Millennium Project or Deception Project of the Millennium?

| April 25, 2011

Meles Zenawi’s
strategy of deception in the aftermath of the 2010 selections was the so called
“transformation” proclaimed in August 2010. The election “victory”
claim by a “99.6%” margin was immediately followed by a strategy of
“transformation”. There was no “wind of revolution”
then, no Tunisia, no Egypt.

The “crafty” Meles only thought of
fooling donors by his venture of “transformation”. In the 1960s the
slogan of revolutionaries was “dare to struggle, dare to win!” In
2010, Meles came up with a new slogan, “dare to deceive!” Indeed,
the “transformation” is the boldest and most daring attempt to
deceive donors. [But, Meles had to first silence the private press and advocacy
NGOs by banning them altogether.]

Now, come
December 2010 and Jan-February 2011, the wind of the revolt of the heretofore
silent and suppressed plebeian in Tunisia and Egypt swept away the dictators
who ruled these countries with iron fist and massive spy/police network. Meles
knew perfectly well that his godfather in Albania, Enver Hoxha, had earlier
claimed an election victory by 99.9% in 1986 (5 years before his regime was
swept away), Ben Ali (whose one party-state Meles was studying to imitate) claimed
an election victory by a huge margin months before he was overthrown and
Mubarak also claimed victory by a huge margin in the 2010 elections. Meles now
knows that empty claims of election victories by ‘landslides’ can
even be counterproductive. Thus, for Meles, the principal strategy now
constitutes how to stay in power by averting a people’s revolt. No donor
can help him from being swept away by a storm of people’s uprising. Not
even Obama who once promised Africa that he would deal with those governments
who steal elections, those who he categorized as to have “stood on the wrong
side of history”. The US could not do anything when their grand puppet in
the Arab World, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown. Thus, the
panic on the part of Meles.

Why the
panic? Meles knows too well that his regime is the most hated in the
country’s history, has no mass social base at all, that his power rests
on the bayonets of the Gestapo, his police/army. The people of Ethiopia are the
most impoverished in the world, hit by sporadic famine and food insecurity, all
sorts of diseases are rampant and easily-controllable diseases kill hundreds of
thousands. In face of such colossal poverty, Meles’ regime could not
reduce it (and under-development) for the last 20 years,
an uprising can be anybody’s guess. On the contrary, poverty is
exacerbated and the people are still subjected to the most repressive police
state. No end to poverty and no end to unfreedom. These are factors for revolt and
they are by far more down-to-earth and serious than the factors that gave rise
to the revolts in Tunisia or Egypt. [One can recall what Meles said about the
impossibility of a revolt in Ethiopia.] Now, the big question for Meles is how
to divert the attention of the people at large and the youth in particular.

Yes! Eritrea
can be one big factor! Declare war on Eritrea and even if it requires
skirmishes, so be it so long as it diverts attention. Meles Zenawi came out one
morning and, to the surprise of anybody, vowed to overthrow the regime in
Eritrea. What happened? Is there a new situation that warrants a declaration of
war? Nothing whatsoever; everything was “normal” under the
circumstances that described the relationship between the two regimes. Shortly
after, Meles downplayed the hostility towards the Eritrean regime and came up
with a new issue that he thinks can really do the job: divert attention from a
possible revolt! Yes! The Nile question! And relate that to Egypt: perfect! The
Millennium Project!

One simple
question to ask is “why now”? If this is the project of the
millennium, one can assume that this is indeed a huge project which the regime
has been thinking and planning for years. We all know that Meles’ claims
that his regime is a “developmental state” [with the blessings of
Joseph Stiglitz and others] and does things with meticulous planning. Now,
where is the meticulous planning about this millennium project? Why was it
proclaimed all of a sudden? Building a dam on the Blue Nile, apart from being
highly controversial, perhaps constitutes the project of the century both in
terms of its crucial contribution in generating power but also in terms of its
expenditure. In Meles’ own admission, this proposed dam constitutes the
project of the millennium. [If it is a real project, it can indeed be the
project of the millennium.] Now, just imagine this is a project of the
millennium for the regime and it is conspicuously absent from the strategy of
transformation declared last August. If one looks at the section on the plans
of the Ethiopian Electric and Power Authority (EELPA) in the transformation
strategy document, the celebrated “millennium project” of building
a dam on the Blue Nile simply does not exist. This proves the fact that Meles
did not have any plan to build a dam on the Blue Nile as early as last August. Then, why now? Why after the revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt? It is extremely important to
underline the fact that the current euphoria about the “millennium
project” is a propaganda ploy invented after the peoples’
revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

Undoubtedly,
given the topography of the Blue Nile valley, constructing a hydroelectric dam
on it requires a high-level engineering technology not to speak of the billions
of Birr it requires. Has Meles acquired donor funding for it? We know he
hasn’t and in the deputy prime minister’s own admission they have
not secured any funding; and it is highly unlikely that donors will ever fund
it because of political reasons that can trigger the wrath of Egypt thereby
affecting the Middle East peace process. Why choosing this risky business at
this time? No funding, political risks: why risk it now? Is it really possible
to build a dam of such scale without donors’ grants or loans from them
but with contributions from the most impoverished people in the world and by
selling bonds to them? We can discern from this that the purpose of the
millennium project rhetoric is not development as it is neither serious nor
feasible. By now, we can see the dominant feature of the political aspect in
this project. It is indeed a political project aimed at deceiving the public
and diverting their attention from a possible uprising.

Then, what is
Meles up to? The first idea of declaring war on Eritrea doesn’t seem to
do the job because in this case, the EPRDF as being proactive in this project
can be considered as the offender and Eritrea can appear the victim. That
won’t really raise the level of “patriotism” that he wants to
fan. The best way to fan “patriotism” is to make the victim appear
as the under-dog vis a vis the imagined enemy. The ideal country
that qualifies for this “job” is Egypt; not Sudan, definitely not
Somalia. But, what can be the issue? Yes! The Nile issue! The erstwhile issue that categorizes Egypt as the “historical
enemy”. Perfect! Egypt is in turmoil and it is very sensitive
about the use of the waters of the Blue Nile. For Meles, it is more
‘appropriate’ to ride roughshod over an old myth and fallacy that
was used by the reactionary regime of Haile Selassie that portrayed Egypt as
the ‘historical enemy’. When a despot gets desperate, he sometimes
forgets the image he tried to portray. [Meles
portrays himself as ‘intelligent and ‘progressive’.]

All of a sudden,
Meles appears to be an Ethiopian patriot. How come he has never spoken in terms
of Ethiopian unity and promoted it for the last 20 years? Everybody in Ethiopia
knows that Meles and his regime are not patriotic at all. Why now, on the eve
of a possible uprising? We will continue our discussion at two levels:
Discussion 1 deals with the Nile question in general, the controversies between
countries of the Nile basin and Discussion 2 will discuss the Meles’
millennium project campaign.

Discussion one: the Nile Question

The Nile
question has been controversial for some time now. Like all river basins in the
rest of the world (Amazon, Mekong, Zambezi, Niger, etc…) the
misunderstanding between up-stream versus down-stream countries has been an
issue in the Nile basin as well. The problem with the controversy in the Nile
basin is the degree of the politicization of the issue. The governments of some
of the countries in the basin [such as Ethiopia, Egypt and Eritrea] are also
belligerent to each other. The rest of the countries of the Nile basin, i.e.
Burundi, D. R. Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are in a much
friendlier relations. In fact, five of these countries, i.e. Burundi, Kenya,
Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have formed the East African Federation. Now,
Southern Sudan, through which the White Nile passes and a number of tributaries
to the Nile from Ethiopia are flowing to, will be added to the political map of
the basin. What counts in the political alignment for most of these countries
is the behavior of each government towards opposition groups in the
neighbouring countries which in turn is determined by external forces such as
the US. Egypt is an exception.

Egypt is
overwhelmingly desert except its Nile basin where 96% of its 74 million
population lives. Egypt without the Nile cannot exist. That is indeed why Egypt
is so sensitive on issues of the use of the Nile water. This concern is
completely understandable and undoubtedly Egypt must get the amount of water
that it needs for its use. The problem with Egypt is that it has mystified the
issue so much so that it even went to the extent of following a policy of
arresting the development of countries such as Ethiopia so that these countries
won’t be able to construct anything on the Nile that it thinks can reduce
the amount of water flowing into Egypt. This is an extremely narrow view that
led Egypt to support any political movement opposed to any regime in Ethiopia.
No wonder why Egypt has supported practically all opposition movements, except
the Leftwing, that appeared on the scene from the old Eritrean Liberation Front
to today’s Al Shabab. This has been a policy constructed with a parochial
lens from the days of Jamal Abdel Nasser. As we will see below, this is a wrong
and dangerous policy that threatens not only the possibility for regional and
river basin-wide cooperation but also peace. Meles’ parochial policy of
disregarding regional cooperation is also dangerous that may instigate a
regional conflict. The potential for a regional war over water hinges on these
two extreme positions of Egypt and Meles’ EPRDF regime.

In the 80s,
when the possibility of regional war on water between Egypt (and perhaps Sudan)
and the Derg regime in Ethiopia was thought to be a possibility, the World Bank
came up with the idea of a regional cooperation on the basis of development to
ward off any conflict between the basin countries. In 1999, the Nile Basin
Initiative (NBI) was established with the help of the Bank by the ten countries
of the Nile basin. According to the World Bank, if these countries go in
cooperation having a development project between them, it is possible to ward
off conflict. To the dismay of its impoverished peoples, the dilemma in Africa
is the mismatch between a grand idea and its implementation. The NBI is a
highly bureaucratized institution that failed to undertake and implement any
serious project in the 12 years of its existence except planning and discussing
millions of initiatives. The many hydropower dams involving countries such as Rwanda,
Uganda and DR Congo, irrigation dams involving Ethiopia and Sudan, prospective
cooperation in the Tekezze-Atbara sub-basin involving Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan
and Egypt never took off the ground. The Nile Basin Discourse, a regional civil
society variant of the NBI, supposedly to monitor the NBI was badly organized
that it did not manage to accomplish anything substantial. From the
donors’ perspective, the NBI is a conflict prevention ploy in the main
and a regional cooperation for development.

Donors try to
generate cooperation among the countries of the basin at large and between the
hawks (Egypt and Ethiopia) in particular. The West’s assurance of the
availability of the Nile waters for Egypt constitutes an important component
part of the Middle East peace process at large. One main factor for the switch
in alliance for Egypt from the ex-Soviet Union to USA is possibly the Nile
factor as well. It is for this reason that Western donors will never fund
Meles’ project as they see it as belligerent and provocative as far as
Egypt is concerned. It goes contrary to the rationale for what they have been
pouring in millions and millions of dollars through the NBI for achieving peace
and cooperation. They will never fund any
project that they think is provocative to one party of the NBI countries.
[That is why he turned to Ethiopia’s poor for fund! Can you imagine, the
poorest people on earth contributing to one of the most expensive projects in
the continent! It is unlikely it will materialize, we presume.]

Will China
lend funds to Meles? This is also unlikely as China does not want to antagonize
neither Sudan nor Egypt by funding a project they never want to see.
China’s eyes are on the oil fields of Darfur and their interest on
Ethiopia is not really economic but geo-political just like what the interest
of the US was on Ethiopia in the decades beginning the 60s.

In the
meantime, the NBI was also engaged in a marathon discussion and debate
regarding a regional cooperation document called the Framework Agreement. After
years of debate and discussion, the draft was almost ready for signature in
2007 in Kigali when Egypt and Sudan raised serious objection to article 14 that
defines water security. The discussion continued but to no avail. In 2009, some
NBI countries signed the Framework Agreement that resulted in a stalemate on
the discussion. The sticking point on article 14 resulted from the erstwhile
mysticism reigned among the Egyptian ruling circles on the amount of water that
Egypt needs. Egypt is opposed to projects such as dams, power or irrigation,
because of the fear that they will reduce the flow of water to Egypt. Thus, it
clings to colonial agreements it signed with the British that guarantees Egypt
unrestricted rights to sue the Nile waters. On the other hand, the rest of the
countries argue back that they don’t need to be abided by colonial
agreements and that they do not recognize agreements signed by the British on
their behalf. In actual fact, this is not an insurmountable disagreement. The Egyptians
only have to abandon their parochial attitude and develop a regional
perspective to the whole issue, and the up-stream countries have to acknowledge
the rights of down-stream countries. Instead, Egypt has to adopt a
developmental policy and, most important, it has to adopt a strict policy of
population control granting reproductive rights to its women, etc… This
in turn involves changes in attitude that are strongly prescribed by religion.
This is an internal problem that Egypt alone has to resolve. The recent
revolution can possibly extend its dimension into looking at these problems.
The second change required by Egyptians is to adopt a regional perspective to
the entire Nile basin and abandon its erstwhile primitive policy of keeping
upstream countries such as Ethiopia weak and undeveloped.

Then what is
the solution to the problems in the Nile basin? From the outset, let’s
establish the fact that the Nile basin is one ecosystem whose conservation is
critical to all the countries, both downstream and upstream. This is extremely
important to realize. There will be no
Nile as a river if the catchments surrounding the lake that still retains its
colonial name, Lake Victoria and that of Lake Tana, the marshes of Southern
Sudan and the natural environment and ecosystem of the basin are not conserved
and preserved. In the contemporary world where climate change has already
destabilized the natural resources of so many countries everywhere, it is
crucially important to realize this fact. If the natural environment
surrounding and feeding into the Nile basin as a whole continues to be
depleted, the survival of the river as a whole will be in doubt. As a matter of
fact, the deterioration of the environment and ecosystem surrounding the Nile
basin has already began. The level of Lake ‘Victoria’ continues to
decrease by an alarming rate and it is indeed more alarming that the three East
African countries that share the lake (Tanzania and Uganda 47% of the
lake’s area each and Kenya owns 6%) have not yet taken any substantial
measure to mitigate the shrinking of the lake. The fate of the Rift Valley
lakes in Ethiopia is also alarming as they are drying up one after another.
Already three lakes, namely Adele, Alemaya and Lange
have completely dried up and the level of Lake Tana is decreasing. Undoubtedly,
climate change and human activity have depleted the ecosystem and environment
so much that a substantial part of the ecosystem in the basin has been
seriously affected that in turn affects the flow of water from the thousands of
rivers that are tributaries to the Nile. Massive deforestation dries up
highlands or the higher ground thereby affecting the streams and then rivers
running into the Nile. This is a huge problem that requires serious attention
and focus on the part of the governments.

What the DR
Congo faces as environmental problem in its Nile basin, for instance, is no
longer a problem of DR Congo alone. It affects the entire basin; therefore it
should constitute a problem of the region as a whole. It is difficult to
discern whether the governments concerned are really aware of this because a
regional perspective simply does not exist. A “go
it alone” parochial approach is a thing of the past when people were not
aware of their regional responsibilities and the interdependence between
countries. Lacking such regional perspective remains to be a problem. Egypt for
instance, instead of crying out for a much more share of the waters of the Nile
should adopt a regional approach and consider the environmental problems of the
upstream countries as its own (indeed it is) and try to do something about it.
There is  no use for an Egyptian
diplomat to go down to the shores of lake ‘Victoria’ and measure
the lake’s level almost every week and cry out when the level goes down.
Egypt has to do something about it. By the same token, worrying about whether
or not the level of Laka Tana has gone down doesn’t help, but supporting
efforts inside Ethiopia to conserve the environment and ecosystem in the Lake
Tana catchment will. The countries of the basin as a whole should consider the
problems as their own and try to do something about it. In such endeavours,
donors will definitely help them as they have invariably displayed.

By the same
token, what Ethiopia as a country should do is [if it has a government
accountable to its people] to adopt a regional perspective and take the lead in
this to conserve the Nile basin as a whole. It has capable environmentalists to
perform the job. The head of the environment department of NBI (NTEAP) is an
Ethiopian, for instance. Ethiopia has no shortage of water at all. It is all a
matter of how to harvest water in various ways. The problem is that
Meles’ regime has literally no idea of the importance of conserving the
environment and the relationship between the environment and social development
as a whole. It has not lifted a finger when the Rift Valley lakes dried up and
the when the rest, including Lake Awassa, are still threatened. Such a regime
cannot really adopt a regional perspective; it is too parochial and too
primitive just like its Egyptian counterpart.

Now, it is
indeed clear that the governments in the region with all their current
orientation cannot develop a regional perspective and a regional strategy to
conserve the Nile basin as a whole. This historical responsibility lies on the
shoulders of the “civil societies” of the region. Unfortunately,
the civil society is suppressed in most of these countries such as Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt and Sudan. The absence of civil
societies to engage the states is a structural problem affecting most of the
countries as mentioned. Unless, civil societies take up their natural role in
engaging the states, it is unlikely that the governments all by themselves
develop a regional perspective and solve the problems of the basin. Now, this
has been a discussion on the structural problems and the conventional
approaches to solve the basin’s problems. Now, let’s proceed to the
second level of the discussion.

Discussion two: the Deception of the
Millennium

One Sudanese
expert of the Nile once put it once that Ethiopia, with all its runny rivers,
can be a power house of the entire region while Sudan can become the bread
basket if only these regimes of the basin share a common view and common
approach to the region’s problems. Does Ethiopia have a problem of
rivers, other than the Blue Nile, to generate power? Not at
all. On the contrary, Ethiopia has plenty of water resources and could
utilize it to generate power and construct irrigation dams for agriculture
without touching the waters of the Blue Nile if only it has an integrated water resources management.
With much less funds, and probably with the assistance or loan of donor funds,
it can meet its water requirements by adopting an integrated water resources
management. This is indeed a huge task that requires vision and tactfulness,
two indispensable development qualifications that Woyane doesn’t meet.
Then, it should not come as a surprise that Woyane, like the Derg, has
completely failed even to maintain the hydro power dams such as Koka. For
instance, much of the problems of power cuts including in the capital Addis
Ababa is caused by not by “lack of rain and shortage of water” in
the dam, but because the siltation of the dam has not been cleaned for decades.
Meles’ regime proved to be incapable of even maintaining and properly
running the infrastructure it has inherited from previous regimes such as the
Koka dam.

We have seen
that Meles’ millennium project was not planned at all and received no
funds from donors. In addition, this is a megaproject that requires a great
deal of funds and that amount of funds cannot be raised from the poor in
Ethiopia. These hard facts compel us once again to question the motive of this
phantom “project”. What could be the motive and why?

By all
indicators both by the UN Human Development Index and other credible
international as well as academic institutions, Ethiopia has been one of the
six poorest countries in the world since the beginning of the Human Development
Indicators in early 80s. The 20 years of Meles’ rule has not changed an
iota of this record. And we can also confidently say that the so called
“transformation” strategy won’t change this state of poverty
at all. On the contrary, perhaps, as the land grab of pastoral areas will
definitely ruin the livelihood of millions of pastoral families. Whether Meles
likes it or not this state of grinding poverty is much worse than the level of
poverty that led Tunisia and Egypt to revolution. Secondly, the level of
political repression is also much worse than it was in Tunisia under Ben Ali
and in Egypt under Mubarak. By all indications, the situation in Ethiopia is
much worse. On top of that, Meles’ regime is also hated due to its policy
of ethnicity and favouring Tigreans over the rest thereby creating animosity
among ethnic groups perhaps as a deliberate policy of staying in power by
dividing people. Thirdly, Meles has seen how his regime is opposed and hated in
2005 during the elections and the revamped security apparatus and the clamp
down as well as the suppression of civil liberties and the private media in
post-2005 Ethiopia have all embittered the people of Ethiopia. Definitely, it
has been paranoid of a possible uprising well before the revolutions in North
Africa.

When the
revolutions in N. Africa occurred, it is now time for Meles to really get prepared
and do something to prevent it. Perhaps, the best way of prevention is
diverting the attention of the public to something else. And that is how the
whole idea of the ‘millennium project’ came about. It is
diversionary manufactured on the morrow of the revolutions in N. Africa and
that is why Meles Zenawi’s ‘millennium project’ is indeed the
deception of the millennium.