Rebels answer Mogadishu's call to arms

[Oromia]

Rebels answer Mogadishu's call to arms

Mike Pflanz in Gode

Last Updated: 2:13am GMT 24/11/2006

 

 

A fierce military campaign against secessionist rebels in south-east Ethiopia is pushing the previously moderate Muslim population into the arms of Somali fundamentalists.

 

Hundreds of men from the ****** region, where most of the population is ethnically Somali, have travelled to Mogadishu to train with the powerful Islamic Courts Union and its militia.

 

The men are answering the Islamists' call to wage holy war against Addis Ababa and the promise of a dollar a day, and they threaten to open a second front against Ethiopia if war breaks out with Mogadishu.

 

advertisement

Yesterday, Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, said attempts at dialogue had failed with the Courts Union. His government had now "completed" preparations to defend Ethiopia from the "clear and present danger" posed by the Courts.

 

Those "preparations" are widely held to be a massive build-up of Ethiopian troops and weaponry inside Somalia, ostensibly deployed to prop up its weak transitional government in Baidoa.

 

But The Daily Telegraph has learned that an Ethiopian army operation against homegrown rebels from the ****** National Liberation Front (ONLF), which has been fighting for self-rule since 1984, has radicalised a huge swathe of the population.

 

Civilians have been worst hit, witnesses said in Gode, 420 miles south-east of the capital on the road to Somalia. All were too afraid to give their names and asked that their villages not be named. "They have come here four or five times, they always say we are helping the ONLF and they burn our houses and destroy our crops," said one man, whose family fled into the bush during the attacks.

 

"A man from our village was arrested," said another. "They said his brother was a rebel and told him to walk into the bush to find him and bring him. When he came back without the brother, they hanged him as an example to other 'collaborators'."

 

Friends and relatives have disappeared, detained in appalling conditions without trial or executed, Amnesty International has claimed.

 

Mr Meles defends the operation as crucial to halting the spread of radical Islam from Somalia into rebellious corners of his own country. He has good reason to worry.

 

The ONLF has long-running links with Ethiopia's arch-foe, Eritrea, and with Al-Itihad Al-Islamiya, a radical Islamic unity group strengthening its presence in the Horn of Africa and linked to the leader of the Islamic Courts.

 

But far from cowing the ONLF into submission, the strong-arm tactics have won the rebels more converts.

 

Hundreds – thousands, according to some estimates – have now made the four-day bus trip to Mogadishu to sign up with the Islamists in preparation for war against the Addis regime.

 

"There is no doubt that the call to arms from Mogadishu resonates with people in the ******," said Matt Bryden, senior Somalia analyst with the International Crisis Group.

 

mike.pflanz@telegraph.co.uk

 

http://www.somaliaonline.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=newtopic;f=9

[Ahmed_Guree]

Oromia as i said earlier on its Judgement day for Xabashi especially Tigarus.

 

Let them enjoy their last days in power.

[Thierry.]

Fragmentation of the country is already starting without any major combat. My only worry is Ethiopia’s refugee crisis after this battle ends.