Mahdi Ayuub: VETERAN OF THREE SUCCESSIVE ETHIOPIAN REGIMES

He joined Ethio/Ogaden politics about thirty years ago. He held different, highly sensitive roles within the Haile Selassie, Mengistu and the current regime. Mr. Ayuub has his admirers who call him the white horse for his purported, dogged defense of the interests of the people of Ogaden within the Ethiopian system.

He also has his detractors who perceived him during his heydays in the successive regimes as an enemy collaborator. His detractors hated his insistence that Ogaden Somalis should fight for their rights while maintaining an Ethiopian identity.

Mr. ayuub became a member of parliament for the first time in the early 1970s. From 1974 until 1977 he was mayor. Starting 1978 and up until the fall of the Derg regime he was a highly respected provincial governor according to sources interviewed by our reporters in Fiiq, Jig Jiga and Qabri dahar. He held gubernatorial positions within Ogaden and the Oromo regions during this time.

There are moments in Mr. Ayuub’s long history when Ethiopian military personnel stationed in Ogaden grossly transgressed against Ogaden civilians’ rights. In one such incident and in the long road between the cities of Wardheer and Dhagah Buur, the Ethiopian military waylaid a civilian truck transporting both goods and people and in cold blood killed about fourteen civilians.

An Ogaden businesswoman by the name Foos Abdi Haashi was part of the dead civilians extra judicially killed by the Ethiopian military. It is reported that Mr. Ayuub insisted and successfully convinced Mr. Mengistu that the only way to remedy the situation and appease Ogaden citizenry in the area was to kill by firing squad all those military personnel that were behind this heinous crime.

This was the first and only the last time that an Ogaden civilian witnessed the punishment of an Ethiopian soldier for crimes he/she committed against the local population. Many credit Mr. Ayuub for this carriage of justice in Ogaden.

Mr. Ayuub was arrested once while serving the Derg regime of Mengistu Haile Maryam. He was accused of having acted as surety for Suldaan Duulane Rafle, may Allah have mercy on him, while he, Mr. Ayub was a parliamentarian in the Haile Selassie regime. He, Mr. Ayuub, was released short time later by the Derg regime without charge.

As is common in Ogaden, anyone is arrested for no apparent reason or crime. The regime in Addis Ababa appears to have mastered the art of detaining Ogaden civilians and elders for no reason. Mr. Ayuub was arrested by the autocracy in Addis Ababa six months after it came to power. At the time, Mr. Ayuub held no position in the new regime of Mr. Meles Zenawi.

In 1996 Mr. Ayuub was asked to become the governor of the Nogob province, his home region. Less than a year later he became the vice president of the so-called Somali regional administration.

As is customary in the so-called ‘democratic’ elections that took place in 2000, Mr. Meles and his minions nominated Mr. Ayuub and others to stand for the elections. Mr. Ayuub won his seat and was a member of the so-called parliament until 2005. It is reported, although we were not able to corroborate this information, that in 2005, Mr. Ayuub did not plan on standing for re-election however he was forced, as is usual in Ogaden, to take part in the 2005 elections.

Soon after the elections, he was given the role of the head of the newly created office of security and justice co-ordination bureau. Sources who requested anonymity intimated to our reporters in Jig Jiga that Mr. Ayuub’s downfall and eventual arrest was necessitated by his insistence that excessive pressure applied to Ogaden civilians be reduced considerably.

His insistence that civilians not be pressured through the use of detention, torture and extra judicial killings was construed according to the same sources that are knowledgeable about the inner workings of the autocracy in Addis Ababa and its minions in Ogaden, as being sympathetic to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) cause.

The same sources claim that it is a travesty of justice that Mr. Mahdi Ayuub has been arrested when his insistency made practical sense as to not force the civilians to support or sympathize with ONLF due to the unbearable pressure advocated by a clique within the Tigrey militia and the so-called local administration.

The same sources add that Mr. Mahdi Ayuub’s arrest shows that the clique advocating for the redoubling of civilian arrests, torture, and extra judicial killings have won and convinced Mr. Meles Zenawi that Mr. Ayuub is an enemy of the state hence the arrest.

Political pundits believe that the arrest of Mr. Ayuub points to a regime that lost its direction in Ogaden. The pundits insist that if the regime can detain without charge a veteran of three successive regimes and one who was educated and worked all his life within the Ethiopian system, then what a chance does a new comer, possibly educated in Somalia, have of ever being accepted by the autocracy in Addis Ababa.

The pundits add that this arrest helps ONLF tremendously to silence its critics who advocate that working with the regime in Addis Ababa is the best way forward out of the current situation in Ogaden. ONLF is sure to use the arrest of Mr. Ayuub for its efforts to increase the schism that now exists between the autocracy in Addis Ababa and the civilians in Ogaden.

Ogaden Online Staff
staff@ogaden.com