EDITOR’S NOTE: Stanford University grad Alex Martinez concludes after visiting Ethiopia and working with USAID for over a month that Ethiopia, a country that has never been colonized, is now a colony of foreign aid. The architect of such colonization is the TPLF junta and its former leader, the late dictator Meles Zenawi, who was the darling of Ambassador Susan Rice and other Western diplomats who shamelessly tried to glorify the beggar dictator as a brilliant African leader. Even though we cannot blame foreign aid for all the ills in Ethiopia, it has played a major role in extending the life of one of the most brutal and corrupt dictators in the world.

Inside and outside the American embassy compound in Ethiopia: my summer at USAID

By Alex Martinez

From the outside, the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, looks just like you would imagine. A high wall surrounds the complex and a series of gates and barriers mark the main entrance. All that’s visible behind the fortifications are the top few floors of a plain, government-style building. Outside, teenage boys herd groups of sheep through the streets towards the informal livestock markets in the center of town. Blue minibuses – carrying twice as many passengers as seats – pass by in all directions, weaving their way around the sheep. A few salesmen push handcarts laden with soaps, candy, cigarettes and SIM cards through the street, avoiding both the sheep and the minibuses as they go.

Inside the embassy, it’s easy to forget this is Ethiopia.

In addition to the main offices, there’s a smaller building that houses the embassy commissary, which is stocked with all the staples of an American diet (ketchup, sugary peanut butter, Gatorade and the like). A paved running path winds its way around the complex, weaving between basketball and tennis courts. There’s even an outdoor pool house where embassy employees can swim laps or just lounge, watch American television on flat screen TVs, and use the pool WiFi – assuming it’s working. Not even the American Embassy is immune to the constant blackouts that characterize Ethiopa’s state-run internet network.
All American employees of the embassy live in similar gated compounds (minus the swimming pools and tennis courts, of course). In theory, a U.S. government employee stationed in Ethiopia could spend their entire tour of duty – only two years, because Ethiopia is considered a “hardship” post – without ever stepping outside of a gated compound or a Land Cruiser.
Just over one month ago, I arrived in Addis Ababa to intern with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as part of the Stanford in Government Stipends Program. One month is really not enough time to fully experience Addis Ababa, and certainly not enough time to fully experience Ethiopia or the field of international development. However, my time as an intern has allowed a glimpse into all three.

Since the beginning of my internship, it has been my mission to try to get a sense of what drives people to live and work overseas, and to figure out if I could make a career in international development. I’ve met and talked with quite a few Americans from USAID and other development agencies, but most don’t really want to talk about their work. Inevitably, our conversations drift towards how difficult it is to live in Addis Ababa.

Complaining – about blackouts, the long rainy season, the complete lack of traffic regulation in Addis Ababa and the poor service at restaurants and hotels – makes for easier conversation than intellectual forays into the role of foreign aid in Ethiopia’s development. If I ask how they feel about suggestions that foreign aid is be doing Ethiopia more harm than good, most expatriates tend to get suspicious, even the young professionals just a few months into their careers. Some answer thoughtfully, but others behave as if I’m mounting an assault on their character or their motives.

At first, I thought they simply didn’t want to be questioned by some kid with less than a summer’s worth of experience in international development (a totally reasonable reservation, I might add), but I’m beginning to wonder if this is simply the kind of question most expats would rather not ask themselves.

I think people have a romantic image of international development. Before my internship I certainly did, and to a certain extent I still do now. The draw of development is that you feel like you’re doing something meaningful – having a real impact. As everyone says, you’re making the world a better place.

But how do you know you actually are?

As an intern at USAID, I’ve been assigned to work on the SCOPSO project, more formally known as the School-Community Partnership Serving Orphans and Vulnerable Children Affected by HIV/AIDS. SCOPSO helps school communities provide services like school supplies, food support, loans, healthcare, and psychosocial counseling to schoolchildren and their families. During visits to primary schools I’ve seen lives changed by foreign aid firsthand – a single mother who turned a $50 loan from SCOPSO into a thriving small business, a child who gets the cost of his antiretroviral drugs reimbursed at school and a little girl who received a school uniform for the first time in her life.

But for the majority of my internship, I’ve collected and analyzed data that will probably be ignored, and helped write reports that will most likely never be read. It’s incredibly frustrating trying to reconcile marginal improvements in healthcare, education and environmental sustainability with the billions of dollars of foreign aid flowing into Ethiopia each year ($3.5 billion, according to Global Humanitarian Assistance).

I’m beginning to understand why so many expats seem jaded. As a field, international development is incredibly degree-heavy. For example, nearly all entry-level positions with USAID require a master’s degree and several years of working experience. I’ve met several expats who invested so much time and education at the beginning of their careers only to get locked into a field that’s far less rosy than they expected. It’s taken me barely four weeks to become somewhat disillusioned with the field, and I can’t imagine coming to this realization after investing years of education in international development.
Most people starting a career in development never intend to lose touch with people out in the field, but nearly all career paths in development inevitably lead to less time on the ground and more time stuck behind a desk in some gated compound. As you gain experience, and move up the ranks in development organizations, it becomes easier and easier to distance yourself from the very people you’re supposedly trying to help.

Thankfully, my internship revolves around work on the ground. Although SCOPSO is funded by USAID, it’s actually carried out by an implementing partner, in this case an independent NGO called World Learning. That means I get to work with an all-Ethiopian staff. It also means that I actually get out to the field to visit schools. Every other week I pack a backpack of clothes, hop into the backseat of a Toyota Hillux, and spend five days driving all over Ethiopia with two World Learning program officers.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my internship, it’s that I only really experience Ethiopia when I leave Addis Ababa and everything it represents – hot water, internet cafés, pizza, my expat friends – behind. With no iPhone to distract me, I simply sit in the truck, chat with the program officers and listen to radio stations in Amharic, Ethiopia’s most widely spoken language. I’m always amazed how quickly the geography of Ethiopia changes, even during the course of a short car ride. My coworkers love to point out the different ethnic tribes as we drive by villages on our way to school visits.
When I first came to Ethiopia I pictured a relatively flat, dry country with one unified culture, populated by one group of people. In reality, it’s a country divided amongst a seemingly endless array of cultures, languages, and landscapes. It’s also a country divided by foreign aid. Even in the most rural parts of the country Ethiopia’s villages are divvied up between World Vision, USAID, South Korean Model Villages, Save the Children and many other development agencies.

Ethiopia was never colonized by a western power. Even so, I think a different kind of colonialism exists here today—one where thousands of foreigners with different visions of what is best for Ethiopia compete for the rights to experiment with the country’s villagers. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a single Ethiopian whose life hasn’t been touched by aid in some way, sometimes for the better.

My first week in Ethiopia, I interviewed a little boy at Yetimihirt Bilichta Primary School in Addis Ababa. The boy lost both his parents to AIDS and now lives in a rented bedroom with his older brother. Before USAID intervened at his school, he skipped class frequently, performing odd jobs to pay for food and rent. Now, using a shoeshine kit provided by SCOPSO, the boy shines shoes before and after school and on the weekends. He makes enough money ($.50 to $2.70 a day) to pay the rent, eat and attend class every day. He’s 11 years old.

At times during my internship, there are moments when I want to run away from international development completely. But how do you run away from a story like this?

As I near the halfway point of my time in Ethiopia I understand why so many expats struggle to share their perceptions of foreign aid. My thoughts change from day to day, and the more time I spend immersed in development the more confused and conflicted I become. I see the promise of foreign aid, and I see its peril. After this experience, I may never return to Ethiopia. I might go down an entirely different career path, but I’ll carry my experience this summer with me forever. I’ll always feel the constant draw of development forever pulling me back.

(Originally posted at stanforddaily.com)

By Messay Kebede

One question that regularly and intensely consumes the mind of many Ethiopians is the question of knowing why Ethiopian elites are unable to work together. Especially those opposing the TPLF regime, even though they are well aware that the regime is their common enemy, invariably prove unable to agree on a common political agenda, let alone to act in concert to remove their common foe. Is the failure to act jointly due to irrational forces or is it the outcome of definite causes that are susceptible of a rational explanation? This paper is an attempt to rationally comprehend the failure, with the hope that some such comprehension will have a liberating impact, obvious as it is that the conscious awareness of the forces of division is liable to significantly reduce their grip on the mind of Ethiopian elites.

The first answer that springs to mind to the question why Ethiopian elites are unable to work together is, of course, the lack of unity. But the latter is more of a question than an answer. For, why is there such a deficiency of unity? Why are elites, despite their enduring frustration toward the regime, nay their recurring conviction that the regime is leading the country to chaos, incapable of overcoming their divisions?

The seriousness of the matter forces us to look for causes transcending the immediate preoccupations of Ethiopian elites, the very ones having to do with historical reasons. I submit that the most compelling causes are historical in that the lack of unity is a product of the ideological and political struggles since the dawn of the Ethiopian process of modernization. Let me explain.

Socio-Historical Causes

The appearance of a centralized and oppressive government and its ever-tightening grip over the country as essential ingredients of the Ethiopian process of modernization have entailed a growing rivalry over the control of power and wealth among old and emerging elites. As the progress of modernization modified the Ethiopian social fabric, the rivalry intensified. It reached its peak in the 60s when the conflict between the old nobility and the imperial state on the one hand and the various modern sectors (students, intellectuals, the emerging bourgeoisie, the bureaucratic and military elites, etc.) on the other hand increasingly took a political and ideological form.

Where there is no enough wealth, state power becomes the privileged instrument to exclude competitors. The need to exclude generates, in turn, radical ideologies either in the form of hardened conservatism or extreme revolutionarism. The function of radical ideologies is to justify the political exclusion of opponents. Thus, to the conservatism of the nobility and the imperial state in the 60s and early 70s, students and intellectuals opposed socialism and ethnonationalism. The ideology of socialism allows elites to claim that they are the sole representatives of the working people, thereby depriving other competing elites of the right to represent the overwhelming majority of the people. As to ethnonationalism, it restricts the right to represent a given ethnic group to native elites, and so denies all political legitimacy to non-kin elites. Unsurprisingly, both ideologies justify absolute power as necessary to effect the exclusion.

The characteristics of a state whose function is to exclude rivals are quite different from a democratic state. In the latter, not only conflicts are recognized, but they are also provided with the means of reaching an accommodation based on the verdict of the people. The provision of accommodation prevents the recourse to violence to settle disputes. By contrast, the excluding state rejects all form of accommodation, leaving to opponents no other choice than the overthrow of the state by violent means.

This politics of exclusion foments a culture of confrontation pursuing a zero-sum game. The fact that winners take all, in addition to exasperating the conflicts between elites, inaugurates an endless cycle of violent confrontations during which one group overthrows the ruling elite until it is itself overthrown by another group and so on. The intensification of conflicts undermines the unity of the country and, most of all, weakens the ability of elites to work together by fostering a culture of mutual animosity and mistrust. As a result, the effort to generate a democratic state is repeatedly foiled. Clearly, these characteristics trace an accurate portrait of the Ethiopian state and elites.

The main drawback of a state practicing exclusion is the lack of legitimacy. One group subduing other groups by means of force does not mean that the subdued groups recognize the authority of the state and are willing to obey. On the contrary, the groups are in a state of permanent rebellion and are just waiting for the opportunity to reverse the situation in their favor. However, their expectation makes victims of the lack of legitimacy of the state by nurturing an anarchic idea of entitlement to power. Indeed, where the state lacks legitimacy, many individuals feel entitled to aspire for the ownership of power. This aspiration stands in the way of the effort to create a collaborative spirit among elites by ignite mistrust and rivalry.

A pertinent illustration of fragmentation is the tendency to create parties revolving around individuals rather than being based on ideas and goals. Nothing better confirms the truth of this analysis than the anarchic proliferation of parties in Ethiopia whose number is estimated to be more than eighty. Worse yet, these parties have the tendency to split into smaller parties because disagreements cannot be managed democratically. Given that influential individuals consider political parties as their private possession, they are apt to create a splinter party by walking away with their followers each time internal disputes arise.

Extraverted Psyche

One must not forget that the flourishing of radical ideologies in Ethiopia is a direct consequence of modern education. Insofar as a system of education alien to the country’s history and culture has shaped modern Ethiopian elites, it has greatly facilitated the absorption of imported ideologies. The main outcome of Western education is not only to undermine the inherited common culture, but it is also to inculcate the paradigm of modernity versus tradition. The weakening of the common culture lessens unity while the paradigm of modernity values imitativeness by advocating the rejection of whatever is traditional as uncivilized, backward and by painting Western countries as the model to follow.

This copyism or extraverted psyche is one of the reasons why the modern educated sector of Ethiopian society easily adopted Marxism-Leninism, which was the dominant ideology in the 60s and early 70s. The Marxist-Leninist definition of political struggle as a resolute elimination of rivals, as opposed to the accommodative stand of democracy, became the rule for Ethiopian elites, while ideological radicalization further exasperated their conflicts to the point where they were perceived as irreconcilable. The high point of these antagonistic relationships was none other than the insidious proliferation of ethnonationalism among the educated elites.

The Lack of Galvanizing Ideas

The progressive decline of the fascination with Marxism-Leninism as a result of repeated economic and political failures of socialist countries and the prevalence of liberal democracy constitute an additional reason for the fragmentation of elites. The undeniable power of Marxism-Leninism was that it was a galvanizing ideology in that it identified the interests of elites with the liberation and empowerment of the working masses. The identification provided a nationalist vision investing elites, especially students and intellectuals, with the electrifying mission of becoming the liberators of the masses from oppression and exploitation and of their country from imperialism. Liberalism offers none of the excitements associated with revolutionary goals.

True, liberalism can inspire a fervent defense of freedom that can be as revolutionary as the idea of socialism. But we must see it in the context of Ethiopia, that is, of a mentality not yet emancipated from the totalitarian doctrine of the 60s. Such a mentality could not but amalgamate liberalism with Leninism, the outcome of which is the confusion of liberalism with individualism. The attempt to combine ethnonationalism with liberal principles, as sadly exemplified by the ruling ideology of the TPLF, is the worst form of the confusion.

The amalgam tries to apply liberalism while suppressing freedom in all its manifestations because of the Leninist remnant of politics defined as exclusion of opponents. Together with the caricature of liberalism by those who control power, there spreads among elites the interpretation of liberalism in the direction of selfish individualism. For this distorted liberalism, individuals should not be concerned about other people; their only worry should be their own interests so that all pursuit of grand causes is devalued. Clearly, where egoistic individualism becomes the norm, unity of purpose among elites is difficult to achieve.

In Ethiopia, the unity of purpose has been seriously hindered both by the proliferation of ethnonationalist ideologies and by the inability to find a matching or counter ideology against ethnonationalism. The choice is reduced to being either a supporter, an opponent, or a resigned tolerant of ethnonationalism. The perversion of Ethiopia with ethnonationalist ideologies is a stumbling block to the formation of a common purpose if only because the threat to the integrity of the nation deprives competitors of a common cause. Since elites rejecting the Ethiopian nationhood aspire either to secede or to become dominant, they cannot work together with those who defend the unity of the nation, still less can they accept an all-embracing ideology.

Divide-and-Rule Strategy and the Politics of Fear

Given that the fragmentation of Ethiopian elites along ethnic lines is the work of the TPLF, it follows that the main culprit for the lack of unity is the TPLF regime itself. It is important to note here that the TPLF did not only divide Ethiopia along ethnic states, but it also opted for a terrorist method of government, the essential function of which is the inculcation of fear. Government by fear has a paralyzing effect: though the overwhelming majority of elites is set against the regime, it cannot act in concert to get rid of the regime because of the paralyzing effect of fear. Instead of action, resignation takes the lead with the consequence that the dislike of the regime never transcends the subjective realm of feelings so as to translate into political action.

Be it noted that one of the effects of fear is the propensity to justify the postponement of political action. Indeed, fear provides justification for not acting together by enhancing little differences to the level of a fundamental disagreement. To the question of why opponents do not act together to remove the regime, the ready answer is the absence of agreement. Magnifying minor differences is how fear camouflaged itself into a valid reason for not acting, thereby avoiding the risks and dangers implied in political action. Not only does fear paralyze, but it also inspires fragmentation as a way of deferring political action. It is because dictatorial governments know that elites broken by fear cannot act in concert that they resort to systematic campaigns designed to spread fear.

In default of promoting action, fear encourages wishful thinking. Terror induces hope but in the form of magic or fantasy. Evidence of this is the recurrent predication of an imminent collapse of the regime by many opponents. By underestimating the strength and survival capacity of the regime, they tell us that it is on its last legs, though nothing is being done to turn the hope into reality. This kind of magical faith is another way of avoiding the risks and sacrifices necessary to actually remove the regime. There is some consolation in doing nothing when it is believed that magical forces are bound to intervene in our favor.

Beyond the Humiliated Generation

All the defects hampering rival elites pertain to a generation that has gone through the bitter experience of defeat and humiliation. The dreams of the generation of the 60s and early 70s have been squashed by the victory of the Derg whose dictatorial rule decimated its morale and that of their offspring. Both were offered nothing but the humiliation of a massive exodus. Whether they stayed in the country or left, all experienced another cycle of humiliating events when they witnessed, powerless, the defeat of the Ethiopian army, the invasion of the country by an ethnic army, and the secession of Eritrea. It is hard not to infer from these events a severe damage to Ethiopian nationalism and an erosion of self-confidence such that the generation’s belief in its ability to accomplish great things has received a deadly blow. Without self-confidence, the readiness to unite for a great cause is also likely to suffer gravely.

Defeat and humiliation entail leadership crisis. Just as a defeated army questions the competence of its commanding officers, so too a vanquished generation loses faith in leadership. Once leadership is distrusted, the willingness to unite in an organization is drastically reduced. No less than the need to accomplish great goals, confidence in leaders is a requirement of unity. Without exaggeration, leadership crisis is one of the crucial setbacks of post-revolutionary Ethiopia, all the more so as the Ethiopian culture is prone to the cult of heroes, as witnessed by the fact that its past history shows that the death or the exceptional courage of leaders often determined the fate of wars.

It would be naive to expect from a wounded generation the solutions to Ethiopia’s numerous problems. What was ruined by one generation cannot be fixed by the same generation. True change requires, above all, culture change, which takes time because it is a matter of creativity and growth. In short, real change is a generational issue. The TPLF, secessionist groups, and their opponents are all products of the dominant culture of the 60s. Their collaborations and conflicts show that society follows a determined path until it sees a precipice. The generation that takes the precipice as a precipice, and not as a redress of a vile social order, is the one called upon to change the direction. It sees an impasse in what other characterize as positive or negative developments.

When things go wrong, the culprits and their opponents are the two poles of the same reality. To the extent that the thinking of the one is just the opposite of the other, they are one and the same, as they remain tied to each other by their very contradiction. Thus, as action and reaction, the Derg and the TPLF are one and the same. That is why many of the actions of the TPLF often give us the impression of a déjà vu. That is why also, just as the Derg, the TPLF is unable to solve the problems of Ethiopia.

The generation that is free of the thinking uniting the Derg and the TPLF is alone able to bring real change to Ethiopia. However, the condition of its emancipation grows from the previous opposition, the development of which draws the limit beyond which the precipice lies. Reaching the limit clears the ground for the new, for “where danger is, also grows the saving power,” as says Heidegger. Whether such a generation is in sight is hard to tell. One thing is sure, though: the best that the defeated generation and perhaps their immediate descendant can do is to take a hard critical look at themselves and exchange their ambition to remain makers of history for the much more subdued role of midwife of the coming repaired generation.

(The writer, Dr Messay Kebede, can be reached at [email protected])

While the Ethiopian National Transitional Council (ENTC) was hosting a consultative conference on transitional government during the first week of July 2013, its chapters in Ethiopia were busy spreading the organization’s message.

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