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ETHIOPIA ON THE BRINK OF CIVIL WAR
By René Lefort
18 November 2005
Within
the space of a few hours, the protest that broke out on 1 November in
the streets of Addis Ababa had spread to other Ethiopian towns.
Vigorously suppressed, it became a riot and Ethiopia found itself
on the brink of civil war. Elite troops brought about a blood bath.
Will the dozens of deaths, the thousands of arrests, the detention
and isolation of the leaders of the opposition finally sweep away the
three myths that surround the regime of Meles Zenawi, the country’s
master since 1991?
The first one, the most unknown, is
probably the most tragic. The government would have us believe that
self-sufficiency in food is within sight. Nevertheless, if aid now
prevents famine in the countryside, where 85% of the 77 million
Ethiopians live, chronic hunger is spreading. In a “good”
year, like 2005, more than ten million of them have a vital need of
external aid. If nothing else changes and in a “normal”
year, within twenty years there will be some forty million of them,
according to the most reliable independent Ethiopian research
institutes, such as the Ethiopian Economic Association.
The
forecasts are equally pessimistic in the event of widespread drought,
such as those that recur on average every five years. In 1984–1985,
with a million deaths, some five million Ethiopians were affected. In
2003, thirteen million were involved. The next major drought will
concern eighteen to twenty million people.
Since he seized
power in 1991, Meles Zenawi has pursued a development strategy based
on raising the productivity of the mass of peasants. However
pertinent this was, its implementation did not succeed. At the very
best, yields stagnate. The increases in production, due mainly to
extending the cultivated area, could not keep pace with population
increase, which doubles every twenty-five years. Production and
revenue per rural dweller are still below those in the last years of
the reign of Haile Selassie, who was overthrown in 1974.
The
natural, technical and demographic obstacles that always receive the
blame obscure the fundamental reason for this failure: the
ever-spreading and insatiable authoritarianism of the public powers
which stifles the peasants. The former take the decisions; the latter
carry out massive schemes involving compulsory labour and “voluntary”
contributions. This forced development absorbs a quarter of a
peasant’s working time. They are obliged to do it: the land
that they cultivate belongs to the State which possesses practically
a monopoly of agricultural inputs. The result is that the capacities
of the authorities and those of the farmers cancel each other out in
a smouldering confrontation instead of reinforcing each other. The
burden imposed on the peasantry undermines rural development, which
first of all needs democracy.
One could hope that, based on
the promises of the Prime Minister, the general elections of 15 May
would, for the first time, be “free and fair”, to the
great satisfaction of international donors. Right up until the final
weeks of the campaign, this was more or less the case, for, if Meles
was anticipating a rejection in the towns, he was counting upon a
plebiscite in the countryside. However, as soon as the first vote
counts indicated a tremendous rise in support for the opposition and
its possible victory, the second myth, the myth of Meles Zenawi as a
democratic, fell to pieces. The counting of votes had barely begun
when he declared a state of emergency, announced his victory and
then, after three long months of fraudulent manipulations, officially
awarded himself 360 seats out of the total of 547. But this first bid
for power was not enough. He then requested a double surrender on the
part of the opposition parties: they had to accept their electoral
“defeat” and then agree to play only a silent walk-on
role so that the regime could call itself pluralist, without the
oligarchy relinquishing one iota of their formidable political and
economic powers.
In a hasty move, the out-going parliament
decided that, the agreement of 274 members was needed (compared to
twenty previously) to place an item on the Assembly’s agenda.
Afterwards, the newly elected parliament cancelled the parliamentary
immunity of those members coming from the main opposition party, the
Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP), which refused to take
up its seats. To every concession agreed by the Coalition, even
including its tacit acceptance of the official results, to every
request to launch a true dialogue, to its calls simply for “civil
disobedience” as the only way of protesting, the regime’s
only reaction was to blacken and repress the opposition. Meles Zenawi
could not have done otherwise if he wanted that the outcome of his
rejection in the ballot boxes to be a popular explosion that the
opposition parties would be unable to contain—but for which
they were made responsible—and which could be crushed in the
name of maintaining public order.
Enthralled, the
international community worshipped Meles Zenawi. They had been won
over by his claim that his declared liberalism was successful and by
the sincerity of his break with the ultra-Maoist stance of his
guerrilla years, as well as with the ancient Abyssinian culture of
his predecessors, where power was neither won nor lost except by
force. They even believed—and this is the third myth—that
the introduction of federalism after years of runaway centralization
would finally achieve balance in the relations between Ethiopia’s
nations and peoples.
However, behind this façade of
federalism, the reign of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front
(TPLF) of Meles Zenawi had been fanning ethnic tensions. What is
worse, as if to deflect a political clash into an obviously
unacceptable ethnic settling of scores, the Coalition has been
accused of embracing the anti-Tigré “chauvinism”
of its most extreme wing, and even of nurturing a design for genocide
that would make what took place in Rwanda look like child’s
play.
Despite this situation, international donors have
accepted that their aid, amounting to a quarter of gross domestic
product and with Ethiopia being the primary recipient in Africa, is
not under their control. They also chose to ignore that the regime’s
authoritarianism neutralizes their development assistance and brought
emergency aid under political control. The diplomatic community has
supported the power play of Ethiopia’s “strong man”
without any sharp question. It has acknowledged the “unprecedented
openness” of the electoral campaign which signified “an
important step” towards democracy. It has endorsed the official
electoral verdict, while accepting that the process was tarnished
with “irregularities”—as if judgment about
expressions of democracy had double standards. It has only been the
observers in the mission of the European Union who considered that
the ballot “failed to meet international standards”.
Finally,
the mediation led by the United States and the United Kingdom to
defuse the crisis only played into Meles’ hands. On the pretext
of the scrupulous respect of legality, it obliged the opposition to
accept the one-sided arbitration of so-called “independent”
institutions, such as the National Electoral Board. The mediators
then urged the opposition to take up their seats in parliament.
At
no stage have the mediators obtained the least concession on the part
of the regime, nor played their master card: the volume of aid or at
least the ways it is used. The G8 Summit in Gleneagles in July, to
which Meles Zenawi had been invited alongside five other leaders from
Black African countries, linked an increase in aid to respect for
“good governance, democracy and transparency”.
Nevertheless, the donor countries immediately promised to double
their aid to match the “democratization” of Ethiopia. In
their eyes, nothing matters so much as the stability of Ethiopia in
the turmoil taking place in the Horn of Africa. In reality, they
consider the present leadership to be a better guarantor of
stability, all the more so because Meles has firmly decided to stay
in power at all costs and when his replacement by the opposition
would be hazardous undertaking given the evident weakness of its
leadership.
When foreign protests against the “excessive”
repression, as well as the calls for “dialogue”, became
more energetic, Meles responded to them by declaring that the leaders
of the Coalition would be charged with “treason” and
could face the death penalty for having called for an “insurrection”.
Nothing can dissuade him from the conviction that he still has a
green light from the international community. But, at the same time,
the ultimate hope of the Ethiopian democrats lies on this same
community.
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René
Lefort, independent journalist and researcher, former director of the
UNESCO Courier, is a specialist on Black Africa, and the Horn of
Africa in particular. He is the author of Ethiopia. An Heretical
Revolution?, Zed Press, 1983.
From (LE MONDE, 14 NOVEMBER
2005)
www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-709994,0.html
Translation authorized by the author.
Source: Ethiopianreview.com
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