HENOK MERHATSIDK 1.pdf - Addis Ababa University

Liberation Front). Besides, series of bombing, shooting, attacking hotels committed by AIAI
(Al- Ithad Al- Islamia) a terrorist group. ONLF and AIAI have comparative advantage for
their evil project. Among others they use the stateless Somalia where they recruit and train
their members with out problem; they also collect finance to build their military power in
Somalia. They were also easily communicated international terrorist groups from Yemen,
Saudi Arabia etc. Finally, after they had committed their terrorist act, they easily fled to
Somalia that is theoretically believed to have sovereignty. Additionally, the Somali region of
Ethiopia is a huge territory and safeguarding the peace and stability of this region is a very
expensive duty (Ploch, 2010:5).
Having repeated attacks by these groups, the Ethiopian government embarked on series of
offensives both in Ogaden and even crossing the Ethio-Somali border chasing AIAI,
destroying its camp inside Somalia. The counterattack waged by the Ethiopian government
was so destructive that AIAI never came to the border area; rather, it had formed an alliance
with other groups in Somalia and tried to survive by combining its forces around central
Somalia (Vermass, et al :2010). In spite of the fact that the Ethiopian government works hard
to protect terrorist acts, it has not yet achieved its goals. Rather, terrorism continued to be a
great danger for the peace and stability of Ethiopia. Leave alone the terrorist groups inside
Somalia; Ethiopia has not yet eliminated the ONLF in its own territory. So bombing,
fighting, attacks on hotels, and other tactics of terrorist groups undermined the internal
sovereignty of the Ethiopian state (Dagne, 2002).
It was after all these attacks, counter attacks and offensive that, the 9/11 accident was
happened. Hence, the USA president George W. Bush waged ‘War on terrorism’ and his ever
confusing words heard “you are either with us or with terrorist groups” and these words
responded by Iran “we are not neither with you nor with terrorist groups”. The Ethiopian
prime minister exploited the opportunity and he said “we were fighting terrorism alone, if
any one joins this endeavor we would like to say welcome”. Moreover, US diminished its
conditionality’s like, human right, democracy and so on. It simply pleased the one who was
joined the fight on terrorism as substantial criteria.
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