Starting Points: Horn of Africa

Showing posts with label Horn of Africa. Show all posts

Jun 19, 2010

In Eritrea, the Young Dream of Leaving

AMMAN, Jordan — Long before he learned to dunk on warped wooden backboards, Awet Eyob nursed a dream: to play basketball in America.

He is 6-foot-8, built like an oak tree, and seems to have mastered a behind-the-back dribble and crisp passes from the corner of his eye.

But one big problem stood between him and his dream: his homeland, Eritrea, an isolated, secretive nation in the Horn of Africa that is refusing to let its young people leave.

Eritrea, which fought its way to independence nearly 20 years ago, is ruled by hard-as-nails former guerrilla fighters who have held firm to their revolutionary Marxist policies and who demand that all young people work for the government, sometimes until their 40s. Anyone who tries to buck this national program, according to human rights groups, is subject to cruelly inventive tortures.

So this January, in great secrecy, Mr. Awet gathered four pairs of boxers, two pairs of socks, his high school transcript, his Air Jordans and some cash to pay a gang of human traffickers (or coyotes, as he calls them).

“I remember that first call,” he said. “The coyote said: ‘Hello, this is Sunshine.’ I answered, ‘This is Thunder.’ ”

Mr. Awet, 20, who is now living in Amman, Jordan, is the embodiment of Eritrea’s lost generation. This tiny country is spawning more refugees per capita than just about anywhere else in the world, according to United Nations statistics, and most of them are young men, and often the country’s most promising ones at that.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says that hundreds of thousands of people have fled Eritrea in recent years — the total population is less than five million — and nearly every day, 100 new Eritreans risk their lives to cross into Sudan.

The New York Times

Hundreds of thousands have fled Eritrea in recent years.

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Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

Many young Eritreans complain of being chained to government jobs in Asmara.

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Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

Mr. Awet, 20, fled Eritrea and is now staying in an American family’s home in Amman, below. He hopes to get into an American college or prep school.

Some of these defections have been hard to miss. In December, more than 10 players from the Eritrean national soccer team absconded to Kenya during a tournament. In 2004, some Eritrean refugees being sent home from Libya were so desperate not to return that they hijacked the plane.

Many never make it out. One of Mr. Awet’s friends recently won a four-year, $200,000 scholarship to a prestigious American university. “He should have been sent out with a garland of flowers,” said the boy’s father, with tears in his eyes.

Instead, the boy was arrested trying to defect in time to register for classes. He was drafted into the military and deployed near Eritrea’s southern border, one of the hottest places on earth.

Mr. Awet was lucky. Dressed in an extra, extra large gallebeyah (a long flowing gown common in the Muslim world), he sneaked through Sudan and then on to Kenya and Dubai. He is now camped out in the basement of an American family’s home here, doing push-ups, working on his jump shot, playing on a Wii set with the family’s children and trying to get into an American college or prep school.

A big reason why he has gotten this far is Matthew Smith, a gregarious, athletic American diplomat who befriended Mr. Awet a couple years ago on a basketball court in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, where Mr. Smith was working. Mr. Smith was impressed by the young man’s game, but more than that, he was moved by Mr. Awet’s burning ambition to break out of his hermetically sealed world.

“He wanted more, and I could relate to that,” said Mr. Smith, whose father was a taxi driver in Brooklyn. “Who would’ve ever thought the kid of a cabbie and nanny could be a diplomat?”

Mr. Smith matched up Mr. Awet with an American basketball coach in Amman who is now training him.

“His skills were better than I expected,” said the coach, Robert Taylor, who was sitting next to Mr. Awet on a stack of exercise mats in a high school gym. “No offense, Awet, but Eritrea isn’t exactly known for its basketball.”

If Eritrea is especially well-known for anything these days, it is for being a troublemaker in a very volatile neighborhood. The nation has been accused of invading Djibouti in 2008 and fueling chaos in Somalia by arming insurgent groups, prompting sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

But Eritrea has a proud history, fighting a grueling 30-year guerrilla war to break away from Ethiopia.

Mr. Awet’s name, in fact, means victory. He was born at home, by candlelight, in February 1990, on the eve of independence, right after a legendary battle.

He was always big. He was selected to play for the national basketball team when he was 15, and earned the nickname King A. By Eritrean standards, he had an enviable life, with a wealthy merchant father, good grades and a touch of fame.

But Dan Franch, his high school literature teacher, could tell he was not happy.

“I knew he wanted to leave, and I didn’t blame him,” Mr. Franch said. “This place is becoming inert. You encourage students to apply to college overseas but their chances of going are one in a gazillion.”

On the surface, life for young Eritreans does not look so bad. Asmara is littered with chrome-lined Art Deco cafes where young people sip cappuccinos and munch on pizza. But many young people complain (quietly) of being chained to dead-end government jobs. By law, mandatory national service is supposed to last 18 months. In reality, it is often indefinite, and few can get permits to exit the country until they are done serving. The government justifies this because of a highly militarized, unresolved border dispute with its neighbor, Ethiopia, nearly 20 times its size.

Mr. Awet says he probably will not see his parents for years because now that he has escaped, it will be dangerous to go back home.

At night, when he cannot sleep, he takes out a tiny prayer book his mother gave him — the cover is literally the size of a postage stamp — and thinks of her. Or he stretches out on a single bed with his feet nearly dangling off, listening to rap songs on his MP3 player and nurturing his dream.

“I used to dream about the money and the cars and the girls,” he sings. “But now I see, because I’m sitting on top of the world.”

Aug 27, 2009

French hostage escapes from rebels in Somalia - washingtonpost.com

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By Abdi Sheikh
Reuters
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 2:06 PM

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - One of two French security advisers kidnapped by insurgents in Somalia last month escaped on Wednesday and fled to the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

Police said the former hostage killed three of his captors but Marc Aubriere denied killing anyone and said he slipped away while his guards slept and then walked across the city.

Militants had seized the Frenchmen at a hotel in the capital on July 14 and handed one to the Hizbul Islam rebels and the other to fighters from the al Shabaab group, which Washington describes as al Qaeda's proxy in the Horn of Africa state.

Al Shabaab militants said later that they had taken custody of both men, although that could not be confirmed. Somali government officials at the city's hilltop Villa Somalia palace said the man who escaped was in good health.

"We understand he killed three al Shabaab guys who were guarding him. I cannot understand how this good story happened but now he is in the hands of the government," Abdiqadir Odweyne, a senior police commander, told Reuters.

Somalia's fragile U.N.-backed government faces a stubborn insurgency mounted by al Shabaab and others. The rebels have been joined by foreign jihadists and militants who Western security agencies say are using the country as a safe haven to plot attacks in the region and beyond.

An al Shabaab source confirmed three of its members were killed, but said it was not known by whom. "Three of my friends died but who killed them is the question. We were expecting a ransom this morning," the rebel source said.

One associate of the kidnappers said the Frenchman had been freed after talks with Somali elders, and a senior Somali government source said a ransom had been paid for his release.

"Of course I feel better than one day ago," Aubriere told the BBC Somali Service. "I'm happy and I will soon see my family ... the guards were very tired and sleepy. I didn't kill anyone or injure anyone while escaping," he said.

Adding to confusion over who was holding the pair captive, Aubriere and a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had escaped the clutches of Hizbul Islam.

KIDNAPPINGS COMMON "One of the two French hostages found a way to escape from the group detaining him, Hizbul Islam. This was with no violence, no ransom," the ministry's spokesman, Eric Chevallier, told a news conference in Paris.

He said reports any other group had been holding him were wrong, and that the two Frenchmen were advisers on an open, official mission in support of the Somali security forces.

A Somali government official and some media said last month that the pair had been posing as journalists. Chevallier declined to comment on the circumstances of Wednesday's escape.

"France continues to make an effort for the second hostage," he said, declining to give further details for security reasons.

A spokesman for African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu said Aubriere was transferred from the palace to their base and then boarded a flight to neighboring Kenya at around 1500 GMT.

Mogadishu is one of the world's most dangerous cities and has a history of kidnappings of foreigners, mainly aid workers and journalists. Hostages have normally been released for substantial ransom payments after days or weeks in captivity.

This month, Somali gunmen freed two Kenyans, two French nationals, a Bulgarian and a Belgian abducted in November.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's administration controls only small parts of the lawless country's central region and a few districts of bomb-blasted Mogadishu.

Underlining the insecurity, police said 12 people were killed on Wednesday as guards from the agriculture ministry battled other government forces near the city's K4 junction.

Violence has killed more than 18,000 Somalis since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.4 million from their homes. That has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies, with the number of people needing aid leaping 17.5 percent in a year to 3.76 million or half the population.

(Additional reporting by Reuters journalists in Somalia and Kenya, and Tamora Vidaillet and Sophie Hardach in Paris; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Aug 6, 2009

Clinton's Visit to Somalia Gives New Meaning to 'Handshake Diplomacy'

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 6, 2009

NAIROBI, Aug. 5 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Somali President Sharif Ahmed are expected to discuss weighty security issues when they meet in this city Thursday. But many Somalis will be paying close attention to a more delicate, but highly symbolic, matter of diplomacy: whether the two will shake hands.

"The talk is everywhere," said Abdirhaman Mumin, a Somali sugar exporter who is hoping for the handshake. "Will he or won't he? For many people, whether he's loyal to Islam or not depends on the handshake."

Somalia is a traditionally moderate Muslim country. Music and poetry are treasured, and handshaking between men and women -- taboo according to some conservative readings of Islam -- has long been considered normal. But since the collapse of the last central government in 1991, a more conservative strain of Islam has taken hold, with Somalis depending more on Islamic law to establish order.

Ahmed, a former geography teacher and Islamic scholar, was the widely respected leader of a movement of Islamist courts that briefly took power in 2006 and imposed a more strict interpretation of Islamic law. The movement was soon ousted in a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion fueled by accusations that the movement's military wing, known as al-Shabab, had ties to al-Qaeda.

These days, a more resolutely moderate Ahmed is back in power and battling the Shabab, which broke with him and now controls much of southern Somalia.

Increasingly, though, its members are rebels without a cause. They lost one of their main battle cries when the Ethiopian army withdrew from Somalia. They lost another recently, when Ahmed heeded a popular call and adopted Islamic law for the country. And so, at the moment, the Shabab is relying heavily on portraying Ahmed as an "impure" Muslim, a puppet of the West, a turncoat.

Last week, pro-Shabab Web sites were speculating about a possible shake between Ahmed and Clinton, arguing that, were it to come to fruition, it would prove that Ahmed had lost credibility with Islamists. Some Somalis have argued that Sharif should refrain from pressing palms, if only to keep the Shabab from scoring a public relations victory.

"If they shake hands, they'll definitely use it as propaganda," said one Somali analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Shabab is known to target critics.

But in recent interviews with Somali exiles -- a generally moderate bunch -- most said they are in favor of the handshake, a view that reflects their cautious optimism about U.S. support for Ahmed, usually referred to as Sheikh Sharif. The United States recently shipped 40 tons of ammunition to help the government fight the rebels.

The pro-shake crowd also reflects a deep-seated desire among many Somalis to shed their image as citizens of one of the most dysfunctional and anarchic countries in the world.

"I think it's good for him to shake hands," said Abdi Ibrahim, who was discussing the issue with friends at a cafe in Nairobi's bustling Eastleigh neighborhood. "Sheikh Sharif has to show Somalis that this is normal. Everyone shakes hands. Why should Somalis be different? Why the big deal? We need to join the world."

"But," he added somewhat gloomily, "the insurgents will use it to say he has changed a lot -- maybe he shouldn't. I cannot say 100 percent."

The former spokesman for the ousted Islamist courts movement, Abdirahim Issa Addou, said that in his view, Sharif is no longer interested in appeasing the Shabab and that "we need to show the Americans we're different."

Following that line of reasoning, he said, Sharif should not just offer Clinton a hearty handshake. "To me, I'd go as far as kissing her," Addou joked. "But really, Sheikh Sharif is in a difficult position. "You know," he said with a sigh, "that Sharif has a lot of problems."