“Not all are victims of the army. Many have been displaced by the ONLF, whose own brutality is unequalled. The rebels routinely burn the homes of anyone who fails to offer food or shelter”.
Ethiopia's 'secret war' forces thousands to flee,
David Blair

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), with its unwavering confrontation with Ethiopian forces, has been lately featured in Western Media in a spectacular way than ever before. While the United States government and the Bush administration staunchly support Ethiopia as a partner in the “war against terror,” liberal western media touts the ONLF as victims.

Even dissident Somali groups who are locked in a bitter confrontation (for obvious reasons) with the Ethiopian government started to promote the bloody campaign that the ONLF carries in the Somali Regional State (SRS) of  Ethiopia as the work of a “liberation” campaign (Jama Mohamed Ghalib, December, 2007). Beneath all the brouhaha, which mainly masks the proverbial deadly strategy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” lies the forgotten plight of hundreds of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.

Death and mayhem in the hands of expeditionary Ethiopian military campaigns are not new to the residents of this region.  Successive Ethiopian regimes (starting with emperor Menelik, through King Haile Sellasie and Col. Mengistu Haile Marriam to the current regime) have meted measurably despicable human rights abuses. The onslaught against the Geri Kombe in Jigiga in the 1950s, including massive public hanging of villagers in the center (Faras Magaalaha) of Jigjiga, the Aisha’a massacre against the Issa in 1961, the Mayhem in Dagahbur and Qorahay in 1963 to the intermittent contemporary collective punishments that uproots swaths of villages is but all that Ethiopia had so far offered to these residents for over one hundred years.

What is unique this time around, though, is the share of deaths and destructions that the ONLF commits under the color of liberating “Ogadenia.”  In the past, the struggle for equality and self determination by the Somalis were coined and conducted in a more inclusive manner.  The 1940s uprising, popularly known as the “Ha noolaato” which were centered in Jigjiga, (long live liberation), the 1964 struggle, an offshoot of the Nasrulah movement, and the 1970s intensive and well-focused struggle waged by the now defunct Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) were all inclusive of all Somali clans in the region and respectively commanded wide support notwithstanding hard circumstances.  But a looming danger to the long term well being of this lineage-based segmentary Somali society is the introduction of the new divisive political terminologies and concepts by the ONLF; if not arrested, the foreseeable impacts may prove detrimental to the society which it claims to be fighting on whose behalf.

The sectarian language and terms in which ONLF engages its politics, such as “Ogadenia,” or the “people of Ogadenia,” the “Ogaden nation,” and the likes, are as a dangerous as the bullets shot by Abyssinian Highlanders. (With the exception of ONLF, most similar Somali dissident groups, although as chauvinistic as the ONLF, avoid the public use of blatant and naked clannish chauvinistic conversation.  Thus Issaq and Majeerteen-dominated fronts in the 1980s used such names as Somali Nation Movement (SNM) and Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) for Issaq and Majeerteen, respectively).

Tobias Hagamann, an expert in the political and social change of the region, recently wrote about the negative meaning of the concept of “Ogadenia: “Many observers ignore its highly politicized connotation… it was propagated by ONLF as part of its nationalist agenda aiming to establish an independent ‘Ogadenia’.”(1)  Would Ogadenia therefore include, say Dir Dhabe, Babile, Jigjiga, Jinacsanay, Xarshin, Gaashaamo, Aw Bare, the Liban zone and many non-“Ogadenia” districts of the region?

But why “Ogadenia” when the Front can have “Somali?” Successive Ethiopian imperial regimes had christened the Somali inhabited region in Ethiopia as Ogaden - a misnomer intended to rob the region from its inherent Somali identity. By clinging into a colonial name and repudiating the Somali term, the ONLF has done a great service for the longstanding Abyssinian colonial objectives of dismembering the Somali nation. If the entire inhabitants in the region are Somalis, including the Ogaden clan, what is it that is preventing the leaders of the Front to harness all the energy available and unify the might of all the Somalis as opposed to their current parochial posture? The Front’s persistent refusal to conduct a meaningful dialogue on this pressing issue has produced a massive breakdown in inter-group dialogue in the region, leading ONLF to be venerable to predators with their own ulterior motives (a case in point is those who opportunistically want to use the ONLF’s weakness to get closer to Ethiopia(2)), as well as causing the Front to turn its guns against innocent civilians.

In the last few years, for example, the ONLF has wantonly attacked its closest co-habitants in the region; it carried destructive terrorist missions in Iimay, Aware, Danood, Wardheer, Qoraxay and Jigjiga regions and districts, often killing innocent civilians and/or looting the meager resources of the victims.  However, the main victims of the ONLF’s murderous and misguided campaigns of intimidation akin to classical terrorism are the Ogaden civilians; otherwise a gallant, honorable and resilient group, the source of pride for all of us, whom it purports to be “liberating.”  In an Orwellian way, ONLF has succeeded to taint the very struggle of liberation that all Somalis have been engaged in - a sustained struggle in which the Ogaden clan has played a bravely prominent and pivotal role for over hundred years. 

According to Hagamann, “The region’s non-Ogaadeen clans, including non-Ogaadeen Darood, Isaaq, Dir and other genealogical groups, strongly refute the ‘Ogaden’ label for their region, fearing that it rhetorically justifies Ogaadeen domination.” (3) If left unchecked, ONLF’s bitter sectarian posturing would ultimately do nothing but to further weaken the already fragile social fabric of the society and confuse the clear colonial domination case of Somalis under Ethiopia.
ONLF leaders and its network of contributors (most of who reside in major western countries, often hard working unskilled laborers) could find themselves liable for actions against humanity lately committed in remote rural regions.  With the world being more and more integrated into a global village, news is traveling faster and more reliably than ever before.  So far this has been good for the ONLF, thanks to liberal western reporters who were shell-shocked to see cruel and under-reported atrocities carried out by the Ethiopian troops.  Likewise, leaders of the ONLF must watch out for they can be found equally as liable as government terror actions against innocent civilians, as depicted in this video. ( The Danood video)

The Somali people, who have long languished under the cruel Ethiopian occupation, deserve a better alternative to seek their freedom.  As such, reviving the more inclusive Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) is one of many alternatives at hand.    

Send your Comments to: WardheerNews Editorial Board