The Kenyan Army may be invading southern Somalia allegedly chasing “Somali pirates” yet the fact remains that zero cruise missiles, zero smart bombs and zero snatch and grab commando operations have been carried out against Somali pirates.

To this day not one Somali pirate has been killed on the ground in Somalia by the international naval flotillas in the Indian Ocean after receiving the ransoms they extract for the ships and crews they have captured.

With hundreds of ships seized, thousands of crewmen held in captivity, and by some estimates over half a billion dollars in ransoms paid to the Somali pirates so feared by seamen traveling through the Horn of Africa who clearly have immunity from the international naval task forces patrolling the Indian Ocean.

This immunity also seems to extend to the western media, for no one, not Jay Bahadur in the NY Times or the venerable USA magazine The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill whose CIA vetted junket to Mogadishu was heralded by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! as an “expose” have raised the obvious question, why do the Somali pirates have immunity from attack?

Maybe all the reporters covering the Horn of Africa have been inoculated with a vaccine to provide them with immunity from asking such a simple question, why hasn’t there been any retaliation against the Somali pirates?

As they say, “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist” to notice this, so maybe something is slipped into their inoculations immunizing them before they fly off to the Horn of Africa?

To those of us who actually follow the media based in the Horn of Africa, the answer has been obvious for sometime.

First, the Somali pirates are mainly based in the warlord controlled “autonomous” region calling itself Puntland, which occupies the very tip of the Horn of Africa. The warlord “President” of Puntland is well known for his alliance with and support from the Meles Zenawi regime ruling Ethiopia. Ethiopia has substantial military bases in Puntland and the leaders of Puntland are regularly reported to be welcome guests in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

From on the ground in Puntland, Somalia;

Garowe Online (Garowe)
From Allafrica.Com: Somalia: Puntland President Meets With Ethiopian Foreign Minister
2 April 2010

The president of Somalia’s Puntland State government Dr. Abdirahman Mohammed Farole has held meeting with Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The meeting which was held in Hotel Sharaton, where Puntland delegation is staying, was focused on relation between the two governments and the general security situation in Somalia.

According to press release from the Puntland Presidency, The meeting ended in good note with both parties reaffirming support.”

In Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa the Puntland warlords were seen shaking hands and embracing the top leadership of the Ethiopian regime though behind the scenes it is reported that suitcases stuffed with cash are delivered to Ethiopian V.I.P.’s and nasty quarrels break out over the amount of cash forked over.

A couple of years ago a Saudi Arabian newspaper published what is common knowledge amongst those in the know here in the Horn of Africa.

In an interview with the Eritrean Minister of Information (everything published in Saudi Arabia has to be cleared by the Saudi Intelligence services before publication so this reflected the unofficial position of the Saudi government) it was disclosed that Somali pirates were known to go directly to Ethiopian military bases in Puntland upon receiving their ransom payments.

Once they make their payoffs to the Ethiopians they are immune from attack for Ethiopia is the USA’s policeman on the beat in East Africa and as such their military is off limits to any attack by the international naval flotillas fighting piracy in the Indian Ocean.

With drones flying overhead sending live video feed via satellites to military attack controllers in the USA it is known exactly where these pirates go after receiving their ransom payments so ignorance is not an explanation for the immunity these pirates have.

Suitcases stuffed with millions of dollars buys immunity for the half a billion dollar piracy business in the Horn of Africa and is all to typical of how much of what passes for business is carried out in Africa as a whole.

This has been common knowledge amongst well informed observers in the Horn of Africa for years now and is the only reality based explanation for the absolute on the ground immunity that has protected the Somali pirates based in Puntland for over a decade now.

You pay, you play though those few poverty stricken Somali desperadoes caught in the act of piracy on the high sea’s remain sacrificial lambs, held up for the world to see that there really is a war against piracy in the Horn of Africa.

As I have said many times, truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to the Horn of Africa. That the Somali pirates have absolute immunity on the ground after receiving their ransoms is beyond dispute. The only important question remaining is why this immunity extends to the international media?

By Thomas C. Mountain

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

Prime Minister Melez Zenawi. Ra'iisul wasaare Meles Zenawi/Google Images.

Recently released Wikileaks Ethiopia files expose how Ethiopian security forces planted 3 bombs that went off in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on September 16, 2006 and then blamed Eritrea and the Oromo resistance for the blasts in a case that raises serious questions about the claims made about the bombing attempt against the African Union summit earlier this year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In a report from 2006 marked “Secret ; Subject: Ethiopia: Recent Bombings Blamed on Oromos Possibly the Work of GOE [Government of Ethiopia]…by: Charge [d’Affairs] Vicki Huddleston”, “An embassy source, as well as clandestine reporting, suggests that the bombing may have in fact been the work of the GoE security forces.” Cable reference id: #06ADDISABABA2708

At the time the western media reported the Ethiopian National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) claims that the bombs were “part of a coordinated terror attack by the OLF [Oromo Liberation Front, the oldest national liberation movement in Ethiopia] and Sha’abiya (Eritrea) aimed at disrupting democratic development”.

The Wikileaks report goes on, “a typically reliable information source, contacted Post to report that” the bodies of three men found at the bomb sites were “men [who] had been picked up by police a week prior, kept in detention and tortured. He said police then left the men in a house and detonated explosives nearby, killing 3 of them.”

This exposes the history of how the Ethiopian regime has planted bombs and then blamed Eritrea and the Ethiopian resistance. The lies that make up the official version of this alleged terrorist attack raises serious questions about the credibility of the recently released report by the UN via its US State Department affiliate, the Monitoring Group for Eritrea and Somalia which blames the Eritreans and the OLF for the January bombing attempt at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Identical lies about a nearly identical “terrorist attack”, all accepted as fact by the western media. This should also deliver another body blow to the Obama White House and its claims that Eritrea supports terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

So once again the bellowing against Eritrea by the USA and it lackeys at the UN going back to 2006 is exposed as complete bunkum and an identical frame up of Eritrean and the Oromo resistance in Ethiopia that has been regurgitated by the UN and its truth challenged Monitoring Group on Eritrea and Somalia must be subject to a more critical scrutiny. Based on this expose’ it can only be hoped that the UN inSecurity Council, which has yet to decide whether to pass severe sanctions against Eritrea, will refrain from doing so.

By Thomas C. Mountain

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

It has been over four years since the USA and it’s vassals at the UN began bellowing charges that Eritrea was supporting “Al Queda linked Al Shabab” fighters in Somalia. At the same time, the US Ambassador to Ethiopia was saying, stamped “Top Secret”, that “The role Eritrea plays in Somalia, for instance is probably insignificant”. {Wikileaks file “Ogaden; Counterinsurgency Operations Hitting a Wall, Part 2. sect. 7.}

For the UN Security Council to pass punitive sanctions against any country, especially such a small, underdeveloped country like Eritrea, one would think that some small modicum of truth would be presented in supporting evidence.

Now, thanks to Wikileaks, the so called “evidence” claiming to document a link between Eritrea and terrorism in Somalia all turns out to be bunkum, at least according to the secret testimony of the US Ambassador to Ethiopia.

From the voluminous charges made by the UN Eritrea Somalia Monitoring Group, to the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, and including just about every western funded “think tank” ranging from the International Crisis Group to Chatham House, it was all bunkum. Or so says empires senior man on the ground in the Horn of Africa, Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto. And that almost a year after all the bellowing began.

Ethiopia has provided most of the muscle for what passes for US foreign policy in East Africa. As Columbia does for the USA in South America, as Israel is in the middle east, Nigeria in West Africa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his army and paramilitary death squads do the dirty work in East Africa so the USA and its western allies can hold up their hands and proclaim them clean for all the world to see.

Behind the scene U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto is the man in charge, the top gun, on the ground in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. Take it from an old “Africa Hand”, what he says in secret, especially when he disagrees with what the politicians in Washington D.C. are saying, is what is most credible.

So here we are, almost 3 years into the Obama regime, and the USA is once again proclaiming Eritrean ties to terror in Somalia. Only now the sanctions being proposed are very serious and will harm the well being of the Eritrean people by damaging the economy and preventing Eritreans abroad from supporting their country financially.

As for all the bunkum “evidence”, the arms that Eritrea is falsely accused of providing to the “Al Queda linked Al Shabab terrorists in Somalia”? It has been two years now since the UN General Assembly’s Special Committee on Somalia issued a report that said that at least 80% of the arms available in Somalia came from Ethiopia. Or were arms “donated” by the USA and other western countries to the so called “Somalia Transitional Government” and then sold on the black market, often times to the resistance. Recent reports continue to echo this fact on the ground, that the arms for sale in the arms bazaars throughout much of southern Somalia/Mogadishu come stamped Made in the USA, not Eritrea.

So thanks to Wikileaks, we can try to once and for all, using words marked “Top Secret” by a senior mercenary of the American Empire, put the “Eritrea supports terrorism in Somalia” lie to rest. And maybe, though I wont hold my breath, the UN inSecurity Council won’t pass more, far worse, sanctions against Eritrea.

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

This protest will be held throughout the world on September 7th as part of an international effort to call attention to the genocide being committed in the Ogaden Region.

See Denver Protest Information Below

Furthermore, the U.S. currently provides millions of dollars of long-term humanitarian aid to Ethiopia; however, the government of Ethiopia is not demonstrating genuine willingness to help alleviate this humanitarian crisis. Instead the Ethiopian regime is using international aid, to commit heinous crimes against humanity in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Millions of people in the Ogaden region are facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and the international community and the international media has ignored the plight of the Ogaden people for far too long.

The protesters demand that the U.S. government compel the Ethiopian regime to open the Ogaden region to independent organizations, including humanitarian ones, to assess and monitor the serious humanitarian situation.

Denver Protest - See Dallas Protest Information Below

The ongoing conflict in the Ogaden has had a devastating impact on innocent civilians. The government of Ethiopia has taken series of steps to clampdown on opposition forces, including use of force and human rights violations. The State Department’s 2010 Report on Human Rights Practices in Ethiopia detail incidences of human rights abuses committed by Ethiopian security forces and government sponsored militias known as Liyuu Bolis.

We are demanding the U.S. government and the international community to take immediate action in dealing with the human and humanitarian crisis taking place in Ogaden.

Ethiopian children laughing. Source: ouradopt.com

Has anyone ever asked movie star Angelina Jolie how much she paid for the Ethiopian baby she adopted? Or should I say how much she “donated”, most of which ended up in the hands of the national crime syndicate known as the Government of Ethiopia.

For several years now just about anyone has been able to buy a baby in Ethiopia, you know what I mean, “adopt”? It costs about $30,000, Cash. Some reports say over 3,000 are sold…adopted, every year.

It has turned into a major cash flow for the Godfathers of the Ethiopian “government”. Do the math, 3,000 X $30,000 X 5 years = almost a half a billion dollars, requiring more and more London bank accounts to be set up to be stuffed chock full of some very sick money.

When you buy…adopt, a baby in Ethiopia there is a good chance that the baby isn’t an orphan, though it is usually standard language in all the deeds of sale/adoption papers that such is the case. With millions of Ethiopians once again famine stricken, selling babies has become a way to survive. Though of the $30,000 as little as $1,000 makes it through the hands of the Ethiopian mafia to the babies families.

If one as been reading the pages of this and other websites willing to publish what is really going on in Ethiopia, you will know that Ethiopia is committing genocide by enforcing a food aid blockade against the ethnic Somalis in the Ethiopian Ogaden during the worst drought in 60 years. So why should selling babies come as a shock?

Angelina Jolie and adopted daughter Source: angelinajolieadoptions.wordpress.com

Angelina Jolie should come clean and tell the world what she really “donated” to get her little Ethiopian girl. Somehow though I wont hold my breath for it wasn’t that long ago that Ms. Jolie was calling for the USA to declare war and invade Sudan. Buy an African baby from Ethiopia and then bomb some African villages in next door neighbor Sudan, its Hollyweird isn’t it?

The UN is even weirder though. With Ethiopia committing genocide in the Ogaden, the UN inSecurity Council is talking about passing even more damaging sanctions against…next door neighbor Eritrea?

The saying goes in this part of Africa “all roads to peace in the Horn of Africa run through Asmara [Eritrea]…” and there is one thing the USA and its cheerleaders in Hollywood are dead set against and that is peace breaking out in Africa.

With the UN there to enforce the Law of the Jungle, only the strong survive. And survivors, especially those that won’t kneel down at the masters feet, have to be made examples of. Or at least it has to look that way so tougher sanctions against Eritrea is the USA’s demand.

So buy a baby in Ethiopia and support genocide. And don’t forget to declare war and start bombing Sudan. In the mean time, get busy and start enforcing even tougher sanctions against Eritrea.

Either that, or better yet, make sure no one even hears about all of this, business as usual, you know, with none the wiser?

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

Eritrean Farming

Most people in Africa spend most of their income on food. With food prices rising by over 50% drought is not the only cause of hunger in the Horn of Africa. While southern Ethiopia, home to half of Ethiopia’s 80 million people, is suffering under its worst drought and famine in 60 years, residents in the northern capital of Addis Ababa are feeling the pinch of hunger due to near record high food prices.

Yet next door to Ethiopia in Eritrea, where we have been living since 2006, there exists an island of food security where grain prices have fallen by half and hunger has become a thing of the past.

Why is it that according to Sukhwinder Singh Toor, the IMF capo in Addis Ababa in 2010, Ethiopia needs over $7 billion in aid a year yet millions starve, while neighboring Eritrea gets a tiny fraction of that and staple grain prices are falling dramatically?

While in early 2011, the UN Famine Early Warning System predicted millions would be starving in the southern half of Ethiopia, the Meles Zenawi regime in power in Addis Ababa was exporting food, over 10,000 tons of rice in 2010 to Saudi Arabia alone.

Land in Ethiopia, good land, can be bought by foreigners from the government for a song, even less if leased for 99 years, putting another $100 million or more into the pockets of P.M. Meles Zenawi and his cronies. All the while basics like wheat, barley, sorghum and chick peas have become so expensive that malnutrition rates for children spike.

Ethiopia is the birth place of the Nile river yet millions starve while in Eritrea, mostly semiarid, some 60% of the country’s food is produced via micro dam fed irrigation systems, beginning to break the age old dependency on the rains to feed the people.

The drought maps for the Horn of Africa show an area running from Sudan to Ethiopia to Somalia and even Kenya, yet in its midst unnoticed by those reading their teleprompters on the news channels there exists an island the size of Britain where affordable bread is there for all and slowly but steadily, life gets better.

Eritrean Farmers showcasing their successful Farms

Johnny Carson, US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa may claim famine rages in Eritrea but then he also says Ethiopia’s economy continues to grow by double digits annually and never mentions a figure for the number of Ethiopian children that die every day of starvation.

Life expectancy in Ethiopia is falling, maybe plunging is a better word while even the World Bank uses words like “dramatic” to describe the improvements in life expectancy in Eritrea. Eritrea is one of the very few countries in the world that will meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), especially in the area of health for its children, malaria mortality prevention and reduction of AIDS.

Hillary Clinton may call Eritrea a dictatorship and Ethiopia a democracy but if one measures human rights by access to clean drinking water, food, shelter and medical care rather than stuffed ballot boxes and fixed elections than the descriptions would have to be reversed.

The Horn of Africa may be the Horn of Hunger for millions but in the midst of all the drought, starvation and suffering, there lives and grows an island of food security, little Eritrea and its five million people.

Unfortunately, none of this may be enough to prevent the UN inSecurity Council from passing even tougher sanctions against Eritrea in an attempt to damage the Eritrean economy and, inevitably, hurt the Eritrea people. This is all done, once again, in the name of fighting the War on Terror, or more accurately, the War on the Somali people.

By Thomas C. Mountain

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.

The images in the article are sourced courtesy www.madote.com. For more images on Eritrean Farming: Eritrea wins war on Food Security.

WFP Food Voucher

The World Food Program (WFP), one of the U.N.’s biggest aid agencies, has a very nasty history in Somalia. Back in 2006 just as Somali farmers brought their grain harvest to market, the WFP began the distribution of its entire years grain aid for Somalia. With thousands of tons of free grain available, Somali farmers found it almost impossible to sell their harvest and faced disaster.

Thousands of angry Somali farmers gathered at WFP distribution centers across Somalia to protest, sometimes violently. In an attempt to calm matters the WFP promised an investigation which in due course announced that yes the WFP had done the Somali farmers wrong and promised they wouldn’t do it again.

Then in 2007, just as the Somali grain harvest began to arrive in local markets, the WFP once again distributed its entire years grain aid, only this time with the Ethiopian army there to protect it. With a four year long on and off again drought afflicting most of Somalia since, you could say the WFP helped put the nail in the coffin of Somali agriculture.

Small wonder then why the Somali resistance, “The Youth”, Al Shabab, has since kicked the WFP out of most of southern Somalia that they control. It was only a couple of months ago that the WFP had cut the minimum survival food rations for the one million or more Somali refugees it had been feeding by 70%, due to a “funding shortfall”. Yet, today, they would have us believe that they are desperately concerned for the survival of the Somali people suffering from the drought?

The WFP is one of the very few aid agencies allowed to operate in the Ogaden next door to Somalia in Ethiopia. They run a few “show case” distribution centers and have provided little or no aid for 4 years to over 90% of the Ogaden suffering from the “The Great Horn of Africa Drought”, the worst in 60 years. This is also the area where the Ethiopian government is fighting a decade long counterinsurgency against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). The WFP’s cooperation in withholding food aid from the areas where the guerilla fighters operate is part of a classic counterinsurgency strategy, “if you can’t catch the fish, drain the lake.”

A couple of months ago, a WFP team in the Ogaden was returning to their base and made the mistake of taking a short cut off of the Ethiopian approved travel routes and came across an Ethiopian paramilitary unit carrying out their everyday practice of burning, looting, murder and mayhem in a village accused of being supporters of the ONLF. Apparently they tried to turn around but it was too late and the Ethiopian death squad opened fire, killing some of the WFP team and wounding the others. The wounded were trucked off to the local Ethiopian garrison town and thrown into the prison there.

Almost at once the Ethiopians announced that ONLF “terrorists” had “ambushed” the WFP team, “murdered” some, taken the rest “hostages” and that the Ethiopian military was in hot pursuit.

Two days later the ONLF launched an attack on the military base and prison holding the WFP captives and freed them and the other political prisoners detained there.

The Ethiopian military immediately brought in helicopter gun ships to pursue the ONLF and the freed prisoners but were unsuccessful and the WFP staff managed to make it to safety.

The ONLF subsequently delivered the freed hostages to the WFP expecting the truth of the incident to be told and the real criminals to be exposed.

To this day, the WFP has remained silent about the details of the incident and has not condemned the murder of their staff by the Ethiopian paramilitary death squads. The freed staffs families live in areas controlled by the Ethiopians. Too many burnt villages, too many slaughtered families, keep ones mouth shut or your loved ones will meet the same fate. How would the world even know if you spoke out and your family was murdered? The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and just about all the other aid agencies besides the WFP having been kicked out of the Ogaden. End of story.

While some 10 million Somalis living in the Ogaden in Ethiopia are the victims of a drought and food aid blockade, the WFP remains silent, complicit in genocide.

World Food Program, angle of mercy or angel of death? You be the judge.

By Thomas C. Mountain

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

Martin Schibbye och Johan Persson. Source: abaaqaroow.com

As predicted here on AfrobeatRadio, crocodile tears have begun to run down the faces of the likes of Anthony Lake, CIA director nominee turned Executive Director of UNICEF, as some 15 million people starve in the Horn of Africa. Tony Lake appeals to the world for tens, no, hundreds of millions of dollars to save the starving people of Ethiopia and Somalia, never once telling you that the majority, some 10 million, are in the Ogaden and Oromia regions, and are being subjected to a western funded food aid blockade by the Ethiopian military.

Another five million people, maybe more, are starving in Somalia. The heads of the western food agencies are loath to admit that a million or more of those starving are refugees created by the UN funded Ethiopian and AU armies invading and occupying Somalia since 2006. The very same refugees who had their minimum survival rations cut by 70% by the likes of Tony Lake due to “funding shortfalls” before all the crocodile tears began to flow.

Since 2008, and the defeat and withdrawal of the Ethiopian army which invaded Somalia in 2006, the UN and its military wing in the African Union have intervened directly in the “war on terror” in Somalia in the form of some 10,000 troops, mostly from Uganda.

In the past 3 years, the UN/AU army has laid waste to over half of Somalia’s former capital of Mogadishu. Some 30 square miles of Mogadishu have been pretty much obliterated by heavy artillery, mortars, tanks and helicopter gun ships operated by the Ugandan army. In the last 3 years some 500,000 or more Somali residents of Mogadishu have had to flee for their lives due to the relentless UN/AU offensive, joining the half a million refugees created by the Ethiopian invasion.

The drought ravaging the Horn of Africa is already four years old and has developed into the worst drought to hit the region in 60 years. With the onset of drought in 2007 came the onset of a major counterinsurgency in the Ogaden region by the Ethiopian military, paid in full for by the western aid and financial institutions. And with the counterinsurgency came the need to cover up this crime and so the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders were expelled. Out of sight, out of mind is the slogan today for most of the international media with no camera crews, no journalists, no news at all if they can help it. About 10 million facing forced starvation in south east and south west Ethiopia, the Ogaden and Oromia.

The last journalists [photojournalist Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye] who tried to get into the Ogaden, two Swedes, were sold out by the Somali Puntland warlords, ambushed by the Ethiopian para-militaries, their escorts slaughtered, with both journalists wounded and thrown into an Ethiopian dungeon, a message to all and wide to mind your own business when it comes to genocide in the Horn of Africa.

So the crocodile tears will flow and hundreds of millions of dollars supposedly meant to feed millions of starving people in the Horn of Africa will once again end up paying for the Ethiopian military’s latest arms purchase or in the western bank accounts of Ethiopian P.M. Meles Zenawi and his cohorts. And for a while the international media will churn out stories filled with heartbreaking images of starving children in the Horn of Africa and never once tell you how some 10 million of these people are suffering from a western funded food aid blockade.

By Thomas C. Mountain

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006.

on Mixcloud

We begin our series on the phenomenon which is generally referred to as “Land Grab” in Africa. While this phenomenon is not unique to Africa, and has in fact been going on all over the world, it has however, taken on increasing urgency due to shortages of arable land globally. There has been an explosion of land dispossession all over Africa since 2008, leading to political instability, insecurity, increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs), starvation, and at least, in the case of Madagascar, a public revolt that lead to a coup. These land transactions between African governments, wealthy international agro-businesses and foreign countries are often opaque, lacking in accountability, and are rarely made public.

In the first of our Land Grab Series, we examine Ethiopia’s “Land Grab”, and the dispossession of tens of thousands (if not millions eventually) of Ethiopian citizens, under the 20-year old authoritarian and brutal regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, which is leasing Ethiopian land for up to 99 years to foreign businesses and governments without any significant consultation with the people most affected.

We explore why a “beggar nation” like Ethiopia which cannot feed many of its people, that is suffering from famine, perennial food shortages, endemic hunger, and chronic dependency on foreign aid, is selling off its fertile lands and natural resources to foreign agro-businesses to grow food that will be exported to their own countries. Ethiopia is currently experiencing its worst drought and famine in sixty years.

To help us make some sense of the land grab in Ethiopia, and why such a poor country with a repressive government, and a well documented history of serious human rights violation, is none-the-less a major US (and western) ally in its geo-strategic posture in Africa and in its war against terror. Our guests on today’s program on AfrobeaRadio on WBAI, joining us on the phone are, Mr. Obang Metho and Mr. Abdikarim Rabi.

Mr. Obang Metho is the Executive Director of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE). According to its website, SMNE is a “non-violent, non-political, grassroots social justice movement of diverse Ethiopians; committed to bringing truth, justice, freedom, equality, reconciliation, accountability and respect for human and civil rights to the people of Ethiopia and beyond.” SMNE is also a co-author of a recent report on Ethiopia Land Grab with the Oakland Institute.

Mr. Abdikarim Rabi is member of Ogaden Youth and Student Union, a member of ICARE, and Americans Against the Genocide in Ogadenia, an anti-genocide movement.

A World Bank report, Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits? reveals that the government of Ethiopia transferred 1.2 million hectares of land between 2004 and 2009, noting that in most cases, “the expected job growth and net investment were very low.” The following table from the report shows countries with the “large land acquisitions.

According to the California-based think tank, the Oakland Institute:

“in 2009 alone nearly 60 million ha– an area the size of France – was purchased or leased in comparison to an average annual expansion of global agricultural land of less than 4 million ha before 2008.”

And in its latest published report on Ethiopia: Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa; Country Report: Ethiopia in May 2011 in collaboration with the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), the report finds, among others, that 36% of the land so far given away by the Meles Zenawi regime is in Oromia (i.e. 1,319,214 Hectares of the 3,619,509 Hectares of land grabbed by neo-colonizers throughout the region as of January 2011). On the other hand, 42% and 27% of the land in Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz, respectively, has already been grabbed or is up for grabs. The figures according to the report by the Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia “likely understate the true extent of land [grab] as only the most reliable information was [provided].”

To Read Oakland Institute/SMNE Full Report Document, click here

Despite having received billions of dollars in aid, Ethiopians remain among the poorest in the world, largely due to poor government policies and practices. Nearly a sixth of all Ethiopians are on some form of food assistance. Food aid is itself often used as a tool of patronage, doled out as a reward for political support, and also withheld as punishment to those labeled enemies of the government. The Ethiopian government has also imposed commercial food embargoes on entire regions and populations as part of its repressive policies and practices.

In a report filed by Thomas Mountain on AfrobeatRadio, Ethiopia Buys Arms As Millions Starve, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced the purchase of 200 military tanks at a whopping price tag of $100 million, a day after Britain announced its pledge of $60 million in food aid to Ethiopia.

In response to this conduct, Thomas Mountain wrote:

“One of the primary reasons Ethiopia needs 200 tanks is to conduct its counterinsurgency campaigns against the ethnically based armed uprisings slowly engulfing much of the country. From the Ogaden in the south east, to Tigray in the north to Gambella in the west, and now [as ] reported, even spreading to much of Oromia in the south west, the Ethiopian regime needs to be able to crush its own people and the latest installment of armor is long over due. It is already 11 years since Ethiopia invaded Eritrea and in the process lost its best armored divisions, including at least 2 in one day long disaster called the Battle of Tsorona(last part of this not clear).”

Tanks work well against lightly armed guerilla fighters and even better when it comes to crushing civilian uprisings, something those in the western and UN “aid” agencies are fully cognizant of. Now that Ethiopia has become a source of “peacekeepers” in Sudan some of these Ethiopian tanks may be used to uphold Pax Americana on the North-South Sudanese border which includes Sudan’s oil fields.

According to several humanitarian organizations including Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia’s military campaigns have triggered a serious humanitarian crisis. Ethopian military crackdown has led to widespread violence in which entire villages have been destroyed. Citizens also suffer from arbitrary arrests, theft, rape and murder by Ethiopian soldiers. “In October 2007, The Independent reported that the situation in Ogaden had begun to mirror the Darfur conflict, with refugees stating that government troops had burned villages and raped and killed civilians.”

In its report, Human Rights Watch claims that;

“civilians have been killed in what appears to be a deliberate effort to mete out collective punishment against a civilian population suspected of sympathizing with the rebels.”

HRW says it has documented dozens of cases of severe abuse by Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden, including gang rapes, burned villages and what it calls “demonstration killings,” like hanging and beheading of populace, meant to terrorize the population.

Compiled and hosted by Wuyi Jacobs

Sources:
Oromia-Ethiopia: Latest Updates on Land Grab – Reports from the World Bank and the Oakland Institute
Oromia/Gambella/Ethiopia: 36% of Land Grabs in Oromia; Half of Gambella to Be Grabbed
Rising Global Interest In Farmland
Abuses perpetrated by the Ethiopian military
Ethiopia ‘blocking MSF in Ogaden
Human Right Watch quote: Ethiopians Said to Push Civilians Into Rebel War

This program was broadcast on AfrobeaRadio on WBAI 99.5 FM PACIFICA Radio on Saturday July 09, 2011. AfrobeatRadio on WBAI broadcast every Saturday from 4 to 5PM EST.

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KPFA News, 07.04.2011: Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region, in accordance with a new UN Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities, if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But, human rights investigators say that the Security Council is ignoring Ethiopia’s own genocide, in the Ogaden Basin, and, that the West is funding it.

Transcript:

KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Landau: In Africa, with South Sudan’s independence from the Northern government of Omar al-Bashir only five days away, the division of oil revenues, demarcation of new borders. and the future of the disputed, oil rich Abyei region remain unresolved. The U.S. has dispatched Ethiopian troops with the approval of a UN Security Council resolution “authorizing the use of force to protect civilians and humanitarian workers in Abyei.” But, veteran African journalists say the Ethiopian troops are actually protecting U.S. and allied oil interests. The same journalists join Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations in saying that the U.S. and the Security Council are tolerating an ongoing genocide in Ethiopia’s own Ogaden Basin. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Thomas Mountain of Eritrea, is a Counterpunch, Global Research, Foreign Policy, and AfrobeatRadio contributor, and, one of the only independent reporters in the Horn of Africa. He says that Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi’s troops in Sudan are in fact, U.S. and allied enforcers:

Thomas Mountain: Ethiopia is the U.S. cop on the beat. They’re enforcers; they’re gendarmes, which is a critical part of U.S. foreign policy. They use local forces so that they can have their dirty work done, and hold up their hands and say “Look; our hands are clean.”

KPFA: Mountain, and others, including Human Rights Watch, and veteran Africa journalist and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow, say that the U.S. and UN are tolerating genocide against the people of Ethiopia’s own Ogaden Basin. The Ethiopian government, they say, has blocked food and medical aid to millions in danger of starvation, amidst a drought worsening in much of East Africa, so as to weaken the Ogaden National Liberation Front fighting for independence from Ethiopia:

Thomas Mountain: Because of a major drought, millions of Ethiopians in the Ogaden are starving. There’s also a counter insurgency that’s been going on for about 10 years, where the people have risen up against the marginalization and the brutal military occupation tactics of the Meles Zenawi regime that’s in power in Ethiopia. So the Meles Zenawi regime has blocked food aid. They’ve kicked the Red Cross and the Doctors without Borders and other aid agencies out of the Ogaden and are blocking food aid to the millions of starving people in the Ogaden. And Ethiopia, of course, is the largest recipient of Western aid in Africa, receiving about seven billion dollars a year. So this is a western funded genocide in the Ogaden that’s being completely ignored by the Western media and the Western governments, even though they know all about it.

KPFA: The UN Resolution approving the dispatch of Ethiopian troops to Sudan invoked the international doctrine that sovereign states have a “responsibility to protect” populations not being protected by their own governments. The doctrine was formalized by UN Security Council Resolutions 1674 and 1894, in 2006 and 2009, on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Neither has been invoked to protect the people of the Ogaden.

By Ann Garrison.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own blog, Ann Garrison, and produces forAfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend Newson KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com.