Tigabu Molla Meresa† Mollameressa2005@yahoo.com
Economic analyses of growth have bewared that sustainable economic growth has been incumbent upon the level of technological development; which has also been the source of divergence in economic strengths and growth rates between countries across the world. The technological breakthrough that steered Industrial Revolution and its lasting effect on the global economy is one such triumphs of technology. For it is the main source of productivity increase, a failure to maintain a continuous technological progress would precipitate long-run growth to grind to a halt. So how to drive and sustain technological progress has been the nub of questions around economic growth. The steering wheel of this engine of growth is primarily Research and development (R&D) effort. Yet R&D is a risky activity, involving not only how much to invest but also how to invest. The amount of resources it requires and the uncertainty of its pay-offs makes it a risky strategy. Firms and other agents like governments that have, whatever happens, continually committed unflagging endeavor to R&D have been marks of economic success. In other words, risk-taking behavior has been the thrust of...More story
Uganda bombings bring Africa together. Except Eritrea.
By Max Delany, Correspondent
Kampala, Uganda
Shortly after marking two weeks since suspected twin suicide bombings killed 76 people watching the World Cup Final in Uganda's capital of Kampala, leaders from across the continent pledged to tackle the terrorist threat from Somalia at an African Union summit in the city. Skip to next paragraph After years of wrangling, underfunding, and broken promises, leaders agreed that the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia – AMISOM – would finally be boosted to its intended full strength of 8,000 soldiers and said that further pledges of soldiers from Guinea and Djibouti could see the mandated level rise still higher. But while presidents from Senegal to South Africa condemned the Kampala attacks as unjustifiable and called for more robust action against the Al Qaeda-linked Somali Islamist group Al Shabab, which claimed to be behind the bombings, one country had other ideas. IN PICTURES: Somali pirates Sometimes called Africa’s North Korea, Eritrea has hermetically sealed itself off from the outside world. Late last year, the Ohio-sized nation on the Red Sea was sanctioned by the UN for supporting Islamist insurgents in nearby Somalia. At the Kampala summit, an unusually high-ranking delegation from Eritrea – including the foreign minister and a key presidential adviser – opposed calls for more troops and a tougher mandate, reportedly asking why, if Afghanistan’s leaders can talk to the Taliban, Somalia’s leaders could not talk to Al Shabab. Does Eritrea have links to Al Shabab? In the aftermath of the Uganda bombings, US Congressman Edward Royce (R) of California wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calling for the designation of Eritrea as a state sponsor of terrorism given what he called its “well documented” support for Al Shabab. But Eritrean officials have repeatedly denied the accusations in the past and consistently argued that opposition to more AU peacekeepers in the country is based on the belief that further foreign interference is not the way to solve the Somali crisis...
Kampala, Uganda
Shortly after marking two weeks since suspected twin suicide bombings killed 76 people watching the World Cup Final in Uganda's capital of Kampala, leaders from across the continent pledged to tackle the terrorist threat from Somalia at an African Union summit in the city. Skip to next paragraph After years of wrangling, underfunding, and broken promises, leaders agreed that the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia – AMISOM – would finally be boosted to its intended full strength of 8,000 soldiers and said that further pledges of soldiers from Guinea and Djibouti could see the mandated level rise still higher. But while presidents from Senegal to South Africa condemned the Kampala attacks as unjustifiable and called for more robust action against the Al Qaeda-linked Somali Islamist group Al Shabab, which claimed to be behind the bombings, one country had other ideas. IN PICTURES: Somali pirates Sometimes called Africa’s North Korea, Eritrea has hermetically sealed itself off from the outside world. Late last year, the Ohio-sized nation on the Red Sea was sanctioned by the UN for supporting Islamist insurgents in nearby Somalia. At the Kampala summit, an unusually high-ranking delegation from Eritrea – including the foreign minister and a key presidential adviser – opposed calls for more troops and a tougher mandate, reportedly asking why, if Afghanistan’s leaders can talk to the Taliban, Somalia’s leaders could not talk to Al Shabab. Does Eritrea have links to Al Shabab? In the aftermath of the Uganda bombings, US Congressman Edward Royce (R) of California wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calling for the designation of Eritrea as a state sponsor of terrorism given what he called its “well documented” support for Al Shabab. But Eritrean officials have repeatedly denied the accusations in the past and consistently argued that opposition to more AU peacekeepers in the country is based on the belief that further foreign interference is not the way to solve the Somali crisis...
AFP: Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US
AFP: Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US
Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Suicide bombings this month in Kampala by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab militants served as a "wake-up call" about the wider terrorism threat in the region, a US official said Tuesday.
"If the Shebab can strike Kampala, it's also a threat to all of Somalia's regional neighbors, from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, all the way down to Tanzania," said Johnnie Carson, US assistant secretary of state for Africa.
The Shebab, an Islamist extremist group that controls most of central and western Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attacks in Uganda's capital on July 11 that killed 76 people gathered to watch the World Cup final.
Carson described the attacks as "a wake-up call," and said that regional states "now recognize that the threat emanating from Somalia is not only about refugees and illegal arms, but also one about terrorism."
An African Union peacekeeping force, made up of 6,000 Burundian and Ugandan soldiers, has been fighting the Shebab and other insurgent groups street to street in Mogadishu since May 2009....
Kampala blasts thrust Somalia top of AU summit agenda
By Barry Malone
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda had been ready to host the African Union summit for months before three bombs sent ball-bearings flying through two bars in its capital, killing 73 people watching the World Cup final.
Now, less than two weeks later, more than 30 African heads of state will gather for their bi-annual meeting and some will sleep just minutes from where Somalia's al Shabaab rebels launched their first attacks on foreign soil.
The festering Somali conflict has featured on African Union summit agendas for years, but analysts say the difference this time is that the assembled leaders feel pressure to act -- now the violence has exploded beyond Somalia's borders.
"It's all Somalia," a senior AU diplomat told Reuters. "Uganda has been attacked, Burundi is threatened, Ethiopia is threatened, the whole region is threatened. And the world's eyes are on Somalia now."
Somalia's near powerless Western-backed government is hemmed into a few streets of its capital Mogadishu by al Shabaab and another Islamist militia. The insurgent groups control much of southern and central Somalia, bordering Kenya and Ethiopia.
The Somali government's reliance on 6,300 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi to survive was the reason Kampala was targeted by suspected suicide bombers.
East African regional bloc IGAD last month pledged to send another 2,000 troops "immediately" to bolster the AU mission. It is unclear which country will contribute the soldiers.
There have also been calls in the region for the force mandate to be widened so they can go on the offensive against the insurgents, rather than just responding when attacked...Full story
Ethiopia’s election: all losers
Open Democracy, UK
René Lefort
René Lefort has covered sub-saharan Africa since the 1970s.
The crushing electoral defeat of the Ethiopian opposition does not actually help the ruling party and encourages its slide into authoritarianism
‘I really feel totally betrayed by the system,’ confessed Beyene Petros, one of the most respected leaders of the Ethiopian opposition, a few days after its crushing defeat in the general elections on 23 May 2010. ‘I thought that, if we competed in the elections, there would be a door ajar that could be made use of by competing parties. This assumption of mine was totally misplaced.’
But how could he have been so mistaken? Like most of the opposition, how could he have expected that the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ruling party since 1991, would faithfully play the electoral game and run the risk of repeating the surprise scenario of the 2005 elections, where the opposition made such spectacular progress? How could he even imply, a few days later, that the voters voted for the opposition in the election and that cheating only defeated it? And what a defeat! 99.6% of the vote, just one opposition representative out of 547 elected members of the federal Parliament and just one out of the 1900 regional assembly representatives. In a nutshell: how and why did the Ethiopian opposition make such a mistake about its electoral chances, as if it had not fully realized that the EPRDF had systematically and implacably started immediately after its 2005 electoral blow to make sure it would win in 2010, at any price?
‘Whatever policy differences there might be among the opposition, I think we agree on the minimum issues of democracy and rule of law.’ This appeal from opposition leader, Seye Abraha, calls on the opposition to unite in order to recover from its defeat. Most commentators credit it with its disarray, which they see as aggravated by internal conflict and the lack of coherence in its policies but these explanations do not stand up to scrutiny.
In 2005, apart from its common hostility to those in power since 1991 and a shared desire for democratic change, the opposition was divided into two main camps: the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces. They also differed on some essential points, left-overs of a persistent divide, inherited from the conquests of the Abyssinian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Schematically, the electoral base of the Coalition was urban, led by Addis-Ababa, and northern, with the Amhara (26% of the population), the epicentre of the old imperial power. The UEDF found its support in the former conquered territories, among the Oromos (37% of the population) and the peoples of the South. The CUD and the UEDF both criticised the EPRDF’s policies on the two main problems confronting Ethiopia for decades – the ‘national question’ or how the 80 ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ of Ethiopia could agree on a modus vivendi and poverty issues – but they disagreed on the solutions. The ruling Party has set up a federal system, with equal rights for all ‘ethnic groups’ as the basis for the “revolutionary democracy” it advocates, with individual rights taking a back seat. But this federalism is a smokescreen behind which Tigreans (6% of the population) held the reins of power, even in all the ‘non traditional’ sectors of the economy. The Coalition advocated a form of recentralisation borne by an ‘Ethiopianism’ that was supposed transcend ethnic differences while the UEDF advocated a genuine ethnic federalism to be implemented. The economic strategy of the EPRDF focused on the land which is the economic base of Ethiopia and public property, in which peasants – 83% of the population – have only temporary usage rights and more precisely, on the masses of subsistence farmers. The CUD quite simply wanted to privatise the land, to ‘liberate’ the peasantry from Party-State’s grip; the UEDF, however, was radically opposed, fearing that it would open the door to northern investors to corner the market of southern land once again.
In 2010, the main opposition force, the Medrek (Forum), had a support base extending over almost all the country, with the notable exception of the Amhara region. On paper at least, its eight components had reached a common position on the ‘national question’ and on the issue of land. Thus, the gulf that separated 2005 when the opposition had drawn with the governing party in the elections with the extent that the governing party was forced to cheat to ensure a comfortable official victory, the 2010 defeat cannot be explained by an intrinsic weakening of the opposition.
The second reason most often put forward to explain the ‘landslide victory’ of the EPRDF is the undeniable intensification of its authoritarianism. This led to ‘the lack of a level playing field for all contesting parties,’ according to the European Union Observation Mission. But several opposition leaders and commentators have only taken this into account within certain limits, i.e. when and where they themselves or their own milieu were directly affected by it. In social terms this means urban dwellers and more precisely the thin slice of them that makes up ‘civil society’. In temporal terms, it means during the two years in the run-up to the elections and during the electoral campaign, when the government stepped up its control even further. Once again, the opposition succumbed to that almost systematic tropism of the Ethiopian elite – navel-gazing, which led it to distance itself from the ‘real country,’ for which it has a kind of ‘blind spot’, starting with the rural areas, where 83% of the population and therefore 83% of voters live.
So, it was on the three recent ‘villainous’ laws on information, NGOs and the fight against terrorism that they concentrated their denunciation of the regime’s shift towards increased authoritarianism. The media have almost no direct influence in the rural areas as there are no circulating newspapers. Very few people have a radio that works and those who do shamelessly confess that ‘political debates are not for us, we don’t understand what they are talking about.’ The only local NGOs are traditional community organisations run on age-old lines. So the anti-terrorist law has no effect here. Since time immemorial an official can punish any of those under his authority, even throwing him in jail, unless he has some form of special protection.
Similarly, while opposition campaigners were undeniably harassed during the elections, this had little real effect in rural areas, for the simple reason that, even if they had tried to campaign there, no-one would have listened to them, to the point of trying to avoid them altogether.
For at least two thirds of the peasant population, an election simply has no meaning. They have a vision of the world where absolutely everything is determined by divine will, including who is in power. They feel they have no right to choose. As they often say: ‘God only decides who rules,’ so an election is futile. Above all, it presents one major danger: voting for the loser. The winner will find out even though the ballot is secret, the election winner has mysterious ways of knowing how each person voted. It could then take revenge on the ‘culprits’ which means putting no less than their survival at risk. This is because all public services, from education to fertiliser, from health care to loans, depend on the good will of local officials of the Party-State, up to and including access to the peasant farmer’s only means of production – land. The only electoral challenge, then, is to try to figure out who is going to win and to slide the ‘right’ ballot into the box. To find this out, one can only turn to the ‘opinion leaders’ of the peasant community, in other words, its elite and then all vote the same way. That way, even if they get it wrong, there is safety in numbers – ‘it’s easier to punish one individual than a whole community.’
The elite have generally developed a more secular vision and therefore have started to claim for citizen’s rights. Thus it feels entitled in choosing the country’s leaders. In 2005, where these elite’s members opposed the ruling regime for many and several reasons – in most rural areas at least – they were easily able to persuade people to vote against it, especially given that they could put forward tangible arguments for forecasting its defeat.
But just a few months after the elections, they were already disenchanted. The most visible opposition members were arrested while other opposition representatives were either totally powerless or even simply physically absent. ‘We voted for the opposition in 2005 and we got nothing from it,’ said these opinion leaders. ‘On the contrary, we suffered the wrath of the authorities.’ For them, ‘the 2005 elections taught us, above all, that however we vote, in the end the ruling power always wins.’ On the evidence that they had nothing to gain from joining the opposition except from being targets of harassment, these elite confided that ‘we remain strong opponents, but only in the remotest corner of our backyard.’ And the measures that the ruling party were to take in the following years, particularly 2006 to 2008, such as forced enrolment of this elite into the Party (see below), would only confirm this position. They repeatedly said it years before the electoral campaigns started – ‘we will not be campaigning for the opposition and will not even vote for them.’ Even supposing that the opposition had more ways and the elbow room to make itself heard, the ‘lesson’ of the 2005 elections as well as an omnipresent fear, would, in any event, have deprived it of the rural activists it needed to capture a decent share of the vote in the countryside.
Given the weight of the peasant vote, defeat was inevitable from as early as Autumn 2005. But the debacle only started to emerge in the last two years before the elections especially during the electoral campaign, when the urban voters, traditionally the bastion of the opposition, progressively adopted the same reasoning as those living in the countryside – that is, that they would have nothing to gain by voting for the opposition but a great deal to lose. The repression of criticism, muffling of civil society and finally, the incredible pressure that the EPRDF put on voters, all had an effect. But the opposition seems also to have underestimated a decisive factor that led to the loss of its urban support: the political shift in the ruling Party, intensified after 2005 and the concomitant multiplication by seven in its membership (from 700,000 in 2005 to 5 million today or around one in seven of the adult population).
Very schematically and in line with its original Marxist-Leninist leanings, it saw itself as the small elite – the self-proclaimed avant-garde – with the right and duty to direct the ‘development’ of the ‘broad masses’, which meant the mass of peasant farmers to lead them out of their incredible misery. In the same ‘socialist’ vein, it reined in private businesses. But some years ago, this ‘pro-poor policy’ gradually disappeared in the face of a form of development where the ‘developmentalist state’ continues to play a central role but essentially to benefit the ‘constructive investors’ to order to promote their entry into a ‘market economy’. It is these people that the Party has enrolled en masse, be it urban small entrepreneurs, intellectuals or especially, those very same, more dynamic farmers, all those who had provided the vast battalions for the opposition by rejecting the authoritarianism of the ruling party and its obstruction to their economic and social advancement. This membership is either purely utilitarian – ‘I am joining the Party because it will reward me in return’ or more often obligatory, where the Party forces the leading social and economic players to join. In a few words, the hard core of the EPRDF which once focused on the “toiling masses,” is now formulating its new political basis on an emerging middle class by promoting its advancement and by enrolling its members at the Party’s periphery. As a result, these former opponents have either actually been rallied round or at least politically neutralised. The opposition, therefore, lost most of its fighting forces and its ‘opinion leaders’, who brought with them the bulk of the electorate.
While it was, then, inevitable that the opposition would be heavily defeated, no-one expected it to be wiped out. This provoked just as much surprise as its massive push in 2005. When the Prime-Minister, Meles Zenawi declared that he expected to get ‘50% to 75% of the vote” and that “we neither projected nor expected to get 99%,’ they confirmed their vision of the electoral challenge facing them. This translated as a clear win over the opposition as well as making up for their humiliation in 2005, but via a sufficiently ‘clean’ election, at least on the surface, to avoid violent reaction by the people, as in 2005, to get the opposition to ratify the results and finally and above all to provide donors with the argument they had been lacking up until then, to justify their full backing of the regime: it would finally have gained a democratic legitimacy through the ballot box.
If, for the time being there is nothing to indicate that troubles like those of 2005 might break out – people have not forgotten the 200 demonstrators who lost their lives and the 30,000 members of the opposition who were arrested – the electoral plan of Meles Zenawi is in 2010 a failure just as it was in 2005. The reason is, once again, the disconnect between the party leaders and its apparatus, despite its rigid, ‘Leninist’ form of hierarchical management. In 2005, the local ‘cadres’ had tried in vain to alert the top leadership of the growing opposition in order to contain its push and to this end to throw the EPRDF in the electoral battle. But these appeals never reached the ears of the leadership, not least because of its blind confidence in victory. They only realised the danger a month before Election Day and the Party-State’s counter-offensive, from top to bottom, and from one day to the next, came too late not to have to resort to vote-rigging in order to win. In 2010, the party’s apparatus went much beyond the original intentions of its leadership. They set out on a frenetic local campaign of one-upmanship, probably motivated by their humiliating defeat in 2005 and with the particular aim of showing their superiors that they were even more zealous than their colleagues next door. They therefore over-reacted by over-pressuring the voters, which European Union observers did not fail to note and even with flagrant vote rigging, which could be noticed in the EU final report. Hence the 99.6% return which is so improbable that it makes the regime look ridiculous, even, it seems, discrediting the Party in the eyes of some of its own core members and once and for all negates any ambition it may have had of being seen as ‘democratising.’ As a result, the EPRDF did not have a ‘landslide victory’ so much as a serious defeat.
Despite the pressure and event threats from the government, the main opposition force continues to contest the election results. It also wonders whether their single representative should join Parliament or not, so as to refuse to legitimise the de facto reign of a single party. The USA, stalwart ally of Ethiopia, went further than ever by declaring that the elections did not meet ‘international standards’. The foreign press is of one voice in its judgement that the regime is authoritarian, if not totalitarian and even goes as far as comparing it to that of Mengistu Haile Mariam, leader of the communist-military junta overthrown by Meles – in both cases, ‘the state and the ruling party are one and the same’ (Wall Street Journal). The setback is so obvious that the demonstration held in Addis-Ababa by the EPRDF to celebrate its ‘victory’ aimed in fact to demonstrate that Ethiopians ‘have rejected election meddling by western powers under the guise of human rights.’
But all the signs are that this cooling in relations with the donors will not have a long-term impact. While they are openly critical of the elections, they have never put into question the pursuit of their aid. Following the 2005 elections they had suspended part of it, only to reinstate it and even increase it a few months later, with just a change to its distribution network. Ethiopia is the perfect illustration that those receiving aid are not necessarily obliged to those giving it but rather the reverse. They would find it hard to justify to their public opinion a suppression of aid on political grounds, while Meles, on the contrary, can reject any imposed conditions in the name of the ‘sovereignty’ of the country. Finally, and above all, he knows that the West see him as the sole guarantee of stability in Ethiopia, which is at the core of a Horn of Africa in the throes of innumerable conflicts, as well as being their inescapable ally in the ‘fight against terrorism,’ which is their strategic priority for the entire region.
Nevertheless, this forced electoral takeover will weigh heavily on the country’s internal development. The extra-parliamentary opposition sees in the 2010 election one more proof that any form of democratic contest would be meaningless, the only remaining option being the armed struggle. But the chances of such an uprising being successful are still as slight as ever, either because of the persistent weakness of its leadership (Oromo Liberation Front), or because a core leadership still has not found the leverage to mobilise a peasant army (Ethiopian Peoples Patriotic Front), the juncture between the former and the latter being the sine qua non of an armed struggle in Ethiopia. The legal opposition, which saw not a single one of its leaders re-elected, is out for the count with very few chances of getting back on its feet not least because the ruling party will not allow them an inch of room to rebuild.
The hypothesis of a brutal breakdown cannot be totally excluded, with an unexpected event such as some insignificant incident that flares up into urban riots, stirred up by ethnic tensions and/or a sudden rage against the regime that the police and the army would be unable to contain. But, any internal changes could most probably only come through developments within the ruling party itself, given the impotence of the opposition and aid donors’ support of the regime. The political shift by the EPRDF and the multiplication of its membership has already started a process of change. Added to this is a generation change in the leadership, which is inevitable given the advanced age of the present incumbents. The profile of the newcomers is quite different to that of their elders in two fundamental ways: they did not rise out of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1970s, which was the strongest and most radically Marxist in all of black Africa; they came to the party out of self-interest, or were forced to do so.
So, what will be the position adopted by the new leadership? Will they stick together, or will the old guard keep control from the sidelines? How, within the Party, will the old hardcore deal with this mixed mass of newcomers and if they do manage to have a say within this heavily hierarchic Party, what will be their political stance? The future depends very much on the answers to these questions.
Given that the deepest sense of hierarchy runs through Ethiopian society as a whole, and given that the emerging middle class largely overlaps with the traditional elites, who have always been the opinion leaders, the neo-patrimonial system under construction could become sustainable, in other words, could offer the Party a wide enough and attractive base to be legitimised through (at least superficially) ‘clean’ elections. But on one condition: that everyone can benefit from this system on equal terms, i.e. that an end is put to the privileges accorded to the Tigreans. But will the present beneficiaries accept it?
Maintaining Tigrean domination, which has prevented any real democratic opening, was and still is the main factor of instability in Ethiopia. And it will continue if ethnic inequalities are perpetuated under this new, neo-patrimonial Party. The ‘national question’ remains the key of Ethiopia’s future.
Ethiopia: African Union vows to defeat Somali terrorists
News - Africa news
African Union vows to defeat Somali terrorists - The African Union (AU) will use all the relevantlaws within its reach to defeat terrorism and terrorist groups, a senior AU official said here Friday.
African Union's Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra, said alt hough investigations into the Ugandan World Cup terrorist attacks were still underway, the continental body was prepared to tackle the scourge of terrorism using the laws within its means.
"We are not issuing a comprehensive statement on the Kampala terrorist attacks until the investigations are complete,' Ambassador Lamamra told PANA.
He said the AU would put the various anti-terrorism treaties which have been passed in recent times to reactivate the continental battle against terrorism.
"The AU is committed to the fight against terrorism and to defeat terrorists and terrorism," the Commissioner said.
African leaders passed a resolution during a meeting in Sirte, Libya, to pursue all measures to stop the financing of terrorism and terrorist organizations.
Ambassador Lamamra said the AU had treaties to guard against terrorism which would be implemented.
Somalia's Al Shabaab, linked to the global terrorist network, the Al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Kampala on 11 July, which targeted fans watching the World Cup final match.
The attack was meant to cow the Ugandan government against sending extra troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which currently has 6,000 peacekeepers.
But the attack, which also came days before the start of the African Union's regular heads of state Summit in Kampala, has been interpreted as a direct affront against the AU.
Sources at the continental organization said there had been recent efforts to re-examine the AU's anti-terrorism strategies in light of the recent attacks which had directly threaten the organisation.
An AU official, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, said the attack raised issues of concern to the AU, but was also an indication that the Al Shabaab was sensing defeat from its war inside Somalia.
Uganda bombings: Somalis in Uganda's capital now fear reprisal attacks
Less than 48 hours after twin Uganda bombings claimed by Somalia's Al Shabab militants killed 76 people, the Somali community in Uganda is now worried about being attacked. An unexploded suicide vest was found Monday and four foreigners arrested.
Damaged chairs and tables amongst the debris strewn outside the restaurant 'Ethiopian village' in Kampala, Uganda, Monday, after an explosion at the restaurant late Sunday.
By Max Delany, Correspondent / July 13, 2010
Kampala, Uganda
As Uganda struggles to come to terms with the Uganda bombings that claimed the lives of 76 people watching the World Cup final Sunday, the roughly 10,000 Somalis living in the country are growing increasingly concerned that they could face a backlash from the local population – and from authorities – after Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the slaughter.
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In the bustling Kisenyi district of downtown Kampala – a little Somalia of supermarkets and restaurants selling Somali goods and food – the atmosphere since the bombings has been tense, local inhabitants say.
“People are staying at home and not going out into the other parts of town,” says Omar Nur Gutale, a former television station director who fled his homeland in 2008. “By 8 p.m. last night the streets here were empty. Normally they would be full of people.”
Uganda is a melting pot of nationalities from around the region, due to the country's liberal immigration policies, so Kampala has traditionally been a magnet for refugees fleeing the instability that has wracked surrounding countries.
But since the bombings, tensions have been ratcheted up – with a swirl of rumors of upcoming vigilante attacks against Somalis or arbitrary arrests adding to the sense of uncertainty in a community already living a precarious refugee existence.
For many Somalis living in Kampala – a large number of whom fled Al Shabab’s murderous Islamic fundamentalism – Sunday’s bloodshed bought back painful memories of the daily violence they thought they had left behind when they escaped their war-ravaged homeland.
“When I heard the news it felt like I was back in Mogadishu,” says Gutale, who received death threats from the Islamic militant group in Somalia before deciding to leave. “We fled Al Shabab to come and live in peace in Kampala and now they have followed us here. We are victims as well.”
Appeals for calm
Despite the occasional bellicose statement, Ugandan officials have been quick to quash blanket accusations against the country’s Somali community and have repeatedly appealed for calm.
Despite Al Shabab’s claims of responsibility – backed up by the arrest of four foreigners and the discovery of a further unexploded suicide vest in a nightclub in the popular hangout area of Makindye Monday afternoon – so far police are refusing to say conclusively who was behind the attacks or point the finger at Somali nationals.
“This is not a matter of nationality,” said police chief Kale Kayihura. “I want to dissuade anyone in this country from turning this into a racial issue.”
Kayihura said that the attack could have been carried out by the ADF, a Ugandan rebel group linked to Al Shabab. An unspecified number of arrests, including what “could be some Somalis,” have been made since the attacks, Kayihura said. No further police protection was being given to Somali community at present, he said.
Somali leaders urge cooperation
Meanwhile, Somali community leaders are urging their fellow countrymen to cooperate with the Ugandan officials running the investigation and not let Sunday’s killings wreck what has for the most part been a peaceful coexistence.
“Our community has to work with the security agencies in Uganda to keep the country safe,” said Somali ambassador to Uganda, Sayid Ahmed Sheikh Dahir. “We cannot let these attacks make friction between the people here and the Somalis.”
But the ambassador warned that until the international community helps resolve the problems in Somalia once and for all, the surrounding countries would remain at risk.
“The threat for the region will be there until the Somalia is peaceful,” Dahir said.
Ethiopia: Speaking Truth to Strangers
By Alemayehu G. Mariam
Note: In my first commentary [1] on the theme, "Where do we go from here?", I suggested that the ruling dictatorship in Ethiopia following its 99.6 percent "victory" in the May 2010 parliamentary "election" will continue to do business as usual in much the same way as it has over the last two decades. In the second commentary[2], I focused attention on the Ethiopian opposition collectively and argued that they must atone to the people and reinvent themselves if they hope to play a significant role in that country's future. In this commentary, I accuse Western donors as accessories to the crime of democricide in Ethiopia and argue for greater accountability in Western aid and loans to the dictatorship in Ethiopia.[3]
Accessories to Democricide in Ethiopia
In the criminal law, an accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime without actually participating in it. Those who are “accessories before the fact” assist in the commission of a crime. “Accessories after the fact” help the criminal conceal his crime and escape liability. In a perfect world, Western donors in Ethiopia would be prosecuted for being accessories before and after the fact to the crime of first degree “democricide” and for aiding and abetting a ruthless kleptocracy. But we live in an imperfect world, and must be content with bringing them to trial in the court of world opinion.
For the past two decades, Western donors and the international banks have nurtured, coddled and sustained some of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes on the African continent. They have done it rather craftily. First, they created the fictional character of the “new breed African leaders” and promoted them as Africa’s saviors. They were presumably much different than the old style in-your-face dictators like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin and the self-coronated Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The “new breeders” were said to be committed to multiparty democracy, economic reforms and civil liberties. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair lionized Meles Zenawi and his ilk (Yoweri Musaveni of Uganda, Kagame of Rwanda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa). Of course, Clinton and Blair knew they were selling the natives the same old rancid wine of dictatorship in a new bottle labeled “New African Democrats.” Zenawi gloated and basked in the sunshine of Western praise and used that fame devastatingly against his opposition: “I am the one, and only one. So I am by the grace of the Western donors.”
Ethiopian Mortality = Western “Stability”
The primary explanation for the silence of Western donors in the face of gross and massive human rights violations, corruption and electoral fraud in Ethiopia is “stability”. On May 24, 2010 Agence France Press quoted a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa saying: "It's a great thing if there are several opposition parties, but when it comes to the long-term stability of the country and the region, Meles is still your best bet.” Such anonymous diplomatic statements are repeated with such nauseating frequency that one is confused about the meaning of the word. We know the diplomatic justification of “stability” for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has a long and ignoble history. In the early 1970s, they failed to act against the imperial regime because doing so could destabilize the country. They said the same thing about the military junta that overthrew the Ethiopian monarchy, except they wanted to maintain stability in the cold war balance of power in the Horn. Now, they are pulling out the same old tired rabbit out of their hat. “Meles is the best bet for the long term stability of the country.”
Zenawi has cultivated and foisted the “stability” canard on the Western donors for years. He has tried to convince them that he is the glue that keeps the 80 million Ethiopians from exploding into ethnic warfare and civil war. The donors know it is all a grim fairy tale, but they go along with it. The facts speak differently. It was Zenawi who created ethnic Bantustans to keep the people corralled in homelands as part of his divide-and-rule strategy. He is the one who facilitated the process by which the country lost its outlet to the sea. He is the one giving away territory secretly to neighboring countries and selling the country’s best land to outsiders. By the time Zenawi is done with Ethiopia, stability will be the last thing Western donors will be concerned about.
The second justification for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has to do with Zenawi’s cooperation (particularly with the U.S. and the U.K.) on the war on terror. In 2006, Zenawi proxied a war for the U.S. to wipe out al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. He got bogged down in a war he promised will take only a couple of weeks; he found few, if any, al-Qaeda terrorists. Two years later he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Somali fighters and exited leaving behind a rap sheet of untold war crimes against Somali civilians. The Bush Administration lionized him for making “monumental advancements in the political environment” and “opening up political space.” The third reason for inaction is said to be the impracticality and futility of ending or suspending aid. Significant cut backs in economic aid and loans would not be practical because of the nature of the needs on the ground; and using aid to leverage change could invite condemnation by other poor countries. The carrot and stick approach is said to be unworkable in the Ethiopian context.
True Lies
As Helen Epstein has shown in her recent meticulously researched and cogently argued piece “Cruel Ethiopia”[4], since 1991 the Zenawi dictatorship in Ethiopia has received some $26 billion in development aid from Western donors including the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the European Union, and Britain’s Department for International Development. By 2008, Ethiopia was the highest foreign aid recipient in the African continent with an inflow of $3 billion in foreign aid. The obvious questions are: 1) What really happened to all of the aid money? 2) Did it do any good?
Supposedly all of the aid money and loans have helped produce “double digit economic growth” and spawned a variety of social programs. Do Western donors know the real truth about the efficacy of their aid money and loans and the real growth of the Ethiopian economy? Of course, they know; but prefer to play dumb. The truth is that Zenawi’s claim of “double digit economic growth” is simply FALSE! As I have recently demonstrated in one of my commentaries, all of the figures about double digit growth over the past half dozen years or so years were simply and literally cooked up in the regime’s statistics office[5] and served to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a silver platter with garnish. It is a simple trick not known to many: The IMF asks its client states to provide economic performance statistics. In Ethiopia’s case, they pull numbers out of thin air or their back pockets and give it to the IMF, which in turn incorporates it in its official reports. Zenawi turns around and tells the world that the IMF said the country’s economic growth has been in the double digits. It is just that simple!
But the story of “economic growth” goes beyond fabricated statistics to the story of a chokehold on the economy by a full fledged kleptocracy. As Helen Epstien describes[6]:
According to the World Bank, roughly half of the rest of the national economy is accounted for by companies held by an EPRDF-affiliated business group called the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). EFFORT’s freight transport, construction, pharmaceutical, and cement firms receive lucrative foreign aid contracts and highly favorable terms on loans from government banks. Ethiopia is not a typical African kleptocracy, and there is no evidence that Meles personally benefits from these businesses. Rather, they are part of a rigid system of control that aid agency officials, beguiled by Meles’s apparently pro-Western exterior, have only recently begun to recognize.
What about the health programs that have been touted as the crown jewels of so much aid effort? The evidence on those programs is no less shocking. Helen Epstein who actually completed a first hand investigation of aid supported health and social services reported:
I first traveled to Ethiopia in 2008 to study the country’s new public health strategy. Nearly every government and aid agency official I met expressed enthusiasm for the many programs underway. Rates of AIDS, malaria, and infant mortality were falling and Ethiopian health officials told me that there was no corruption; medicines were always in stock, even in faraway rural clinics; and community health workers were trained, efficient, and never absent from their posts….. Most of these programs were in rural areas far from the capital, Addis Ababa, where my interviews took place. I wanted to see them for myself, not least because I knew that some of the claims I was hearing weren’t entirely true. Government officials claimed that in 2005, 87 percent of children had received all major vaccines, but an independent survey suggested that the figure was closer to 27 percent. Similarly, the fraction of women using contraception was 23 percent, not 55 percent as government officials claimed. The annual growth in farm production was also probably nowhere near the government’s own figure of 10 percent.
…
One day, I heard an aid official give a lecture about a small nutrition project in one of the poorest regions of the country…. A few days later I visited the region myself. I was amazed by what I saw there. Roads were under construction, a university had recently opened, and crowds of children were on their way home from a new school. Health workers spoke enthusiastically about the malaria bednet program, the immunization program, the pit latrine program, and the family planning program…But when I went to visit the nutrition project, my enthusiasm faded. It was intended for children, but many of their mothers were also malnourished. Several had obvious goiter, and a few were so anemic they nearly fainted while they were speaking to me. When I asked these women why they could not adequately feed their children or themselves, most replied that they didn’t have enough land, and therefore couldn’t grow enough food either to eat or to sell.
Hanna Ingber Win’s recent five-part analysis of maternal health care programs in Ethiopia supported by the U.N. Population Fund paints a similar picture of failed international aid policy[7]. In my commentary on Win’s report, I noted: “It is simply preposterous and irrational to talk about economic growth or development when a country has ‘one of the world’s worst health care systems.”[8]
Western Donors Through Zenawi’s Eyes
In a recent commentary, I outlined my views on what I believe to be Zenawi’s strategy in dealing with the Western donors[9]. The fact of the matter is that Zenawi knows the Western donors very well; and he anticipates and plans for any moves they are likely to make on the aid and loan chessboard. He knows what makes them tick and not tock. He knows they want two things: 1) “stability” (whatever it means) and 2) plausible deniability (that is if something goes wrong, they can say they did not know about it). Zenawi’s logic in dealing with the Western donors is demonic, but flawless in execution. When he massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets and imprisoned some 50 thousand political prisoners (by official Inquiry Commissions accounts) and stole the 2005 election, he was rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid. When he herded and jailed nearly all of the opposition leaders, he was given more aid and loans. When he passed a repressive press and charities law, he was showered with more aid and loans. Every time the international human rights organizations issued reports of gross violations of human rights, Western donors rewarded Zenawi with more aid and loans, NEVER less. The best the Western donors have done in terms of bringing pressure on Zenawi has been to windbag about human rights, democracy and all of that good stuff. Lesson learned: Getting aid and loans from the Western donors and banks is like taking candy from a child. There is nothing to it!
Zenawi knows the Western donors so well that he now openly shows his contempt for them by getting in their faces. He jammed the Voice of America and came out in public and told the U.S. that it is no different than the genocidal interhamwe maniacs in Rwanda. American taxpayers dropped a cool $4 billion of their hard earned dollars in Ethiopia in the past few years, and they get spit in the faces. What a shame! The point is that Zenawi will continue to taunt and play confrontational with Western donors until they put a stop to it. That will happen when hell freezes over and the devil goes ice skating!
It’s All About Mind Over Matter
The bottom line for the Western donors it that it is all a simple problem of mind over matter. They don’t mind the dictatorship and its corruption and human rights violations, and Ethiopians don’t matter. In other words, they don’t give a damn if there is democracy, dictatorship or despotism. They are all words that start the letter “D”. They just want a “stable” government that will let them do their thing. Millions are dying from starvation? Send a few boatloads of grain to ease their consciences. Human rights violations? Stolen elections? Political prisoners? Suppression of press freedom? Issue a few public statements expressing dismay. Otherwise, have breakfast with the dictator in Stockholm, lunch in Toronto and dinner in Pittsburgh. It is all about mind over matter. Western donors and international banks don’t mind, and Ethiopians don’t….
The Need for Greater Accountability in Aid and Loans
Few are foolish enough to believe that Western aid and loans alone could develop Africa. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. In her recent book, Dead Aid, Dambissa Moyo has made a compelling argument to “cut aid to Africa” not only because it has not promoted development, but also because it has compounded Africa's problems. Moyo argues that aid helps create kleptocratic governments in which powerful elites embezzle public revenues. William Easterley in his book The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, has shown the incestuous relationship between the international aid bureaucracies and corrupt local officials that benefit from aid funds.
High aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid. Systemic evidence in a couple of recent studies suggests that aid actually decreases democracy and makes government worse. Steve Knack of the World Bank finds that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption."
Both Moyo and Easterly have argued for more accountability and tougher scrutiny of the “foreign aid industry.”
The problem of accountability is complicated by the fact that the aid and lending agencies have a vested (conflict) interest in proving that their programs are working, and the dictatorships want to show that they are using the money well. It is a well known fact that the performance of the aid agencies is judged primarily by short-term criteria such as how much aid is disbursed, rather than longer-term effects on accountability. Aid and lending agencies are also insulated from the consequences of their failures. This often makes it difficult to implement a structure of accountability and transparency in recipient countries. For instance, the IMF has no mechanism to hold its client states accountable for the economic data they collect as I have demonstrated in my recent commentary . USAID performs perfunctory annual program evaluations that are self-serving and intended to show that U.S. tax dollars are actually doing good in Ethiopia.
In the short term, the best that can be done is to demand transparency on the part of the donor countries in the administration of their aid money, and in seeking greater accountability on the part of the multilateral lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. For instance, there have been numerous recent allegations of U.S. aid being used to buy votes and influence elections in Ethiopia. In the U.S., Congress has the power to look into such allegations of abuse of U.S. aid money. The second area of action should focus on demanding imposition of “governance conditionality” (reasonable conditions on grant of aid). H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act) is a good example in this regard.
Those advocating for change in Ethiopia should take heed of the words of Helen Epstein:
The problem with foreign aid in Ethiopia is that both the Ethiopian government and its donors see the people of this country not as individuals with distinct needs, talents, and rights but as an undifferentiated mass, to be mobilized, decentralized, vaccinated, given primary education and pit latrines, and freed from the legacy of feudalism, imperialism, and backwardness. It is this rigid focus on the ‘backward masses,’ rather than the unique human person, that typically justifies appalling cruelty in the name of social progress.
The question is simple: When we witness the crime of democricide being committed against the “backward masses,” we have the choice of acting to stop it, or being accessories before and after the fact. I can imagine the thunderous crescendo of 80 million people shouting with index fingers pointing at the Western donors: “We accuse!”
Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org, allafrica.com, afronline.org, newamericamedia.org and other sites.
Note: In my first commentary [1] on the theme, "Where do we go from here?", I suggested that the ruling dictatorship in Ethiopia following its 99.6 percent "victory" in the May 2010 parliamentary "election" will continue to do business as usual in much the same way as it has over the last two decades. In the second commentary[2], I focused attention on the Ethiopian opposition collectively and argued that they must atone to the people and reinvent themselves if they hope to play a significant role in that country's future. In this commentary, I accuse Western donors as accessories to the crime of democricide in Ethiopia and argue for greater accountability in Western aid and loans to the dictatorship in Ethiopia.[3]
Accessories to Democricide in Ethiopia
In the criminal law, an accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime without actually participating in it. Those who are “accessories before the fact” assist in the commission of a crime. “Accessories after the fact” help the criminal conceal his crime and escape liability. In a perfect world, Western donors in Ethiopia would be prosecuted for being accessories before and after the fact to the crime of first degree “democricide” and for aiding and abetting a ruthless kleptocracy. But we live in an imperfect world, and must be content with bringing them to trial in the court of world opinion.
For the past two decades, Western donors and the international banks have nurtured, coddled and sustained some of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes on the African continent. They have done it rather craftily. First, they created the fictional character of the “new breed African leaders” and promoted them as Africa’s saviors. They were presumably much different than the old style in-your-face dictators like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin and the self-coronated Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The “new breeders” were said to be committed to multiparty democracy, economic reforms and civil liberties. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair lionized Meles Zenawi and his ilk (Yoweri Musaveni of Uganda, Kagame of Rwanda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa). Of course, Clinton and Blair knew they were selling the natives the same old rancid wine of dictatorship in a new bottle labeled “New African Democrats.” Zenawi gloated and basked in the sunshine of Western praise and used that fame devastatingly against his opposition: “I am the one, and only one. So I am by the grace of the Western donors.”
Ethiopian Mortality = Western “Stability”
The primary explanation for the silence of Western donors in the face of gross and massive human rights violations, corruption and electoral fraud in Ethiopia is “stability”. On May 24, 2010 Agence France Press quoted a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa saying: "It's a great thing if there are several opposition parties, but when it comes to the long-term stability of the country and the region, Meles is still your best bet.” Such anonymous diplomatic statements are repeated with such nauseating frequency that one is confused about the meaning of the word. We know the diplomatic justification of “stability” for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has a long and ignoble history. In the early 1970s, they failed to act against the imperial regime because doing so could destabilize the country. They said the same thing about the military junta that overthrew the Ethiopian monarchy, except they wanted to maintain stability in the cold war balance of power in the Horn. Now, they are pulling out the same old tired rabbit out of their hat. “Meles is the best bet for the long term stability of the country.”
Zenawi has cultivated and foisted the “stability” canard on the Western donors for years. He has tried to convince them that he is the glue that keeps the 80 million Ethiopians from exploding into ethnic warfare and civil war. The donors know it is all a grim fairy tale, but they go along with it. The facts speak differently. It was Zenawi who created ethnic Bantustans to keep the people corralled in homelands as part of his divide-and-rule strategy. He is the one who facilitated the process by which the country lost its outlet to the sea. He is the one giving away territory secretly to neighboring countries and selling the country’s best land to outsiders. By the time Zenawi is done with Ethiopia, stability will be the last thing Western donors will be concerned about.
The second justification for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has to do with Zenawi’s cooperation (particularly with the U.S. and the U.K.) on the war on terror. In 2006, Zenawi proxied a war for the U.S. to wipe out al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. He got bogged down in a war he promised will take only a couple of weeks; he found few, if any, al-Qaeda terrorists. Two years later he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Somali fighters and exited leaving behind a rap sheet of untold war crimes against Somali civilians. The Bush Administration lionized him for making “monumental advancements in the political environment” and “opening up political space.” The third reason for inaction is said to be the impracticality and futility of ending or suspending aid. Significant cut backs in economic aid and loans would not be practical because of the nature of the needs on the ground; and using aid to leverage change could invite condemnation by other poor countries. The carrot and stick approach is said to be unworkable in the Ethiopian context.
True Lies
As Helen Epstein has shown in her recent meticulously researched and cogently argued piece “Cruel Ethiopia”[4], since 1991 the Zenawi dictatorship in Ethiopia has received some $26 billion in development aid from Western donors including the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the European Union, and Britain’s Department for International Development. By 2008, Ethiopia was the highest foreign aid recipient in the African continent with an inflow of $3 billion in foreign aid. The obvious questions are: 1) What really happened to all of the aid money? 2) Did it do any good?
Supposedly all of the aid money and loans have helped produce “double digit economic growth” and spawned a variety of social programs. Do Western donors know the real truth about the efficacy of their aid money and loans and the real growth of the Ethiopian economy? Of course, they know; but prefer to play dumb. The truth is that Zenawi’s claim of “double digit economic growth” is simply FALSE! As I have recently demonstrated in one of my commentaries, all of the figures about double digit growth over the past half dozen years or so years were simply and literally cooked up in the regime’s statistics office[5] and served to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a silver platter with garnish. It is a simple trick not known to many: The IMF asks its client states to provide economic performance statistics. In Ethiopia’s case, they pull numbers out of thin air or their back pockets and give it to the IMF, which in turn incorporates it in its official reports. Zenawi turns around and tells the world that the IMF said the country’s economic growth has been in the double digits. It is just that simple!
But the story of “economic growth” goes beyond fabricated statistics to the story of a chokehold on the economy by a full fledged kleptocracy. As Helen Epstien describes[6]:
According to the World Bank, roughly half of the rest of the national economy is accounted for by companies held by an EPRDF-affiliated business group called the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). EFFORT’s freight transport, construction, pharmaceutical, and cement firms receive lucrative foreign aid contracts and highly favorable terms on loans from government banks. Ethiopia is not a typical African kleptocracy, and there is no evidence that Meles personally benefits from these businesses. Rather, they are part of a rigid system of control that aid agency officials, beguiled by Meles’s apparently pro-Western exterior, have only recently begun to recognize.
What about the health programs that have been touted as the crown jewels of so much aid effort? The evidence on those programs is no less shocking. Helen Epstein who actually completed a first hand investigation of aid supported health and social services reported:
I first traveled to Ethiopia in 2008 to study the country’s new public health strategy. Nearly every government and aid agency official I met expressed enthusiasm for the many programs underway. Rates of AIDS, malaria, and infant mortality were falling and Ethiopian health officials told me that there was no corruption; medicines were always in stock, even in faraway rural clinics; and community health workers were trained, efficient, and never absent from their posts….. Most of these programs were in rural areas far from the capital, Addis Ababa, where my interviews took place. I wanted to see them for myself, not least because I knew that some of the claims I was hearing weren’t entirely true. Government officials claimed that in 2005, 87 percent of children had received all major vaccines, but an independent survey suggested that the figure was closer to 27 percent. Similarly, the fraction of women using contraception was 23 percent, not 55 percent as government officials claimed. The annual growth in farm production was also probably nowhere near the government’s own figure of 10 percent.
…
One day, I heard an aid official give a lecture about a small nutrition project in one of the poorest regions of the country…. A few days later I visited the region myself. I was amazed by what I saw there. Roads were under construction, a university had recently opened, and crowds of children were on their way home from a new school. Health workers spoke enthusiastically about the malaria bednet program, the immunization program, the pit latrine program, and the family planning program…But when I went to visit the nutrition project, my enthusiasm faded. It was intended for children, but many of their mothers were also malnourished. Several had obvious goiter, and a few were so anemic they nearly fainted while they were speaking to me. When I asked these women why they could not adequately feed their children or themselves, most replied that they didn’t have enough land, and therefore couldn’t grow enough food either to eat or to sell.
Hanna Ingber Win’s recent five-part analysis of maternal health care programs in Ethiopia supported by the U.N. Population Fund paints a similar picture of failed international aid policy[7]. In my commentary on Win’s report, I noted: “It is simply preposterous and irrational to talk about economic growth or development when a country has ‘one of the world’s worst health care systems.”[8]
Western Donors Through Zenawi’s Eyes
In a recent commentary, I outlined my views on what I believe to be Zenawi’s strategy in dealing with the Western donors[9]. The fact of the matter is that Zenawi knows the Western donors very well; and he anticipates and plans for any moves they are likely to make on the aid and loan chessboard. He knows what makes them tick and not tock. He knows they want two things: 1) “stability” (whatever it means) and 2) plausible deniability (that is if something goes wrong, they can say they did not know about it). Zenawi’s logic in dealing with the Western donors is demonic, but flawless in execution. When he massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets and imprisoned some 50 thousand political prisoners (by official Inquiry Commissions accounts) and stole the 2005 election, he was rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid. When he herded and jailed nearly all of the opposition leaders, he was given more aid and loans. When he passed a repressive press and charities law, he was showered with more aid and loans. Every time the international human rights organizations issued reports of gross violations of human rights, Western donors rewarded Zenawi with more aid and loans, NEVER less. The best the Western donors have done in terms of bringing pressure on Zenawi has been to windbag about human rights, democracy and all of that good stuff. Lesson learned: Getting aid and loans from the Western donors and banks is like taking candy from a child. There is nothing to it!
Zenawi knows the Western donors so well that he now openly shows his contempt for them by getting in their faces. He jammed the Voice of America and came out in public and told the U.S. that it is no different than the genocidal interhamwe maniacs in Rwanda. American taxpayers dropped a cool $4 billion of their hard earned dollars in Ethiopia in the past few years, and they get spit in the faces. What a shame! The point is that Zenawi will continue to taunt and play confrontational with Western donors until they put a stop to it. That will happen when hell freezes over and the devil goes ice skating!
It’s All About Mind Over Matter
The bottom line for the Western donors it that it is all a simple problem of mind over matter. They don’t mind the dictatorship and its corruption and human rights violations, and Ethiopians don’t matter. In other words, they don’t give a damn if there is democracy, dictatorship or despotism. They are all words that start the letter “D”. They just want a “stable” government that will let them do their thing. Millions are dying from starvation? Send a few boatloads of grain to ease their consciences. Human rights violations? Stolen elections? Political prisoners? Suppression of press freedom? Issue a few public statements expressing dismay. Otherwise, have breakfast with the dictator in Stockholm, lunch in Toronto and dinner in Pittsburgh. It is all about mind over matter. Western donors and international banks don’t mind, and Ethiopians don’t….
The Need for Greater Accountability in Aid and Loans
Few are foolish enough to believe that Western aid and loans alone could develop Africa. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. In her recent book, Dead Aid, Dambissa Moyo has made a compelling argument to “cut aid to Africa” not only because it has not promoted development, but also because it has compounded Africa's problems. Moyo argues that aid helps create kleptocratic governments in which powerful elites embezzle public revenues. William Easterley in his book The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, has shown the incestuous relationship between the international aid bureaucracies and corrupt local officials that benefit from aid funds.
High aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid. Systemic evidence in a couple of recent studies suggests that aid actually decreases democracy and makes government worse. Steve Knack of the World Bank finds that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption."
Both Moyo and Easterly have argued for more accountability and tougher scrutiny of the “foreign aid industry.”
The problem of accountability is complicated by the fact that the aid and lending agencies have a vested (conflict) interest in proving that their programs are working, and the dictatorships want to show that they are using the money well. It is a well known fact that the performance of the aid agencies is judged primarily by short-term criteria such as how much aid is disbursed, rather than longer-term effects on accountability. Aid and lending agencies are also insulated from the consequences of their failures. This often makes it difficult to implement a structure of accountability and transparency in recipient countries. For instance, the IMF has no mechanism to hold its client states accountable for the economic data they collect as I have demonstrated in my recent commentary . USAID performs perfunctory annual program evaluations that are self-serving and intended to show that U.S. tax dollars are actually doing good in Ethiopia.
In the short term, the best that can be done is to demand transparency on the part of the donor countries in the administration of their aid money, and in seeking greater accountability on the part of the multilateral lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. For instance, there have been numerous recent allegations of U.S. aid being used to buy votes and influence elections in Ethiopia. In the U.S., Congress has the power to look into such allegations of abuse of U.S. aid money. The second area of action should focus on demanding imposition of “governance conditionality” (reasonable conditions on grant of aid). H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act) is a good example in this regard.
Those advocating for change in Ethiopia should take heed of the words of Helen Epstein:
The problem with foreign aid in Ethiopia is that both the Ethiopian government and its donors see the people of this country not as individuals with distinct needs, talents, and rights but as an undifferentiated mass, to be mobilized, decentralized, vaccinated, given primary education and pit latrines, and freed from the legacy of feudalism, imperialism, and backwardness. It is this rigid focus on the ‘backward masses,’ rather than the unique human person, that typically justifies appalling cruelty in the name of social progress.
The question is simple: When we witness the crime of democricide being committed against the “backward masses,” we have the choice of acting to stop it, or being accessories before and after the fact. I can imagine the thunderous crescendo of 80 million people shouting with index fingers pointing at the Western donors: “We accuse!”
Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org, allafrica.com, afronline.org, newamericamedia.org and other sites.
Against all odds
The prime minister, in his outspoken speech made at Mesquel square didn't hesitate to send an important message to the opposition. He said, the EPRDF as a party tried to correct what it perceived as its shortcomings from the day the 2005 election ended. He added he expects the opposition to do the same. I tried to think about what the opposition parties may have been doing wrong. Well, there can be a lapse in my judgement for the sole reason that I haven't been in Ethiopia for quite a while to witness the reason behind the overwhelming pro-ruling party vote that has, as Mr. Zenawi himself openly admitted, surprised him when he realized the size of the outcome. What I may guess he was referring to may be that the people have confirmed what the ruling party has been saying all along that the opposition is incapable to the extent that even the voters have changed their mind about the opposition parties, specially when they got the chance to closely monitor who is who in the political arena, thanks to the debates that were promoted in a well intended national media with little or no reservation. This may be opening up a bitter reality for the opposition for the next five years. I ask, what went wrong? Has the opposition weakened since the 2005 election or has there been a social transformation in the last five years, putting in the open how controversial every issue that is affecting the country can be. I have the feeling the latter is the case. The whole scenario confirms the process of democracy has come a long way in Ethiopia, although I can unambiguously say there may be some holes in the procedure. All in all, the election has bygone putting some of us in a limbo. It is something we have to ask ourselves hard enough to come up with some form of direction that won't put the political elites in a position of being outrageously confused.
That said, I can't help but stress the crucial points where the ruling party diverted the already touchy situation to its advantage. I can name several instances where the turning points accumulated to the extent that the people have been left with little to prove otherwise:
-Although it can be controversial, the 10 or so percent annual economic growth for the past several years can be categorized as an unparalleled achievement when Sub Saharan Africa is taken into consideration.
-The idea behind making the country energy independent has become controversial in terms of possible long term environmental damage that the Hydro electric Dams can cause. The speed and the secretiveness of the initial drive for the construction helped to effectively make the possibility of having uninterrupted bright nights and most importantly managing to generate surplus energy that can produce a new export income must be something the people couldn't afford to argue.
_The recent global initiative of the prime Minister in the global political arena propped up by the AU members and major international organs helped improve the country's foreign relation that has otherwise been considered numb for a long time.
Whether those important and decisive factors were actions taken intentionally to make the election a success for the incumbent party could be very easily proven by what it does in the next five years of its ruling. The things that matter to me are whether the opposition is going to use this experience to break itself up or to come back with a better cohesion and clear vision to take advantage of what the ruling party may or may not do during the next five years of its quarter century rule. I will be with all ears and eyes to be at the war front that has allredy began anew.
Tadesse H.
That said, I can't help but stress the crucial points where the ruling party diverted the already touchy situation to its advantage. I can name several instances where the turning points accumulated to the extent that the people have been left with little to prove otherwise:
-Although it can be controversial, the 10 or so percent annual economic growth for the past several years can be categorized as an unparalleled achievement when Sub Saharan Africa is taken into consideration.
-The idea behind making the country energy independent has become controversial in terms of possible long term environmental damage that the Hydro electric Dams can cause. The speed and the secretiveness of the initial drive for the construction helped to effectively make the possibility of having uninterrupted bright nights and most importantly managing to generate surplus energy that can produce a new export income must be something the people couldn't afford to argue.
_The recent global initiative of the prime Minister in the global political arena propped up by the AU members and major international organs helped improve the country's foreign relation that has otherwise been considered numb for a long time.
Whether those important and decisive factors were actions taken intentionally to make the election a success for the incumbent party could be very easily proven by what it does in the next five years of its ruling. The things that matter to me are whether the opposition is going to use this experience to break itself up or to come back with a better cohesion and clear vision to take advantage of what the ruling party may or may not do during the next five years of its quarter century rule. I will be with all ears and eyes to be at the war front that has allredy began anew.
Tadesse H.
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