Amnesia Redux?

Our friends at Redeem Ethiopia don’t blog often enough, but when they do… goodnight! The latest entry, The Lures of War, is the kind of succinct brilliancy this blog will one day dream of being when it grows up.

Redeem Ethiopia, preach it brother:

Most western policy makers are surely a lot more naïve than the Ethiopian populace when it comes to reading the motivation of Ethiopian leaders. For instance, it has still not sunk in for most US policy makers that to support Ethiopia in Meles’ provocative invasions of Somalia can only strengthen the Islamic court by giving it a lot more legitimacy than it could muster on its own.

In many ways the rarasissboombah war of Ato Meles’ Attention Deficit Disorder should remind us of the EPRDF’s sneer-y war drumming back in 1998 when Eritrea was enemy du jour- an entity that had to be destroyed because it was, all of a sudden, destroying the Ethiopian way of life. Never mind that for seven years (longer, actually, since Meles and Iyassas were AK47 slinging Marxists guerilla buddies) Eritrea and Ethiopia could not be any more of BFFs.

So, suddenly and conveniently (or maybe because the crazy pills run out), Ato Meles became vaywee vaywee worried about Ethiopia’s borders, mainly that there wasn’t one up north. (Yes, usually you don’t grant “independence” to a province without, what is it called… actually demarcating the damn territory, but that’s not how Ato Meles rolls.) Ethiopians were asked to have amnesia: uhh, were we dreaming the whole TPLF-EPLF reign that rendered non-TPLF Ethiopians second class citizens? We were? Okay. Let’s go kill us some Eris.

Apparently that strategy worked so well that fast forward to 2006 and people in the Somali region/Ogaden, long neglected and marginalized by Ato Meles, are going to be asked to die for the glory of Ethiopia.

The US’ policy regarding the Horn of Africa and the looming catastrophe in both Ethiopia and Somalia has been lazy and chaotic. Ambassador-in-waiting Donald Yamomoto keeps turning the “Ethiopia is a strategic partner in the war on terror” wheels even as the wheels are coming to a grinding halt with a piercing squeal. Mr. Yamomoto forgets, Ato Meles thought it was a perfectly acceptable policy to deport people “if we don’t like the color of their eyes.”

Rock on, Don.

Soon, the US will learn just how unreliable an ally Ato Meles can be. For seven sloth-ridden years, the TPLF tangoed with one of the worst totalitarian African leaders next to, well, Ato Meles. When the novelty run out Ato Meles happily sacrificed tens of thousands of Ethiopians in the name of territorial integrity which left Ethiopia without a port.

Seriously? Haven't we learnt to pick our friends (Saddam Hussien call your office) a little more carefully?

Then came the Algiers agreement—where Atos Meles and Issayas shook hands and played nice by signing a treaty. An independent Border Commission would decide the final demarcation of the Ethio-Eritrean border. Ato Meles didn’t bother to take Badme (the alleged trigger point of a two-year war) out of the negotiations because… just ‘coz. Ato Meles famously said that he would accept the Commission’s demarcation even if the line cut through Addis Abeba.

Well, we all know what’s happened since. Border demarcation is for pussies… apparently.

In the negotiations after the May 2005 elections Ato Meles always pulled his trump card whenever he couldn’t handle intellectual gravitas: his famed “psychopathic willingness to kill his own people to keep power.”

Ethiopundit has surmised that the Meles regime would resort to slave trading if it meant hanging on to power. It is our contention that if the tide turns and Ato Meles thinks aligning with the Islamic Courts would extend his stay, he is taking that deal. You think that’s hyperbole? His guerilla buddy in Eritrea is sending arms to the ICU. Now, Eritrea has a measurable Moslem population. Why in the world would it dip its toes in a cesspool of fundamentalism? Because, and we hope you are taking notes, Ato Meles’ counterpart has the kind of special crazy in his heart that cultish, sh0rt-sighted warmongers can only aspire to. Allegiances between totalitarians is a very fluid situation- the Mujahadeen, the war lords in Somalia. You would think the US remembers these kinds of details.

Both Meles and Issayas have gone as far as imprisoning and torturing people who had fought with them in their liberation wars. Their loyalty is to their egos, while the people they rule with an iron fist are mere pawns to be patted on the head before they are stationed in front of cannons.

If it means holding on to power, the EPRDF will resort to any measure. For God’s sake this is an administration that has compared the opposition to the Rwandan Interwame! Bubbly government spokesperson Bereket Simon, in defending the killing by government forces of unarmed protestors, has said,

“But, what was the alternative? Let's look at it. The alternative was strife
between the different nationalities of Ethiopia which might have made the Rwandan genocide look like childsplay. This was the alternative.”

(Emphasis added)

Before the amnesia sets again, let’s remember that Ato Meles has that easily, that callously used the deaths of a million slaughtered Africans as a cheap campaign ploy. Additionally, the unfinished war between Ato Meles’ and Ato Issayas’ restless testosterone is playing out as a proxy war in Somalia.

The bottom line is, only a democracy can counter fundamentalism. That’s why, we assume, 2,775 American boys and girls and over 600,000 Iraqis have given up their lives.

The US, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Sachs and all of Ato Meles’ enablers are in for a very rude awakening.

Until then, rock on.

…………………………….

Additional reading: Meles’ Sea of Lies

Aside: Tsegasaurus at Egoportal… do we need to send your picture to Ethan Zuckerman? Tell us you are alive.