem fighters.

 

A security source in western Somalia reached by radio from Mogadishu on Friday said some 50 Ethiopian troops had entered a small border village near the village of Bulo Hawo and fought with Somali militiamen of al-Ittihad al-Islami (Islamic Union).

 

South Mogadishu faction leader Hussein Aideed on Thursday urged Ethiopian to withdraw its forces but stopped short of expressing support for the Moslem fundamentalist al-Ittihad.

 

It is the second time in five months Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to strike at al-Ittihad. Last August Ethiopia said its forces killed more than 230 fighters and destroyed three bases.

 

Ethiopia said then it might have to return to hit again at what it called a "multinational terrorist group" in Somalia.

 

In its first comment on the latest incursion, Ethiopia said on Wednesday its defence forces killed or wounded more than 100 Moslem fundamentalists who had tried to attack the border town of Dollo.

 

The Ethiopian statement said those killed included Arabs from a number of countries. It gave no indication of Ethiopian casualties and did not say how far Ethiopian forces pushed into Somalia.

 

Somalia has had no central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 at the start of civil war.

 

© Reuters Limited 1996

[Xudeedi]

 

SOMALIA: Shukri Gamadiid: "This is not a life"

SHALAAMBOD, 13 February 2008

 

(IRIN) - Shukri Gamadiid, 27, is displaced in Somalia's Lower Shabelle region. She fled the capital, Mogadishu, in September 2007 due to fighting between government troops and insurgents and now lives in a camp for the displaced in the small town of Shalaambod, 90km south of Mogadishu.

 

Shalaambod is home to thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who have fled Mogadishu and those who were turned back from Kenya. Gamadiid left Mogadishu with her husband and their five children, aged between two and 12 years, travelling more than 700km to the Kenyan border before returning to Shalaambod. She spoke to IRIN on 13 February:

 

"We used to live in Towfiq [north Mogadishu]. It became the centre of fighting; every day someone's house was hit by a shell or someone was killed.

 

"My husband and I decided to leave when it got so bad that we could not even get an hour of peace to go to the market. We decided that we should seek refuge in Kenya and we went with two other families to share the burden of the long journey.

 

"We hoped that our nightmare would be over once we reached Kenya. But we were wrong; on the way I lost one of my sons, a four-year-old.

 

"The militias we ran into on the way raped women and robbed us of all our belongings. By the time we reached Dobley [on the Kenyan-Somali border], we were exhausted, frightened and had nothing.

 

"We tried to cross into Kenya but they refused to let us in. People told us to wait, that we would eventually get in. For two months we waited and survived on help from the community. Finally, we decided to return. We found a truck driver who said he could take us up to Brawe [110km south of Shalaambod].

 

"Here [in the camp] we have safety but nothing else; I live in a hut with my family. It gives us shade from the sun but when it rains we get wet. We depend on the kindness of other people who have been here before us. Some days my children go hungry and the only thing they get is tea.

 

"I worry a lot about my children. The oldest used to go school. Now he does not and if this continues none of us will have any future. I hope and pray that this will be over soon so we can go back to our lives.

 

"This is not a life for any one."

 

Source:IRIN

[Xudeedi]

 

My Brush with Islamic Justice

 

Martin Fletcher

February 9, 2008

 

As one who has been hauled in front of a Sharia court I would like to risk having my hand — or head — chopped off a second time by suggesting that the Archbishop of Canterbury just might have a point.

 

My brush with Islamic justice occurred in December 2006 in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. A popular movement called the Islamic Courts Council (ICC) had recently seized control of the country, expelling feuding warlords who had made it a byword for terror over the previous 15 years.

 

One afternoon Richard Mills, The Times photographer, and I were driving away from the infamous Bakara arms market. In a narrow, rutted sidestreet our way was blocked by an approaching vehicle. Neither driver would give way.

 

A furious argument flared up, and our bodyguards drew their guns. Happily, ICC policemen arrived in the nick of time and escorted us all to the nearest Sharia court.

 

We waited in the yard of an old police station. An alleged drug dealer lay on the ground on his stomach, his hands and legs bound together behind his back. Several wretched faces stared out from the dark interiors of cells with barred windows. A bunch of women engaged in some sort of domestic dispute arrived and waited patiently behind us.

 

Finally the drivers, still arguing furiously, were each told to make their case to a couple of religious elders. They had barely begun before the court adjourned to a nearby carpet for sunset prayers.

 

When it resumed, and both drivers had had their say, the court pronounced. The two men were ordered to apologise to each other and we were all dismissed.

 

The court performed its duty with admirable dispatch and minimal fuss and everyone went away happy. It was quicker, cheaper and just as effective as a British magistrates’ court.

 

The ICC is no more. Washington accused it of turning Somalia into a terrorist haven. It was replaced by a deeply unpopular Government of former warlords.

 

Source: Times Online

[Gabbal]

As late as 1999, Ethiopia and the SNF were engaged in one of the most protracted and intense combats:

 

Sunday, June 6, 1999 Published at 17:27 GMT 18:27 UK

 

 

World: Africa

 

Somali faction accuses Ethiopia

 

 

In south-western Somalia, the Somali National Front has accused Ethiopian troops of human rights abuses.

 

The SNF says that the Ethiopians were mistreating civilians and had detained some prominent business and religious leaders at Luq in the Gedo region.

 

It has accused Ethiopia of supporting a breakaway SNF faction which had taken contol of the area.

 

Ethiopia has made no comment on the Somali reports.

 

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

BBC

[Gabbal]

Earlier in August, 1996

 

Ethiopian Army Attacks 3 Towns in Border Region of Somalia

 

By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.

Published: August 10, 1996

 

Ethiopian troops, tanks and helicopter gunships have crossed the border into western Somalia and attacked three towns, killing scores of people, a Somali Muslim fundamentalist faction charged today. Workers for a Kenya-based Western relief organization confirmed the attack.

 

High-ranking officials of a Somali group called the Union of Islam said two battalions of Ethiopian troops with tanks and helicopter gunships had seized the Gedo region of southwestern Somalia in fighting on Thursday night and this morning.

 

The group said that the troops, tanks and helicopter gunships had swept through the towns of Dolo, Beled-Hawo and Lugh, and that the fighting was continuing.

 

The area of the fighting is adjacent to the ******, a harsh desert region controlled by Ethiopia but populated almost entirely by ethnic Somali nomads. In 1977, Somalia and Ethiopia waged a bitter war over control of the region. Ethiopia eventually prevailed with heavy support from the Soviet Union and Cuba. Still, nationalist sentiments still run high among many of the Somalis living there.

 

The towns under attack are a stronghold of the Union of Islam, a fundamentalist Islamic group that with the collapse of central authority in Somalia, has carried on the fight for the ******'s independence from Ethiopia.

 

The group has claimed responsibility for three bombings and one attempted assassination inside Ethiopia since January.

 

In a statement released in Nairobi, Kenya, the fundamentalists said that more than 100 civilians and an unknown number of militiamen had been killed and that thousands of Somali families were fleeing because of the Ethiopian attack.

 

The group said Dolo and Lugh had been captured by the Ethiopian forces and warned that the Ethiopian Government would have to bear the consequences of what it called a savage attack on Somalia.

 

''We declare a holy war against the Ethiopians,'' said the group's leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys. ''The invasion just shows the longtime desire of Ethiopia to occupy part of Somalia.''

 

Michael Gerber, director of the African Medical Research Foundation, told Reuters that four members of his staff had been evacuated by air from Lugh to Kenya today after the town was attacked.

 

''They heard gunfire at 6 this morning,'' he said, ''and it got more and more extreme, so they called by radio two hours later for evacuation.

 

Mr. Gerber said the European Union Humanitarian Operations agency had sent in a plane for the evacuation but it had been unable at first to land because three helicopter gunships had been flying in the area around Lugh.

 

''Our people felt they definitely came from Ethiopia,'' he told Reuters. ''They were attacking Lugh. Our staff at the airport as they left saw Lugh under missile or artillery fire from across the Ethiopian border.'' No faction in Somalia is believed to have any aircraft.

 

An Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Addis Ababa declined to comment on the reports of the invasion, Reuters and BBC Radio reported.

 

Since the collapse of central authority in Somalia after the overthrow of President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, rival clans have carved the nation up into fiefs, ruled mostly by young clansmen with guns.

 

The Islamic Union is a faction made up of fervently religious people, mostly from the ******i clan in Somalia. The group controlled Dolo and Lugh, having turned them into tiny Islamic city-states ruled according to strict Koranic codes. Even cigarette smoking was considered a crime in Lugh.

 

The group, which has offices in Mogadishu, has also claimed responsibility for a violent campaign inside Ethiopia aimed at gaining independence for the ****** region. In January, a bomb at a hotel in Addis Ababa killed one person. A month later another bomb at a hotel in Diredawa took three lives. On Aug. 5, a third blast killed another man at a hotel in the capital.

 

The Islamic Union has also said it was behind the attempted assassination of an ethnic Somali who is the Transportation Minister in the Ethiopian Government, Dr. Abdul Majid Hussein.

 

Dr. Hussein heads a political party in the ****** that opposes breaking away from Ethiopia and is seen by some Somalis as a tool of the governing party. He was seriously wounded by gunfire outside his office in Addis Ababa in early July. He is now recovering at a hospital in Israel.

New York Times