Analysis | Why fate of Somali region in Ethiopia is likely to take a turn for the better

By The Star Staff Writer

MOGADISHU — For decades, the Somali region in Ethiopia  — best known both as Western Somalia and Ogaden — has been technically a war-zone. Tens of thousands of Somalis trying to liberate it have died. Seeking to reclaim all the Somali-inhabited territories in East Africa, the Somali government went to war with Ethiopia in 1977 and briefly retook the region before Ethiopians pushed them back with the help of the Soviet Union and soldiers from Cuba. 

Despite the challenges that faced Somalis in the last three decades, efforts to recapture the territory have never died down. In 1984, inhabitants of the Somali region in Ethiopia formed a nationalist group called the Ogaden National Liberation Front, whose objective was to spilt the area off from Ethiopia.

The group adopted guerrilla tactics as a strategy and in 2007 its fighters killed nine Chinese and 74 Ethiopians at a Chinese oil exploration site in the region. Since that attack, the area was on lockdown. Security forces carried out scorched earth policy that led to egregious human rights abuses, including murder, rape, torture and arbitrary detentions.  Jails – especially the notorious Jail Ogaden in the region’s capital, Jigjiga — were filled with innocent people. Abdi Mohamud Omar — who now languishes in jail in the capital, Addis Ababa, after being ousted last month – led those abuses as the head of a special police force, popularly known as the Liyu Police, and since 2010 as the president of the region.

Addis Ababa sanctioned these cruelties that took place in the Somali region; federal army commanders have also shielded Omer, as he dutifully did their job of keeping the restive region, which never voluntarily accepted to be a part of Ethiopia, under control.

The advent of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, an ethnic Oromo, whose people were like Somalis systematically marginalized and abused, has, however, changed the political landscape in Ethiopia. Abiy came to power after three years of protests in Oromo and Amhara regions almost plunged Ethiopia, one of the continent’s most ethnically diverse nations, into a chaos and civil war.

Since April, when he took the oath of office, Ahmed rolled back the oppressive laws and tactics used by former administrations. He allowed local and international media to operate freely after rescinding laws that labeled government critics terrorists. He removed both the army chief, Samora Yenus, who protected Omer, and Getachew Assefa, the head of the intelligence agency, from their offices. The pair were the pillars of the tyrannical Tigrayan elite that ruled the country with an iron fist since 1991, when it toppled dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

While it’s too early to predict how the ongoing changes in Ethiopia will benefit the Somali region, yet one thing is clear: Ethiopia’s long-abused people are not ready to accept less than a full democratic system that guarantees them their rights as citizens, not as subjects.

Prime Minister Ahmed has already raised the integrity bar for the Somali region when he ordered the arrest of former President Omer on charges that he committed gross human rights violations and incited ethnic and religious violence in the area that killed dozens of people and destroyed properties, including churches.

Ahmed has also openly criticised, for the first time in Ethiopia’s history, Addis Ababa-backed human rights abuses in the Somali region, saying what happened in the territory was like a fiction and a horror movie. He said inmates were detained with animals, like lion, hyena and tiger to frighten them into making confession or extracting information from them.

Like PM Ahmed, the Somali region’s new President Omer — who’s riding the larger wave of change sweeping across Ethiopia — is different from his predecessors who were always instruments of Addis Ababa’s subjugation.

Omer, who shares the same last name with his predecessor, is no pushover. He was bold enough to call on Somalis to be proud of their culture and Somaliness, something that previous Somali leaders never dared to say it in public. In fact, the the region’s ruling party was the only one that prefixed Ethiopia to its name. 

Now, Somalis in Ethiopia have every reason to be optimistic. For, their fate is steadily but surely taking a turn for the better.

Facing a reluctant Amharas and open hostility from Tigrayans – the second largest and fourth-largest tribes in the country respectively – Prime Minister Ahmed, an Oromo, will do everything that can help him win over the support of Somalis, with whom his ethnicity shares religion and borders. Moreover, Ahmed and his ethnic Oromos will certainly be grappling with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which loathes non-Christian rulers because allowing an Oromo Muslim to rule Ethiopia would dent its false claim that the country is a Christian oasis in the middle of Muslims. In 1916, the Church ousted Lij Iyasu, who was grandson and designated heir of Menelik II of the Tigray ethnic group, on suspicion of having ties to Muslims. Like Prime Minister Ahmed, Lij’s father was an Oromo and Muslim. To remain relevant in a Christian-controlled nation, Lij’s father converted to Christianity.

Inevitably, there will be cultural, economic, political and religious tug-of-war between Oromos and others over the new Ethiopia. This supremacy battle between Oromos, on the one hand, who’re determined to rule the country, as they’re the majority, and Amharas and Tigrayans, on the other hand, who, as the past rulers, are desperate to regain their lost privileges and advantages, will last for years, offering Somalis in Ethiopia the much needed space to grow and run their own affairs quite easily. Somalis are, in a word, having a once-in-a-lifetime wind at their back: They will either get a full freedom from Ethiopia or be much more independent than at any time in their history under the Ethiopian occupation.

Ethiopia is passing through a time of unprecedented uncertainty that threatens its very existence as a united nation. At any rate, it’s far more probable that Ethiopia will fall apart before it can bring back its oppressive measures that, for eons, forced every citizen to fall in line.