Someone somewhere is happily financing, arming, and providing every available logistical and strategic support to fuel the atrocities being committed by Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's monstrous Prime Minister, against the innocent civilians of Somalia, the people of Ogaden, and Oromia. This is setting a wrong precedent and a very excruciatingly painful future for the Horn of Africa.
Somalis and Oromos have been at war with past Abyssinian kingdoms for centuries not over politics but over land. Every time the two won a war against the Abyssinian murderers, a foreign force intervened in favor of the oppressive Abyssinian kingdoms.
A prime example is the 15th century war between the gallant forces of Ahmed Gurei alias 'gran' or the 'left handed' who fought with such valor that the ruling Abyssinian Emperor called for Portuguese help.
Also, Seyyid Mohamed Abdille Hassan alias 'Mad Mullah', a Somali nationalist, poet, and hero, despite ferociously fighting for twenty uninterrupted years against joint British, Italian, and Habasha forces, and having found himself weakened and surrounded by enemy power on all fronts, disbanded so as to retire to his native Ogaden region where he met his final death in the village of Iimeey.
The 1997-1998 war between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden region took many innocent lives. Despite conquering almost ninety percent of this region from Mengistu's red terror regime, Somalia's armed forces had no other option but to retreat after combined Russian, Cuban, and Yemeni forces sided with Ethiopia. The destruction caused on both sides by this war, is to be felt to this day as hatred, suspicion, and poor neighborliness remain visible on the faces of the warring parties.
What is transpiring today is a repeat of the old tactics applied by Somali and Oromo enemies. Some foreign powers are fully engaged at ensuring Ethiopia continues with her irredentist mentalities and territorial usurpations. Ethiopia has been left to raze, burn, and dislodge its citizens who see to it for protection and guidance. Satellite images taken from thriving villages that were intact a few years ago, today depict different gloomy pictures with indiscriminate bombardments of these same villages by the Ethiopian army clearly visible to the naked human eye.
Killings, rape, and plunder has been used by Ethiopian forces as a means to win wars of any nature. Assimmilation and integration, power sharing and political parties are major factors that don't work in this country of over 70 million where a fair share of the cake always goes to the clan in power and to the stooges that support it loudly. Yesterday, it was the Amhara, and today it is their blood relative, the Tigrayans, led by Meles Zenawi, who live in complete luxury while the rest either have to sing the regime's desiderata to survive or live in ignominy or starve to death.
Meles Zenawi's atrocities seem to have been ignored by the world. Perhaps, humankind is not mature enough to understand the concept of human rights. Human rights violations and cases of genocide are pretty much rife in Ethiopia. It is the creation of human greed and jostling for power that has left millions dead, maimed, and homeless in this beautiful Horn of Africa. The best the internatinal community can do is to stop Meles Zenawi's atrocities for the time being and come with a strategy for the good of this region in turmoil.
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