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U.S. Aid Ethiopia

Reflections on Thanksgiving in America

Posted on by Alemayehu G. Mariam

Alemayehu G. Mariam

In 1620, one hundred and two prospective settlers left England and set sail for over two months to come to the New World. They landed in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Nearly one-third of them were religious dissenters escaping persecution. A group of English investors had provided the voyagers transportation, provisions and tools in exchange for 7 years of service upon arrival at their destination. The settlers’ principal concern in the New World was potential attacks by the Native American Indians, who proved to be peaceful and accommodating. Their first winter proved to be wickedly cold. Unable to construct adequate habitation, sick and hungry, nearly one-half of the settlers died in the first year. The following year the settlers had a successful harvest and were living harmoniously with their Indian neighbors. They celebrated their good fortune and good neighbors with prayers of thanksgiving establishing that tradition.

Three and one-half centuries later, thousands of Ethiopians made their “pilgrimage” to America. In the early 1970s, many came to pursue higher education. In the late 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands fled escaping political persecution. That trend continued in the 1990s with the entrenchment of one of the most ruthless dictatorships on the African continent. By the beginning of the new century, America had not only become a destination of choice for any Ethiopian who could manage to get out, but also the dream country of a new generation of Ethiopians.

Regardless of our reasons for coming to America, we have much to be thankful. If we exert ourselves, few of us have to worry about our daily bread or a roof over our heads. If we are determined to improve ourselves, the opportunities are readily available. Our children have more opportunities in America than anywhere else in the world. Above all, we should be thankful for living in a free country. We don’t have to fear the wrath of vengeful dictators. Our liberties are protected; and we have the means to defend them in the democratic process and in the courts of the land. To be sure, we should be thankful not because we live a dreamland, but because we are free to seek and make true our own dreams.

Reflecting on the meaning of the Thanksgiving in America, the question for me is not whether Ethiopians in America have reason to be thankful for the blessings of liberty and the opportunities they have to make material progress. The question for me is whether they should be thankful to America for providing billions of dollars to a repressive dictatorship that has its crushing boots pressed against the necks of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends living in their native land.

Ethiopia is Africa’s largest recipient of foreign aid. It received well over $3 billion in handouts in 2008. According to U.S.AID statistics, the “FY 2008-09 USAID-State Foreign Assistance Appropriations” for Ethiopia was $969.1 million in 2008 and $916.1 million in 2009. The latest U.S.AID brag sheet reports that U.S. aid money in Ethiopia has “helped build the capacity of institutions such as the Parliament and National Election Board to democratize and improve governance and accountability” and “strengthened judicial independence through legal education training for judges and students, and promote greater understanding of and respect for human rights among police and the courts.” U.S.AID claims that in 2009 it “led advocacy efforts that contributed to pardons for 15,600 prisoners who had been languishing in federal and state prisons.” U.S.AID reports that “about 450,000 [Ethiopian] children die each year, mainly from preventable and treatable infectious diseases complicated by malnutrition. One in three Ethiopians has tuberculosis, and malaria and HIV/AIDS contribute significantly to the country’s high rates of death and disease.” Among the major U.S.AID projects in Ethiopia today include an “integrated health care program [which] focuses on improving maternal and child health, family planning and reproductive health, preventing and controlling infectious diseases, and increasing access to clean water and sanitation.” U.S.AID is one of the major participants “in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, a donor-government partnership to reduce the economic and environmental causes of chronic food insecurity that affects 7.5 million Ethiopians.”

Such is the “newspeak”, the glossy, rose-colored narrative, of the U.S. aid bureaucracy. The most recent evidence paints a different picture: American tax dollars have done little to help the people of Ethiopia, and much to strengthen the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi. As the Economist Magazine noted this past July, “there is no escaping the fact that Ethiopia remains almost as fragile and underdeveloped as it was when an Irish musician, Bob Geldof, set up the first global pop concert, Live Aid, to help the drought-benighted nation 25 years ago.” Stated plainly, billions of American (and Western European) tax dollars later, Ethiopia is in no better shape than it was a quarter of a century ago despite the construction boom in glitzy buildings with few utilities in the capital begging for occupancy and the comic display of economic development that is skin deep.

The fact of the matter is that U.S. tax dollars in Ethiopia, combined with aid from other donors, is doing harm to the Ethiopian people by “financing their oppressors.”[1] Summarizing the evidence in the recent Human Rights Watch Report on Ethiopia, the renowned development economist, Prof. William Easterly of the New York University wrote :

Human Rights Watch contends that the government abuses aid funds for political purposes–in programs intended to help Ethiopia’s most poor and vulnerable. For example, more than fifty farmers in three different regions said that village leaders withheld government-provided seeds and fertilizer, and even micro-loans because they didn’t belong to the ruling party; some were asked to renounce their views and join the party to receive assistance. Investigating one program that gives food and cash in exchange for work on public projects, the report documents farmers who have never been paid for their work and entire families who have been barred from participating because they were thought to belong to the opposition. Still more chilling, local officials have been denying emergency food aid to women, children, and the elderly as punishment for refusing to join the party.

Prof. Easterly concluded:

This blatant indifference to democratic values is particularly tragic since there are many ways the aid community might help Ethiopians rather than their rulers. First and foremost, donors could insist that investigations into aid abuse be credible, independent and free from government interference, and then cut off support to programs they find are being used as weapons against the opposition. They could speak out forcefully against recent legislation that smothers Ethiopian civil society. They could also seek to bypass the government altogether, channeling funds through NGOs instead, or giving direct transfers or scholarships to individuals… For not only is foreign aid to Ethiopia not improving the lives of those most in need, by financing their oppressors, it is making them worse.

U.S.AID and Aid Without a Moral Compass

In his inaugural address in 1961, President John Kennedy set the moral tone of American aid policy, which now seems to be a distant historical echo: “To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.” The Kennedian sense of altruistic morality in foreign aid is probably forgotten or unknown by those managing America’s foreign aid programs today. President Kennedy set a great ideal to guide America’s hand in helping others who need help. It was a simple and powerfully principled message: We should help the poorer nations of the world because helping our fellow humans is the morally right thing to do. Stated differently, if we cannot help “those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery”, we should not hurt them in the name of helping them.

Today, it seems the one measure of all things in U.S. foreign policy, including aid policy, is the “war on terror.” Any regime or dictator who claims to be an ally of the U.S. in the war on terror can expect to receive not only the full support of the U.S., but full absolution for all sins committed against democracy and human rights. Last December, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said:

First, a commitment to human rights starts with universal standards and with holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves… By holding ourselves accountable, we reinforce our moral authority to demand that all governments adhere to obligations under international law; among them, not to torture, arbitrarily detain and persecute dissenters, or engage in political killings. Our government and the international community must counter the pretensions of those who deny or abdicate their responsibilities and hold violators to account.

The fact is that the U.S. has stood by passively and idly witnessing elections being stolen in Ethiopia time and again in broad daylight. It has turned a blind eye to repeated gross violations of human rights by Zenawi’s regime. Though the U.S. has substantial evidence that its aid money is being used, misused and abused for political purposes, it has chosen not to hold Zenawi accountable. For the U.S., it is all business as usual: Give out the blank checks to the grinning and palm-rubbing panhandlers standing outside the gates of U.S.AID.

I am appalled by the lack of moral criteria in U.S. aid policy because I believe states have moral obligations, ethical standards and legal duties to uphold, contrary to what is taught in the school of realpolitik. I believe it is the lack morality in U.S. aid policy that has contributed significantly to the triumph of tyranny and dictatorship in Ethiopia. It is self-evident that over the past five years the U.S. has shown little willpower and moral power in its dealings with the Zenawi dictatorship. Zenawi has taken advantage of this psychological weakness and simply finessed the U.S. into silence and policy paralysis. He has in fact cunningly turned the tables on the U.S. Just as the U.S. has made Zenawi its principal ally on the war on terror in the Horn, Zenawi has made the U.S. his principal ally in his war against democracy, freedom and human rights in Ethiopia.

The morality of aid to me is not some metaphysical abstraction but a practical expression of the accountability of recipient countries and the U.S. itself of which Secretary Clinton often talks about in her speeches. I frame the moral issue along two questions: Should American taxpayer money be used directly or indirectly to support a repressive dictatorship in Ethiopia? Does the U.S. Government have a moral and legal duty to make sure American tax dollars are not used to repress “those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery”, as President Kennedy so eloquently articulated it?

In pursuit of the war on terror, the U.S. has gone to extremes of subservience to Zenawi’s regime to ignore these two questions. Instead of standing up for American bedrock principles of democracy and human rights and promotion of economic growth and poverty reduction through good governance, the U.S. has adapted its principles to fit the dictates of dictatorship and tyranny. The U.S. continues to pour billions as elections are stolen, the independent press shuttered, constitutions trashed, political parties and opposition leaders persecuted and civic society institutions and leaders criminalized. The U.S. denies facts about poor farmers who are held in perpetual dependence on aid doled out based on a political litmus test. For the U.S., development is operationally defined as dumping aid money into a kleptocratic economy. The “success” of U.S. aid in Ethiopia is measured not by evidence of the right things that have been done (good governance) to promote political and economic freedom and protect human rights, but by how much money has been handed out with no questions asked.

In its aid policy in Ethiopia, the U.S. seems to be more interested in generating “newspeak” and photo ops than producing the right results (good governance). As I reflect upon it, I am more convinced than ever before that U.S. aid is in good part responsible for keeping Ethiopia “almost as fragile and underdeveloped as it was when an Irish musician, Bob Geldof, set up the first global pop concert, Live Aid, to help the drought-benighted nation 25 years ago.” The evidence assembled by Dambissa Moyo, William Easterly, Peter Buaer and others compellingly show that in Africa foreign aid corrupts; and in Ethiopia, the largest recipient in Africa, aid has corrupted governance absolutely.

For U.S. aid policy to succeed in Ethiopia and Africa in general, it must have a moral imperative which requires holding the corrupt leaders and institutions in recipient countries accountable for their past and present actions. U.S. aid policy must also insist on future compliance with high standards of financial and ethical accountability. The U.S has the tools to convert aid-driven public corruption in Ethiopia into a shining example of public integrity for all of Africa. It is called the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (as amended). Section 116.75 of that law provides:

No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or de-grading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.

U.S. aid today does not “directly benefit the needy people” of Ethiopia. It benefits directly, indirectly and massively the dictatorship that denies the “needy people” of Ethiopia basic human rights. The U.S. helping hand no longer heals the “needy people” of Ethiopia; regrettably, it has become the brass knuckle of ironfisted dictators. So, I will just say, “Thanks for the thought U.S.A(ID), but no thanksgiving.”

[1] http://www.ethiomedia.com/absolute/3580.html

RELEASE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA.

Steel Vises, Clenched Fists and Closing Walls, (Part II)

Posted on by Alemayehu G. Mariam

Note: This is the second installment in a series of commentaries I intend to offer on U.S. foreign policy (or lack thereof as some would argue) in Ethiopia. In this piece, I argue that the price of U.S. lip service to human rights in Ethiopia without action is demoralization of the brave and dedicated Ethiopians who struggle everyday against dictatorship and tyranny, trivialization and crippling of efforts to build a strong human rights movement and disempowerment and discouragement of ordinary Ethiopians aspiring to a democratic future.

If the Silenced Majority Could Talk…

If the silenced majority inside of what has become Prison Nation Ethiopia (PNE) could talk, what would they tell President Obama and Secretary Clinton about U.S. human rights policy? Would they pat them on the back and say, “Good job! Thank you for helping us live in dignity with our rights protected.”? Or would they angrily wag an accusatory finger and charge, “You speak with forked tongue. You wax eloquent on your lofty principles to us in the morning while you consort with thugs and murderers in the afternoon.” What would the thousands of political prisoners rotting within the closed walls of dictator Meles Zenawi’s prisons say of America’s big human rights talk? “Practice what you preach, Mr. President!” What would Birtukan Midekssa, Ethiopia’s No. 1 political prisoner, first woman political party leader in Ethiopian history and the undisputed heroine of 80 million Ethiopians say to President Obama were she allowed to speak to him? “Mr. President, why do you turn a deaf ear when I have been silenced in solitary confinement?” What would the innocent victims gripped in the jaws of Zenawi’s steel vises say to Secretary Clinton in their faint whimpers from the torture chambers? I do not know. What I know for sure is that the silenced majority of Ethiopians does speak loud in bootless cries while gasping for air under the jackboots of a barbaric dictatorship. President Obama, can you hear their deafening silence?

The Belly v. The Ballot

The defenders of the dictatorship in Ethiopia argue that the masses of ordinary Ethiopians are interested in the politics of the belly and not the politics of the ballot. They do not care about human rights or democracy because they are concerned about finding their daily bread. The masses of poor, illiterate, hungry and sick Ethiopians in their view are too dumb and too damn needy to appreciate “political democracy”. “Economic democracy before political democracy,” they proclaim with certainty. They condemn free speech, free press, free elections, and indeed freedom itself as alien Western ideologies that are meaningless to the masses of poor and hungry Ethiopians. Ethiopia’s dictators are quick to stand on their hind legs and condemn the West for violating their sovereignty because the West insists on human rights observances in Ethiopia. Of course, these rights are not some bizarre imported ideas but core element of the organic law of Ethiopia which incorporates by reference all of the major international human rights conventions. All African dictators have been justifying their dictatorships for well over one-half century by claiming that there is democracy before democracy in Africa.[2]

I raise the belly v. ballot argument to contextualize American human rights policy in Ethiopia. The evidence suggests that the attitudes and perceptions of American (and other Western) policy makers may be latently contaminated by the view that human rights are not of concern or are not important to the tired, poor and huddled Ethiopian masses. I have heard it said artfully in moments of candor by those who have access to U.S. decision-makers, by some decision-makers themselves and even by certain of my learned friends that the majority of ordinary Ethiopians neither know of nor understand their human rights. Even if they are aware of their rights, they do not have a clue as to how to defend them. As a result, I am told, the interests of the ordinary Ethiopian citizens do not figure in the least in U.S. human rights policy calculations. Some have even pointed out to me (much to my disappointment, embarrassment and chagrin) that the lack of informed and vigorous human rights debate and sustained and organized human rights advocacy among Ethiopian elites within and without Ethiopia is clear and convincing evidence that human rights are not important to Ethiopians. I am advised to accept the fact that U.S. human rights rhetoric is primarily intended for international media consumption and to give moral support to the few human rights-minded Ethiopian elites while avoiding the scathing criticisms of the international human rights community for U.S. inaction and hypocrisy. “That is realpolitik for you,” said one of my erudite colleagues jokingly. “The U.S. would rather blather about human rights violations to the African masses in the morning only to sit down for a seven-course meal with Africa’s murderers and butchers in the afternoon.”

Introducing the Unsung Heroes of Ethiopian Human Rights to U.S. Policy Makers

I strongly disagree with those who sideline ordinary Ethiopians as too poor and hungry to be concerned about their human rights or good governance. I could not disagree more with the cynics who claim that ordinary Ethiopians do not know or care about their human rights as long as their bellies are full. In fact the contrary can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. When the 2005 elections were stolen by Zenawi in broad daylight and opposition leaders were hunted down, arrested and jailed, it was not the elites, the privileged and the degreed that came out to defend democracy and human rights. The people who stood up for democracy, freedom and human rights when it really counted were the poor, the urban laborers, the students, the unemployed, the slum dwellers, the retired and plain ordinary folks. The true unsung heroes of Ethiopian human rights are Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Debela Guta, age 15; Habtamu Tola, age 16; Binyam Degefa, age 18; Behailu Tesfaye, age 20; Kasim Ali Rashid, age 21; Teodros Giday Hailu, age 23; Adissu Belachew, age 25; Milion Kebede Robi, age 32; Desta Umma Birru, age 37; Tiruwork G. Tsadik, age 41; Admasu Abebe, age 45. Elfnesh Tekle, age 45; Abebeth Huletu, age 50; Etenesh Yimam, age 50; Regassa Feyessa, age 55. Teshome Addis Kidane, age 65; Victim No. 21762, age 75 and Victim No.21760, male, age unknown and hundreds more. These were the real defenders of human rights in Ethiopia. Their story is memorialized for history in the testimony of Yared Hailemariam,[3] an extraordinary human rights defender and investigator for the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), before the European Parliament Committees on Development and Foreign Affairs, and Subcommittee on Human Rights in May 2006 [Warning: The graphic content in Yared Hailemariam’s testimony cited in the link in footnote 3 may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is strongly advised.] and the report of the official Inquiry Commission that investigated the violence in the post-2005 election period.

If American policy makers are giving lip service to human rights in Ethiopia to please the few elites or immunize themselves from criticism by the international human rights community, their concern is truly misplaced. Human rights in Ethiopia is not about the elites yapping about human rights, nor is it about fine intellectual discussions, philosophical debates, speeches, annual reports or legal analyses of the nature and importance of human rights. It is much, much simpler than that. It is about helping to bring to justice the killers and those who authorized the killings of Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Debela Guta, age 15; Habtamu Tola, age 16 and all the rest. It is not about a metaphorical “closing walls”; it is about getting released the thousands of innocent political prisoners languishing behind the prison walls. It is not about an imaginary clenched fist but the real iron fist of a dictatorship that crushes citizens mercilessly every day. It is not about metaphorical steel vises, but about those who cling to power like blood-sucking leeches on a milk cow.

American policy makers should not be dismissive of ordinary Ethiopians. They should not misinterpret their silence for consent to be brutalized by dictatorship. Ordinary Ethiopians may not know much about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the numerous protocols, resolutions and declarations. They may not even know of Article 13 of their Constitution which incorporates all of the major international human rights conventions as part of their rights. But there should be no doubt that all of them know that as human beings, no person has the moral or legal right to take their lives just because he wants to, jail them and throw away the key because he feels like it or rule them for decades against their will by training a gun to their heads. That is all the human rights knowledge they need to know to deserve the respect and support of the American government.

Stability v. Human Rights

It has been argued and anonymously reported in the media that “Western diplomats” in Addis Ababa believe that forceful U.S. action on human rights could create “instability” in the country. To talk about stability in a dictatorship is like talking about the stability of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl just before it suddenly exploded. But the whole U.S. “stability” subterfuge to do nothing, absolutely nothing, about gross human rights violations in Ethiopia is eerily reminiscent of a shameful period in American history. The principal argument against the abolition of slavery in the U.S., the ultimate denial of human rights, was “stability”. Defenders of slavery strenuously argued that if slavery ended, the American South would simply disintegrate and collapse because the slave labor-based economy would be unable to sustain itself. They predicted that there would be widespread unemployment and chaos leading to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. To ensure the “stability” of the South, even the United States Supreme Court joined in with its most infamous decision and held that the U.S. Constitution protected slave-holders’ rights to their property. But history proved that keeping the institution of slavery became the very undoing of the American union when the civil war was fought. America came apart at the seams because slavery that denied fundamental human rights to African slaves was retained, not because it was abolished. American policy makers should see the historical parallels. The undoing and unraveling of Ethiopia will be the result of sustained and gross violations of human rights by the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi, not because of respect for and observance of human rights. Perhaps we can crystallize the issue for American policy makers in the language of the American Declaration of Independence: It is necessary for Ethiopia to go through a civil war to ensure that every Ethiopian has the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…”?

President Obama’s Challenge in Ethiopia and Africa

President Obama now faces a great challenge in Africa, and particularly in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. His African human rights rhetoric is being tested by the cunning dictators on the continent who are scheming to counter his every move. They are prepared to test his mettle to find out how far they can push him before he pushes back. So far, Zenawi has succeeded in cowering the U.S. into inaction and paralysis.

President Obama will soon have to make some tough decisions in his choices in the Horn of Africa. He can choose to let progress on human rights and democracy die on the vine by handing over American tax dollars to sustain bloodthirsty regimes to oppress their citizens, or use the same tax dollars to pressure for change. President Obama is said to be “a pragmatist” concerned about “problem-solving.” He has got a hell of a problem in Ethiopia and must make some tough choices. His major choice will not be between “stability” and human rights, nor will it be a choice between the forces of radicalism and terrorism and democracy in the Horn as the dictators want him to believe. The one and only choice he has is how to help Ethiopia become permanently stable by ensuring the protection of the human rights of its citizens. There will be neither peace nor stability in Ethiopia until the human rights of every citizen are protected.

Zenawi complains that the U.S. and the West in general interfere in Ethiopian affairs too much by insisting on human rights observances and demanding democratization. But by Zenawi’s measure, the U.S. has been “interfering” in Ethiopia for nearly two decades, handing out to him tens of billions of dollars in aid. But for U.S. aid and loans by multilateral institutions under U.S. control, his dictatorship could not last even a single day. If the U.S. is serious about progress on human rights, it will have to kink the aid hose line just a bit. It is guaranteed that someone will be shrieking at the receiving end, “Uncle! Please Uncle Sam!”

Giving lip service to human rights in Ethiopia without action is tantamount to demoralization of the brave and dedicated Ethiopians who struggle everyday against dictatorship and tyranny, trivialization and crippling of efforts to build a strong human rights movement and disempowerment and discouragement of ordinary Ethiopians aspiring to a democratic future. It has been said that, “Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” The most critical need in Ethiopia today is neither food nor water (though they are very much needed), but HOPE. The U.S. has a moral obligation to keep hope alive in Ethiopia by conditioning its aid on significant human rights improvements. Stated simply, the U.S. must practice what it preaches!

FREE BIRTUKAN MIDEKSSA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA.

[1] http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61799

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/the-democracy-before-demo_b_434992.html

[3] http://ethiomedia.com/carepress/yared_testimony.pdf

See also the list of names of massacred victims released by the official Inquiry Commission investigating the
post-2005 election at: http://www.abbaymedia.com/pdf/list_of_people_shot.pdf