EDITOR’S NOTE: This is yet another fake battle with malaria. It is to be remembered that before the Woyanne tribalist junta came to power in 1991, malaria had been effectively eradicated in Ethiopia. One of the first institutions Meles and his Woyanne gang had dismantled when they took power was the Ethiopian Malaria Prevention Center saying that each ethnic region should have its own Center. Of course all of the equipment and supplies from the dismantled Center in Addis Ababa were shipped to Tigray. What Health Minister Tewodros Adhanon and his Woyanne regime are currently doing is nothing more than a scheme to milk more money from donor countries.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (VOA) – Ethiopia is gearing up for an epic battle with malaria, possibly later this year. The stakes are high, with international aid agencies betting millions of dollars that the Horn of Africa’s largest country can wipe out a disease that kills at least a million Africans every year. VOA correspondent Peter Heinlein reports on Ethiopia’s unique chance of eradicating a killer disease.
The battle lines are drawn. The troops in this fight are equipped with life-saving medicines, diagnostic kits and protective gear. Health Minister Tewodros Adhanon says Ethiopia is on high alert for the next attack of malaria-carrying mosquitos. “We have deployed 30,000 health extension workers over the country, civil servants, high school graduates with one year certificate training out in the village to train and empower our communities,” he said.
Humad Ibrahim belongs to a nomadic tribe that roams Ethiopia’s remote Afar region. Now he’s also a health worker. Equipped with a cellphone, medicines and diagnostic kits, he is on the scene in the event of a malaria outbreak.
“We are not free of malaria,” Ibrahim said. “But it is better than it was before.”
Historically, a malaria epidemic hits Ethiopia every five to eight years. The last one, in 2003-and four, caught the country unaware. Millions contracted the disease. Nobody knows how many died.
Since then, aid agencies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent the next outbreak.
In a country with a doctor shortage and a mostly rural population, Ethiopia’s Health Minister, Twodros Adhanon, says bednets for all, and an army of village-level health workers are the cornerstones of the strategy to beat the disease.
“We have 10-million households in malarious areas, the target was to distribute 20-million, that’s two bed nets per household. A very ambitious target,” Adhanon reported.
Hospitals in the malaria zone are on alert, screening for signs of a surge in caseloads.
The US Agency for International Development believes Ethiopia has a unique opportunity to beat the disease because, unlike in most African countries, malaria is seasonal here. It hits hardest right after the rainy season, around September or October. USAID’S malaria program chief in Ethiopia Richard Reithinger says only time will tell.
“We’re basically due for another big epidemic year, and the big question is, are the number of cases that– we usually would see about 10-million cases in an epidemic year– is that number going to be lower, or is it going to be as high as before, as in 2003-2004,” Reithinger said.
Ethiopians believe they can control the next outbreak, and prove to skeptics that the huge sums being spent battling malaria can produce a decisive victory.
With another epidemic due, the battlefront is ready. Health workers are at their stations, confident of defeating one of the region’s biggest killers.
The U.S.-backed Global Fund for HIV, TB and malaria is betting they can. The fund has just approved another $290-million grant to the campaign.
WARS, GUNS, AND VOTES: Democracy in Dangerous Places
By Paul Collier
255 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers
Reviewd by Kenneth Roth
These days no self-respecting government wants to present itself on the world stage without the legitimacy of a democratic mantle. Elections are now de rigueur, even if many a despot rejects the idea of actually abiding by voter preferences. The result is an embrace of “democracy” by such authoritarian leaders as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. They all have used some combination of violence, fraud and repression to ensure that elections do not threaten their grasp on power.
They get away with this charade in part because the Western democracies that might be expected to demand the real thing have economic and strategic incentives to settle for farce. Rather than insist on the elements of democracy that make it meaningful — a free press, a vigorous civil society, the rule of law, a fair and transparent process for counting ballots — they close their eyes to electoral travesty.
It has long been an article of faith that these pseudodemocracies are inherently unstable. When citizens have no real opportunity to select their leaders, grievances fester, and violence may be close behind. But it is one thing to know of this phenomenon, quite another to prove it. In “Wars, Guns, and Votes,” Paul Collier has set out to bring empirical rigor to our intuitions.
A professor of economics at Oxford, Collier examines the governments of what, in an earlier book, he called the “bottom billion” — the world’s 58 most impoverished countries. He undertakes this daunting task by summarizing an array of sophisticated economic and social science research, all in a folksy, accessible style. For those who want statistical chapter and verse, he refers readers to his Web site.
Collier’s primary conclusion: democracy, in the superficial, election-focused form that tends to prevail in these countries, “has increased political violence instead of reducing it.” Without rules, traditions, and checks and balances to protect minorities, distribute resources fairly and subject officials to the law, these governments lack the accountability and legitimacy to discourage rebellion. The quest for power becomes a “life-and-death struggle” in which “the contestants are driven to extremes.”
Collier’s data show that before an election, warring parties may channel their antagonisms into politics, but that violence tends to flare up once the voting is over. What’s more, when elections are won by threats, bribery, fraud and bloodshed, such so-called democracies tend to promote bad governance, since the policies needed to retain power are quite different from those needed to serve the common good.
Ethnic identification in the multiethnic societies that predominate among the bottom billion is a particular impediment. Leaders have no incentive to perform well, Collier explains, if voters cast ballots according to ethnic loyalty rather than governmental competence. Nor should we be fooled into thinking that democracy is working just because voters turn out in large numbers. Where identity politics prevail, “voting is likely to be primarily expressive,” like “wearing a football scarf.” It doesn’t mean voters have faith that their ballots will lead to more effective government. Besides, because news organizations in these countries are weak and objective information scarce, citizens probably don’t even know how well or how badly their leaders are performing.
To flourish among the bottom billion, Collier says, democracy must “gradually erode ethnic identities and replace them with a national identity.” Economic development helps, but in societies riven by ethnic divisions, it can simply increase the stakes to be parceled out among the different groups. According to Collier, what is essentially needed are visionary leaders who can build identification with the nation as a whole.
The West’s mistaken fixation with elections, according to Collier, has mainly to do with lingering cold war habits. The Soviet dread of the ballot, he writes, “confused us into thinking that achieving a competitive election is in itself the key triumph. The reality is that rigging elections is not daunting: only the truly paranoid dictators avoid them.”
Still, electoral shortcomings in these countries do not mean we should give up on democracy altogether. It’s the cheap imitation that should give us pause. As Collier explains, “democracy is a force for good” as long as it is more than a “facade.”
Collier’s analysis is filled with interesting statistical tidbits. For example, coups tend to cost a country 7 percent of a year’s income — “not a cheap way of replacing a government,” he notes. And international aid, by sweetening the honey pot, increases the risk of a coup — by roughly a third when aid amounts to 4 percent of the gross domestic product of a recipient nation. Leakage from international development assistance finances some 40 percent of military budgets, yet military spending doesn’t necessarily bring peace. Quite the opposite. It can jeopardize peace by signaling to potential rebels that the government “is planning to turn nasty.”
But Collier’s news is not all bad. If democracy (in its limited form) tends to increase political violence in the poorest countries, the opposite occurs once per capita income reaches about $2,700. These wealthier voters apparently expect more responsive governments, and are prone to revolt if their expectations are dashed. Since China recently passed this income threshold, the statistics suggest that it risks increasing political violence unless it democratizes.
The weakest part of “War, Guns, and Votes” occurs when Collier turns prescriptive. At the most general level, his recommendations are unexceptionable: because electoral competition promotes antidemocratic practices if there is no other accountability, the governments of the bottom billion need help to be made more accountable. Yet Collier’s solution is questionable. He proposes that Western governments declare they will accept military coups if elections are not fair. This, he argues, would provide a powerful incentive for leaders to allow meaningful balloting. But legitimizing coups in this way also risks substantial bloodshed.
By contrast, if an elected leader follows agreed-upon rules, Collier wants the West to guarantee his government against overthrow. It should be pointed out that Collier does not support military interventions to stop mass atrocities — the killing in Darfur, for example — which he somewhat callously dismisses as “distracting fantasies.” But his suggestion that Western militaries might roam the world putting down coups, even if only against genuinely democratic leaders, seems dangerous and naïve. Collier suggests that interventions in small, less-developed countries would be relatively easy for a military trained for such exercises — “not another Iraq.” Recent experience would lead us to think otherwise.
Collier is better at responding to the objection that he is advocating interference in other nations’ internal affairs. Many of the governments of the bottom billion, made sensitive by their colonial heritages, reject any international pressure as an affront to their sovereignty. But as Collier points out, these governments typically do not really have national sovereignty, since they have yet to develop a national identity or national institutions. They have only “presidential sovereignty” — hardly the same thing, and hardly worth defending.
Whatever one’s feelings about Collier’s recommendations, there is no denying that he has made a substantial contribution to current discussions. His evidence-based approach is a worthwhile corrective to the assumptions about democracy that too often tend to dominate when Western policy makers talk about the bottom billion.
(Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch.)
PORTLAND, OREGON – Mahmoud Ibrahim Gilani, 32, of Portland, was sentenced today to 114 months in federal prison for an armed bank robbery that occurred in Portland on June 5, 2007. Gilani is a citizen of Ethiopia.
U.S. District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty imposed a mandatory seven-year (84-month) term for brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, and a consecutive 30-month term for the robbery, for a total of 114 months. Gilani has been in federal custody since the day of the robbery.
The robbery occurred at the Rose City Branch of Bank of America, located inside a Safeway store at 6901 NE Sandy Boulevard. Gilani pointed a pistol at tellers and customers, pulled back the gun’s slide, and demanded money. He received $6,903.00 in cash and fled from the building. Portland police officers apprehended Gilani driving alone in a car a short distance away. In a pants pocket they found a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, loaded with a round chambered. Investigation showed that Gilani had robbed the same bank on April 27, 2007.
Upon completion of the prison sentence, immigration authorities will determine whether he is allowed to remain in the United States.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen F. Peifer.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While over 15 million Ethiopians are going hungry, Woyanne-affiliated companies are doubling profits from exporting livestock.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia plans to more than double earnings from livestock exports to $85 million in 2009 by curbing illegal trade and opening new marketing centres, a government official said on Friday.
The Horn of Africa country sold 297,662 heads of livestock for $40 million in 2008 but hopes to raise this by exporting 429,244 livestock for $85 million this year, according to Berhe Igziabher, head of the Animal and Plant Health Regulatory Body.
“The country plans to transform the old and backward type of animal husbandry into a modern ranching system and export processed meat, hides and skin and other leather goods rather than live animals,” Berhe said.
Ethiopia has an estimated 41 million cattle, 25 million sheep, 23 million goats and 150,000 camels, but poor husbandry and contraband trade with neighbouring countries have kept the industry underdeveloped.
The country has also started programmes to check smuggling of animals through neighbouring Djibouti and Somalia.
“We know that Djibouti, a Red Sea state where animals could not thrive due to the country’s climatic conditions, has become a livestock exporter and we also know that 60 percent of livestock being exported by Somalia are those taken from Ethiopia through contraband trade,” Berhe said.
To curb the black market trade, the government has established markets in remote areas to cater for pastoralists in far flung areas such as Afar and Somali.
Berhe said the main thrust of Ethiopia’s livestock development policy would not centre on live animal exports alone.
The government has established a new institution — Ethiopian Meat and Dairy Technology Institute — whose mandate is to enhance modern dairy farming and improve the stock and quality of cattle in the country, he said.
The body will also help pastoralists protect their livestock against the vagaries of climate change by providing feeds and water and veterinary medicine in each districts, he said.
The country’s leather sector earned $103 million last year and plans to take $190 million from leather exports in 2009, according to the Ethiopian Leather Industries Association.
J.Crew Catalog’s April 2009 issue features Ethiopian supermodel {www:Liya Kebede}. The catalog has arrived in many of its stores this week.
Liya earlier this month took Paris Fashion Week by storm — and landed opening Balenciaga spot — and now she’s owning in another area. She’s becoming the first model to be the exclusive face of a J.Crew catalog, and the retailer is picking up pieces from her handmade children’s clothing line, Lemlem, to sell in stores and online as part of their children’s Crewcuts line starting in April.
When J.Crew creative director Jenna Lyons and team met supermodel, mother of two, and International Goodwill Ambassador Liya Kebede, a relationship was born. Lyons approached Kebede to appear in the April catalog, but both quickly realized their relationship needn’t end there. The product of their partnership? Not only will Kebede be the first model to be the exclusive face of a J.Crew catalog, but J.Crew’s Crewcuts line will pick up pieces from the model’s handmade children’s clothing line, Lemlem. Lemlem (the name means “to bloom”) was launched by Kebede in 2007, with all of the pieces made by hand from natural cotton in her native Ethiopia. The line will be available at Crewcuts store locations and at jcrew.com beginning in April. – Fashion Week Daily
The town of Wardheer was burned down by Meles Zenawi’s troops. In this satellite image of the town of Wardheer, Ethiopia, from Dec. 30, 2007, yellow dots indicate structures that were burned down or destroyed. Source: AAAS
OGADEN, ETHIOPIA – An Ogaden Online News reporter stationed in Doolo province has confirmed that the head of the {www:Woyanne} militia stationed in Wardheer was killed in the battle of Afyaraado. Afyaraado is about six kilometers from Wardheer. The dead Woyanne militia head was a man named Colonel Manos (Sp?). Also killed in the same battle was the head of the conscripted Somali militias nicknamed ‘Wadna Qabad.’
In related news, a local militia numbering 430 under the command of Woyanne officers left the town of Dhanaan and redeployed in Godey. Eyewitnesses indicated that the reason for the redeployment was due to fear by the Woyanne regime that this militia was either going to be overrun by the Ogaden National Liberation Army (ONLA), or that many were preparing to desert.
Reports reaching the Ogaden Online News indicate that ONLA commandos have successfully penetrated a major militia garrison that bordered the Jees Guuleed homes in the city of Dhagax Buur. A fierce firefight ensued and lasted a couple of hours. It was reported that the ONLA commandos confused the Woyane militias by attacking them from four different directions from within the garrison.
This has caused the Woyane militia members to fire indiscriminately in all directions. All ONLA commandos left the garrison unharmed. The fighting left about 25 Woyanne militia members dead.
Due to the increasing success of the ONLA, it is reported that both the so-called head of the local administration and that of the ‘security affairs’ were both summoned to go to Wardheer. Wardheer is the city that came under the most intense ONLA attacks. It is also the city that is most feared to fall for the ONLA at any moment.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (VOA) – Ethiopia is gearing up for an epic battle with malaria, possibly later this year. The stakes are high, with international aid agencies betting millions of dollars that the Horn of Africa’s largest country can wipe out a disease that kills at least a million Africans every year. VOA correspondent Peter Heinlein reports on Ethiopia’s unique chance of eradicating a killer disease.
These days no self-respecting government wants to present itself on the world stage without the legitimacy of a democratic mantle. Elections are now de rigueur, even if many a despot rejects the idea of actually abiding by voter preferences. The result is an embrace of “democracy” by such authoritarian leaders as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. They all have used some combination of violence, fraud and repression to ensure that elections do not threaten their grasp on power.
PORTLAND, OREGON – Mahmoud Ibrahim Gilani, 32, of Portland, was sentenced today to 114 months in federal prison for an armed bank robbery that occurred in Portland on June 5, 2007. Gilani is a citizen of Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia plans to more than double earnings from livestock exports to $85 million in 2009 by curbing illegal trade and opening new marketing centres, a government official said on Friday.
J.Crew Catalog’s April 2009 issue features Ethiopian supermodel {www:Liya Kebede}. The catalog has arrived in many of its stores this week.