Notes from the Hyena's Belly

by Nega Mezlekia

  The newly organized front engaged in more battles in the following month than it had in the eighteen months since it had been dispatched from Somalia. Unlike the earlier easygoing days, we were sent on strenuous sorties. As more and more Somalis joined the ranks, as more tanks and artillery were acquired, the nature of the battles changed remarkably. Soon, all non-Somalis were removed from the fighting teams. We had become expendables, whose duty it was to spy on enemy movements, or fetch daily supplies.

  Those of us who were not Somalis resented our change in position and started seriously rethinking the whole business. First and foremost, it did not seem right that we should support what had obviously become a Somali effort to annex part of our own country. We may have had a different agenda than the military junta ruling the nation, but our involvement in the Somali faction was no way of settling the difference. Secondly, we were aware that our present status as expendables numbered our days. We would either be killed by the Ethiopian Army while fetching water or be disposed of by the Somali rebels themselves when the time came. Death was inevitable and dishonourable, either way.

  For days we thought about our options. Dissent is not tolerated in a guerrilla army, so we were secretive and never divulged our plans to anyone outside our small circle. There are no prisons in the field, no courts to try each case, just summary execution. Whatever we chose to do, we had to do it together and quickly.

  We had two choices: either we had to trudge hundreds of kilometres to Djibouti and seek asylum—a dangerous trek across a hostile territory infested by both the government army and the Somali guerrillas—or we had to give ourselves up to the Ethiopian Army and await our fate. We were literally caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

  After a long deliberation, four of the boys decided to head for Djibouti. A boy from Jijiga and I decided we would return home. We were acutely aware of the consequences of our action, but we had long since ceased to care.

  * * *

  APATHY IN THE FACE of continual violence is something someone who has never lived through a war cannot understand. Barely six months later, when my family and I were seeking refuge, travelling slowly on the road to Harar, the heat of mid-afternoon was broken only by the treble whirr of falling bombs and the sight of the dead. People had long since ceased to huddle under their limbs at the sound. They simply walked unflinchingly past the dead. Their frail limbs could not stop the bombs, their ears could not tell them where the bombs would fall. Death was random and continual, and people simply got on with what living was left to them: the long wait in line for a bucket of water, the preparation of what food there was to be found. People simply gathered about themselves, like rags, what life there was left, deafened and inured to the inevitability of death.

  * * *

  THE PLAN AND execution of our escape was quite simple. The six of us co-ordinated the times when we were outside of camp, searching for supplies, so that we would all be out of sight of the rebels at the same time. We left the shelters at around ten in the morning and met at the foot of the hill. The first couple of hours were the most critical. They would give us the time to get out of the army’s reach. We dumped everything we were carrying in the bush, except for three good rifles, some ammunition and our water canteens. Then we ran, for hours, stopping only to catch our breath and help each other with the small loads we were carrying. About seven hours after leaving camp we reached a point where we had to part. We hugged each other and wished one another good luck, joking that one day we would meet again in ivory towers.

  The two of us who were heading back to Jijiga had an eight- to ten-hour journey ahead. As for the others, there was no telling. It might take weeks or even months for them to reach their destination, if they reached it at all.

  Going back to the same old enemy after having experienced a sort of freedom was an obvious failure. However, I managed to convince myself that I had, at the very least, fought in the trenches for something I believed in. Whoever first said that he had won a moral victory had probably, likewise, lost the battle. The one failure I could not bury was the fact that I returned alone, without my childhood friend Wondwossen.

  As I approached Jijiga, I worried about how I would face Wondwossen’s parents and my own mother, who treated Wondwossen like another son. The other concern I had was obvious. After all, my absence hadn’t been a night out to paint slogans on walls or spread illegal pamphlets. We had fought the regime in a real battle, inflicting serious damage to the army. Who knew how many soldiers had been killed during the seven months we were with the rebels? Who could tell how many children had been orphaned, how many wives widowed? But it was too late to worry. Whatever the consequences, they were only hours away, and inevitable.

  We arrived in the city shortly before sunset. I was very surprised to find that we could walk right down the main street without being confronted by the army or the police. For a major military base and a strategically important city, the local security was pitiful.

  There were many refugees in town from the regions south of Jijiga, recently conquered by the Somali Army. A good number of them were boys of my age, not much better dressed than myself, carrying or dragging guns. We were tempted to toss our guns in a ditch and head home. It was possible that we could hide for a few days, and then slip out of town under assumed identities. But we considered the consequences. If our relations were caught harbouring fugitives, particularly rebels, the punishment would be as severe for them as for us. We decided to do the right thing, and headed for army headquarters.

  On surrendering to the army I discovered that a person’s worst fears are seldom realized. We learned that the government had already granted amnesty to anyone in the field who was willing to give up arms and return to civilian life. We were ecstatic, incredulous, and naturally suspicious. After all, how could one expect the same junta that had chased us from one end of the bush to the other to be so reasonable, even merciful? We were proven wrong for once, and did not mind at all.

  I wondered how many lives would have been saved if we had known about the amnesty earlier. The news had been aired for months in different languages, but radios and newspapers were off-limits to rank-and-file fighters because enemy propaganda was considered the most dire form of warfare. Anyone attempting to smuggle newspapers or radios to the front was considered an enemy collaborator. Obviously, these rules served the intended purpose.

  The day after we gave up, when they learned of our arrival, my mother, brothers and sisters, close friends and neighbours came to visit me. My siblings were too young to know what had happened; they only felt relief to see me at the army headquarters. They crowded around, jumping up and down, outshouting each other to tell me what they’d done while I was away. My elder sister, Meselu, was still in Mechara, some four hundred kilometres away.

  Mam was a wreck, her eyes peach-red and her movements unusually awkward. She tried to ask many questions at once, but words failed her and I could not follow her meaning. When she finally composed herself and was able to speak in coherent sentences, she asked me, as I was afraid she would, about Wondwossen’s whereabouts.

  I felt a lump in my throat and could not answer. All I could do was cry. She knew from my face that Wondwossen was gone, that she would never again cast an eye on him. Mam straightened her back and became still, facing the blank white wall in front of her for a very long time. Her lips quivered. Her face changed colour. The blood vessels on her temples and forehead became swollen with anguish, and it seemed to me that they would burst and drown her face with red. Then, all at once, her face broke like a ruptured dam and the tears poured from her eyes. She cried for centuries, pausing once every few decades to wipe her nose with her handkerchief. No form of persuasion would ease her weeping. She stopped only when she ran out of tears. For years afterwards, when something brought Wondwossen to mind, she would cry as though it were only yesterday that he had been home to see her.

  * * *

  WE WERE DETAINED for two weeks for politica
l rehabilitation, but otherwise were treated like celebrities. The prisons had been transformed since I had last been incarcerated. With proper sleeping quarters, regular meals, exercise and access to showers, they had the feeling of bootcamps. Our relatives were allowed to visit us as often as they wished. As we were released, they advised us of our newly acquired freedom, and told us we were free to go to school, to seek employment or to do nothing.

  All signs seemed to indicate that the junta would remain in power for some years to come. The Soviets and their allies, the Cubans and others, were embedded in the country, and it appeared that nothing would uproot them in the foreseeable future. If I had any hope of helping to change the system, I realized, I had better resume my education. With the endorsement of the local cadre in charge of my case, I was permitted to join my former classmates in Grade 12, despite the fact that I had been away for most of the school year.

  * * *

  IN THE WEEKS after my return, the Somali government intensified its efforts to occupy all Somali-speaking regions of Ethiopia. Despite desperate attempts to save Jijiga, we were completely surrounded by the enemy and cut off from the rest of the country. There was no form of civilian transport arriving in or departing from Jijiga. Martial law had been declared, and every available truck, bus and airplane had been diverted to the war effort.

  This was the third attempt by Somalia to take over Ogaden. The first two wars, waged in 1961 and 1966, were mere child’s play compared to the latest efforts. In terms of armaments, deployments and casualties, the enemy’s achievements were breathtaking.

  Somalia had laid claim to the Somali-speaking territories within Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti since its inception as a modern state in 1960. Somalia considered these regions “lost territories,” and justified her war effort as an unfortunate, but necessary, measure towards reclaiming her rightful provinces. Indeed, the Somali-speaking peoples of Ethiopia and Kenya had little in common with the people they were “forced” to live with. Somalis are one of the few ethnic groups in Africa speaking the same language, having identical cultural and religious institutions, even as they live under four different flags.

  I lay awake many nights wondering if Kenya and Ethiopia had not heinously divided a unique people, forcing them to live separately. I wondered if liberal elements in the two neighbouring countries shouldn’t strive to reunite the “annexed provinces” with their mother land, Somalia.

  But the more I studied history, the more I questioned this view.

  BOOK THREE: STORM

  WINDOW ON HISTORY

  IN THE YEAR A.D. 1000, if you had strolled along the northern frontier of the Horn of Africa, you would have witnessed a human tidal wave moving inland, and wondered where it could have come from. You might even have glanced at your surroundings and surmised that these nomadic people had somehow crossed the bottleneck at the Gulf of Aden; the vast Indian Ocean was impossible to navigate.

  Having crossed this bottleneck, the Somalis found themselves in one of the harshest regions on the Horn, with little to recommend it for human settlement. They immediately started elbowing their way south and, to some extent, west. By the turn of the twentieth century, they occupied the regions they currently inhabit. Their progress, however, was not without obstacles. The Somalis faced their greatest challenge from the Oromo people, who were the original inhabitants of these regions. They drove the Oromos from their traditional homes into the Ethiopian highlands at the turn of the sixteenth century.

  The land occupied by the Somalis is, for the most part, an arid savannah—an endless steppe punctuated by acacia trees, huge anthills and the thick-trunked baobabs. Somalis are nomadic pastoralists, their favoured domestic animal being the one-humped camel. This beast is the hardiest of all animals. In the dry season, it can go without water for more than three weeks. Between rains, Somalis can be seen driving a caravan of camels for a week or more, without regard for political borders, as they search for water holes and grazing lands. They repeat this arduous task, without rest, until the rains come. The nomads themselves subsist, during this period, entirely on camels’ milk.

  Today, Somalis number between four and five million. Three-quarters of them are still nomads. They have a modern form of government, but it has little meaning for them, indeed, is of no relevance in their day-to-day life. Somalis pledge their allegiance to traditional chiefs, who have powers over matters that concern the group as a whole. The chief heads the clan. The clan is subdivided into patrilineal kinship groupings, which themselves are subdivided into smaller hereditary groupings. The diya-paying group is the smallest and most relevant to the rank-and-file Somali.

  Diya means blood compensation. A diya-paying group consists of anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand kinsmen. If a Somali has been wronged by another Somali, it is unlikely that he will go to the police or the courts for justice, preferring to lay the matter before his diya-paying group instead. This group makes sure that compensation is made for injuries sustained, or for a violent death. Compensation takes the form of camels offered to the victim or the victim’s family.

  Somalis have managed their affairs without outside intervention for many centuries. They have cultivated a rich oral literature, an egalitarian culture and religious institutions that are centred around Islam.

  Many of the present-day Somali problems have their root in the European scramble for African territories, not to mention Ethiopia’s own imperial ambitions. The recent bloody breakup of the country into five different pieces, for instance, stems from attempts to force a fiercely individualistic, clan-minded people, through colonial influence, into the mould of a nation.

  The three European powers who had a stake in the area were France, Italy and Britain. The British interest was exceedingly simple. They had a colony across the gulf, in Aden, which had a very strong naval base. This colony needed a reliable supply of meat for its army and subjects. As the main suppliers of meat in the area were the Somali nomads, what better way to ensure the continuity of its supply than to annex its source?

  The British weren’t greedy. They didn’t wish to occupy the entire Somali holding, just a strip of land on the north coast of the region. They didn’t send armies to quash the nomads, but negotiated their way in, setting up shop on the Horn in 1884.

  The successful, low-cost entry of the English in the region gave the French ideas. Why not grab the port of Djibouti? The port was exactly what they were looking for—a short route to Europe, aided by the majestic Suez Canal, which had opened its gates in 1869. Like the British, the French negotiated a protectorate agreement with the dominant clan of the region, the Issa. In 1888, France set up camp in Djibouti, one of the harshest regions on the Horn. France would rule this port for the next ninety years.

  The Italians were the last to arrive, but their prize was by no means smaller than the others’. Indeed, Italy had staked out for itself the longest coastal territory on the Horn, bordering the English possessions and running along the Indian Ocean. This acquisition, along with Eritrea—which had come under Italian rule a few years earlier—was considered the perfect launching point for a campaign to take the grand prize of them all: Ethiopia.

  Menelik II, King of Kings of Ethiopia, wasn’t ignorant of the threat posed by the European warlords in the region. However, he was a practical man. He knew that his armament was no match for the enemy’s, and that his arms supplies were very limited. The number and quality of weapons delivered by French smugglers were hardly enough to put out a small fire. It certainly wouldn’t do for his grand imperial plan—which entailed sharing in the spoils of the Horn alongside his European competitors.

  Menelik was an astute politician as well as a warrior. He made friends with the Italians. He humoured them into sponsoring his participation in the Brussels General Act. In 1890, Ethiopia, as a Christian state, was empowered for the first time in history to import munitions legally. There was one small drawback, however. The Emperor was a little short of money. The Italians obliged b
y lending him four million francs, which he later repaid. They also granted him 28 cannons and 38,000 rifles. The armament was meant to be used to subjugate the pagans and Muslims occupying the lowlands—an aim that didn’t conflict with the interests of the European warlords in the region.

  Secure in his power, and armed with up-to-date weapons and trained fighting personnel, Menelik waged war on the people to the south and west of his kingdom. The Emperor’s soldiers decimated the much inferior armies of the local people in short order, extending his sovereignty to regions never before conquered by an Ethiopian king. In ten short years, the kingdom had doubled in size.

  By the early 1890s, Menelik was ready to stake his claim in the Somali lands. First, he dispatched a carefully worded letter to the British government, reminding this likewise Christian kingdom of his Solomonic lineage; that Menelik was a kinsman to none other than Christ; and that challenging his grand plan to extend his empire as far north as Khartoum, and as far south as Lake Victoria, would be tantamount to interfering with the wishes of God. Menelik’s new scheme included taking more than half of the British protectorate.

  “A deranged upstart,” the British thought.

  The moment of reckoning came when Menelik had to fight the Italians in Adwa. In 1895, Italy dispatched a strong force to the north, led by a highly decorated warlord, General Barateri. On March 1, 1896, Barateri decided to launch his attack on Ethiopia. He amassed his soldiers in Adwa, the capital of Tigre province. The only information the Italian general had about these formidable northern highlands was in the form of sketch maps. His forces were soon separated, and completely routed. The casualties numbered eight thousand Italian soldiers and four thousand Eritrean recruits by the time the rest of the Italian army beat a hasty retreat.