Late last month, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Sultan fired a shot across the bow from the Arab Water Council in Cairo to let the regime in Ethiopia know that his country takes a dim view of the “Grand Renaissance Dam” under “construction” on the Blue Nile (Abbay) a few miles from Sudan’s eastern border. According to Prince Khalid, “The [Grand] Renaissance dam has its capacity of flood waters reaching more than 70 billion cubic meters of water… [I]f it collapsed Khartoum will be drowned completely and the impact will even reach the Aswan Dam…” The Prince believes the Dam is being built close to the “Sudanese border for political plotting rather than for economic gain and constitutes a threat to Egyptian and Sudanese national security…” The Prince raised the stakes by accusing the regime in Ethiopia of being hell-bent on harming Arab peoples. “There are fingers messing with water resources of Sudan and Egypt which are rooted in the mind and body of Ethiopia. They do not forsake an opportunity to harm Arabs without taking advantage of it…”
A spokesman for the regime in power in Ethiopia sought to minimize the importance of the Prince’s statement by suggesting that the Saudi Ambassador in Addis Ababa had disavowed the Prince’s statement as official policy or a position endorsed by the Saudi government. The alleged disavowal of the statement of a member of the Saudi royal family and top defense official seems curiously disingenuous after the fact. But that is understandable since “an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” The regime spokesman also insinuated in fuzzy diplomatese that such inflammatory statements could result in war between Arab countries and African countries in the Nile basin.
The real possibility of a water war between countries of the upper Nile basin, and in particular Ethiopia, and Egypt and Sudan over the so-called Grand Renaissance Dam is the (white) elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about openly and earnestly at this stage. But in November 2010, the late dictatorMeles Zenawi in an interview with Reuters seemed to defiantly relish the possibility of war with Egypt. With taunting, dismissive and contemptuous arrogance, Meles not only insulted the Egyptian people as hopelessly backward but bragged that he will swiftly vanquish any invading Egyptian army. “I am not worried that the Egyptians will suddenly invade Ethiopia. Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story. I don’t think the Egyptians will be any different and I think they know that…The Egyptians have yet to make up their minds as to whether they want to live in the 21st or the 19th century.” Meles also accused Egypt of trying to destabilize Ethiopia by supporting unnamed rebel groups which he promised to crush. Meles served the Egyptians an ultimatum to engage in “civil dialogue”: “If we address the issues around which the rebel groups are mobilized then we can neutralize them and therefore make it impossible for the Egyptians to fish in troubled waters because there won’t be any… Hopefully that should convince the Egyptians that, as direct conflict will not work, and as the indirect approach is not as effective as it used to be, the only sane option will be civil dialogue.”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit denied Meles’ allegations and expressed amusement and amazement over Meles’ braggadocio. “I’m amazed … by the language that was used. We are not seeking war and there will not be war… The charges that Egypt… is exploiting rebel groups against the ruling regime in Ethiopia are completely devoid of truth.” Gheit may have been diplomatically deescalating the war of words, but his statement belies statements by a long line of top Egyptian leaders over the decades. President Anwar Sadat in 1978 declared, “We depend upon the Nile100 per cent in our life, so if anyone, at any moment, thinks of depriving us of our life we shall never hesitate to go to war.” Boutros Boutros Gahali, when he was the Egyptian Foreign State Minister (later U.N. Secretary General), confirmed the same sentiment when he asserted “the next war in our region will be over the water of the Nile, not politics.”
“If it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, simple as that.”
What will Egypt will do if Meles’ “Grand Renaissance Dam” is in fact built? “Simple.” They will use dam busters to smash and trash it.
The same source further indicated that Egypt is “discussing military cooperation with Sudan” and has “a strategic pact with the Sudanese since in any crisis over the Nile, Sudan gets hit first then us.” That military cooperation includes stationing Egyptian “commandos in the Sudan for ‘worst case’ scenario on the Nile issue. Sudanese president Umar al-Bashir has agreed to allow the Egyptians to build a small airbase in Kusti to accommodate Egyptian commandos who might be sent to Ethiopia to destroy water facilities on the Blue Nile…The military option is not one that the Egyptians favor. It will be their option if everything else fails.” So far Egypt has successfully lobbied the multilateral development and other investment banks and donors to deny or cut funding for the dam and to apply political and diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia and the other upstream Nile countries. The World Bank has publicly stated it will not to fund any new projects on the Nile without Egypt’s approval.
The Grand Renaissance Dam or the grand dam (de)illusion?
All African dictators like to build big projects because it is part of the kleptocratic African “Big Man” syndrome. By undertaking “white elephant” projects (wasteful vanity projects), African dictators seek to attain greatness and amass great fortunes in life and immortality in death. Kwame Nkrumah built the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River, at the time dubbed the “largest single investment in the economic development plans of Ghana”. Mobutu sought to outdo Nkrumah by building the largest dam in Africa on the Inga Dams in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire) on the largest waterfalls in the world (Inga Falls). In the Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny built the largest church in the world, The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, at a cost of USD$300 million. It stands empty today. Self-appointed Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic built a 500-room Hotel Intercontinental at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of his people starved. Moamar Gadhafi launched the Great Man-Made River in Libya, dubbed the world’s largest irrigation project, and proclaimed it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Gamal Abdel Nasser built the Aswan High Dam which could be affected significantly if upstream Nile countries build new dams. Ugandan dictator Yuweri Museveni built the Bujagali dam which was completed in 2012. The backflow from that dam has submerged a huge area of cultivable and settled land forcing migration and resettlement of large numbers of people.
Meles Zenawi hoped to build the “Grand Renaissance Dam” as the mother of all dams on the African continent to outdo Nkrumah, Mobutu and Gadhafi. Like all of the African white elephants, this Dam is a vanity make-believe project partly intended to glorify Meles and magnify his international prestige while diverting attention from the endemic corruption that has consumed his regime as recently documented in a 448-page World Bank report. Meles sought to cover his bloody hands and clothe his naked dictatorships with megaprojects and veneers of progress and development. The “Grand Renaissance Dam” is the temporary name for the “Grand Meles Memorial Dam”. Meles wanted to be immortalized in that largest cement monument in the history of the African continent. To be sure, he had a “dry run” on immortality when he commissioned the construction of Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the Omo River in southern Ethiopia which has been dubbed the “largest hydroelectric plant in Africa with a power output of about 1870 Megawatt.”
The Dam and the damned
There is little doubt that IF the “Grand Renaissance Dam” is completed, it will have a significant long term impact on water supply and availability to the Sudan and Egypt. The general view among the experts is that if the dam is constructed as specified by the regime in Ethiopia, it could result in significant reduction in cultivable agricultural lands and water shortages throughout Egypt.According to Mohamed Nasr El Din Allam, the former Egyptian minster of water and irrigation,if the dam is built “Millions of people would go hungry. There would be water shortages everywhere. It’s huge.”
The regime in Ethiopia claims the depth of the Dam will be 150 meters and the water reservoir behind the Dam could be used to irrigate more than 500,000 hectares of new agricultural lands. Experts suggest that the water reservoir behind the dam could hold as much as 62bn cubic meters of water; and depending upon seasonal rainfall and the rate at which the reservoir is filled, there could be significant reductions in the flow of water to Egypt and Sudan. The environmental impact of the Dam in Ethiopia will be catastrophic. Experts believe such a dam if built will “flood 1,680 square kilometers of forest in northwest Ethiopia, near the Sudan border, and create a reservoir that is nearly twice as large as Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest natural lake….” The so-called tripartite committee of international experts is expected to issue its report on the potential environmental impacts of the Dam in May 2013.
The legal dimensions of the Nile water dispute
The are many knotty legal issues surrounding the treaties and agreements concluded between Britain as a colonial power and the countries in the Nile basin (Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Sudan, and Egypt) on the use of Nile water. Beginning in 1891, Britain concluded at least seven agreements on the use and control of the Nile. In the major treaties, the British included language which effectively prevented Ethiopia and other upstream countries from “construct[ing] any irrigation or other works which might sensibly modify its flow into the Nile” or its “tributaries.” For instance, the May 15, 1902 Treaty regarding the Frontiers between the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan, Ethiopia and British Eritrea, restrained “His Majesty the Emperor Menelik II, King of kings of Ethiopia” from “construct[ing] or allow[ing] to be constructed, any works across the Blue Nile, Lake Tsana or the Sobat,… except in agreement with his Britannic Majesty’s Government and the Government of the Sudan”.
The current legal and political controversy over the Nile water revolves around the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement (which guarantees disproportionately high volumes of Nile water (85 percent) to Egypt and gave Egypt the right to monitor the Nile flow in the upstream countries and veto powers on all Nile projects upstream) and the 1959 agreement between Britain and Egypt in regards to the use of waters of the River Nile for irrigation purposes which recognized “Egypt’s natural and historic rights in the waters of the Nile and its requirements of agricultural extension…”
A number of the upper-riparian states including Ethiopia, Tanzania and Burundi have rejected the validity of the 1929 Treaty and believe that they have the right to do whatever they choose with the water that flows through their boundaries (“Harmon Doctrine”). In 1964, the Government of Tanganyika openly disavowed the 1929 agreement (“Nyerere Doctrine” which asserts that a newly independent state has the right to “opt in” or selectively succeed to colonial treaties): “The Government of Tanganyika has come to the conclusion that the provisions of the 1929 Agreement purporting to apply to the countries ‘under British Administration’ are not binding on Tanganyika.” On similar grounds, Uganda and Kenya subsequently rejected that agreement. Even Sudan has challenged the allocation ratio of the water it got under that agreement.
Ethiopia’s legal position on the various colonial treaties is explored in full in Gebre Tasadik Degefu’s authoritative work, The Nile: Historical, Legal and Developmental Perspectives (2003). Gebre Tasadik challenges the validity of the treaties on the grounds that “while Ethiopia’s natural rights in a certain share of the waters in its own territory are undeniable…, no treaty has ever mentioned them. This fact would be sufficient for invalidating the binding force of those agreements, which have no counterpart in favor of Ethiopia.” He also points out significant technical issues in the treaties. He suggests that the “English version of the 1902 agreement obliged Ethiopia to seek prior accord with the united kingdom before initiating any works that might affect the discharge of the Blue Nile… The Amharic version does not oblige Ethiopia to request permission from the British Government…”
Others have argued that Ethiopia is not bound by the 1902 treaty with Britain because the “treaty never came into force as Britain did not ratify it and the Ethiopian government had rejected it in the 1950s”. Even if that treaty were valid, Britain is said to have violated its terms by “supporting and recognizing the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in violation of Article 60 of the 1902 agreement”. Technical interpretation of the relevant clauses of the 1902 treaty are also said to favor Ethiopia since that treaty “does not prohibit use of the Nile” but obliges Ethiopia “not to arrest of the Nile, which is interpreted to mean total blockage.”
The 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Egypt and Sudan sought to give the two countries full control and utilization of Nile water by modifying certain aspects of the 1929 agreement. But that agreement completely ignored the interests of any of the upstream countries, particularly Ethiopia.
Egypt has refused to renegotiate the 84-year-old treaty and insist on the perpetual binding authority of the colonial era treaties as legal formalizations of Egypt’s historical and natural rights over the Nile water. They also insist that the international law of state succession makes the treaties made by colonial Britain binding on successor post-independence African states.
The general consensus among informed commentators is that the Nile treaties are not binding in perpetuity. They point to the inequitable elements of the various agreements on upper riparian states and the radical change in the scope of obligations under the agreements over the past eight decades to challenge the validity of the colonial era treaties.
The paramount question is not whether the Nile water dispute can be resolved in an international court of law or other tribunal but what political accommodations can be made by the basin states to equitably benefit their nations and strengthen their bonds of friendship. Equitable sharing of Nile water is necessary not only for regional stability and amity but also to meet the growing energy and food production needs of the populations of all Nile basin countries in the coming decades. There is no shortage of predictions of doom and gloom over the looming water scarcity worldwide. Over a decade ago, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan warned, “Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future.” Insisting on the eternal validity and binding nature of the Nile water treaties is untenable and unreasonable.
The Nile Basin Initiative was established in 1999 to develop a scheme for the equitable distribution of water among the Nile basin countries. Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya have signed the Agreement on the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework (Entebbe Agreement). This agreement allows construction of projects that do not “significantly” affect the Nile water flow. Egypt has rejected the Agreement because it necessitates renegotiation of its share of the Nile water and surrender of its veto power guaranteed under the old agreements.
Water, water everywhere… and Meles’ “damplomacy” of brinksmanship
Whether there will be an actual “Grand Renaissance Dam” is the $5bn dollar question of the century. Because Egypt has been successful in pressuring multilateral development and investment banks not to fund the project, the regime in Ethiopia has defiantly forged ahead to fund the project itself. But is self-funding of the mother of all African dams a realistic possibility?
The regime has kept much of the details of the Dam behind smoke and mirrors. The regime claims that the dam is 14 percent complete (whatever that means) and will reach 26 percent completion by the end of 2013. When it comes online in 2015 as scheduled, the regime claims the dam will have the power generating capacity of nearly 6,000MW, much of it to be exported to the Sudan, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula.
The regime has forged ahead to build the “Grand Renaissance Dam” by “selling bonds” domestically and in the Ethiopian Diaspora. The regime claims to have collected USD$500 million from bond sales and “contributions” of ordinary citizens. Business and institutions have been forced to buy bonds. The regime’s Diaspora bond sales effort has been a total failure. Most Ethiopians in the Diaspora have been unwilling to bet on imaginary and speculative future earnings from operations of the dam because of the regime’s morbid secrecy and lack of transparency. They have little confidence in the regime’s capacity to guarantee their bond investments. For instance, current underpricing in power tariffs which have ranged between “$0.04-0.08 per kilowatt-hour are low by regional standards and recover only 46 percent of the costs of the utility.” That does not bode well for long term bond holders.
To add insult to injury, the Meles regime has the gall to say that it intends to sell the power from the “Grand Renaissance Dam” to the Sudan, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula once construction is complete. That is not only nonsensical but downright insane! Why would Egypt or the Sudan buy power from a dam that damns them by effectively reducing their water supply for agriculture and their own production of power?
Meles and his disciples have always known that they do not have the financial capacity to complete the Dam. They also know that actually completing the constructing the dam will be dangerous for their own survival as a regime should regional war break out. But Meles has always been a peerless grandmaster of intrigue, machination, duplicity, one-upmanship and diplomatic gamesmanship. With this Dam, he was merely pushing the envelope to the outer limits. His real aim was not the construction of dam but to use the specter of the construction of a gargantuan dam on the Nile to fabricate fear of an imminent regional water war. His price for continued regional stability, avoidance of conflict and maintenance of the status quo would be billions in loans, aid and other concessions from the international community and downstream countries.
Meles’ diplomatic strategy shrouded a clever deterrent military strategy: If Egypt goes for broke and attacks the “Grand Renaissance Dam”, Ethiopia could retaliate by attacking the Aswan dam. Meles likely believed the threat of mutual assured destruction will prevent an actual war while maintaining extremely high levels of regional tensions. By playing a game of chicken with Egypt and the Sudan, Meles hoped to strong-arm donor and development banks and wealthy countries in the region into giving him financial, political and diplomatic support. There is no question Meles would have driven on a collision course with Egypt only to swerve at the last second to avoid a fatal crash had he been in power today. It is unlikely that Meles’ disciples have the intellectual candlepower (“megawattage”) or the sheer cunning and artfulness of their master to play a game of chicken with Egypt to skillfully extract concessions.
For love of white elephants and war of the damned
Water is a source of life. War is a source of death. The water of the Nile has given life to Ethiopians, Egyptians and the people of the Nile basin countries since time immemorial. If Meles prepared for war by building his dam, his disciples shall surely inherit war. But Meles should have reflected on the words of Ethiopia’s poet laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin before embarking on his “Grand Renaissance Dam” project: “O Nile, you are the music that restores the rhythm of existence…/ You are the irrigator that cultivate peace…/ …From my Ethiopia sacred mountains of the sun…”
Meles’ legacy could indeed be a water war of death and destruction on the Nile, but he will never have a cement monument built on the Nile to celebrate his life. Meles’ disciples would be wise to remember an old prophesy as they march headlong to build their doomsday dam on the Nile: “God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign: No more water. The fire next time!”
Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.
Previous commentaries by the author are available at:
http://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/
www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/
Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:
(Yemen Post) – An investigation conducted by al-Wethaq a couple of months ago – a right group organization based in Yemen – revealed that two years in its post revolution era Yemen is still home to hundreds of slaves.
Despite its many promises to address all grave human rights violations such as slavery, the central government has proven unable, or politically unwilling to impose its human rights agenda to Yemen, barely controlling its institutions.
Because of Yemen tribal structure and an overlapping of influences in between the state institutions and tribal leaders, Yemen’s government can often only “advice” Sheikhs, encouraging them to follow their directives rather than impose the rule of law.
It is this conflict of power and political authority which is preventing issues such as slavery, child labor and under-age marriages to be properly addressed and rooted out from society.
Yemen will have at one point or another to reconcile its desire for democracy and its tribal tradition, as both as they currently stand now cannot cohabit.
Al-Wethaq established in its six-months field study that slavery mostly persists in three north western provinces — Hodeidah , Hajjah and al-Mahwit –
UNHCR wrote in its 2012 report “while no official statistics exist detailing this practice, sources report that there could be 300 to 500 men, women, and children sold or inherited as slaves in Yemen, including in the al-Zohrah district of al-Hodeidah Governorate and the Kuaidinah and Khairan al-Muharraq districts of the Hajjah Governorate, north of the capital.”
In all three provinces slave markets are being operated by human traffickers and smugglers.
Most incredibly, deeds of ownership are exchanged between slave traders and the slave owners upon completion of the trade with a price tag running at around $2500 per person at any given moment.
The idea that “legal papers” are being exchanged warned activists is proof slavery in those areas has been standardized.
An activist in Hodeidah said under cover of anonymity he had himself witness slave trading. “Traffickers are operating quite freely in the region, slave trading has been normalized here. Given the economic difficulties Yemen is going through right now the government needs to put an immediate stop to such practices or more people will fall victims to slavery.
Farmers are always looking for cheap labor and nothing is as cheap as slaves. This is a dangerous situation as minority groups and African refugees are at great risk here.
Al-Wethaq recorded 190 cases of slavery so far which as far the foundation is concerned is 190 too many.
Human rights activists working for al-Wethaq have complained that despite their many pleas and reports to the government, officials had so far “politely” ignored their calls, only half-heatedly committing to support their anti-slavery campaign efforts.
While Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashour has been active in promoting anti-slavery and other human rights violations, her ministry alone cannot possibly hope to eradicate slavery on its own.
Activists made clear that unless the government as a whole is willing to actively pursue traffickers and hand out hefty prison sentences while rehabilitating slaves back into society, they had little hope things will ever get better.
“Yemen slavery problem is an economic one. People needs to make money, hence traffickers and others, buyers, are looking for cheap labor. The equation is really simple and there is plenty of money to be made on the misery of others,” said Ahmed an activist in Hodeida.
He added that while buyers were often local land owners, many were also acting on behalf of Gulf nationals — Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE and Qatar. And if some rich families are only buying the slaves to free them later on as an act of charity others will arrange for their smuggling over the border and use them as domestic help or some instances sex workers. A link has been made in between slave trading and prostitution, where women and sadly even children were sold into prostitution abroad.
Ethiopian and Somali women and children travel voluntarily to Yemen with the hope of working in other Gulf countries, but some are subjected to sex trafficking or domestic servitude in Yemen. Others migrate based on fraudulent offers of employment as domestic servants in Yemen, but upon arrival are subjected to sex trafficking or forced labor. Some female Somali refugees are forced into prostitution in Aden and Lahj governorates, and Yemeni and Saudi gangs traffic African children to Saudi Arabia. Smugglers capitalize on the instability in the Horn of Africa to subject Africans to forced labor and prostitution in Yemen,” read UHCR 2012 trafficking in person report.
Mohammed Naji Allaw a former member of parliament explained while most slaves in Yemen were freed after September 26 Revolution – 1962 – the practice had somehow survived through the decades, the remnants of Yemen old feudal system.
Najeeb al-Saadi, an activist working for al-Wethaq noted the government had tried on many instances to quiet his organization, denying slavery was an issue in Yemen as to avoid answering embarrassing questions.
Back in 2010 HOOD, – most prominent rights organization in Yemen – launched an anti-slavery campaign calling on the country’s general prosecutor to pursue all slave masters and for the government to build housing complexes on fertile plots of land to help those emancipated from slavery get a new start.
“We asked the government to look into the problem and the general prosecutor to investigate,” said Khaled al-Anesi, a lawyer with the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms in 2010.
Despite the campaign and calls from local and international rights organizations nothing of consequence was ever achieved. Slavery continues to be an issue in modern Yemen.
Activists now hope that the momentum created by 2011 revolution and a sense of civic duties will mean the government will eventually come through and devise a plan action which will translate into real change. Because beyond being set free Yemen’ slaves need to be given a chance to re-integrate society as well as receive compensations for their suffering.
Ancestral land that for generations has served as home and livelihood for hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Ethiopia is being leased out, on 99-year renewable contracts at nominal sums to foreign corporations. The land giveaway or agrarian reforms as the government would prefer to present them began in 2008 when the Ethiopian government, under the brutal suppressive Premiership of Meles Zenawi invited foreign countries/corporation to take up highly attractive deals and turn large areas of land over to industrial farming for the export of crops. India, China and Saudi Arabia were all courted and along with wealthy Ethiopians have eagerly grabbed large pieces of land at basement prices; rates vary from $1.10 to $6.05 per hectare (HA), comparable land in India would set you back $600 per ha.
A total of 3,619,509 ha, the Oakland Institute (OI), a US based think tank, estimate has been leased out. Land made available by the forced re-location of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people under the government’s universally condemned Villagization progamme, which aims to forcibly re-locate over 1.5 million people from their homes.
India corporations have taken the lion’s share, acquiring around 600,000 ha concentrated in Gambella and Afar, split between 10 investing companies. The term ‘investing’ implies benefits for Ethiopia, which is misleading; ‘profiteering’, or ‘exploiting’ sits closer to the truth of these land deals, as the OI make clear, “taking over land and natural resources from rural Ethiopians, is resulting in a massive destruction of livelihoods and making millions of locals [farmers and pastoralist communities] dependent on food handouts”. With small scale farmers being evicted from their land, prices of staples such as Teff, used by millions throughout Ethiopia to make Injera (bread), has rocketed in price, according to Ethiotribune 22/5/2012, increasing fourfold since 2008.
Corporate expansionism: small change big profits
In line with its ambitions of diversity and world food dominance – Karuturi Global, the world’s largest grower of roses, leads the Indian charge, leasing 311,700 ha in Gambella. Not satisfied with this, GRAIN (an international NGO, working to support small farmers) report Mr.Karuturi “wants to set up farming operations [throughout Eastern and Southern Africa] on more than 1 million [ha]” – too much never enough in corporate expansionism.
Almost a quarter of Gambella’s 25 million ha has been earmarked by the federal government for agricultural ‘development’. Karuturi, whose profits “rose 55.13% to Rs 1.21 crore [10 million] in the quarter ended June 2012”, took their chunk without even seeing it, paying only $1.10 per ha. For the Indian giant it is, John Vidal in ‘Land Grab Ethiopia (LGE)’ says, “the sale of the century”. ‘Green Gold’ is how Mr. Karuturi in GRAIN (‘Who’s Behind the Land Deals’), describes his 300,000 ha of Ethiopian soil, “for which he pays $46 per ha per year including water and labour and expects at least $660 [per ha] in profit per year”. (Ibid)
In addition to paddy, Indian farmers are being sub-contracted to grow maize, cereals, palm oil and sugarcane amongst others. All of which are destined for export, either to India or Europe, where companies farming in Ethiopia (and other Sub-Saharan African nations), benefit from lower import duties applied to developing countries, notwithstanding the fact that the land is leased to, and the crops produced and sold by, multi million-rupee rich companies.
Another major Indian company leasing land in Gambella is the decidedly green sounding BHO Bioproducts. Following the corporate rhetoric, BHO Chief Operating Officer Sunny Maker told Bloomberg in 2010 that, they have “plans to invest more than $120 million in rice and cotton production”, which, by 2017, should “generate about $135 million a year from sales divided equally between domestic [Indian] and international markets.” He added that the “incredibly rich fertile land”, will all be “cleared within the next three years”. Cleared yes, violently, indiscriminately and totally; villages, people, forests, woodland, all destroyed, burnt, relocated, displaced, desecrated. The governments promise to such prized investors is that the land is handed over stripped of everything and everyone. Dissent is not allowed and dealt with brutally should it occur, as Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of OI makes clear. “The repression of social resistance to land investments is even stipulated in land lease contracts, [it is the] state’s obligation to ‘deliver and hand over the vacant possession of leased land free of impediments’ and to provide free security ‘against any riot, disturbance or any turbulent time.”
The ‘rich fertile land’, lovingly cultivated at the hands of the men and women who have farmed it for generations, is unlikely to be nurtured so carefully by Indian (or indeed Chinese or Saudi Arabian) corporations with their thirsty ‘GM seeds’ (Ibid). For as Oxfam in their detailed report ‘Land and Power’ diplomatically point out, “investors short time scales may tempt them into unsustainable cultivation, undermining agricultural production.”
The devolution of development
Land is a prime cut asset in the commercialisation of everything, everywhere, and the “rich fertile land” in Ethiopia is cheap, even by Sub-Saharan African standards. Along with long-term leases, the government offers a neat bundle of carrots, including tax incentives and unrestricted export clauses, incentives that the OI state “deny African countries economic benefits” from land deals that the Ethiopian regime wraps up neatly in its complete disregard for the human rights of the indigenous people. Government indifference encouraging corporate irresponsibility – and they need little encouragement. Businesses hardly seem to be grabbing the land, so much as accepting it as a gift, parceled up and ready to be torn open.
In exchange for such attractive deals, the Ethiopian government has been extended, the OI reports “a $640 million line of credit… over five years to boost sugar production in the country’s Lower Omo region”. Not a philanthropic gesture, more a sales trap by India’s EXIM (export and import) Bank, who stipulate, “Ethiopia must import 75% of the value of the credit line in the form of Indian goods and services.”
The government-owned sugar plantations in the Lower Omo are themselves attracting a great deal of concern and criticism from human rights groups, who highlight the environmental and human damage being perpetrated. Government acts of violence and abuse, in the various land deal regions, are justified under the overused and misleading title of ‘development’; a term appropriated by the international monetary machine – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) primarily – misunderstood and distorted by government development agencies, acting in line with foreign affairs policies by promoting national self interest and perverted by the corrupt ideologically-blinkered governments of developing nations.
An undeveloped ideological trinity whose actions have drained the 21st century sacred cow and its stable mate ‘growth’ – dry of any true and relevant meaning. Far from supporting human and or social development the “unfair terms and near give-away prices [of land deals]… are hindering development…. Foreign corporations and the World Bank are pressuring African leaders to give them exemptions from taxes, import and export duties, and local labor laws – not to mention water and mineral rights that could be worth billions”, the OI confirm.
More concerned with sitting at the top table and cultivating the right international allies than with doing their constitutional duty and serving the needs of the people, the Ethiopian government is in danger of giving away, and for peanuts, it’s ‘rich and fertile’ land to overseas companies who have no interest in Ethiopia, it’s environment, its culture and even less in its people.
Increasing hunger
Hunger and poverty stalk the land of both Ethiopia and India. 12 – 15 million people survive on food aid in Ethiopia, which ranks bottom of the World Hunger Index at 76. India, with the highest rate of malnourished children in the world, where 25% (around 270 million) of the world’s hungry live, despite the fact that, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), “the country grows enough food for its people”, it comes in 65th of the hungriest nations, below Niger and the Sudan – neither of which, to my knowledge, boast 61 billionaires and 200,000 dollar millionaires unlike India. And whereas “most countries have made consistent progress in reducing hunger, India has seen hunger rise over the last decade compared with the late 1990s.”(Ibid) This so-called economic miracle nation refuses to feed it’s own people.
Food insecurity, the WFP makes clear is caused not by lack of produce, but by an unwillingness to share the Earths bounty equitably. The states in India with the greatest numbers suffering from hunger and malnutrition, WFP records “include Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh”; these are the states where the poorest (Adivasi – indigenous and Dalit) people in the country and quite possibly in the World happen to live. The poor are dying of hunger not because India cannot feeed everyone, as the United Nations report on regional cooperation makes crystal clear, “the root cause of hunger across the sub-region and the world today is not a lack of food. It is the economic and social distribution of that food which leaves populations undernourished and hungry.”
Men women and children living in dire poverty starve to death, in India, Ethiopia and throughout the world. They starve and die for want of the food that is rotting in warehouses, food served up to rats or destroyed by the Indian government, because it is cheaper to burn it than to distribute it to those in need. As Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (26/01/13) said, “globally, a third of all food produced is wasted, and… if one could avoid this waste it would be possible to feed all the hungry people [in the world] and have food to spare.” Food to spare!Such is the inhumane ethos that underpins market fundamentalism, that allows men women and children, young and old to starve – simply because the do not have the financial means to feed themselves. Shame on governments Indian and the rest, that allow such inhumane injustice to prevail, as a wise teacher said, “throughout the world there are men, women and little children who have not even the essentials to stay alive; they crowd the cities of many of the poorest countries in the world… My brothers, how can you watch these people die before your eyes and call yourselves men”.
The commercialization of the countryside in India and Ethiopia, which is displacing large numbers of small-scale farmers and concentrating crop production in the hands of multi-nationals, is intensifying existing levels of hunger. Substantive agricultural reform and real development would see the army of skilled small scale producers, with generations of local knowledge and love of the land, supported with the needed capital and technology, given access to markets that corporations bring. Such an agrarian revolution, ethically founded, environmentally healthy and socially sustained, would build long-term food security and feed the hungry.
Soft targets easy profits
India as the WFP makes clear, has no domestic need for food produced by the overseas industrial farms that are causing such far-reaching damage, to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people of Ethiopia as well as the natural environment. The movement in Ethiopia mirrors what is taking place to a much greater degree in India. The government has shifted all support away from Indian farmers and is supporting the transfer of land from the rural poor to large companies – wealthy government benefactors, causing the displacement of millions (60 million to date, according to Arundhati Roy) of indigenous people.
Corporations are targeting countries Oxfam 7/02/2013 makes clear, with “poor governance”, that “allow investors to secure land quickly and cheaply…. [They] “Seem to be cherry picking countries with weak rules and regulations”. Needy nations like hungry people make easy targets for multi-national man, whose pockets governments are desperate to nestle inside. The driving force behind such destructive land developments, undertaken by corporations obsessed by an insatiable desire for growth and world leading economic development, is, as Oxfam suggests, profit and profit alone.
Graham Peebles is director of the Create Trust. He can be reached at: [email protected]
The film seeks to transform the “demands for freedom of religion” into a joint criminal enterprise with terror groups.
Awol K Allo | Aljazeera
March 4, 2013
The government’s uncanny response to “basic demands of religious freedom” has created a rare opportunity for a decisive break with a docile political past and for the “formation of a new collective consciousness” [AP]
On February 5, 2013, Ethiopia’s only and publicly funded Television Station, ETV, aired a controversial documentary during prime time in violation of an outstanding court injunction. Oddly subtitled “Boko Haram in Ethiopia”, Jihadawi Harekat – Arabic for “jihadi movement” – denounces leaders of Ethiopia’s year-long protest movement for alleged links to foreign terrorists.
Muslims in Ethiopia have been protesting the government’s control of the Supreme Islamic Council and its imposition of al-Ahbash, an unknown Islamic sect across mosques in Ethiopia. In a press statement last year, the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom said: “The Ethiopian government has sought to force a change in the sect of Islam practiced nationwide and has punished clergy and laity who have resisted.” Elected to represent the movement, the accused Muslim leaders were arrested and charged under Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law when negotiations with the government failed last July.
A joint production of the Ethiopian National Security Agency, the Federal Police and ETV, the film draws a parallel between a local protest movement recognised for its peaceful acts of resistance with Africa’s most notorious terrorist groups such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Mali’s Ansar Din and Somalia’s al-Shabaab.
With dozens of journalists, politicians and activists already charged or convicted under its vague and broad anti-terrorism law that criminalises all forms of dissent, the fight against terrorism has become the primary juridical framework within which to legitimise and justify war against political foes. It is the new legal ideology in which these political motives are institutionalised to provide long-standing relationships of domination some legal pretext. In Ethiopia today, America’s “war on terror” is used to short-circuit both the constitution and international criticism.
Making fiction intelligible
Made to portray the Muslim community’s struggle for religious freedom as a terrorist ploy designed to “establish an Islamic state”, Jihadawi Harekat is less about what it describes so much as the alternative reality that it depicts and crystallises. By drawing politically explosive parallels between groups with radically different political presuppositions, the film dramatises and escalates the gravity of the threat. It replays deeply held narratives of the past and accentuates the “evil” embodied by the committee in its attempts to frame them as “public enemies” working towards a common goal with groups that inhabit an entirely different political universe.
To amplify this new reality, that is, the cinematic production of new subjects of terrorism, the film appropriates pre-existing frames of reference that sociologists call “processes of signification”. To augment the parallel, it situates the protest movement in the context of terrorism – a discourse whose antecedent is always Islamic and “whose stereotypical characteristics are already part of socially available knowledge”.
“The film is designed to portray the Muslim community’s struggle for religious freedom as a terrorist ploy to ‘establish an Islamic state’.”
Just because the protest movement shares the antecedent “Islam” with al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, the signification equates a peaceful movement that operates within the framework of Ethiopia’s own constitution with violent groups on the sole basis of their imputed common denominator. The exemplar images of violence embodied by al-Shabaab and Boko Haram are situated within the geopolitical context and cultural idiosyncrasies of Ethiopia to essentialise the association and ultimately render its absurd collocation socially intelligible.
There are temporal, spatial, material and editorial questions that the film cannot account for. By connecting events that took place from East Africa to West Africa, from North Africa to the Middle East, by gathering actors of differing ideological persuasions into unity, by reducing complex and contingent historic and political issues into self-evident mathematical varieties, Jihadawi Harekat inadvertently slips into a crisis it cannot contain or suppress.
One excellent example is a hinge the film uses to connect the leaders of the protest movement to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. In an unedited interrogation clip wrongly broadcasted after the film, the interrogators coerce Abubakar Ahmed – the chairman of the committee chosen to be representative of the Muslim community – into accepting their conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis have the ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic world under Sharia law.
While the reduction of such complex and contingent issues of historical and theoretical specificity into an either-or binary is emblematic of the logic through which the film establishes its central thesis, I am interested in the logic used to connect the ideologies of the Brotherhood in the Middle East to the protest leaders in Ethiopia. This pivot is a distinguished Qatari public intellectual, Jassim Sultan whose teachings two members of the protest leaders were said to have attended.
In an article that examined the increasing role of Qatar in the politics of the Middle East, The Economist holds up Sultan as an exemplary figure known for his “middle-of-the road” politics, not the extremism depicted in Jihadawi Harekat. Sultan, whom the film accuses of being a middle man between the “extreme ideological orientations” of the Brotherhood and Ethiopia’s “jihadists”, was praised by The Economist as, “a renowned Qatari intellectual, [who] strikes a chord by rejecting the Brotherhood’s demand for strict obedience… derides its slogan, ‘Islam is the solution’, as facile”.
By editing conversations about conversations, copy-pasting interrogations about different spatial, temporal and material co-ordinates into a coherent Ethiopian story, the film seeks to transform the most basic demands for freedom of religion into a joint criminal enterprise with terror groups near and far. Nowhere else is the conjuncture between words and images, facts and fictions, times and spaces, persons and events manifestly absurd as in Jihadawi Harekat.
Instead of generating a moral panic that serves as the material fabric for social control, the film generated consequences that are destabilising the regime. In a statement to the press, a coalition of 33 political parties emphatically denounced the film as yet another spectacle that epitomises the ruling party’s contempt for the constitution and the rule of law.
Boomerang effects
The film, along with the ongoing trial, offers an important window into the cleavage that divides the old Ethiopian Muslim subjectivity from the new. Thanks to the government that never ceases to generate crisis and mobilise the law and its court system to cement this crisis, these events have opened up a space for critical cultural-political awareness.
Muslims in Ethiopia, who conceive their religious subjectivity as apolitical and go about their lives, have begun to realise that their religious identity can be a potent site of subjectification and domination. As one of 20th century’s prescient political thinkers, Hannah Arendt formulates this point; an attack against a specific identity creates spontaneous moment of political self-awareness. “If one is attacked as a Jew,” Arendt said, “One must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.”
Because of the events of last year, there emerged a critical space in which a society that rarely, if at all, engages in questions of law and politics, protested the usurpation of its constitutional guarantees. In their struggle, Muslims in Ethiopia began to see unfair closures and systematic subjections taking place at sites and moments they could not have seen before. The government’s uncanny response to basic demands of religious freedom has created a rare opportunity for a decisive break with a docile political past and for the formation of a new collective consciousness.
Awol K Allo, is the Lord Kelvin Adam Smith scholar at the University of Glasgow Law School, UK. Previously, he was a lecturer in law at St Mary’s University College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
Ethiopian Muslims engaged in the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement?
In her recent commentary in the New York Review of Books, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”, Dr. Helen Epstein questioned the Obama Administration for turning a blind eye to human rights violations in Africa, and particularly the persecution of Muslims in Ethiopia. She argued that “After more than four years in office… Obama has done little to advance the idealistic goals of his Ghana speech.” In fact, she finds the Administration playing peekaboo with Paul Kagame, the Rwandan dictator and puppet master of M23 (the rebel group led by Bosco Ntganda under indictment by the International Criminal Court) which has been wreaking havoc in Goma, (city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Youweri Museveni, the overlord of the corruptocracy in Uganda. Dr. Epstein is perplexed by President Obama’s lofty rhetoric and his paralysis when it comes to walking the talk in Ethiopia:
Perhaps most worrying of all is the unwillingness of Obama and other Western leaders to say or do anything to support the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Ethiopians who have been demonstrating peacefully against government interference in their religious affairs for more than a year. (The Ethiopian government claims the country has a Christian majority, but Muslims may account for up to one half of the population.) You’d think a nonviolent Islamic movement would be just the kind of thing the Obama administration would want to showcase to the world. It has no hint of terrorist influence, and its leaders are calling for a secular government under the slogan ‘We have a cause worth dying for, but not worth killing for.’ Indeed, the Ethiopian protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.
Is Dr. Epstein correct in her profound observation that the Ethiopian Muslim “protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.” Are the Muslim protests that have been going on for nearly two years the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement in Ethiopia? Is Obama failing an Ethiopian Spring?
The importance of religious freedom to Americans and in U.S. foreign policy
Religious freedom is arguably the most important cornerstone of all American liberties. Promoting religious freedom worldwide is so important that the U.S. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA)affirming religious freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and in various international instruments, including Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Obama Administration’s record on international religious freedom in general has been deplorable. In 2010, Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Commission openly complained that the Administration is ignoring religious persecution throughout the world to the potential detriment of U.S. national security. “We’re completely neglecting religious freedom in countries that tend to be Petri dishes for extremism. This invariably leads to trouble for us… Regrettably, this point seems to shrink year after year for the White House and State Department.”
The Obama Administration’s disregard for religious freedom and tolerance of religious intolerance and persecution throughout the world is incomprehensible given the centrality of religious freedom and separation of religion and government in the scheme of American liberties. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the foundation of all American liberties, first and foremost prohibits government involvement in religion in sweeping and uncompromising language: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The “establishment” clause guarantees government neutrality by preventing government establishment of religious institutions or support for religion in general. The “free exercise” clause protects against religious persecution by government.
In the 1796 “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary”, the U.S. formally affirmed to the world the sanctity of religious freedom in America without regard to doctrine or denomination: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” (Art. 11.)
Many of the American Founding Fathers including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were deeply suspicious of government involvement in religion, which they believed corrupted religion itself. George Washington championed separation of religion and state when he wrote, “I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” Thomas Jefferson believed religion was a personal matter which invited no government involvement and argued for the “building a wall of separation between Church & State”. Jefferson wrote, “Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that … of liberty to worship our Creator… a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.” James Madison, the “father of the U.S. Constitution” was a staunch defender of religious diversity: “Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society.” President John Adams minced no words when he wrote, “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.”
President Barack Obama himself made it crystal clear that he personally disapproves of government’s involvement in religion or government imposition of religious orthodoxy on citizens. “I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.” In his first inauguration speech, President Obama declared, “Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”
The right of freedom of religion is the quintessential “rights of man” and an “ideal that still lights the world”. Yet, neither President Obama personally nor his Administration collectively have made any statements or taken any action concerning religious persecution in Ethiopia. It seems President Obama has given up the “ideal” of religious freedom for “expedience’s sake”. Such facile expedience is difficult to comprehend because President Obama was a constitutional lawyer before he became president.
It seems the President Obama now prefers a foreign policy based not on principle and the ideals of the Constitution but rather one based on expediency. It is more expedient for President Obama to have drone bases in Ethiopia than to have bastions of religious freedom. It is more expedient to sacrifice human rights at the altar of realpolitik than to uphold the right of Ethiopians to worship at the altar of their faiths. It is more expedient to chase after terrorists in the name of counterterrorism while sharing a bed with state terrorists. It is more expedient to tolerate dictatorship than to uphold the fundamental rights of citizenship. It is more expedient to support a benighted police state that to use American “ideals that still light the world” to enlighten it.
Why is the Obama Administration tone-deaf and bat-blind about religious freedom in Ethiopia given the established fact that the ruling regime in that country has engaged in egregious religious persecution with reckless abandon. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent body constituted by the Congress and the President of the United States to monitor religious freedom worldwide, recently reported:
Since July 2011, the Ethiopian government has sought to impose the al-Ahbash Islamic sect on the country’s Muslim community, a community that traditionally has practiced the Sufi form of Islam. The government also has manipulated the election of the new leaders of the Ethiopia Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC). Previously viewed as an independent body, EIASC is now viewed as a government-controlled institution. The arrests, terrorism charges and takeover of EIASC signify a troubling escalation in the government’s attempts to control Ethiopia’s Muslim community and provide further evidence of a decline in religious freedom in Ethiopia. Muslims throughout Ethiopia have been arrested during peaceful protests: On October 29, the Ethiopia government charged 29 protestors with terrorism and attempting to establish an Islamic state.
U.S. foreign policy of expediency in Africa
Expediency has been a guiding principle in American foreign policy in Africa for quite a while. “Expediency” emphasizes “pragmatism” or “realpolitik” over principles and ideals. It is an approach that dictates consideration of each case in light of prevailing circumstances. Expediency subordinates values, ideals and principles to particular political or strategic objectives. Expediency justifies full support for blood thirsty African thugs just to advance the national interest in global “war on terror”. Expediency sacrifices principles and ideals on the altar of hypocrisy. Expediency has allowed the Obama Administration to pump billions of America taxpayer dollars to strengthen the iron fist of Meles Zenawi and his cronies in the name of fighting the so-called war on terror while preaching a hollow sermon of human rights to ordinary Africans.
What is most disconcerting is the fact that President Obama speaks with forked tongue. In Accra and Cairo, he hectored African dictators and made promises and affirmations to the people of Africa: “Development depends on good governance… We must support strong and sustainable democratic governments… Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty… That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there…” He spoke of a “new partnership” with Africa, but his Watusi dance partners were Kagame, Museveni, Zenawi and their ilk.
As a strong supporter of President Obama and one who sought to exhort and mobilize Ethiopian Americans to support his election and re-election, I feel pangs of conscience when I say the President has been a poor advocate of American ideals in U.S. foreign policy in Africa. He has hectored ordinary Africans and African dictators about the need to be “on the right side of history”. For four years, President Obama has talked a good talk to Africans that America symbolizes freedom, liberty and democracy. But when it comes to walking the talk, we see him sitting in a wooden wheel chair that ain’t going nowhere fast. This paralysis has created a monumental crises of credibility for the President personally. Few Africans believe he is on their side and even fewer believe he is on the right side of history. But they do see him standing side by side with African dictators.
But could there really be expediency in dealing with blood thirsty African dictators? President Obama knows Ethiopia is a virtual police state. He knows elections are stolen there in broad daylight as those in power claim victory by a margin of 99.6 percent. He knows thousands of political prisoners languish in Ethiopian jails considered by international human rights organizations to be among the most inhumane in the world. He knows civil society institutions in that country have been wiped out of existence. He knows opposition parties, the press and dissidents have been crushed. He knows of the crimes against humanity that have been and continue to be committed in the Ogaden region, in Gambella, the Omo region and many other parts of the country. He knows about religious persecution. President Obama personally knows that 193 unarmed protesters were massacred and 763 wounded following the 2005 elections and that no one has been brought to justice for those crimes against humanity. That crime against humanity is on par with the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960 in South Africa in which South African police slaughtered 69 unarmed black protesters in the township of Sharpeville and wounded 180.
It is said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. But must the Obama Administration get in bed with those who have committed the most heinous crimes against humanity in the 21st Century? Is it worth sacrificing American ideals to coddle and consort with brutal African dictators just to get drone bases?
Can Ethiopian Americans hold the Obama Administration accountable?
IFRA requires that the United States designate as “country of particular concern” (CPC) those countries whose governments have engaged in or tolerated systematic and egregious and “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” and prescribes sanctions against such countries. IRFA provides the President 15 options ( 22 U.S.C. § 6445(a)(1)-(15)) to consider against states violating religious freedom including demarches (diplomatic protest) , private or public condemnation, denial, delay or cancellation of scientific or cultural exchanges, cancellation of a state visit, withdrawal or limitation of humanitarian or security assistance, restriction of credit or loans from United States and multilateral organizations, denial of licenses to export goods or technologies, prohibition against the U.S. government entering into any agreement to procure goods or services from that country, or “any other action authorized by law” so long as it “is commensurate in effect to the action substituted.” Once a state is designated a CPC, the President is required by law to conduct an annual review, no later than September 1 of each year, and to take one or more of the actions specified in IRFA.
The first action Ethiopian Americans who believe in religious freedom in Ethiopia should take in an organized and collective manner is to file a request, (and if necessary a demand) that USCRIF amend or append to its 2012 report religious persecution and government interference in the profession and practice of the Islamic and Christian faiths in Ethiopia and make recommendations to the Secretary of State (SoS) for sanctions or alternative actions. In the alternative, they should insure that the violation is reported in the 2012-2013 USCRIF report with recommendations to the SoS for appropriate action. The SoS is required by IRFA to take “into consideration the recommendations of the Commission [USCRIF]” in formulating subsequent action.
By having USCRIF amend or append to its report and submit appropriate recommendations, Ethiopian Americans concerned about religious freedom in Ethiopia will have a legal basis to demand that the President “take all appropriate and feasible actions authorized by law to obtain the cessation of violations” (22 U.S.C. § 6445(a)(1)-(15)) or make Presidential certification and issue a waiver. In other words, the President would be in a position to take action or not to take action because taking action would be against U.S. “national security”. Either way, the Obama Administration could be held accountable under IFRA. No doubt, any such organized effort by Ethiopian Americans will stir the hornet’s nest of the K Street lobbyists who will rub their palms with glee and grin ear to ear as they come to feast at the trough of poor Ethiopian taxpayers.
The second action Ethiopian Americans who believe in religious freedom in Ethiopia should take is to establish an interfaith council to work on broader issues of religious freedom in Ethiopia. In my July 2012 commentary “Unity in Divinity”, I argued that a threat to the religious liberty of Muslims is a threat to the religious freedom of Christians. I urged Ethiopian “Christian and Muslim religious leaders [to] play a critical role in preventing conflict and in building bridges of understanding, mutual respect and collaborative working relations…” I suggested the establishment of “interfaith councils” patterned after those in the U.S. “These [interfaith] councils bring diverse faith communities to work together to foster greater understanding and respect among people of different faiths and to address basic needs in the community. Many such councils go beyond dialogue and reflection to cooperative work in social services and implementing projects to meet community needs. They stand together to protect religious freedom by opposing discrimination and condemning debasement of religious institutions and faiths. There is no reason why Ethiopians could not establish interfaith councils of their own.”
I reiterate my call for interfaith councils to bring together members of the two faith communities in the United States, and possibly elsewhere, for collective action. Religious freedom in Ethiopia is not an issue that concerns only Muslims. It is of equal concern and importance for Christian Ethiopians who have undergone similar egregious interference in the selection of their religious leadership just recently.
What is needed is sincere and open dialogue and interaction between Ethiopian Americans who are Christians and Muslims to advance the cause of religious liberty and equality for all in unity. Members of these two faith communities must come together in a historic meeting and develop a joint agenda to guarantee and safeguard their religious freedom, overcome any traces of sectarianism and reaffirm their long coexistence, diversity and harmony in a unified country based on the rule of law. They must jointly develop principles of cooperation and coordination. They must develop solidarity which can withstand narrow sectarian interests and the whims and personalities of those in leadership positions. They must relate with each other in the spirit of mutual respect, trust and co-operation and find ways to deepen and strengthen their relations.
Perhaps such dialogue may not come so easily in the absence of existing institutions. It may be necessary for leaders of both faiths to join together and establish a task force to study the issues and make recommendations for the broadest possible dialogue between Ethiopian American Muslims and Christians in America. Christian and Islamic spiritual authorities and laymen should be encouraged to work together not only to defend each other on matters of religious liberty but also to propose long term solutions to reduce the dangers of sectarianism, fanaticism, conflict and misunderstanding and institute a permanent dialogue between members of both faiths. There is no reason why an interfaith council cannot organize joint conferences, meetings, workshops, seminars, press conferences and informational campaigns in the media in both faith communities. The Ethiopia of tomorrow can be built on a strong foundation of dialogue of Muslims and Christians today. Dialogue is a precursor to national reconciliation.
From expediency to consistency
The Obama Administration must do a lot more to improve human rights in Africa. President Obama must not only talk a good talk, he must also walk the talk. But with religious liberty, he must walk the talk and follow the letter and spirit of IFRA. If he does not, he would have betrayed not only the ideals of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution but also disregarded the law he is sworn to uphold. There is no reason why the Obama Administration cannot find a harmonious convergence of national security and human rights in Africa. When America cannot lead by ideals it will be forced to follow up by exacting ordeals.
Are the Ethiopian Muslim protesters leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle? Yes, they are!!!
Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.
Previous commentaries by the author are available at:
http://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/
www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/
Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:
With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists (deemed irrelevant to the Government’s, economically-driven development plans) are being threatened, and intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced and herded into camps, their homes destroyed. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops, forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced – men beaten, children frightened, women raped, so too the land.
Over 80% of the 85 million population of Ethiopia live in rural areas, in settlements and villages, and work in agriculture. Many are small-scale farmers who, according to government figures, farm “eight percent (about 10,000,000 ha) of the national land area”, and traditional pastoralists who have, for generations, lived simple lives, culture, nature and livelihood entwined.
Huge tracts of agricultural land with water supplies are being leased to foreign companies for food export. The Oakland Institute (OI), a US- based policy think-tank and leader in the field, have produced in-depth reports on worldwide land sales stating that, between 2008 and 2011, “3,619,509 hectares (ha) were transferred to domestic investors, state-owned enterprises and foreign companies”. Amounting to a third, if government figures are correct, of the land farmed by Ethiopians themselves, an area the size of a small country, e.g. Holland.
Government Genocide
Land grab (and associated water appropriation), Oxfam states, occurs when “governments, banks or private investors buy up huge plots of land to make equally huge profits”. Since 2008 such speculation has vastly expanded; in 2009 alone the OI recorded that “foreign investors acquired 60 million ha of land [worldwide] – the size of France – through purchases or leases of land for commercial farming,” up from an annual average, pre-2008, of 4 million ha. Three quarters of all land deals take place in sub-Saharan Africa, in some of the most food-insecure, economically vulnerable, politically repressive countries in the world; precisely, some say, because of such advantageous commercial factors.
In Ethiopia, land sales are occurring in six key areas. Oromia and Gambella in the south, Amhara, Beneshangul, Gumuz, the Sidaama zone, or SNNP and the Lower Omo Valley – an area of outstanding natural beauty with acclaimed UNESCO World heritage status. The Ethiopian government’s conduct in Omo and Oromia, Genocide Watch (GW) considers “to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal massacres”. A statement that shocks us all, and casts shame upon the government and indeed slumbering donor nations, who act not, who speak not, but know well the cruel methods, which violate a plethora of human rights laws, employed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). A regime whose loyalties, it seems, rest firmly with investors, corporations, multi-nationals and the like, and who cares little for the people living upon the land, or indeed in the cities.
Forced from Home
Conditional within land lease agreements is the requirement that the government will clear the area of ‘encumbrances’, meaning indigenous people – families, children, pastoralists, cattle, wildlife, forests, anything in fact that will interfere with the leveling of the land, building of [foreign] workers’ accommodation, roads and the eventual sowing of crops.
The national three-year Villagisation program, initiated in 1985, aims to move 1.5 million people from their ancestral homes, over four states, into large settlements. The process is well under way, as these 2010 figures from Cultural Survival show, “by February 1987, 5.7 million people (15 percent of the rural population) had been moved into 11,000 new villages. By the end of this year, 10 million rural inhabitants (25 percent of the population) are expected to be villagized in 12 of Ethiopia’s 13 provinces.” Government propaganda justifying the policy states these new village centers will, “facilitate the provision of human social services by concentrating scattered homesteaders into central communities”, and facilitate ‘agrarian socialism’ – hence the leasing of mega chunks of land to multi-national corporations, without the participation of local people, whose land is being taken from them: a totalitarian version of socialism then.
Contrary to federal and international law, which requires the free, informed and prior consent of the people, this mass movement is being carried out without consultation or compensation, no matter the official claims to the contrary. Human Rights Watch (HRW) (28/08/12) reports how “Villagers who have been unwilling to move, or who refuse to mobilise others to do so, have been arrested and mistreated by the soldiers.” Once forcibly emptied, villages are destroyed and cattle killed or confiscated, the OI state, by government troops. Along with pastoralists, who number around 300,000 in Gambella alone, villagers are herded, sometimes literally, always metaphorically at the end of rifle, into Villagisation camps. And these, despite Government promises to, “provide basic resources and infrastructure, the new villages”, HRW found “have inadequate food, agricultural support, and health and education facilities”.
Resistance to moving is met with abuse and violence. HRW’s detailed report “Waiting for Death”, found that in Gambella, where the government plans to ‘relocate’ 225,000 people, “soldiers frequently beat or arrested individuals who questioned the motives of the program or refuse to move to the new villages [Villagisations]. Community leaders and young men are targeted [scores are arrested without due process]. There have also been credible allegations of rape and sexual assault by government soldiers. Fear and intimidation was widespread.” In a disturbing account of life within and without the Villagisation centers, the OI discovered, most disturbingly, that pastoralists (whose lifestyle and nature is to wander) if “encountered [by the military] outside of villages are told to relocate to the villages immediately”. Such restrictions conjure images of prison life rather than a peaceful, communal village, and contradict the government’s message of willing relocation, good community relations, participation and social harmony.
A Culture of Fear
Such abuse is not limited to Gambella – in the Lower Omo region, where huge, state-owned sugar plantations and the massive Gibe III Dam project are being developed, dissenting voices are, the OI report, subjected to “beatings, abuse and general intimidation”, in addition to extra-judicial prison sentencing.
“Fear and intimidation” is endemic, not just in areas associated with land sales, but throughout the country; suppression is common and freedom of expression greatly restricted. The media – TV, radio, press as well as print companies, are state-owned, so too the sole telecommunication company, restricting access to the internet, which is monitored. The judiciary is simply an extension of government, lacking credible independence, the political opposition marginalised and completely ineffective. International media are frowned upon and, in some areas (e.g. Ogaden) completely banned, such are the paranoid actions of the ruling EPRDF, which, it would seem, has much to hide.
Resentment and anger simmers amongst many displaced oppressed villagers. In April 2012 a group of men attacked the Saudi Star compound in Gambella and killed four employees. The men were quickly labeled ‘rebels’ and a military manhunt was instigated. The criminal act should be treated as such and the men brought to justice, however government forces have reacted with unwarranted unjustifiable violence and aggression to innocent civilians, as HRW (28/08/12) reported: “Ethiopian soldiers went house to house… arbitrarily arresting and beating young men and raping female relatives of suspects”. Any excuse, it seems, to unleash state violence, perpetrated by a regime that mistrusts even it’s own people. After the attack on Saudi Star, a company that has leased some 10,000 ha of prime Gambella land, the Ethiopian military accused four Anuak guards on duty at the time, of involvement in the attack and carried out extra- judicial killings (murder) on them all. Local villagers “alleged they were tortured”, and “women and girls raped either in their homes or in detention” (ibid). Illegal acts by the Ethiopian State that by any reasonable reading fits the definition of terrorism stated by the US military as, “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.” Terrifying tactics employed by the military in the search for information about ‘the rebels’ – a meaningless term evoking negative stereotypes, used alongside the ‘T’ word (terrorist) to demonise anyone who disagrees with disagreeable government policies and justify all violent measures by the benevolent regime – such is the perverse and dangerous use of language, facilitated by the international mainstream media that has infiltrated our imaginations.
The Myth of Development
The government proclaims land sales are part of a strategic, long-term approach to agriculture reforms and economic development, that foreign investment will fund infrastructure projects, create employment opportunities, help to eradicate hunger and poverty and benefit the community, local and national. The term development is itself an interesting one; distorted, linked and commonly limited almost exclusively to economic targets, meaning growth of GDP, established principally by the World Bank, whose policies and practices in relation to land sales, the OI discovered, “have glossed over critical issues such as human rights, food security and human dignity for local populations”, and its philanthropic sister, the International Monetary Fund; market fundamentalism driving the exported (one size fits all) policies, of both ideologically entrenched organisations, that promote models of development that seek to fulfill corporate interests first middle and last.
Defined in such limited ways, Ethiopia, having somehow achieved impressive GDP growth figures since 2004, (with a dizzy 9.8%, average, similar to that of India) would seem to be in the premiership of development. Inflation, though, sits at 30% and, whilst unemployment in urban areas has dropped to around 20%, over a quarter of young people aged 18-24 remain out of work; high unemployment in urban areas means young women are often forced into commercial sex work or domestic servitude.
Statistics compiled by The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provide a broader, less GDP-rosy picture of the country. They place Ethiopia 174th (from 187 nations) on the Human development index (HDI), with average life expectancy of 59 years and 40% of people living in poverty (on less than $1.25 a day). The 2012 Global Hunger Index makes Ethiopia the 5th hungriest country in the world (IFPRI), with between 12 and 15 million people a year relying on food aid to keep them alive. What growth there is benefits the rich, privileged minority. There is a growing divide between the 99.9% and the small number of wealthy Ethiopians – who, coincidentally, are mainly members of the ruling party trickle down, gushing up’, concentrating wealth with the wealthy; as the Inter Press Service (IPS) 22/08/12 reports, “development has yet to reach the vast majority of the country’s population. Instead, much of this wealth – and political power – has been retained by the ruling party and, particularly, by the tiny Tigrayan minority community to which [former Prime Minister] Meles belonged.”
“Protect, Respect and Remedy”
Protagonists laying claim to the all-inclusive healing powers of agriculture and agro-industrial projects, contradict, the OI states, “the basic facts and evidence showing growing impoverishment experienced on the ground”. What about the bumper benefits promised, particularly the numerous employment opportunities? It turns out industrialised farming is highly mechanised and offers few jobs; overseas companies are not concerned with providing employment for local people and care little for their well-being, making good bedmates for the ruling party. They bring the workers they need, and are allowed to do so by the Ethiopian government, which places no constraints on their operations.
Such shameful indifference contravenes the letter and spirit of the United Nations (UN) “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework. Endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council on 16th June 2011, the guiding principles outlined, “provide an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity.” Corporations have a duty under the framework to “prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations… even if they have not contributed to their impacts”i Although not legally enforceable, these principles of decency offer recourse to human rights organisations and community groups, and should be morally binding for multinationals, whose profit-driven activities in Ethiopia, facilitated by a brutal regime that ignores fundamental human rights, are causing intense suffering to hundreds of thousands of indigenous people.
Graham Peebles is director of the Create Trust. He can be reached at: [email protected]
![The government's uncanny response to "basic demands of religious freedom" has created a rare opportunity for a decisive break with a docile political past and for the "formation of a new collective consciousness" [AP]](http://www.ethiopianreview.com/2011/Addis_scene.jpg)
Ethiopian Muslims engaged in the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement?