Ethiopia’s Dirty War
Newsweek - January 23, 2008
It was early one morning in July when 400 Ethiopian soldiers came to Ridwan Hassan Zahid's village of Qorile, 120 miles southeast of this dusty market town. The small settlement of ethnic Somalis in eastern Ethiopia was suspected of supporting separatist rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), and the government troops were out to exact revenge. They took Zahid, another woman, and eight men to the nearby village of Babase, where, she says, the soldiers chased away residents and burned the village to the ground. "I became like plastic," she says. "I couldn't feel a thing."
On the third day after her capture, the soldiers divided the prisoners into groups. As the other captives looked on, soldiers hung one man from one of the parched region's few trees; another was taken out of sight. Soon it was Zahid's turn. A small group of soldiers dug a hole in the sandy ground. They forced her into it and pinned her down by pressing the barrel of an AK-47 to her throat. As she tried to choke out the words to a final Muslim prayer, she heard two other captives screaming for mercy nearby as a noose was slipped over her head. Two soldiers jerked up on the rope, lifting her out of the hole by her neck, and she lost consciousness ...