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20 June, 2007
Journalist Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times recently vented his rage at the Ethiopian authorities for arresting him for his illegal venture as a secret agent in the unstable Ogaden. However, to carry out his revenge, he was forced to abandon his basic journalism values that once helped him get from Cornell University to New York Times. Most of all, he ended up justifying the terrorist acts of a rebel group, while victims of such acts were still mourning in Ethiopia.
Just a couple of months ago, the Ogaden National Liberation Front massacred 65 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese before it followed that up with another killing at the funeral of the families of the previous victims. The bloodbath, particularly its unpredictable nature that also claimed the live of a three year old, united even the opposition parties in the Ethiopian parliament with the ruling party, enough to produce public condemnations of ONLF’s acts from them.
Despite that recent carnage, various assassinations of ethnic Somali, Ogaden leaders, have also been carried out by the ONLF which ironically claimed to stand for the same ethnic Somali people of eastern Ethiopia it continues to massacre & assassinate. Even weeks after the oil field massacre, ONLF members allegedly threw a bomb in a stadium, where around 100,000 locals ethnic Somalis were celebrating a national holiday.
However Mr. Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times didn’t even blink twice before he accumulated a long list of propaganda given to him by the ONLF rebels who were his only friends during this clandestine trip in Ethiopia. He successfully justified the massacres and assassinations of the terrorist organization by depicting made-up events coughed up by people under ONLF’s control. Not only were ONLF’s accusations blindly validated but Mr. Jeffrey also ridiculed the economic successes of the Ethiopian government in its uphill struggle to end poverty in one of the poorest nations, even in African standards. Though the Ogaden area is the poorest region in one of the poorest countries, some of its relatively stable areas have been undergoing developments including hundreds of new schools, health centers and a new univerisity. The locals have been building their state with their left hand while they are fighting the ONLF terrorists with their right hand. Certainly the NYTimes's Mr. Jeffrey unleashed an attack on Ethiopia’s dedication to change itself, a country that is being lead by people who are in an uphill battle to develop a nation with infrastructure that belongs in the stone ages. It was Déjà vu for Ethiopian authorities for other immature & low level western personals have occasionally used the accounts of terrorist organizations as an evidence to condemn Ethiopian authorities. But no one really predicted that the much respected New York Times would suffer such an embarrassment. None of the Ethiopian journalists would be interviewing Al-Qaeda to justify its terrorism acts in New York City any time soon. In contrast, Mr. Jeffrey Gettleman not only covered up & downgraded the massacres and crimes of the ONLF but also ignored the existence of ethnic Somali officials who have been trying to alleviate their own region from the terrorist organization. Certainly, the New York Times has not been this humiliated with such terror justification & a cover-up of ONLF’s massacres since the New York Times infamous cover up of the Ukrainian tragedy in the 1930s.
Despite such terrorist acts of the ONLF during the last decade, respectable steps were already taken by the local Somali elders to reach out to a terrorist organization. Steps any of the extreme leftists, which Jeffrey might have been trying to appease, would have appreciated. Ignoring all rational, local Somali elders actually reached out to the ONLF terrorist leadership last year in an attempt to end the constant terrorist attacks. But the response they received for such an admirable step was more assassinations of clan elders and Somali officials in this Ethiopian region. Even while Mr. Jeffrey Gettleman was in the middle of writing up his article and looking at the best way to excuse terrorists, the ONLF was busy gunning down more Somali people. According to the State Department two people were assassinated by the ONLF in Kabridahar because their father worked for the District office in the Ogaden.
It was not much of a surprise that the pseudo-liberation organization that continued to kill the same people it claims to stand for rejected the admirable peace offer by the local officials & elders. The terrorist organization that Mr. Jeffrey Gettleman labeled a “rebel with a cause” has too much at stakes including its real “cause” & real goal which include oppressing rival local clans and creating its own Ogaden Republic without the will of the majority of the people. By abandoning terror, not only is its own personal goal at stake, but it will be abandoning the numerous regional stakeholders that finance and arm this terrorist organizations. These stake holders include:
Egypt
A country that has been arming ONLF and its predecessors for decades in order to keep instability in Ethiopia for two reasons: to make Ethiopia a puppet Islamic state and to keep the country unable to use Egypt’s lifeline – the Nile River which 80% of it happens to originate from Ethiopia.
Libya
A country that is also vying for the radicalization of Muslims in Ethiopia and a Libyan government that is doing its natural duty of state sponsoring of terrorist organizations. (a government that flaunts "United States of Africa" while sponsoring terrorists that divide people, to effectively prey on tiny & weak African nations with its anti-West propaganda)
Islamic Courts Union
A well-known organization that has been hi-jacked by extremists & jihadists last year and who has been arming the ONLF for quite some time in attempt to secure their "Greater Somalia" ideology.
Eritrean government
A government that is daunted by the fact that the balkanization of Ethiopia hasn’t happened despite the Eritrean secession. A government that is recognized by the UN for supporting the Islamic Courts, ONLF and numerous terrorist organizations that frequently target Ethiopia.
Thus it is no wonder that Arab nations and the likes of Libya, Turkey & Egypt are having a field day with this propaganda article that brought shame to the New York Times. If Mr. Jeffrey Gettleman was interested in the real “crime against humanity” that has been happening in the region, he should have written an article on the British-backed Egyptian governments that have threatened war on the victims and obstructed Ethiopia's exploitation of her own Nile water resources for half a century. The real “crime against humanity” is what has been happening for decades in Ethiopia, a country that has the most water resources but somehow remains the thirstiest and the most famine-stricken in the world.