WASHINGTON — Senator Jim Inhofe is scheduled to visit five African countries this week, including ones he’s been to numerous times in the past 10 years.
Inhofe, Republican from the State of Oklahoma, was in Afghanistan earlier this week and is scheduled to go to Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Inhofe has been to Africa at least 20 times in the past 10 years.
He has described his trips to Africa as “a Jesus thing,” in which he meets with African leaders in a spiritual context, although he told The Oklahoman he also pursues humanitarian and national security causes on his taxpayer-funded visits. He last went to Africa in December. That trip also included a stop in Ethiopia.
Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey said Inhofe “is once again focused on his work as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Senator Inhofe is in the pockets of DLP Piper lobbyists who receive $50,000 per month from Ethiopia’s dictator to lobby U.S. congressmen. Last year, he was instrumental in blocking the “Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act” in the Senate after it unanimously passed in the House.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The U.S. also knows about, and is in fact an accomplice in, the current slow-pace, systematic genocide in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia by its client regime.
Johannesburg, South Africa – The Clinton administration and Congress watched the unfolding events in Rwanda in April 1994 in a kind of stupefied horror.
The US had just pulled American troops out of a disastrous peacekeeping mission in Somalia – later made famous in the book “Black Hawk Down” – the year before. It had vowed never to return to a conflict it couldn’t understand, between clans and tribes it didn’t know, in a country where the US had no national interests.
From embassies and hotels in Kigali, diplomats and humanitarian workers gave daily tolls of the dead, mainly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus who had called for tribal peace. The information came in real time, and many experts say that the US and the Western world in general failed to respond.
‘We knew before, during, and after’
“During World War II, much of the full horror of the Holocaust was known after the fact. But in Rwanda, we knew before, during, and after,” says Ted Dagne, a researcher at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, who has traveled to Rwanda on fact-finding missions. “We knew, but we didn’t want to respond.”
In an official letter written as late as June 19, 1994, the then-UN-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali showed exasperation at the numbers of peacekeepers that member nations were willing to provide.
“It is evident that, with the failure of member states to promptly provide the resources necessary for the implementation of its expanded mandate, UNAMIR (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda) may not be in a position, for about three months, to fully undertake the tasks entrusted to it,” Mr. Boutros-Ghali wrote. Within a month of the writing of this letter, the genocide ended, as Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front took full effective control of Rwanda.
US support for a rapid-action force
Mr. Dagne, a Congressional aide at the time, says that if the Clinton administration had called for a rapid-action force to stop the killings in Rwanda, Congress would have supported him. Letters from bipartisan panels of Congress back this up.
“We are writing to express our strong support for an active United States role in helping to resolve the crisis in Rwanda,” wrote Rep. Bob Torricelli (D) of New Jersey, in a letter of April 20, 1994, signed by Republicans and Democrats alike. “Given the fact that approximately 20,000 people have died thus far in the tragic conflict, it is important that the United States endeavor to end the bloodshed and to bring the parties to the negotiating table.”
But time and again in that spring and summer, President Clinton replied with more pleas for the government and the rebels to stop the violence themselves, and suggested that the underarmed, overstretched UN peacekeeping mission on the ground was the right group to lead the way.
“On April 22 … the White House issued a strong public statement calling for the Rwandan Army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front to do everything in their power to end the violence immediately,” President Clinton wrote on May 25, 1994, to Rep. Harry Johnston (D) of Florida. “This followed an earlier statement by me calling for a cease-fire and the cessation of the killings.”
With Congress looking toward the president, and the White House looking toward the UN, nothing was done, and the genocide ran its course.
“At the end of an administration, they write a report, and Rwanda was at the top of the failures list for the Clinton administration, so this is something that they acknowledge themselves,” says Dagne.
If there is a lesson learned from Rwanda, Dagne says, it is that the international community needs to avoid giving the impression that it is willing or capable of rescuing civilians in a conflict. “It’s important to build the capacity of people to do the job themselves [of protecting themselves],” Dagne says. “We must not give the expectation that people will be saved.”
I participated in a panel hosted by the Oromo Studies Association at Howard University in Washington on April 4 and gave a subsequent interview to the Oromo language service of the Voice of America. The theme of the conference was “U.S. Policy in the Horn of Africa: Opportunities and Prospects for Change under the Obama Administration.” Other members of the panel were Terrence Lyons, associate professor at George Mason University, and Ezekiel Gebissa, associate professor at Kettering University.
I emphasized during the panel and in the VOA interview that it is important to treat the Horn of Africa as a region as conflicts in any one country inevitably have important implications for one or more neighboring countries. It is also essential that the United States work cooperatively with traditional allies and some of the new non-African countries that have growing influence in the region. I urged the mostly Ethiopian-American audience of Oromo heritage not to accept the commonly-held view that the United States wields enormous control over the Ethiopian government through its assistance program, which consists mostly of funding to combat HIV/AIDS and humanitarian assistance. U.S. influence is important but not uniquely critical to the Ethiopian government.
Although the 2005 national elections in Ethiopia ended badly and the 2008 local elections were a missed opportunity to restart a competitive electoral process, I noted that the Eritrean-based Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also missed an opportunity when it boycotted the 2005 elections. It is difficult to be optimistic about competitive national elections in 2010, but if discussions between the Ethiopian government and the OLF suggest the possibility of good elections on a relatively-level playing field, the OLF should engage politically. Its long-standing armed struggle against the government has not been successful and shows no sign that it will be successful.
As for the Obama Administration and the concerns of the Oromo in Ethiopia, I doubted that the new administration will focus on any particular ethnic group in Ethiopia. Although the Oromo constitute by far the largest group in the country, there are some 85 ethnic groups in Ethiopia. It is not realistic to expect the American government to single out the grievances of any particular group. On the other hand, I believe the Obama administration will give greater attention generally to the process of democratization and human rights issues in Ethiopia. This should work to the advantage of the Oromo.
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – A group of private Saudi investors plans to invest 375 million riyals ($100 million) to plant wheat, barley and rice in Ethiopia, one of the investors said.
The three investors met Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi late last month, Mohamed al-Musallam, who chairs Dar Misc Economic and Administrative Consultancy firm, told Reuters.
“They approved to lease us the farm land. They will exempt us from paying taxes and lease fees in the first years of production and they will allow us to export all our production,” Musallam told Reuters.
Food security has topped the policy agenda in the Gulf Arab region following rampant inflation in 2008 that underscored the peninsula’s dependence on imports and forced countries to invest abroad to ensure supplies of staples like rice and wheat.
The three investors are setting up a company that will lead the investment. “We have opted for rice, barley and wheat because they are among the crops covered by the (Saudi) government’s strategic food security programme,” he said.
“We plan to start within one year. We are in the process of assessing best areas and ratios for each crop,” Musallam added.
The other investors involved in the project are Yassine al-Jafri and Khaled Zeiny.
“Some of the financing will come from us and … we can secure some of the financing from private financial institutions or from the Islamic Development Bank,” he added.
Saudi Arabia has urged companies to invest in farm projects abroad after deciding last year to reduce wheat production by 12.5 percent per year, abandoning a 30-year-old programme to grow its own, which achieved self-sufficiency but depleted the desert kingdom’s scarce water supplies.
State-owned Saudi Industrial Development Fund is granting financing facilities to firms exploring agricultural investments abroad.
Saudi investors have launched agricultural projects in Indonesia worth $1.3 billion last year, Mohamed Abdulkader al-Fadel, who chairs Saudi Arabia’s Commerce and Industry Chambers Council, said earlier this month.
The world’s largest oil exporter said in January it had received the first batch of rice to be produced abroad by local investors as part of the King Abdullah Initiative for Saudi Agricultural Investment Abroad.
Crossroads Music books veteran Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal and the Debo Band, the first American-based band ever to be invited to play at the Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa–and for putting them on the same bill. It’s the kind of bold programming that should be much more common.
The vibraphone seems to be an instrument that lots of listeners are drawn to, and Jamal plays with a rare combination of technique and creativity. He’ll be joined on Saturday by drummer Lenny Belasco and a bassist, probably Fahir Kendall.
The Boston-based Debo Band was founded by Ethiopian-American saxophonist Danny Mekonnen in 2006 as a way of exploring the unique funk- and jazz-influenced sounds that filled the dance clubs of “Swinging Addis” in the 1960s and ‘70s. Its a unique and catchy style of music that has become more well-known to American audiences in recent years, due in part to the Ehtiopiques series of CD reissues.
Belasco/Jamal Trio and the Debo Band at Crossroads Music
Saturday, April 11, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $10-20
Crossroads Music@ Calvary United Methodist Church
801 S. 48th St, Philadelphia, PA
(215) 729-1028 www.crossroadsconcerts.org
Former chairman of Kinijit North America chairman Shaleka Yosef Yazew has abruptly dropped his defamation lawsuit against Kinijit NA auditor and other individuals following a conference with the defendant’s lawyer.
Kinijit North America is a U.S.-based support group of Ethiopia’s major opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit) during the 2005 elections in Ethiopia.
Last week, Shaleka Yosef Yazew and his wife went to Ato Tesfai Asamaw attorney’s office accompanied by their attorney to take a deposition under oath. When it was time to do so, he surprised everyone including his attorney refusing to proceed. Instead, he chose to drop the case and walked away pretending to be sick.
The Shaleka knows that the auditor is a Certified Public Accountant who has done his homework in preparing all the necessary evidences to not only defeat him in court and make him pay for his legal expenses, but also further expose him to the public. It seems that the shaleka’s intention was to settle the case in a face saving way for himself, not to punish the auditor for his alleged defamation.
Ato Tesfai told Ethiopian Review that had the shaleka “continued with the proceeding, it could have put himself in a series legal trouble.”
Shaleka Yoseph had included Ethiopian Review as as accomplice in his initial complaint. He and his blind defenders had repeatedly threatened Ethiopian Review publisher with a lawsuit.
As part of his retreat, the shaleka was asked by Ato Tesfai to go public and ask for forgiveness of his community via any available media.
Ethiopian Review had previously reported that Shaleka Yosef and his cronies had pocked several hundred thousand dollars that belonged to the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit). Under his watch, over 2 million dollars that have been collected from Kinijit supporters in the United Sates have been squandered.
When Kinijit chairman Hailu Shawel was released from jail in Ethiopia, he had received a complete report about the corruption of Shaleqa Yoseph. Instead of taking appropriate measures to recover the stolen funds, Ato Hailu chose to try to cover up the massive corruption, which soiled his own name as well. Shaleqa Yoseph’s corruption, and Ato Hailu Shawel’s attempt to cover it up, was the main reason for the split up of the Kinijit top leadership and later the party itself. These two corrupt politicians and their cohorts should never be allowed to hold any public office.
WASHINGTON — Senator Jim Inhofe is scheduled to visit five African countries this week, including ones he’s been to numerous times in the past 10 years.
I participated in a panel hosted by the Oromo Studies Association at Howard University in Washington on April 4 and gave a subsequent interview to the Oromo language service of the Voice of America. The theme of the conference was “U.S. Policy in the Horn of Africa: Opportunities and Prospects for Change under the Obama Administration.” Other members of the panel were Terrence Lyons, associate professor at George Mason University, and Ezekiel Gebissa, associate professor at Kettering University.