WASHINGTON (CNN) — When Gregg Wenzel died six years ago in Ethiopia, the obituaries said he was a U.S. Foreign Service officer killed by a drunken driver on the streets of Addis Ababa.
Monday the public learned the State Department job was a cover for his real occupation: CIA spy.
At a ceremony commemorating those who died in the line of duty, CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed Wenzel’s affiliation with the agency and noted Wenzel was a member of the first clandestine service class to graduate after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“He helped unite the class and kept its spirits high in the toughest moments,” Panetta said.
Wenzel left his job as an attorney to join the agency. He was 33 years old when the car he was riding in was hit by a drunken driver who to this day remains a fugitive.
There are now 90 stars prominently displayed on the memorial wall in the spacious atrium of CIA headquarters, each commemorating an officer, like Wenzel, who died while serving the country.
The 90th star was added recently, but as with most of the victims, the person’s name and nature of service will remain unknown to the public so as not to compromise secret operations.
At the annual memorial service attended by hundreds of employees, retirees and family members, Panetta paid homage to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. “Their patriotism and leadership, courage and decency are models for all of us,” said the director, adding, “their work is our work now. And their spirit abides with us.”
Panetta also announced the beginning of a new tradition. Family members of the fallen officers will receive a replica of the star from the wall. The first star was given to the brothers of Douglas Mackiernan, the first CIA operations officer killed in the line of duty, shot to death in Tibet after fleeing China in 1950.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — RELATIVES of a Melbourne man thrown into an Ethiopian jail as he worked to build a hospital fear he has been beaten and tortured.
West Heidelberg resident Sadiq Ahmed was arrested on May 21 with a British man and seven local community leaders in the eastern Ethiopian town of Raaso.
Distraught relatives told Herald Sun they believed the men had been beaten and possibly tortured after being grabbed by authorities in the regional government of Ethiopia’s Somali district.
“My brother has two broken ribs, that’s what we’re told. The British guy was hit around the head badly and is bleeding,” said Sadiq’s brother, Abdalla Ahmed.
Abdalla narrowly escaped arrest himself and went into hiding, only emerging six days later to make his escape home to Australia.
Abdalla, 53, and his brother Sadiq, 46, a food safety inspector, had been working in the Somali region of Ethiopia for the past two years to build a hospital after their family – once refugees from the area – had raised more than $100,000 for the project to help the impoverished community.
Ethiopia is broken into ethnic regions, with Raaso governed by the Somali regional government.
Mr Ahmed said Executive Committee president Daud Mohamed Ali was angry with Raaso community leaders campaigning to draw attention to the plight of poor people, many living in tents with no running water.
“He personally came to Raaso to threaten us,” he said.
Abdalla, Sadiq, and a group of other community leaders left Raaso to go to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Abbaba 10 days ago.
There was not enough room on the bus for all of them, Abdalla Ahmed said, so he caught a different bus.
“We kept communicating by mobile … They were on the bus laughing until they reached a road block. The Somali Regional Government army took them and was beating anyone who asked them what was going on,” he said.
Nine people including Sadiq and British citizen Ibrahim Gaasim were arrested, taken to the provincial capital Jijiga and thrown into prison, Mr Ahmed said.
Community members living in Jijiga told the former Melbourne taxi driver that the militia were looking for him, too.
“I didn’t have any chance to go back to my house for my clothes or my photographs – I had to go on the run,” he said.
Mr Ahmed spent a week hiding in Addis Ababa.
“I stayed in hotels and inside a room in an unknown house,” he said.
“My friend was the only one who knew where I was and he brought me food.
“It was hell not knowing what would happen to me. I could not use my phone in case they tagged me.”
Mr Ahmed said his friend organised for him to meet an Australian consular official who was flown from Pretoria, South Africa, to work on the case.
“She organised for me to fly to Australia,” he said.
“I’m relieved to be home but I’m very worried about my brother … I am still in shock and worried about him.”
Mr Ahmed said community sources had told him the detainees appeared as though they had been beaten when they appeared in a Jijiga court late last week.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said the Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs had confirmed that an Australian man had been detained in Ethiopia.
“The man has not yet been charged and it is inappropriate to speculate about what, if any, charges the man may face.”
The department did not say whether a representative had seen the Australian detainee or whether he was in need of medical attention, but said they were continuing to provide assistance to the man and his family.
The spokesman stressed the Australian government was unable to control or intervene in the judicial processes of foreign countries including Ethiopia.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s travel advice for Ethiopia advises Australians to reconsider their need to travel to Ethiopia.
Mr Ahmed’s sister Malyun Ahmed said the attack had happened two weeks after the Ethiopian Government had passed a vote to recognise Raaso, which had angered Ethopia’s Somali regional government.
But she said the arrests could also be based on tribal rivalries.
Violence has flared in the past between the majority Ogaden tribe and the minority Sheekhaal to which the Ahmeds belong, causing the Sheekhaal community to move to Raaso, Malyun said.
“The Sheekhaal community fled the Ogaden region six years ago after killings and raids,” she said. “Since then Ogaden militia have waged several wars: my cousin who was only 16 years old was shot more than 10 times in 2006.”
Awramba Times, an Amharic language weekly newspaper that is published in Addis Ababa, has extensive coverage of Ginbot 7 Secretary General Andargachew Tisge’s recent visit to Eritrea. The paper, relying on its own sources, reports that Ato Andargachew’s visit includes a meeting with Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki. Ginbot 7 Chairman Berhanu Nega denies such a meeting has taken place, in an interview with Ato Abebe Belew of Addis Dimts Radio (click here to listen – May 31st program), but explains that a Ginbot 7 delegation has been in Eritrea recently to receive soldiers who have defected from the Woyanne army.
Ginbot’s mission to Eritrea was a shock to the Woyanne junta and the Tigrean supremacy elite. They were confident that the $40-million propaganda bombardment was working in discouraging such a rapprochement by an Ethiopian political organization such as Ginbot 7 with the Government of Eritrea. Bereket Simon, the Woyanne propaganda chief, may lose his job over this. Such a move is one more nail in the Woyanne coffin.
Those who oppose Ginbot 7’s cooperation with Eritrea are either:
1) Woyannes, or
2) Victims of Woyanne propaganda, or
3) Tigrean supremacists who want to replace Meles but keep Woyanne in power, or
4) Those who serve Woyanne for crumbs (hodams).
This is the time for political leaders to lead, not to follow. It is the time to march forward, not to look left and right. It is the time to be one step ahead of Woyanne, not react to what it does.
Countries across the African continent devoted May 25 to the observance of the so called African Union’s Day. Few countries, though, have declared the day a holiday and celebrated as such to the neglect of the millions of man hours that could have been put to productive use. Little was heard of the challenges and potential progress that the continent could make in the face austere financial difficulties. It was the grumpy old self-delusory target of ridding the continent of coup makers and now, state-sponsored terrorism. Amusingly, Eritrea was the only culprit fingered and suspended for the latter charge whilst others such as Sudan, Madagascar and Mauritania, renegades of true democracy are still plying their violent and near-violent trade against ordinary citizens.
And Eritrea replied, calling the AU a full house of disenchanted musical chairs, notoriously toothless and straight –jacketed thinkers. Eritrea might just be right. For, how is it that the recently elected AU Chairman, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi made an embarrassing mockery of democracy on the continent when he stated in a keynote address at an AU summit at Addis Ababa, that democracy in Africa only leads to bloodshed. This could be a thought trend for African leaders. In 2005, Africanliberty.org editor and executive director of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe, and debated former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa on the latter’s call for an African clone of democracy and the need to fear globalisation, as it was the final undoing of the continent after slavery and colonialism had their way.
So what else is the AU, an avowed claimant of continental unity, has little to show for? The AU envisages a political and economic integration across all borders devoid of poverty, conflicts, and diseases. Naturally, the various regional economic groups will strive for integration before the entire continent is united. Such a union could affect the livelihoods of the 800 million plus Africans. But we in Africa are our own friends of protectionism. Nigeria and Ghana, next door neighbours within the Economic Community of West Africa still trade in protectionist goods, with Nigeria still maintaining a near-ban of some 74 Ghanaian products from entering Nigeria, while Ghana is demanding hefty down payments for Nigerian tradesmen to enter the Ghanaian market. But Ghana is awashed with Nigerian banks. The Commission for Africa Report 2005 sadly asserts that shipping a car from Japan to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for example, costs $1,500. Shipping the same car from Abidjan to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, costs $5,000. Removing regional trade barriers would earn Africa an extra $1.2bn a year, according to the World Bank.
Instead of focusing on removing the log in the eye of the continent, the AU has a mindset that trade ought to be a one-way traffic, with richer countries who also erect annoying barriers to our produce. It is instructive to know that the global economic difficulties have lowered consumer confidence in rich countries and by extension slowed all agri-export-led economies. In April this year, the World Bank Vice-President for Africa Region, Ms Obiageh Ezekwesil, noted that at the beginning of 2008, Africa’s growth rate which was projected at 6.4 per cent dipped to 4.9 per cent. The rate for 2009 now stands at 2.4 per cent.
However, the cacophony of asking for help to weather the raging storm of economic recession has taken centre-stage in the global discussion of stimulus packages. And African leaders are asking for stimulus packages from the staggering West instead of stimulating critical thinking on how to build their own economies from within. However, it seem to have emerged from a recent Economic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, that they are going to rely more on home-grown solutions to these and other problems. These solutions lay not in imposing additional taxes on the 30% visible businesses and small formal sector workers, but ensuring that the close to 70 % of Africa’s underground economy is unearthed and nurtured with low business entry rules, and perhaps taxed a low flat tax regime. Increased corporate taxes on perceived ostentatious products ought to be reflective of the wider implications for government’s own revenue and employment figures. Already many great performing companies on the continent are not salivating at losing employees. An additional tax burden will leave companies no choice but to lay people off.
Ordinary Africans must help African leaders to use AU day to reflect on how to reduce economic intervention in our lives, sensibly regulate financial markets, remove bureaucratic obstacles to setting up businesses, establish property rights and enforce contract law. These are the forces that release entrepreneurial energy to see us through the financial meltdown. There is only one reason why African leaders will do these things- when they are forced to do so as a condition of aid which despite its towering failure to reduce poverty on the continent continues to be supported by activists, whose livelihoods depend on it.
(Franklin Cudjoe is executive director of IMANI, a Ghanaian think tank. He also edits www.AfricanLiberty.org. Alhassan Atta-Quayson is a graduate student in economics and writes for www.AfricanLiberty,org)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (Addis Journal) — A correspondent for the Amharic service of the Voice of America, Meleskachew Amha, has been arrested in connection with printing and studio equipments belonging to Addis Broadcasting PLC, owned by Dr. Berhanu Nega and others.
The Amharic weekly, Addis Admass, reported today that Meleskachew and other four people were detained on Wednesday for allegedly “trying to transfer duty-free imported goods to a third party.”
Meleskachew and the other four suspects who appeared before court yesterday were denied bail, according to Addis Admass. The court granted police twelve more days to conduct further investigation, as per the latter’s request.
The Addis Broadcasting PLC had established its headquarters in Kechene Medanhialem but has gone unoperational for a number of years as it was denied broadcasting licenses and most of the shareholders disbanded after the 2005 election.
Meleskachew has been manger of the PLC for three months.
Dr. Berhanu Nega now leads an opposition party, Ginbot 7,which the government has designated as a terrorist organization.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Ethiopia’s export revenues are expected to fall short of the target by more than $1 billion this year, bucking the positive trends of the past few years, an official report has indicated.
Demand for Ethiopian goods has fallen on account of the global economic slowdown, while the nation’s biggest export product, coffee, has been affected by hoarding, the government has said.
In a report submitted to parliament’s standing committee, the trade and industry ministry said only 40 percent of the export target for the September 2008-August 2009 financial year has been earned.
Of the $2.56 billion targeted for the entire year, it earned $1.02 billion. This was 56 percent of the revenues targeted for the September-May period, the report said.
Unofficial estimates say going by the trend so far, export revenues would be around $1.33 billion for the whole year, short of last year’s figure by over $170 million.
In fact, Trade and Industry Minister Girma Birru said the only realistic goal he saw for the export sector was to try and match last fiscal’s revenues.
Admitting that it had failed to look for new markets after regular buyers canceled orders, the government said it was now taking measures such as exempting exporters from power shedding to bail them out.
‘For exporters with confirmed export orders in May and June, power will be given without any interruption,’ Birru said.
Coffee has fetched $251 million till now — about 54 percent lower than what was forecast earlier. This, according to the ministry, was on account of hoarding by exporters who were waiting for prices to rise and also derail the newly-established Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.
The licences of six exporters have been revoked, while some are being prosecuted.
Over $229 million was earned from oilseed exports, while the narcotic khat crop accounted for about $102 million.
Mineral exports have shown a slight increase, fetching over $68 million compared to $64.4 million in the corresponding period last year.
