More Blowback from the "War on Terror"
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://tinyurl.com/44nmjh
More blowback from the war on terror
The U.S.-backed Ethiopian military has secreted away scores of
"suspects" -- including pregnant women and children -- and fueled
anti-American rancor in Africa.
By Jennifer Daskal
Editor's note: This article is adapted from a report published Wednesday
by Human Rights Watch on renditions conducted in the Horn of Africa in
2007. Read the full report here:
http://hrw.org/reports/2008/eastafrica1008/
Oct. 01, 2008 | Ishmael, a 37-year-old shepherd from the Ogaden region
in Ethiopia, looked at me with tears in his eyes. Ethiopian forces --
who had already killed his mother, father, brothers and sisters --
murdered his wife days after they were married. They then slaughtered
his goats, beat him unconscious, and slashed his shoulder to the bone,
he said.
In December 2006, Ishmael crossed through Somalia into Kenya, heading
for the nearest refugee camp in search of medical care. But when he
didn't have enough money to pay a 1,000 shilling ($15) bribe, the Kenyan
police bundled him into a car and took him to Nairobi. Less than a month
later, he was herded onto an airplane with some 30 others, flown to
Somalia and handed over to the Ethiopian military -- the same forces
that he previously fled.
Ishmael is a victim of a 2007 rendition program in the Horn of Africa,
involving Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the United States. There are at
least 90 more victims like him. Most have since been sent home. A few --
including a Canadian and nine who assert Kenyan nationality -- remain in
detention even now. The whereabouts of 22 others -- including several
Somalis, Ethiopian Ogadenis, and Eritreans -- remain unknown.
In late 2006, the Bush administration backed a full-scale Ethiopian
military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from Somalia's
capital, Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis, including
some who were suspected of terrorist links, to flee across the Kenya border.
Kenyan authorities arrested at least 150 men, women and children from
more than 18 countries -- including the United States, the United
Kingdom and Canada -- in operations near the Somali border, and held
them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. In January and February 2007,
the Kenyan government then unlawfully put dozens of these individuals --
with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees themselves -- on
flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the Ethiopian
military. Ethiopian forces also arrested an unknown number of people in
Somalia.
Those rendered were later transported to detention centers in the
Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and other parts of Ethiopia, where they
effectively disappeared. Denied access to their embassies, their
families and international humanitarian organizations such as the
International Committee of the Red Cross, the detainees were even denied
phone calls home. Several detainees have said that they were housed in
solitary cells, some as small as two meters by two meters, with their
hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and their feet
bound together any time they were in their cells.
An unknown number of them -- likely dozens -- were questioned by the
Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers
daily transported detainees -- including several pregnant women -- to a
villa where U.S. officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist
links. At night the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their
cells.
For the most part, detainees were sent home soon after their
interrogation by U.S. agents ended. Of those known to have been
interrogated by U.S. officials, just eight Kenyans remain. (A ninth
Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in August 2007, after
U.S. interrogations reportedly stopped.) These men, who have not been
subjected to any interrogation since May 2007, would likely have been
repatriated long ago but for the Kenyan government�s longstanding
refusal to acknowledge their claims to Kenyan citizenship or to take
steps to secure their release.
Recently I spoke by telephone to several of the still-detained Kenyans.
They described water-soaked mattresses, insufficient food and inadequate
healthcare. Two said they have trouble walking, following beatings by
Ethiopian officials, and a third said he can no longer use his left hand.
�I can�t sleep here. I miss my family. Please, I need you to help us to
go home,� one detainee pleaded with me.
In mid-August 2008, Kenyan authorities visited these men for the first
time. The officials reportedly told the detainees they would be home
within a few weeks. But more than a month and a half has passed with no
apparent follow-up.
In addition to working with the U.S., the Ethiopians used the rendition
program for their own ends. For years, the Ethiopian military has been
trying to quell domestic Ogadeni and Oromo insurgencies that receive
support from neighboring countries, such as Ethiopia's archrival,
Eritrea. The multinational rendition program provided them a convenient
means to continue this internal battle -- and get their hands, with U.S.
and Kenyan support, on those with suspected insurgent links.
Ishmael was one of their victims.
The questions his Ethiopian interrogators asked were nonstop, and always
the same: "Are you al-Qaida? Are you an Ogadeni rebel? Are you part of
the Somali insurgency?" Each time he said no, he was beaten, sometimes
to the point of unconsciousness. When he resisted answering, they
targeted his testicles.
Then, in February 2008 -- some 14 months after his original arrest --
the Ethiopians decided Ishmael was no longer worth the trouble. They
dumped him, along with 27 others, just over the Somali border. The men
were met by a Somali officer who told him that he was very sorry, that
their arrest was a mistake and that they were all innocent.
Now Ishmael is back in the refugee camp, limping and urinating blood. He
is still waiting for the healthcare he came searching for nearly two
years ago.
Almost everyone I spoke with assumed -- whether true or not -- that the
United States backed the arbitrary arrest and unlawful rendition of men
like Ishmael and the still-detained Kenyans. Almost everyone assumed
that the Ethiopians operate with America's blessing. Their stories have
circulated, fueling anger and resentment. As one man, whose childhood
friend became one of the rendition victims, told me, "Now when I go to
the mosque, I pray to God to punish the Americans."
To be sure, the United States is not the main culprit when the Kenyans
unlawfully render suspects or the Ethiopians torture them. But when U.S.
officials interrogate rendition victims who are being held
incommunicado, the United States becomes complicit in the abuse. The
U.S. is funding the Ethiopian military, supporting its activities in
Somalia and training Kenyan security forces in counterterrorism -- so as
U.S.-backed military and police forces in the region brutalize their
domestic opponents in the name of fighting terrorism, the United States
is often blamed.
The United States could change those perceptions by demanding higher
standards of its foreign partners and cutting off aid to abusers. It
otherwise risks fueling the very problem -- anti-American militancy --
that it seeks to solve. For starters, the U.S. could demand the release
or fair trial of any rendition victims still stuck in Ethiopian custody.
At the end of our interview, Ishmael looked at me with sad eyes. "I have
suffered three times," he told me. "I lost my family; I was beaten and
tortured, and then I was arrested and tortured again. Now I have nothing
to lose."
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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