Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 12:37:32 +0200 From: Bernhard Helander To: pauls@css.itd.umich.edu Subject: Somalia News Update, No 12 In this issue: * TURMOIL IN ETHIOPIA'S REGION FIVE * ESCALATING INTER-CLAN VIOLENCE IN MOGADISHU ____________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ Vol 3, No 12 April 22, 1994 ISSN 1103-1999 ____________________________________________________________________ Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and fax. Questions can be directed to Bernhard.Helander@antro.uu.se or to fax number +46-18-151160. All SNU marked material is free to quote as long as the source is clearly stated. ____________________________________________________________________ TURMOIL IN ETHIOPIA'S REGION FIVE (SNU, Addis Ababa, April 21) - While the remains of the Somali Republic still have no government, ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia's Region Five are cursed with two. A bloodless coup in the Regional Council backed by the central government appears to have backfired. The resulting confusion seems likely to result in embarrassment for Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi and Minister for External Economic Cooperation, Dr Abdul-Mejid Hussein, as they seek to explain what is going on. The present crisis started with a meeting of Region Five council members in Jijiga ending on April 6. An announcement was made to the Ethiopian News Agency that the incumbent Regional Executive Committee had been removed from office for neglect of their duties and financial irregularities. The new president, according to the group, was Ugaz Abdulrahman Abdukenu, formerly a businessman in Mogadishu. The Ugaz is well known in Gode as a former Relief and Rehabilitation Commission representative, widely believed to have manipulated thousands of tons of food aid delivered to his warehouses in the furtherance of his political career. The Executive Committee hit back in a statement yesterday, saying that only 14 members of the council and 21 "new faces" were present at the Jijiga meeting, and as such it was illegal and its decisions invalid. It also claimed that the expenses of the meeting were paid by the central government's Election Board. Last week, the statement claimed, a legal session of the regional council was held in Jijiga, but was ignored by the Ethiopian News Agency and the central government. The press statement defends the record of the present executive committee and bluntly accuses the central government of political interference, military intimidation, and delays in the transfer of the region's $10 million budget from Addis Ababa. To confuse the picture even further, in the same statement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and the Western Somali Liberation Front, the two largest parties in the regional council, claim that President Meles, in a visit to Gode on 17 April, reassured elders that he neither knew nor condoned the breakaway Jijiga group. Dr Abdul-Mejid Hussein's interview on BBC World Service on April 21, muddied the waters still further, denying the allegations of the Executive Committee emphatically. To make sense of these events, the story starts with the elections of 1992. Much delayed and unobserved elections in late 1992 produced results released by the Election Commission in February of 1993. Of 107 seats, the Ogaden National Liberation Front won 38, with the Western Somali Liberation Front taking 22. The remainder were won by independent candidates, and eight other parties, mainly representing smaller clans. Unlike in most other regions, the dominant Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had no satellite party organized to defend its agenda. Controversy began immediately when the Council decided that Gode should be the capital, while the other parties representing smaller clans, favoured Jijiga. The Oromo region had already claimed Dire Dawa. The ONLF again managed to upset the other clans by insisting the name of Region Five should be Ogadenia, despite the fact that at least five other clans are living in the region. Until the latest upset, the Region Five administration was headed by Hassan Jire Kalinle, a former Air Force pilot in Somalia, born in Ethiopia at Kelafo. The first regional council's President and other ministers had been removed from office towards the end of 1993, accused of expropriating about $1 million of missing funds from the region's budget. On January 28 1994, the ONLF repeated its proposal a referendum on independence for the region at a press conference in Addis Ababa. Despite the right of regions to self-determination "up to and including secession" enshrined in the Transitional Charter, the EPRDF was alarmed at the prospect, and stepped up its contacts with the minority parties in the Regional Council. The ONLF, supported by Amnesty International, alleged the extra-judicial killings of three of its officials and the detention and torture of others. The result was the formation of the Ethiopian Somali Democratic League, led by Dr Abdul-Mejid Hussein, Minister for External Economic Cooperation in Addis Ababa in early February. The party is a conglomeration of 10 smaller parties, at least three of whom had hardly been heard of before. The formation of the party "signals a blow to those disgruntled elements and anti-peace forces" said Dr Abdul-Mejid, referring to ONLF and Al-Ittihad, the armed Islamic fundamentalist group. It remains to be seen whether the combined forces of the ESDL, which does not count the WSLF among its members, can force out the ONLF, WSLF and Hassan Jire's party, the Western Somali Democratic Party. Previous pacts among Ethiopian Somali parties have dissolved almost as soon as the ink dried on the agreement, but then again, they never had a government Minister for a leader before. Elections for the national Constituent Assembly are due on June 5 1994. ESCALATING INTER-CLAN VIOLENCE IN MOGADISHU (SNU, Mogadishu, April 22) - More than 30 people are said to have died in the heavy fighting between the Hawaadle and Habar Gedir clans that has been raging in central Mogadishu since last Saturday. The current fighting between the two clans began as the last American troops pulled out of Somalia in mid-March and was directly triggered by a disagreement over the control of a toe-truck in the airport. The Hawaadle clan who previously were allied with Aideed's SNA militia have found themselves increasingly on the fringes of potential political power in Somalia. The so-called Hiraab treaty between some Hawiye clans in January left the Hawaadle out and without a militia and a party of their own they lack possibilities to gain seats in a future National Assembly. UNOSOM has declared that only parties which existed prior to March 1991 can be part of peace agreements in Somalia. The Hawaadle frustration over their margninalized position became clear when they recently shot and wounded their own clansman Ahmed Mumin Warfa who has been assigned as advisor to UNOSOM's political office. Their involvement in the kidnapping of Sudan's ambassador may also be seen as a reaction to Sudan's suspected support to Aideed's militia. UNOSOM spokesman George Bennett yesterday said the fighting was holding up the delivery of essential anti-cholera drugs to parts of the capital which has been hit by the deadly disease. "In Mogadishu, access to the central pharmacy, run by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Pharmaciens Sans Frontiers, has been cut off", Bennet said to reporters, adding that the conflict was hampering other agency efforts to control the deadly disease. The cholera epidemic has claimed an estimatd 200 lives and infected 5,300 people countrywide since the first cases were reported in February. ____________________________________________________________________ SNU is an entirely independent newsletter devoted to critical analysis of the political and humanitarian developments in Somalia and Somaliland. SNU is edited and published by Dr. Bernhard Helander, Uppsala University, Sweden. SNU is produced with support from the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden. ____________________________________________________________________