Waging war under the Guise of Wanting Peace

Meles Zenawi, The head of the current regime in Addis Ababa, for the first time announced publicly that he was ready to start peace negotiations with Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) early last year. People of Ogaden who yawned for peace since 1890s welcomed this peace initiative. ONLF, although suspicious of Meles’s motives and timing, still were the first to respond positively to the peace pronouncements from Addis Ababa and did so through official press releases and media interviews. Instead of engaging reputable countries with conflict resolution and peace negotiation expertise, Meles proposed that Ogaden elders, who are stakeholder in the Ogaden issue and do not have any power to enforce the outcome of the peaceful negotiations should they succeed, to be the mediating third party. While the elders were busy abroad in Europe and North America preaching to the Ogaden community in the Diaspora the viability of peace in Ogaden, Meles ordered the deployment of more than seven thousand Tigrey militias to wage a renewed war in Ogaden.These newly deployed militias have been waging a brutal war in Ogaden since the end of April this year. Having failed miserably in the fierce firefights they have engaged with ONLF troops, they, militias, started revenge killings and gutting campaigns to destroy the meager belongs of the Ogaden civilians who are nursing from the effects of the droughts and famines of the past couple of years. Seeing the silence of the world community about the plight of the Ogaden civilians only encourages Meles and his minions to persist with these wars. Deploying militias under the explicit orders to kill and maim innocent civilians in Ogaden should give the world community a glimpse of Meles’s mind. It vindicates those who have said all along that peace pronouncements from the regime in Addis Ababa should be considered only as propaganda on the part of the regime to give itself a grace period to get into the good books of the developed world. It also betrays those who were naively convinced that Meles was rehabilitated by the failed wars he has engaged in the past decade and that he was finally ready to resolve the Ogaden issue through peaceful negations. We, the Ogden Online Editorial board, ask the world community to condemn the renewed fighting initiated by Meles’s deployment of militias in Ogaden. The world community should send observers to assess the extent of the death and destruction caused by these marauding militias. The world community should take an active role in resolving the Ogaden issue through dialogue. On a final note, we ask ONLF leadership to spare the lives of the many militia prisoners who were taken alive during these firefights. ONLF should give save passage to the militia conscripts who are reported ready to lay down their weapons.
editorial@ogaden.com
Ogaden Online Editorial May 14, 2006