Somalis in Jigjiga Experience Massive Looting by a Government Military Raid

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Somalis in Jigjiga Experience Massive Looting by a Government Military Raid

 

 

WardheerNews, April 14, 2005 ( WDN) - Forces of the Federal government of Ethiopia have undertaken massive looting in Jijgjiga in the wee hours of Sunday morning. This latest government act is testament to the absence of basic human rights in this region. According to reports from Jigjiga, approximately 14 stores have been looted and the total loss is estimated to be over one million Eth. Bir.

 

The people of the Somali Regional State (Somali Galbeed) is one of the most oppressed peoples that humanity has ever seen, and share a lot with the Kurds in the Middle East, the Palestinians in the Arab world and the Afars in the Horn of Africa. An Arab sociologist once wrote that the most oppressed groups in the human race are the Jews in Yemen (who lived like rats) and the Moslems, including Somalis under Ethiopian rule (who live with no human right.)

 

Ethiopia colonized the Somalis in Ethiopia in the later parts of the 19 th Century and since then has maintained an open policy of wanton feudal looting of local resources. Emperor Menelik II brought the Somalis violently into his feudal fold in the later parts of the 19 th Century. With his mercenary Yemeni forces, headed by Al Sayid Abdala Daha, Menelik II and his cousin and ruler of Harar, Ras Mekonin, father of Haile Sellasie I, captured Jigjiga in the early parts of 1890s. The colonizing army of Menelik II was charged to loot livestock as part of raising their own local funds for their soldiers' sustenance since the feudal court could not sustain such an expedition. Hence Ethiopian soldiers' loot of Somalis started in the 1890s.

 

When in 1962, Girma Neway, who was a graduate of Colombia University and a relative of the late emperor Haile Sellasie I, was assigned to assume the mayoral post in Jigjiga, he then officially commented on Ethiopia's official looting campaigns in Jigjiga. Within weeks of his assignment to Jigjiga, Girma Neway was presented with official papers to authorize a raid on the City's bustling shops. His first question then was: Are not the owners of the shops to be looted Ethiopians? The answer given to him surprisingly was that these people are “Somalis and smugglers.â€

 

A left-leaning intellectual, Girma Neway was radicalized by this experience and was killed later on while he was escaping to Somalia after a coup that he has organized, along with his late brother, Mengistu Neway, had failed. Mr. Neway did not like the way Haile Sellasie's imperial court treated the Somalis and drafted the now-famous Jigjiga policy papers .

 

In his papers, he proposed that the imperial government stop looting the Somalis and instead craft a mechanism to help the government return all looted properties to their lawful owners, either by taxing the looted properties or by returning them through some kind of amnesty. By talking to elders of the city, Girma Neway found out that Somalis, when given a chance, will always welcome the opportunity to reclaim their looted properties if they are adequately taxed.

 

The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were years of perpetual looting and raids in several Somali cities including Jigjiga, Harta Sheikh, Dhagaxbuur, Wardheer, Awaare, Qabridahar and many other commercial towns. The Derg regime put to a temporary halt to this policy mainly because of the security conditions in the region at the time.

 

This practice of illegal raids and looting of private properties have been given a new life under the Tigrean-dominated government of Meles Zenawi. Two years in to its rule, Jigjiga cattle traders lost about five hundred cattle to Tigrean soldiers. Somali quarters in *** Dhabe were massively looted last year. And now, in the early dawn hours of April 10, 2005, a well-orchestrated EPRDF army systemically raided Babile Dhagaxle and Jigjiga. Under EPRDF, the geography covered by the loot is expanding.

 

This is a primitive public policy. And, as the case has always been, Ethiopia's primitive policies towards the Somalis seem to be resilient to change. Even at a time when the Soviet empire perished, or when Iraq chose a Kurdish president, Ethiopian feudal policies in the Somali region designed to break down the Somalis continue. Or worse, when Israel, with all its might, is on the verge of bowing down to the stone-throwing, iron-willed Intifada teenagers of Palestine, Ethiopia's primitive rule, bereft of human rights accorded to what Ethiopian authorities call “aramanaw ya qola Agar Somale,†meaning pagan low-lander Somalis, proves to be tenaciously resilient to change.

 

Nearly Fourty (40) years after Girma Neway scolded the reactionary policies of his Ethiopia government visa vi its Somali subject, Meles Zenawi's autocratic government gets a green light from its puppet regime in Jigjiga to loot the city. As a result, helpless Somalis wake up to a raid on March 10, 2005 that started around 4:00 AM and continued to the morning hours of the next day. About 14 major stores of the city (selling electronic, rugs, food whole sellers, clothes and farm equipments) were looted by heavily armed troops that descended on this helpless, naked and often rapped, city from *** Dhabe.

 

In the summer of 2003, the US Ambassador in Ethiopia, her Excellency Mrs. Brasilia visited Jigjiga and toured the main streets where these stores are located. The Ambassador, aware of the lack of any capital investment by the federal government, was overwhelmed by the strength and the go-get and stick-to-it nature of the Somali entrepreneurship that is, as she said at an official dinner, unmatched by any other state in Ethiopia. When she conversed with some women who were running some of the business looted by the Ethiopian authority, she learned that most of the local businesses are directly linked to Somalia's coastal towns of Berbera and Bossaso.

 

It is reported that the Ambassador promised investment in this sector to the tune of US $15 million. What Ethiopian government did on this fateful day of April 10, 2005 to the Somalis in the Somali State of Ethiopia must shock the Ambassador and her top officer at the US AID in Addis Ababa who accompanied her in this trip. This latest raid has totally undermined the kind and feminine hand and blessed touch that her excellency lent to the hard-working Somalis in this region where Ethiopia has always carried extra-territorial policies. The hard earned pennies of Somalis always get easily transferred to the pockets of Ethiopian soldiers and their families one way or another. It is a primitive lopsided re-distribution system that favors Ethiopian looting against hard-working Somalis

 

Looting the properties of law-abiding citizens is illegal and an outright violation of rules that govern both human and property rights. It also throws a chilling blanket on one of the few thriving economies in this empire that is still haunted by the limitations of feudalism and its attendant and penchant oppressive rules against Somalis.

 

WardheerNews is startled at the level of anger detected among the Diaspora community. Some of the questions that are boggling in the minds of the community include: who authorized this hideous act, which Girma Neway resisted to authorize half a century ago? What is the role of the Mayor of Jigjiga in this matter? How could the president of the region authorize this illegal act, especially in light of the fact that he illegally authorized the transfer of almost one third of the original Somali land to the Oromo/EPRDF coalition? Are we good enough to be Ethiopians?

 

What option to looting is the government of Meles Zenawi giving to the lawful residents to reclaim their properties? Is armed struggle to protect your family, your land and your property rights the last option facing Somalis?

 

The Somali Regional State and its meek (fadhiid) government must feel the waves of the city's anger sooner than later. What is bothersome about the looting of Jigjiga is that this is a policy that is more than one hundred years old, and is only implemented against the Somalis. This new looting is an indication that Ethiopia is resilient to democratic changes and it is more comfortable with its feudal past.

 

News analysis by WardheerNews Staff

 

WardheerNews