Word: ethiopian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...still possible, this summer, to see some hope in Somalia. The country was in dire need of some. The Ethiopian army, which invaded last December, had killed thousands of Somalis and lost thousands of its own in some of the fiercest fighting that the capital, Mogadishu, had seen in 16 years of civil war. There was also an acute and mounting humanitarian crisis, as hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the capital for makeshift camps in the desert. But an August lull in the fighting allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to claim violence was ending. And Washington, which sent...
...That hope has now evaporated. In October, the T.F.G.'s inability to rise above tribal rivalries was laid bare when internal feuds culminated in President Yusuf Abdullah's firing of his Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Gedi. This month, fighting between Ethiopian troops and Somali insurgents again erupted in Mogadishu, prompting tens more thousands of refugees to desert the capital. In scenes reminiscent of the 1993 battle between U.S. troops and a Somali militia, the bodies of two dead Ethiopian soldiers were dragged through the streets...
...says 1.5 million people need assistance, of which a mere 60,000 are getting it. And Somalia is of significant strategic interest. Pirates based there regularly strike ships heading to and from the Suez Canal, and attacks have rocketed this year. The conflict in Somalia - which pits Ethiopian and T.F.G. troops against Somali rebels, backed by Eritrea - also has the potential to ignite a larger regional war that engulfs the Horn of Africa. Last week, Ban Ki-Moon expressed serious concern about the military buildup along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border, while State Department spokesman Sean McCormack urged Eritrea and Ethiopia...
...Most important for the U.S., Somalia has wider international ramifications for terrorism. It has been a home to al-Qaeda-funded Islamist radicals since the early 1990s. The Ethiopians invaded to topple the Union of Islamic Courts (U.I.C.), which had ruled Mogadishu for six months and whose leader declared a jihad on Ethiopian troops then operating inside Somalia. According to insurgents I spoke to this summer in Mogadishu, U.S. intervention alongside Ethiopian forces - U.S. warplanes carried out at least two strikes on suspected Islamists in the south of the country in January, and a warship unleashed an artillery barrage...
...their outreach. U-Haul is offering free storage units for a month. Many hotels all across the county have cut their rates in half. One man called a radio station offering his apartment free of charge until the evacuees find other accommodations. A friend tells me one downtown Ethiopian restaurant offers free meals to evacuees, though not a lot of people have stopped by. And these aren't isolated incidents. The number of looting cases crossing police counters: just...