the human province

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.

I'm a little late for Labor Day, but Human Rights Watch here in Lebanon has begun an awareness campaign for rights of domestic workers entitled Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

The condition of (predominantly women) domestic workers in the Middle East is atrocious. Apparently, the problem is as bad in Israel as it is in Lebanon and even worse in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. According to HRW:

The most common complaints made by domestic workers to embassies and nongovernmental organizations include non-payment or delayed payment of their wages, forced confinement to the workplace, no time off, and verbal, as well as physical, abuse. According to a 2006 survey conducted by Dr. Ray Jureidini of 600 migrant domestic workers, 56 percent said they work more than 12 hours a day and 34 percent have no regular time off. In some cases, workers have died while attempting to escape these conditions, some by jumping from balconies.

...The Lebanese authorities have failed to curb abuses committed by employers and agencies. Lebanese labor laws specifically exclude domestic workers from rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits on work hours, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation. Immigration sponsorship laws restrict domestic workers’ ability to change employers, even in cases of abuse. An official steering committee created in early 2006 and led by the Ministry of Labor to improve the legal situation of migrant workers in Lebanon has yet to deliver any concrete reforms. This includes a long-discussed standard contract to outline minimum standards for domestic workers’ employment.  

Human Rights Watch called upon the Ministry of Labor and other relevant authorities to amend the labor law to extend equal protection for domestic workers and to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. 

 

A few years ago, the Times did a story about Sri Lankan women who go to the Middle East to work as domestic servants.  This picture is of a 20-year-old woman named Thangarasa Jeyanthi who was severely abused in Lebanon. In Lebanese Arabic, the common word for a domestic worker is "Sri Lankan." At one point, I remember hearing a joke about an NGO that was fostering multiculturalism by doing presentations with people from all over world invited to introduce themselves to the audience. The Egyptian man comes and says he works as a concierge. The Syrian says that he's a field hand. And then comes the Ethiopian who introduces herself but forgets to say what her profession is. When reminded that everyone has to say what they do, she replies, "I'm a Sri Lankan."

In the case of Sri Lankan women, the conditions that they live and work in criminally miserable, and their government is actually complicit. There are training programs that teach the women some Arabic and how to do what is expected of them without receiving the beatings that are so common. The government encourages women to go to the Middle East, they provide remittances that help keep the Sri Lankan economy afloat.

An Ethiopian friend of mine here used to work for a big hotel in town, but she wasn't allowed to be hired directly even though she has all of her papers in order. The hotel insists on going through a middle man, who garnishes half of the wages of the foreign women working at the hotel. A salary of $450 is reasonable (and more than twice the pitiful minimum wage), but when some sleazy profiteer gets to pocket half of your salary, it's difficult to survive, especially with the increasing price of living (many food items have nearly doubled in price in the last 9 months).

In contrast with Colombo's policy of encouraging the migration, Ethiopia's government has taken the decision to ban its citizens from coming to Lebanon in search of employment:

ADDIS ABABA: On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.

"Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens," said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.

According to a report published by Ethiopia's official news agency, past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone while working in Beirut.

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

So for Labor Day this year, I'd like to remind everyone that Sri Lankan is a nationality, not a profession. And I'd like to remind the Lebanese, many of whom go off to Europe, North America and the Gulf in search of work, that they should have a little solidarity with domestic workers here who are hoping to make so money to create a better life for themselves. As my friend Nadim from HRW says about their media campaign: "Many Lebanese themselves have been forced by wars and hardships to emigrate looking for a better life. We hope that they will see the parallels with the experience of these migrants that came from far away to care for Lebanese families."

I'm sure someone else has noticed it, but I think it's important to note the dangerous precedent set by the Bush doctrine of preventative war and the ensuing "war on terror." American allies in Turkey and Colombia have taken advantage of this precedent to conduct their own cross-border attacks into Iraq and Ecuador, respectively.

One can empathize with the tough situation that Ankara and Bogotá are in with the PKK and FARC without accepting the idea that they can invade neighboring countries. This is a problem that's endemic in Africa, where terrorist and rebel groups are tools of statecraft used by neighboring regimes to weaken their enemies. So in Khartoum, Chadian and Ugandan rebels are supplied. Addis Ababa supports rebels in Darfur, Asmara supports Somali rebellions in Ogaden, and Kampala returns the Sudanese favor by supporting the South and Darfur against the center in Khartoum. And let's not even bring up central Africa.

Let's hope that South America doesn't break into the same dirty pattern. Although Colombian accusations that Chávez has been supporting FARC and his response that he'd invade Colombia if Bogotá tried the same thing on the Venezuelan border as just happened on the Ecuadorian side are bad news for stability in the region:

[Colombian ambassador] Mr. Ospina said that, in addition to the alleged payment by Mr. Chavez, the information found on the laptops that Colombian troops seized indicated that President Rafael Correa’s government had met several times with the FARC and allowed them to set up permanent bases in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia would seek charges against President Chávez at the International Criminal Court.

“There is not the least doubt that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador have been negotiating with terrorists,” Mr. Ospina said. “Allowing terrorist groups to keep camps on their territory border for the planning and execution of terrorist acts is a crime and a clear violation of international treaties.” Television in Venezuela also broadcast images of tank battalions heading to the border, following a threat by Mr. Chávez on Sunday that Colombia would be inviting war if it carried out an incursion in Venezuela similar to the one on Saturday in a remote Amazonian province of Ecuador that killed 21 guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez’s threat, which included a taunt that Venezuela would use its Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to attack Colombia, has been interpreted here as a sign that Mr. Chávez stands ready to defend the FARC, a group classified as terrorists in the United States and Europe that is reported to operate without hindrance along Venezuela’s porous 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

Contrasting the FARC’s image in Colombia as a group that finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions and still plants land mines in rural areas, documentaries on state television here in Venezuela portray the FARC as an insurgency born out of efforts to combat Colombia’s moneyed elite.

On his Sunday television program, Mr. Chávez went further by calling for a minute of silence to mourn for Mr. Reyes, the fallen guerrilla leader whose real name was Luis Édgar Devia.

If we add to the Colombian and Turkish examples, the Ethiopians in Somalia, a clear pattern of US allies taking advantage of the doctrine of preventative war becomes clear. So while it's important to note that cross border raids are not new by any means, due to the American invasion of Iraq they've probably become more common and more defensible by US allies the world over.

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Now that I've spent two nights in Sana'a, I'm disappointed that I don't have more time in this wonderful country. It's somehow now what I expected, although it's really hard to say exactly what I expeceted.

A few months ago, the major cities of Yemen were made gun free. Apparently, before that, the city was full of gun toting Yemenis. In the space of two months or so though, the government set up checkpoints at the entrance of cities people can leave their guns and then pick them back up again on the way out. I'm not really sure what the policy is inside the cities, whether people's guns were confiscated or just have to be left at home, but I haven't seen a single person in the street carrying a firearm.

Those in Lebanon will be unhappy to hear that there are no electricity cuts in Yemen's capital and DSL internet is already available in Sana'a for much less than one pays for a much slower connection in Beirut. The taxis are also much newer, and many of them even have meters. So while there are men walking around in dishdashas carrying curved daggers on their belt, some things in Sana'a are closer to western standards than they are in Lebanon.

I went to a couple of parties last night, and the first had one of the strangest mixtures of people I've ever seen in my life. It was the birthday party of an American girl studying Arabic here, and I went with another American living here, an American-Yemeni basketball player and a Norwegian researcher. Before getting to the party, we went to a Chinese restaurant where an Ethiopian guy sold contraband alcohol, so we picket up a bottle of vodka for the occassion, which cost us about $25. When we arrived, I met a guy from Madagascar who spoke with me in French. But then when he heard that the Yemeni basketball player was from Brooklyn, he shouted, "Fo real!? Nigga, I'm from Jersey City!" in a New York accent. Then there was James/Mohamad, the former white Crip from Florida who converted to Islam in jail when he was a teenager and told me a story about having almost shot a Black Muslim in Atlanta, because he had called him a "devil" when James refused to respond to his as-salam aleikum. He moved to Sada to study Islam seven years ago but is now living in Sana'a, doing what I was afraid to ask.

After that, we went to a dance party at the US embassy, where our Yemeni-American friend was amazingly allowed to enter without any identification. It was some sort of semi-regular dance party that was frequented by westerners who were working in NGOs, UN gigs, private companies and probably other embassies. There were also a fair amount of western expats, some girls from Djibouti and ethiopia who may or may not have been prostitutes, and some young hip Yemenis. After that, we went to a Russian club and then a Lebanese one, where we were accosted by a young woman who looked like she was out in Monot dancing with her cleavage open and her midrift showing. It turned out that she wasn't Lebanese at all, but rather totally Yemeni. It wasn't until after a bit of naively receiving her very forward attention that I realized she was a prostitute. After she asked me for $200, I told her that in Beirut where I live, all the women were as pretty as she was, but you didn't have to pay them to go out with you. She, of course, lost interest in me almost immediately. The place seemed to be full of foreigners studying Arabic and prostitues from Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

I'll have to post later about chewing qat. But so far, I'll just say that I don't really like it. It's more or less bitter, depending on the type of leaf, and honestly just feels like chewing a mouthful of leaves. I left it in for a couple of hours but didn't feel anything, which is apparently common the first few times you try it. I'm sure I'll have the occasion to try some more in Ethiopia, and I suppose I will, but so far, keeping such a big wad of cud in my mouth seems more like a chore than anything else.

I'll be leaving on Sunday for Yemen and then Ethiopia. I've been pretty lax about posting lately due to my enormous workload, but I'm almost over the hump. I'm not sure what the internet connections will look like in Sana'a and Addis Ababa, but provided that I can get access to the internet, I'll do my best to post while I'm away.

I know very little about Kenya, so I'm not going to open my mouth about what's going on there, except to say that it's been disappointing and surprising to me.

I've mentioned the McClatchey blogs before, but if you haven't already, you should go look at the Africa one, which is based in Nairobi.

In other Africa news, I may go to Ethiopia for a couple of weeks at the end of the of the month, so I've been trying to read up a bit and will hopefully be blogging while there.

US allies in Addis Ababa have been facing some pretty serious charges lately, the latest coming from the Times. It seems that in an effort to combat the mainly ethnic-Somali rebel group in the east of the country, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the government has been starving the entire region:

The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

In this part of Africa, famine has often been used a blunt political tool by central governments to keep the periphery in line. Precedent has already been set in Addis Ababa and Khartoum. Possibly even more disconcerting, however, are allegations that the government is arming ethnic militias in order to attack the rebels:

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” [former MP] Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

In both cases, the actions of the Ethiopian government are disconcertingly close to those of the Sudanese government. It looks like any ethnic-based collective punishment aimed at quelling a separatist movement in Ogaden is still in the formative stage. The US should use its clout to dissuade Addis Ababa from going down the same road that Sudan has taken, as some in the House of Representatives like Randy Forbes (R, VA) have started to do by stripping Ethiopia of American aid. In any case, this is a case that Americans should keep an eye on, because it's obviously better to prevent humanitarian disasters and ethnic violence before it happens rather than wringing our hands when it does. 

Kristof has an op-ed about Somaliland, the part of Somalia that seceded from Somalia in 1991, in today's Times. He argues that the US should recognize Somaliland:

The U.S. and other governments don't recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the "country" was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.

Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquillity and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.

Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don't try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals -- even a public library.

This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women's groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.

...[I]t's time to recognize Somaliland as a nation. When a place does this well, we should hail it as a model, not shun it.

The case of Somaliland is a strange one. The Organization of African Unity and then its replacement, the African Union, have always been scared of opening a "pandora's box" of secessionist claims in hte continent. As a result of this fear, the OAU Cairo Declaration, which made Africa's old colonial borders inviolable, was penned in 1964. Since then, there has been the exception of Eritrea, which is fairly unique in that although it was part of Ethiopia, it was the coastal portion of Ethiopia that was colonized by the Italians, whereas the rest of Ethiopia remained more or less independent. Another looming exception is Southern Sudan, which, in a few years, will have a referendum on breaking away from Khartoum and the north of the largest country in Africa.

Somaliland was part of a larger area called Somalia, which was administrated by different European countries - Somaliland by the UK, Djibouti by France and the rest by Italy. In 1960, when British Somaliland gained independence, there was a dream of a greater Somalia, which would include what is now Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, as well as parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. The formerly British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to create a federation, which was quickly dominated by the formerly Italian half, based out of Mogadishu. Technically, however, there was a brief window of time when Somaliland was an independent country, and this is how the current government is arguing that its independence does not violate the Cairo Declaration.

The International Crisis Group has a report on the Somaliland question, in which they give some background, ask some important questions and offer recommendations:

In December 2005 President Dahir Rayale Kahin submitted Somaliland's application for membership in the AU. The claim to statehood hinges on the territory's separate status during the colonial era from the rest of what became Somalia and its existence as a sovereign state for a brief period following independence from Great Britain in June 1960. Having voluntarily entered a union with Somalia in pursuit of the irredentist dream of Greater Somalia (including parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti), it now seeks recognition within the borders received at that moment of independence. Despite fears that recognition would lead to the fragmentation of Somalia or other AU member states, an AU fact-finding mission in 2005 concluded the situation was sufficiently "unique and self-justified in African political history" that "the case should not be linked to the notion of 'opening a pandora’s box'". It recommended that the AU "should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case" at the earliest possible date. On 16 May 2006, Rayale met with the AU Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konare, to discuss Somaliland's application for membership.

Somaliland has made notable progress in building peace, security and constitutional democracy within its de facto borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have returned home, tens of thousands of landmines have been removed and destroyed, and clan militias have been integrated into unified police and military forces. A multi-party political system and successive competitive elections have established Somaliland as a rarity in the Horn of Africa and the Muslim world. However, the TFG continues strongly to oppose Somaliland independence.

...There are four central and practical questions:

* should Somaliland be rewarded for creating stability and democratic governance out of a part of the chaos that is the failed state of Somalia?;
* would rewarding Somaliland with either independence or significant autonomy adversely impact the prospects for peace in Somalia or lead to territorial clashes?;
* what are the prospects for peaceful preservation of a unified Somali Republic?; and
* what would be the implications of recognition of Somaliland for separatist conflicts elsewhere on the continent?

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Appoint a Special Envoy to consult with all relevant parties and within six months:

(a) report on the perspectives of the parties with regard to the security and political dimensions of the dispute;

(b) prepare a resumé of the factual and legal bases of the dispute; and

(c) offer options for resolution.

2. Organise an informal consultation for members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) – modelled on the UN Security Council’s “Arria Formula” sessions – involving presentations by eminent scholars, political analysts and legal experts.

3. Pending final resolution of the dispute, grant Somaliland interim observer status so that both sides can attend sessions on Somali issues, make presentations and respond to questions from member states and generally be assured of a fair hearing.

I tend to agree that Somaliland should be rewarded for its advances in peaceful stability and democracy while the rest of Somalia continues to fester in a state of violence and instability. And while I agree that partition can be a messy affair and a slippery slope, Somaliland is already a de facto country, and even if the AU were to reject their request for membership, there isn't really a Somali state for Somaliland to go back to.