14 December 2008
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The report draws on interviews with more than 80 witnesses and victims of abuses, who described attacks by all the warring parties in stark detail.
Each party to the conflict has indiscriminately fired on civilian neighborhoods in Mogadishu on an almost daily basis, leveling homes without warning and killing civilians in the streets.
Insurgent forces have regularly carried out ambushes and roadside bombings in markets and residential areas, and launched mortars from within densely populated neighborhoods. Ethiopian forces have reacted to insurgent attacks with indiscriminate heavy rocket and artillery fire, with devastating impact on civilians.
TFG security forces and allied militia have tortured detainees, and killed and raped civilians and looted their homes, sometimes in the context of house-to-house joint security operations with Ethiopian troops. Ethiopian forces, who were relatively disciplined in 2007, have been more widely implicated in acts of violent criminality this year. Insurgent forces have threatened and murdered civilians they view as unsympathetic to their cause and have forcibly recruited civilians, including children, into their ranks.
The full horror of these abuses can be captured only through the stories of Somalis who have suffered through them. Human Rights Watch interviewed teenage girls raped by TFG security forces, parents whose children were cut to pieces in their own homes by Ethiopian rockets, and people shot in the streets by insurgent fighters for acts as trivial as working as a low-paid messenger for TFG offices. One young man described watching a group of Ethiopian soldiers rape his mother and sisters in their home.
"And I was sitting there helpless," he said. "I could not help my mother or help my sisters."
For many, the worst of it is being caught between all three sides at once. One young man was given an ultimatum by radical Islamist Al Shabaab fighters in his neighborhood to join them or face retribution. Days later, he came home from school to find that his mother had been killed and his house destroyed in an unrelated artillery bombardment.
"The world has largely ignored the horrors unfolding in Somalia, but Somali families are still left to confront violence that grows with every passing day," Gagnon said. "Even those who try to flee find that the violent abuses follow them."
Hundreds of thousands of Mogadishu's poorest residents, lacking the money to travel further, have congregated in sprawling displaced persons camps along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road, but the indiscriminate fighting they fled has followed them there.
Tens of thousands of Somali refugees have also fled the country this year. Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps are now the largest concentration of refugees anywhere in the world, with nearly 250,000 inhabitants. But the journey itself is perilous. Human Rights Watch interviewed many refugees who had been robbed, raped, or beaten by freelance militias as they fled Somalia.
Kenya's border with Somalia is closed, leaving refugees at the mercy of abusive smugglers and corrupt Kenyan police.
Hundreds of Somalis have drowned trying to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, often after being forced overboard or abandoned at sea by traffickers.
The United States, the European Union, and governments in the region have taken few positive steps to address the worsening situation in Somalia, and have too often taken actions that have made it worse.
Ethiopia is a party to the conflict, but has done nothing to ensure accountability for abuses by its soldiers. The United States, treating Somalia primarily as a battlefield in the "global war on terror," has pursued a policy of uncritical support for transitional government and Ethiopian actions, and the resulting lack of accountability has fueled the worst abuses.
The European Commission has advocated direct support for the transitional government's police force without insisting on any meaningful action to improve the force and combat abuses.
In recent months, the conflict has increasingly spread into neighboring regions and countries in the form of bombings and other attacks - precisely what Ethiopia's military intervention in 2006 sought to prevent. During the latter half of 2008, there have been suicide bombings in the previously more stable semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland, as well as rampant piracy on the high seas, and kidnappings across the border in Kenya.
"The Somali crisis is not just a nightmare for its people, it is a regional threat and a global problem," Gagnon said. "The world cannot afford to wait any longer to find more effective ways of addressing it."
Human Rights Watch called for a fundamental review of policy toward Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa in Washington, where the Obama administration will have an opportunity to break with the failed policies of its predecessor, and in European capitals.
It also called for the establishment of a UN-sponsored Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of international law, map the worst abuses, and lay the groundwork for accountability.
"So Much to Fear"
Summary (excerpts only. For full summary, full report, translations into Somali and Italian, as well as multimedia resources, see http://tinyurl.com/6ldpmx)
December 8, 2008
Somalia is a nation in ruins, mired in one of the world's most brutal armed conflicts of recent years. Two long years of escalating bloodshed and destruction have devastated the country's people and laid waste to its capital Mogadishu. Ethiopian, Somali transitional government, and insurgent forces have all violated the laws of war with impunity, forcing ordinary Somalis to bear the brunt of their armed struggle.
Beyond its own borders Somalia has had a reputation for violent chaos since the collapse of its last central government in 1991.
When Ethiopian military forces intervened there in late 2006 the country already bore the scars of 16 conflict-ridden years without a government.
But the last two years are not just another typical chapter in Somalia's troubled history. The human rights and humanitarian catastrophe facing Somalia today threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of Somalis on a scale not witnessed since the early 1990s.
In December 2006 Ethiopian military forces, acting at the invitation of the internationally recognized but wholly ineffectual Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), intervened in Somalia against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The ICU was a coalition of shari'a (Islamic law) courts that had taken control of Mogadishu in June 2006 after ousting the various warlords who controlled most of the city. At the time the ICU had begun what might have been a dramatic rise to power across much of south-central Somalia. ...
Ethiopia's ally the TFG was corrupt and feeble and it welcomed the Ethiopian military support. In 2006 it had a physical presence in only two towns, provided no useful services to Somalis, and with the ICU's ascendancy was becoming increasingly irrelevant. The United States, which denounced ICU leaders for harboring wanted terrorists, supported Ethiopia's actions with political backing and military assistance.
The Ethiopian military easily routed the ICU's militias. For a few days it appeared that they had won an easy victory and that the TFG had ridden Ethiopia's coattails into power in Mogadishu. But the first insurgent attacks against Ethiopian and TFG forces began almost immediately and rapidly built towards a protracted conflict that has since grown worse with every passing month. ...
During the past two years life in Mogadishu has settled into a horrifying daily rhythm with Ethiopian, TFG, and insurgent forces conducting urban firefights and pounding one another with artillery fire with no regard for the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the city. ... Fighting regularly breaks out between insurgents and Ethiopian or TFG forces and all too often civilians are caught in the crossfire.
The warring parties in Somalia have been responsible for numerous serious human rights abuses. TFG security forces and militias have terrorized the population by subjecting citizens to murder, rape, assault, and looting. Insurgent fighters subject perceived critics or TFG collaborators-including people who took menial jobs in TFG offices or sold water to Ethiopian soldiers-to death threats and targeted killings. The discipline of Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia has broken down to the point where they increasingly are responsible for violent criminality. ...
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I want to work in Africa.I am working in primary school.I am professor of pedagogic and socilogy.
It is devastating to discover how little credibility anglo-saxon dominated institutions,like the media and organizations like HRW,have these days in Africa. As an Ethiopian i must say that they are exceptionally hostile to Ethiopia as this report shows that calls a US-puppet regime that is in power for 18 years in Ethiopia thanks to anglo-saxon,in particular US, support ETHIOPIA !
NO NO MELES and co are not Ethiopia they are US puppets who are in power AGAINST THE WILL OF 80 million Ethiopians and who are inflicting enormous damage on Ethiopia since they came to power in 1991 thanks to US support. So the anglo-saxons authors of that report should CRITICIZE themselves and their governments such as US and UK and Not Ethiopia !!!
We know allafrica is not really African and is owned by the americans, so hiding those facts only further destroys the credibility of this site in this era of the internet.
GUYS you need to mention at least a 1000 times how the Ethiopia-hater Bush kept supporting hated Meles after losing the may 2005 elections, and Ethiopians will never forget that and for sure the americans will pay one way or another for their crimes of the past 18 years on the Ethiopian people by installing their puppet Meles, the worst leader in the history of Ethiopia and Africa.
So keep on lying and hiding the facts about US crimes in Ethiopia and your credibility will approach ZERO.
Thanks
yours sincerely Tom
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