Archive for February 23rd, 2012

Somalia conference seeks to galvanise peace push

Note: Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, will attend this meeting today. There will be Oromo and other community demonstrations here in London.

A Somali government soldier patrols the streets of capital Mogadishu February 22, 2012. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

LONDON, Feb 23 (Reuters) – African, Arab and Western nations worried by Somalia’s turmoil meet on Thursday to coordinate efforts against militants and pirates seen as growing threats to global security and ramp up measures to end famine and clan violence.

Sceptics say the London conference of 40 countries including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon risks producing fine words but no action: They point to ineffective similar gatherings in the past 20 years involving a corrupt Somali elite skilled in extracting support from Western aid bureaucrats and foreign peacekeepers.

But the British organisers have sought to temper expectations, explaining that the aim of the event is to galvanise policymakers’ attention on Somalia to better coordinate a sometimes disjointed international response.

It will not delve far into the details of Somalia’s clan-based politics, which play a complex role in everything from business and piracy to the distribution of humanitarian aid. Read more…

The Irreconcilability of the Oromo Nature of Peace and Leadership with the Ethiopian Nature of Violence and Dictatorship

By G. Chemeda Nadhabaasaa (M.G.Meelbaa) | February 23, 2012

As embedded in the Oromo Gadaa tradition, the Oromos understand peace (nagaa) in its positive term. When the Oromos say, Peace to the Creator God (Waaqa Uumaa), peace to the mother earth (lafa, dachee), peace to all mankind, peace to plant life and animal creations etc. they mean that they perceived peace as a gift of God (Waaqa), on which they are blessed to work  in positive terms for positive missions. 

In order to defend the Waaqa given peace at the centre of its positive position, the Oromos, in their history of peace management, tirelessly work and sort out the root causes that could defile the worthiness of the peace (nagaa) they are granted by God. This had helped pre-colonial Gadaa Oromo society in particular to devise constructive reconciliation methods (mala araara) at various levels, for example, at family level, at clan level, at inter-clan and at ethno-national levels.

And, thereof, the Oromo belief of peace asserts a harmonious relationship    between human laws and natural laws. Any imbalance between the two laws is believed to cause the departure of peace from the centre of its positive domain. It will be casted down to the periphery, leaving the domain to chaos; selling it for evilness and ruthlessness; inviting dictators to the top echelon to rule over humanity with iron-fist. To the Ethiopian autocratic and theocratic leaders however, the existence of balance of forces between the natural and human order is undesirable, for the fact that it gives them no chance of getting up on horseback to ride for violence and excommunication. Read more…

Oromummaa and Ethiopian Vicious Circle Trap: the way I see it

By Abraasaa Dirree | February 23, 2012

Recently we have witnessed Diimaa’s death bed like confession, Dr. Asafa’s timely call for an open dialogue and building national consensus and Jijjirama’s fast-food like political program. Many prominent Oromos have said their peace and I, as a mere mortal, would like to put forward my two senses on the issues.

Diimaa’s death bed like confession

When I watched Diimaa’s confession many questions came to my mind and I thought of the death bed confessions of “Deep Throat” and the last survivor of the “lock neck monster” hoax. Leaving aside the notion of the living dead, Diimaa is not the last survivor and he does not seem to be in his death bed and so many questions, which I did not have any answer for, came to my mind. What was the purpose of his revelation? Why did he do it at this time? What was his motivation? Why did he choose the Habasha media to make his confession? Who benefits from his revelation? Why did not the OLF unequivocally refute his revelation? I am sure that Oromos all over the world have been grappling to find answer to such questions and trying to make sense of what has transpired.

The one thing that is absolutely certain is that we have been duped, big time. The blood of Oromo children has been used as a currency to advance the hidden agenda of the OLF – democratization of Ethiopia. These crops of leaders have miserably failed to lead or follow the people. The honourable thing for them to do was to get out of the way of the momentum of Oromummaa as they have never, ever believed in it. Since they have no backbone or spine to face Oromos, they turned to the Habasha camp to democratize Ethiopia by waging war on Oromummaa. They want to kill Oromummaa because deep down in their heart they feel that Oromummaa and Ethiopian empire are dialectically opposite. So one group has now come out of the closet by confessing their hidden agenda for united Ethiopia and while the other is trying to outmanoeuvre them by revising the OLF program to charm the Habasha groups.   Read more…

Somalia: No great expectations

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough

February 23, 2012 (Africa Confidential) – After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many approach the London Conference on Somalia on 23 February with muted hopes of any political advance and say that its most important contribution will be to raise the profile of Somalia’s internal political and social crisis, plagued by intermittent conflict and chronic food shortage. British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Foreign Secretary William Hague have evidently succeeded on the promotion front. Thanks to the Foreign Office’s invitations to Arab countries, it is the first big Somalia meeting in which several Muslim states are seriously involved.

The challenge to the London conference will be to go beyond the recent International Contact Group (ICG) on Somalia or the United Nations Security Council. Both those meetings endorsed policies decided elsewhere and seemed unable to assess why those policies are not working. Delegates in London could start the search for a strategy. Announced by Cameron in late November 2011, the London Conference was supposed to offer fresh thinking on Somalia’s current political dynamics. It promised to broaden the international representation in efforts to tackle Somalia’s crisis and to strengthen the role of the UN there. Central to that is Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG), veteran Tanzanian diplomat Augustine Philip Mahiga. Read more…