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A Week in the Horn 20.4.2009 |
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This is all to the good. Assuming that words can be matched by action, there is a lot that can and should be done to stem the tide of the scourge of piracy. Equally, it is necessary to put things in perspective. No matter what the international community or the Somali International Contact Group does on piracy, the real problem remains on land, and here virtually no steps have yet been taken. The major issue now is the need to strengthen the position of the government, of the TFG. The TFG itself is under heavy pressure to broaden its support base. In fact, the demand is to bring on board everyone including those who actually oppose the very existence of the TFG. This is one major problem currently facing the TFG. Unless the Government, as it is, is taken seriously by the opposition (and indeed by the international community), and unless confidence can be created within the country in the ability of the Government to provide security for the average Somali, the Government will not be able to ensure peace and stability. It will not be able to carry out the calls for national reconciliation despite the widespread support for this. As we have said before, the paramount issue in fact is the need to provide necessary resources for the TFG to operate successfully. Internal clan dynamics and the role of extremists is one side of the equation. Another is the sustained effort of some external actors to derail the Somali peace process. It is an open secret that Eritrea arms and trains extremist and terrorist elements in Somalia and has consistently opposed all efforts towards a peaceful transition in Somalia over the last few years. It even recently declared official support for attacks on the Transitional Federal Government as well as on AMISOM peace-keeping forces. This underlines the fact that to make any progress towards peace in Somalia it is necessary to take action against those who have made it their business to try to scuttle Somalia’s peace processes. Without strong action against spoilers such as Eritrea, no lasting solution to Somalia’s problems can succeed. Interestingly, Congressman Donald Payne, a strong supporter of Eritrea, on a brief visit to Mogadishu this week, praised the new government for the progress it has shown. He said he was confident that the international community will now do more to see the government gets the resources it needs to stand on its feet and maintain a functioning authority. The Congressman seems unaware that such a position can only be realized if there is sufficient pressure on Eritrea to stop involvement with Somali opposition groups. An end to Eritrean support for the opponents of the TFG would actually be one of the best possible aids to the TFG. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Somalia’s President Sheikh Sharif was visiting Turkey and is going on to the Donors’ conference in Brussels, where he will be looking for real international support and assistance for his government. The Donors must provide for reasonably effective levels of support for the TFG, for its resources and for capacity building. His Prime Minister, Omar Ali Shermarke, and Sharif Hassan, the deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, were in Addis Ababa over the weekend, holding talks with high level Ethiopian officials. It was the Prime Minister’s first visit to Adds Ababa since he was appointed in February. ***************
At the closing ceremony of the 120th Session of the Assembly, representatives from all areas and political groups extended their thanks to the people and government of the host country for organizing such a successful Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting. One of those who spoke was Mr. John Austin, head of the British Parliamentary Delegation. He particularly commended the commitment of the Ethiopian Government and its people to the development of the country, and applauded the achievements visible in various development endeavors. He thought developed countries should recognize, appreciate and support “these encouraging efforts.” On Monday, Ethiopia’s Speakers of the House of Federation, Ato Degifie Bula, and of the House of Peoples’ Representatives, Ambassador Teshome Toga, gave a Press Conference to express their satisfaction at the success of the 120th Assembly over which Ambassador Teshome had been chosen to preside. The Speakers noted the Assembly had allowed IPU members to see Ethiopia’s ongoing development efforts and the current process of democratization. Participants had been able to carry away a positive image of Ethiopia and many had promised to exert efforts to promote investment opportunities in Ethiopia. There was general support for the setting up of national parliament friendship societies to allow for relations with the Ethiopian parliament and other members of the IPU to continue and strengthen. **************
Eritrea’s apparent contempt for the United Nations, and for all its efforts to mediate, has also been visible in the current problem that Eritrea instigated last June when its troops crossed the Djibouti border. Eritrea has since then ignored a series of UN Security Council Resolutions for it to pull back to the status quo ante. Djibouti has done so. Eritrea, exactly as it did in 1998 with Ethiopia, claims it cannot withdraw from its own territory. This, of course, is automatically attempting to pre-empt any investigation of Eritrean claims. Eritrea has also refused to allow any UN or other fact-finding teams into Eritrea to investigate the situation along the border, or its claims. The UN, the League of Arab States, and the African Union, have all attempted to look into the dispute. Eritrea’s actions can only be described as outrageous. They are highly dangerous for regional security. They simply cannot be ignored. The only way to resolve such issues is to deal with them and find solutions, not to appease the aggressor. As we noted last week, it is deeply disappointing, and indeed highly dangerous to the credibility of the UN, that the Security Council appears unable to respond decisively towards Eritrea’s repeated defiance of Security Council Resolutions and UN demands. The Council, or at least some of its members, is apparently prepared to tolerate a regime which has carried out aggression against all of its neighbors, without exception, and calls for attacks on the internationally recognized Government in Somalia, and which repeatedly makes a fool of the UN itself. It has even publicly encouraged attacks against AMISOM, an UN-mandated AU force in Somalia. This is a stance which by any standards amounts to reckless defiance of international norms and decisions. Eritrea has shown no sign of changing its policies. It persistently demands that everyone else should march in step with Eritrea; it is always the rest of the world which is wrong, not Eritrea. Despite its intransigence, in recent weeks there has been something of a coordinated campaign to try and push the new US administration into mending fences with Eritrea, though some of Eritrea’s supporters, notably Congressman Donald Payne, have been working on this rather longer. It is this indeed which seems to have had some effect in the UN Security Council. There have been two elements in this. One is to try to minimize the positions and actions of a government whose poor record on human rights is actually unequalled in Africa, perhaps in the world, and which has among other things been holding local staff members of the US Embassy in Asmara without trial or charge for several years. Political prisoners held without charge and incommunicado since 2001 include some of the most senior members of Eritrea’s leadership after the President. Eritrea’s record of aggression, against all its neighbours, is unequalled in the region. The other aspect of this approach is to denigrate Ethiopia, repeating Eritrean propaganda against Ethiopia, notably the Eritrean claim that its regional aggressions have been caused by ‘frustration’ over Ethiopia’s failure to accept the Boundary Commission’s Decisions of April 2002.. There are two things wrong with this claim. The briefest knowledge of events in the region would underline that Eritrean aggression against Sudan, Yemen and Djibouti pre-dated its invasion of Ethiopia in 1998. None of these can possibly be blamed on Ethiopia. Secondly, Ethiopia, as it has repeatedly made clear, fully accepted the Boundary Commission Decisions in November 2004. These fallacies underlie the sort of attitude which precluded any resolute action against Eritrea by the UN Security Council despite the humiliating and dangerous treatment of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the point-blank refusal to respond at all to a series of UN Security Council Resolutions. As so often in such circumstances, Eritrea has taken the refusal to act as a green light for continued destabilizing activities. The double standard involved poses the possibility, even the probability, of exceptional danger for the Horn of Africa, and for international peace and security. Resolution of disputes can only have any reality if they are based on accuracy and reason. There is little evidence of this in these recent attempts to re-write the realities of the region, and one example of this has been the recent Newsweek article on which we comment below. It is the responsibility of all the parties in conflict to address their disputes through direct discussion and dialogue. This must be accepted as a matter of principle and in the interest of regional as well as international peace and security that conflicts and disputes between two parties should first of all be addressed by the parties themselves. They are the ones directly involved, and therefore it is only they who can have the responsibility for a sustainable resolution and a successful agreement. **************
Mr. Tepperman talks of rigged elections, the banning of independent human rights groups, a draconian press law and a Government refusal of an investigation into the Ogaden region. What Mr. Tepperman offers by way of evidence is, of course, mere allegation. These are allegations we have been used to hearing, but mere repetition does not make them any more plausible. No one necessarily expects an article to be fair, just accurate. In previous book reviews and articles, Mr. Tepperman has often tried to appear balanced. In this case, he has most emphatically not succeeded. Indeed, it would appear he has not even bothered to try. Mr. Tepperman has been both sweeping in his judgments of Ethiopia’s Government and its actions. This has resulted in serious errors one of which is the characterization of the religious standing of the country. He is still apparently thinking of Ethiopia in medieval religious terms. What does it take to convince the likes of Mr. Tepperman that this is one of the areas in which Ethiopia has undergone radical transformation? Mr. Tepperman’s central idea appears to be that Washington isn’t getting what it’s paid for from Ethiopia. There is an underlying assumption here is all too obvious. For him, Ethiopia is America’s errand boy whose services the latter can buy at will. The flip side of such an assumption is also obvious: Ethiopia does not have an agenda of its own and every move it makes should always be interpreted only in terms of American interests. Ethiopia’s own interests are thus relegated to secondary status. If Ethiopia embraces democracy, then it must have done so in order to win the respect of the United States; it holds elections because that is America’s wish; it went to Somalia to do America’s bidding; the Ethiopian army is the Pentagon’s territorial appendage in the Horn of Africa. Mr. Tepperman yet again repeats the completely unsupported allegation, steadily and consistently denied by both countries, that Ethiopia went into Somalia in December 2006 at the US behest. It didn’t. Ethiopia did have genuine security concerns of its own when it intervened in Somalia. Some years ago, Mr. Tepperman felt American liberals should be castigated for failing to support US intervention in Iraq. It is surprising he now finds it difficult to understand Ethiopia’s move into Somalia. Mr. Tepperman suggests that Ethiopia failed in Somalia with only a “few high-ranking terrorists…eliminated”, though, oddly, he does quote Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister who has pointed out that Ethiopia ‘shattered’ the terrorist elements of Al-Shabaab in Somalia. This largely achieved Ethiopia’s original aim, to break the growing threat of terrorism. In the operations in December 2006 and on a number of subsequent occasions Al-Shabaab, the largest extremist organization, lost hundreds of fighters killed and captured, many from abroad. Al-Shabaab, incidentally, did not just appear in 2007 as a response to Ethiopia’s presence. It was founded originally as a hit squad to kill moderate Somali politicians at least two years earlier by Sheikh Hassan Dahir “Aweys” as part of his efforts to take power in Mogadishu. Mr. Tepperman is clearly very free with figures as long as they help to buttress his case. He claims Ethiopia had “a cool billion in 2008’ in US aid. We should be so lucky. The briefest investigation of US aid to Ethiopia would note that Ethiopia got less than half that amount in 2007 and again in 2008; and for the third year running well under 500 million was requested this year. It might be added that approximately three quarters of all this assistance was provided under the Global HIV/AIDS Initiative. And despite all allegations of unlimited US military support for Ethiopia, or the comments of some Congressmen, the US military, counter-terrorist, and security assistance to Ethiopia amounted to no more than 1.2% of the total aid provided in 2007 ($US5.9 m.), 0.6% of the estimates for 2008 (US$2.9 m.) and 2.0% (US$9.9m.) of the amount requested this year. Mr. Tepperman ‘argument’ appears to be that as a result of Ethiopia’s supposed failure in Somalia, Washington should insist on greater democratization in Ethiopia. Even more bizarrely, he then adds that this should be accompanied by reconciliation with Eritrea. A number of points should be raised here. Ethiopia’s democratization process by any rational standards must be a significant achievement. Nor is democratization a project that Ethiopia embarked upon to please the United States. We owe it to our people first and foremost. Second, Mr. Tepperman repeats the Eritrean claim that all problematic Eritrean actions are to be explained by frustration over Ethiopia’s refusal to demarcate the border. As he well knows, Ethiopia agreed to demarcate and normalize relations five years ago. It has been Eritrea which has consistently refused to take any steps in this direction since then. And it shouldn’t really be necessary to point out Eritrea’s aggressive regional activity started long before it invaded Ethiopia in 1998. It went to war with Yemen, crossed the Djibouti border for the first time in 1995/96, and moved into Sudan in 1994. The timing of Mr. Tepperman’s article raises a question here. It is not the first time so-called pundits in the US in particular have sought solutions to the Somali problem in the wrong place. One has to wonder whether this is coincidence or is there a pattern to be seen in the statements of ‘experts’ and Congressmen, or in the articles of journalists. It does look as if Mr. Tepperman and others are still prepared to swallow President Issayas’ enduring mantra that the source of every problem lies hidden along the Ethiopia-Eritrea borders. One could go on at considerable length. Newsweek’s editorial staff and fact-checkers should surely have noticed just how much of Mr. Tepperman’s assertions are at odds with the facts. Of course, Mr. Tepperman has every right to believe that Washington should demand more from its relationship with Ethiopia, though the core of the relationship, as of any other US relationships, should surely be for the mutual benefit of both parties. Ethiopia hopes the US would actually regard the relationship in a rather more nuanced way, and, one might add, over a rather longer time frame than “the days after 9/11”. Indeed, Ethiopia and the US have actually had a constructive relationship for over a century. |
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Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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