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Tragedies of the “War on Terror” comes
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A recent Chicago Tribune article (Fallout from the war on Terror hits Ethiopia, July 9, 2007), and a call-in (town-hall style) program of the BBC Somali Section, which featured the Regional president of the Somali autonomous region, in Ethiopia, Abdullahi Hassan “Lug Buur” (July 13, 2007) are both troubling. The gory and inhumane way Somalis are treated (e.g., Nur Osman, 25, who was still “clamping a hand to his stitched up neck,” cut by the Ethiopian soldiers) is in a way a small part of the results of the “war on terror.”
As an American of Somali origin from that region my family and I have been deeply impacted by the story in the Chicago Tribune article.
Listening to the many call-ins, with harsh words for the government, I felt somewhat sad for my good friend and the president, especially the position he has found himself in. Abdullahi Hassan is basically a good man with a good heart (not to mention that he is as one caller said, a distant relative of Sayid Mohamed Abdulla Hassan), but he is in the middle of a storm that he/his government cannot do much about.
The Somali question in Ethiopia is old, and as complex as the conflict of the Palestinians & Israelis, and is very difficult for the outside world to comprehend; it’s human and personal tragedies have been often overlooked for many years.
It is only now with western reporters taking a good look at it that our conditions are humanly shocking to human eyes: Ethiopia treats us as sub-human; our largely reserved and private women are raped at will; our books of faith are burned or soaked in urine and in human waste by Ethiopian soldiers as part of their prison torture machine; family belongings (livestock, farms and anything else that we own) are looted, confiscated, or burned with impunity. Collective punishment is a mainstay in the Somali region, a reminiscent of “Zaraf Somali,” meaning “wipe out Somalis,” a favored slogan for Ethiopian soldiers while carrying their indiscriminate total scourge policy.
Different Ethiopian regimes have been doing to us similar things since the Paris Conference in1884 that placed our community under this excessively cruel feudal rule of ancient empire. This time, with the world becoming a "global village," small parts of our blight is being noticed, thanks to some American papers.
Some of us escaped the rape, torture and mayhem, often physical like that one imparted on Nur Osman. Although the Chicago Tribune witnessed the young man still “clamping to his stitched new neck,” the Minister of Information, Bereket Simon, a Tigre in ethnicity, who is a close advisor Meles Zeanawi, denied any culpability
But Nur, who may most likely get killed in the very hospital bed he is supposed to rest, told the western reporter that Ethiopian soldiers did it to him. The added tragedy of this story is that Nur may as well be the cousin of the president of the region, but they are both helpless in the hands of this government. And each would try to survive the best way they know.
I left Ethiopia while I was still in my teens for a temporary safe haven to Somalia en route to America. Just like my countrymen, the psychological scars that I sustained from the Ethiopian rule is complex, but the most immediate one for me involves the last leg of my father’s life, Abdi Roble.
I have been a naturalized US citizen, thankfully achieved the “American middle-class dream,” and always longed for the day my father comes here and plays with my sons in the backyard of my suburban home. In 1996, I secured an immigrant visa.
But days before he departed Jigjiga for Addis Ababa, he was taken from his home to the Jigjiga jail at the frail age of 86, and was instantly transferred to Harar where he remained until April, 2003. There he joined among other elders his long time friend Bashir Sheikh Abdi, the grandson of Sayid M. Abdulle Hassan. Unlike my Dad, Bashir could not withstand the dilapidating conditions of advanced diabetes and died there.
My Dad told me that dragging Bashir’s dead body represented the lowest point of his community. “Nobody threw a single stone,” became his post prison mantra.
Sooner I learned that he was out than I travelled to Jigjiga (in May of 2003), and spent time with him, sickly with a soul of 92-years-old that still wanted to visit America.
For the month that I was with him, we talked small talks. I once told him how old-age is a mitigating factor, even for hard criminals. He laughed at me, implying I was naive, and added: “son, you are telling me about the country where real human beings live; you know real freak animals live here (sow ma ogid in uu halkan dugaag cirfiid ahi ku nool yahay?).
He told me that it was his dream to visit America to see all his children and grandchildren (all together 29); and for once lay his eyes on this magically magnanimous country called America, which gave to his children the chance to seek education and succeed in life.
My father’s dream was denied and he could not travel to America because his health was failing by the time he was released. Exactly 30 days to the day I arrived in town, he saw me to the dusty airport in Jigjiga with a final and ultimate sojourn saying:
“Son, only Allah knows whether we will meet again, but go to your new and safe [adopted] home.”
Uncommon to Somali men, I felt tears streaming down on my cheeks uncontrollably, only to be countered by his fatherly gaiety and cheerful pronouncements: "son, be a man and be happy for me to leave this world for good and for the better place that we will all end up sooner or later."
I gave that man a huge and rare hug, holding his bony body tightly against mine for as long as I could, and quickly turned away to not look backward. I was sure I could not handle any more emotions. The last thing I wanted to see was tears streaming on those frail and fried cheeks. My Mom recently told me he indeed wept. I am glad I did not see that for going through that would have killed me! My Dad passed away five days after I got back in LA.
No body explained to me to this day why my Dad languished in that jail in Harar that they call "alam-baqay," meaning, I am finished with this world. I talked to many top officials (powerless ministers) in the region and everyone talks about my Dad as the great patriot that he was. I only surmise that they all are as helpless as their community under occupation is.
For a while I used to have nightmares of an American court, where my attorneys would grill Ethiopian officials on human rights abuses. Who knows what the future holds for us, especially that now a lot of us are US citizens, and live in places like San Diego, Minneapolis, Chicago, Columbus, Toronto where many conscientious lawyers are in abundance. In my consoling prayers I remind my late father to hang on!
As a tax payer, it angers me, though, that millions of our hard-earned dollars would go to this dictator to kill and torture relatives of our own US citizens –something of freak duplicity in American foreign policy that my late Dad could not understand.
Faisal A. Roble
E-Mail: fabroble@aol.com
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