ONLF; Enemy in Our Midst.

Recently, I wrote a short, but meaningful opinion piece on various Somali web pages, titled: Recent Massacres Committed by ONLF. Few days following the postage of the mentioned article, I received considerable amount of responses regarding my writing. To be honest, most of them were negative, while many of them were supportive and encouraging. Some e-mails were filled with hate and ignorance, others were simply misguided while many others got exactly that kind of message I aimed to convey to my fellow peace loving and inhabitants of the Somali Region.

In this piece, I would like to share with you what I learned since I wrote my earlier article. One of the e-mails I received states: “While ONLF is not innocent when it comes to harming or even killing the civilians, it is not appropriate to condemn them publicly”. These are his/her exact words (most of them were hiding their identities therefore, it’s impossible to know one’s gender). The individual whose email I referred to represents a large section of the society who chose to sit back and look away while these terrorists are committing atrocities against our people. The term ‘don’t say, don’t ask’ doesn’t apply in this case. Innocent lives are being taken by ONLF. If one is able to segregate right from wrong, there shouldn’t be difficult to come to a healthy conclusion. There is a verse in the Koran which clearly rejects the killings of innocent people under any circumstance.

I also received another alias email from one of the funding machines of ONLF. That individual didn’t shy away from praising his beloved monsters. He went even further by writing the following: ‘ONLF is fighting for the rights of my people and any one who stands the way will be killed. I help ONLF financially and will continue to do so no matter what’.
First of all, I am not sure to whom he is referring “my people” as he didn’t elaborate further in his email. This gentleman seems to have confused between protecting people and killing them. ONLF kills indiscriminately. If one justifies killing of innocent people, one goes against every thing our beloved religion stands for. Fighting against uniformed personnel is one thing, slaughtering of civilians is another.

The last Email I would like to share with you is one sent by a man by the name Haji who contradicted my claim that ONLF killed civilians in the region. Whether or not such individual was searching the truth about ONLF or was just ignoring the facts that are out there, I would like to present to you the following links which victims of ONLF are telling their horrific experience during the terrorist group’s raid not long ago. These victims are the lucky ones. Some of their loved ones were not as lucky, they were murdered by ONLF monsters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTl5SJ_9aO0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwoZT3CUaeU&feature=related

In conclusion, just in the last 11 months, the civilians killed by ONLF terrorist group have surpassed 70. The manner of which these innocent people were massacred is unbearable. The victims include; pregnant women, sick children and older men as well. We must not turn our back on deceased and those in danger of being killed. Instead we ought to take a stand against ONLF and not turn our head away from those killed in Gole, Lahelow, Shilabo, Dhobawayn, Jijiga and in other areas of the region. Let’s come out and strongly condemn ONLF actions with one voice.

Abdirahman I. Takhal
atakhal@aol.com