DJIBOUTI: Armed FRUD recruiting galore

The following article is reprinted with permission from Ogaden Online. (Map added by Inteltrends.)
 

Armed FRUD recruiting galore
©  Ogaden Online
February 20, 2011  05:45

Abdoulkader Adan, a former military leader of the Afar rebel movement during the 1990s, has gone back to his first love. He, along with about ten of his comrades, has joined the wing of the Front pour la Restauration de l’Unité et la Démocratie (FRUD, rebel movement) which still advocates armed struggle against the regime of President Ismaël Omar Guelleh. During the early 1990s Adan was the deputy commander of the rebel movement’s northern front, before succeeding Ali Maki as head of FRUD military operations at the end of 1997. The Djibouti authorities had accused him of instigating the attack at the end of July 1999 on a national army barracks in Medeh, on the Mabla Mountain 50 km north west of Obock.

Adan relinquished arms after the peace agreement signed in 2001 between the FRUD’s then leader, the late Ahmed Dini, and the Djibouti government. Since then, the Djibouti government has been paying him a regular salary to keep him quiet. But he would seem to have changed his mind with the approach of the presidential election in April 2011. Moreover, a dozen Djibouti nationals of Issa (the clan of Saad Moussa, Odahgob and Fourlaba) extraction also joined the FRUD in the last two weeks of 2010. Finally, this rebel movement has embarked on a campaign to recruit young Afars in the north of the country, sometimes voluntarily but sometimes by force.

All the signs are that the FRUD rebel movement wants to form a small task force to carry out military actions ahead of the next election.

[End.]

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Extra-Ordinary Rendition Of Ogaden Refugees By Djibouti To Ethiopia

The following is an official press release from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
 

Extra-Ordinary Rendition Of Ogaden Refugees By Djibouti To Ethiopia
Source:  Ogaden National Liberation Front
February 3, 2011

PRESS RELEASE

The Djibouti government, in collaboration with Ethiopian security forces, has executed a Gestapo style operation resulting in the arrest and the extra-ordinary rendition to Ethiopia of nearly one hundred Ogaden refugees and legal residents living in Djibouti. This operation began on January 20, 2011, when Djibouti police joined by Ethiopian security officials raided more than thirty homes, businesses and workplaces in Djibouti City.

This joint operation forcefully detained ethnic Somalis from Ogaden and took them to a military camp on the outskirts of the city of Djibouti where they were placed on military trucks on the 23rd of January and taken to an unknown destination in Ethiopia.

Sources from Djibouti security confirmed that several detainees died from torture during their detention in Djibouti. The whereabouts of the rest these victims is now unknown even to their families.

Throughout this sweep up, Djibouti police specifically targeted Somalis from Ogaden in what was clearly a well-planned and deliberate operation resulting from what appears to be a new security arrangement between Ethiopia and Djibouti.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has sought to address this Gestapo style operation through Diplomatic channels, but the Djibouti government unashamedly resorted to fabricating fictitious plots purportedly committed by these innocent refugees and residents under its legal and moral protection.

The Djibouti regime has breached both the African Charter and international conventions on the rights of refugees. By doing Ethiopia’s bidding, the government of Djibouti has acted irresponsibly and recklessly. Those refugees and legal residents from Ogaden swept up and extradited to Ethiopia by the Djiboutian regime have a clear and well-founded fear of persecution in Ethiopia. The fate of those individuals is therefore the responsibility of the Djiboutian government.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front condemns this heinous crime and calls on the international community to hold the government of Djibouti and the Ethiopian regime to account.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front has sacrificed for the past sixteen years some of its most strategic interests in order to safeguard the National security of Djibouti due to the brotherly ties between the people of Djibouti and the people of Ogaden.

This act represents a clear indication that the Djibouti government does not value the relations of our two respective people.

As such, the message of ONLF to the Djiboutian government is that Ogaden people’s struggle will not be intimidated with ill advised and misguided acts of such as this extradition of our people. These acts will only increase the determination of the people of Ogaden to continue their legitimate struggle for self-determination.

Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)

[End.]
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IntelTrends republishes selected resistance statements so that readers can access different perspectives on current affairs, political and military issues.

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