Addis Ababa – Meles Zenawi’s dictatorship in Ethiopia is to bolster its defence budget by $50-million (about 450 million birr) “for stability reasons” amid tension in the Horn of Africa region, according to a draft budget presented to parliament Tuesday by Finance Minister Sufian Ahmed.
“The defence budget for the next fiscal year (beginning in July) will be raised to four billion birr ($400-million) up from 3.5-billion ($350-million) last year,” Sufian said. “We believe that this amount is proportional.”
The budget is to be approved by the end of the month.
The Meles dictatorship is involved in a tense standoff with Eritrea over a border row that has remained unresolved despite the signing of a peace deal that ended their two-year war in 2000.
Its troops are also battling insurgents in Somalia after entering in late 2006 to bolster Somalia’s beleaguered transitional government, in a move supported by the United States.
“We have raised the amount for stability reasons as we are based in the Horn of Africa region,” the finance minister said. “We can only sustain economic development when there is stability in our region.”
– IOL
8 thoughts on “Ethiopia military budget increased by $50 million”
How many mouths could feed 450,000 bir? It is a shame that some people including children are dying because of hunger!
I don’t what we have to do
in one side they talk about the shortage of food, in the other side they want to spend $ 50 million. That’s crazy
we hate you Wayane
Let millions of Ethiopians raise a united arms and crush the murderers, the invaders, and the looters. when the tplfwoyane enemies came into Ethiopia, they had nothing in their pockets but had a lot of guns and bullets to kill and loot millions of Ethiopians.
like they built giant sillos to store looted grains, they built giant military warehouses to store guns and bullets to murder Ethiopians.
They don’t have enough food for the starved children, but they have millions of bulletes to kill Ethiopians.
Today is 2008. A year the cursed and sinful robbers brought omen to millions of Ethiopians. Since the time they collaborated with foreign enemies, and passed on lots of the nations’ secrets for weapons and monetory aid, they continued to harm millions and diminish the form and content of Ethipia until nothing is left but tears droplets on the faces of millions of Ethiopians.
but and for sure, these robbers shall be catured dead or alive and face the millions justice tantamount ot their accumelated gross sins and outrageous crimes committed agains millions of Ethiopians.
Having came out of their hide-outs, these robbers, they had what they had:guns and bullets;nothingelse.Today, they are the wealthiest and Ethiopia most wanted criminals. Of course, they will be captured alive or dead by the help of millions of Ethiopians. Amen.
good news. so what Elias? You know this is to fire a missile at Berhanue’s armed men. You should not get surprised
It is so shameful for the elite and oppressive rulers of Ethiopia to point their own disastrous, degrading and scandalous political failure to Eritrea. It was their miscalculations and costly military adventurism during Haileselassie and Menghistu’s Derg in Eritrea, had consumed them hundred thousands of poor Ethiopian army personals and Billons of Dollars buried in the sand.
The minority and apartheid TPLF regime had also inherited his forefathers military adventurism in a far and sophisticated term and instead develop Ethiopia and feed its hungry people (Innocent children, women, men), it had tried to reinvade Eritrea, went to Somalia on the order of America and cause the massive destruction of Somalia and Ogaden (parts of Ethiopia). The tribal TPLF regime cause massive destruction in Ethiopia in paticular and in the Horn of Africa in general. It commits barbaric crime in Ethiopia and Somalia killing uncounted innocent civilians. History is repeating just on our age again. How much the TPLF for the destructive arms spree spends, it will for sure burn and buried as it’s predecessors.
Had the Ethiopian Elites (Rulers) avoid the military adventurism in Eritrea and later in Somalia, no Ethiopian Children in particular and Ethiopian people in general were went empty belly in the bed. Ethiopia were, with its enormous resources, better off with infrastructure, health centres, education institutions and many more. Ethiopia were fed itself and the whole Horn of Africa. But, what we see thanks to the corrupt rulers Ethiopia is in contrary. Ethiopia is economically, financially and at worst food items totally dependent on outsiders handout since almost centuries. It is not new and never be changed unless the brave Ethiopians come to their rational terms together, work hard in self-reliance, get rid the beggar mentality and reclaim their dignity and respect. Please, do not blame Eritrea for that Eritrea has not evil intention on the Ethiopians. As an Eritrean, I am very sorry to see hungry, crying and ill treated Ethiopian children every evening in western commercial net works (TV). The proud people of Ethiopia deserve much more better. It is very sad.
Additional budget for defense in the face of wide spread starvation?Preposterous indeed!The regime never learns from its mistakes.
Friendship brings stability where as the increase of defense-budgetary creates hostility and plunges millions of Ethiopians into the sea of poverty.
The reason given for the military budget increase is that Ethiopia is in the Horn of Africa surrounded by hostile neighbors, Somalia, Sudan, and Eritrea, so in order to bring stability to the region, Ethiopia must have a well-paid, well-fed, and well-trained army to keep stability in the region. This is the reasoning of the Finance Minister Sufian Ahmed in raising the military budget by $50 million for the fiscal year of 2009.
However, building a big army, and yet ignoring the infrastructure of the country, does not bring stability, security and final peace to the region. If Ethiopia boosts its military hardware, so does Sudan, so does Eritrea or Somalia. Therefore, military-buildup alone gives no stability to the Horn of Africa; in fact, it creates hostility, suspicion, untruthfulness, and unfriendliness among neighboring countries, which means, if Ethiopia is building up its military, the neighboring countries will do the same thing, so the more Ethiopia builds up its military might, the more backward its infrastructure becomes because the money that is supposed to be used for building roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, irrigation has been wasted for training soldiers and for buying more weapons and more military equipments.
What creates stability, to me, is not the military buildup but the absence of it and the economic opportunity that a country provides to all its citizens. When people are satisfied with their lives, when they are free to express themselves, and when they are allowed to determine what is good or bad for them, then there will be a lasting stability in the country. Otherwise, if people go hungry and are not fed, when they get sick and are not treated, then they will rise up against their government and destabilize their country.
When Meles Zenawi increases the budget for his army, ignoring the 8 million Ethiopians who are struggling with hunger and disease, he is thinking that if he has a strong army he will stay longer in power, and the hungry Ethiopians have no strength to bring him down from his power. He is totally wrong; it is the hungry Romanians who brought down their leader, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena; it was the hungry Russians that humiliated and killed their last Tsar, Nicholas II of Russia, and it was the hungry French mob that executed Louis XVI. In the same way, one day, the hungry Ethiopians will rise up against Dictator Meles and bring him down and execute him and his wife for the delight of the democracy-loving country.
This time, if Meles goes to war with Eritrea for Badme – a barren land, the Ethiopian people will abandon him and never send their boys and girls for that war. They will ignore him as they ignored Mengistu Haile Mariam from fighting on his side against the Meles gangsters. None of them raised his/her hands against the Meles invasion, because they were confused by the Meles propaganda, and they were frightened of Mengistu’s “Red Terror.” They gladly opened their doors and accepted Meles the invader, the cheater, the traitor, and the criminal. They never thought he would be more oppressive than Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Of course, if Meles goes to war with Sudan to restore those territories he has sold to Sudan out of his bad judgment, the Ethiopian people will support him in order to regain their territories; however, knowing the hearts of the Ethiopian people, he will never go to war with Eritrea even if Eritrea takes Badme by invading it because Meles knows the Ethiopian people will not support him. He may though, as a well-known cheater, try to deceive the Ethiopian people by telling them that he has to go to war with Eritrea to bring back one of Eretria’s sea ports and then fights for Badme. I hope the Ethiopian people will never believe him and let the Tigray people fight for him to keep Badme as his own.
We, the diaspora people, in our part, must work hard to dissuade the Ethiopians not to send their sons and daughters to any war initiated by Meles Zenawi; let him and the Tigray people fight the war for him. When the appropriate time comes, we will declare war against Meles and his hiding place – Tigray- and we will bring back all the Ethiopian treasures he has stolen and hid them in the Tigray province.
Meles well knows why some of his armies are defecting because many of them have been unsatisfied with the little money they get for their sacrifices, so Meles wants to pay his army a high salary, thinking all of his army will stay in their jobs. Those who have defected may not have defected for less pay but for the injustices Meles Zenawi has committed on the Oromo, the Amhara, and the Ogaden people. Any way, Meles has increased his defense budget by $50 million on the expense of the poor and the hungry Ethiopians.
Meles may be transferring $50 million from the donated money because everything in Ethiopian is run by the donated money, and the West continues to send money in the name of the hungry and the sick Ethiopian children. Once Meles gets the money, he calls his finance minister and orders him/her to go to the Black-Market and purchase several sophisticated weapons and transport the weapons secretly to their hiding place in Tigray region to use them later when he wages war with the rest of the Ethiopian people.
When the donated money is near to an end, Meles prevents any food assistance from going to certain regions in Ethiopia and let the people of that region starve to death; then he announces that 10-11 million Ethiopians are dying of hunger, and he wants over $100 million to feed these hungry Ethiopians. As usual, the West believes him and sends him the money he has requested. With such techniques and deception unknown to the West, Meles will continue to deceive the whole world, and by such deception of his that never seen before, no one dares to bring him down from his power, but one day if the West wakes up and finds out his shenanigan and his human rights violation, the whole world will condemn him to death. Then the Tigray people will join the rest of the Ethiopians and rejoice for many days until another dictator takes Ethiopia in the name of democracy or something else, but I doubt there will be another dictator in Ethiopia because the Ethiopians, by now must know what it looks like to be under a dictatorship or monarchy; they have seen them all and can witness which type of government is suitable for them.
After having seen and examined the seriousness of the famine and the diseases in Ethiopia, I hope the Ethiopian Parliament will reject the $50 million budget for defense and instead appropriate it for hunger and disease prevention; if the Parliament has a gut, it will do it the way I have proposed; if not, then Melees gets what he wants and uses some of the money for the defense and some of it for his children’s education.
not too much to keep the country from enemy. may be if they need my cooperation i will offer on above of it. first safety, to talk of on a country the country should be in peaceful condition.just if we think we are loosing then we will realize when we are out of game. remember our land has a big history that our fathers has kept. though i had no clear information u hate the party,but don’t compromise on the safety of your country.