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Feeding Hyenas And Seeking U.S. Troops

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By WADE STEPHENS Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 20, 2008

HARAR, ETHIOPIA - The rocks and bricks mixed irregularly among the mortar of the old walled city whose gates were locked at sunset until 300 years ago. But in late January, two Americans walked outside the walls after a day exploring the town's 400 alleyways.

The sky was turning to twilight above the red dirt road that led to the man who tossed raw meat to hyenas coming in from the trees and thick brush. The hyenas moved on their short haunches and longer front legs toward the man; they wanted the food but were cautious of him.

The man was from this ancient city of 90,000 in an ancient Christian nation surrounded by four Muslim countries, three of which were either at war with rebels, or another nation's troops. The town of Harar had been built with red volcanic ash and rock laden with iron oxide spewed from volcanoes of the Great Rift Valley. It is a dusty and direct 50 miles to the former Italian Somaliland, which Ethiopian troops had invaded in 2006 supported by U.S. troops inside Ethiopia and inside Somalia.

President Bush said the invasion was his newest front in the global war on terror.

The Arc Of The Raw Meat
"Do you think this walk is safe?" the daughter asked her father for the only the second time in 28 days. "I'm not sure," said the old man, pondering how quickly a sweet glass of whole milk can turn sour in a hot place.

"Whatever you think, I'm fine," the college student said to the old man, along to keep situations such as this one from turning unproductive. "There is a streetlight up there," he said to her.

"Yes," she said, "It looks like the tip of a matchstick."

The man ahead was using his tongue and cheeks to make a clicking sound to call in the hyenas from the jungle 10 feet away. He sat on the inner rock-and-dirt gutter of the road. The electric light from the distant pole was so weak that his cinnamon face showed no features.

"What is that flying through the air?" she said calmly, with a tone. The father thought: I have brought my daughter to the edge of the Somalia border, to this land of hush-hush training camps where United States military advisers dressed in their pixilated camouflaged utilities had trained Ethiopian soldiers to invade Somalia to topple the Union of Islamic Courts government in that country of clans notable for their chewing of the stimulant khat, their fighting tenacity and brutal bloodletting, as shown in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

One hyena ate the meat tossed in an arc to land across the road at the edge of the jungle. The boldest hyena snapped some meat from the hand of the sitting man. A local tradition, the trekkers were told later.

The Tomahawks Came in from the Sea

DHUUSA MARREEB, SOMALIA - Early on the morning of May 1, 360 miles from Harar, Ethiopia, four Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from a U.S. Navy ship steaming near the equator off the Somalia coast. They hit, exploded bam-bam-bam-bam and destroyed a compound of single-story buildings in the middle of the croplands of Galguduud Providence. The missiles blew into little Islamic pieces al-Qaida agent Aden Hashi Ayro, a confessed murderer of a British reporter and planner of Somali suicide bombings. The Bush White House recently had classified the group Ayro commanded as Islamic terrorists. Maj. Sherri Reed of Tampa's U.S. Central Command confirmed the missile attack.

The attack seemed similar to the missile attacks President Clinton ordered in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. But there is a difference here. However off-base President Clinton was in his intelligence, there had been two direct attacks against two U.S. African embassies in 1998. When the four Tomahawks crossed the Somalia border last month, they were aimed against a man who was fighting Ethiopian troops who had invaded his country supported by U.S. troops training the Ethiopians and flying air strikes from Ethiopia and Djibouti. The mud huts of Ayro's compound were the same distance from Harar as Jacksonville is from Miami. Tomahawks are swift and sure, even in undeclared and not-well-known invasions.

The Somalis Know a Stupid White Man

ADDIS ABABA - At Bole International Airport, the father and daughter knew they had neither seen sights nor heard sounds nor smelled scents as those that engulfed them as they walked through the automatic glass doors at 3 a.m. The airport sits on a broad hillock overlooking a city of 3 million. Small fires sparkled. A hum superseded. Rust, smoke, animals, food and antiquity surrounded. A lighted white Christian cross blinked in the distance. The old man and student were there to absorb a culture, to try to locate the United States troopers training Ethiopian invaders, and to inquire about President Bush's plan to build new military bases across the top of Africa.

Soon, the American trekkers found a woman who knew exactly what was up in Africa. She worked for the U.S. government helping refugees from the Chad and Sudan war. She was quiet and polite, her young face with the fine lines of age, hair clean but matted, clothes fresh but wrinkled. The woman screwed up a smile and squeaked words that came out like fire ants to a bare foot. "I'm from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum and I have to go someplace quiet because all the wasted millions of money going into Darfur!" she said, referring to the ethnic catastrophe that was killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions.

She went to Harar. The student and old man went to interview Somali refugees who lived in a farflung collection of tin shacks on the edge of Addis Ababa. One million refugees had spread across Kenya and Ethiopia from a nation of 9 million since the 2006 invasion to oust the Somali Islamic government. The old man was out of the rented car too quickly, camera and pad in hand, when the Ethiopian driver yelled, "Back here! Back here! Back here!" The Somalis knew a stupid white American when they saw one; the American knew that when he saw the brown sticks with chewed ends and its green juice running down snarling lips. These Somalis wanted blood. Ethiopians were using tanks, artillery and airplanes. Goodbye, interviews.

Bases Are Commanded from MacDill

DIRE DAWA, ETHIOPIA - The geopolitical competition of the 1800s and 1900s remains in Africa. The imperial countries of Europe have been replaced by India, China and the United States. The motives are the same intense craving by great powers for Africa's tapped and unknown resources. That would be oil, natural gas and a basketful of essential minerals. China has been vigorous in pursuit of energy supplies, especially if it can secure a long-term deal with an African potentate that will nudge America out of the picture.

And America knows that Nigeria, Angola and Algeria are the fifth, sixth and seventh countries, respectively, that send the most crude oil to the United States. That means that nearly 25 percent of the countries from which the United States imports crude oil are in Africa. Nigeria, for example, sends 1.021 million barrels of oil to the U.S. each day, right behind Venezuela and close to Saudi Arabia. (A guerrilla attack on an offshore facility in Nigeria this week caused Royal Dutch Shell to shut down production at the installation, which is likely to affect oil prices in coming weeks.)

The Pentagon supplies military aid and technology, leases bases and makes arms transfers to many African nations. In two years, additional U.S. Navy vessels have been deployed to African waters, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea off the shores of Nigeria and Gabon, and the terminus of the Cameroon pipeline from Chad. It is no accident that there is a struggle between China and the United States to win the loyalty of major energy producers.

Throwing the China

President Bush announced in February 2007 the formation of the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM). That was three months after a major China-African summit in Beijing. It would be solely dedicated to the African continent. The former "bare bones" facilities of airstrips, communication stations, training sites and support facilities spread across Africa would be formalized. These outposts were to be enhanced and commanded by a centralized oversight that Bush created as AFRICOM to be run from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base.

Again, he used the rubric of the global war on terror. African states' ability to fight external strife and suppress internal rebellion was the key to stability of energy supply free from terrorism. But the Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Department of Defense official said "... a key mission for U.S. forces in Africa would be to ensure that Nigeria's oil fields are secure. ..." That's because Nigeria soon will supply 25 percent of all U.S. oil imports.

China has decided to elevate its geopolitical calculation as its dependence on African oil and minerals has grown. China knows it does not have enough military power in Africa, yet also knows that it is seen by Africans as a nation formerly exploited by Western powers, too.

AFRICOM's real mission is to shove chopsticks into the spokes of the Chinese drive to energy control and friendship with African potentates and their armies.

Words of Hope, Despair on the Wind

HARAR - It was dark on the road beside the walled city where the father and daughter walked. The moon was full enough to cast shadows and produce a slight glow above the roadside jungle. Every now and again tall, slender women dressed in white and orange or yellow robes, often carrying bundles on their heads, would approach from the opposite direction, turn off the red road, knock on an ancient dark wood door and disappear into the rock wall. Bit-by-bit a faint rumble indicated a place of jumbled commerce lurking ahead.

"I think we are heading toward the main Harar gate where we were this morning," the old man said. "That would be a good thing," said the student.

Then a breeze brought on by a drop in nighttime temperature carried the sound of footsteps from behind shuffling through dirt, and muted conversation. Two male teenagers were walking on the edge of the road as it cut through the scrub forest where the occasional movement of hyenas rustled the brush. The couples walked at a pace that kept a steady distance. What now, thought the old man. His daughter was in a country where political prisoners are charged with treason, a BBC reporter is in jail and a road taken in wrong direction turns up a military roadblock.

The teenagers picked up their pace. As they just passed the Americans and moved slightly ahead one shouted, "Ethiopia is freedom." Now, what does that mean, thought the father? Soon, at the jumbled intersection at Harar's turreted main gate the old man and student climbed into an "Indian taxi," which is nothing more than a tricycle with a top, handlebars and a putt-putt motor mixing it up with cars, donkey carts, trucks, horses, men carrying sacks of coffee beans, saffron-robed walking women, boys rolling tires, humans pulling worn rubber-tire carts filled with toilets, mini-buses, many goats, children chasing tourists for birr and mini-buses, all with an assertiveness dangerously demanding traffic equality. When asked about "freedom," the driver said, "That means they wanted you to know there is safety in Ethiopia."

The breeze of the cool air of the black night carried the calm reassurance from teenagers that things were safe. But the wind also carried the adult dictum that power and profit come from hot red blood and deep black despair when orders come down from the masters of war.

Wade Stephens is a former newspaperman and currently a Tampa mediator. Annie Stephens is a junior at Centre College, where she majors in Spanish and International Studies.

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