Ethiopia. A Fool’s Game in Ogaden

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Ethiopia. A Fool’s Game in Ogaden

Laurence Binet

The Ogaden region in the Somali regional state of Ethiopia has been the scene of conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) separatist movement since 1994. In April 2007, the fighting intensified. After a series of rebel offensives, a wave of repression hit the region, which saw villages attacked and burned, violence and forced displacements, denial of access to wells and a blockade on all commercial traffic, vital to the nomads who inhabit the area.¹
In 2007, MSF’s objective was to provide care for the victims of the conflict. In a region with very few medical facilities and a dispersed population, this meant supporting health centres and organising mobile clinics to go where patients were in need of treatment.
Since the beginning of 2007, the Dutch section’s team had been trying to set up a programme in the Wardher hospital on the outskirts of the conflict, but the army regularly denied MSF access to the population living in the area. After a rebel attack near its base in July, MSF decided on a temporary evacuation that was followed by the authorities banning the organisation from returning. Before pulling out, during the few rounds of medical consultations it had managed to hold, MSF had been able to collect witness reports on the acts of violence committed by the warring factions.

During the same period, the Belgian section was prohibited from completing an exploratory assessment at the centre of the conflict zone in the area around Fiq where it was preparing to start up a programme and the ICRC, accused by the Ethiopian authorities of supporting the ONLF, was expelled from the Somali region.
No other humanitarian organisations were active in the conflict-ridden areas of Ogaden. The army’s distribution of WFP aid raised questions of impartiality as it was suspected of using the aid to reward people for keeping their distance from the ONLF.
In early September, after a series of diplomatic meetings with Ethiopia’s main donors and other stakeholders that brought few results, MSF held a press conference to condemn the government’s refusal to allow humanitarian organisations into the Ogaden region.² Accounts of human rights violations, documented by the Dutch section, were also cited at the press conference and reported by the international media.³
The government then accused MSF of violating its sovereignty and supporting the ONLF.⁴ The Belgian section was ordered to close down its long-standing programme for tuberculosis patients outside the conflict zone and the ban on the Dutch team returning to Wardher was maintained.
In the meantime, OCHA, responding to the alerts on the situation in Ogaden, issued in particular by MSF, sent a fact-finding mission which reported a worsening of the health and economic situation in certain areas:⁵ difficult access to water and food, shortage of drugs and therapeutic foods, and many cases of acute diarrhoea and measles. In November, OCHA obtained permission from the Ethiopian authorities for several international organisations to work in Ogaden. As the authorities were continuing to block the return of the Belgian and Dutch sections, the MSF movement encouraged applications from the Swiss and Spanish sections that went on to become some of the chosen few. OCHA also obtained the promise that WFP officials could be present when the army distributed food aid, a promise that was not to be kept.
In January 2008, the Swiss and Spanish sections started up medical and nutritional programmes in the areas of Fiq and Degeh Bur that were directly affected by the conflict and the Dutch section returned to Wardher, without authorisation but not officially banned either. But, in reality, by mid-January the operations of two sections were at a standstill. The team of the Dutch section was put under house arrest in Wardher after one of its lorries refused to stop at an army roadblock, and several national staff members were accused of spying for the ONLF. With no explanation, an MSF-Switzerland field team was also ordered to shut down its exploratory mission and forbidden to leave the hotel. Before the mission was suspended, the team had observed that the people it had encountered were victims of violence and suffering from shortages of water, food and medical care due to the restrictions on movement caused by the conflict. However, MSF headquarters was reluctant to draw overall conclusions from these events with regard to the situation in the region as a whole.
In March, the house arrest orders had only just been lifted when all the MSF teams were hindered, on the pretext that most of the expatriate staff members didn’t have work permits.⁶ In May, a severe nutritional crisis necessitated the assistance of international organisations to conduct emergency relief operations in several Ethiopian states and the authorities took a more relaxed attitude to the question of work permits.
In the Fiq area, however, the MSF-Switzerland field teams were still paralysed and, in June, several national staff members were accused of spying and imprisoned. A month later, the Swiss section shut down its programme and issued a public condemnation of the administrative obstruction that was preventing it from providing relief to the population.⁷ It also circulated a document to donors, international institutions and embassies denouncing the Ethiopian authorities’ exploitation of emergency food aid for political ends and the absence of a response from the United Nations.⁸ The other sections, hoping to be able to work within the limits allowed them and judging that they lacked solid evidence of the misappropriation of aid, did not join MSF-Switzerland in the condemnation.
In the following years, managing as best they could with the endless administrative hurdles, they instigated programmes to support health facilities in areas of ongoing, low-intensity conflict. They provided medical and nutritional aid to the inhabitants—who lacked such care even in times of peace—and medical care to Somali refugees in the transit camps on the border.

Conflicting Objectives

The issue of access to Ogaden in 2007 to 2008 was marked from the outset by a conflict between MSF’s goals and those of the Ethiopian government. The latter regarded international humanitarian organisations’ aid to the inhabitants of ONLF-controlled areas as potential support for the rebellion. Any contact with the insurgents—even though such contact was crucial to impartial distribution of aid and the safety of the humanitarian teams—was condemned as a sign of political partiality. This position was clearly expressed and defended during meetings with MSF representatives and in the official correspondence sent to them.⁹ In 2009, the president of the Somali regional state even confided to a journalist that he believed “that MSF has a hidden agenda. MSF is consulting the ‘elders’ [clan chiefs] who have close relations with the ONLF, and hiring personnel who support the ONLF”.¹⁰
MSF, convinced of the legitimacy of its cause of providing assistance to the Ogaden people, took a while to realise just how intransigent the government was. It tried to resist the pressure by playing on the fact that there were several MSF sections present and using the levers of diplomatic negotiation and public statement. But those public statements worked to its detriment. The September 2007 press conference referred to the accounts of violence logged by the Dutch section’s team, even though they had been regarded initially as insufficiently documented. This increased the Ethiopian authorities’ mistrust of MSF, who they accused of spreading propaganda on behalf of the ONLF under cover of providing humanitarian aid. A few weeks later, representatives of MSF were able to experience the government’s intolerance of criticism first-hand. During a meeting with the foreign affairs minister, they were shown a file of press cuttings containing all of MSF’s public criticisms of the government dating back to its denunciation of forced displacements during the famine of 1985.
In July 2008, the Swiss section’s public criticism of the government’s refusal to allow access to the area was weakened as the two other MSF sections were still in Ogaden and did not join in the accusation. A paradox that did not escape the notice of the authorities, who publicly accused MSF of “disseminating rumours whose content is clearly at odds with the reality on the ground”.¹¹
When it came to negotiating with the authorities, even the heads of mission acknowledged that MSF’s network of official contacts in Ethiopia was insufficient and poorly organised. The operational teams, often with little experience in the country, struggled to identify the right contacts within a complex governmental system with blurred levels of responsibility; decisions on authorisations and restrictions were taken sometimes at regional level and sometimes at federal level, sometimes by the health authorities and sometimes by the army, without any clearly defined rules.
On the diplomatic front, the team responsible for coordinating the different MSF sections’ relations with countries, civil society and international institutions saw that appealing to the African Union would be futile, given Ethiopia’s prominent role in the organisation. The team therefore concentrated its efforts on United Nations agencies and western donors who, as providers of aid to Ethiopia, were liable to take seriously the difficulties experienced by the people of Ogaden in gaining access to their aid. But Ethiopia is the United States’ main African ally and its partner in the “war on terror”, particularly in Somalia where the Ethiopian government plays a leading role in the combat against Islamist insurgents.¹² Most of the diplomats and representatives of those UN agencies present in Ethiopia privately expressed their alarm at the government’s refusal to allow access to the area and its misappropriation of aid. While many of them encouraged MSF to voice what they were thinking, none of them seemed to have either the means or the ambition to change the balance of power with the Ethiopian government, a past master in the art of controlling aid.
Over the course of these events, the Ethiopian authorities manoeuvred MSF into waltzing twice round the floor. The first time of the first round began when the Ethiopian government launched a crackdown and denied access to the area from April to November 2007. The second was marked by MSF’s diplomatic and public protests, and the third by a spurious opening-up in November, briefly imposed on the Ethiopian government after pressure from the United Nations.
In 2008, events speeded up in the second round. Access was refused for longer, the period of opening-up was no more than brief. The authorities engaged in virtually uninterrupted harassment, paralysing all action by the MSF teams.
If MSF resisted the first waltz, it subsequently bent to the tempo that permitted it to stay at the dance. Since what was to be to date its last public statement on the situation in Ogaden, the organisation has kept a low profile, hoping to improve its relations with the authorities and thereby gain wider access to the region. This strategy is designed to enable MSF to assist the inhabitants should the conflict intensify, but there is no reason to believe that the Ethiopian government will be any more willing to open up the area than it was in 2007 and 2008.

Translated from French by Neil Beschers

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• 1. Jeffrey Gettleman, “In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality”, The New York Times, 18 June 2007.
• 2. MSF, “MSF Denied Access to Somali Region of Ethiopia despite Worsening Humanitarian Crisis”, press release, 4 Sept. 2007.
• 3. “Ethiopia Blocking Civilian Access to Medicine in Conflict Zone, Agency Says”, Associated Press, 4 Sept. 2007.
• 4. “Ethiopia: Government Denies ‘Blocking’ NGO”, IRIN, Nairobi, 4 Sept. 2007.
• 5. “Report on the Findings from the UN Humanitarian Assessment Mission to the Somali Region, 30 Aug.–5 Sept. 2007”.
• 6. “Letter from MSF International Office Secretary-General to Ethiopian Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs”, 31 Mar. 2008.
• 7. MSF-Switzerland, “Ethiopia: Repeated Obstructions Lead MSF-Switzerland to Pull Out from Fiq, Somali Region of Ethiopia”, press release, 10 July 2008.
• 8. MSF, “Access and Response in the Somali Region: Mission Impossible? The Case of MSF-Switzerland in Fiq”, report, Dec. 2007–June 2008.
• 9. Letter from Tekeda Alemu, Ethiopian minister of foreign affairs, to the heads of mission of the Belgian, Dutch, Swiss and Spanish sections of MSF, 18 Feb. 2008.
• 10. Peter Gill, Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• 11. “Ethiopia Slams Swiss Charity over Ogaden Pull-out”, Reuters, 12 July 2008.
• 12. See infra, “Somalia: Everything is open for negotiation”, pp. 77–106.