Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the coterminous regime of Meles Zenawi and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni — in some areas, they’re so similar, hence the word coterminous — collude to gag the voices of such an innocuous individual like me by throwing their weight through their ubiquitous agents in various ways, ranging from bribery to intimidation.
Two things forced me to think in this melodramatic fashion.1.Fully confident that the above article I mentioned is worth publishing on the basis of its factual content, I was disappointed when it didn’t in the next one week edition and beyond.So,I called one of the editor who handles all incoming letters and articles. After apologizing to me on the grounds of being deluged with letters and articles, he assured me he will handle my material in the following week.Unfortunately, he didn’t. Around the same time, another article of mine suffered the same fate.Undaunted; I kept on sending several of my articles on topical issues which I felt had universal appeal. Except one, the rest got stifled.So, I wrote to the paper for explanation. A journalist named Henry Ochieng who is an editor for the Sunday Monitor replied to me. After thanking me for my previous insightful contribution, he said they were having a problem with their server and asked of me to be kind enough to send the material on his email which I did right away.Alas!I never heard about my articles, nor from Mr. Ochieng again. The title of the articles was “Mr. Hyena! Devour me without any excuse” and “Absolute monarchy vis-à-vis life presidency” both of which are attached for curiosity’s sake. They were written to counter the opinions of other columnists who happen to be close to the president with some fancy titles. One argued, there’s a danger of terrorism in Uganda by citing the fracas between the president and the traditional leader of Buganda whereupon he called to emulate the draconian law of UK to incarcerate people suspected of terrorism up to 48 days without the need to produce them in court. The other one wrote all traditional leaders are barred by the constitution from partisan politics. To strengthen his argument he invoked the historical transformation of the British monarchy into a constitutional one in contrast to the ones that resisted change such as the Czar of Russia,Haile Selassie of Ethiopia etc.
2.Information from a reliable source about TPLF’s embassy in Kampala.According to the source,the regime in Addis castigated a diplomat named Tesfaye whose actual job is snooping around Ethiopian exiles for not doing enough to have them repressed from their activities.Hence,his masters decided to banish him to Djibouti while replacing him with a more ruthless one called Girmatsion who is leading a group of four consisting of a widow and three other young men.Allegedly,these operatives have recruited some lowly Ugandan security agents to shadow some Ethiopian exiles for what purpose is only known to them and their God, if they have one. On several occasions, they’ve been sighted meeting furtively at a restaurant called Crocodile to exchange rubbish gossip which they think is intelligence. One thing is sure, though.In the event that these hoodlums decide to throw some danger on any Ethiopian exile, they don’t have to take elaborate measure like the Russian KGB did with Alexander Litvinenko in London. After all, Uganda along with the entire Great Lakes region is a country where even prominent figures suddenly drop dead and no amount of investigation will unearth the truth. Isn’t that the reason the murmurings of the late John Garang’s widow fizzled out as quickly as it arose? Isn’t Laurent Kabila’s assassination still rife with speculation albeit a hush hush matter in Kampala? Isn’t the story of the sudden collapse and death of Brig. Noble Mayombo one of the charges that caused the dragging of the flamboyant journalist, Andrew Mwenda, to court? Considering all these, therefore, the editors of the Daily Monitor might have suppressed my articles to protect me from a possible second round blind flight or from being bitten by ferocious dogs unleashed by the police on WBS TV journalists. While being eternally grateful to them to whatever favor they did unbeknownst to me, I turn now to the issues I raised in my suppressed article titled “Will Ugandans ever distance themselves from cold-blooded killers?” Among other things, I wrote the following,
“—I say,the West,particularly,US and UK merely pay lip service to human rights issues when it comes to Africa and the Middle East. That’s why the administration in Washington who shed crocodile tears to the Iraqi Kurds during the reign of Saddam Hussein left them to be bombed today by the Turks. Also, until any extremism or terrorism run counter to western interest, its status quo has no problem to do business with it. This is what one discovers with shock when one reads books such as The new rulers of the world, by John Pilger. By the same token, the genesis of the Somali problem is no different.Yet,as the Ethiopian saying goes, to poke wood in already festering wound, Uganda and later Burundi are compounding the Somali problem in the name of peacekeeping.Though,Ugandans have never been implicated in any of the atrocities—on the contrary, have done a commendable job in relieving the suffering of the Somalis,—still, their presence from the very beginning is in violation of the principles of the procedures of deployment of peacekeeping forces. Ugandans were sent after the deplorable invasion of Somalia by Zenawi’s henchmen who provoked the wrath of Somalis. As this was sanctioned by Kampala’s boss,Washington,the establishment justified its presence in the spirit of Pan-Africanism.Nonetheless,no matter how impossible it is to influence policies in a pseudo-democracy, at least, for record purpose, the opposition and independent media should have consistently probed the continued presence of Ugandan troops in Somalia.Because,they failed to do that their establishment is not only clamoring for other Africans to repeat its folly by sending troops there.Rather,Ugandan senior officers in AMISOM have just been implicated in a scandal of arms trafficking which brought them bonanza in dollars./see www.ethiomedia.com “Ethiopian commanders pillage their own arsenal” by Alain Lallemand/.
That was then. Now Ugandans too have stained their hands with the innocent blood of civilians. To justify their indiscriminate shooting and firing into civilian areas, the Ugandan “peacekeeping” force spokesman, Major Barigye Ba-Hoku recently rejoined in an interview on BBC Focus on Africa by saying “Are we expected to throw stones when fired upon with mortars?” But this Major and his top brasses went on record several times that all is peace, thanks to their presence which stabilized situations in Mogadishu. In fact, this Major wrote an article recently expressing his disappointment on the world’s failure to see the budding peace that enabled Somalis to send their delegation to the Beijing Olympic./see www.monitor.co.ug “Somalia is full of miracles but where are the stories?”/ In April 2008, Let.Gen.Katumba Wamala said “There is no reason why other African countries cannot move in now. We have greatly improved the situation there. We burst the myth that Somalia is a no-go-area.” After such jubilation and pride on ones performance as peacekeeper, how can a force easily slide into firing against civilians on the slightest provocation? What happened to a procedure called “Rules of engagement?”Though, the Ugandan establishment like its Ethiopian counterpart decided to meddle in the affairs of Somalia to ingratiate itself with Washington, unlike Ethiopia, the opposition and other pressure groups in Uganda had a wider chance to question the wisdom of sending troops in Mogadishu. Had they done so, they would have learned that Somalia is essentially a country of clan politics and the war that Ethiopia and its backers have now precipitated is rapidly evolving into a clan war—broadly pitting the Darod clan which dominates the TFG against the Hawiye clan which supported the Islamic courts union./Read “Somalia; a failing counter- terrorism strategy by Tom Porteous,London advocacy directors May 14,2007/.Though,there was and still is the danger of Somalia being talibanized with some al-Qaeda elements, Somalia with its present state could never have been a mortal threat to anyone in the region. Not so long ago, history has shown us that most of the deadly terrorists were hatched in the still medieval nation of Saudi Arabia where oil money is a potent force to the point of making white house officials lick the boot or sandals of the sheikdom. Added to the list now is the Libyan dictator Col.Mummar Gaddafi.Washington is even ready to bear any kind of mortification for a protocol faux pas as seen during the recent visit of Condoleezza Rice to Libya.Rememeber how the Colonel brushed her aside in the full glare of camera when she went to shake his hand? As the so-called international community finds it in his great heart to tolerate tyrants like this be it in the name of military dictatorship,talibanism or sharia law, it should also have given the chance to Somalis to resist in their own good time the Islamic courts union/ICU/in whose brief rein they felt secure and peaceful. It takes an extraordinary genius and courage now to face up to the quagmire squarely and find a lasting solution before the whole region explodes into one big conflagration.
The first truth we’ve to admit is that Somalis are ferocious fighters.And, the only way to conquer ferocious fighters is by winning their minds and hearts. It is not by unleashing another dictator’s henchmen from next door whose behavior is more like a rabid dog under the guise of fighting terrorism. Save for some who had been conscripted, these henchmen for the most part don’t even have mercy for their own people. When deployed after a thorough brainwash about bogey jihadists who will invade their island of Christianity, unless preempted, one can imagine how brutal such a force can be. What’s more, when such a force has a commander with a rapist mentality on top, it would be easy to foresee how all the floodgates of war crime be opened. In a classic case of Freudian analysis termed as Para praxes or slip of the tongue or pen that exposes ones repressed urge, Meles Zenawi manifested his dirty mind to his rubber stamp parliament. When asked by Hon.Bulcha Demkesa to explain Ethiopia’s uncalled for entanglement in Somalia in terms of financial and human cost, he replied “Except sharing intelligence, the Americans didn’t give us a cent. Of course, they give us aid for development, draught and HIV.Surely; you don’t expect us to fight in Somalia carrying condoms.”/Listen to www.waltainfo.com/currentissues/2007/jun/meles.htm/.This may be news to those who only know Meles when he speaks in refined English, thanks to the now defunct Gen.Orde Wingate High school in Addis Ababa. To these outsiders who are interested to know his real nature, I advise them to start by having all of his Amharic and Tigrinya diatribes translated professionally. That would give them an insight to his warped mentality whom the western world showered with all kinds of praises and honorary doctorates.Also,helps to explain the impunity with which his henchmen perpetrates defilement and gang rape from Ogaden to Mogadishu. At any rate, it is against this backdrop that the so-called peacekeeping force of Uganda and Burundi went into Somalia.Yet, for Ugandans, especially, Somalia will not be a cakewalk like DR Congo.
Message to all our Somali brothers and sisters
Whenever the violence heightens and becomes ugly in Somalia, I hear phrases such as “Ethiopians; our historical enemies!” This always disturbs me to the point of wondering loudly now as to whether we Ethiopians are really the historical enemy of Somalis. It is true we fought two wars in 1963 and 1977.And, in both times, it was the then Somali regimes who ordered for the invasion of Ethiopia. Mind you! I didn’t say the Somalis invaded Ethiopia. I said the regimes ordered for the invasion of Ethiopia. Again in both times after the Ethiopian force repulsed the Somali force withdrew quickly from the Somali territory. When Somalia disintegrated following the ouster of Siad Barre, many Somalis sought refuge in Ethiopia whereupon Ethiopians embraced them within their means.So, where is the historical enmity? Regarding the present occupation of Mogadishu by Meles Zenawi, Ethiopians are still registering their objection despite the absence of freedom. All decent Ethiopians are incensed by what is being done in Somalia in the name of Ethiopia. But not ashamed because the people who are committing this heinous crime only represent a small criminal clique answering to Meles Zenawi and Meles Zenawi only. The majority of Ethiopians are waiting for the day when they can bring this criminal clique to justice, including, if not more, for the crime committed in Somalia. We are the kind of people who will not condone any kind of injustice on any people, especially one being perpetrated in our name.
On the other hand, it is not only some Somalis who make it sound like Ethiopians carry perennial grudge or evil design on Somalis. For instance, a columnist named Mukoma Wa Ngugi wrote in the July-September 2008 BBC Focus on Africa magazine what appears to be a carefully thought out but in reality a misleading article under the title “On the border.” He rightly chided the hypocrisy of the African union mission and questioned the seat of AU in Addis, the occupier force’s capital.Nevertheless, he wrongly asserted that Ethiopia has territorial claims over a part of ancient Somalia since the 19th century which were given a blessing by the British colonialists with the official award of Ogaden to Ethiopia in 1948.What Ngugi doesn’t know is that before the invasion of Ethiopia by fascist Italy, Ogaden was also part of Ethiopia. That and Eritrea was what Ethiopia claimed to regain diplomatically after independence. Not annexation of others territories.Ngugi also contended by justifying the “Greater Somalia” concept with that of people of the same language who were divided by “conquest and occupation” have the right to demand unification and that this promotes Pan-Africanism.The point he missed is that the concept of the Greater Somalia is not an indigenous Somali conception. It is the British who invented it with the evil design of incorporating Ogaden with the then British and Italian Somaliland. Of course, later it was owned by Somali irredentists beginning from “The Somali nationalist party, the Somali youth league/SYL/down to successive regimes. It is appropriate to mention here too that the secessionist movement of the so-called Eritrean liberation struggle was also germinated by the British and fomented by the Arabs, particularly the Egyptians.Sadly, though; this one not only ended up splintering an ethnic group with the same language and culture into two but pitted them in bloody conflict.
Therefore, if we follow Ngugi’s line of thinking to promote Pan-Africanism by granting the right of clamoring to form a greater territory by annexing land from a neighboring country on the grounds of having the same language, all we will have in Africa would be nothing but internecine war. Imagine as to what would happen, if Tanzanians who pride themselves as the fountain of Kiswahili claim that all Kiswahili speaking people in their adjacent should be incorporated with them in a bid to form “The Greater Tanzania.” What’s ideal for all of us Africans is to bring a system of governance that ensures our fundamental rights. When that happens, instead of talking about the “Greater Somalia” we would be talking about the Greater Horn of Africa which eventually leads to the merging of all Africa. In the meantime, let’s never forget that our real enemy is oppression that curtails our inalienable right to think and express ourselves freely in a bid to find a lasting solution for all our woes in a civilized manner. Let’s also be mindful that when we achieve independence in the true sense of the word, we can shake off the legacy of colonialism which to this day pits us with one another through its extension with gimmicks such as cold war and the new world order.
