"I'm in the Mood.... for War..."

Fellow sociopath guerilla fighters turned knighted “enlightened African leaders”, and two generally los loco compadres had a good thing going: for the better part of the past few weeks they had the UN and especially Secretary General Kofi Annan twittering about nervously like a blonde who's running out of lipstick. Anan was paniky about an impending war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The press went along with the frenzy, and so we were subjected to saber rattling that often sounded like the vapid posturing of two malcontent schoolboys.

The plan was to get the world to divert its attention from Ato Issayas “not so” Afewerqi and Ato Meles Zenawi’s mounting domestic problems. PM Meles, of course, is in the last throes of his reign and has decided the best way to leave his mark on Mother Earth is by getting completely unhinged and blanketing the land with terror. His counterpart up north… well, he’s long been ticking the wrong way for a while now. Pick a neurosis he's had a double dose of it.

So the world bought it. (Well, not all the world. Just those who wanted to buy it, and those who needed to buy it. Ethiopundit does his thang in “Rumors of War.") Some fretted what a new war would mean. Conjecture was rampant about how Ethiopians and Eritreans would rally behind their leaders out of nationalism and bury the hatchet until the time was ripe to dig up the hatchet and bury it in the backs of Atos Meles and Issayas.

The western world would be obligated to get off Ato Meles’ back about this whole democracy-gone-haywire thing, which also serves as a great relief for PM Meles’ donor nations, who have been increasingly embarrassed by their Golden Boy’s killing spree. They, too, wanted a little distraction.

And until Friday everything was working according to plan.

But like the world-class boobs that they are, Ato Meles and his buddy could not leave a good thing alone. They just had to up the crazy one more notch and the whole deck of cards came tumbling down.

Eritrea has condemned neighbouring Ethiopia for "bloody suppression and
atrocities" during a recent crackdown on unrest which left more than 40 dead and
stirred fears of instability in the region's dominant power.

Awww.

A statement from Eritrea's Information Ministry also lambasted Ethiopian Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi for "farcical" recent elections where he won another
five-year term.

You see what I mean? After all the hard sell on a war of convenience, they just had to fan the flames a little too earnestly, and now it’s all gone.

In a statement sure to sting Meles, Eritrea said his government was to blame for
fanning tensions that led to the recent bloody confrontations in Addis Ababa
between police and crowds protesting against a May poll the opposition says was
fraudulent.

And a quote? You got yourself a crazy ass quote to seal the deal?

"The recent elections had only been a farcical drama acted by the TPLF regime
for gaining more time," said the editorial on the [Eritrean] Information
Ministry's Web site …

Yes, they have a Ministry of Information, too.

"So we don't find it strange in the ethical code of the regime the acts of
stealing, perjury and falsification of the people's will and attempting to
silence the peaceful opposition by the barrels of the guns.

Oh, boys. You were just so close. So close.

It had probably taken Ato Issayas and Ato Meles months to hatch up this plan. They propably had to work through surrogates ; they probably had to use code words… “Operation What the Hell Do We Do?”… all for naught. Making it look like you are perpetually on the brink of war is a lot of work.

Well, maybe people were just not buying it, or maybe the world did not come buckling to its knees fast enough to “prevent another senseless war”, or just maybe the domestic front was not abating like it was supposed to, but the “enlightened Africans” thought ‘twas time to engage in a juvenile verbal back and forth.

Let’s guess what’ll happen next… Ato Meles will say something equally creepy back, and then Ato Issayas will volley back a “nee’ner nee’ner” rejoinder, and then Ato Meles will pretend he is offended and then Ato Isayas will pretend he is more offended, and then… another round of “Tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea is at an all time high. Annan says he is “highly anxious” about another war….” Blah, blah, blah.

We get it, boys. We get it. Except now the whole world gets it and you both look like madmen who think nothing of using war as a cheap PR stunt. If you ever needed proof that these two are working together on this cockmamie scheme, then this is it, because we know Isu is a few marbles short of a bag, but he ain’t that stupid.

Now you have to go back to the board and find another way to scare us. Bad boys! Bad, bad boys.

Now, the pernicious part two of this story on the part of Ato Meles is to whip up the frenzy about how the “chauvinists” do not care if the country is being invaded by the godless Shabia, therefore leaving the north to languish at the hands of the enemy. Tribalists will promptly be up in arms about the negtegNas yadda yadda… and maybe Professor Sachs will find another revanchist era to zero in on. We know the drill.

Nice try, boys.

Meanwhile, finally, finally, supporters of the EPRDF in the Diaspora are a comin’ out to be heard in a rally at the State Department tomorrow to voice their displeasure at the way VOA is covering events in Ethiopia, and to, um, “encourage the Government of Ethiopia to further intensify its efforts in the democratization process…”

Intensify its democratization process? So that’s what the Ethiopian government has been up to these past five months. To think some of us thought it was on a... what’s that thing called when you aim a gun at an unarmed person and shoot… no… wait… it’ll come to me…

And then Tuesday will be another rally, also at the State Department by another segment of the Diaspora that will be asking the Ethiopian government to... stop its brand of “intensifying democratization in Ethiopia.”

I have a feeling that if Ato Meles intensifies any more democracy on us we might end up over-democratized. Just like the UK. And Canada. And Germany.