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“Somalia: a year after Ethiopia’s intervention” a meeting hosted in the UK. Ethiopian regime's views aired by non-Ethiopians

Meadna News, Friday 21 December 2007

The Royal African Society, the Centre of African Studies, and the Horn of Africa Group hosted a meeting entitled “Somalia: a year after Ethiopia’s intervention” in University of London. The speakers of the meeting were Dr Ahmed Samatar, a Somalian Scholar, Sahal Abdulle, a Journalist and Cedric Barnes, from Foreign Commonwealth Office. The objective of the discussion was to analyse what has happened and look for ways towards peace and the restoration of Somali sovereignty. The meeting was attended by diplomats, journalists, students and people from the Horn of Africa.

Followed by the opening speech of the meeting, Sahal Abdulle, who reported from mid-2006 in Somalia for Reuters, started his presentation with images that showed the capital Mogadishu turning from a beautiful city to rubbles, which he said reminded him of Bagdad and looked at what went wrong. One of the major problems he cited was the empowerment of war lords by international community, who “represented no one but themselves.” He gave further detailed analysis of the make up the parties who are involved in the current fighting. Abdulle was injured in a bomb attack that killed his friend.

Explaining the difficulty of covering a large and difficult subject in few minutes, Dr Ahmed Samatar gave a very articulate analysis of the main players in the Somailai conflict, USA, Ethiopia and Somalia. Dr Samatar presented a deep analysis of the major characteristics of the American society. Describing the American people as generous, he pointed out the characteristics such as ill-informed society and the failure to see the complexity of the world, which have enormous consequences for the Somalian people and others. Dr Samatar also looked at the role of the USA in supporting the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. He said Ethiopia could not sustain one week in Somalia without the financial and other forms of support, it receives from the USA.

Dr Samatar gave a detailed analysis of Ethiopian power structure in historical context including reference to the Eritrean struggle and the ongoing marginalization of the Ogaden people. He described the three great destruction caused by the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia namely, destruction of lives, property and a calculated political destruction.

Dr Samatar also looked at the warning signs of the crisis during the 80s and at the conferences such as the Djibouti Conference, which he said was successful but used a wrong formula that assumed Somalians were divided into tribes. He described the TFG as illegitimate clearly created by Ethiopia and incompetent. He stated “the TFG has run out of gas” and the field was ready for a new team with new ideas, new organization, and leadership.

Cedric Barnes, Researcher from the Foreign Commonwealth Office, was given an opportunity to respond and ask questions. Cedric Barnes stated that he was not representing the Foreign Office and gave short talk. He said he did not disagree with what was said, but emphasized the complexity of the situation. He criticized the US administration for failing “to speak to itself.” He said that Ethiopia did not plan to go to Somalia and it does want to withdraw from Somalia, but the problem was finding the alternative to replace Ethiopians. This was a short talk but gave a good insight to how confused the western policy on the horn Africa is.

Finally it was time for comments and questions from the attendants of the meeting. Mr Tesfamicael Gerahtu Ambassador of the State of Eritrea to the UK gave a brief and eloquent comment regarding the present crisis in Somalia and the ways forward. The ambassador also talked about the unwarranted attention given to Somalia in regards to war on terrorism and the false justifications of the invasion of Somalia including the fabricated presence of two thousand Eritrean special forces.

The Ethiopian regime officials did not attend the meeting, but its views were aired by non-Ethiopians Martin Plaut, who said he was not representing the BBC and, Patrick Gilkes who stated “I work for the Ethiopian government.” Martin plaut who seemed unhappy about Dr Samatar’s assertion that invasion of Somalia had the prior approval of the USA, asked for a real evidence to which Dr Samatar gave several reasons including prior “bedroom” talk at the state department involving Dr. Jandayi Fraser, satellite information that was provided for the regime and the initial millions of dollars investment for peace keeping. This was challenged by Patrick Gilkes claiming unconvincing he had the real evidence that Ethiopian government was in fact told by a high ranking US general not to invade Somalia.