Commander Zeleke Bogale has passed away on this day last year, June 17, 2010. The following is a tribute by his former colleague Commander Assefa Seifu.
By Assefa Seifu
The first batch of Apprentice Cadets for the new Imperial Ethiopian Naval College were flown to Asmara from AA (after all assembled there from various parts of the country) on Meskerem 20 & 21 1948 on board Air Force Dakota planes. We were 47.( probaly the first time to fly for all!)
After about a month they were taken to Massawa (three of us went back to AA to help celebrate the Silver Jubilee of HIM’s Coronation.)In Massawa, we embarked on basic infantry and naval training, plus academic ones particularly in English, math & physics to prepare us for the proper launch into Imperial Ethiopian Naval College curriculum, as cadets. Needless to say there were attritions.
The remaining bulk were divided into three branches; The Executive, Supply(Logistics) and Engineering. Zelleke and I were in the first. So, we were not only course mates but also class mates. On graduation, Zeleke was given the first sword.
Thereafter, we, of the Executive Branch went to Norway for a year’s practical sea training and or another year to England for, what they called, Sub.Lieutenants’ Courses.
We returned to AA virtually on the eve of the Mengistu – Germame attempted revolution. Less than ten days after we returned home, we were ordered to proceed to Massawa to prepare for The Navy Days.
This was a bit tough for those that came from the provinces because they could not see their families after more than two years abroad.
The Navy Days were big celebrations of the graduating cadets, bordering on fanfare; which I need not go into. But one thing cannot be overlooked. Beginning on our graduation, history was made and repeated
yearly until HIM’s overthrow. Please bear the digression a bit for historical purposes.
For the first time since the Cold War, NATO & Warsaw Pact Naval Ships and others from neutral countries participated in a manoeuvre at our Navy Days. This Naval Review by HIM commanded by the Senior Admiral of whichever group broke the ice ‘of the cold war’ and there was a yearly vying which one will send a senior admiral as that would determine who would be the commander of the manoeuvres and the honour of having HIM on board. This was no mean diplomatic feat and political manoeuvre, by HIM and his Minister(s) of Foreign Affairs.
HIM reviewed the manoeuvres from the senior Admiral’s ship until he got his own Flag Ship HMS Ethiopia. Soon after the Navy days, we most of the officers of The Executive Branch, were sent to The US Naval Post Graduate School (USNPGS) at Monterrey California. Please forgive the slight digression, but I feel it is important for historical purposes how the Western Media & Press treat us!
Well after I had come out in exile Egypt copied our monumental achievements and the western press & media hailed it as an extraordinary achievement by Egypt to bring the two opposing Worlds’ war ships to participate in a manoeuvre. Needless to add that I reminded the BBC World Sevice & TV that they had reported this feat for years from Ethiopia. Adding surely they could not forget the time when The Princess Royal (Anne) was the guest of honouor at one of the Navy Days!
On graduation from the USNPGS we were met by officers of other branches and other ranks to sail her back from San Francisco/Diego via Hawaii and Japan to her new home. Zelleke, was of course, part of the of the officer-corps that brought HMS Ethiopia to her new home.
Thereafter, Zeleke was sent to England for further naval and academic education. While there, Zelleke had an unfortunate accident in the underground train where he had one leg partially disabled. All of us,
without exception, were shocked to hear this. Our boss, Commander Eskinder Dessta, was kindness itself. He made sure that Zelleke got the best treatment the country (UK) offered.
A lesser person would have had all his personality shattered. Not Zelleke!
After the revolution, Zelleke was promoted as Administrator of The Marine Department under the Ministry of Transport; later the department was given an autonomous status and became known as The Ethiopian Marine Transport Authority in charge of inland waterways and the seaports of Assab and Massawa.
He was virtually his own boss and there he showed what he was really made of a man of steel and determination in character, brilliance in administration and foresight in the implementation of his duties and responsibilities..
As I had had to leave in Oct 1975 what I relate hereafter is what I was happy to glean from colleagues at the time and now when the inevitable happened to share it with the EEDN family.
One friend (2nd Entry of the navy) that I asked said:
“As discussed, I never had the pleasure of working for/with Cdr. Zeleke. When one thinks of Zeleke, hard work, dependability and good character spring to mind. The story is told that in his capacity as the General Manager of the Marine Transport Authority, he was responsible for turning Assab Port into an oasis by giving incentives to all kinds of people including to several gardeners to look after the greening of not only the port but also the city of Assab too.”
I had to go into the root of this “oasis “as I had heard about it before. So my enquiry, of which I am very pleased, revealed, that the gardeners at Assab Port were so diligent that they did not stick to working hours even during the hottest season. Pleased with what he saw, Zelleke rewarded the chief Gardener and the assistants wit a hefty pay rise that caused fairly senior office staff to murmur. Not that Zelleke
would take any notice of such trivialities. The friend that reminded me of the “oasis” mentioned a biblical story which I looked up for our benefit. No doubt many of you will remember the story Our Lord told his
disciples about the kingdom of heaven and exemplifying it by a boss ‘hiring labourers at a penny a day early in the morning, later employing more and saying that he will pay them whatever is right; and finally,
he did likewise at the sixth, 9th & 11th hour. He paid them all a penny each and when those that had worked longer complained, the boss’s answer was, “Friend I do thee no wrong; didst though agree with me for a penny?” – Matt. 20/10)
That was not all that Zelleke did to look after his hard working employees. The Dergue had ordered no salary increments. The order did not exclude new employment; just not to increase salaries. The good man found a way out of this by creating various echelons. He created higher paying jobs and promoted the dserving thereby giving his staff the increment they were due. Ingenious and kind would you not agree? Let me add one more point on this thread, hope I am not boring anyone.
As most of you will remember the revolution was not just against the Emperor, his family and ministers but all the way down. The Navy was no exception. It was the non commissioned officers that, in effect, hired and fired.
Sadly, it was in the Navy too. A number of highly qualified, very decent, duty-minded officers were dismissed by these thugs for merely being duty conscious and disciplinarians. They were not only dismissed but also banned from any government employment.
When Zelleke was promoted to head the Marine Transport Authority, he needed qualified personnel. What a God sent opportunity! On top of desiring to help his unlawfully dismissed colleagues, some his course
and class mates that he knew were badly wronged. So there was only one solution and Zelleke took it. He went to Col. Mengistu himself and explained. The ban was lifted and he had his qualified personnel and
grateful colleagues to help him.
In the early 70s the insurgents had virtually taken over Eritrea save Asmara, that was surrounded and Massawa. Massawa was attacked heavily.
The service that was to guard the port was overwhelmed and the remnants were trying to come into the Naval Base.
The Captain of the Naval Base, Captain Mersha Girma, is reported to have famously, said to those that were approaching,
“It is not only their bullet that kills! another step in our direction you will taste our bullet. Stand your ground and fight!” ( something to this effect.
Zelleke was at the Port Massawa back then and wanted to join his colleagues at The Naval Base, but his staff prevailed upon him to save the vessels, and boats, leading the evacuation from Massawa towards
Dhalak and Port of Assab.
This is sheer Professionalism! If and when a unit or a force is overwhelmed by the enemy the last duty of the Commanding Officer is to retrieve what is retrievable and destroy what is not so that nothing falls into the enemy hands to enhance its activities.
HE ALSO RAIDED THE LOCAL BANK BRANCH AND SAVED EVERY CENT FROM FALLING INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY.
This is not all that this gallant sailor did,I, besides totally renovating the ports and facilities of Massawa and Assab; he built air conditioned houses and apartments for port employees. He further built guest houses, clubs and recreational facilities at both Massawa and Assab ports to serve the employees and guests coming to the ports from elsewhere for business or work related matters.
Those in Assab, I am told, tried to refuse these facilities to truck drivers. On hearing this Zelleke is said to have fumed and asked them, his employees, that don’t they know that without these divers that crisscross the desert they will have no job? The truckers, gratefully, had an unlimited access and usage of the clubs.
Bear with me for just one more illustration of this brilliant guy. Whenever he entered a contract for new materials and machineries, one condition was never forgotten; the sellers were put under obligation to train his employees that will use/operate these machineries; thus saving the country an invaluable not just foreign currency to have experts to do whatever but to save time too. No one can accuse Zelleke that he has not used his Naval training to full use!
I was looking for an officer that has worked with Zelleke and I was told that there was one 2nd in taker that had high regards for him. I sought him out and here is what he said to me.
“I was saddened to hear of Commander Zelleke’s passing. I had met Commander Tessema a few weeks ago in Addis and he had told me that he saw Zelleke just before coming over and that he was in good mood. He also told me that Zelleke was taking treatment for Evidently Zelleke did not win this time and as usual he must have born his suffering in silence. I feel honoured to have known and worked with him closely on board H.M.S. Ethiopia as well as later at our Headquarters. His integrity, maturity, wisdom, quiet strength, constructive nature and streak of humour were beyond compare.”
Zelleke lived a solitary life for the last 18 years, not for the lack of friends. Far from it! He avoided almost everybody.I learnt from one close to him that his reason was:
“… he said because he felt all his generation including those in the armed forces have failed the country.”
A gallant officer to his last breath!
To conclude let me go the a tribute I heard on ‘Netsanet le Etiopia radio’ by members of ye petty officer Getachew… yewondimamamchina ehtmamamch mahber
“komander Zelleke be aleqochachew yetemesgenu be betachochachew yetewededuna yetekeberu neberu!”
I think the last is a testimony that any body can be proud of.
So, Neamin & Adnew, you had a father to be really proud of. I am confident that you will follow his footsteps to the last.
May the Lord rest His Soul and give you both and your families his solace.
Distinguished Ethiopian scholar Prof. Teshome H. Gabriel has passed away. Prof. Teshome’s invaluable advise and encouragement were of great value in launching Ethiopian Review. His passing away is another great loss to Ethiopia, and the whole world. It is sad to see that scholars of his generation and caliber are passing away without getting a chance to serve their country.
His colleagues at UCLA sent out the following news release today:
LOS ANGELES, CA (UCLA) — It is with great sadness we announce that our colleague Teshome H. Gabriel passed away yesterday evening, Monday, June 14, 2010. Professor Gabriel passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles.
Teshome Gabriel, professor at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, has written extensively on memory and the cinema, theories of Third Cinema, on the aesthetics of nomadic thought in cinema and on weaving and the digital in developing countries. He has numerous publications including “Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged” and his “Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetic of Liberation.” He is the founding director of several journals, including Emergencies and Ethiopian Fine Arts Journal.
His passing away will be deeply felt at UCLA his home for over 25 years and by his long-time colleagues at the African Studies Center. Our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Maaza, and his children.
Details on funeral arrangements and memorials are pending and will be announced shortly.
For those who want to express their condolences in person the family is accepting visitation this week.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Professor Englebert comes up with an idea that Ethiopian Review has been advocating for a while. As long as poverty-mongering institutions such as the World Bank continue to keep genocidal dictators like Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia financially afloat with billions of dollars in loans and aids, Africa will remain a hell on earth for most of its people. Hopefully the folks at the World Bank, the U.S. State Department and European Union will listen to Englebert’s ideas as presented below:
To save Africa, reject its states
By PIERRE ENGLEBERT
THE World Cup, which began on Friday, is bringing deserved appreciation of South Africa as a nation that transitioned from white minority domination to a vibrant pluralist democracy. Yet its achievements stand largely alone on the continent. Of the 17 African nations that are commemorating their 50th anniversaries of independence this year — the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia will both do so in the coming weeks — few have anything to truly celebrate.
Five decades ago, African independence was worth rejoicing over: these newly created states signaled an end to the violent, humiliating Western domination of the continent, and they were quickly recognized by the international community. Sovereignty gave fledgling elites the shield to protect their weak states against continued colonial subjugation and the policy instruments to promote economic development.
Yet because these countries were recognized by the international community before they even really existed, because the gift of sovereignty was granted from outside rather than earned from within, it came without the benefit of popular accountability, or even a social contract between rulers and citizens.
Buttressed by the legality and impunity that international sovereignty conferred upon their actions, too many of Africa’s politicians and officials twisted the normal activities of a state beyond recognition, transforming mundane tasks like policing, lawmaking and taxation into weapons of extortion.
So, for the past five decades, most Africans have suffered predation of colonial proportions by the very states that were supposed to bring them freedom. And most of these nations, broke from their own thievery, are now unable to provide their citizens with basic services like security, roads, hospitals and schools. What can be done?
The first and most urgent task is that the donor countries that keep these nations afloat should cease sheltering African elites from accountability. To do so, the international community must move swiftly to derecognize the worst-performing African states, forcing their rulers — for the very first time in their checkered histories — to search for support and legitimacy at home.
Radical as this idea may sound, it is not without precedent. Undemocratic Taiwan was derecognized by most of the world in the 1970s (as the corollary of recognizing Beijing). This loss of recognition led the ruling Kuomintang party to adopt new policies in search of domestic support. The regime liberalized the economy, legalized opposition groups, abolished martial law, organized elections and even issued an apology to the Taiwanese people for past misrule, eventually turning the country into a fast-growing, vibrant democracy.
In Africa, similarly, the unrecognized, breakaway state of Somaliland provides its citizens with relative peace and democracy, offering a striking counterpoint to the violence and misery of neighboring sovereign Somalia. It was in part the absence of recognition that forced the leaders of the Somali National Movement in the early ’90s to strike a bargain with local clan elders and create legitimate participatory institutions in Somaliland.
What does this mean in practice? Donor governments would tell the rulers of places like Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea or Sudan — all nightmares to much of their populations — that they no longer recognize them as sovereign states. Instead, they would agree to recognize only African states that provide their citizens with a minimum of safety and basic rights.
The logistics of derecognition would no doubt be complicated. Embassies would be withdrawn on both sides. These states would be expelled from the United Nations and other international organizations. All macroeconomic, budget-supporting and post-conflict reconstruction aid programs would be canceled. (Nongovernmental groups and local charities would continue to receive money.)
If this were to happen, relatively benevolent states like South Africa and a handful of others would go on as before. But in the continent’s most troubled countries, politicians would suddenly lose the legal foundations of their authority. Some of these repressive leaders, deprived of their sovereign tools of domination and the international aid that underwrites their regimes, might soon find themselves overthrown.
African states that begin to provide their citizens with basic rights and services, that curb violence and that once again commit resources to development projects, would be rewarded with re-recognition by the international community. Aid would return. More important, these states would finally have acquired some degree of popular accountability and domestic legitimacy.
Like any experiment, de- and re-recognition is risky. Some fear it could promote conflict, that warlords would simply seize certain mineral-rich areas and run violent, lawless quasi states. But Africa is already rife with violence, and warlordism is already a widespread phenomenon. While unrecognized countries might still mistreat their people, history shows that weak, isolated regimes have rarely been able to survive without making significant concessions to segments of their populations.
For many Africans, 50 years of sovereignty has been an abject failure, reproducing the horrors of colonial-era domination under the guise of freedom. International derecognition of abusive states would be a first step toward real liberation.
(Pierre Englebert, a professor of African politics at Pomona College, is the author, most recently, of “Africa: Unity, Sovereignty and Sorrow.”)
SEATTLE, WA — Investigators are looking into whether the fire that swept through a Fremont neighborhood apartment, killing a woman and four children, may have started when a mattress inside a closet accidentally came in contact with a light bulb, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.
The sources say Saturday’s fire may have smoldered in the mattress and then exploded into flames when the closet door was opened.
Dana Vander Houwen, spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department, declined to comment Monday on the cause of the fire, saying investigators are reviewing everything in the apartment. She said officials also are awaiting test results from the State Patrol crime laboratory
“That information will be released when the investigation is complete,” Vander Houwen said of the cause of the fire.
Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean said during a news conference Sunday that the fire appears to be an accident.
Late Monday afternoon, the Fire Department released a written statement saying the first engine to arrive on the scene, which experienced a failure of its pump mode, was not a 2008 model as originally reported, but a 1996 model used as a reserve engine.
The older truck, Engine 81, was used by the crew of Engine 18 on Saturday as a replacement for their regular truck, which was undergoing routine maintenance.
The pump operator could not move a lever to activate the pumping mode for the engine’s 500-gallon tank, according to the Fire Department.
In the statement, officials said an independent expert and the engine’s manufacturer, E-One of Ocala, Florida, will conduct an investigation into the failure.
Engine 81 will not be used as the investigation gets underway, the statement said.
Another engine arrived at the scene 2 1/2 minutes later.
After the fire erupted, Helen Gebregiorgis, 31, who was renting the apartment, grabbed her 5-year-old niece, Samarah Smith, and dashed outside, believing the others were behind her. Gebregiorgis’ sister and four young children took refuge in an upstairs bathroom, Dean said on Sunday.
Killed were Gebregiorgis’ sons Joseph Gebregiorgis, 13, and Yaseen Shamam, 5, and daughter, Nisreen Shamam, 6; her sister, Eyerusalem Gebregiorgis, 22; and a 7-year-old niece, Nyella Smith.
Family members had gathered at Helen Gebregiorgis’ home for a sleepover Friday night after watching the movie “The Karate Kid” at a theater.
Daniel Gebregiorgis, Helen Gebregiorgis’ brother, declined to comment Monday on what happened inside the home. He said the incident is under investigation.
Autopsies on the five victims were being performed Monday. It’s unclear when their cause of death will be released.
John Drengenberg, consumer safety director at Underwriters Laboratories, a product safety certification organization outside Chicago, said that mattresses have long been a source of fires in American homes.
Federal guidelines, established in 2007, mandate that all mattresses manufactured and sold in the U.S. must be resistant to open flame sources, such as candles, matches and cigarette lighters. The old regulations, enacted in 1973, required that mattresses resist smoldering cigarettes, according to Underwriters Laboratories.
A mattress that does not have the flame-protective barrier required in all new beds could go from smoldering to a full blaze in about four minutes, Drengenberg said. Once a flame erupt, the results could be catastrophic, he added.
“It would be a fire that would get so hot that everything in the room ignites almost immediately,” Drengenberg said.
During a news conference on Monday, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn described meeting Helen Gebregiorgis at Harborview Medical Center after the fire.
“This was a very very tragic event for, first and foremost, the family. It’s an extraordinary tragedy. And for the community that they’re a part of,” McGinn said. .
The mayor made midyear budget cuts to every city department on Monday except the Fire Department. He said that because of the fatal fire, the safety implications of any budget cut should be studied.
(By Jennifer Sullivan | Seattle Times. Staff reporters Steve Miletich and Emily Heffter contributed to this report.)
It is now totally clear that the form of opposition based on the goal of winning parliamentary elections is a dead-end, obvious as it is that the leadership of the TPLF has never contemplated the prospect of sharing power with the opposition, let alone ceding defeat to the verdict of the ballot-box. Ethiopians face two choices: either to resign themselves to the idea of an indefinite rule of the TPLF or to rise up and confront the regime with their own violence. There is, however, a third possibility, which is non-violent resistance and whose essential characteristic is the refusal to cooperate through such actions as massive strikes, demonstrations, boycotts, etc. Though highly efficient to overthrow dictatorial regimes, the recourse to non-cooperation requires the conviction that the government in place is not open to the game of elections and, most of all, leaders ready to suffer all the gruesome hardships that dictators usually preserve for opponents. Before reflecting on the way ahead, it is imperative to assess correctly the outcomes of the recent parliamentary election. People have reacted diversely to my previous article concerning the election (see “Yes, a Fake Election, but for what Purpose?”), with many disapproving my characterization of the outcome as a “defeat of the opposition.” According to my critics, the blame should be put on Meles… click here to continue reading
Note: In my first commentary [1] on the theme, “Where do we go from here?”, I suggested that the ruling dictatorship in Ethiopia following its 99.6 percent “victory” in the May 2010 parliamentary “election” will continue to do business as usual in much the same way as it has over the last two decades. In the second commentary[2], I focused attention on the Ethiopian opposition collectively and argued that they must atone to the people and reinvent themselves if they hope to play a significant role in that country’s future. In this commentary, I accuse Western donors as accessories to the crime of democricide in Ethiopia and argue for greater accountability in Western aid and loans to the dictatorship in Ethiopia.[3]
Accessories to Democricide in Ethiopia
In the criminal law, an accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime without actually participating in it. Those who are “accessories before the fact” assist in the commission of a crime. “Accessories after the fact” help the criminal conceal his crime and escape liability. In a perfect world, Western donors in Ethiopia would be prosecuted for being accessories before and after the fact to the crime of first degree “democricide” and for aiding and abetting a ruthless kleptocracy. But we live in an imperfect world, and must be content with bringing them to trial in the court of world opinion.
For the past two decades, Western donors and the international banks have nurtured, coddled and sustained some of the most brutal and tyrannical regimes on the African continent. They have done it rather craftily. First, they created the fictional character of the “new breed African leaders” and promoted them as Africa’s saviors. They were presumably much different than the old style in-your-face dictators like Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin and the self-coronated Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The “new breeders” were said to be committed to multiparty democracy, economic reforms and civil liberties. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair lionized Meles Zenawi and his ilk (Yoweri Musaveni of Uganda, Kagame of Rwanda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa). Of course, Clinton and Blair knew they were selling the natives the same old rancid wine of dictatorship in a new bottle labeled “New African Democrats.” Zenawi gloated and basked in the sunshine of Western praise and used that fame devastatingly against his opposition: “I am the one, and only one. So I am by the grace of the Western donors.”
Ethiopian Mortality = Western “Stability”
The primary explanation for the silence of Western donors in the face of gross and massive human rights violations, corruption and electoral fraud in Ethiopia is “stability”. On May 24, 2010 Agence France Press quoted a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa saying: “It’s a great thing if there are several opposition parties, but when it comes to the long-term stability of the country and the region, Meles is still your best bet.” Such anonymous diplomatic statements are repeated with such nauseating frequency that one is confused about the meaning of the word. We know the diplomatic justification of “stability” for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has a long and ignoble history. In the early 1970s, they failed to act against the imperial regime because doing so could destabilize the country. They said the same thing about the military junta that overthrew the Ethiopian monarchy, except they wanted to maintain stability in the cold war balance of power in the Horn. Now, they are pulling out the same old tired rabbit out of their hat. “Meles is the best bet for the long term stability of the country.”
Zenawi has cultivated and foisted the “stability” canard on the Western donors for years. He has tried to convince them that he is the glue that keeps the 80 million Ethiopians from exploding into ethnic warfare and civil war. The donors know it is all a grim fairy tale, but they go along with it. The facts speak differently. It was Zenawi who created ethnic Bantustans to keep the people corralled in homelands as part of his divide-and-rule strategy. He is the one who facilitated the process by which the country lost its outlet to the sea. He is the one giving away territory secretly to neighboring countries and selling the country’s best land to outsiders. By the time Zenawi is done with Ethiopia, stability will be the last thing Western donors will be concerned about.
The second justification for Western donor inaction in Ethiopia has to do with Zenawi’s cooperation (particularly with the U.S. and the U.K.) on the war on terror. In 2006, Zenawi proxied a war for the U.S. to wipe out al-Qaeda terrorists in Somalia. He got bogged down in a war he promised will take only a couple of weeks; he found few, if any, al-Qaeda terrorists. Two years later he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Somali fighters and exited leaving behind a rap sheet of untold war crimes against Somali civilians. The Bush Administration lionized him for making “monumental advancements in the political environment” and “opening up political space.” The third reason for inaction is said to be the impracticality and futility of ending or suspending aid. Significant cut backs in economic aid and loans would not be practical because of the nature of the needs on the ground; and using aid to leverage change could invite condemnation by other poor countries. The carrot and stick approach is said to be unworkable in the Ethiopian context.
True Lies
As Helen Epstein has shown in her recent meticulously researched and cogently argued piece “Cruel Ethiopia”[4], since 1991 the Zenawi dictatorship in Ethiopia has received some $26 billion in development aid from Western donors including the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the European Union, and Britain’s Department for International Development. By 2008, Ethiopia was the highest foreign aid recipient in the African continent with an inflow of $3 billion in foreign aid. The obvious questions are: 1) What really happened to all of the aid money? 2) Did it do any good?
Supposedly all of the aid money and loans have helped produce “double digit economic growth” and spawned a variety of social programs. Do Western donors know the real truth about the efficacy of their aid money and loans and the real growth of the Ethiopian economy? Of course, they know; but prefer to play dumb. The truth is that Zenawi’s claim of “double digit economic growth” is simply FALSE! As I have recently demonstrated in one of my commentaries, all of the figures about double digit growth over the past half dozen years or so years were simply and literally cooked up in the regime’s statistics office[5] and served to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a silver platter with garnish. It is a simple trick not known to many: The IMF asks its client states to provide economic performance statistics. In Ethiopia’s case, they pull numbers out of thin air or their back pockets and give it to the IMF, which in turn incorporates it in its official reports. Zenawi turns around and tells the world that the IMF said the country’s economic growth has been in the double digits. It is just that simple!
But the story of “economic growth” goes beyond fabricated statistics to the story of a chokehold on the economy by a full fledged kleptocracy. As Helen Epstien describes[6]:
According to the World Bank, roughly half of the rest of the national economy is accounted for by companies held by an EPRDF-affiliated business group called the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). EFFORT’s freight transport, construction, pharmaceutical, and cement firms receive lucrative foreign aid contracts and highly favorable terms on loans from government banks. Ethiopia is not a typical African kleptocracy, and there is no evidence that Meles personally benefits from these businesses. Rather, they are part of a rigid system of control that aid agency officials, beguiled by Meles’s apparently pro-Western exterior, have only recently begun to recognize.
What about the health programs that have been touted as the crown jewels of so much aid effort? The evidence on those programs is no less shocking. Helen Epstein who actually completed a first hand investigation of aid supported health and social services reported:
I first traveled to Ethiopia in 2008 to study the country’s new public health strategy. Nearly every government and aid agency official I met expressed enthusiasm for the many programs underway. Rates of AIDS, malaria, and infant mortality were falling and Ethiopian health officials told me that there was no corruption; medicines were always in stock, even in faraway rural clinics; and community health workers were trained, efficient, and never absent from their posts….. Most of these programs were in rural areas far from the capital, Addis Ababa, where my interviews took place. I wanted to see them for myself, not least because I knew that some of the claims I was hearing weren’t entirely true. Government officials claimed that in 2005, 87 percent of children had received all major vaccines, but an independent survey suggested that the figure was closer to 27 percent. Similarly, the fraction of women using contraception was 23 percent, not 55 percent as government officials claimed. The annual growth in farm production was also probably nowhere near the government’s own figure of 10 percent.
… One day, I heard an aid official give a lecture about a small nutrition project in one of the poorest regions of the country…. A few days later I visited the region myself. I was amazed by what I saw there. Roads were under construction, a university had recently opened, and crowds of children were on their way home from a new school. Health workers spoke enthusiastically about the malaria bednet program, the immunization program, the pit latrine program, and the family planning program… But when I went to visit the nutrition project, my enthusiasm faded. It was intended for children, but many of their mothers were also malnourished. Several had obvious goiter, and a few were so anemic they nearly fainted while they were speaking to me. When I asked these women why they could not adequately feed their children or themselves, most replied that they didn’t have enough land, and therefore couldn’t grow enough food either to eat or to sell.
Hanna Ingber Win’s recent five-part analysis of maternal health care programs in Ethiopia supported by the U.N. Population Fund paints a similar picture of failed international aid policy[7]. In my commentary on Win’s report, I noted: “It is simply preposterous and irrational to talk about economic growth or development when a country has ‘one of the world’s worst health care systems.”[8]
Western Donors Through Zenawi’s Eyes
In a recent commentary, I outlined my views on what I believe to be Zenawi’s strategy in dealing with the Western donors[9]. The fact of the matter is that Zenawi knows the Western donors very well; and he anticipates and plans for any moves they are likely to make on the aid and loan chessboard. He knows what makes them tick and not tock. He knows they want two things: 1) “stability” (whatever it means) and 2) plausible deniability (that is if something goes wrong, they can say they did not know about it). Zenawi’s logic in dealing with the Western donors is demonic, but flawless in execution. When he massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters in the streets and imprisoned some 50 thousand political prisoners (by official Inquiry Commissions accounts) and stole the 2005 election, he was rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and aid. When he herded and jailed nearly all of the opposition leaders, he was given more aid and loans. When he passed a repressive press and charities law, he was showered with more aid and loans. Every time the international human rights organizations issued reports of gross violations of human rights, Western donors rewarded Zenawi with more aid and loans, NEVER less. The best the Western donors have done in terms of bringing pressure on Zenawi has been to windbag about human rights, democracy and all of that good stuff. Lesson learned: Getting aid and loans from the Western donors and banks is like taking candy from a child. There is nothing to it!
Zenawi knows the Western donors so well that he now openly shows his contempt for them by getting in their faces. He jammed the Voice of America and came out in public and told the U.S. that it is no different than the genocidal interhamwe maniacs in Rwanda. American taxpayers dropped a cool $4 billion of their hard earned dollars in Ethiopia in the past few years, and they get spit in the faces. What a shame! The point is that Zenawi will continue to taunt and play confrontational with Western donors until they put a stop to it. That will happen when hell freezes over and the devil goes ice skating!
It’s All About Mind Over Matter
The bottom line for the Western donors it that it is all a simple problem of mind over matter. They don’t mind the dictatorship and its corruption and human rights violations, and Ethiopians don’t matter. In other words, they don’t give a damn if there is democracy, dictatorship or despotism. They are all words that start the letter “D”. They just want a “stable” government that will let them do their thing. Millions are dying from starvation? Send a few boatloads of grain to ease their consciences. Human rights violations? Stolen elections? Political prisoners? Suppression of press freedom? Issue a few public statements expressing dismay. Otherwise, have breakfast with the dictator in Stockholm, lunch in Toronto and dinner in Pittsburgh. It is all about mind over matter. Western donors and international banks don’t mind, and Ethiopians don’t….
The Need for Greater Accountability for Aid and Loans
Few are foolish enough to believe that Western aid and loans alone could develop Africa. In fact, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. In her recent book, Dead Aid, Dambissa Moyo has made a compelling argument to “cut aid to Africa” not only because it has not promoted development, but also because it has compounded Africa’s problems. Moyo argues that aid helps create kleptocratic governments in which powerful elites embezzle public revenues. William Easterley in his book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, has shown the incestuous relationship between the international aid bureaucracies and corrupt local officials that benefit from aid funds.
High aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid. Systemic evidence in a couple of recent studies suggests that aid actually decreases democracy and makes government worse. Steve Knack of the World Bank finds that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption.
Both Moyo and Easterly have argued for more accountability and tougher scrutiny of the “foreign aid industry.” The problem of accountability is complicated by the fact that the aid and lending agencies have a vested (conflict) interest in proving that their programs are working, and the dictatorships want to show that they are using the money well. It is a well known fact that the performance of the aid agencies is judged primarily by short-term criteria such as how much aid is disbursed, rather than longer-term effects on accountability. Aid and lending agencies are also insulated from the consequences of their failures. This often makes it difficult to implement a structure of accountability and transparency in recipient countries. For instance, the IMF has no mechanism to hold its client states accountable for the economic data they collect as I have demonstrated in my recent commentary . USAID performs perfunctory annual program evaluations that are self-serving and intended to show that U.S. tax dollars are actually doing good in Ethiopia.
In the short term, the best that can be done is to demand transparency on the part of the donor countries in the administration of their aid money, and in seeking greater accountability on the part of the multilateral lending institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. For instance, there have been numerous recent allegations of U.S. aid being used to buy votes and influence elections in Ethiopia. In the U.S., Congress has the power to look into such allegations of abuse of U.S. aid money. The second area of action should focus on demanding imposition of “governance conditionality” (reasonable conditions on grant of aid). H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act) is a good example in this regard.
Those advocating for change in Ethiopia should take heed of the words of Helen Epstein:
The problem with foreign aid in Ethiopia is that both the Ethiopian government and its donors see the people of this country not as individuals with distinct needs, talents, and rights but as an undifferentiated mass, to be mobilized, decentralized, vaccinated, given primary education and pit latrines, and freed from the legacy of feudalism, imperialism, and backwardness. It is this rigid focus on the ‘backward masses,’ rather than the unique human person, that typically justifies appalling cruelty in the name of social progress.
The question is simple: When we witness the crime of democricide being committed against the “backward masses,” we have the choice of acting to stop it, or being accessories before and after the fact. I can imagine the thunderous crescendo of 80 million people shouting with index fingers pointing at the Western donors: “We accuse!”
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/of-elections-and-diapers_b_595203.html
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-speaking-truth-t_b_602507.html
[3]See also, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/western-diplomatic-omerta_b_453003.html
[4] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/13/cruel-ethiopia/
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-the-voodoo-econo_b_542298.html
[6] See footnote 4.
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hanna-ingber-win/mothers-of-ethiopia-part_b_300333.html
[8] http://www.abugidainfo.com/?p=11726
[9] See footnote 1.
Distinguished Ethiopian scholar Prof. Teshome H. Gabriel has passed away. Prof. Teshome’s invaluable advise and encouragement were of great value in launching Ethiopian Review. His passing away is another great loss to Ethiopia, and the whole world. It is sad to see that scholars of his generation and caliber are passing away without getting a chance to serve their country.