URGENT! For Immediate Release
Mark-up Vote for H.R. 2003 Scheduled for July 31, 2007
The Coalition for HR 2003 is informed and believes that the House Foreign Affairs Committee will calendar H.R. 2003 for mark-up on Tuesday, July 31, 2007. We expect the bill will receive full support by committee members and recommended for passage by the Full House.
Special Alert
DLA Piper
Zenawi has engaged his lobbying army of DLA Piper to defeat the bill. They are making calls and paying visits to members asking them not to support and vote for the bill.
DLA Piper has fully engaged their top guns to defeat the bill. See Ken Silverstein’s article in the recent issue of Harper’s Magazine, entitled “Lobbying firms blocking action against Ethiopia’s tyrant.”
Shimagles
We are also very much aware that some individuals who have lately been representing themselves as “shimagles” are indeed leading a secret lobbying campaign against the bill. We are fully aware of their efforts, and if they want to continue on their present course, we insist that they register as lobbyists for a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, 22 U.S.C. § 611 (c) (1).
Final Push
The Coalition for H.R. 2003 calls on all Ethiopian Americans in the United States to rise up once again and deliver victory in the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights in Ethiopia. We are up against the mighty lobbying firm of DLA Piper. If we don’t rise up now and show our support for H.R. 2003, they will use their enormous power to crush our efforts to defend human rights in our country.
Special message from Prof. Al Mariam
I thank the Coalition for H.R. 2003 for giving me the opportunity to say a few words on the challenges that we face in pushing through H.R. 2003 in the House of Representatives.
I am afraid that some of us may not be aware of the concerted and coordinated activities by Zenawi’s lobbyists and others to defeat H.R. 2003. Every single day, Zenawi’s lobbyists, official representatives and even some who claim to be “shimagles” are making phone calls and pounding the pavement in Congress to defeat H.R. 2003. There is a coordinated effort between the lobbying firm, the official representatives in the U.S. and certain “shimagles” and others to mount a covert and not-so-covert assault on our bill. We must stand up and defend our bill!
Zenawi’s new lobbying strategy is simple. He wants to convince Congress that he has changed overnight from a dictator to a democrat. He says: “I have released the political prisoners. I am going to be a good boy from now on. I will abide by the rule of law and all that good stuff. Just don’t slam me with H.R. 2003.”
His lobbyists are chanting the same thing all over Congress. “Sure, sure. Things are improving in Ethiopia. The political prisoners are released. More will be released. Zenawi is willing to observe human rights. He should be given a chance. The bill will hurt the Ethiopian people.” Blah, blah, blah. The unofficial lobbyists are trying to scam members of Congress by telling them that “Ethiopia is trying to solve its problems by using its elders and traditional methods of conflict resolution”. Blah, blah, blah.
But H.R. 2003 is not just about releasing political prisoners. It is about democratic reform and accountability, restoration of the democratic rights of the people, strengthening human rights and civic society organizations and human rights monitoring and reporting processes, increasing the independence of the judiciary, prosecution of human rights abusers, improving election procedures, removing press censorship and repeal of restrictive press laws and provision of various training programs for demcratic participation, and limiting U.S. security assistance to peacekeeping and counter-terrorism only, among others.
Fortunately, we have not only truth and justice on our side, but also the defenders of truth and justice: Donald Payne, Chris Smith, Tom Lantos, Mike Honda, Charlie Rangel and dozens of others.
We have a choice to make now: Let Zenawi buy his way out of H.R. 2003, or we stand up and stop him cold on the steps of Congress. The choice is ours, not his.
Zenawi is certain, very certain, that he will defeat H.R. 2003 and win in the end, because he has millions to spend on lobbying. He thinks he can buy Congress. Have no doubts about this. He is sitting in his palace right now laughing at us: “They are not going to do a damn thing. All they do is moan and groan. They have never been able to do anything in all these years.” So, here we are. Is Zenawi right? “We can’t do a damn thing.” ???
Call, Write, Visit Your members of Congress on behalf of Mother Ethiopia
I ask every Ethiopian American to call, write and visit their members of Congress and ask them to support H.R. 2003. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the questions are:
Can each one of us afford to give Mother Ethiopia 5 minutes out of our busy lives to make a telephone call to a member of Congress and plead on her behalf the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights?
Can each one of us spare 10 minutes to write a letter to a member of Congress and explain Mother Ethiopia’s pain and suffering and the plague that has been visited upon her children?
Can we spare a couple of hours to go to the district office of our member of Congress; or for those of us who live close to Washington D.C., can we spend half a day in Congress and personally petition for relief of the suffering of Ethiopia’s children?
Let’s act NOW!
Let’s prove, No! Surprise Zenawi, that we can really work together to bring about positive transformations in Ethiopia. Let us show him that though we do not have millions to spend on lobbyists, we have hundreds of dedicated Ethiopians who will make up with patriotism and love of country what they lack in money.
My fellow Ethiopian Americans, awaken the giant within you. You have the power to do good, to be caring and compassionate towards your suffering brothers and sisters in Ethiopia. Use your power as a democratic citizen of the United States to fight evil. As Ghandi has taught, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Let me add that strength does not come from spending millions on lobbyists. It comes from an unflagging and unfaltering commitment to a cause – our holy cause of freedom, democracy and human rights in Ethiopia.
JOIN ME AND THOUSANDS OF OTHERS AS WE MAKE OUR CALLS AND VISITS TO OUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.
Remember July 31, 2007!
God bless all of you!
Fax letter
Fax your letters, DO NOT MAIL. It takes 2 weeks to deliver a letter to congress because of security inspections.
Office telephone and fax numbers are listed below.
Copy and paste, and modify the letter below to fit your special situation.
Documents can be FAXED during the day or at night.
They will be read whenever they are sent. If you do not have a fax machine, places use fax services available at places like Kinkos, Staples, Office Max and others. You can also ask friends who have faxes to send them for you.
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We encourage you to immediately call, write, fax and/or visit your Congressional Representatives’ district and/ Washington D.C. offices and URGE THEM TO CO-SPONSOR HR 2003
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
OR USE THE FOLLOWING
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/ethiopia.html
July…, 2007
BY FAX
The Honorable [Name of Member]
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Attention: Foreign Affairs
Dear Representative [name of member]:
I am writing to ask you to co-sponsor H.R. 2003 (“Ethiopia Freedom and Accountability Act of 2007). I also respectfully ask that following committee consideration, you vote to recommend the bill as amended do pass.
(Personalize the letter in the next paragraph. Research the member’s legislative history on Google or by going to their website. If you are in their congressional district mention that also. Mention your line of work, expertise, special things about yourself, if you want.)
Example: Over the years, I have been one of your greatest admirers in the area of human rights, and I very much aware of your leading role in promoting human rights through the Cuban Democracy Act. It gives me great pleasure to write to you on H.R. 2003, (Ethiopia Freedom and Accountability Act of 2007) as I am sure you will appreciate the gravity of the human rights situation in Ethiopia. I am presently … describe your work, responsibilities etc, briefly)
As you may recall, on June 26, 2007, the scheduled mark-up action on H.R. 2003 was delayed because the ruling regime in Ethiopia, through its official representatives, communicated to the Committee that mark-up action on the bill on that date will adversely affect the release of the prisoners of conscience held in Kality prison.
I have learned that the Committee, in the face of such unprecedented challenge to its institutional integrity, nonetheless agreed to delay mark-up action for 2 weeks.
As you know, H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Freedom and Accountability Act of 2007) is not merely about the release of political prisoners in Kality prison. It is fundamentally about reclaiming, revitalizing and advancing human rights as a central pillar of American foreign policy.
To that end, H.R. 2003 aims to institute accountability and democratic reforms in Ethiopia, aid in the restoration of the democratic rights of the people, strengthen human rights and civic society organizations, increase the independence of the judiciary, assist in bringing to justice human rights abusers are brought to justice, ensure fraud free-elections, and removing press censorship, among many others. Simply stated, it is a bill that aims to institutionalize the rule of law in Ethiopia.
H.R. 2003 is presently co-sponsored by Chairman Lantos, and eighty-three other members. I respectfully request your co-sponsorship because I take great pride in the fact that my representative from the great state of ___________ stood up to defend freedom, democracy and human rights in Ethiopia, where most of my relatives and friends still live. I also appreciate your help in expediting the mark-up of the bill by requesting that it be placed on the next calendar of the Committee.
I would like to thank you in advance for your help.
I will call your office in the next day to follow up on this letter.
Sincerely,
Your Name
Give your address and telephone number where you can be reached
==================
DO NOT CALL OR WRITE HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE MEMBERS LISTED IN RED BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALREADY CO-SPONSORED THE BILL
STATE — TELEPHONE — FAX — District
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ADDIS ABABA, July 26 (Reuters) – Ethiopian opposition leaders accused the government on Thursday of waging an “intensive propaganda campaign” against them through state media, less than a week after being freed in a clemency deal.
Thirty eight opposition members and activists were freed from jail last Friday after a nearly two-year trial that rights groups and donors complained was an attempt to dismantle the opposition after it made strong gains in 2005 elections.
The defendants were found guilty of inciting violence, treason and trying to topple the government, and 35 of them were given life sentences.
“It is also our belief that the people understand the true nature of the intensive propaganda campaign that the government is waging through the mass media after the conclusion of the agreement,” the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) said in a statement.
“We are also fully confident that the propaganda barrage will not, in any way, reduce the strong support that the people have for CUD.”
Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Since the pardon, announced by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, state-owned Ethiopian television has aired several interviews with lawyers who said the trial and the convictions were just.
In a broadcast on Saturday, the chief prosecutor in the case, Shimeles Kemal, said the opposition leaders’ crimes justified the death penalty.
The defendants were arrested after two bouts of violence following disputed 2005 elections in which 199 civilians and police were killed, 800 people wounded and 30,000 arrested according to a parliamentary inquiry.
The CUD said it would continue to “struggle for democracy” and pledged to resolve its differences with the government through a reconciliation process initiated by the same elders that negotiated their release.
The group was freed after the government made public a letter it said CUD leaders sent to Meles admitting their guilt and promising to respect the law.
The CUD said a government statement on the clemency agreement was different to what they agreed to, but gave no details.
“It is our belief that the elders will make public the true content of the agreement at a time and in a manner that is convenient to them,” the statement said.
ADDIS ABABA, July 26 (Reuters) – Ethiopian opposition leaders accused the government on Thursday of waging an “intensive propaganda campaign” against them through state media, less than a week after being freed in a clemency deal.
Thirty eight opposition members and activists were freed from jail last Friday after a nearly two-year trial that rights groups and donors complained was an attempt to dismantle the opposition after it made strong gains in 2005 elections.
The defendants were found guilty of inciting violence, treason and trying to topple the government, and 35 of them were given life sentences.
“It is also our belief that the people understand the true nature of the intensive propaganda campaign that the government is waging through the mass media after the conclusion of the agreement,” the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) said in a statement.
“We are also fully confident that the propaganda barrage will not, in any way, reduce the strong support that the people have for CUD.”
Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Since the pardon, announced by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, state-owned Ethiopian television has aired several interviews with lawyers who said the trial and the convictions were just.
In a broadcast on Saturday, the chief prosecutor in the case, Shimeles Kemal, said the opposition leaders’ crimes justified the death penalty.
The defendants were arrested after two bouts of violence following disputed 2005 elections in which 199 civilians and police were killed, 800 people wounded and 30,000 arrested according to a parliamentary inquiry.
The CUD said it would continue to “struggle for democracy” and pledged to resolve its differences with the government through a reconciliation process initiated by the same elders that negotiated their release.
The group was freed after the government made public a letter it said CUD leaders sent to Meles admitting their guilt and promising to respect the law.
The CUD said a government statement on the clemency agreement was different to what they agreed to, but gave no details.
“It is our belief that the elders will make public the true content of the agreement at a time and in a manner that is convenient to them,” the statement said.
By J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
World Defense ReviewTwo weeks ago a “national reconciliation congress” that Somalia’s ineffectual “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG), under pressure from international donors who are its only means of support, convened in a bullet-riddled Mogadishu garage finally got underway – and promptly adjourned after mortar fell nearby. Despite this inauspicious start, four days later at the State Department in Washington, Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey tried to put the best spin the deteriorating situation by choosing to not acknowledge the ignominious dispersal of gathering:
The United States welcomes the opening of the Somalia National Reconciliation Congress in Mogadishu on Sunday, July 15, and looks forward to continued deliberations over the coming weeks. We are encouraged by the remarks from President Abdullahi Yusuf stating that the Congress will address key political issues, such as power sharing and transitional tasks mandated by the Transitional Federal Charter, and that the Transitional Federal Government will implement the outcomes of the Congress. We urge all Somali stakeholders to participate constructively in the Congress and use this opportunity to establish a roadmap for the remainder of the transitional process leading to elections in 2009.
There is little likelihood of any of these benchmarks, much less all of them, being met. For one thing, the TFG is, at best, a notional entity whose day-to-day physical survival is due to the continuing presence of the Ethiopian intervention force which rescued it last December from certain collapse in the face of an assault by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which at the time controlled Mogadishu and majority of the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic and were threatening to overrun the provincial outback of Baidoa, the only Somali town where the interim “government” even had the pretense of running. For another, even if the TFG were able to hold elections, it would have little incentive to do so given that the only certain result is that a poll would result in “President” Abdullahi Yusuf, a Majeerteen subclansman of the Darod clan from northeastern Puntland, being repudiated by Hawiye clan which predominates in the country’s sometime capital of Mogadishu.
In fact, the “national” conference – the first for the TFG since it was set up in late 2004 as the fourteenth attempt at an interim government – has been repeatedly postponed (three times since April alone) and only got underway this time because the European Union’s special envoy for Somalia, Georges-Marc Andrea, together with Mario Raffaelli, the special envoy from the former colonial ruler, Italy, went in person to Mogadishu the week before to ensure that it did. Most of the delegates who showed up openly admitted that they did so because the international community was paying an extravagant cash per diem allowance equal to month’s wages (originally over 3,000 clan elders and other notables were invited, but the number had to be pared down to just over 1,300 because funding shortfalls meant that there was only enough money to assure that many six weeks’ worth of the dole). Excluded from this largesse were leaders of rival clans as well as Islamists, moderate and otherwise (the TFG did make a show of extending a late invitation to the foreign secretary of the ICU, Ibrahim Hassan Adow, now living in exile in Qatar, but he could hardly have been expected to travel to Mogadishu while the same Ethiopian troops who drove him and his allies out six months ago are still present).
In any event, the formal agenda for the “reconciliation congress” was limited to mainly clan issues with no real political questions on the table. The TFG “president” was not about to allow a discussion of his position to occur, much less in a city dominated by his clan rivals (the Hawiye ran most other Darod out of town in the early 1990s after the collapse of last real government, the Siyad Barre dictatorship). Nor was the position of its prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, open to be filled since the incumbent enjoys close ties with the TFG’s chief supporter, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who employed Gedi’s father as a glorified valet in the 1980s. Likewise precluded was any real debate about allocations of the TFG’s only source of revenue other than international mendicancy, fees collected at the port of Mogadishu. The latter, however, have been treated as little more than a privy purse by the president and prime minister, both of whom are proud owners of new villas in the capital of neighboring Kenya.
In this context, it is not particularly surprisingly that the TFG, its Ethiopian defenders, and the pathetically undermanned African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) find themselves facing a growing armed resistance which, as I predicted in a column nearly five months ago, is “repeating almost step-by-step the tactical and strategic evolution of the Iraqi insurgency.” Spearheading the insurgency is al-Shabaab (“the Youth”), an extremist group which I reported last year emerged within the ICU’s armed forces and is led by a kinsman and protégé of ICU council leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir ‘Aweys, Adan Hashi ‘Ayro, who trained in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda before returning to Somalia after 9/11. Recent intelligence indicates that Shabaab efforts have been coordinated by Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, the reputed leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa who is on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list with a $5 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi , Kenya. Fazul, who is said to have been the target of the guided-missile destroyer USS Chafee‘s shelling of a stretch of the Somali coast last month, is reportedly working directly as intelligence chief for the Shabaab campaign.
Things had gotten so bad by early July that Mogadishu’s famed open-air Bakara Market was shut down for the first time in living memory (the sprawling bazaar was open for business even through the madness of the battle captured in Black Hawk Down) as insurgents and TFG supporters, backed by Ethiopian soldiers, have turned the commercial center into daily battlefield – just on Sunday, at least one person was killed and several more wounded in clashes there. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at least 10,000 people fled the sometime capital city last week alone, bringing the net emigration figure to an estimated 275,000 since the beginning of the year. In addition, last week UNHCR had to reopen the closed refugee camp at Teneri Ber in eastern Ethiopia for another 4,000 refugees from southern Somalia. While African leaders went through the motions of renewing AMISOM’s mandate for another six months, given the rapid spiral of violence from drive-by shootings to artillery and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire to improvised explosive devices (IED) to suicide bombings, it is understandable why no one is eager to join the 1,600 Ugandan peacekeepers who have been keeping a low profile since they deployed several months ago (see my April 12 column, “Peacekeepers with No Peace to Keep”).
To make matters worse, the TFG’s ham-fisted ways have not only driven potential Somali constituents into the arms of the insurgents, who are increasingly embracing a broad spectrum ranging from radical Islamists with foreign ties to irate members of sidelined clans, but have also succeeded in alienating international nongovernmental organizations. As the Voice of America’s Alisha Ryu reported earlier this month, TFG officials have been harassing and intimidating humanitarian organizations that refuse to work under its control, including SAACID, a women’s NGO involved in the largest demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration program in central southern Somalia, whose country director and her husband were briefly arrested on charges of being “Hawiye terrorists” (see SAACID-Somalia’s press release on the incident). Meanwhile, as Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times wrote poignantly last week, “piracy off of Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline is a serious issue again, threatening to cut off crucial food deliveries to a population that is often just a few handfuls of grain away from famine.”
There is only one way to escape the downward spiral and that is by summoning the clarity of vision and mustering the political courage to squarely confront the facts on the ground and come to the following realizations which I outlined in this space four months ago and which bear repeating:
- The recent escalation in violence cannot be interpreted other than as the wholesale rejection by Somali clans of the TFG as well as any foreign forces which are viewed as shoring up the that pretender government. The danger is that, since Somalia’s homegrown Islamists were defeated but not eliminated as I called for in January while the Ethiopian campaign was in progress, the clansmen will align themselves with the ICU/PRM much like the Pashtun tribes backed and, in many cases, continue to back the Taliban in Afghanistan. Stop wasting time, money, political capital, and, now, lives on the TFG.
- There is no hope of outsiders being able to reconstitute a unitary Somali state. Somalilanders – roughly half of whom have been born after the northwestern republic reclaimed its sovereignty upon the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991 and have never even known themselves as Somalis – will never agree to turn back the clock and reenter into a union with the rest of the country. The inhabitants of the semi-autonomous northeastern region of Puntland which, while not as politically advanced as the Republic of Somaliland, is nonetheless making significant progress on its own, are likewise unlikely to want to chain themselves to the anarchic rest of the former state. As for the other Somali regions, their clans show little inclination to surrender their traditional freedoms, reasserted in the decade and a half since the collapse of the Siyad Barre dictatorship, to a new central regime. Consequently, short of employing overwhelming brutal force – and, even then, the odds of success are not good – there is little likelihood that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.
- Given that the international community is both unlikely to use force to compel unity and unwilling to support extensive nation-building efforts, its primary strategic objective must therefore be to prevent both outside actors from exploiting the vacuum left by the de facto extinction of the entity formerly known as Somalia and those inside the onetime state from spreading their insecurity throughout a geopolitically sensitive region. On a secondary level the international community might also be interested in facilitating progress inside the failed state; however the outsiders’ chief interests will be allocating their scarce resources where they can achieve some effect.
The last point about security and scarce resources is particularly important since it was only last month that a “dangerous terror suspect” by the name of Abdullahi Sudi Arale had been transferred to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This detainee who served as a courier between the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and their affiliates in the Horn of Africa, was captured in Somalia where, since he returned from South Asia last September, he has been part of the leadership of the Islamic Courts Union which he assisted by acquiring weapons and explosives and providing false documents for foreign extremists traveling to join their fight.
When I put forward my proposal earlier this year, I acknowledged its limits:
A policy like the one I have outlined may strike many as minimalist, to date the international community has shown little inclination to do much more than proffer empty words. Furthermore, my approach buys Somalis themselves the space within which to make their own determinations about their future while at the same time allowing the rest of the world, especially the countries of the Horn of Africa, to realize most of security objectives. In short, this strategy has offers the most realistic hope of salvaging a modicum of regional stability and international security out of an increasingly intractable situation.
If last week’s botched congress is any indication, the only thing that has changed is that we have wasted several more months and several more million dollars even as the insurgents gathered strength from the accumulating grievances of those marginalized by the TFG. If a foreign-funded kaffeeklatsch by the handpicked (and paid) invitees of a “government” with no grass-roots support is the most creative solution the international community’s Africa policymakers can come up with, it is going to be a very long, very hot, and very violent summer in Mogadishu.
– J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a Research Fellow of the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. In addition to the study of terrorism and political violence, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, international law, political theory, and ethics, with particular concentrations on the implications for United States foreign policy and African states as well as religion and global politics.
Dr. Pham is the author of over two hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. Among his recent publications are Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press, 2004), which has been critically acclaimed by Foreign Affairs, Worldview, Wilson Quarterly, American Foreign Policy Interests, and other scholarly publications, and Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (Nova Science Publishers, 2005).
In addition to serving on the boards of several international and national think tanks and journals, Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress and conducted briefings or consulted for both Congressional and Executive agencies. He is also a frequent contributor to National Review Online’s military blog, The Tank.
By Ken Silverstein
Harper’s Magazine
July 25, 2007
|
There have been a series of accounts out of Ethiopia recently that describe a nasty situation there, including a Human Rights Watch report earlier this month that said the Ethiopian military had “forcibly displaced thousands of civilians in the country’s eastern Somali . . . while escalating its campaign against a separatist insurgency movement.” Government troops were “destroying villages and property, confiscating livestock, and forcing civilians to relocate,” according to Peter Takirambudde, Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “Whatever the military strategy behind them, these abuses violate the laws of war.” Eyewitness accounts offered to Human Rights Watch said Ethiopian troops had been “burning homes and property, including the recent harvest and other food stocks intended for the civilian population, confiscating livestock and, in a few cases, firing upon and killing fleeing civilians.”
Despite that record, the Bush Administration views Ethiopia as an important counterterrorism ally, especially given Ethiopia’s recent involvement in Somalia, and annually provides the regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. But some in Congress have grown weary of abuses committed by Zenawi’s government. Earlier this month a House subcommittee passed a bill that would limit American aid to Ethiopia and ban government officials linked to human rights abuses from coming to the United States. In the Senate, Patrick Leahy of Vermont is seeking passage of a measure that would review some of the military assistance that is being provided.
But two congressmen-turned-lobbyists — former House Majority Leaders Richard Armey, the Republican from Texas, and Missouri Democrat Richard Gephardt — are working hard to block full congressional action against the Zenawi regime. The duo work with the firm of DLA Piper, which federal disclosure records show is being paid at least $50,000 per month by the Ethiopian government for “strategic advice and counsel.”
In 2006, the House International Relations Committee approved the Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act, which criticized the government for its human rights record, called for it to free jailed opposition leaders and restricted security assistance. But the full House never voted on the bill. Two sources that follow the issue — one a former Hill staffer and the other a lobbyist on African affairs–tell me that Armey twisted the arm of then — House Speaker Denny Hastert to ensure that it didn’t come up for a vote. “Armey has a lot of influence over there,” the former Hill staffer said. “A lot of people in the GOP leadership owe their positions to him.”
Armey has no pull with the new Democratic leadership so now Gephardt has apparently been called on to block full passage of this year’s version of the bill. Gephardt, incidentally, also lobbies for the government of Turkey (another Piper client to the tune of $100,000 per month), as was recently detailed in a terrific New Republic piece in which author Michael Crowley wrote about Gephardt’s efforts to stop Congress from declaring as genocide the Turkish massacre of Armenians during the early twentieth century:
A few years ago, [Gephardt] was a working-class populist who cast himself as a tribune of the underdog–including the Armenians. Back in 1998, Gephardt attended a memorial event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America at which, according to a spokeswoman for the group, “he spoke about the importance of recognizing the genocide.” Two years later, Gephardt was one of three House Democrats who co-signed a letter to then House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging Hastert to schedule an immediate vote on a genocide resolution. “We implore you,” the letter read, arguing that Armenian-Americans “have waited long enough for Congress to recognize the horrible genocide.” Today, few people are doing more than Gephardt to ensure that the genocide bill goes nowhere. It’s one thing to flip-flop on, say, tax cuts or asbestos reform. But, when it comes to genocide, you would hope for high principle to carry the day.
Piper’s lobbyists have been working the “war on terrorism” angle hard, arguing that even a hand-slap of Ethiopia for human rights abuses will jeopardize its support in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. (And we all know what a smashingly successful collaboration that’s been.)
I called Armey and Gephardt but never heard back from them. Piper did, however, send me a statement which said:
The U.S. first established diplomatic relations with Ethiopia more than a century ago and Ethiopia remains a close ally today, particularly in the global war against terrorism. It is crucial for the United States to have friends and allies in the strategically important Horn of Africa region who are committed to democracy, stability and moderation. The firm is assisting Ethiopia in strengthening bilateral relations with the U.S., including increasing humanitarian, economic and development assistance, expanding trade and investment opportunities, and enhancing relationships with financial, academic and public policy institutions.
I had heard that former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine, Chairman of the Global Board of Piper and Co-Chair of its Government Controversies Practice Group, was also working on the account. The firm’s statement said that Mitchell “has never lobbied or done legal work on behalf of Ethiopia in connection with DLA Piper’s representation.” However, Piper declined to say whether Mitchell had played a role in winning the Ethiopia deal or whether he was offering strategic advice or playing some other role in the contract.
