Somalia's al-Shabab: A Global or Local Movement?

When Somalia's al-Shabab militia claimed responsibility for the July 11 suicide bombings that killed 76 people watching soccer on TV in Uganda, the media described the event as an al-Qaeda attack on the World Cup. That's a misrepresentation, of course, but one that illustrates many of the problems with viewing and reacting to events in Somalia through a war-on-terrorism paradigm. The Shabab certainly has a relationship with al-Qaeda, but it is an independent organization, and the Kampala bombings were motivated not by some global jihadist agenda but by the Shabab's ongoing struggle against foreign military intervention in Somalia. That primarily means Uganda, which is a key component of the African Union (A.U.) mission in Somalia. That mission props up the beleaguered remains of a government that is widely seen as corrupt, greedy, inefficient and illegitimate. The Shabab perceives that government as a foreign-imposed regime; in fact, it does not even qualify as a regime, simply the faction that controls the airport and the presidential villa — buttressed by Ugandan arms. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2010700,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopularemail#ixzz0xA76O4Hz

Ethiopia Faces Era Of One-Party Rule

Ethiopia's 2010 election all but wiped out the country's once vibrant political opposition. This means that Ethiopia faces the prospect of one-party rule for the foreseeable future. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi categorically rejects characterizations of Ethiopia as a one-party state. Speaking to reporters last week, he likened the Horn of Africa nation to Japan or Botswana, where opposition groups operate, but one party dominates the political landscape. "Ethiopia is not moving towards a single-party system," said Zenawi. "It can, with some credence, be said that it is a dominant party system, but there is a fundamental distinction between a dominant party system and a single-party system. The democratic system in Japan has been a dominant party system for half a century, but it has not been a single-party system." ...More story

China wants bureaucrats to shut up - latimes.com

Less is more, top officials say, as they try to crack down on civil servants notorious for longwinded speeches. Reporting from Beijing — By John M. Glionna Chinese officials say they want to clean up a pollution scourge fouling the capital and government centers nationwide: bureaucratic gasbags. The problem, Communist Party functionaries say, is that civil servants talk too much — at meetings, in speeches and when speaking off-the-cuff in public. It's the official Chinese version of yada-yada-yada, blah-blah-blah. To set an example for his peers, Li Yuanchao, a top member of a key Central Committee department, told the state-run New China News Agency that he is keeping his speeches short during meetings. In one recent video-conference, he kept his remarks to just 10 minutes, officials said. Vice President Xi Jinping scolded underlings at a recent Central Party orientation meeting, declaring that bureaucratic long-windedness lengthened meetings and cut productivity. So there's a new unwritten policy among bureaucrats: when it comes to speechifying, less is more. Scholars say long speeches by Chinese officials are legendary, often making a U.S. congressional filibuster seem like a haiku in comparison...More story

Some see worsening rights situation in aid donor 'darling' Ethiopia - Los Angeles Times

Some see worsening rights situation in aid donor 'darling' Ethiopia The U.S. gives about $1 billion annually to Ethiopia. But even as U.S. and other international aid has surged in the last decade, activists charge that the government has become more authoritarian. August 12, 2010|By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times Reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Like many in the West, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn watched the country's recent elections for signs that democracy was finally taking root. When the results of the May vote were announced, all but two of 547 parliamentary seats went to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, the coalition that has been in power here for nearly 20 years, or its allied parties. "How do you win 99% of the vote?" Shinn said. "That's un-American." And yet, he said, "Ethiopia remains a darling of the donor community." The U.S. gives about $1 billion annually to Ethiopia, more than to any other country in sub-Saharan Africa except Sudan. But even as U.S. and other international aid to Ethiopia has surged in the last decade, activists charge that the government has become more authoritarian. "There's been an inverse ratio of rising donor aid and a worsening human rights record," said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government has won a degree of favor from the West for sending troops to fight radical Islamists in neighboring Somalia, but reports of rights abuses and a string of draconian laws that have constricted political space have put donor countries in an awkward position. "It's a dilemma for the international donor community, which doesn't want to walk away from Ethiopia because the needs are so great," said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Recent allegations of aid corruption have caused further unease among donor countries. A March report by Human Rights Watch alleged a countrywide pattern of local government leaders denying aid to opposition supporters. Eligibility for many major aid programs is determined by local government officials — almost all of whom belong to the ruling coalition or its affiliates. One former Ethiopian aid worker, who didn't want to be named out of fear of government retribution, told The Times that aid is leveraged by local leaders to consolidate power. "Aid is a tool for development," the aid worker said. "It is also a tool for politics." Ethiopian officials deny such claims. Communications Minister Bereket Simon said Human Rights Watch was "engaged in the continuous fabrication of allegations" and said Ethiopia "has put in place a transparent mechanism for the distribution of food aid."...More story

UN welcomes Ethiopian policy to allow Eritrean refugees to live outside camps

UN welcomes Ethiopian policy to allow Eritrean refugees to live outside camps Young Eritrean refugees Ethiopia has recently decided to take a new approach to Eritrean refugees by allowing them to live outside camps, a move welcomed by the United Nations refugee agency. Under the so-called ‘out-of-camp’ scheme announced last week, Eritreans who can sustain themselves financially or have relatives or friends who commit to supporting them no longer have to stay in camps. The policy shift is due to discussions between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Ethiopian Government. “Given the fact that Eritrea and Ethiopia were a single political entity before the 1993 referendum, the new policy is also a response to refugees’ wishes and needs for strengthened people-to-people relations between the two countries,” UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told reporters in Geneva.More than 60,000 Eritrean refugees have crossed the border into Ethiopia since the border conflict in the late 1990s between the two countries. More than 60,000 Eritrean refugees have crossed the border into Ethiopia since the border conflict in the late 1990s between the two countries. The new scheme now allows Eritrean refugees to live in urban areas, improves their access to services and helps build stronger ties with host communities. UNHCR said that once the policy has fully been implemented, the costs of looking after the refugees will be significantly lowered since those benefiting from the programme will be sustaining themselves. “It is our hope that this decision will eventually expand to include refugees from other countries as well,” Mr. Mahecic said. Refugees from Somalia and other countries – numbering 138,000 in all – already live in Ethiopian towns and cities, while more than 36,000 Eritrean refugees reside in three camps and two community centres that are set to be converted into camps. Any Eritrean refugee living in an Ethiopian camp who does not have a criminal record is eligible to take part in the new programme, which also involves skills training and educational opportunities. At present, many Eritreans in Ethiopia work in the informal sector and this is normally tolerated by the Government, the agency noted. UNHCR’s Addis Ababa office has found that a “good number” of Eritrean refugees plan to take advantage of the new policy, Mr. Mahecic said.

Obama’s African youth leaders forum

Ethiopia, 25 years later

The image most of us retain of Ethiopia is one of mass starvation and a glittery rock concert intended to ease the suffering. That famine and concert was 25 years ago, and Ethiopia has tried to move on. But just as the world at first overlooked the famine, it is now not aware of progress in the country. Economic and political strides have been made, but still many Ethiopians struggle just a bad drought or flood away from disaster. Peter Gill, who covered the famine and wrote “A Year in the Death of Africa,” now looks at Ethiopia over the past 25 years in “Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid,” out this month from Oxford University Press.

By Peter Gill

Ethiopia is desperate to live down its past – but not the story of an ancient empire founded in a union between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; nor the tale of a Christian culture established before the conversion of much of Europe; nor the country’s crushing defeat of European colonizers. Rather Ethiopia is trying to get past its more recent history of famine and suffering.

The world has an image of Ethiopia based on the terrible events of 1984-5 when up to one million died of starvation and when rock stars in the United States and Britain sang ‘We are the World’ and ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ to raise money for famine relief.

All that has now changed, say the Ethiopians. But Western commentators are out of touch with the new reality. The former famine lands of the North have been at peace for the past 20 years and a stable government with a commitment to agricultural development has brought about real improvements. Overall the Ethiopian economy has boomed over recent years, with only a temporary check brought about by rocketing international commodity prices in 2008.

The big problem with the old image, officials complain, is that it is an active obstruction to Ethiopian progress. Every time a starvation story gets into on to television, potential investors think again about where they putting their money.

The West’s relentless focus on the aid relationship and how best to help relieve hunger and poverty dominates the official relationship and those same old tales of suffering discourage tourists from discovering the treasures of one of the world’s greatest cultures.

Friends of Ethiopia can sympathize with this impatience to shrug off the old and get on with the new. But in the memorable words of the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (he was actually referring to ‘tribe,’ not ‘famine’) ‘a word will stay around as long as there is work for it to do.’

For all Ethiopia’s determination to live down the recent past, the unfortunate truth is that far too many of its people live on the margins of existence, that just one shock such as a drought or a flood tip them into destitution and the risk of death from starvation, and that upwards of ten million of them are dependent on an almost annual basis on foreign food aid.

A quarter of a century on from the rock star mobilization of the mid-1980s, the twin problems of backward agricultural practices and galloping population growth remain the same. At the time of the great famine Ethiopia had a population of 40 million. It now has 80 million people and that figure could double again in the next 25 to 30 years.

Yet Ethiopia’s own efforts in family planning and agricultural development have not always been endorsed by the aid-givers. The fashion-conscious rich world moved away from these development fundamentals to concentrate instead on the showier provision of education and health, and then more recently on democracy and ‘good governance.’

In the 20 years after the famine, western agricultural aid to Africa fell by almost two thirds, and in the past decade, thanks largely to Washington’s distaste for contraception, aid expenditure on family planning in Africa has also fallen. According to the United Nations, it now amounts to just one fortieth of spending on HIV/AIDS.

Not everyone rails against the injustice of Ethiopia’s characterization as the land of famine. Often in my discussions with him, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi took me by surprise. When I asked him about the western image of his country, I expected a politician’s defensiveness.

The answer I received was this: “Humiliation can be a very powerful motivation for action and therefore I don’t hate the fact that we get humiliated every day provided it’s based on facts ... if we feel we deserve to be treated like honourable citizens of the world, then we have to remove the source of that shame. There is no way round it.”

By Steven E. Levingston | August 4, 2010; 11:00 AM ET
Categories: Guest Blogger | Tags: ethiopian famine; live aid; 25th anniversary of ethiopian famine and live aid

Risk taking behavior: Another look at the Ethiopian economy �

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...

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....