Western governments in general and those of the United States in particular are often accused of double standards in their foreign policy behaviour. They preach democracy and freedom to the rest of the world, especially the developing world. In some instances they seem to back their words with deeds and in others to do the opposite. They take a tough stance against such dictatorships as in Belarus and Zimbabwe and actively work against such democratically elected governments/ political movements as those in Venezuela and Palestine. And this is a double standard, or is it?
Do Principles Matter to Western Governments?
The history of United States’ foreign relations is replete with unholy alliances between U.S. governments and dictatorships in different parts of the world. In the Cold War era, when containment of communism meant more than any thing else, any developing country government willing to put itself at the service of Western powers, especially the United States, was considered to be a valued friend. If a government of a developing country was not willing to cooperate, the West would some times ‘cook’ a new government that would be amenable to its anti-communist crusade.
The anti-communist crusade was not just a matter of ideology. It was also about controlling the choicest resources of the world such as precious metals, oil and other strategic assets. Western governments, big trans-national corporations, including media corporations, and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have often worked in tandem to promote their own interests in the name of advancing freedom, democracy, civilisation, development, etc. Look every where and you will see the subtle and unholy alliance among the three. Let’s consider a few examples to illustrate this point and view Ethiopia’s ordeal in a broader context.
Demonise or Praise
When in 1953 the U.S. government overthrew the popular and democratically elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, it did it because it could not bear the prospect of Arbenz’s pro-poor land policies derail the economic interests of an American giant in Central America, United Fruit Company. And in a ground-breaking move in U.S. foreign policy, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) manufactured ‘social unrest’ in 1951, in collaboration with the British, to get rid of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosadeq, who had dared nationalise a British oil company. Oil-rich Iran was then made safer in the hands of the pro-West Mohammed Reza Shah.
Fast forward to the 1970s and you will find a familiar darling of the West in Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who was brought to the helm through the murder of the popular Salvador Allende in 1973. Read the story of military coups in our own Africa in the decades following independence and you will find the involvement of western governments and their intelligence agencies written all over the pages. Coups in Africa were so endemic that by 1975, nearly half of the states in the continent had military regimes. Depending on how the coups impacted on their ‘national’ interests, Western intelligence services – the CIA, the British SIS (MI6) and the French DGSE being the prominent ones – got involved in them either in helping power aspirants overthrow an incumbent government or in lending a hand to the incumbent to stay in power. The involvements were of course justified as either support to a ‘friendly’ and democratic government or as a response to the threat of dictatorship, communism and instability. But even in such relatively stable governments as Côte d’Ivoire, Botswana, Senegal, Ethiopia (under Hailesselassie I) and Kenya, which the west praised and funded for their pro-western stance, mass poverty and destitution reigned making the stability too eerie to be genuine. Western covert involvement is not necessarily the only cause of coups, but it has always been there to either catalyse or prevent them. And less frequent they may have become, coups are still with us. Western darlings like Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire might have gone, but new darlings are being moulded.
The timeless tactic has often been to stigmatize and demonise a leader or government not friendly to the west as a dictator and communist in league with such enemies as the former Warsaw Pact. Panama’s President Omar Torrijos and Ecuador’s Jaime Roldòs were both pro-poor nationalists who wished well for their respective country. But they were targeted as friends of Communist China and the former Soviet Union as the United States believed that their policies were inimical to the interests of big business. Eventually, the Reagan Administration and the CIA did their homework and the two Latin America presidents were eliminated in mysterious plane accidents within a few months of each other in mid-1981.
In the immediate post-cold war era, international relations were dominated by euphoria, especially in the west, leading some scholars such as Francis Fukuyama to claim the defeat of communism was an “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”, hence the end of history. In the wake of 11th September 2001, preoccupation with fighting terrorism is fast replacing the anti-communist crusade of the previous era, filling the ideological gap vacated by anti-communism with anti-terrorism. The world community shared the sadness caused by the destruction and loss of life of 9/11 and the need to deal with terrorism.
But the neo-conservative and market fundamentalist revolution that had picked up momentum with the collapse of the communist bloc grew more militaristic and unilateralist (with little or no respect to basic principles of international law and the role of the United Nations in global politics) after the 9/11 tragedy. And sadly, the only thing that matters for Western governments seems to be one’s position with regard to how they, especially the world’s only super power, conduct the war on terrorism. As succinctly put by President G. W. Bush put, “if you are not with us, you are against us”. You can be a tyrant and get a pat on the back so long as you stand with America, even if you are a terrorist yourself. You can commit crimes against humanity and accuse your victims of the same crimes, so long as you are an ally of the Bush Administration, as is the Meles tyranny, in the war against terrorism.
Against all the facts, the Clinton Administration hailed Meles, Eritrea’s Isayas, Rwanda’s Kagame, and Uganda’s Museveni as a new breed of African leaders destined to bring democracy to Africa. But these are individuals who have been good at talking about democracy rather than at helping build it. Would it not have been better if Africans had been the ones to pass judgement on the performance of their leaders? We know how governments and movements have adopted the slogans of democracy, socialism, liberation, human rights, and freedom and used them as cover for political schemes far from implied by those slogans. From our own experiences, we Ethiopians learnt the hard way how socialism grafted onto military ethos and patriarchal political culture led to an over-centralised and repressive state under the Dergue. We also know how socialism of the Stalinist variety grafted onto a secretive guerrilla movement turned the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – and its creation of the EPRDF – into a ruthless killing machine.
Democracy, Hypocrisy
The insincerity of preaching democracy and freedom, on the one hand, and of practicing inhumane foreign policies, on the other, is stifling the developing world. As John Dunn once put it, “Democratic theory is the public cant of the modern world; and cant is the verbal medium of hypocrisy; and hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue. All states today profess to be democracies because a democracy is what it is virtuous for a state to be” (Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, 1979). And such hypocrisy is observable not only in such tyrannies as Meles’ regime, but also in such states as the U.S. and Britain widely accepted as democracies.
Strange and trivial as the thought may seem, some times one cannot but wonder if the noble and republican principles of democracy and freedom are being used as a cover for a sinister imperial crusade. But how dare we ask such questions while we all aspire to the dream world of the west? Young and old dream of partaking in the fruits of the ‘heaven on earth’ that is the west. Once our dreams in our own countries have turned to nightmares, for one reason or another, we incessantly strive to become part of the American dream or of the European welfare paradise. This is not a moral diatribe against anyone, but look at the desperate efforts to get to the West and the regularity with which many African and Mexican lives are lost in the Atlantic Sea or at the U.S. – Mexican border (not to mention those lost in the Red Sea) and you will see my point. Those who have made it or have been forced to flee to the west know that the paradise is only one side of the coin. But still they seem too mesmerised by the undeniable achievements of the West that they find it difficult to contemplate that the democracy and respect they witness in their ‘second home’ is being denied their ‘first home’. May be it is a catch 22 situation. Be that as it may, the idea of using the rhetoric of democracy as a cover for sinister foreign policy objectives is one worth examining further.
Six years ago, an unprecedented piece of diplomatic history was made in Addis Ababa when eighteen foreign Embassies (most of them western) accredited to Ethiopia unashamedly issued a joint declaration in support of the 2000 rigged election results that made the EPRDF regime the victor. Such a declaration in support of a regime that in the first place did not allow its true opponents to take part in the elections was a clear statement of intent that the governments of those western Embassies were determined to stand with Meles’ dictatorship no matter the democratic aspirations of the people of Ethiopia. In other words, the declaration was a statement that the EPRDF served their ‘national’ interests best and that they cared less about the plight of ordinary Ethiopians.
Last month that piece of diplomatic history in Addis was taken a step farther in Belarus when some representatives of NGOs and diplomats from some Western governments, including those from Britain were spotted among anti-regime protesters in the wake of the 19th March 2006 elections there. The observer group from the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) had said the election was not free and fair as President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime had intimidated voters, rigged votes and subsequently used violence and imprisonment against pro-democracy demonstrators. Lukashenko had already been a marked man as his regime was regarded as ‘the last dictatorship in Europe’.
The European Union (EU) and the U.S.A. moved quickly to capitalise on the situation – in reaction to the violation of the right to free speech and assembly, of course! They responded by announcing that they would impose sanctions, including a travel ban and financial restrictions. A few weeks later, EU Foreign Ministers agreed on a travel ban on Mr. Lukashenko and thirty of his top officials. The West wants Belarus (and Ukraine) to have a pro-west leadership that can bring the country closer to Europe and away from Russia. Western strategic thinking is anathema to a Belarus that is a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe, or worse, an ally of Russia.
Surely, many of us who have been following Western reluctance to react meaningfully to the massive human rights violations and cold-blooded killings in Ethiopia wondered as to what the people of Ethiopia had done to deserve such a treatment. Not that we are unhappy about Western support to Belarusian pro-democracy protesters! It was, however, nauseating to see the contrasting western reactions to the stolen elections in Ethiopia and Belarus. Can one imagine how the West would have reacted if Lukashenko had committed in his country the crimes Meles had committed in Ethiopia? The big powers might have sent their troops into Belarus. That part of Europe (Euro-Asia) has produced several other revealing instances of western behaviour on the conundrum of democracy versus ‘national’ interests. Just like Meles, Uzbekistan’s tyrant Islom Karimov has gotten away with mass murder, at least for now, thanks to his alliance with the West on the war against terror, while the Pro-west leaders of Georgia and Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili in 2004 and Viktor A. Yushchenko in 2005, respectively, were helped to state power.
There is no one standard of democracy for some countries and another one for others. But one has to see the reality of ‘national’ interest promotion through the smoke screen of the rhetoric about democracy and fundamental rights. It is remarkable how consistently deceptive Western foreign policy has been over several decades. U.S. Secretary of State Rice said as much regarding U.S. policy towards the Middle East in a speech in Cairo in June 2005. “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people (emphasis added)’’, she said. The admission that her country had pursued ‘stability at the expense of democracy’ was breath-taking. But did she really mean it? And is the U.S. really ‘taking a different course’ now? As Rice was making those remarks at the American University in Cairo, her head of mission in Addis was working hard to save a trusted tyrant who only weeks earlier had massacred innocent Ethiopians in broad day light.
The U.S. has since notched up a level and is now involved in sabotaging the votes and hopes of Ethiopians who had overwhelmingly voted the tyrant out of office. Eight months on, Secretary Rice’s Deputy Assistant for Africa, Mr. Donald Yamamoto, continued to stick his neck out and defend Meles’ heinous human rights violations at the House Subcommittee on Africa hearing on ‘Ethiopia’s Troubled Internal Situation’ of 28th March 2006. Yamamoto had the audacity to tell the hearing, contrary to election observers’ findings that the May elections were credible and that they reflected ‘competitive conditions’. He either forgot or chose to gloss over the fact that the ‘competitive conditions’ were rendered meaningless as Meles abrogated the results with a state of emergency and declared his party and himself the winners. Yamamoto, who said that the Bush Administration believed in ‘the primacy of democracy’, gave the impression that Meles’ crimes were insignificant. Characteristically, he then noted America’s role ‘as a partner and friend’, to help the tyrant ‘choose the right path’ ‘through diplomatic persuasion’. He could not get tougher than that against a trusted ally, could he?
The west no doubt regards Meles as a strategic ally. If the rumours are true, the U.S. has secret facilities in Eastern Ethiopia where suspected terrorists are flown in through so-called extraordinary renditions and tortured and incarcerated. Add to this the undying interest in the waters of the Nile and the apparent discovery of oil as well as the availability of such strategic minerals as gold and platinum, and you will see why the west chooses to stick to the tyrant. A weak and fractured (but ‘stable’) Ethiopia under the brutal suppression of Meles perfectly serves the strategic and economic calculations of Europe and America, as well as those regional actors who have long had imperial aspirations on Ethiopia and the Nile. For all these reasons the west wants Meles to stay even if Ethiopians want him to go, although China’s increasing influence in Ethiopia (and the lucrative construction, exploration projects in which it is involved) could be a complicating factor.
It is not just the U.S. and the other big powers in the west who are engaged in playing chess with the fate and future of other peoples. Let me add another curious but not atypical reaction to the post-May crisis in Ethiopia by a small western country. The General Director of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) was about to travel to Ethiopia on 1st November 2005 to sign a new cooperation agreement, including budget support with the Meles dictatorship, in spite of ongoing human rights violations and the 8th June killings in Ethiopia. But the planned trip was cancelled as the Devil and his disciples had other ideas and committed another mass killing on that same day of 1st November. As recently as February 2006, an official from SIDA told a meeting on Ethiopia, in a manner reminiscent of President R. Reagan’s constructive engagement on apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, that his government preferred engaging Meles constructively to isolating him. This was despite the Swedish government’s reluctant decision to temporarily withhold aid to Meles and despite the incessant call from the Ethiopian Community in Sweden and Swedish friends of Ethiopia to isolate the Meles regime and cut all assistance, except emergency aid, to it.
The SIDA official had no answer as to why Sweden was active in isolating President R. Mugabe and engaging Meles if it was committed to promoting democracy in both Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. But he was only echoing his boss. Acting Foreign Minister Carin Jämtin, recently said she preferred ‘dialogue and contact’ with Meles’ regime (Omvärlden, April 2006). And this was coming from a government whose development cooperation policy is replete with such principles as good governance and respect for human rights and which says that bilateral assistance is conditional on these principles. This hypocrisy can, of course, be observed virtually across the board among donor governments.
Attacking Ethiopian Patriotism
If the west rejected dictatorship in Ethiopia as a matter of moral and political principle, it would hate and drop Meles as it hated and dropped Mengistu. If the west abhorred Mengistu’s repression it would also find Meles’ tyranny repugnant. It apparently hates the one and loves the other, because what matters most is whether or not one is subservient to western interests. The rhetoric about dictatorship and democracy regarding Mengistu and Meles has had little or no relevance, unless one confuses the theory of democracy and fundamental rights with the dubious implementation of the. Mengistu and Meles may both be dictators but they are markedly different in how they approach the west. The west hated and demonised Mengistu due to his foreign policy shift towards the then socialist bloc (to which the US contributed by refusing delivery of arms Ethiopia hade already paid for at the critical time of the 1977 Somali invasion) rather than to his repressive rule over his own people. By contrast, it is praising and rewarding Meles for his friendship with and subservience to it.
To demonise and stereotype some one, it seems it hardly matters whether one is a an elected democrat or a trigger happy dictator so long as one is perceived as inimical to the west. Today, a stereotype that is often used to demonise the Ethiopian opposition which western governments perceive to be patriotic and, hence, untrustworthy and inimical, is to associate them with the Amhara. It does not take a genius to smell a collusion between Meles and certain western governments in the current exclusive ‘dialogue’ with opposition party members that are either under coercion or have sold their soul for money in a futile effort to isolate and neutralise opposition figures that are perceived by the mass of Ethiopians to be true patriots.
People like Meles Zenawi make their bread and butter upon such stereotypes and make themselves a pawn in the hands of forces that do not wish Ethiopia well. Stigmatising the CUDP (Kinjit) as an organisation of the Amhara, who have repeatedly been stereotyped as colonizers is an ongoing spectacle we are witnessing. The implication is that the Amhara neither deserve to get organised nor are fit to govern even when accepting of democracy and the rule of law – dividè et impera at its pick! Not surprisingly, the U.S. mission in Addis is serving as the propaganda and political arm of the Meles regime in the conspiracy to create a satellite group bearing the popular name of CUDP.
This stereotyping denies the fact that the CUDP is a staunchly multi-national organisation that has chosen a peaceful means of struggle. More importantly, it is an affront to the pride and patriotism of Ethiopians other than the Amhara. This is because the stereotype is founded on the long-standing misperception or deliberate distortion that Amhara nationalism was the main force behind the Victory of Adwa in 1896. But Adwa belongs to no single group of Ethiopians, although the Amhara (whose detractors regard as a class and a people at one and the same time) had contributed their share. The Victory of Adwa, which Western governments regard as a humiliation, was achieved through the ultimate sacrifices of Ethiopia’s sons and daughters of all groups and faiths. Adwa is the major ingredient in the making of modern Ethiopia and Ethiopian nationalism (that transcends ethnic, religious or regional boundaries).
Our African brethren abhorred colonialism as much as we did and fought it heroically in many parts of the continent, but the colonisers’ superiority in modern arms was simply too overwhelming. What made Adwa a rarity was a combination of leadership, intelligent use of national resources in acquiring some modern weapons and the collective indignation at and response of Ethiopians to the violation of their independence. Unfortunately for Ethiopia, the resentment in some quarters against the Victory of Adwa is, on the one hand, a racist grudge against a black people and, on the other, the price of preserving our independence.
So long as you show signs of patriotism and of love and concern for Ethiopia, you are shunned and branded as Amhara as a way of attacking the patriotism in you, even if you are Oromo, Gurage, Sidama, Kembata, etc.! For those who have this twisted view, Meles is a God-send as his soul is filled with hatred for everything Ethiopian. No wonder therefore that his crimes are ignored, his deception praised and his rigged elections hailed as a step in the right direction. How else can one explain the West’s mind boggling determination to see Meles and his clique continue in power, in spite of the horrendous crimes they committed and continue to commit against the entire nation of Ethiopia? How else can one explain the fact that some western governments, spearheaded by the United States, are working hand and gloves with Meles in the name of dialogue and negotiations to kill the CUDP as an independent organisation? And how else can one turn a blind eye to Meles’ blood drenched hands and expend so much energy on condemning Belarus’ dictator Lukashenko, who has yet to match Meles’ ruthlessness, although the peoples under both tyrants deserve to get the democracy they crave and fight for?
Working with Meles against the CUDP is not the first time the West is conniving against Ethiopian patriotism. At the 1991 London talks, where the U.S. and British governments gave their blessing to the EPLF, OLF and EPRDF to seize power, Meison and EPRP (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party) were carefully excluded from the talks. Those two organisations might have been deemed too risky to include due partly to their Marxist-Leninist past, although such a consideration did not prevent the west from not only facilitating Stalinist EPRDF’s assumption of power but also of the consolidation of it. More importantly, it is apparent that the perceived Ethiopian nationalism of Meison and the EPRP was the fundamental reason for their exclusion. Just like the jailed CUDP leadership the EPRP and Meison leaderships were perceived as patriots who would turn out to be unwilling to bend to the will and interests of the west.
Both the London talks and the concerted efforts of Meles and the U.S. government to categorise the CUDP membership, especially the leadership, into hardliners and moderates are a mark of the triumph of narrow interests over democratic principles. Look back at our history and you will find countless other examples: British facilitation of Italian control of Red Sea ports through the1884 Hewitt Treaty; Western acquiescence with Italy’s colonial war against Ethiopia in 1935, including negligence and/ or violation of the sanctions imposed against fascist Italy by the League of Nations; the inaction against fascist Italy’s gassing of our people in violation of the 1925 Geneva convention forbidding the use of mustard gas; and the refusal to deliver arms for which we had paid during the 1977 Somali invasion are but a few examples.
The West has invested a lot in Meles (and Isayas Afewerki) since his days as a guerrilla leader. His (and Isayas’) seizure of state power was assisted in several ways, including diplomatic, political and intelligence backing. Both governments and so called non-governmental ‘charity’ organisations had contributed their share. Some of the NGOs active in the cross-border ‘humanitarian’ operations from Sudan in the 1980s boasted how victory was achieved ‘without troops and tanks’ (M.Duffield & J. Prendergast, 1994). Those operations, spearheaded by western ‘humanitarian’ organisations, and later used as a convenient channel of Western governments’ assistance to Meles (and Isayas), were instrumental in procuring much needed financial resources and provisions, as well as political solidarity to the EPRDF (and the EPLF). Those forces, many of them religious charities, strongly believe that Meles has given them the opportunity to try and break what they see as the dominance of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which they see as a deadly rival, and hence have reason enough to tolerate him regardless of his atrocities. They resented Mengistu for favouring “the indigenous religions of Islam and Orthodox Christianity” at the expense of what he termed as new-comers (mettie haymanotoch) such as the Pentecostal Church. Regardless of the merits and demerits of Mengistu’s policy, there is no question there are forces who believe Meles’ continued tyranny is their revenge and reward, considering his attitude towards the Orthodox Church and their new found freedom to roam Ethiopia.
It is, however, important to point out that there is a significant difference in the approach of the western public, on the one hand, and governments and big business, on the other. Although there seems to be a tendency for the public to readily trust and take at face value the policy pronouncements and explanations of their governments due to little knowledge about or interest in what usually goes on in the outside world, there is also genuine concern for the plight of people in other parts of the world. There are social forces such as civil society, institutions and sympathetic individuals that are willing to listen to calls for justice and even opt for active involvement on the side of victims of tyrannies.
There are always those who can see through the intrigues of their own governments and who can also feel the sense of injustice experienced by the victims of the concerted/ unilateral actions of western governments. Look at people like Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960), Anna Maria Gomes, Addis Ferenj, Congressman Chris Smith and so many other nameless individuals and groups that are too warm-hearted to ignore gross violations of basic rights and who are principled enough to stand by those who demand justice. It is such people that keep the hope of keeping the universality of democracy and respect for fundamental rights alive even when their own governments blatantly set aside those principles and side with mass killers like Meles Zenawi.
Conclusion
What conclusions and lessons can one draw from the foregoing discussion?
Firstly, democracy, freedom and respect for human rights are the wrap in which western foreign policy goals are delivered. If and when democracy and ‘national’ interests coincide, well and fine – the accompanying public relations exercise about democracy would look convincing. When and if the two do not coincide, ‘national’ interests override democratic principles. The experiences of several countries and those of our own encounters with the West under different regimes confirm that. No matter your political colour, if you are detrimental to western interests you are marked. Where one stands vis-à-vis western interests is what determines whether one is demonised as an enemy or praised as a friend.
In other words, there is no double standard in the sense that democratic principles are upheld in some cases and trounced in others, except where the comparison is between how democracy is practiced in western societies and flouted by the west and its allies in developing countries. There is only one standard, one guiding light, which always pays lip-service to democratic principles and fundamental rights but subordinates them to narrow ‘national’ interests – be it oil, strategic-cum-security considerations or sheer corporate greed. One practices double standard when one applies a moral code or principle more strictly to one instance than to another. But hidden in what appears to be a double standard in the foreign policy behaviour of western governments, especially in that of the United States, is consistency in the form of insincerity or hypocrisy. The substantive common thread that runs through modern western foreign policies is ‘national’ interests, not democratic principles. What is wrong with promoting one’s national interests, one may wonder. It certainly is not strange that a government tries to promote its ‘national’ interests through the instrumentality of foreign policy, all governments do that. What is interesting to point out here is how ‘national’ interest is promoted by big powers in the garb of democracy and human rights to the detriment of the promotion of those principles in the developing world.
Secondly, when push comes to shove and tyrannies begin to collapse, western governments resort to evacuating their nationals from societies imploding in their face. Black hawks, giant Hercules planes, modern naval ships take turns in a hasty evacuation effort. No distinction is made between western nationals during such crises times. Rwanda, Iraq, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Balkans, etc. are living witnesses to this hypocrisy. Today in Ethiopia, frequent rehearsals are being made in the form of travel advisories and warden messages issued by Western foreign ministries and diplomatic missions in Addis Ababa. God forbid, if the worst comes, Ethiopians will be left to their own devices. This is sad because first they preach to us the Gospel of democracy which they do not practice, save on their own soil, then their zealous teachings evaporate into thin air when disaster strikes!
Thirdly, we have to learn to primarily rely on our own resources and look to our history for inspiration. The Victory of Adwa was achieved because of the skilful use of our own resources (intelligent leadership, popular participation, unity, etc.) and fascist Italy was defeated in spite of mockery and machinations from Western governments. Autarky may be awkward in an age of globalisation, but there is much we can do if we can listen to one another. It is high time that we see the bigger picture. It is high time that we stop bickering over petty differences, join hands to liberate our people and launch our country on the long path of democracy, peace and prosperity. That is easier said than done, but there is no other choice. If we stand together and deny our enemies the opportunity to exploit our differences for their own evil designs, the next step will be that much easier to take. And that next step should be the democratisation and institutionalisation of our socio-economic and political relations and rebuilding our unity Meles is trying so hard to destroy.
Last but not least, we have to distinguish between western rhetoric about democracy and our own desire for genuine democracy. Failure to do so can only aggravate and complicate our problems. Our guiding principle must be the democratic aspirations of our people and their thirst for peace, justice and development. It is time that we saw the rhetoric of western governments for what it is – hypocrisy! The west’s image as a beacon of freedom and democracy is at stake in Ethiopia. One wishes they could see that a democratic Ethiopia was a far more solid ground against terrorism in the Horn of Africa than a regime standing on feet of clay. Terrorism is evil and it must be fought, but not through an alliance with tyrants and, certainly, not at the expense of democratic principles and innocent lives. Ethiopia and its future cannot be entrusted to Meles and his clique. To Ethiopians, Meles Zenawi in power is like the fox guarding the hen house. But to the West, Meles is the single most important instrument they have to smother Ethiopian patriotism, the unspoken enemy the two have in common. Both regard Ethiopian patriotism as the thorn in the flesh of their designs to control and exploit Ethiopia.
Sewbageru Holechissa may be reached for comments at [email protected]
