Woyanne's counterinsurgency in Ogaden not yielding results

December 21st, 2009 at 1:32 pm |

By Georg-Sebastian Holzer | ISN Security Watch

A long-time buffer zone between Ethiopia and Somalia, the politically and economically marginalized Ogaden region has transformed into a hotspot entangled in wider regional and global politics, albeit shielded from international public attention, Georg-Sebastian Holzer writes for ISN Security Watch.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front’s (ONLF) recent claim to have captured seven towns and killed 1,000 soldiers in fierce fighting in Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region was, although in substance exaggerated, a stark reminder that Ethiopia’s Woyanne's harsh counterinsurgency campaign is not yielding the results hoped for by Addis Ababa.

On the contrary, the ONLF can build on local grievances of the four million or so ethnic Somali in Ethiopia’s most underdeveloped periphery and is determined to keep up its struggle for national self-determination.

The movement also has once again warned oil searching companies operating in the region under Ethiopian control to halt their plans to exploit oil there.

Such threats are indeed substantial. On 24 April 2007, ONLF fighters were able to overpower Ethiopian Woyanne troops protecting Chinese oil-exploration workers in Obole, situated in the Degehabur zone. A total of 74 people were killed, including nine Chinese workers. As a result, the Chinese Zhoungyan PetroleumExploration Bureau suspended its seismic tests for Ethiopian-owned South West Energy in Ogaden.

Regional security complex

While the ethnic Somalis’ rebellion against the Ethiopian state dates back to colonial times, the scale of the Obole attack was unprecedented.

It was made possible because of a security gap resulting from the invasion and subsequent occupation of Somalia in late December 2006 by the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF). Many of its units used for the war in Somalia were from the Ogaden.

With Ethiopia withdrawing its troops in January of this year, a second supporting factor is still relevant. Eritrean military advisers are widely assumed to have helped prepare theObole attack. Moreover, the UN Monitoring Reports indicate that Eritrea was training ONLF fighters on its own territory and is still aiding rebels in the region, hence suggesting that the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict is also fought as a proxy in the Ogaden region, not only in Somalia itself.

This is no surprise to any observer of conflict dynamics in the Horn of Africa.

As Chatham House’s Sally Healy put it, “interactions between the states of the region support and sustain the conflicts within the states of the region in a systemic way. The different conflicts interlock with and feed into each other, determining regional foreign policy positions that exacerbate conflict.”

Perpetuating local grievances

The Ethiopian government itself – which had never seriously been threatened by ONLF’s armed struggle – decided to crack down on the movement. ENDF’s South-East Command in Harar under Brigadier General Seyoum Hagos launched an operation based on collective punishment of the Ogaden clan, the core base of the ONLF.

Human Rights Watch accused Ethiopia in a report titled Collective Punishment of war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying the ENDF burned down villages and killed, raped and tortured civilians in the counter-insurgency campaign.

Addis Ababa responded by producing counter-report titled Flawed Methodology, Unsubstantiated Allegations and expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières from the Ogaden.

Since then, an unofficial economic blockade on the Ogaden population has further aggravated the humanitarian crisis in the region.

Additionally, ENDF’s arming of non-Ogaden clans people will guarantee years of inter-clan fighting in the region.

The governments’ harsh policies come on top of an already deep feeling of marginalization on the part of Somali Ethiopians, who feel they are treated as second-class citizens and are de-facto excluded from national institutions. Even when put in the regional context of both Ethiopia’s highlands and Somaliland/Somalia, public infrastructure and service delivery in the region fares worse than with its neighbors.

The national government’s perpetuation of local grievances and the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in the region have strengthened an otherwise deeply divided rebel movement, which moreover lacks a clear long-term agenda.

ONLF’s weaknesses and strength

ONLF’s modern struggle for Ogaden self-determination dates back to the mid-1990s, when it began targeted killings and bombings, promptingAddis Ababa to label it a terrorist group.

Indeed, both the rebels’ and government’s harsh punishments for those who refuse their support make civilians the prime victims of the conflict, not least reflected in refugee movements into the neighboring states of Kenya, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.

ONLF actually draws its support exclusively from the Ogaden clansmen, in particular the Rer Harun, a sub-set of the Rer Isaaq sub-clan, and of the Hirsi Khalaf, a sub-set of the Rer Abdille sub-clan. While the Rer Isaaq and Rer Abdille are two of the biggest Ogaden clans, this still means that ONLF can count on the support of no more than one-third to one-half of the Ogaden clan, which contradicts the group’s claim to represent all Ethiopian-Somalis.

The group now has an estimated 8,000 fighters, trained and equipped with Eritrean help mostly with automatic firearms as well as some rocket-propelled grenades. But the leadership and organization is – besides their split along clan-lines – deeply divided over its links with Eritrea.

The group around former Somali admiral Mohamed Omar Osma (since 1998 chairman of ONLF’s central committee) favored Asmara’s help.

In contrast, the group around the former head of the UK-based Ogaden Action Group, Dr Mohammed Siraad Dolaal, opposed Eritrea’s involvement. Dolaal himself was killed on 18 January 2009 in Denan, when he returned to Ogaden as a commander.

The ONLF still controls much of the rural hinterlands of Fiq, Degehabur, Qorahe, Wardheer and Godey zones, all areas predominantly inhabited by the Ogaden clans of the Darood clan family. Nevertheless, when attacking government strongholds they are not able to hold territory and hence have to resort to hit-and-run tactics.

The federal government’s policy of co-opting non-Ogaden and moderate Ogaden groups while fighting the more radical ONLF worked fairly well for some time. However, the war in Somalia and the proxy conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea were triggers for a spark in violence.

Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism, introduced in 1991 with the coming to power of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), itself a former rebel movement from Ethiopia’s marginalized periphery, failed to deliver. The federal government’s brutal counter-insurgency tactics yielded results contrary to those intended: the Ogaden-clans, in large numbers, turned into ONLF supporters.

The ONLF itself lacks a clear, long-term vision, as neither the creation of a landlocked Ogaden state nor a union with Somalia are realistic options.

Rocking the boat

With the Ogaden desert having a high potential to be the most resource abundant region in Ethiopia, the ONLF has a well founded agenda at hand to give voice to mounting local grievances.

It is indeed hard to understand why one of the poorest regions in the world should not gain from its wealth in natural resources. Hence, it is clear that oil firms will remain a central military target for the ONLF as long as the Ethiopian government is not willing to find a wealth sharing agreement with the region. And while ONLF is internally split, it does keep its ‘nuisance’-potential in Ethiopia’sEastern region.

Currently, Malaysia’s Petronas and Vancouver-based Africa Oil Corporation are back in the Ogaden and Ethiopia is offering up to 14 more exploration permits over the next three years.

In this context, the absence of international engagement in the Ogaden crisis is striking. The most accepted conventional wisdom among internationals inAddis Ababa is that public criticism of the government never yields any positive results. But it appears that embassies, UN agencies and NGOs first and foremost are reluctant to do anything that would endanger their relationship with the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Nearly all international actors have conflicting agendas in Ethiopia, from the US strategic security relationship with Addis Ababa to NGOs whose programs in other parts of the country could be endangered by rocking the boat over the Ogaden.

Ethiopia’s political vision appears to be a continuation of armed engagement in the Ogaden mainly fought with loyal Ethiopian-Somali militias. While political dynamics in the Somali periphery will probably not influence national politics in Addis Ababa, like the upcoming national elections in May 2010, the armed resistance movement in the strategically important Ogaden is likely to gain momentum through Ethiopia’s current counter-insurgency strategy.

For now, neither the government in Addis Ababa nor the ONLF seem to have the capacity to imagine a more peaceful future for the region.

(Georg-Sebastian Holzer is an analyst and free-lance journalist. He focuses in particular on conflict dynamics in the wider Horn of Africa.)