Ethiopia’s
Zenawi exploits the “War on Terror”
By Yohannes
Woldemariam, Sudan Tribune
Nov 25, 2005
— An ongoing hazard of the "War on Terror" has been
that tyrants like Zenawi would exploit the threat of terror to win
support from the Bush administration and Tony Blair’s Britain.
The Bush administration is trying to buy stability at the expense
of liberty in the Horn of Africa and neither of these goals is attainable
without liberty. Zenawi has been warmly courted by the United States
since the Clinton era and continues to be pampered by the George
W Bush administration which has anointed him as an ally on the open
ended “War on Terror” in the Horn of Africa. He is propped
up by the U.S. and the international financial institutions. From
the U.S. alone, he receives $800 million a year and $500 million
worth of food assistance. Ethiopia is set to have its debt cancelled
that will forgive $18.3bn owed to the International Monetary Fund,
the World Bank and others. Despite his massacre of students and
workers demanding democratic rule, Meles continues to enjoy western
support simply because he has had the wit to call himself an ally
on the “War on Terror.” As long as you are on the right
side of the "War on Terror," it is a safe time to be a
dictator and tyrant.
Meles Zenawi
is a complete thug. His jails are filled with thousands and possibly
tens of thousands of political prisoners. In a vain attempt to silence
the opposition, at least eighty people were killed in protests during
June and November. Special Security forces known as the Agaazi (trusted
forces from his tribe) have arrested thousands of opposition members.
There were massacres including of the Anuaks in Gambella. The Human
Rights Watch dubbed the Anuak massacre as "a crime against
humanity." Increasingly, the Meles regime is becoming one of
the nastiest in the world. Currently, Dictator Zenawi is preparing
to put “treason” show trials of opposition leaders whose
only crime is winning the elections. Meles has now graduated into
a deadly python dressed in human flesh. The tactical use of constitutional
amendments to deprive the elected representatives any power in parliament
and an increasing willingness to use military force in a broad range
of "security matters" suggest that the direction of Meles
is fast approaching the dictatorship of the man he helped to overthrow,
the butcher Mengistu Halemariam.
To polish the
dent in his image resulting from the ongoing violence against the
opposition and to secure the flow of aid money, Meles has hired
another Public Relations firm in Washington. The Indian Ocean Newsletter
reported that: “the government of Addis Ababa has taken on
the services of a public relations company in Washington. The firm
McGuire Woods Consulting registered on 15 September with the American
authorities as accredited lobbyist for the Ethiopian government
on all issues concerning this government’s relations and its
public communication in Washington. Its task will be essentially
to promote relations between Ethiopia and the United States at a
time when the repression of the Ethiopian opposition is starting
to arouse negative reactions in many quarters including among members
of the American Congress. McGuire Woods Consulting is run by Frank
B. Atkinson and L. F. Payne Jr. Last year, the Ethiopian government
used another lobby firm, Hunton & Williams LLP (ION 1104). This
firm had already been Ethiopia’s legal advisor in the past
in the international arbitration process in its conflict with Eritrea.”
The fraudulent
results of the May elections forced the elected members of the opposition
to refuse to take their seats in protest. After the results, the
European Union and the U.S. Embassy remained relatively mum. This
is so despite the fact that the Euro-MP Ana Gomes who led the European
mission to observe the Ethiopian elections in May urged her fellow
Euro-MPs: “asking them to condemn the Ethiopian government’s
repression of the opposition.” Ana Gomes wrote that “the
EU observation mission had concluded that the Ethiopian election
had not taken place in keeping with "international standards
for genuine democratic elections". She lamented that the EU
had come to a "business as usual" attitude with Meles
Zenawi. Adding insult to injury, Germany’s President, Horst
Koehler welcomed Meles to a conference in Bonn while his Agaazi
troops were committing atrocities in Ethiopia during early November.
The Teflon
Meles Zenawi is being imitated by the Ugandan leader Museveni, another
donor darling, who has taken a lesson from the apathy and double
standard of the West. Like Meles’s government, the regime
of Uganda, is becoming increasingly repressive. ‘Political
analyst Andrew Mwenda says that [Museveni] had taken note of the
muted foreign response to recent unrest in Ethiopia and Tanzania,
and had decided the current mood among donors about African electoral
turmoil was conveniently indulgent. But even if he draws criticism,
he won’t care, Mwenda said. ‘If it is a choice between
staying in power and losing a little bit of international standing
by cracking down on the opposition, the choice is very easy.’
Museveni followed Meles’s example and arrested a top opposition
leader, Kizza Besigye, just days after his return from exile and
charged him with “treason.” These dictators have realized
that President Bush’s treatment of despots the world over
is applied selectively, and that they are safe from any consequences
for their autocratic rule. Meles has so far paid little price for
his actions. In the short term, more repression may be an effective
way for these dictators to quell opposition. But over time it could
make matters worse. The deeper cause of discontent is political
fossilization: dictators like Meles are rarely willing to give up
power.
Is Meles a
worthy ally against extremism in the Horn? Roughly 800 U.S. troops
are stationed in Djibouti and working closely with troops from the
Ethiopian government. U.S. Special Forces have provided training
to the Ethiopian military. US troops have trained with Ethiopian
troops that patrol the border with Somalia. This is supposedly collaboration
against “terrorists” in Somalia. The irony is that by
doing so, the U.S. may create the very thing it fears: Islamic terrorism
in Somalia and the Horn. Islamism has never really been strong in
the Horn. Yet Meles’s meddling in Somalia could give the Islamists
their real opening in the region. Meles’s contention that
he is besieged by Muslim extremists may eventually prove self-fulfilling.
Meles’s
Ethiopia is far from being an anchor for the Horn of Africa; it’s
more like a prison of nations, which without the life support system
of foreign aid is in danger of imploding. The Bush and Blair affection
for dictators like Meles who promote “America’s short-term
political interests” is dangerous and sends the wrong message
to those who struggle for democracy and human rights around the
world. In fact, this strategy will make the world substantially
less free than it was before he took office. It encourages dictators
like Meles to represent themselves as deserving of U.S. support
on the grounds that the alternative would be worse. If not me, the
dictators say, the Islamists would take over. Ready U.S. acceptance
of such arguments gives dictators every reason to ensure that their
regime is always threatened by phantom Islamist violence. The need
for allies on the War on Terror has pushed the U.S. toward unsavory
“friends” like Meles.
The regime
continues to round up opponents, and is refusing to take responsibility
for the shooting of unarmed protesters. Another devastating war
with Eritrea could soon be on the horizons, if Meles perceives that
he can no longer contain the growing domestic opposition to his
rule. Zenawi is now attempting to divert attention from domestic
protests and his decline in the power base of his ruling party by
threatening to restart the war with Eritrea.
The Eritrean
and the Ethiopian people are now convinced that the purported support
for democracy and human rights by Bush and Blair is far from being
a principled stand. It is easily sacrificed on the altar of ill
informed and narrow security interests. It doesn’t seem that
the George W Bush administration has learned the fundamental lesson
of the 9-11 tragedy. The real lesson from the attacks of September
11 2001 is where repression and despair rule, extremism and violence
breed. Rationalization of the partnership with Meles Zenawi that
is justified by the adoption of a view of the war on terrorism that
conflates Meles’s domestic opponents with terrorists will
have a ripple effect. The United States makes little distinction
between real terrorists and Muslim groups like in the Ogaden or
Oromia which simply oppose the regime. By such a flawed policy,
the U.S. is leaving resort to Islamism and Warlordism as the only
alternatives to the hated Meles regime.
