|
An
alliance with malicious intention By Amdetsion Kidane, DBA The Chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, the Honorable
Senator Russell Feingold, on March 3 mentioned Eritrea by name as one of the
states in the Horn of Africa destabilizing the political situation in
Ethiopia. On the other hand, Feingold strongly criticizes the current Ethiopian
government for corrupting the democratic process of the country and the use
of force to subjugate the people in general and its opponents in particular. He even criticizes the Bush Administration for
not living up to “its own rhetoric in promoting democracy and
human rights by making it clear that we do not – and will not -- tolerant [tolerate
– my insertion] the Ethiopian government’s abuses and illegal behavior.” And yet, in spite of his acknowledgement and
condemnation of the Ethiopian government for abuse and human right violation,
and criticism of the Bush Administration for its inaction, he hints the
importance of defending Ethiopia from allegedly hostile neighbors, including
Eritrea, that surround it for siding the US government to fight terrorism in
the Horn of Africa. He states that, “the US-Ethiopian partnership is an incredibly important one – perhaps one of the more
significant on the continent given not only our longstanding history but also
the increasingly strategic nature of our cooperation in recent years.” At the outset, I like to say that Senator Feingold’s
implication of Eritrea being a threat to peace in the area in general and Ethiopia
in particular is unwarranted. What I
want to comment on extensively though are two issues that the Honorable Senator
raised in relation to Eritrea and Ethiopia: (1) the importance of
US-Ethiopian partnership noting that Ethiopia is surrounded by hostile
nations including Eritrea, and (2) his claim that “Ethiopia seems relatively
stable with its growing economy and robust poverty reduction programs.” The partnership of the United States of America and
Ethiopia in relation to Eritrea is not new. Four such partnerships are listed in chronological order. ·
The US-Ethiopian alliance
against the Eritrean people dates back to 1950, when the disposal of former
Italian colonies was in the hands of the four powers of the time. During that
critical moment, the US unjustifiably and unequivocally denied the Eritrean people
their right to independence. In the
words of John Foster Dulles who was the Secretary of State at the time: “From the point of view of justice, the
opinions of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless the
strategic interest of the United States in the Red Sea basin makes it
necessary that the country has to be linked with our ally, Ethiopia.” Breach of federal
contract brokered by the US on the part of the Ethiopian government triggered
the thirty-year struggle for independence that cost tens of thousands of
lives. Except for the fourteen years
interruption when the Ethiopian Military Government chose to ally with the
Soviet Union, the US has always been on the Ethiopian side against Eritrea,
perhaps, with the perception that “bigger is better.”
The fact remains that Ethiopia complicated and perpetuated the problem by sticking to a delaying tactic best described as “no-peace, no-war” situation. It is obvious to anyone that Ethiopia would not stubbornly stick to this illegal delaying tactic without the blessing from the US and its surrogate, the United Nations. John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations blames Dr. Jandayi Fraser, the Deputy Secretary of State for African Affair, for her attempt to reverse the “final and binding” decision of the Commission to accommodate the wishes of the darling state, Ethiopia. Ambassador Bolton writes, "For reasons I never understood, however, Frazer reversed course and asked in early February [2006] to reopen the 2002 EEBC decision, which she had concluded was wrong, and award a major piece of disputed territory to Ethiopia. I was at a loss to explain that to the Security Council, so I didn’t.” John Bolton, Surrender is not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” p. 347. With frustration for lack of cooperation from Ethiopia to demarcate the border by planting pillars on the ground, the Commission ended its mandate submitting to the United Nations Security Council a legal electric “virtual” border as specified in coordinates on the map in the delimitation process. As for the economic virtues the Honorable Senator has accorded
Ethiopia, with all due respect to him, I, for one, disagree with his
assessment. Paraphrasing, Ethiopia’s
dependency and its economic impact as recorded in www.wikipedia.org, Ethiopia has been a receipient of
economic development aid since the end World War II. Between 1950 and 1970 alone, one source
estimated that Ethiopia received almost US$600 million in aid, $211.9 million
from the US, $100 million from the Soviet
Union and $121 million from the World Bank
not counting the assitance in kind it receivied from other countries
including Sweden. Indeed, the aid
from the West dried up under the military regime that followed the Ethiopian revolution, except for food aid
to combat the widely-known famine of the 1980s that killed hundreds of
thousands if not million of Ethiopians. The post-2000 period, however, has seen a resumption of large
disbursements of grants and loans from the United States, individual European
nations, and Japan,
and from the World Bank, the European
Union, and the African Development Bank that totaled
US$1.6 billion by 2001. Ethiopia was also a
beneficiary of the World Bank-IMF-sponsored debt reduction program for
highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) designed to reduce or eliminate
repayment of bilateral loans from wealthy countries and international lenders
such as the World Bank. Ethiopia rceived a noteworthy advance toward these
goals in 1999, when the successor states to the former Soviet Union,
including Russia,
cancelled US$5 billion in debt contracted by the Derg. However, this amount did not eliminate Ethiopia’s
external debt. It only reduced by half
leaving it with a balnce of US$5 billion.
On top of that, HIPC additional form the World Bank and IMF is
expected to total almost US$2 billion. Teketel Haile Mariam of Addis Tribune [October 2004] expressed
his economic woes saying: “Ethiopia had (and continues to have) a history of dependency on foreign assistance, whether that be in the form of food donations, military hardware, or loans for public investment. Although this history applies to all three recent successive regimes, non-military loans contracted by the current government over the last eleven years exceeded similar loans obtained over a span of about sixty years by the two prior regimes combined. And there had been negative correlation between the ever increasing loans and the levels of poverty. As loans increased, the per capita income (brute measure of the level of economic development) had stayed virtually unchanged, poverty had spread and deepened, and even by African standards, Ethiopia had lagged miserably and had become an example of most things wrong in that unfortunate continent, rather than being a symbol of freedom, unity, and prosperity.” Ethiopia’s economic malaise continues as is
reported by Economist Magazine of November 2007. “Despite almost a decade of well-intentioned development
policies, Ethiopians remain mired in the most wretched poverty.” Where then is the “growing economy and robust poverty reduction programs”
that Senator Feingold is talking about?
You know what? Give
Eritrea the money that was given to Ethiopia, with empowerment to spend it on
development as it pleases to see economic miracle happening. In conclusion, motivated by self-interest,
the United States has on several occasions allied with wrong countries or
leaders inflicting irreparable human, economic and social damage on the
parties it opted to damp. I hope, as
a US citizen with a stake in the outcome, that the US alliance with Ethiopia that
is being planned is not a repeat of past mistakes and failures of US policy.
|
The
content below this line is advertisement generated automatically and ertra.com
doesn't control or endorse the content in anyway.