Tell-Tale Signs of an Aid Colony

A short and very interesting opinion piece on Front Page Africa (FPA) starts by stating there is some good news regarding Human Rights in Ethiopia. It continues:

"The British Secretary of State for International Development made the pitch last week to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi…for an independent investigation into reports of Abuse in the Oromia Regional State."

Meles Zenawi, of course, accepted the idea. The "good news", if we can call it that, ends there.

It is immensely disturbing, but not unexpected, that Meles would respond positively to the British official who has no constituents in Ethiopia, while he refused for months to hear the same request coming from elected representatives from Oromia now serving in the House of Representatives. FPA continues:

"This comes to light after a formal request was made to the Ethiopian Parliament by members representing Oromia …the Speaker of the Ethiopian Parliament did not accept the request. The request has been submitted also to the Prime Minister…there has not been a response…"

The British request, designed to save their cozy relationship with Meles, has removed all the technical hurdles so far presented in Parliament preventing discussion of the issue. Eight months into the escalating abuses of human rights by Meles, Mr. Benn still assures us that they are "concerned"

"…[Hillary Benn] stated that the UK is seriously concerned with issues of governance, Human Rights and the detention…"

But he is clearly not concerned enough to disassociate himself from Meles or to stop aiding him. The article also expresses doubt about the whole hype of concern and feels that the cosmetic agreement is meant to enable aid to be reinstated. It states that this may all be part of a ploy that will eventually reward Meles:

"A tactic is possible so that the international donors will resume foreign aid. This may also occur to encourage the United States to resume its good feelings and resume Military Aid Shipments."

The story underlines the notion that aid giving is as important to the international community as receiving it is to Meles. Aid provides the necessary leverage the west needs from governments that have no interest in serving their own population. If aid was given, as is so often publicized, in good faith and for the good of the people then the British would not have had to undertake last week’s PR somersault to give the impression that they have actually done something without having done anything.

It is because Aid is given in the donor’s interest that aid givers find it impossible to completely disassociate themselves from the likes of Meles. For them, to give up influence over something so puny as the massacre of locals, the contravention of freedoms, the loss of civil life and the imprisonment of thousands would be unthinkable. And neither is it out of their concern for the poor that they do not stop the aid [though this seems to be the fashionable excuse used to prop up Meles]. It would be moronic on our part to suggest that the aid-givers do not know what billions of "development aid" poured into government coffers such as Meles’s, and the contractual agreements that come attached with aid, have really meant for the poor of the world.

In Ethiopia today, thanks to Aid, we have a government that totally ignores its own people while it is completely beholden to the interests of those giving it Aid. In a sense we have a colony, an aid colony that is administered by locals, but answerable to those who finance it. For Meles, what is at stake is his ability to rule for however long he wishes, sustained by the "development" money he receives from his friends.

The alternative for him would be achieving some level of internal legitimacy by being accountable to the people of his country. His actions make it clear which path he has chosen. For aid givers it is a delicate balance. On the one hand they are trying to appear as humanitarian as possible to their own constituents while on the other they are trying to ensure that they do not lose any of their leverages that are used in a variety of contexts from policy and market control to military operations. In this calculi "development", "the poor" etc…are really only words which justify the passage of money and influence between groups that are both bent on different kinds of power – one local, one global. The poor, well the poor always get shafted.

Opinon piece from FPA can be read here.

Gode Cheetahs Voice Their Objections!

Now, was that so hard to believe? What if we were to tell you that this was a recent headline in the Washington Post? Well it wasn’t, but other stories that were just as hard to believe have been making headlines…read on.

These days the Washington Post constantly reminds us that U.S. Forces are saving Cheetahs in Ethiopia [a prelude to saving us all maybe?], while others remind us that the western “Reality TV” craze is now bringing hope to Ethiopians after the election unrest. We scroll through the news on Ethiopia and find it hard to believe that these are the news pieces American media feels are worthy of attention. But we can not take these stories for granted without pondering if there maybe something more sinister at work. It seems to us that while the former story’s motivation is to instill a sense that foreign military personnel are there for our own good, the latter story may be written to convince people that Ethiopians aspire to the teachings of the west [never mind that TV ownership is at 0.6% in Ethiopia].

Truth be told, during difficult times most Ethiopians draw hope and sustenance within the context of their own culture and identity. Thousands of years of local history is a testament that we probably have a lot to teach the world in this area than the other way around; and most certainly not via an Idol show.

But maybe we are seeing it all wrong…just maybe, we should take comfort in all this because, incase the viceroy in Addis has to leave, this may all mean that our saviors won’t be too far removed to assure "appropriate" leadership. For now, we know that the Agazi forces [pictured here, and apparently trained between saving cheetahs], have done their job well enough to buy time for other diplomatic endeavors to save the bankrupt Ethiopian regime.

Meanwhile on the Ethio-Eritrean Front...
Yared Tibebu recently wrote an article in The Sudan Tribune that the latest diplomatic machination of the U.S. is meant to overshadow the people’s internal struggle in Ethiopia by some agreement with Eritrea. Similarly a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations said:

“Washington's leverage over Ethiopia [in its attempt to resolve the border standoff] is a promise to help Meles deal with a turbulent political situation at home and to persuade European donors to give back $375 million in aid they withheld over an opposition crackdown last year.”

In other words, Meles negotiates a peace deal with Eritrea and in due course the aid that ensures his stay on power gets reinstated.

Eritrea has responded to the latest U.S. offer to mediate much differently from how it responded to past attempts including that of the U.N. The reason could be that it either feels the U.S. has no choice but to pressure Ethiopia or that it would find itself in a more precarious situation if it refuses to talk to the U.S. which sees Meles’s removal as unacceptable. Recent talk of international sanctions from the U.N. is meant to further pressure Asmara, which is already at odds with the U.S. over the expulsion of USAID. Issayas just may have a guest that he can not refuse to see.

What Happens Next?
To restore international legitimacy to Meles, what happens locally is also important. The additional opposition members that have chosen to join the parliament lend more international legitimacy to Meles’s government. Once reelection takes place on the boycotted seats, Meles can change the parliamentary rules that have been controversial on recommendation of the western consultants he has promised to hire. Undoubtedly, the changes will only be symbolic, probably reflecting the new composition of The House. The western media will remarket Meles to the world as once more on the right path. Meles gets another pat, the west congratulates itself on reinstating Meles to the 'right path' and finally aid is reinstated.

But in all this one thing is overlooked, and that is the role of the Ethiopian people. Western governments seem to think that the only legitimacy that really matters is an international one. As long as public opinion in their respective capitals is willing to accommodate the support of a dictatorial client government, they will continue to do so. As the recent reports on Ethiopia suggest, the mainstream press in these countries lacks the moral authority to be taken seriously but unfortunately these are the outlets that form western public opinion. Despite all these however, the most important thing for Ethiopians to remember is that no matter what influences are backing Meles and Co., the key ingredient for long term rule is missing. The west, the press as well as the viceroy himself have overlooked that legitimacy is not for them to give. That is reserved for the Ethiopian People.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

The Need for Redefining Ethiopian Nationalism

The formation of modern Ethiopia was initiated by Emperor Tewodros as he attempted to consolidate his rule over as large an area as possible in what was historically known as Abyssinia. Considering that this area did not contain large urban centers it is difficult to call this the beginning of the formation of Ethiopia as a nation-state.

Europe was itself going through this process in the middle of the 19th century except that its urban bourgeois class defined the structure of the state while most of the notions of nation were defined by ethnicity. The notion of nation-states that did not have ethnic hegemonies was indeed rare. The fact that not all of Europe turned into republic states can not take away from the crucial role that the urban classes played in this process.

The same era defined the modern introduction of European interest in the Red sea and the horn in general – partly as a consequence of British interests in the Suez Canal and trade with Asia. The Emperor’s attempts had much to do with the amount of new European arms that had started flowing into the region and the imbalance that this created, disrupting the equilibrium that existed before then between local lords.

The Emperor’s methods of securing support ranged from liberation to suppression but had much in common with what was being observed in other parts of the world at the time. He attempted to accentuate the old Abyssinian unifying values but was always careful to keep the old institutions of church and landlords in check as they represented the classes that needed to be sacrificed to bring about social transformation.

Despite these attempts at forging a nation-state, the Emperor’s efforts set in motion a dynamics that established Ethiopia as an important empire that, unlike Europe’s colonial empires, did not have a nucleus of a nation-state in it. Europeans, and particularly the British and French, kept arms flowing to various regions within the Ethiopian Empire blocking any chance of building a central authority.

This made the structure of modern Ethiopia more like that of the Ottoman Empire than that of the competing west European empires of the 19th century. Positively this made Ethiopia much more ‘democratic’ in allowing expression of interest in various regions compared to European empires, but this was impossible to demonstrate as the most lavishly financed parts of Ethiopia could not compete economically with the most neglected parts of European colonies. It is important to remember that this was caused more by the marked difference in economic advances rather than political structure of these empires however.

Showan hegemony at the beginning of the 20th century came closest to starting the process of forming a state structure but Emperor Menelik’s vision also came to naught as the confrontation between west and central Europe over their economic/political interests compromised Ethiopia’s sovereignty until the final attack by Fascist Italy in 1935.

The centralizing effect of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, through the provision of infrastructure and governance systems, finally resulted in the Ethiopia of the 1940s where an externally weakened Emperor Haile Selassie had more control over Ethiopia than any ruler before him. The price was steep however. His external weakness, due to the military support that he had accepted from the UK/US, seemed to put him in a position where he had to accept his place in the hierarchy of global power and give up on the historic quest for Ethiopian modernization through the structures of nation-statehood.

This also marked the beginning of an era when the whole world, including Europe, was being consolidated under two polar powers dominated by the USSR and the US. For Ethiopia it spelled the beginning of half a century of governance where control over internal dissent was becoming harsh and unforgiving but the need for an external sponsor in one of the two superpowers was critical for any government in power.

The first major opportunity that came at the same time as the Emperor’s choice of the US as his sponsor was the onset of Arab nationalism and the threat that this posed to the west. This made the long espoused wish of Ethiopia for an outlet to the sea a possibility by aligning its interest with those who wished to contain the anti-colonial sentiment of the Arabs. Eritrea’s acquisition not only brought internal prestige to Ethiopia’s government but also provided an economic impetus by securing Eritrean industrial capacity – capital and labor – and ports.

These positive developments were soon to be clouded by doubt however. Ethiopia’s ambiguous existence as the modern manifestation of an old empire seemed unsustainable. Again the first negative impact of this was felt in Eritrea where the federal arrangement that both Christian and Muslim Eritreans had accepted in 1952 was dissolved as the Ethiopian government found it impossible to effectively absorb a federal state under its prevailing structure. Furthermore, the growing urban intelligentsia in the country started agitating for political participation and this was also met with stonewalling measures. These tensions boiled over into open armed rebellion in Eritrea while they formed the basis for much instability in all the major cities of Ethiopia leading up to the revolution.

As Arabs worked to break the western stronghold over themselves, they tried to undermine the Ethiopian Emperor using the Eritrean insurrection but failed in most of these quests as their revolution was contained and transformed into various Islamic movements by the 1970s. In addition, the ‘thaw’ in relations between the US and the USSR combined with the end of the post war economic boom in the west to cut Ethiopia off from most western support.

The chaos that ensued in Ethiopia invited the Soviet involvement in the country’s affairs and military and totally undermined whatever remaining independence the state had. This created the total destruction of civilian revolutionary movements, established conditions for the resurgence of Eritrean nationalism and encouraged an ethnic Tigray movement. The opportunity that the revolution presented for the formation of a national consensus was quickly usurped by the Soviets as they militarized Ethiopia’s governance. What appeared to be another opportunity at nation-statehood was lost yet again.

The dramatic reduction in Ethiopia’s ability to negotiate its interest with major powers over the century was due to two major trends. One was Ethiopia’s inability to form an effective state structure and an inclusive nationalism, while the other was the growing consolidation in global governance and hierarchy. This second trend has been totally ignored in most studies that pertain to Ethiopia but probably has as much to do with Ethiopian governance problems as the more commonly known domestic failure above.

An important impact of this second trend has been that more recent Ethiopian governments have managed to stay in power more as agents of greater powers – as controllers of their populations and their region whenever they could – rather than as representatives of their people and the state. The ex US ambassador to Ethiopia, David Shinn, put it succinctly when he was witnessing for a congressional committee recently by stating that the primary reason why Ethiopia was crucial to US national interests was its “effective national security system.”

The question of why a Turkey like state did not emerge out of the Ethiopian empire of the 19th century can probably be explained by the difference in economic and political advancement between the two empires. But a persisting question is why one can not emerge at this time when Ethiopia does have the required advances. Is the global power structure too rigidly set to allow for the rise of more nation-states or is this made impossible due to Ethiopians’ – particularly the intelligentsia – lack of willingness to go through a paradigm shift?

For this paradigm shift to occur, Ethiopia’s interests and nationalism must be defined on much more solid grounds than the fleeting ethnic based entitlement logic or anti-Eritrea/Somalia fear rhetoric. If this paradigm shift does not occur, it probably means that most of Ethiopia’s leaders – both in power and outside – have accepted the premise that Ethiopia is not viable as a state. The present Ethiopian condition is a clear demonstration of where this premise leads. The attempt of any group will always remain to be to attain power in Ethiopia’s government structure, since that position provides the highest returns from global powers by providing the ability to act as an agent.

Statehood is attained by the natural dynamics of domestic interests vying for power while still answerable to their domestic constituencies. This need not be in the form of voting, but a democratic political structure presents one of the acceptable ways of doing this.

At the end of the day what is desired for growth to occur is for those in power to have, in the best of their interest the growth of the capacity of their population. This capacity growth generally takes the form of a population being able to produce much of what it consumes thereby initiating industrialization and national wealth accumulation that can be reinvested for more growth. Agent governments can not allow this to happen since it goes totally contrary to their interest in all respects. The question thus remains. We know under what premise the TPLF operates but are all Ethiopians inadvertently operating under that same premise? In other words, is this a TPLF problem or one of a need for paradigm shift by all?

We Deserve Aid II - Satire

The prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, reiterated today his serious objection to the proposed aid reduction from western donors. The prime minister revealed that the aid reduction is unacceptable to him and his government and that there would be a retaliatory action taken soon. Asked what the government intends to do about the threat; the prime minister claimed that it may have to cut the donors off from the services that it presently provides them.

Asked repeatedly what this includes, the Prime minister chose to stay ambiguous and answered in characteristic shrouded language that the west has much to gain from having an Ethiopian government that fundamentally believes that Ethiopia can not work as a nation-state. Pressed further in what ways such a government could be of value to donors the prime minister mentioned military and economic partnership with donors as an example.

This has come as a shock to many observers. Sources have maintained that US Special Forces are helping protect the country from a potential attack from Somalia, which is known to be a source of danger to its neighbors due to its highly organized Islamic military capacity, while Aid organizations and international institutions have taken over the provision of civic services and central banking from the government in order to improve overall governance.

The prime minister’s contradictory statements about his government fundamentally not believing in the viability of Ethiopia as a state and yet also securing help from donors to protect and build up the state have not gone unnoticed in western capitals. A diplomat who wished to remain anonymous disclosed that this seems to have made donors jittery and resulted in the proposed threats to cut aid unless the prime minister decides what he believes about his country and its relationship with the outside world. The diplomat claimed that for the first time in years, the donors have come to see that there may be alternative sources of political legitimacy in the country if the prime minister was to lose power.

This confusing state of affairs has left the Ethiopian people with much pain and suffering. A store owner in the middle of Merkato, the largest market in Africa, claimed that all Ethiopians are asking for is to be given the chance to have control over their own destiny and to work their way out of poverty. He argued that the Prime minister was slowly decimating the governance and defense capacity of the state using various means. This opinion seemed to resonate with many inhabitants of the city who have already shown their displeasure with the EPRDF government in the May 2005 elections.