Mereja Forum

[sarcasm]

Accounts of atrocities by Somali soldiers in Ethiopia’s Tigray war are casting a spotlight on an emerging military alliance that has reshaped the Horn of Africa, weakening Western influence in a strategically important region.

The Globe and Mail has obtained eyewitness reports of massacres by Somali troops embedded with Eritrean forces in Tigray in the early months of the war. The new evidence raises disturbing questions about a covert military alliance between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia that has inflicted death and destruction on the rebellious Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.

Officially, the three governments have denied any alliance, and Somalia has denied that its troops were deployed in Tigray. But The Globe’s investigation has provided, for the first time, extensive details of civilian killings committed by Somali soldiers allied with Eritrean forces in the region.

Gebretsadik, a 52-year-old farmer from the village of Zebangedena in northwestern Tigray, said the dusty roads of his village were strewn with the bodies of decapitated clergymen in December, 2020, a few weeks after the beginning of the war.

Some of the priests and monks were people he recognized. Somali soldiers, working alongside Eritrean forces who had captured the village, had targeted churches and killed the clergymen, he said.

“They slaughtered them like chickens,” he told The Globe.

The Somali and Eritrean troops stayed in the village until late February, according to Gebretsadik, who often fled to the bushes and mountains around the village to escape attacks during that time.

The Globe talked to dozens of survivors who had witnessed atrocities in six Tigrayan villages where Somali troops had been stationed between early December, 2020, and late February, 2021. The Globe is not publishing their full names or their current locations because their lives could be in danger.

The survivors said the Somali troops were wearing Eritrean military uniforms, but they were clearly identifiable as Somali because of their language and their physical appearance. Unlike the Eritreans, they could not speak any Tigrinya, the language spoken in Tigray and much of Eritrea. The witnesses said they also heard the Eritrean troops referring to them as Somalis.

Last year, United Nations and U.S. officials said they had received information that Somali troops were present in Tigray, but few details were known. Somali parents held several protests in Mogadishu and other places in Somalia last year, complaining that their sons had been ordered to fight in Tigray after being originally sent to Eritrea for military training. Hundreds of Somali soldiers were reportedly killed in the fighting.

Continue reading https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/a ... e-emerged/

[Somaliman]

One of the fuckers that used to propagate such baseless rumours is now "elected" as the president of Somalia. It's time for him to prove this.

Many people think that Somalia's disease is clanism/tribalism, but in reality, it's not. It's rather federalism. Federalism was imposed to Somalia to destroy the Somali fabric. Those Somalis in the politics in Somalia haven't got a clue about federalism to this very day.

So-called leaders of federal states backed by the US, UK, Gulf Arabs, and Kenya "elected" this fucker and not a clan, including his own.