Ethiopian Premier Admits Errors on Somalia

[Castro]

By Stephanie McCrummen

Washington Post

Foreign Service

Friday, June 29, 2007; A16

 

NAIROBI, June 28 --

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Thursday that his government "made a wrong political calculation" when it intervened in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a fight against a growing insurgency.

 

Addressing Ethiopia's Parliament, Meles said his government incorrectly assumed that breaking up the Islamic movement that took control of most of Somalia in June 2006 would subdue the country. He also said he wrongly believed that Somali clan leaders would live up to unspecified "promises."

 

"We made these wrong assumptions," Meles said on a day when a roadside bomb killed two Ethiopian soldiers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and two aid workers were shot dead in northern Somalia.

 

Opposition members of Parliament have accused Meles of making the same mistake in Somalia that critics say the United States made in Iraq: launching a military intervention without having a political plan.

 

Many Ethiopian intellectuals and political leaders opposed the intervention because they said it would inevitably create the conditions for the sort of Somalia-based terrorist attacks that Meles intended to contain by invading the country.

 

In December, Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's transitional government dislodged the Islamic movement, which was popular for the relative security it had brought after years of brutal warlord rule.

 

Ethiopia and the United States said the Islamic movement had been hijacked by extremists and accused it of harboring terrorists, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a charge the Islamic leaders denied.

 

Since January, fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and Somali government troops has displaced more than half of Mogadishu's population while the humanitarian situation has deteriorated. On Thursday, Amnesty International accused Kenya of blocking 141 trucks of food and other aid headed for more than 200,000 displaced Somalis suffering from "alarming levels" of malnutrition.

 

Many businessmen and civil society leaders in Mogadishu say that over the past two weeks, they have been unjustly labeled "al-Qaeda" and that their homes and offices have been ransacked by Ethiopian and Somali troops.

 

One internationally respected civil society leader, Abdulkadir Nur, said that troops plundered equipment in his offices and that his colleagues and relatives had been arrested without charge.

 

Nur said he is simply against what he considers an Ethiopian occupation.

 

"I do have the right to express my personal views," he said in a statement. "And the transitional government has no right to abuse its power to destroy my livelihood, my personal property and abuse my colleagues and co-workers."

 

Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.

[Castro]

Geedi gets the (proverbial) middle finger from the US (and the UN) and Meles divorces Yey in public.

 

How much longer before these two buffoons are liquidated?

[Gabbal]

His job is done I guess. It is not a secret the only Ethiopian interest in Somalia is to never let one group get strong enough to reconstitute the state. I will not be surprised if he has a hand in the "insurgency" itself.

 

Ethiopian objective in Somalia; keep Somalia in a bantustan state with highly paranoid mini quasi-states taking the place of a central administration.

[AYOUB]

At least he's "big" enough to admit they've f up.

[Castro]

"The first part of your question is ruthless"

 

LOOOOL. Did he mean "truthless" or "rootless?" Must be a new word. LOL.

 

Listen to the last 10 seconds when someone is whispering "wrap this up" to him in Somali. What a colossal dimwit.

[Abwaan]

Originally posted by Castro:

Geedi gets the (proverbial) middle finger from the US (and the UN) and Meles divorces Yey in public.

 

How much longer before these two buffoons are liquidated?

Waa sugeynaa mar dhow insha Allaah and ku dar kuwa hadda taageersan daba-dhilifeentana they will immediately change sides and say "Anigu awalba waan ka soo horjeeday"!...lol

[Allamagan]

Originally posted by Castro:

"The first part of your question is

ruthless

"

 

LOOOOL. Did he mean "truthless" or "rootless?" Must be a new word. LOL.

^ loool @ the new word. He seemed lost & nervous there.

[Fabregas]

Zenawi would probably do the same thing again and again. It's called damage limitation and I would probably do the same, if i was him.........