For a president who rarely shows emotion, Barack Obama’s surprisingly personal blast at Republican critics of Susan Rice, his U.N ambassador, suggested two things. One, Obama genuinely admires Rice and thinks she’s being unfairly criticized for giving a controversial explanation of the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack that later didn’t hold up. And two, he may well intend to name her his second-term secretary of State, as some reports indicate.
Obama made a fair point when he said Rice “had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received.” All Rice did was to carefully articulate on the Sunday TV talk shows what the administration knew at the time, “based on the best information we have to date,” as she put it.
But there are other issues with Rice’s record, both as U.N. ambassador and earlier as a senior Clinton administration official, that are all but certain to come out at any confirmation hearing, many of them concerning her performance in Africa. Critics say that since her failure to advocate an intervention in the terrible genocide in Rwanda in 1994 — Bill Clinton later said his administration’s unwillingness to act was the worst mistake of his presidency — she has conducted a dubious and naïve policy of looking the other way at allies who commit atrocities, reflecting to some degree the stark and emotionless realpolitik sometimes associated with Obama, who is traveling this week to another formerly isolated dictatorship: Burma.
Most recently, critics say, Rice held up publication of a U.N. report that concluded that the government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, with whom she has a long and close relationship, was supplying and financing a brutal Congolese rebel force known as the M23 Movement. M23’s leader, Bosco Ntaganda, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting child soldiers and is accused of committing atrocities. She has even wrangled with Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, and others in the department, who all have been more critical of the Rwandans, according to some human-rights activists who speak with State’s Africa team frequently.
Rice claimed she wanted Rwanda to get a fair hearing and examine the report first, and her spokesman, Payton Knopf, says that “it’s patently incorrect to say she slowed [it] down.” But Jason Stearns, a Yale scholar who worked for 10 years in the Congo and wrote a book called Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, says “that is not common practice with these reports. Even when Rwanda did get a hearing, all they did was to use it to smear the report and say how wrong it was.” The report has since been published.
Mark Lagon, a former assistant secretary of State under George W. Bush and a human-rights specialist at Georgetown, has generally positive things to say about Rice’s tenure as U.N. ambassador, especially her leadership in the intervention in Libya against Muammar el-Qaddafi and her revival of the administration’s failing policy on Darfur. But he too says she has fallen short on Africa. “In recent months, there is documentary evidence of atrocities in the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], and their umbilical cord is back in Rwanda. These issues have not been raised in the Security Council, and Susan has fought the U.N. raising them in the Security Council,” Lagon says.
In September, Rice also delivered a glowing eulogy for the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, whom many rights activists considered to have been a repressive dictator.
Recently, during a meeting at the U.N. mission of France, after the French ambassador told Rice that the U.N. needed to do more to intervene in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rice was said to have replied: “It’s the eastern DRC. If it’s not M23, it’s going to be some other group,” according to an account given by a human-rights worker who spoke with several people in the room. (Rice’s spokesman said he was familiar with the meeting but did not know if she made the comment.)
If true, that rather jaded observation would appear to echo a Rice remark that Howard French, a long-time New York Times correspondent in Africa, related in an essay in the New York Review of Books in 2009, which was highly critical of Rice. In the article, headlined “Kagame’s Secret War in the Congo,” in which French calls the largely ignored conflict “one of the most destructive wars in modern history,” he suggests that Rice either naïvely or callously trusted new African leaders such as Kagame and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda to stop any future genocide, saying, “They know how to deal with that. The only thing we have to do is look the other way.” Stearns, the author, says that during Rice’s time in the Clinton administration “they were complicit to the extent that they turned a blind eye and took at face value Rwandan assurances that Rwanda was looking only after its own security interests.”
Knopf, Rice’s spokesman, says “she clearly has relationships, some of which are very close, with African leaders, and Kagame is one of them. Her view and our view is that these relationships have given her an opportunity to influence events.”
At the same time, however, Knopf says Rice has been tough and forthright in criticizing Rwandan abuses, and backed a “very strong statement out of the Security Council in August about M23.” (The statement, though, did not refer to Rwandan support directly.)
In a speech she gave at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in November 2011, Rice took Kagame’s government to task for a political culture that “remains comparatively closed. Press restrictions persist. Civil-society activists, journalists, and political opponents of the government often fear organizing peacefully and speaking out. Some have been harassed. Some have been intimidated by late-night callers. Some have simply disappeared.”
The long conflict in Congo has sometimes been called “Africa’s World War,” because it has led to a staggering 5.4 million deaths — far more than any war anywhere since World War II. Throughout it, Kagame has appeared to play a clever game of pretending to intervene to impose peace and deliver Western-friendly policies, while in fact carving out a sphere of influence by which he can control parts of Congo’s mineral wealth.
Ironically, much of the controversy that surrounds Rice’s relationship with Kagame and other African leaders goes back to the event that Rice herself has admitted was personally wrenching for her, and influenced much of her later views: her failure to stop the Rwandan genocide.
At the time, under National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, Rice was in charge of advising Clinton’s National Security Council on peacekeeping and international organizations such as the United Nations. “Essentially, they wanted [Rwanda] to go away,” scholar Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. mission to the United Nations then and later wrote the book Eyewitness to Genocide, told me in an interview in 2008. “There was little interest by Rice or Lake in trying to stir up any action in Washington.”
Both Lake and Rice later said they were haunted by their inaction. In an interview in 2008, Rice told me that she was too “junior”at the time to have affected decision-making then, but that “everyone who lived through that feels profoundly remorseful and bothered by it.”
“I will never forget the horror of walking through a church and an adjacent schoolyard where one of the massacres had occurred,” Rice said in her 2011 speech in Kigali. “Six months later, the decomposing bodies of those who had been so cruelly murdered still lay strewn around what should have been a place of peace. For me, the memory of stepping around and over those corpses will remain the most searing reminder imaginable of what humans can do to one another.”
Rice’s relationship with Kagame began with her efforts to form a new African leaders group in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Among them were Museveni and Ethiopia’s Zenawi. The Clinton administration “believed in an African renaissance,” says Stearns. “She backed this somewhat naïvely, because they were forward-looking leaders who spoke a different language. They spoke about markets.”
While Rice was serving — and despite her later denials before Congress — the Clinton administration appeared to back an invasion of the troubled Congo by Rwanda and Uganda, according to a 2002 article in the journal Current History by Columbia University scholar Peter Rosenblum. In the article, titled “Irrational Exuberance: The Clinton Administration in Africa,” Rosenblum called the invasion “a public relations disaster from which the United States has not recovered.”
On September 2, 2012, Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., delivered a nauseatingly sentimental oration at the funeral of Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi. She called Meles “selfless and tireless” and “totally dedicated to his work and family.” She said he was “tough, unsentimental and sometimes unyielding. And, of course, he had little patience for fools, or idiots, as he liked to call them.” The “fools” and “idiots” that Rice caricatured with rhetorical gusto and flair are Ethiopia’s independent journalists, opposition leaders, dissidents, political prisoners, civil society leaders and human rights advocates.Watching the video of her eulogy, one could easily say she “had gone native” completely. But it was clear that her aim was to deliver the last punch to the gut of Meles’ opponents as a sendoff present.
As the old saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together”. Rice, like Meles, likes to insult and humiliate those who disagree with her. She had a reputation in the State Department as boor and a bit of a bully; or as those who knew her say, she was a “bull-in-a-china-shop”. She is known for verbal pyrotechnics, shouting matches and finger wagging at meetings. On one occasion, she is reported to have flipped her middle finger at the late Richard Holbrooke, the dean of American diplomats, at a senior State Department staff meeting. Prior to the onset of the air campaign in Libya in March 2012, France’s U.N. ambassador, Gerard Araud, advised Rice that the European Union would seek a no-fly zone resolution from the Security Council regardless of U.S. support. She gave Araud the verbal equivalent of a kick in the rear end: “You’re not going to drag us into your shitty war.” She later tried to claim full credit for the effort: “We need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk.” This past July when China and Russia at the U.N. blocked adoption of language linking climate change to international security, she lambasted them as “pathetic” and “shortsighted” and accused them of “dereliction of duty.”
That was then. In the past several days, Rice was on the receiving end. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham virtually called Rice a fool and an idiot for her statements following the U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 in which four Americans were murdered. Rice appeared on five national Sunday talk shows five days after the attack and made the boldfaced claim that the attack on the consulate “was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo in response to this very offensive video that was disseminated”. According to Rice, the protest by a “small number of people who came to the consulate” was “hijacked” by “clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons.”
Senator McCain showed “little patience for fools, or idiots” and fairy tales when he angrily threatened to block Rice if she were nominated to become Secretary of State: “Susan Rice should have known better, and if she didn’t know better, she’s not qualified. She has proven that she either doesn’t understand or she is not willing to accept evidence on its face. There is no doubt five days later what this attack was and for.” Rice’s Benghazi story was reminiscent of the bedtime stories of the late Meles Zenawi.
Truth be told, only a “fool” or an “idiot” would not know or reasonably surmise the attack on the U.S. consulate was a terrorist act. CIA Director David Petraeus recently testified that from the moment he heard of the attack, he knew it was a terrorist act. He included this fact in the talking points he sent to the White House which somehow got redacted form Rice’s public statements. The experts and pundits also called it a terrorist act. For Rice, it was a protest gone wrong.
But there remain a number of puzzling questions: Why was Rice selected to become the point person on the attack in light of President Obama’s defense that Rice “had nothing to do with Benghazi.” Why didn’t Hilary Clinton step up to explain what happened? Did the White House throw Rice under the bus to save Hilary? Was Rice supposed to provide plausible deniability and political cover until the election was over by calling a manifest terrorist attack a protest over an offensive anti-Muslim video? Did Rice have to fall on the Benghazi sword to divert attention or delay accountability for the Administration’s failure to take appropriate preventive action in Benghazi as the price for nomination to the job of Secretary of State? Or was the White House trying to showcase Rice’s diplomatic adroitness and savvy in a futile attempt to bridge her unbridgeable competence and “stature gap” to become America’s foreign policy chief?
President Obama was ready to drive a lance through the heart of Republican villains hell bent on capturing and devouring his prevaricating damsel in distress. He told McCain and Graham to bring it on. If the Republican duo and their buddies “want to go after somebody, they should go after me. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador? Who had nothing to do with Benghazi? And was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received? To besmirch her reputation is outrageous.” That was great drama staged by “no drama Obama.”
What is mindboggling is the fact that Rice would believe and earnestly propagate such a cock-and-bull story about the Benghazi attack. Rice is a person with extraordinary credentials. She is a graduate of Stanford and Oxford Universities and a Rhodes scholar to boot! She was a top official in the National Security Agency and an Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton Administration. She has two decades of solid high level foreign policy experience. Yet five days after the attack, Rice shuttled from one news talk show to another telling the American people the Benghazi attack was not an act of terrorism. Is that willful ignorance, foolishness or idiocy?
The fact that the attack occurred on September 11 — a day that shall live in infamy in American history — and the attackers used their trademark “heavier weapons” (to use Rice’s words) of terrorism — pickup mounted machine guns, AK-47s, RPGs, hand grenades, mortars and IEDs — meant nothing to Rice. The fact that in Libya today there are all sorts of militias, rebel groups, Islamist radicals and terrorist cells are operating freely did not suggest the strong possibility of a terrorist attack for Rice. The fact that Gadhafi made Libya a state sponsor of terrorism for decades provided no historical context for Rice. Simply stated, in the Benghazi attack Rice saw something that looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, but she concluded it was a giraffe.
The race card-ists and race baiters came out in full battle dress to defend Rice against charges of “incompetence”. Rep. Jim Clyburn, House Assistant Democratic Leader, was the first to strike a blow by politicizing Rice’s incompetence. “You know, these are code words. These kinds of terms that those of us — especially those of us who were grown and raised in the South — we’ve been hearing these little words and phrases all of our lives and we get insulted by them. Susan Rice is as competent as anybody you will find.” A group of democratic lawmakers delivered a second salvo charging “sexism and racism”. That was the shot across the bow and the message to the Republicans is clear:
Obama wants Rice as Secretary of State. He has won re-election. Rice will be nominated. Republicans who oppose her will be tarred and feathered as racists, sexists and misogynists persecuting a competent black woman. They will be demonized, dehumanized and discredited in the media. The democrats have 55 votes in the Senate and will be able to peel off at least 5 Republicans to end a filibuster. Rice will get the job of Secretary of State. Republicans will have eggs on their faces and will look like fools and idiots at the end of the day.
Such is the Democrat game plan and screenplay for victory and triumph in the Rice nomination. The Republicans will probably put up a nominal fight but will eventually fold under a withering Democrat attack. Rice will rise triumphant.
Rice’s confirmation as Secretary of State will be a sad day for American foreign policy because she is simply not qualified to be America’s diplomat-in-chief. Her confirmation will mark the saddest day for human rights throughout the world and particularly in Africa. Thetired, the poor, the huddled masses of Africa yearning to breath free will continue to find themselves in the iron chokehold of African dictators for another four years as Rice turns a blind eye to massive human rights violations. African dictators will be beating their drums and dancing in the streets. They will be happier than pigs in mud. They know she will have their backs for another four years. With Rice at the helm, there will be more money, more aid and more loans for African dictators. But the truth must be told. Calling Rice “incompetent” is a fact, not a racially coded denigration of African Americans. To paraphrase Clyburn, Rice is as incompetent as you will find.
The Peter Principle essentially states that in an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, that organization’s members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. In other words, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.” The Dilbert principle states organizations tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to higher management positions in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. If Rice succeeds Hilary Clinton, she will be a living example of the fusion of the Peter and Dilbert Principles at the highest level of the American government.
Let the truth be told: Susan Rice is simply not competent to become U.S. Secretary of State! To be a competent diplomat-in-chief of a great country, fundamental moral integrity is a necessity. Rice is incompetent because she lacks not only the moral judgment to tell right from wrong and truth from falsehood, but she is also incapable of distinguishing between two wrongs. In March 2012, Rice scathingly condemned Iran, North Korea and Syria “for their mass violations of human rights”. On September 2, 2012, she delivered a canonizing oration at the funeral of one of the ruthless dictators in recent African history. Twelve days before Rice recited Meles’ hagiography, Human Rights Watch issued a report stating, “Ethiopia has seen a sharp deterioration in civil and political rights, with mounting restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and assembly. The ruling party has increasingly consolidated its power, weakening the independence of core institutions such as the judiciary and the independent media that are crucial to the rule of law.”
A competent Secretary of State must have a working knowledge of military operations. Rice is clueless about military and paramilitary operations. She said the Benghazi attackers used “heavier weapons” but she could not connect the signature weapons of terrorists to the attackers who used them. Cluelessly or disingenuously, she tried to convince Americans and the world that a coordinated assault on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi was caused by “a small number of people” whose “protest” had gone awry!
A competent Secretary of State must have sound political judgment. Despite her stellar education and broad experience in foreign policy, Rice has traded intellectual integrity and prudence for blind political ambition. She seems incapable of discerning truth from falsehood even when it is obvious. She seems to have little concern for the truth or falsity of what she says; and evidently, she will say anything to advance her political ambitions in reckless disregard for the manifest truth. As Senator McCain perceptively observed, “she either doesn’t understand or she is not willing to accept evidence on its face”. She also does not seem to understand or appreciate the fact that a high level public official in her position has an obligation to undertake due diligence to find out what is true and what is false before swaggering in public peddling boldfaced lies.
A competent Secretary of State diplomat must subordinate his/her political ambitions to his/her patriotic duty to those who put their lives on the line to defend American values. Rice is incompetent because she will put her own political ambitions and loyalties to her political party above her patriotic duty to her fallen compatriots. She is a person for whom political expediency and opportunism are the creed of life. She will blindly tow the party line and support a policy without regard to principles or scruples. In other words, Susan Rice is a party hack and not material for the job of America’s diplomat-in-chief.
A competent Secretary of State must have intellectual courage and conviction. Rice is incompetent because she lacks intellectual courage, commitment and conviction. In a scholarly writing in 2006, Rice energetically argued that “Mali [as] an example of a well-governed country that suffers from capacity gaps that extremist groups have been able to exploit. Mali cooperates fully with the United States on counterterrorism matters.” In April 2012, when radical Islamist rebels took over Northern Mali and split the country in half, all she could offer was an empty statement calling on “all parties in Mali (including murderous terrorists) to seek a peaceful solution through appropriate political dialogue.” She folded her hands and watched for nearly four years doing nothing as Mali spiraled from a “well-governed country” to a divided strife-stricken country half of which today is a haven for murderous terrorists. Rice will talk the talk but not walk the talk.
A competent Secretary of State must be tempered in language and demeanor. Rice is incompetent because she lacks diplomatic temperament and thrives on being antagonistic, condescending and disrespectful to colleagues and other diplomats. A bullying and loose cannon Secretary of State cannot perform his/her job competently. She has a disgusting scatological lexicon. She is intolerant and arrogant and will try to vilify into submission those who disagree with her.
It is said that “stupid is as stupid does”; so “incompetent is as incompetent does”. I hope President Obama will not nominate Rice to replace Clinton. But I believe he will and we will all get to see a Shakespearean mini-drama at the confirmation hearings: “To be, or not to be (Secretary of State): that is the question (for Rice):/Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer (for all the lies she has told)/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (in a Senate confirmation hearing),/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles (by coming clean and telling the truth)…/.
I believe Rice will be will be exposed for what she really is at the confirmation hearing– a grand obfuscator of the truth, an artful dodger and a masterful artist of political expediency and intrigue. In 1994, when the Clinton Administration pretended to be ignorant of the terror in Rwanda and the death toll continued to rise by the thousands, Rice’s concern was not taking immediate action to stop the genocide and saving lives but the political consequences of calling the Rwandan tragedy a “genocide” and saving her job and others in her party. She had the audacity, moral depravity and sheer callous indifference to ask, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”
Did Rice avoid using the word “terrorism” in explaining the Benghazi attack because she was concerned about the political costs the President would have to pay in the November election if the voters were to see him as doing nothing to prevent it?
At the end of the day, what Rice told the American people five days after the Benghazi attack, to quote Shakespeare, “is a (tall) tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Previous commentaries by the author are available at:
This paper is third of a series on Ethiopian fascinations concerning the “Arab Spring.” Beyond these current fascinations, there are strategic economic and diplomatic dimensions that require deeper analysis and understanding with regard to relations between Ethiopia on the one hand, and Egypt on the other. I refer to the future development and use of the waters of the Nile River. I know of no other topic in the 21st century that evokes strong emotions and national {www:sentiment}s in Egypt and Ethiopia than the development and use of the River Nile and its tributaries. These sentiments {www:emanate} from the fact that water is among the most precious natural resource assets in the world. It is the source of life, identity, civilization, food self-sufficiency and security, industrialization, potential wealth and security for those who possess it and a source of jealousy for those who do not. People need water to survive. They need fertile or irrigable land to procreate and to produce food. Water meets basic needs. As populations increase and infrastructural and economic demand intensify, governments are obliged to respond to the needs of their societies as a matter of urgency. They have little choice but to harness their water resources for the betterment of their respective societies. Understandably, government officials, experts, academics, and members of civil society from both sides express views that reflect competing national interests. Elementary school children in both countries find themselves growing up with the belief that their respective perception- that is single country-focused – is the most critical; and it is. Ethiopian history, resistances to foreign aggression, honor, and identity emanate largely from its coveted position as the source of the Blue Nile or Abay. When viewed regionally and multilaterally, perceptions on both sides often underestimate the interdependence of {www:riparian} nations in general, Ethiopia, and Egypt in particular. For peace to prevail, mutuality must govern relations and the future.
Seifu Metaferia Firew, a well-known Ethiopian poet, expresses the widely held view among Ethiopians that, as the “origin of the Nile, Ethiopia, continues to suffer from water scarcity” and from recurring famine. He suggests that this “shameful” condition continues not because Ethiopia does not possess water; but because its government is unable to “develop, harness, and use” the country’s “vast water resources and silt to dam, irrigate, produce and feed its large and growing population. Ethiopia, he says, loses two ways: “The waters of the massive Abay River (the Blue Nile) flow into the Greater Nile; and that this river takes away millions of tons of fertile soils from the Ethiopian highlands” year after year and provides the material foundation for Egyptian agriculture. At the same time, Ethiopia faces chronic drought, famine, skyrocketing food prices, and hunger. Today, more than 4.5 million Ethiopians endure the worst famine since the 1980s. In light of this, the author suggests that “Someday, I (meaning government), will be held accountable for gross negligence to develop the Abay River” so that Ethiopians will no longer go through the humiliation of hunger, destitution and international food aid dependency. The lack of prioritization in the agricultural sector in general and irrigated farming in particular is now a “national crisis.” The thesis of this chapter is that no current or future government in Ethiopia will survive unless it addresses this fundamental national crisis. To-date, successive Egyptian governments have managed to marginalize Ethiopia and bar it from exploiting its major rivers including the Abay. The fact that Ethiopia is “the water tower of Africa” has meant practically nothing when measured against the food self-sufficiency and security and modernization needs of the country. In contrast, Nile-centered and dependent Egypt has succeeded to meet domestic food demand and to create a strong agric-based industry that employs millions. Egypt has done this by invoking the principle of acquired or “historic rights” while denying Ethiopia fair and equitable share of the Nile. 1/
These two seemingly irreconcilable perspectives and principles lead me to the second thesis of the article. On the Egyptian side is the principle of acquired or “historic rights,” a principle inherited from the colonial era that gives Egypt total hegemony over the Nile. This hegemony clashes with the principles of equitable and fair share, principles that most Sub-Saharan African riparian states now embrace. On the Ethiopian side is the history-based and growing recognition that “historic rights” claimed by Egypt and to some extent Northern Sudan are unjust and unfair, and that colonial and foreign interference-based treaties and legal arrangements are no longer viable or acceptable. One cannot appreciate the depth and breadth of these two contending views unless and until one goes back and examines history. Ethiopia’s claim for fair and equitable allocation is not new at all, and predates pre- Aksumite Empire and the height of Egyptian civilization. The country’s history shows that King Lalibela wanted to build a dam long before dams had become an economic necessity. Emperors such as Zara Yaqob, Yohannes, Teodros, Menelik, Haile Selassie, and leaders such as Mengistu Haile Mariam and Meles Zenawi manifest visions and perspectives that defend Ethiopia’s national interests over its water resources. Emperor Yohannes IV died defending this sacrosanct principle, as did Emperor Teodros. Regardless of regime, Ethiopia and Egypt will remain adversaries over the use of the Nile. At best, they will remain keen competitors in the decades ahead.
Demography may now be destiny
The Nile River has been a major source of contention, rivalry, and animosity between Egypt and Ethiopia since time immemorial. The fundamental role of the Nile in shaping Egyptian life is incontestable. Egyptian civilization is a gift of the Nile six sevenths of the waters of which originate from the Ethiopian highlands. The battle for control and for influence of countries around it predates Egypt’s Pharos. From time to time, it has involved powers beyond riparian states for more than 7,000 years. This tradition to exercise monopoly continued under British imperial rule that imposed binding agreements on riparian nations on behalf of Egypt, a British colony at the time. Egypt signed a Nile Agreement in 1929 that offered it natural and exclusive rights over the Nile. This arrangement begun to unravel only after Sub-Saharan African states gained independence. Until then, Ethiopia stood as the sole voice in defense of the principle of fair and equitable share without success. This Egyptian inherited “historic right” and preponderance has virtually undermined Ethiopia’s legitimate rights to advance its national development by building hydroelectric and irrigation dams. Ethiopian and other independent experts contend that Egypt does not contribute a drop of rain or water to the Nile. Ethiopia contributes 86 percent of the water and uses only 1 percent for irrigation. Thirty percent of Ethiopia’s land mass that covers 385,400 square kilometers is within the Abay River Basin and its tributaries. This provides potential of 3,500,000 hectares of irrigable land, more than sufficient to meet Ethiopia’s food demand for decades. From 1990 to present, the country used only 90,000 hectares of the available potential within this land mass. Given geographic spread, population, and size, Ethiopia possesses geopolitical and demographic advantage unmatched by other riparian states. This enormous potential suggests urgency. Ethiopia’s population of 90 million–the second largest in Africa– will reach 278 million by 2050, the tenth largest in the world. This dramatic demographic shift will have profound economic and political impact not only in the Horn but also in the rest of Africa and the Middle East. This in itself foretells the need for change in the governance of Nile waters. Ethiopia’s legitimacy is firmer than ever before. There is no doubt in my mind that Ethiopia will emerge as a leading economy over the coming 25 to 50 years; if it resolves its current political crisis and establishes inclusive and participatory governance.
Colonial powers and especially Britain tried to tie Ethiopia’s hands at a time when the country was relatively weak. The May 15 1902 Treaty between Britain and so-called “Abyssinia” regulated the frontier between Ethiopia and the Sudan, a British colony. Article III of this treaty states that “The Emperor Menelik engages not to construct or to allow being constructed any work across the Blue Nile, Lake Tana or the Sobat which would arrest the flow of their waters into the Nile, except in agreement with the governments of Great Britain and the Sudan. “ This and the 1929 agreement weakened Ethiopia’s position in that both set a precedent used by Egypt subsequently to justify unfair and unjust arrangements. The Nile Waters Agreement of 1959 between the Republic of the Sudan and the United Arab Republic of Egypt benefitted from colonial precedents to which Ethiopia is not a party. At the center of all these agreements, the economic principles that the River “needs projects for its full control and for increasing its yield for the full utilization of its waters” are under-scored. It is unthinkable to realize development without a project or program. This same principle of project applies to Ethiopia. “Acquired or historic rights” trace their origins to these types of arrangements that conferred on Egypt and the Sudan exclusive rights to develop and use the Nile. Both countries continue to adhere to these outdated agreements as if the world remains static. “The absurdity of the land of the Blue Nile dying of thirst (during the Great Famine of the 1980s in which 1 million lives were lost; and today in which close to five million Ethiopians face death) was combined with fact that Egypt at that time (l980s) was about to face a similar catastrophe,” had rains not started in Ethiopia. This nature-driven interdependence between Egypt and Ethiopia virtually defines the acrimonious links between two competing societies that depend on the same river to achieve the same goals. “The intensive Egyptian-Ethiopian efforts to reach understanding that resumed in the early 1990s have not been facilitated by old legacies of mutual suspicion…Egypt was not only born of the Nile, it also lives by it, and its dependence increases with the pace of modernization and population growth.” The same forces that deepen Egypt’s dependence on the Nile are shaping Ethiopian society at speeds that no one had anticipated in the last century. I am not referring only to demographic change. Ethiopians aspire to achieve rapid and inclusive modernization, and possess the requisite talent pool and material resources to achieve these goals over the coming decades. The various dams built and proposed reflect this achievable goal. 2/
Ethiopian interest in harnessing and developing its water resources for development are not new. Successive Ethiopian governments tried to persuade the Egyptian and Sudanese governments of Ethiopia’s right to invest in its waters to meet changing needs. In 1960, the Imperial government under Emperor Haile Selassie sponsored a hydroelectric and irrigation feasibility study led by the US Bureau of Reclamation. In July 1964, the group identified 71 locations, 31 water, and 19 specific hydroelectric sites on the Abay River. It recommended the construction of hydroelectric dams that would produce 87 billion kilowatt electricity per year, more than sufficient to meet domestic demand. Irrigation dams of varied sizes would irrigate 430, 000 hectares of land and would meet the food security needs of the country for decades. Breakdowns of the proposals suggest the seriousness of the thinking and the sizes of the projects. One such hydroelectric dam would have been bigger than the Aswan Dam that contains 51 million cubic meters of water; and would generate more electricity than the Aswan Dam. The primary locations identified included Lake Tana, Mendassa near the Sudanese border and Makile. The government was able to realize only the Fincha Dam. The newly proposed Millennium Dam is not radically different in dimension or in location from earlier proposals.3/
Why did the other projects fail to come to fruition? The primary reason is Egyptian intransigence and rejection of any move by Ethiopia to develop its waters. The Tana Beles hydroelectric and irrigation project involving five dams near Lake Tana proposed in 1958–that would have benefitted 200,000 farmers under financing from the African Development Bank– was rejected outright by Egypt. The feasibility study conducted by the US Bureau of Reclamation and the Tana Beles project would have effectively transformed the Abay Gorge and Lake Tana into the “primary all-Nile reservoir to supply electricity and irrigation for Ethiopia while significantly enlarging and regulating the amount of water flowing into the Sudan and Egypt. “ The scheme would have benefited Egypt too. Egypt rejected all of the projects and persuaded multilateral financial institutions not to support Ethiopia’s ambitions. This rejection curtailed Ethiopia’s potential in developing its water resources to meet its food demands and to reduce poverty. In 1977, a World Bank study of the Nile concluded that the “Waters of the Nile probably constitute Ethiopia’s greatest natural asset for development. The development of the River Nile in Ethiopia has the potential to contribute significantly to poverty reduction, meet domestic power and food demands, and become a cornerstone of a future export strategy.” 4/
How do riparian states move from intransigence to commonality?
In my view, and as the World Bank study suggests, past arrangements are no longer viable and or acceptable to changing Ethiopian development needs. Governments must recognize the importance of averting the inevitability of war over the Nile. As a step forward, there must be willingness and readiness on all sides to build mutual confidence and trust. Ethiopians feel that the lead responsibility must come from Egypt. In the past and today, Egypt finances(d) and provides()d armaments and safe harbor to secessionist movements such as the Eritrean Peoples’ Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front, the Ogaden Liberation Front, and the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front. These and similar activities must cease. The evolving consensus among riparian states and the world community suggests an urgent need for radical shifts in policy and covenants among all parties. Threats and suspicions must give way to win-win options that would serve all parties fairly and equitably. The alternative could be catastrophic for Egypt and Ethiopia in particular. War will have no boundaries; and no one will emerge victorious. Ethiopia is vast enough to develop its water resources without much danger. Those that tried to encircle and weaken it in the past failed because of the unity and patriotism of the population. The key point is that the threat of war is not a viable option. No one including Egypt can win a war that will engulf the entire region. Egypt and Ethiopia need one another not only to survive but also to thrive. Egypt’s priority is to ensure that it has adequate water flow. Ethiopia’s first priority is to achieve food self-sufficiency and security for its growing population. It cannot cope with demand until and unless it harnesses and develops its water resources as optimally as possible without affecting Egypt adversely. Hydroelectric and irrigation infrastructure at a massive-scale is a prerequisite in achieving this urgent goal for Ethiopia. This is a matter of survival, sovereignty, and national security for Ethiopia and Ethiopians.
In light of the above, Ethiopians within and outside the country agree that fair and equitable allocation and use of the Nile is a necessity. The vast majority of 11 riparian states, including South Sudan, endorse this fundamental principle. The Ethiopian government, other riparian states, and independent experts point out to successful examples in the rest of the world where riparian nations negotiated fair and equitable allocation and use of major rivers such as the Mekong, the Amazon, Indus/Ganges, and Okavango. Ethiopian experts suggest that the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) of 1999 provides an institutional framework for genuine negotiations and program implementation that will lead to cooperative development of the Nile. Egypt places numerous conditions on NBI to undermine its effectiveness. Professor Majeed Rahman recognizes that Ethiopia has needs too and points out that “Egypt’s defiance of the NBI and its lack of participation in the NBI’s initial attempt to convene such a cooperative agreement is a crucial aspect of the NBI’s objective to consolidate through cooperation in the negotiation for equitable distribution.” This lack of engagement from and inflexibility by Egypt leads Rahman to conclude that Egypt “has denied other riparian countries complete access to water resources along the Nile and for that matter has exercised her hegemonic power over the development and control of water resources in the Nile River Basin for decades.” 5/
Tesfaye Tadesse believes that Egyptian government attitude in maintaining the status quo began to change slightly for three fundamental reasons:
I)”Pressure” from the global community including the World Bank and UNDP;
ii) “Threats” from riparian states that they will go ahead and develop their waters with or without Egyptian consent; and,
iii) “Changes in Egyptian public and political” sentiments. 6/
This turned out to be an optimistic view in that the Egyptian government has dragged its feet with the hope that other riparian states will be willing to wait for decades more patiently. Egypt continues to adhere to its hard-line policy of maintaining the status-quo. Against this, Ethiopia pursues its ambitious water infrastructure project at a pace never witnessed in the country’s history. This includes “the controversial multibillion-dollar Nile River (Millennium) Dam that could supply 5,000 megawatt of electricity for itself and its neighbors including newcomer South Sudan. “ Ethiopia plans to build four additional dams, “together, 20 dams either built or planned– the largest number in Africa.” Concerns include the environment and the political and diplomatic fallout that could ensue. “Egypt and North Sudan have expressed concern that the mega dam project could seriously reduce the downstream water flow of the Nile River to their countries. “ As worrisome is the lack of a proper environmental and social assessment by the Ethiopian government. In my mind, the Ethiopian government did not consider smaller irrigation and hydroelectric dams that are more cost effective and less costly to maintain. Further, the government initiated these mammoth projects at a time when it is granting millions of hectares of irrigable farmlands to foreign investors from 36 foreign countries. 7/
Is there a way out?
In my view, the most sensible way forward is to accommodate the needs and aspirations of all riparian nations in a fair, equitable and balanced manner. The World Bank, the Canadian Development Agency (CIDA) and the UNDP tried to promote shared, fair and equitable use of the Nile through the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). It is clear that no single state should have monopoly over the Nile. Article 5 of the UN General Assembly Convention A/51/869, 1997 on the Law of Non-navigational uses of International watercourses recognizes the need for “equitable and reasonable utilization and participation” explicitly. “Watercourse states shall in their respective territories utilize an international watercourse in an equitable and reasonable manner,” with the intent of serving their social, economic, hydraulic, ecological, conservation, and development needs. NBI is consistent with this UN mandate. This first multilateral initiative provides a solid framework for the 11 riparian states: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, North Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda representing more than 300 million people that depend on the Nile to pursue a shared vision and set of programs along the following lines:
• “Develop the Nile in a sustainable and equitable manner to ensure prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples;
• “Ensure cooperation and joint action between riparian countries seeking win-win gains;
• “Target poverty eradication and promote economic integration; and
• “Ensure the program results in a move from planning to action.” 8/
These objectives are noble but require political will. Many years after NBI, there are yet no clear commitments and or political will to advance a cooperative approach. The current impasse on the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) curtailed by Egypt and North Sudan has not been helpful in moving from rhetoric to action. My own view is that it is tantamount to madness for anyone to use force or the threat of force against any African state that assets its right to use its waters to dam, irrigate and feed its starving population. The Egyptian position “We want historical use of the Nile water to be recognized by other Nile Basin countries because this is the only source of water we have,” before it would sign the agreement is irresponsible and restrains MBI. Egypt insists on the three preconditions:
1) Maintain its share of 55.5 billion m3 of water” per the 1959 Treaty;
2) Prior notification by upstream states before they can construct hydroelectric and other projects; and
3) Basin decisions to be mad by consensus not majority vote” giving Egypt veto power. 9/
These three preconditions prevent an otherwise promising agreement from bearing fruit. The spring 2011 high level Egyptian delegation to Ethiopia mirrors the emerging reality on the Nile that requires compromise rather than confrontation. All sides must recognize that fair and equitable allocation of the waters of the Nile is here to stay. Although controversial, the proposed Millennium Dam has galvanized a cross-section of the Ethiopian population. Ethiopia is going ahead with this mammoth project without prior notification thereby reinforcing its sovereignty over waters within its own borders. This is a position many Ethiopian experts defend. Ethiopians may disagree on many political and ideological issues. Disagreement concerning the legitimate right of Ethiopia to use its water resources for the betterment of its people and for its national security should not be among them. 10/
I should like to conclude this article with an optimistic note that riparian nations can derive substantial benefits from a cooperative rather than from unilateral approaches in the use of the Nile River. I am convinced that meaningful dialogue, negotiation and confidence-building rather than destructive and costly confrontation should usher in a new era of cooperative development and shared benefits for the populations of member countries. Within this spirit, governments have an obligation to their respective people to draw upon the state of the art technical, hydraulic, environmental and water resource knowledge and experience that will ensure sustainability and peace, avail waters, protect long-term security, reduce un-necessary sedimentation and loss and promote greater regional economic integration. This is the only legacy that makes sense. It is natural that Ethiopians admire the Egyptian people’s revolution on its own merit. They cannot afford to ignore the adversarial and contentious relations between the two countries that predate Egypt’s Pharos and the Aksumite Empire.
Reference notes
1/ Firew, M. Seifu, Abay: Fengie yekebere wuha. Daraku Publishing Inc. Boston, 2009. The author presents a penetrating notion that, left unaddressed, the Abay River contains the ingredients of a massive “bomb buried in water” and waiting to explode. The Amharic symbolism is not academic. The current famine in the Ogaden and persistent hunger among the Ethiopian population suggest that the demand on the government to respond will be far greater in the future, than it has been over the past 3,000 years of Ethiopian history.
2/ Haggai, Erlic, the Cross-and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder. 2012. Haggai brings to the debate on the Nile a feature often ignored by most experts on the Nile, namely, the broader cultural, historical, religious, and other relationships between Egypt and Ethiopia that reveal commonalities. One commonality is the Coptic faith. Ethiopia is predominantly a Christian country with strong links to the Egyptian population that belongs to the Coptic faith. This long tradition in the evolution of this faith and Ethiopia’s capacity to accommodate all three major faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam portend potential for mutuality that both sides must explore and strengthen.
3/ US Bureau of Reclamation, Land and Water Resources of the Blue Nile. Addis Ababa. July 1964. The Bureau identified that Ethiopia possessed ample irrigable land to meet food self-sufficiency and security for decades to come. Ethiopia would have avoided hunger and would have managed famines on its own if it translated these projects into action.
4/ The World Bank, “The World Bank, Ethiopia and the Nile: a strategy for Ethiopia.” Washington, DC. 1998. Internal draft document. While the Bank endorses Ethiopia’s fundamental rights in the development of the Nile to meet growing demand, it has refrained from financing major hydroelectric and irrigation dam projects. In fact, it role in agricultural development has been disappointing. The Bank continues to present analytical and policy pieces without backing them with real resources.
5/ Rahman, A. Majeed, the Geopolitics of Water in the Nile Basin. Global Research. July 24, 2011. Rahman points out the danger of war in the event that a win-win solution that will serve all parties cannot be reached. In my view, the NBI provides a good framework for further negotiator.
6/ Tafesse, Tesfaye. Water conflict resolution and institution building in the Nile Basin. Monograph 178. Institute for Security Studies.
7/ Than, Ken. Ethiopia: why a massive dam on Nile? National Geography News. July 14, 2011.
8/ International Roundtable: the Nile: sharing experiences, sharing visions. Berlin. 2002
Nine/ Wolde Giorgis, Hailu. Le Abay Wuha Mugit. Addis Ababa University Press. 2001.
Ethiopian Review has been informed by a credible source in Asmara that Eritrea’s president Isaias Afwerki is planning to step down within a year along with most of the senior leadership and transfer power to younger leaders.
Asked about possible successors, the source said he can throw out some names but it would be pure speculation on his part. Isaias is keeping the decision close to the vest.
Another source and an attentive observer of Eritrean politics has told Ethiopian Review that Isaias’ decision to step down is not surprising and that he has been quietly preparing for transfer of power because of his declining health as well as growing discontent in the military. Isaias doesn’t want to die in office like his late nemesis Meles Zenawi, our source said, adding: He wants to be a Mandela- or George Washington-like figure to his country by overseeing a smooth transfer of power on his own term.
After Eritrean military officers have started to openly complain about poor living conditions with no improvement in sight, earlier this year Isaias promised that there will be changes, including a new constitution. But no one expected he will hand over power while alive.
The Eritrean opposition media are reporting that the regime is unraveling and senior officials are contemplating defections. Earlier this week, there was a rumor that Information Minister Ali Abdu has sought asylum in Canada.
Ethiopian Review’s sources have denied the rumor and that Ali Abdu is still at the Ministry of Information. As a matter fact, according to our source, Ali, who is like a son to Isaias, is one of the younger leader whose prominence in the Eritrean government will reach new heights in the post-Isaias era if the transition of power goes smoothly.
Regarding war with Ethiopia’s regime, Ethiopian Review’s source said that no one among the senior leadership expects full scale military clash because both countries have neither the will nor the economic resources to fight. Both regimes talk about possible war to divert the attention of their people from domestic problems.
Former TPLF regime foreign minister and current ambassador to China, Seyoum Mesfin, is said to be receiving medical treatment at a hospital in Bellevue, Washington, according to an Ethiopian Review source.
Ethiopian Review has been informed that Seyoum was admitted to Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, about 10 miles east of Seattle, last week but the hospital itself would neither confirm nor deny that he is there. We made a phone call to the hospital again this afternoon, and we are told that he could be an outpatient but was not willing to give us further information.
Seyoum was conspicuously absent from the TPLF meeting that took place in Mekele last week, ESAT reported.
The secretive and paranoid nature of TPLF officials make it difficult to get such information that could easily be obtained in most other countries. The regime admitted that dictator Meles Zenawi died two months after Ethiopian Review and other media reported his death.
Seyoum is reportedly suffering from AIDS. When Meles died in July this year, many observers predicted that he would take over as chairman of the ruling TPLF and EPRDF.
Electronic Freedom Foundation Calling on Ethiopia to Free Eskinder Nega
By Rainey Reitman | Electronic Freedom Foundation
November 19, 2012
Eskinder Nega, an award-winning journalist who has been imprisoned for over a year, appeared briefly in court to appeal the terrorism charges levied against him. Eskinder has unwaveringly denied the charges, maintaining that blogging about human rights abuses and democracy is not a form of terrorism. In July, Eskinder was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his reporting. In court this week, his appeal was cut short: according to one report EFF received from partners working on his case, Eskinder was not allowed to read his defense statement and the appeal was rescheduled to November 22. We are continuing to seek confirmation about the status of the trial. For now, we’re asking concerned individuals to join us in calling on the Ethiopian government to live up to the promises in their own Constitution and free Eskinder Nega.
While many journalists have either fled Ethiopia or been silenced by repressive policies, Eskinder Nega has become a national symbol for press freedom. Educated in the United States in the 1980s, Nega studied political science and economics at American University. He subsequently returned to Ethiopia where he has worked as a journalist for over twenty years. Nega founded 4 newspapers –all of which were shut down by the Ethiopian government –and has been jailed 9 times in the last two decades for his outspoken articles.
Upon his release from prison in 2007, Nega’s journalism license was revoked and he was banned from working on newspapers. He immediately turned to the Internet and began using blogs to speak out. Some of his work has been published on Ethiomedia, a blog that is inaccessible from inside Ethiopia.
Four years later in 2011, Nega was the recipient of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Peter Godwin, President on the PEN American Center, noted that Eskinder understood the risks of continuing to speak out publicly:
He went back into the breach knowing full well what the risks were for doing so. He had a number of other options. He grew up in the DC area. He could have left the country, but he chose to stay. He’d been arrested 6 or 7 times before, he’s had newspapers closed down. He’s really been hounded by the Ethiopian regime.
Birtukan Midekssa, a former federal judge and opposition leader in Ethiopia, says Nega has been unwavering even in the face of death threats from the police. Midekssa said: “At some point, they told him that, you know, they are tired of arresting him. And they said, this time around, we are not going to arrest you, we are going to kill you. Better stop it. But he can’t, you know. He can’t stop. That’s him.”
Already targeted by police, Eskinder Nega drew even more ire from the Ethiopian government when he continued to blog about the Arab Spring uprisings. Through articles like As Egypt and Yemen protest, wither Ethiopia’s opposition? and Egypt’s and General Tsadkan’s lesson to Ethiopian Generals, Nega discussed the implications of the pro-democracy movements in North Africa and the Middle East on Ethiopia. Nega was picked up by the police in February 2011. According to a harrowing account Nega wrote afterwards, he was interrogated at length about his journalism, and the police threatened to seek retribution against him if protests broke out in Ethiopia.
A few months later, he was arrested again. This time, Eskinder Nega was charged with terrorism.
Where are all the Newspapers? The Plight of Independent Press and Ethiopia’s Internet Access
To understand the risk –and importance—of Nega’s work, one must first understand the status of independent media in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Constitution promises to uphold freedom of expression, stating: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression without any interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of his choice.” But Ethiopia has a dark history of shutting down newspapers and imprisoning journalists.
Immediately prior to the 1990s, there was no independent media to speak of in Ethiopia as the country struggled under a Communist regime and devastating famines. The early 1990s saw major political change in the country. Communism was ousted, a bicameral legislature and judicial system were created, and a new Constitution was written and enacted. Meles Zenawi, who would prove himself deeply aligned with U.S. interests, governed—initially as President, then as Prime Minister. While in some way Zenawi helped Ethiopia to recover after many difficult years of conflict and depravation, his government was marked by an intractable disrespect for human rights and press freedom.
In 1992, Ethiopia issued a Press Proclamation that, in addition to other restrictions on free expression, gave the government the ability to shut down publications that printed “false” information. Ethiopia became one of the leading countries in imprisoning journalists during the 1990s, trailing only Cuba and China.
In the lead up to the 2005 election, there was a brief period of improved journalistic freedom in Ethiopia. However, the aftermath of the controversial election brought a severe crack down on independent media. Even as clashes between government troops and protesters left dozens of civilians dead, law enforcement began a witch-hunt for journalists. Dozens of journalists were arrested and charged with serious crimes such as treason and even genocide. Some of these journalists faced decades in prison or even the death sentence.
The Committee to Protect Journalists described the crackdown:
Along with issuing its “wanted lists,” the government raided newsrooms, blocked newspapers from publishing, and expelled two foreign reporters, including a long-serving Associated Press correspondent. About a dozen exiled Ethiopian journalists were charged in absentia with treason. The U.S. government-funded Voice of America and Germany’s Deutsche Welle, which broadcast radio programs into Ethiopia in local languages, were targeted by smear campaigns in state media, endangering their local correspondents…Eight newspapers were shut as a result of criminal indictments and the jailing of their top journalists.
Many of the journalists who were not arrested fled the country or stopped reporting. The few newspapers that survived the purge increased their self-censorship.
Eskinder and his then-pregnant wife, Serkalem Fasil, a newspaper publisher, were both arrested during the 2005 crackdown on dissent. They each spent over a year in prison.
In Ethiopia today, journalism is still a dangerous occupation. In July 2009, the Ethiopian parliament passed the Anti-Terror Proclamation, a sweeping piece of “anti-terrorism” legislation that’s been used to imprison journalists and political dissidents. Amnesty International researcher Claire Beston, who was expelled from Ethiopia in August of last year, has criticized the application of the law, noting: “Since the law has been introduced, it’s been used more to prosecute opposition members and journalists than persons who might be committing so-called terrorist activities.”
Eskinder Nega criticized the anti-terrorism law just before he was arrested for violating it. In the article, Eskinder pointed to Debebe Eshetu, a famous actor, whose imprisonment under the anti-terrorism law Eskinder said “defies logic.”
The problems with press freedom in Ethiopia are compounded because the majority of the population can’t get to the open Internet, which might otherwise give them access to international news outlets.
Part of this is due to difficulties in accessing the Internet at all. Internet penetration in Ethiopia is among the lowest in all of sub-Saharan Africa. According to Open Net Initiative’s 2009 report, the majority of Internet access in the country occurs in Internet café, most of which are in the capital city. These cafes provide slow and unreliable service. As Nega noted in 2011, Internet access in Ethiopia is slow and cumbersome to use: “It is hard to sign in and out of a simple email window. Fast broadband Internet gave birth to the North African revolution, and now the revolution-phobic EPRDF-led Ethiopian government [Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front] is struggling against fast internet access.”
But even Ethiopians who can get online often can’t reach independent, international news. The only telecommunications service provider for all of Ethiopia is the state-owned Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (Ethio-Telecom), which heavily censors access to the open Internet. Tests conducted by the Open Net Initiative in September 2012 showed that online political and news sites are heavily blocked within the country.
In June, EFF reported on recent increases in the censorship and surveillance practices in Ethiopia. Ethio-Telecom began deep packet inspection of all Internet traffic in the country, which engineers at the Tor Project discovered when Tor stopped working there in May of this year.
In the same month, the government of Ethiopia ratified the new Telecom Service Infringement Law. This law criminalizes online speech that may be construed as defamatory or terrorist, and holds the website or account owner liable even if the speech is posted as a comment by someone else on their website. Endalk, a prominent Ethiopian blogger, has wondered if this law could be “the most creative way of copying SOPA and PIPA.” The law also tries to squash competition of VOiP services and harshly punishes citizens for using or having in their possession any telecommunications equipment without prior permission from the government.
Through law and practice, through intimidation and arrest, the Ethiopian government has looked to choke off free expression at every corner. It is no wonder than Eskinder Nega is one of the few outspoken journalists still operating inside Ethiopia.
Eskinder’s Current Conditions
While we are unable to receive direct reports from Eskinder about his current physical conditions, our knowledge of the prison system in Ethiopia leaves us gravely concerned.
A country report about Ethiopia produced by the U.S. Department of State, noted:
Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and in some cases life threatening. Severe overcrowding was common, especially in sleeping quarters. The government provided approximately eight birr ($0.46) per prisoner per day for food, water, and health care…Medical care was unreliable in federal prisons and almost nonexistent in regional prisons. Water shortages caused unhygienic conditions, and most prisons lacked appropriate sanitary facilities.
Wikileaks published a diplomatic cable that was called “Inside Ethiopia’s jails” that is far more graphic than the State Department’s annual report. The cable, based on reports from several recently released prisoners, detailed extreme deprivation, including:
“Abuses reported include being blindfolded and hung by the wrists for several hours, bound by chains and beaten, held in solitary confinement for several days to weeks or months, subjected to mental torture such as harassment and humiliation, forced to stand for over 16 hours, and having heavy objects hung from one’s genitalia (males).”
Even though the cables noted that much of the torture occurred in police station detentions, the threat of torture in the Kaliti Prison (where Eskinder is being held) is still possible. We are deeply concerned about the physical condition of Eskinder.
Freeing Eskinder Nega (and Helping All of Ethiopia’s Imprisoned Journalists)
Freeing Eskinder Nega will help preserve a vital voice for independent journalism in a country that hungers for access to truthful news coverage. It will also serve as inspiration for activists working to free other imprisoned journalists in this country.
The Ethiopian government has released journalists in the past—including Eskinder, several times. Earlier this year, it released and pardoned Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye after substantial international pressure. And in August, Temesghen Desalegn, editor of a leading independent weekly newspaper in Ethiopia, was released and cleared of the criminal charges against him. So we know that activist efforts – including international pressure – can be persuasive to the Ethiopian government. If nothing else, continued international attention can help ensure Eskinder Nega’s safety as he continues to appeal his case.
Here’s how you can get involved:
• Sign PEN American Center’s petition, which automatically an email to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Minister of Justice Berhanu Hailu.
• Send appeals by mail to Ethiopian officials and their local Ethiopian Embassy or Consulate.
• Tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Suggested Tweet:
Journalism is not terrorism. Join @PenAmerican and @EFF in fighting to #FreeEskinder Nega. http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/2226
We’re also going to be changing the EFF Twitter profile image to show a #FreeEskinder banner leading up to Eskinder’s next appeal. We hope you’ll do the same to your own online accounts by using the image located here.
The United States has deep ties with Ethiopia, which is a major military alley for our country in sub-Saharan Africa. EFF is writing an open letter to the US State Department to urge them to speak out on Eskinder’s case to Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister. As the Washington Post stated, Eskinder’s case is “a source of tension and embarrassment to the Obama administration,” whose new Africa strategy makes democracy promotion the number one priority.
We’ll be watching Eskinder’s case closely in the coming months. Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on the campaign.
Follow EFF
Journalism is not terrorism. Join @PenAmerican and @EFF in fighting to free #EskinderNega https://eff.org/r.a7qY
On September 2, 2012, Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., delivered a nauseatingly sentimental oration at the funeral of Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi. She called Meles “selfless and tireless” and “totally dedicated to his work and family.” She said he was “tough, unsentimental and sometimes unyielding. And, of course, he had little patience for fools, or idiots, as he liked to call them.” The “fools” and “idiots” that Rice caricatured with rhetorical gusto and flair are Ethiopia’s independent journalists, opposition leaders, dissidents, political prisoners, civil society leaders and human rights advocates.
Former TPLF regime foreign minister and current ambassador to China, Seyoum Mesfin, is said to be receiving medical treatment at a hospital in Bellevue, Washington, according to an Ethiopian Review source.
