Another shining example of our beloved friend, ally, and neighbor: Ethiopia

[Kashafa]

JIJIGA, Ethiopia - The gray-faced young man lying in bed number 15 of the run-down local hospital wasn't much of a talker. In truth, few people are these days in Jijiga, a desert town whose tense streets are patrolled by swarms of Ethiopian police.

 

But Nur Omar Ali, 25, whose neck was patched with dingy bandages, had a particularly good reason for being silent. His throat had been cut. He'd been attacked and left for dead nine days earlier at his remote village. When he was asked to identify his assailants, the camel herder's eyes shined with hate.

 

"Christians," rasped Nur, clamping a hand to his stitched-up neck. "Ethiopian soldiers."

Human-rights groups and media reports accuse Ethiopia -- a key partner in Washington's battle against terrorism in the volatile Horn of Africa --

of burning villages, pushing nomads off their lands and choking off food supplies in a harsh new campaign of collective punishment

against a restive ethnic Somali population in the ******, a vast wilderness of rocks and thorns bordering chaotic Somalia.

One man in that raw frontier outpost described walking eight days through the bush to escape a war-ruined zone called Fik, where he claimed he saw torched and depopulated villages. And a displaced camel herder told how his village close to the Somalia border had been emptied by the Ethiopian army and its residents trucked to garrison towns such as Shilabo, a counterinsurgency tactic once used by the U.S. in Vietnam, and meant to deprive the rebels of their civilian support base.

 

"They loaded people into trucks and just abandoned them there," said Farah, 60, who like most people in Jijiga refused to give his full name for fear of police reprisal. "They treated us like animals."

 

'People are actually starving'

The Ethiopian army has locked down immense swaths of the ******, blocking all roads and smuggling trails to commercial traffic, and thus triggering desperate food shortages in a desert already prone to famines. A teacher from the central ****** town of Kebredehar said most shops in that area had closed for lack of stocks. The prices of remaining foodstuffs such as rice, he said, had rocketed 400 percent -- far out of reach of ordinary ******is

Boy, They sure do love us Somalis eh ? What ? You don't believe me ? Like, you actually believe this sensational reporting by the Chicago Tribune....those left-wing pink commie nut-jobs ? Shucks, here's the advisor to his Eminence Zenawi himself, Mr. Bereket Simon.

 

We don't see any basic violations of human rights," said Bereket Simon, an adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. "Abusing the people doesn't make sense. You abuse people and they look to the subversives. It's counterproductive

Told'ja so. Straight quote from his Grace to you, paranoid neighbor-hating nomads: They don't torture the shit out of Somalis. Period. Friends wouldn't do that to friends. These guys are our strategic allies. We go back a long time, a loving neighborly relationship spanning centuries and centuries.

 

I just don't understand what these ONLF boys are fighting for.....this thing called 'freedom'(whatever the heck that is). What's so wrong with bearing the easy heel of an Ethiopian boot ? While I'm at it....what's so wrong with just accepting their damn patronage, fer cryin' outloud ? Look at the rest of us Somalis, we got with the program and, today, we got it gooooooood. Guess what...Our Ethiopian friends have been generous enough to protect our major cities like Mogadisho, Bosaaso, and Kismayo(although the terrorists took this city back.) from the terrorist enemy. An fearsome dastardly enemy that can walk on water and can spew flames of fire.

 

Some people may say we happen to be slaves, that we have signed away Somali sovereignty and that history will never forgive our infamy. SO WHAT ? I quote Adeer Gheedi in saying "Tigraay-ga waa cid Tol-ka ah. Reer Abti baa loo yahay Ab-tiris-ka markee aa sii-fiican loo soo baaray, ilmo-abti ilmo-habreed baan ku soo baxnay. Marna waa in-laws baa isko nahay. Marka Tol-ka hala soo dhaweeyo"

 

There you have it. They are our family. Blood trumps it all. Break out the canjeera, waryaaya.

[Fabregas]

According to some everything Ethiopia has done or is doing should be overlooked. Because they have given us the sacred "G" word, no not god. But "Government", because we backward nomads can't form a government.

[General Duke]

Beloved is way too strong a word. Ally for now, friend not yet.

[-Nomadique-]

^ I see the sarcasm is lost on you Duke.

[rudy-Diiriye]

sleeping with the enemy never worked since xawaa iyo adan...! pay back is on the way.