The excision of entire passages from a leaked US embassy cable on Seye
Abraha, a former Defense Minister turned opposition politician, and
Berhanu Nega, a former mayor-elect turned leader of a clandestine
opposition based in the US, has stirred bewilderment and
disappointment here in Addis Ababa, the nation’s capital. The two were
conspicuously referred to in a June 2009 cable to Washington by Donald
Yamamoto, then US Ambassador to Ethiopia, after a rare meeting with
Ethiopia’s “elusive hardliner” spy chief, Getachew Assefa.
WikiLeaks posted the first two of more than 1300 leaked State
Department cables on Ethiopia this week, triggering a new wave of
blockades by ETC against proxies that circumvent filters against
Ethiopian websites. (Despite their best effort, nonetheless, their
“line of defense” is hardly impregnable.)
But if only half-heartedly, the Under Secretary, who travelled to
Addis primarily to lobby in support of the Copenhagen accords, did
raise other issues of keen local interest, and in the process,
inadvertently highlighted not only the increasing assertiveness of
Meles in his dealings with the world’s lone super power, but also the
clear reluctance of the Obama administration to apply pressure on
authoritarian regimes. “Birtukan will vegetate in prison forever,”
Meles tells the Americans belligerently. And all Otero could muster in
response was a pitiful “(urge to) exercise wise judgment and
leadership, and CONSIDER the release of Birtukan Mideksa.” Emboldened,
Meles then even goes to risk the mother of all revisionist histories.
“Referencing his own struggle against the Derge regime,” details the
cable,” Meles said he and his compatriots received no foreign funding,
but were willing to sacrifice and die for their cause.” The Americans,
in line with their famed short attention spans, were in no position to
debate about events two decades in the past. And suddenly, Meles
assumes the moral high-ground. There was no stopping him after this.
All in all, Meles comes out the clear winner in this cable: strong,
confident, and, most importantly, his private utterances fall in
perfect sync with his public pronouncements. The Americans, on the
other hand, fall far short of the traditional image of a superpower,
sadly, not even that of a receding one. They allow Meles to bully,
provoke and lecture them, all in almost meek silence. To all
appearances, they stand powerless before him. (Interestingly, not a
word about freedom of the press, the principal advocates of democracy
until their suppression in 2005, but an argument of sorts over civil
society, whose record on democratization in Ethiopia is at best
minimal.)
But only two lines into the cable, in a seeming vindication to
Professor Easterly’s oft repeated adage, “foreigners never have enough
at stake to get it right,” Yamamoto commits a startling error. “In a
rare meeting with the elusive head of the Ethiopian National
Intelligence and Security Service (NISS),” wrote Yamamoto, “and main
hardliner within the powerful executive committee of the ruling
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party,
Ambassador and NISS chief Getachew Assefa discussed a wide range of
regional and bilateral issues.” But Getachew has never been a member
of the Executive Committees of neither the EPRDF coalition nor one of
its four constituent members, the TPLF. He has neither moved
up or down from his position on the central committee of both parties for over two decades.
A few lines later, Yamamoto relates about Getachew’s concerns about
the OLF and ONLF. He also“spoke at length about former Addis Ababa
mayor-elect Berhanu Nega.” And suddenly, inexplicably, the first
excision, suggested by the State Department, and obviously accepted by
WikiLeaks and the papers, appear. Presumably, only a few lines are
omitted, but one could not help but wonder how “a State Department
source,” the rational for the censorship, could be involved here. (Or is
the State Department, as many wonder, protecting Getachew’s sources,
too?) Mercifully, the next two lines are spared the censor’s sharp
scissors, and that “VOA’s biased reporting; the dangers of former
Defense Minister Seeye Abraha’s growing authority within the
opposition” are on the “reclusive” spy chief’s mind is revealed. All
these, and much more, come as introductory summaries; in three
unusually lengthy sentences. And only then do the details ensue.
Interestingly, this rare meeting comes courtesy of former US
Ambassador to Ethiopia, Irving Hicks, an African American, who is a
close confident of Ethio-Saudi billionaire, Mohammed Al Amoudi. In
fairness to Getachew, though he obviously disdains the prospect of a
regular meet with foreigners, he tries to compensate by giving
Yamamoto a 4-hour marathon audience.(Which was not enough to break
the ice between them, however. “Getachew will never be a close
contact,” Yamamoto informs Washington at the end of his report. And
with US’ embassy in Asmara cable to Washington about the need for
close contact with Eritrean Generals to encourage a coup against
Isaias Afewerki posted by WikiLeaks, this will no doubt comfort
Meles.)
Getachew speaks more like a politician, which he is, than a
professional spy master. “(The US) should brand the OLF and the ONLF as
terrorists, and should never meet with them,” he argues. “The
Ethiopian government would not meet with extremists in the US who bomb
abortion clinics,” he assures Yamamoto, a bit comically. “ The
Ambassador responded that there should be closer discussion between
Ethiopia and the US on this issue,” reports Yamamoto. (Don’t hold your
breath, Getachew.) All juicy, and nothing was omitted. So far, so
good.
But then come the details about Getachew’s misgivings about the VOA,
and everything after the first sentence is deleted. Where is room for
ambiguity here, ask many in the public. No State Department source
could even be remotely involved. Why then would WikiLeaks and the
papers agree to the excisions suggested by the State Department?
But worse is in store. A paragraph later, a paragraph in its
entirety, numbered 6, is missing. Number 7 is also partially cut.
Number 8, as was the case for 6, is deleted entirely. Fortunately, the
erasing stops here. The five subsequent paragraphs are there in their
entirety. But the take (most probably, no more than a political
analysis) of the security chief on Seye Abraha and Berhanu Nega are no
where to be found. They are inexplicably removed “from the public
domain.”
Would Manning and Assange, both now languishing in prison, approve of
censorship, when the safety of sources are clearly not endangered?
WikiLeaks and the papers have a lot of explaining to do.
