A
losing bet in Ethiopia
By Mike Clough, The Los Angeles Times,
Michael Clough has worked on U.S. Africa policy for nearly three
decades. Most recently, he was the Africa advocacy director for
Human Rights Watch.
ETHIOPIA IS edging toward renewed conflict with Eritrea that could
result in tens of thousands of deaths and spark a civil war that
would claim many more lives. But the Bush administration, a strong
supporter of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, appears to
have neither the vision nor the will to avert catastrophe.
It
would not be the first time Africans died because U.S. policymakers
failed to recognize the dangers of backing a ruthless, doomed
regime.
In the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the U.S. supported former President Mobutu Sese Seko's tyrannical
rule almost to its bitter end — and more than 2 million
people died in the internal wars that followed. In Liberia, the
U.S. looked the other way as Samuel Doe, an illiterate thug without
popular support, brutalized his population and stole the 1985
election — and tens of thousands subsequently died. And
in Sudan, the U.S. continued to give economic and military aid
to then-President Gaafar Nimeiri as he fought a long civil war
in which more than 2 million eventually died.
In all these cases, U.S. policymakers, despite
clear evidence to the contrary, insisted that continued aid and
support — and quiet diplomacy — were the best ways
to reform a troubled client. Then, when that lie became untenable,
the U.S. walked away, leaving Africans to pay the consequences.
Ethiopia is not yet Zaire, Liberia or Sudan, but
the situation is dangerous because not only is unrest inside Ethiopia
growing, military tensions on Ethiopia's border with Eritrea are
increasing. The two countries fought a war in the late 1990s.
Meles has been a U.S. client since 1991, when
his rebel movement seized power. He is good at talking the language
of democracy and development — and even more adept at manipulating
Western fears of terrorism.
Parliamentary elections held in May were supposed
to cement Meles' claim to be a democratic reformer. Instead, they
revealed his lack of national support. According to official tabulations,
disputed by opposition parties, Meles' ruling party won a majority
of seats. But as Human Rights Watch reported on the eve of the
May elections, Meles squashed political dissent in Oromia, the
country's largest region, thus denying voters there a real choice
in the elections.
Most experts on Ethiopia believe that if the Oromo
Liberation Front, which was forced to leave the country in 1992,
had participated, it would have won a majority of votes in the
region. That would have left Meles and his party with only a minority
of parliamentary seats. Since the elections, there have been two
waves of protest in the Ethiopian capital. Both times government
forces shot scores of protesters and locked up opposition figures.
The government is now planning to put opposition
leaders who have refused to take their parliamentary seats on
trial for treason. It has also arrested many independent journalists.
There are also reports of growing restiveness in the countryside,
especially in Oromia.
Meles will be unable to maintain his monopoly
on political power. His base, the Tigrean ethnic community, makes
up less than 10% of the population. As the demand for democratization
grows, he will have to either share power or increase repression.
Given that most Ethiopian soldiers are drawn from disaffected
ethnic groups, Meles can't count on security forces to stifle
opposition.
Eritrea's intentions complicate the situation.
It may decide the moment is right to launch a war to take back
disputed territory it lost in the last war.
In the past, Meles has wagged the Eritrean dog
to rally Ethiopians behind him. But if war breaks out, his opponents
might move against him, perhaps causing the Ethiopian army to
disintegrate.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's unwillingness
to talk to the Ethiopian opposition and pressure Meles to permit
real democratization has undercut opposition moderates and greatly
increased the prospects of war. After the elections, the Oromo
Liberation Front abandoned its sporadic and ineffective struggle
against Meles and sought a peaceful accommodation. In October,
it asked Rice to support Norwegian efforts to get the negotiations
going. But the Bush administration rebuffed its entreaties and
instead dispatched a mid-level State Department official to persuade
Meles to avoid war with Eritrea and make some internal conciliatory
gestures.
Washington's refusal to deal with the Oromo Liberation
Front is bewildering. The party is one of the few in the Horn
of Africa to bridge the Christian-Muslim divide, and there is
a strong democratic tradition in Oromo civil society. It has never
adopted terrorism as a tactic.
If the Bush administration continues to bet on
Meles, it shouldn't forget that the lives of millions of Africans
were lost in the Congo, Liberia and Sudan because of similar misjudgments.
