The West's Urge to Cuddle With a Tyrant

I often wonder why a people who have been so successful in nearly all walks of life can sometimes be utterly wrong and disdainfully stupid when it comes to their understanding of the issues that matter to people of other cultures. I am of course speaking of Americans and Brits in general but especially of the foreign policy wonks who are assigned to any African, Middle Eastern or Asian desk by these two otherwise very successful nations. They miss the most obvious shift in public attitudes. They mistake a people’s patience for either fear or love. They routinely miscalculate the balance of political power in emerging civil and military conflicts. The people who report on developments in these regions fare no better.

A case in point is a recent article by the Eocnomist.Com on the unfolding political drama in Ethiopia. I was disappointed to note that a publication which has served its readers with distinction for so long got the current Ethiopian problem so wrong. The intro appropriately refers to these developments as “the carnage committed by Meles Zenawi”. The facts reported in the first few paragraphs thus are consistent with what has been reported elsewhere. Its transgression perhaps arose for the urge to make its report “fair and balanced”. It ran into difficulties trying to find creative ways to balance the report on the carnage with something, anything positive to say about Meles. In the process it insulted the dead, it infuriated at least one reader and it broke its reputation for intelligent but thorough reporting.

Mr. Editor;

In your assessment of how the west might encourage Mr. Zenawi not to be so callous with the lives of Ethiopians, you ruled out using the west’s purse strings as leverage because you believed that to be “not a very effective stick for beating Ethiopia”. You cite as the basis for your conclusion the fact that “Mr Zenawi's supporters argue that his authoritarian methods, however ruthlessly on display in the capital, have helped to complete roads, clinics and agricultural extension projects in the famished countryside, where most Ethiopians live”.

Given all that has gone over the last several months, one wonders who these supporters might be. One also might wonder how these supporters failed to give some consideration for the possibility that those who live in Mr. Zenawi’s beloved and famished countryside might actually consider living under ruthless tyranny to be too high a price to pay for roads, clinics and agricultural extension projects. Of course, there remains the matter of the unfounded premise that there are roads completed, clinics built or agricultural extension works carried out in that famished country side. Except if one takes the work of the fertilizer businesses of Mr. Zenawi’s party companies to constitute the agricultural outreach of Mr. Zenawi’s government, there is no evidence of any of these alleged gains.

I found your very next sentence even more troubling. You write that “blood-spattered as he now is, Mr. Zenawi has earned plaudits for growing more food and overseeing one of Africa's more effective strategies for reducing poverty.” Again one would have expected the Economist to have considered the sources of those plaudits and to have expended some effort to substantiate whether the claims are reasonable.
You are well aware that Mr. Zenawi has held absolute power for fourteen and a half years. He has held power without checks either by a legitimate and organized political opposition, an independent judiciary or a meaningful legislative body. He has had a decade and half of free reign where his word has been law. He came to office pledging to end hunger in Ethiopia and to achieve food self-sufficiency within five years. Never mind that most observers believed that the target date was movable, but nearly all believed that the objective of working towards food self-sufficiency was real.

Fourteen and half years later, there are more Ethiopians who rely on food aid than when Mr. Zenawi came to power. Indeed more people rely on food aid now than at the height of the 1984 great Ethiopian famine. Every year Mr. Zenawi has been in office, millions of those who live in Mr. Zenaw’s beloved countryside, millions of the very farmers who were to feed everyone else have had to rely on food aid. As to reducing poverty, the World Bank reports that per capita income in Ethiopia has declined from about $120 when Mr. Zenawi came to office to just under $100 now. Yes, $120 is not something you can brag about. But when that paltry sum declines by one-sixth after 15 years of “growth” and after being nurtured under “one of Africa's more effective strategies for reducing poverty”, I’d say it is time to revisit Mr. Zenawi’s strategy.

Without citing when your poll was conducted or when and by whom it was conducted, you reported that “many, perhaps most, Ethiopians and many foreign observers argue that, despite the government's recent bloody brutality, Mr. Zenawi is still the best man to keep Ethiopia on a path to development.” I know in economics, you are supposed to have empirical bases for statements such as that. I suspect, that journalism schools too instruct their pupils that summative statements which claim to point to the preferences of others be based on direct measurement, or at least on second had data -- be it sample data or census data. I cannot say whether your statement about foreign observes has some factual bases. However, I very much doubt that there are a million much less tens of millions of Ethiopians who hold the opinions you ascribe to them. Look at the election results. Except if you were to suggest that the May vote was simply a protest vote and not a reflection of the true sentiments of the population (a point Mr. Zenawi once sought to make to the BBC’s Hard Talk reporter while challenging the opposition for a rerun of the election) or that the people’s vote does not reflect their economic calculus, then the majority of the voting public emphatically declared Mr. Zenawi to be the worst man not the best man for Ethiopian development. Of course, his actions ever since have exonerated the voters’ contempt for the man.

I take issue not only with your characterization of Mr. Zenawi’s record but also with your assessment of the readiness of the opposition to assume state power. While assessing that readiness, you wrote “nor is there a clear alternative to him” as though what is called for is another strongman to replace Mr. Zenawi. It might come as news to you, but the opposition has dozens of experienced, intelligent and patriotic leaders who are ready to take significant leadership within a democratic government structure. Yes, there is no strongman among them who would insist on assuming all of the roles Mr. Zenawi had amassed for himself. In the eyes of Ethiopians, that, believe it or not, is viewed to be good thing. There is room for many strongmen and strongwomen in Ethiopian public life. We have had thirty years where one man (first Colonel Mengistu and then guerilla fighter Meles) had thought of everything on our behalf. For thirty years one of these two men had designed the nation’s economic plan, thought of educational reform, came up with foreign policy, health policy, farm policy, designed the highway network and did everything else. And look where that has taken us. Ethiopians reject the need for another strongman with and a one man show.

I understand that you and many others in the west would prefer the simple nation state where you don’t have to deal with too many (potentially crazed, semi-retarded, corrupt and greedy) leaders. You want to know who is in charge and who makes the call in specific countries. You like the simplicity of thinking of the Shah or the Ayatolla Khomeni when you think of Iran or of Mobutu in Zaire. It is much easier to deal even with crazy places such as North Korea, because you know who is in charge. An Ethiopia run by a consultative democratic government would be too ambiguous for you to feel comfortable with.

You would not be bothered by the absence of a clear alternative to Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair. You would not even care who would lead Israel if Mr. Sharon steps aside, but you would most certainly loose sleep over the possible replacement of Mr. Mahmoud Abas. That perhaps reflects one of the more egregious strains of western prejudice towards third world politics. You would not count on the democratic process to produce capable leadership in these countries. The opposition in Ethiopia worries you because you don’t know who the next big man or big woman to sit in the big chair is. Sadly, that is reflected not just in your journalistic preference. It is the common denominator of western foreign policy toward third world countries.

You seem to also be uncomfortable with the possibility that many of the opposition leaders do not come from among Mr. Zenawi’s Tigrayan clansmen. I am perplexed that a paper which for so long has been both a benefactor and a contributor to the distinguished British democratic heritage, would find the disproportionate accumulation of political in the hands of a small minority comforting. You seem rather concerned with the possibility that the division of political power among Ethiopia’s diverse population might actually be changed to reflect that diversity.

According to Mr. Zenawi’s 1994 census, Ethiopia’s population is Oromo, 32%; Amhara, 30%; Tigray, 6%; Somali, 6%; Guragie, 4%; Sidama, 3%; Wolaita, 2%; Afar, 2%; Hadiya, 2%; and Gamo, 1% http://www.ethiopianembassy.org/population.shtml. Yet Mr. Zenawi and his Tigrayan inner circle control nearly everything. What is different about the opposition is that both its leadership and its membership come from all walks of life and from all corners of the country. That is one of the things that Ethiopians find refreshing and enjoyable. For 15 years, Mr. Zenawi told Ethiopians that there are no such people as Ethiopians, only captive nations called Amar, Oromo, Tigrey, Somali, Gorage, each belonging in its own place and belonging to its own political organization. The opposition parties created forums where Ethiopians can work together across ethnic lines to build their common future for a common destiny without shame or fear.

The Economist in particular and western media in general would best serve their readers and the people of whom they report if they spend just a bit more time to speak with truly ordinary people; not just with the “guide and driver” the ministry of “information” assigns to you, not just with the women who hangout in the international hotel lobby nor with the NGO fellows who have to carefully manage careers. To detect the heartbeat of Ethiopia, go to Nekempte, to Dangila, to Assosa, to Dilla, Dire Dawa, to Debre Birhan and/or to any number of small and medium sized towns. You will find that Mr. Zenawi’s loyal rural population which has reaped the benefits of those great development works you so frequently write about does not exist. What you will find instead is a people which have been held hostage for 14 years by a cynical Marxist power monger, heart broken with the disappointment of their failed attempt to liberate themselves by selecting an alternative.

Of the many critical comments you make about the opposition, perhaps your comment about the oppositions attitude towards Eritrea come close to being true. Even then, at least in the eyes of Ethiopians, the disposition of the opposition towards Eritrea is far more consistent with Ethiopia’s national interest than that of Mr. Zenawi’s. Mr. Zenawi did not consult the Ethiopian people when he endorsed the secession of Eritrea. Furthermore, intoxicated with his new found power, he agreed to Eritrea’s secession without clear demarcation of the boundary between what were to be two sovereign states. Some estimate that that mistake cost Ethiopia up to 100,000 of her children in the war of 1998-2000. In an even more egregious move, Mr. Zenawi surrendered the ground gained at the expense of those 100,000 lives without arriving at a final agreement over the issues that lead to the conflagrations. Hence, Ethiopia will fight at least one more war with Eritrea to settle the issues which, as the victor, it should have been able to settle to its satisfaction at the end of the last war. Here too, Mr. Zenawi has undermined the country’s interest and in the eyes of many if not most Ethiopians (to borrow your phraseology) he has engaged in what amounts to treasonous activity not just for lack of foresight, but perhaps because he is half-Eritrean surrounded by Eritreans in his inner circles.