In Ethiopia a separatist war is taking place far from media headlines around the world. The Ogaden conflict has claimed thousands of lives and is being called the next Darfur by some.
The Ogaden region of Ethiopia lies between Oromia to the west, the Republic of Djibouti to the north, Kenya to the south and the Somali Republic to the east. It is home to approximately five million people, who are for the most part ethnic Somali nomads.
Over the past two years, the conflict has escalated following the Ogaden National Liberation Front’s (ONLF) attack on a Chinese-run oil exploration field that resulted in the death of 74 Ethiopian guards and Chinese workers.
Since then, the area has been closed off by the Ethiopian army.
The armed ONLF resistance began in 1994 when they broached the idea of splitting from Ethiopia.
The central government then imprisoned Ogadeni leaders and has since labeled them as terrorists, linking them to al-Qaeda.
The Ogadeni allege assassinations, torture and rape at the hands of the Ethiopian solders.
Joining the programme to discuss the ongoing conflict will be Fowsia Abdulkadir, an independent researcher and human rights activist who testified before the US Congress on the situation in the Ogaden region, Gregory Stanton, the founder and president of Genocide Watch and the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Ethiopia and co-author of A Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia.
