She moved to Belgium as a political refugee along with her younger sister, Almensh Belete, who is also a runner. It was in Belgium that she began competing: she ran at the 2007 Memorial van Damme in Brussels and was the 2009 winner of the Eurocross competition. She chose to transfer allegiance to Bahrain in early 2009 and her first outing for her newly adopted country was at the Asian Cross Country Championships, where she took the silver medal behind fellow convert Maryam Yusuf Jamal. She ran at the 2009 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in March and finished in 28th place. She also qualified for the 1500 metres at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics and reached the semi-finals of the event. At the end of the year she set indoor bests at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games, taking fourth place in the 800 metres and taking the runner-up spot in the 1500 metres behind Liu Qing.