“Any action outside of this commitment and agreement is totally unacceptable to Ethiopia under any circumstances. They have to live up to their commitments and agreements,” he declared.

Though the officials are saying that the donor community was ill informed about the situation in Ethiopia, they have repeatedly made it clear to the government that good governance, democracy and respect for human rights are essential prerequisites for keeping their financial support. Their decision was not based on groundless rumours about extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, mass arrests, illegal detentions, torture, inhuman and degrading treatments of citizens. Their decision is based on incontrovertible evidence of crimes against humanity.

The international community have diplomats and agents that follow up every twist and turn in the country. In its latest resolution on Ethiopia, the European Parliament not only condemned the gross human rights violations and atrocities being committed against the people, but also called for an international inquiry commission under the auspices of the UN to investigate human rights abuses and bring to justice those responsible for the crimes.

It seems nonsensical to blame donors for refusing to support a government that has an absolute disregard to its own constitution, basic international conventions and principles. If there is a party, which should take the blame for committing great blunders that are severely affecting the nation, it is the elite that calls itself a government as it has failed to behave in a responsible and civilized manner.

The Ethiopian economy is one of the weakest in the world, which are called aid economies. Last year the government secured over 18 billion birr in aid and loans. For nearly fifteen years, the government has successfully convinced Western donors to inject nearly $1.8 billion annually with great promises of political and economic liberalization. Up to 40 per cent of the national budget, currently around $3.5 billion but far less than the annual revenue of Nike Inc., comes from external loans and grants. Due to heavy dependence on foreign aid, compounded by high level of corruption, the economy is obviously vulnerable.

The withdrawal of $375 million (nearly 3 billion birr) in direct budgetary support, which accounts to over 10 per cent of the current national budget, punctures a big hole. At a time where the budget deficit is increasing dramatically as a result of government spending that exceeds revenue by leaps and bounds, the reduction of alms has far-reaching consequences. For example, according to the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association, in the last fiscal year Ethiopia exported nearly 160 thousand tones of coffee and earned $334.5 million. One can easily imagine the implications of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in donation, which exceeds the hard currency that the nation can earn after sweating hard for a whole year to sell its coffee in the world market.

In an article senior IMF economic analysts, David Andrews et al, published in the September 2005 issue of Finance and Development, in spite of the scaling up of aid money, they concluded that on current trends Ethiopia would not meet any of its UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) except school enrolment targets. They underlined that an economic policy, which hinges largely on a dramatic increase in the inflow of foreign aid, would inevitably face great challenges. “Our findings suggest that Ethiopia faces enormous challenges in boosting growth and meeting the MDGs, even with far higher levels of aid—in part because of the need to ensure that this aid is absorbed and used effectively.”

In a complete reversal of fortune, the aid economy is now under threat. The scaling up of foreign aid seems to be scaling down significantly due to a breakdown of trust between the ruling party and Western donors. The World Bank, the EU including the UK, international NGOs and other ‘partners’ are now reluctant to give a blank check to a government that is terrorizing a poor nation. The move is likely to seriously crack the already fragile aid economy. Of the total 30.4 billion birr budget for this fiscal year, the treasury expects to raise 13.7 billion birr through grants, loans and debt cancellations. Under the current trend, it is highly unlikely for the government to meet its aid generation target. The World Bank is even seriously considering its debt cancellation promises to Ethiopia, as the government’s credibility has been seriously dented due to its repressions and gross human rights violations.

Unfortunately, aid is the only leverage that the West can exert to press unwise African tyrants to respect human dignity. The reckless ruling elite needs to come to its senses and move in the right direction that calls for political good will and vision. Instead of aggravating the crisis by accusing every government critic as “genocidal and treasonous” and resorting to terrorist tactics against the poor people, Mr. Meles should work hard to bring about national reconciliation which seems the only way out of the political and economic quagmire.

It seems high time that Meles Zenawi stopped pretending to be unfazed by the serious financial matters. It is not a defeat but a wiser move to resolve the post-election political crisis through peaceful dialogues rather than resorting to appalling atrocities and mass arrests, which David Blaire of the Daily Telegraph compared to “Apartheid-era South Africa’s onslaught against black townships in the 1980s.” The PM will be well advised if he follows the path of post-Apartheid South Africa instead of emulating the tactics the Afrikaner National Party that invented and enforced the “Grand Apartheid” scheme. The unconditional release of Ethiopian Mandellas can be a good beginning for real national reconciliation.