Born and raised in Ethiopia, Cadaawe has
been in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. He is a naturalized American citizen and a
respected community elder among his Gurre (Dir) clan in the U.S. A 5’8” man in his early 70s, he speaks softly
but authoritatively. Wearing a baseball cap, he sat with me in a café in a major
city on the West Coast while visiting his son and grandchildren. He is angry
and disappointed with Abdi M. Omar, “Abdi Iley,” the president of the Somali
region. In fact, Cadaawe has a painful story to tell.
Cadaawe and five of his colleagues from the
Gurre clan were arrested last year in Ethiopia. They were handcuffed, chained
like animals, and kept in detention for more than two weeks after they entered
Ethiopia through Kenya.
Cadaawe was the victim of political
circumstances that left him in bewilderment. He never expected he would be the
subject of an international incident for the U.S. State Department, the
Ethiopian federal government, and the regional administration of the Somali
region. In hindsight, Cadaawe would never have left America to visit his native
country had he known what awaited him. “Not at my age,” he said and chuckled,
“Are you serious?”
His travails started in the spring of
last year when some of the Gurre elders, intellectuals, women, and youth activists
met in Minneapolis to discuss what seemed to be a simple grievance on behalf of
their people in Ethiopia. They called out the “lack of progress” in the heavily
populated Gurre districts in Ethiopia such as Goro-Baqaqsa, Gurre Dhaamole, and,
to a lesser extent, Qarsa duula. “We are Ethiopians,” many of them emphasized,
and not opposed to the Ethiopian federal government or the administration of
the Somali region. The attendees lamented the lack of development in their region—no
roads, not enough schools and ambulances, and no palpable economic progress.
One elderly woman focused on what she
called “the allocated budget” for the Gurre districts, which is mismanaged and
unfairly distributed. Khalif Adaawe, one of the main speakers of the forum, and
other participants highlighted the disenfranchisement of the Gurre as a
community and their need for equal rights and free access to federal government
resources. “We do not want civil war,” one of the speakers declared, but “are
only interested in a peaceful way of addressing our legitimate grievances.”
Members of the Gurre community selected
Cadaawe to represent them and he traveled to Kenya first to mobilize the Gurre
community on his way to Ethiopia. In Nairobi, he met with members of the Gurre clan
and raised money for the Grand Renaissance Dam being built in Ethiopia. On
April 15, 2016, the community met with the Ethiopian Ambassador and other officials
from the Ethiopian federal government. Speeches were delivered in support of
the Ethiopian government, and the Gurre leaders requested that their demands for
better services in the Somali region and access to power be honored. Then, Cadaawe
presented a check in the sum of $20,000 from his community to the ambassador.
Cadaawe told the Ethiopian officials that a delegation consisting of six members,
including him, was planning to visit Ethiopia to meet with the Gurre. According
to Cadaawe, the ambassador wrote a glowing recommendation letter for them, addressed
to Ethiopia’s interior minister, urging the government to facilitate the needs
of the delegation.
Abdi Iley was not pleased with Cadaawe
and his friends met Embassy officials and complained about him. He considered
their meeting with the federal figures to be an affront to his
administration.
Cadaawe and his colleagues planned to
cross into Ethiopia through Kenya at the border town of Moyale. A rental bus
was waiting for them to take them to Addis Ababa and then to the Gurre
territory. However, something else—perhaps even tragedy—awaited them in Moyale.
Immediately after Cadaawe and his group
crossed into the Ethiopian side of Moyale, they were met by armed agents of the
Liyu police from the Somali region and arrested, handcuffed, and put in chains
from their waist to their legs.
Cadaawe and his friends were driven
through the vast territory of the Somali region unaware of the reason for their
detention. “I was blanketed by shock and horror,” he said. In his mind,
questions abounded: “What happened?” “What did he do?” “Was it a case of
mistaken identity?” “Was he betrayed by his own people?”
For 24 hours, the detainees and their
captors traveled on a long, treacherous, and unpaved road until they finally
reached Goday. They were taken out of the police vehicle and he discovered—to
his horror—that they were all in chains. “I was paralyzed with a gripping fear,”
he said, “I thought we will be shot.” Instead, the detainees were lined up for
the mass media to be shown and presented as terrorists and members of
Al-Shabaab.
As the rumor mill swirled about
Cadaawe’s detention among the Gurre, his family in the U.S. became concerned. News
about his incarceration finally reached the federal government in Addis Ababa
and frantic calls ensued asking Abdi Iley to release the delegation. At first, an
official of the Somali region denied the existence of such figures in their
custody. Then Cadaawe and his colleagues were secretly whisked away from Goday (and
the federal government’s reach) and transferred to a small village in a remote
area.
“For all practical purposes, we were
kidnapped and spent 17 grueling days in detention,” said Cadaawe. They were
given meager food and kept in chains. What bothered him the most was the lack
of formal charges being presented against the group and the absence of due
process. He said it was more like the law of the jungle.
Relatives of Cadaawe in the U.S. were
not to be cowed. They immediately contacted Congressman Keith Ellison of
Minnesota and sought his assistance. It was then that the American Embassy in
Addis Ababa intervened on behalf of Cadaawe. Two consular officers finally came
and visited him after he was transferred to Jigjiga. Additional pressure came
from the Ethiopian federal government for Abdi Iley demanding the release of
the Gurre delegation. However, Abdi Iley did not look like a leader perturbed
and he flew to Australia for an official visit.
Cadaawe has become a target of scorn for
some leaders of his clan who were allied with Abdi Iley. They see Cadaawe as a
trouble maker from America bent on embarrassing Abdi Iley’s administration. Ugaas
Mohamed Ugaas Guled, a Gurre chieftain, chastised Cadaawe in the harshest
terms: “He is an old man who represents no one but himself,” the chieftain
said. “In fact, Cadaawe is a propagandist and a product of fadhi-ku-dirir (political chatter) in the diaspora.”
In Australia, Abdi Iley finally caved in
and called for his subordinates in Jigjiga to release “only the American
citizen” among the detained group. American diplomats then collected Cadaawe,
who was taken to Addis Ababa. “I was in poor health,” he said, and he could not
afford either medical treatment or legal counsel. He later traveled to Nairobi
where he spent three months recuperating, resting, and ruminating on what had
happened to him in the Somali region. “I was bitter and felt utterly
humiliated,” he said.
At times, Cadaawe seemed to articulate the
story of his ordeal in a confident voice. Other times, he seemed fearful of the
long arm of Abdi Iley. He repeated that he was neither a politician nor someone
harboring political ambition. He made a distinction between his grievances of the
wrong that had been meted out against him by the Liyu police and his unbridled loyalty
to the Ethiopian government.
In a move to mollify the political
outcry that resulted from Cadaawe’s detention among the Gurre, Abdi Iley has
offered—through intermediaries—to meet with Cadaawe and other members of his
community in the diaspora. It is not clear if the supposed meeting will take
place anytime soon.
Cadaawe says he has no intention of
suing Abdi Iley or his administration. “I am an elderly man and I want to spend
the rest of my life in peace,” he said. “However, I would love to visit my relatives
one day in the Somali region.” He said
he is still afraid that his next visit to the region will have calamitous
consequences.
Cadaawe’s story is one of many untold
narratives being told about Abdi Iley’s administration, a regime that has been
accused of imposing a reign of terror in the Somali region. If the goal of
Cadaawe’s incarceration was to send a message to the Gurre community that no
dissension will be tolerated in that region, it was heard loud and clear.
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