Ethiopians reject war as Zenawi’s creation

Exhausted by a war with neighboring Eritrea that ended in 2000 and by election violence last year that saw nearly 200 citizens die at the hands of police, Ethiopians are suspicious of their leader, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

“Meles wants this war,” said Abiye Fikre, a shopkeeper in the capital. “The problems are his own creation.”

Adds butcher Abebe Belayaneh: “If Meles has his way, we’ll make war all over the Horn.”

There are questions the war rhetoric is meant to win Western backing for Meles. Some Ethiopians accuse the United States in particular of ignoring Meles’s poor human rights record because it sees him as an ally in the war on terror. U.S. troops attached to an anti-terror operation based in nearby Djibouti can be seen from time to time in the Ethiopian capital, fueling rumors.

The United States has accused Somalia’s Islamic movement of harboring al-Qaida suspects. Somali and Ethiopian officials allege senior positions within the Islamic forces are held by men wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks blamed on al-Qaida.

The top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, has called on Somalia’s Islamic leaders to turn over the suspects, but has also called on Ethiopia to practice restraint.

Ethiopian newscasters and governing party politicians argue this nation, with its large Christian population, is being forced to fight by militant Muslims Somalis who have declared holy war and already staged cross-border raids.

The Ethiopian government has said it has deployed only several hundred military trainers, not a fighting force, in support of Somalia’ transitional government. But the U.N. says as many as 8,000 Ethiopian troops may be in Somalia supporting its government.

The U.N. also says Eritrea, Ethiopia’s longtime rival, has deployed 2,000 troops in support of an Islamic group that controls Somalia’s capital and much of its south. Eritrea denies it has interfered, but many fear Ethiopia will fight a proxy war in Somalia.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but their border was never settled. Their 2 1/2-year war that ended in December 2000 was disastrous for both impoverished countries.

In an interview with the BBC earlier this week, Ethiopia’s information minister, Berhan Hailu, dismissed ultimatums from Somali Islamic leaders. He said Ethiopians — with an army of 150,000, according to its Defense Ministry — “are always ready to defend ourselves.”

Beyene Petros, leader of the opposition United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, said his party was anti-war.

“We have advised the prime minister against any confrontation, short of any circumstances involving an invasion of our territory,” he said.

Some fear the war rhetoric could inflame religious tension here. While the Ethiopian Orthodox Church estimates that up to 60 million of 77 million Ethiopians are Christian, independent experts say the population is almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

Clashes between Muslims and Christians in the west in October left 19 dead, according to the prime minister.

Somali Islamic leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys has called Ethiopia a Christian nation in a Muslim region of the world. Bishop Eiustatwos Gebrekristos, one of the top leaders in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, accused Somalia’s Islamic movement of wanting “to convert the country to Islam.”

Ethiopians are suspicious all the talk of a foreign threat is meant to distract attention from problems at home.

Meles led rebels who in 1991 toppled a brutal dictator, and was at first hailed as a reformer. In recent years, though, his democratic credentials have been questioned.

Opposition parties allege rigging in May 2005 elections that gave Meles’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front control of nearly two-thirds of parliament.

U.S. and European election observers said the vote had been marred by irregularities. In October, Ethiopia acknowledged that security forces killed 193 civilians protesting election fraud after the vote.

Since the vote, more than 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers were charged with treason and attempted genocide in connection with the postelection violence.

Meles also faces a small-scale rebellion by an ethnic-Somali insurgency in eastern Ethiopia.

The problems aren’t just political. Most Ethiopians get by on less than US$1 (less than €1) a day. Last year, they suffered drought, only to be hit this year by devastating floods.

Not all in Ethiopia are anti-war.

Every afternoon in Little Mogadishu, the Ethiopian capital’s enclave of ethnic Somalis, dozens of men gather at the Teza Cafe and listen to the news from Somalia.

The Somali Islamic movement is the problem, said Osman Nuer, an elderly Somali who came to Ethiopia fleeing devastating clan violence in his country in the 1990s. “Ethiopia has been good to us.”