The Mitmita Girls are all atwitter at the auspicious beginning of this new decade. First came the Sudanese vote, then Tunisia, then our brothers and sisters in Yemen and well everybody knows about Egypt, goddam, as Nina Simone would sing.
Now we have Syrian and Yemeni leaders making “concessions” aimed at portraying a relaxing of their autocratic rule in an attempt to stem any of this freedom fever from wafting over the Red Sea and taking hold among their captive citizens.
A little southeast of Egypt, down at the origin of the Blue Nile, hiding in his presidential palace without so much as a squeak is our beloved Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. He need not make any concessions; the United States has given him carte blanche to keep his steel boots on the necks of eighty million Ethiopians. Here is a very, very brief look into the current conditions in Ethiopia:
vCivil society is practically dead—it is essentially a crime to operate an NGO in Ethiopia. If you are an Ethiopian NGO, there are no means to obtain any funding and if you do get funding, the red tape and obstacles alone, including intimidation, harassment and utter disruption of your work, render you ineffective. If you are wondering why there are still so many ex pats and foreigners claiming to be working at an NGO in Ethiopia, understand that they are there for the macchiatos and to sit poolside at the Sheraton.
vFinding independent media in Ethiopia is about as likely as chasing down that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
vAny opposition has been killed, jailed and silenced through pardons, threats of further imprisonment or violence or forced into exile. The rest of the population is divided into two camps: first, those whose business interests keep them “loyal” to the regime—until the regime betrays them through their eminent domain laws or other legalese which enable them to effectively rob you of your businesses and/or lands and second, the silent majority, those who have watched their daughters being raped, their ancestors’ graves desecrated, their uncles pistol-whipped into submission and fathers disappeared and have relegated themselves into this existence because no amount of demonstrations or elections or martyrdom has brought about the end of this dictatorship.
When is enough enough?
Yet the Mitmita Girls can’t help wondering if our beloved Melese is getting a little restless with all of the goings on around him: Sudan, Egypt, Yemen…Could the fever catch on again in Ethiopia?
We were struck by the similarities between these popular uprisings and the 2005 people’s revolt in Ethiopia. This is particularly the case with Egypt. Here you have a strong ally of the United States for 30 years. Similarly, Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia has been at the beck and call of the United States government since he took power in the early 1990s. It may not be a thirty year relationship but the kind of love affair these two governments share cannot be measured in terms of time.
Then there is the matter of the funding these regimes. The Egyptian government is the second largest recipient of aid from the US, after Israel. Meles’ regime also receives billions in aid from the United States. It’s important to note that that the recipients of the “aid” in these scenarios are the governments and not the people of Egypt or Ethiopia. Meles’ personal coffers, like those of Mubarak are lined with the billions intended to feed, build infrastructure, educate and otherwise “lead” a nation of millions.
That would be your tax dollars at work, Minnesota!
Part of this aid, or rather a substantial portion of it, is military training and equipment. We were therefore not surprised when news emerged that the tear gas that was being used against pro-democracy protestors in Egypt was made in the United States. The State Department was quick to point that that the tear gas was not a part of the aid provided to the Egyptian government.
Is this déjà-vu, wondered the Mitmita Girls?
This is a revolution redux. We have been here before! In 2005 during the massive human rights and pro-democracy uprising in Ethiopia, government security forces used US made Humvees to run over anti-Meles demonstrators. United States officials at the time practically swore on a stack of bibles that the Humvees were not US made. Except that they really were and there was photographic evidence.
The US provides all manner of technical training and military equipment to the Ethiopian regime. Better yet, Ethiopia was allegedly one of the sites for the CIA’s extrajudicial rendition program where all manners of torture were being exacted on alleged terror suspects.
Our Alice in Wonderland feeling of “haven’t we been here before” continued with the official US response to the revolt in Egypt. As with the current situation, in Ethiopia, since the EU and the United States had praised Meles as an exemplary African leader, it was obviously hard for them to call for his ouster just because a rag tag of “unemployed youth” as our Prime Minister branded our popular uprising, called for a regime change. So they never called for his resignation. They instead used the familiar refrain of “condemning violence” and asking both sides to “use restraint.”
This week, Tony Blair, former PM of Great Britain, that hapless dilettante who allowed George Jr. to talk him into the elusive search for those Weapons of Mass Destruction, has decided to crawl out of that ninth circle of hell to which he has been resigned to announce to the world that Mubarak is “immensely courageous and a force for good.” The statement, strangely out of place following nearly a week of massive protests, exposes the singular objective of the West on the African continent: Western national security concerns and corporate interests at the cost of the dignity and human rights of African people. And lest you forget, dear reader, Egypt is an African nation and can be found on the African continent. It is not in the Middle East.
In the next stage of coordinated repression, Mubarak is following the “how to put down the popular uprising” handbook to the letter. Journalists and human rights activists are being attacked and jailed. As one human rights group noted, he is essentially eliminating witnesses to his brutal crackdown against demonstrators.
Rewind to 2005, when Meles also following this handbook, jailed opposition leaders, journalists, attorneys and human rights activists and for his pièce de résistance— charged them with genocide and treason!
Next on the list is ostracizing or downplaying the opposition. Both Meles and Mubarak are using the “outside agitator logic”: Meles in 2005 blamed the Diaspora Ethiopians for poisoning the minds of the good, simple people of Ethiopia into believing that they are being repressed. Likewise, Mubarak is now blaming journalists and outside factions for fomenting revolution.
And finally, we come to the American handling of this “crisis. The United States’ response to the uprising in Egypt, described as cowardly by the brilliant journalist Robert Fisk, is rooted in the same self-interested analysis which resulted in their betrayal of the hopes of the Ethiopian people in 2005. In Ethiopia, they feared that with Meles’ ouster, a “strategic ally” (Read: lapdog) will be removed and replaced with a whole host of bogeymen including: a socialist/Marxist a la Chavez, an “Islamist pariah state” like Somalia or even more unthinkable: a revolutionary leader a la Patrice Lumumba who would put the interests and the rights of her people above the national security and corporate interest of the United States. The latter is the most horrifying of all prospects.
The dialogue surrounding the ouster of Mubarak has taken on the same tone: the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know. This translates to: the next leader might not be as malleable and do our bidding. This in turn is spun to say: we fear an Islamic state a la Iran being established in Egypt or what about the security of Israel in the event that another leader is elected and she doesn’t honor the peace treaty between the two nations?Nowhere in that reasoning is the interest of the Egyptian people taken into account. They are absent in the analysis as they have been for the past thirty years of US support for this dictatorship.
Mubarak may likely continue to hold firm in his refusal to relinquish power as did Meles because his masters, his funders, the United States have yet to blatantly tell him that its time to make his exit.
But freedom…it may be delayed but it certainly won’t be denied for too long in Egypt.
When the Egyptians yell “Kefaya!” at the top of the Nile, we, at the origin of the longest river in the world, the cradle of civilization should be yelling “Beh’qa!” Enough!
2011 is not 2005. It’s time to catch that freedom fever again.
