The Horn in the week of September 20 2008

A Week in the Horn

19/09/2008

Strong criticism of Eritrea from a UN Fact-Finding Mission

Political rather than security problems in Somalia

Senator Feingold's lack of knowledge

Professor Lyons, HRW and the Washington perspective again

A Japanese trade and investment mission in Ethiopia


Dialogue and African solutions: the Zimbabwe agreement.

The Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Djibouti-Eritrea Crisis has now been presented to the United Nations Security Council. The Mission visited the region from 28 July to 6 August. Eritrea refused admission to the mission.

According to the Eritrea Permanent Representative to the UN, Eritrea refused to co-operate because in June the UN Security Council had urged both sides, particularly Eritrea, to show maximum restraint and pull back their troops. This, according to the Ambassador, clearly demonstrated the UN had already condemned Eritrea.

The President of the Security Council, Ambassador Michael Kafando of Burkina Faso, regretted the mission had been unable to visit Eritrea and expressed appreciation of Djibouti’s co-operation. He also noted that UN Security Council had expressed its concern over the tension and militarization on the border. The Mission identified the situation as a threat to Djibouti’s stability and said if not resolved it could have a major effect on the entire region and more widely. Solutions must be found as a matter of utmost priority.

The report, which provides significant detail of Eritrea’s invasion of Djibouti territory and the events that followed, places the onus on Eritrea to co-operate with the UN, suggesting that if Eritrea continues to be obdurate the issue should be referred to the Security Council for further action.

This refusal to cooperate, of course, has become something of the norm for Eritrea. It has consistently rejected any diplomatic efforts to resolve its dispute with Ethiopia and any mechanism intended to assist in the peaceful resolution of conflict. It is, as usual, being intransigent, towards Djibouti and to the international community, just as it has been in its constant refusal to hold a dialogue with Ethiopia.

Rather more surprisingly, the report on Djibouti and Eritrea also attempts to link the Eritrean invasion of Djibouti to the Eritrea-Ethiopia dispute, suggesting that progress in resolving the latter would help solve the former. It produced no evidence for this assertion, though it noted that much of the instability in the region arose from Eritrean efforts to counter Ethiopian interests in Djibouti and Somalia.

The report in fact fails to appreciate the fundamental strategic position of Eritrea, that it does not subscribe in any way to the idea of co-existence with the Government of Ethiopia. Indeed, Eritrea has made it clear that its own strategic objectives in the region include the removal of the Government of Ethiopia.

It has devoted almost all its efforts to the destabilisation of Ethiopia and has recently added the dimension of extra anti-Ethiopian media broadcasts in several local languages.

Far from wanting any resolution, Eritrea’s strategy calls for continued widening of division between the two countries and the nullification of any or all efforts to try to build up mutual confidence or progress towards any settlement of differences. The contrast with Ethiopia’s strategic objectives could hardly be more marked. Ethiopia does not reject co-existence with the regime in Asmara; it is committed to resolving the dispute as quickly as possible.

The International Contact Group on Somalia met on Tuesday in Djibouti, with the UN Special Representative for Somalia, Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdullah chairing. This was the first time the ICG had met since January in Addis Ababa and it continued to take a more positive approach, focusing on ways to help implement the Djibouti Agreement, formally signed on August 19, and the Addis Ababa ‘road map’.

The ICG pledged political and financial support for the implementation of the agreement, and in a communiqué urged the TFIs to enforce the Transitional Charter fully, “including the development of the constitution and the formation of local administrations”. These are currently operating in Bay, Bakool and Gedo regions, and Benadir is being set up.

The ICG also condemned attacks on AMISOM and called on the international community to provide more resources to allow for its full deployment. It called for the immediate cessation of all hostilities and for the free and unhindered access for humanitarian aid, and emphasized that no individuals or groups should be allowed to obstruct the peace process, and urged all parties to join it.

Participants included representatives from the UN, the AU, the EU and the European Union Secretariat, IGAD, the Arab League, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, the US and the UK.

The ICG meeting coincided with another session of the TFG/ARS (Djibouti) talks, with both Prime Minister Nur ‘Adde’ and Sheikh Sharif in attendance. This meeting, also held in Djibouti, is finalizing the formation of the political and security committees called for under the Djibouti Agreement.

The setting up of the security committee will allow for work to start on the details of the ceasefire due to be implemented today. The discussions have been complicated by apparent divisions within the ARS delegation which found it difficult to present a unified view on some topics. There were even indications that some members were inclining to positions inimical to the Djibouti Agreement and the peace process.

At the beginning of this week Al Shabaab threatened to shut down Mogadishu airport as of Wednesday. The airport, which is guarded by AMISOM, is used by UN and AU flights as well as government and commercial flights. Several local Somali airlines use the airport and local business leaders and clan elders have expressed their concern at Al-Shabaab’s threat even though Al-Shabaab is not believed to have the capacity to implement it.

As a Ugandan plane landed this afternoon, a couple of mortar shells failed to reach anywhere near their presumed target. It is seen more as an attempt to persuade local airlines to direct their operations away from Mogadishu and out of the reach of the TFG.

In fact, despite appearances, the security situation is rather better than portrayed. Much of the current activity is not the work of Al-Shabaab which is becoming more of a broad, if fragile, umbrella group made up of a small core of Al-Shabaab terrorists, and various hard line opposition groups including a number of straightforward criminals.

Equally, many of Al-Shabaab’s claimed operations, as at Kismayo, have little or nothing to do with Al-Shabaab but relate to the traditional sub-clan conflicts which have led to numerous changes of control in Kismayo over the last seventeen years.

More significant than the security situation now are the political differences which have meant that less progress than expected or needed is being made with the implementation of the Djibouti Agreement or the Addis Ababa ‘road map’.

As agreed in Addis Ababa, the decree dismissing the Benadir administration was issued last week. The Benadir administration has now been handed over to the new appointees. However, Parliament and the executive are still at loggerheads over the issue of the resigned and reinstated ministers. Parliament is insisting at looking at the ‘road map’ in detail rather than as a package. There are still differences over implementation.

However, the capacity building teams involved in areas of information, finance, security and others areas, have been making substantial progress in working out the details of their planned activities.

Inevitably, it comes as a considerable surprise when a US Senator, and one who is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on African Affairs, sees fit to equate the democratic credentials of a prime minister duly elected in a successful multi-party election with a president who seized power by military force.

It suggests a frightening level of misunderstanding at best; at worst....Senator Feingold’s speech this week at Georgetown University, like his remarks introducing his recent bill on Ethiopia in the Senate, displays a serious level of ignorance.

There are two serious issues here. One, of course, is whether any government, whether the US or any other one, has the right to legislate in an attempt to dictate policies to another government. Senator Feingold’s S3457, like Congressman Payne’s HR2003 previously, is a deliberate attempt to allow US interference in Ethiopia’s judiciary, media, electoral processes, economy, national security and foreign affairs.

It will seriously affect the currently close relations between Ethiopia and the US. Indeed, whatever Senator Feingold’s intentions, and he praises Ethiopia for being a good friend of the US, there’s no doubt, as he must be very well aware, his bill will pose a very real threat to US-Ethiopia relations. This was heavily underlined in his speech casting aspersions on the Ethiopian leadership in what virtually amounted to a call to subvert the democratic process in Ethiopia.

The other issue here is that many of the claims made in the bill, and in Senator Feingold’s speeches, are quite simply wrong, in many cases out of date, in others just inaccurate.

The reasons for this appear to be that Senator Feingold, like Representative Payne before him, has relied on the allegations and claims all too often repeated by Eritrea, whose approach is dedicated to bringing down this government for its own ends. Eritrea, of course, has no need to take into account what has been achieved in Ethiopia in recent years. One wonders, however, what might be the common objective of Eritrea and members of the US Congress.

This, incidentally, raises the issue of what US Congressmen are doing, trying to legislate in the US Congress on behalf of externally based Ethiopian opposition groups, a number of which are openly committed to armed struggle and employ terrorist tactics. The most egregious error is to ignore the undeniable fact that the EPRDF convincingly won a multi-party election in 2005.

It wasn't perfect, any more than the US elections of 2000 and 2004 were perfect, but even discounting all irregularities there is no doubt the EPRDF won. All serious observers and analysts would agree. Similarly to suggest that it is only “Ethiopian reformers” who try to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law, demonstrates that Senator Feingold has been almost totally mislead about the way the political situation has developed in Ethiopia.

In fact, Senator Feingold’s comments suggest he has been listening far too much to the more extreme elements of the US-based Ethiopian opposition, some of whom are in cahoots with Eritrea actively determined to destabilize the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

It is equally surprising that Senator Feingold and others are prepared to give credence to these complaints without looking a little more closely into the background and the reality on the ground. The same is true of Senator Feingold’s understanding of the democratic process in Ethiopia, of what happened in 2005, of the operation of the judiciary and of events in the Somali Regional State.

The reality in every case is seriously different from his allegations as the briefest of investigations would demonstrate.

Senator Feingold should look more carefully at the reality of what has been achieved in Ethiopia in recent years, at the progress made in the democratic process, in the economy, in progress towards the MDGs, and in human rights, including the reform of the National Electoral Board, the creation of the Office of the Ombudsman and the creation of a Human Rights Commission, the provision of proper training for riot police, major improvements in the judicial system and extensive training for security forces and the military in international human rights legislation.

One cannot avoid being surprised at the paradox contained in the major theme of Senator Feingold’s speech. The Senator is apparently unhappy with the way in which the current US administration has attempted to introduce “democracy and freedom” in the Middle East. The Senator believes that the challenge that the US faces in Iraq is a result of that particular approach.

In short, Senator Feingold in the first part of his speech is vehemently opposed to meddling by the US in the internal affairs of other countries. Then, in the second part, where he begins to focus on Ethiopia, and his bill, the principled approach expounded earlier is abandoned and a blatantly hubristic call for political intervention in Ethiopia’s affairs takes its place. What a paradox! It might be appropriate here to remind the Senator that Ethiopia is a sovereign and independent country. One might also wonder just how the interests of the United States can be promoted by Senator Feingold’s proposals.

Senator Feingold has not been alone in the last week or two in making highly inaccurate and ill-informed comments about Ethiopia. Professor Terrence Lyons of George Mason University entitling a piece ‘Ethiopia: Domestic and Regional Challenges’ virtually managed to ignore Eritrea's central role in the collapse of the Algiers Agreements making no reference to continuous Eritrean violations of the Temporary Security Zone and its enforced withdrawal of UNMEE, both central elements of the Algiers Agreements.

These deliberate actions by Eritrea were carried out despite Ethiopia's full and unreserved acceptance of the Boundary Commission Decisions in November 2004. It really shouldn't be necessary to repeat this fact again and again. Professor Lyons knows it very well.

Since then it has been Eritrea which has consistently and repeatedly refused to agree to demarcate the Boundary Commission's Decisions in accordance with international norms or to open any discussions on demarcation or on the normalization of relations. We would remind Professor Lyons that normalization of relations was also an integral element of the Algiers Agreements.

Nor does Professor Lyons appear to have realized that the boundary issue now has nothing to do with the technicalities of demarcation or of territory, and everything to do with the one basic strategic issue: Eritrea is not prepared to negotiate with the present government in Addis Ababa; it is only prepared to do everything it can to remove it, using every effort to destabilize Ethiopia.

This includes an alliance with the ICU in 2006, providing arms and support; the provision of arms, support and training to the ONLF and the OLF, and indeed to any other opposition movements prepared to commit themselves to armed struggle.


Eritrea has even allied itself with terrorist organizations like Al-Shabaab and the small Asmara-based fragment of the Somali opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, now led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir 'Aweys'. Incidentally, one glaring example of Professor Lyons’ capacity to ignore fact in favor of fiction is his claim that Ethiopia is “bogged down” in Somalia. It is not; it can, and probably will, withdraw at any time.

Professor Lyons makes much of the 2005 elections, an issue on which he has been equally inaccurate on other occasions. Whatever the claims of the Ethiopian opposition in the Washington Diaspora, no serious observer of the 2005 election, then or subsequently, doubts that the EPRDF won, and won convincingly. It is therefore very simple to see why the 2005 elections “failed to usher in an orderly transition based on peaceful multi-party competition” - the opposition lost.

Professor Lyons claims that “cynicism and disillusionment with electoral politics have replaced the hope and optimism that characterized the period leading up the 2005 vote.” The hope and optimism he refers to are misleading. The opposition leaders believed in 2005 that if they participated in the election they must win. When they lost they immediately claimed this could only have happened through manipulation.

They refused to accept one rather important fact – that parties can lose as well as win elections. Even today, when the evidence is clear enough, those opposition leaders who sent their followers out on the streets to cause violence in which people died, still claim they won. They didn't. The boycott of parliament by CUD leaders in 2005 wasn't just a “miscalculation” as Professor Lyons so carefully puts it.

It was a deliberate betrayal of the constituents who elected them, a quite calculated and conscious denial of parliamentary democracy. Most of their own party actually rejected the arguments of their leaders. In meetings before the decision to boycott, 65% of the CUD central committee voted to join parliament. It was the leadership who insisted on the boycott, and it was their action which split the party, with one of the four groups in the CUD walking out. Revealingly, after the arrest of the leadership, almost all the CUD MPs, apart from the ten or so detained, quietly joined Parliament.

Incidentally, to use a Gallop poll of a thousand people in Addis Ababa and quote its figures for honesty of elections, confidence in the judiciary, confidence in the government, is hardly meaningful. And hasn't Professor Lyons seen any of the figures for the US or the UK on how politicians (or academics or journalists) are regarded? It is difficult to see how 137/138 seats in Addis Ababa, won by the CUD in 2005 represents a firm basis of support for the CUD, while 137/138 seats won by the EPRDF in 2008 translates into “cynicism and disillusionment”, making the EPRDF's ability to govern “precarious”.

It is certainly true that the EPRDF is far better organized than any of the opposition parties. It is, as Professor Lyons grudgingly admits, an extraordinarily effective party, but this does not mean a lessening of political space, though it would certainly be better if the opposition were more effective.

Professor Lyons, apparently quoting directly from HRW and AI, accepts their claim that the draft Charities and Societies Bill (it is not yet a proclamation) is an “assault on civil society” and a narrowing of political space.

He appears not to have studied the proposed bill himself with any care, making a series of assumptions based less on the provisions of the bill than on HRW's own distorted view of Government policy and aims. HRW made another “analysis” of the bill last week.

As usual it made little or no effort to obtain clarification or query allegations, preferring to reiterate them without qualification or query, a technique it has repeatedly used with reference to alleged abuses in the Ogaden or in Somalia. None of this reflects either the theory or the reality of Government practice or activity, and is simply not borne out by the facts, many of which HRW ignores, deliberately or inadvertently. Limiting political space is a nice catchy phrase, but the bill doesn’t do that.

It lays down improved mechanisms to monitor NGOs, but given the casual, free-for-all, approach adopted by many NGOs that's hardly surprising. The bill requires NGOs to take a lot more care in planning and in carrying out activities, in drawing up its statutes, using proper book-keeping and proper audits. Most countries do this as a matter of course. Given that seventeen NGOs had to be closed down for irregularities last year alone, the bill is hardly surprising. Indeed the squawking of horror from NGOs faced by the prospect of stricter controls and oversight, or the need to be checked every three years through a process of re-registration, underlines exactly why the Government finds the bill necessary.

Some of the provisions may sound tough, but the gratuitously offensive and cavalier approach of some NGOs, including HRW, makes the reason clearly understandable to any one who looks at the evidence rather than respond to HRW's usual hysterical reflex. Indeed, one of the reasons for HRW 's concern appears to be that the bill requires organizations like HRW, or AI and other international human rights organizations, to obtain permission to carry out activities in Ethiopia.

In fact, for NGOs, the real problem with the Charities and Societies Bill is that it demands that NGOs recognize and respond to their responsibilities and are accountable. Given, for example, the efforts of HRW to move outside its own remit and deliberately attempt to interfere in the electoral process as it did with reports specifically designed to influence voting in 2005 and 2008, this is nor unreasonable.

It is deeply depressing to see that “the view from Washington” as enunciated by Professor Lyons, by HRW, and by Senator Feingold, still continues to be based on a series of exaggerations, half-truths and inaccuracies, or, perhaps to be generous, even misunderstandings.

A Japanese mission to promote trade and investment visited Ethiopia this week, from September 14-16.

The delegation, led by Mr. Nobuhide Minorikawa, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, included 36 representatives drawn from both public and private sectors. The visit followed the commitment made by the Japanese government at the TICAD IV Conference in Yokohama in May, to dispatch economic missions to enhance its engagement in trade and investment in Africa.

This Joint Mission, which is also visiting Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, is to explore trade and investment opportunities. Three separate missions have been dispatched to various parts of the continent.

During its stay in Ethiopia, the Joint Mission was briefed by Ato Sufian Ahmed, Minister of Finance and Economic Development (MOFED), by the Ministers of State of MOFED, of Trade and Industry, and of Agriculture and Rural Development, as well as senior officials from the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and Foreign Affairs, and the Ethiopian Privatization Agency. Discussions focused on the political and economic climate in Ethiopia and the investment incentives and opportunities available to Japanese Companies in the areas of agriculture, mining, power and energy and other sectors.

The Joint Mission paid a courtesy call on President Girma Woldegiorgis and visited the Japanese Garden at the National Palace. They also met with leaders of the Ethiopian and Addis Ababa Chambers of Commerce and members of the business community.

The Joint Mission visited the site of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and a flower farm in Holeta, and attended a dinner hosted by the State Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Mission arrived only a few days after the Japanese built 'Hidasie' Millennium Bridge over the Blue Nile was officially inaugurated. Described by Prime Minister Meles as a symbol and a living monument to Japanese-Ethiopian friendship, it is moving Ethiopia into its 21 century.

The bridge, which cost $14 million, is part of a road upgrading project from Gohatsion to Dejen. Under a memorandum of understanding signed between the Ethiopian Roads Authority and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency in November 2003, the cost is fully covered by the Government of Japan.

In Zimbabwe an agreement was finally signed, on September 15, between President Mugabe and opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, under the aegis of South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki. The agreement marks a dramatic turning point for Zimbabwe. It provides for a government of national unity with Mr Mugabe to remain an executive president and Mr Tsvangirai as an executive prime minister.

There is, of course, still room for problems to emerge and not all details yet appear to have been fully worked out. Indeed, implementation of the deal may prove difficult, but even to have reached this stage, an agreement between two groups who have long been bitterly at loggerheads, is a notable achievement to the credit of an African solution to African problems.

It appears both sides are committed. President Mugabe was notably complimentary towards President Mbeki, praising his determination and his generosity, thanking Zimbabwe’s neighbours for coming to its assistance once again, and describing President Mbeki’s work as noble.

Mr. Tsvangirai referred to the agreement as “the best opportunity for us to build a peaceful, prosperous, democratic Zimbabwe”. It should be remembered that President Mbeki had earlier come in for a lot of criticism especially from the western press and others for his “quiet diplomacy”, which was even described as “a method of conferring respectability on a policy of appeasing Mugabe’s domination” and claims that he was denying the crisis and preventing regional and international intervention in defence of human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe.

The most striking factor in this mediation is that it was achieved within the African context. President Mbeki was first given a mandate to mediate by the South African Development Community (SADC), and this was subsequently endorsed by the AU at its Sharm el Sheikh summit, at the beginning of July.

It was notable that the AU Executive Council expressed its deep concern over the situation in Zimbabwe and its implications for political stability, supported the efforts to assist the parties to find a peaceful and lasting solution, called on all parties to exercise restraint and put an immediate end to violence and intimidation and urged the parties to refrain from any actions that might negatively impact on the climate for dialogue, and to commit themselves to a peaceful solution to the current situation through dialogue. The AU very specifically did not call for sanctions or resort to threats.

This contrasted sharply in tone and intent with a UN Security Council draft resolution a few days later which demanded the beginning of a substantive and inclusive political dialogue, but called for condemnation and sanctioning of Zimbabwe under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, calling it a threat to international peace and security in the region.

The draft would have imposed an arms embargo, and a travel ban and a financial freeze. Fortunately wiser councils prevailed, and the draft was rejected, allowing President Mbeki the space necessary to carry out serious and substantive negotiations that would have been impossible if the heavy handed approach of the international community had been adopted.

There are considerable lessons to be learnt from this implementation of an African approach to African problems. President Mbeki was emphasizing a peaceful, low key, approach based on dialogue and discussion, avoiding any sense of exclusivity and stressing the necessity of inclusively.

He resolutely refused to demonize, something that certain elements of the international community have made the central element of their approach to Zimbabwe. President Mbeki consistently made it clear he was seeking the middle ground between the protagonists rather than trying to widen the gap which appeared to be the intent of those who proposed the UN draft resolution.

This use of an African style of mediation, and the particularly African insistence on dialogue rather than confrontation, provides a welcome lesson. It isn’t a question of parochialism, and it isn’t indicative of any necessary rejection, principled or otherwise, of other alternatives or an insistence on any uniquely African approach.

What it emphasizes is that in such cases, African states are, perhaps, closer to the problem, in a position to understand the dangers and the implications of selected courses of action rather than others. There is no doubt, for example, that if the approach outlined in the UN draft resolution had been adopted, it would have done nothing to maintain stability in Zimbabwe, and done much to encourage instability.

This reminds us of the experience we had in Ethiopia in 2005 during the post election period when highly provocative, and inaccurate remarks by the head of the EU’s Election Observation Mission, and the leaking of documents, were largely responsible for bringing opposition supporters out onto the street and encouraging the opposition into violent confrontation.

In other words, the violence that occurred was not solely the product of the Ethiopian political scene. There was external third party involvement by people whose knowledge of Ethiopia was minimal, whose sensitivity to potential problems was non-existent, and who had no attachment to the interests of Ethiopia, only to their own. In the end this meant that no dialogue proved possible, and led, almost inexorably, to the riots of November, and the totally unnecessary loss of life, both of police and civilians.

It was a political crisis that could have easily been avoided by discussion and dialogue, as demonstrated last year when the efforts of the traditional Council of Elders provided mediation which allowed for the pardoning of convicted opposition leaders.

It is clear that the first approaches of the international community to the crisis in Zimbabwe had nothing to do with dialogue and everything to do with the threat of external intervention from outside Africa. Once this was dropped and a more conciliatory mode adopted, coupled with mediation by people involved in the region, knowledgeable and prepared to take the time, interest and energy to produce a settlement in the interests of the parties concerned, a peaceful solution became very possible. We might, at this point, ask what are the lessons we should draw from the experience we have had in Zimbabwe.

First of all it is very clear that what was in the interests of Africa might not be supported by the international media. Prudent approaches that would help maintain peace in Africa and contribute to national reconciliation might be ridiculed. It is only when they succeed that their validity is accepted, and even then only grudgingly.

All this means that any potentially effective methods of resolution of African problems must be pursued with patience, determination and consistency even in the face of what appears to be almost unanimous opposition from the international community. For Ethiopians, of course, this is confirmation of the soundness of the policy their government has been following both in domestic and foreign affairs. That is why we continue to insist that for Ethiopia and Eritrea there is no alternative to dialogue, and to consistent and determined commitment to peaceful resolution of the dispute.

Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Ministry of Foreign Affairs