By Shepard Daniel with Anuradha Mitta:

In the midst of a severe food and economic crisis, the “land grabbing” trend has grown as an international phenomenon.

The term land grab refers to the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors from mostly poor, developing countries in order to produce crops for export. Approximately 180 instances of such land transactions have been reported since mid-2008, as nations attempt to extend their control over food-producing lands and investors attempt to turn a profit in biofuels and soft commodities markets.The International Food Policy Research Institute (IF PRI) has reported that foreign investors sought or secured between 37 million and 49 million acres of farmland in the developing world between 2006 and the middle of 2009.3 Land grabs have not gone unnoticed—they have elicited widespread media coverage and concern from civil society, researchers, and environmentalists, who fear that private land investments will increase monoculture-based, exportoriented agriculture, arguably jeopardizing international food security. United Nations agencies and governments have raised concern as well. The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO ), Jacques Diouf, expressed apprehension over the potential effects of swift land deals on political stability in “host” countries,4 while European Union officials have stated that some land deals are exploiting poor nations.5 In response, several research institutions and international governance agencies have proposed ways to make the land grab phenomenon a win-win situation, in which food-insecure nations will increase their access to food resources while benefiting “host” nations through investments in the form of improved agricultural infrastructure and increased employment opportunities. These diverse responses to the issue are creating an important and timely debate on the implications of land grabbing for poor populations, the role of increased investment in agriculture for improving global food security, and the best way forward in light of the food and financial crises.

Click here to read the article in PDF

To read VOA’s report on land grab in Ethiopia, clcik here.

Bob Geldof upped the ante in the row between Band Aid and the BBC yesterday by demanding the sacking of BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks.  Many say his  move appears more of a tyrant than a dead aid campaigner.

The former musician-who turned himself to become the so called “Dead Aid Campaigner” also called for two other BBC journalists to be fired after various BBC news outlets claimed that 95pc of the €75m aid donated, by Live Aid and others, to fight famine in northern Ethiopia in 1985 was diverted to be spent on weapons. For millions of Ethiopians, Bob Geldof’s recent behavior appears  very similar to the tyrants who are currently ruling Ethiopia.

Mr Geldof also  claimed there had been a “total collapse of standards and systems at the World Service which has a special and particular duty of care to the truth”. To many Africans,  Mr Geldof  appears to a be a person who is unable to visualize and understand  the “total collapse of standards”  in the dead aid  systems which he has been advocating.

Mr Geldof and his Dead - Band Aid Trust is preparing an official complaint to the British broadcasting regulator  about the BBC story.

Last night, the Live Aid organiser and Geldof called for the sacking of Mr Horrocks, Andrew Whitehead, the World Service news and current affairs editor, and Martin Plaut, the originator of the story, which he claimed was “discredited and sexed up”.

Mr Geldof is also unable to understand that millions of people have been dying of starvation and genocide within Ethiopia with the support that he and the Live Aid organisers provided to the tyrants currently ruling over 80 million people.

Geldof  failed  to ask for an immediate investigation into what the tribal rebels have done with the aid money.

Part II, Separating facts from fiction:

By Neamin Zeleke:

“A man should keep learning as long as he is ignorant, as long as he lives” Seneca

 “The whole glory of virtue lies in activity”   Cicero

In his latest article, written as a response to my response, Mr. Tibebe continues his exercise of recycling and rehashing fabrications and allegations to prove his points which cannot be proved otherwise. He starts by asserting: “…Though Mr. Neamin’s article “EPLF and the ‘89 coup: Setting the record straight” is written eloquently, it is short in substance, misleading and intellectually dishonest…” Throughout out the article, Mr. Tibebe does not give concrete evidence to refute my arguments, where I was “misleading” and where I was “intellectually dishonest”. Instead he engages in desperate attempt of cover up his previous blunders by repeating more of the same. Full of allegations and assertions without adducing factual and material backing. Parading the names of Majors and Generals—none of whom had ever corroborated his ludicrous claims—is not going to cut it either. But he chose to continue on a slippery slope just to win an unwinnable argument. Therefore, I say Mr. Tibebe is the one who should be looking himself in the mirror and reexamine his assertions that I am engaged in “intellectual dishonesty”.

Seneca: “A man should keep learning as long as he is ignorant, as long as he lives”

In his latest article, written as a response to my response, Mr. Tibebe continues his exercise of recycling and rehashing fabrications and allegations to prove his points which cannot be proved otherwise. He starts by asserting: “…Though Mr. Neamin’s article “EPLF and the ‘89 coup: Setting the record straight” is written eloquently, it is short in substance, misleading and intellectually dishonest…” Throughout out the article, Mr. Tibebe does not give concrete evidence to refute my arguments, where I was “misleading” and where I was “intellectually dishonest”. Instead he engages in desperate attempt of cover up his previous blunders by repeating more of the same. Full of allegations and assertions without adducing factual and material backing. Parading the names of Majors and Generals—none of whom had ever corroborated his ludicrous claims—is not going to cut it either. But he chose to continue on a slippery slope just to win an unwinnable argument. Therefore, I say Mr. Tibebe is the one who should be looking himself in the mirror and reexamine his assertions that I am engaged in “intellectual dishonesty”.

Before I lay out to the reader with established facts how Mr. Tibebe is using fiction to support his point, let me identify the theory he is trying to prove. Mr. Tibebe’s main theory is that EPLF is a “treacherous” entity and accepting Eritrea’s help in fighting against TPLF is a bad idea. I do not wish to debate this point mainly because I choose to debate this point only with those who have actively engaged in the struggle and have accepted armed struggle as a necessary means of freeing our people. The issue whether or not to accept military aid and sanctuary from Eritrea is a question of process and options for those committed to free Ethiopia from the chokehold of TPLF’s minority and fascistic dictatorship.

Mr. Tibebe, while having many alternatives to make his point, however, chose to use fabricated facts to establish the nature of the EPLF. He boldly asserted that EPLF orchestrated the May 89 coup and directly or indirectly ordered the removal of 400 troops from Asmara to allow marching to Asmara. It is on this point that I utterly disagreed with Mr. Tibebe. It is this assertion that offended me so much that I chose to set the record straight with the credible information available.

• Let me restate the core argument for which I responded by refuting his claim as regard to the direct involvement of EPLF in the coup of 1989. In fact, as the writer claimed the EPLF was leading or “orchestrated” the coup of 1989. Save for EPLF’s agreement to accept a ceasefire offer made by the leaders of the coup, this is patently false statement; I maintain my core point of refutation to Mr. Tibebe’s claim. It is only a fabrication made by those who have political points to score and recycled by the writer and his likes. Of course, Mr. Tibebe’s claims are made in order to prove a political position by distorting and twisting hisorical facts and records in the service of a political agenda. The agenda being that of “teaching” and “enlightening” us about the EPLF and its past deeds as lessons to be learned from and relevant for the current political configurations.

• Although he makes desperate efforts to prove his points with all sorts of gymnastics and mincing of words, his assertions as regard to who led and orchestrated the coup of 1989 , I still maintain they cannot be corroborated by General Kumlachew’s handwritten notes that Mr. Tibebe claims to have, or in the books written by Maj. Seleshi, Maj Dawit, and even with a dose of help from Col Mengistu ‘s 11 tapes that he quotes. If one looks at the Dictators’ self serving statements found in his tapes and that of Genet Ayle’s book entield “YeColonel Mengistu Tizitawotch”, the former president has no qualms to present himself as the blameless saint and that he has nothing to do with the woes and wrongs in Ethiopia during his reign. While all others Ethiopians who worked under him including Maj. Dawit and the leaders of 1989 attempted coup were the culprits for the demise of the Ethiopian armed forces and the ascent to state power of both EPLF and TPLF in Asmara and Addis respectively.

• General Wubetu Tsegay’s name is mentioned in Mr. Tibebe’s latest article. General Wubetu was the commander of the 2nd Revolutionary Army in Eritrea for several months before General Demissie took over. He is a person who spent more than 13 years in Eritrea, starting as a brigade commander, and then reaching the height as the commander the 2nd Revo. Army’s in Eritrea would not possibly corroborate Mr. Tibebe’s claims. As the military adviser to the former President Mengistu and in charge of the National Service program, Gen Wubetu was among more than 400 high ranking and line officers who were victims of imprisonment for two years in the aftermath of the coup. I know for sure that he would not be party to corroborate Mr. Tibeb’s ridicules claims.

• I assert this in confidence because I happen to speak with the General about many historical issues pertaining to the era almost on a regular basis. I bring his name to the fore because his name was mentioned by the writer himself. With regard to Gen Kumlachew, we also happen to have in our hands several hours of tape records about the circumstances of the coup and how it came about and why it failed. My relationship with him was neither that of a business or a professional one. We had a very close friendship for several years that spanned from 1998 until he passed away in 2004. This is just for the record and to give an idea of how much time I spent time with the late Maj. General Kumlachew Dejene. Even towards the final weeks of his life, I was the one who flew with him to Boston when he went there for medial treatment. I flew back to Boston to bring him back to Virginia where he resided until he passed away. Again, I am stating these facts because they are relevant to establish the basis for many factual assertions. Nowhere did the late General Kumlachew make statements near to the claims made by Mr. Tibebe so flatly and misleadingly. Indeed, the late general never said, or wrote, or gave a tape recorded testimonial that he had ever had a communication with the EPLF let alone being sent by Mr. Issayas Afeworki to Addis along with the 400 “elite military” as falsely presented by Mr. Tibebe. Yet, the writer has the temerity to accuse me of being presumptuous.

• Mr. Tibebe seems ever determined to gloss over his lack of knowledge of elementary military matters. Although he tries to appear logical and reasonable, his assertions are illogical and unfounded. He writes: “The country was pulling all its military personnel from everywhere, and I find it incredible that Mr. Neamin who wrote a review for this book attempt to convince us that taking 400 elite military forces from Asmara was insignificant.” Mr. Tibebe’s insistence that EPLF’s grand strategy was to have 400 troops withdrawn to Addis to allow it to march to Asmara is stupefying. Let’s be real, how on earth would the absence of 400 soldiers from Eritrea allow the EPLF to march to Asmara undeterred? Mr. Tibebe never cares to answer the fact that Ethiopia had close to a quarter of a million troops I Eritrea, as I argued in my previous response. These are battled tested troops in Eritrea back then, before the coup of 1989. Does the writer know that the more than 200,000 strong 2nd Revolutionary Army included several brigades and divisions of Special Forces, airborne commandos, mechanized brigades, and all sorts of battle tested elite units numbering in tens of thousands in Eritrea outnumbering the mere 400 at least by many many times or more? Not to mention the Naval Northern Command at Massawa and 2nrd Air Regiment in Asmara.

• Here is a hard fact for Mr. Tibebe. The entire air born division was withdrawn after the coup and transferred to Wollo. Still, the EPLF did not march into Asmara until after the government in Addis fell and the then commander of the army in Asmara, Gen. Hussain Ahmed abruptly abandoned his troops in 1991. The reader should keep in mind that EPLF was able to march to take Asmara in May of 1991 , two years after the coup of 1989. 

• In the interest of historical accuracy for which the writer seems not to care, the less than a battalion force numbering 400 under the command of Gen. Kumlachew was sent by Gen Demissie to help the coup leaders. Because the leaders of the coup in Addis did not have a fighting force in their hands to take control of the situation in Addis Ababa. They only planned and depended on using the Sparta special force on training by North Koreans at Toli military camp, hundreds of kilometers away from Addis. Only 150 soldiers made it to Addis from this force as opposed to the thousands available. The reason for the failure of the coup, in part, had to do with this fact. The force they intended to use did not make it to Addis, for whatever reason.

• That was why the leaders of the coup were surrounded by the palace force numbering less than a battalion and few Tanks under the direct command of Capt. Mengistu Gemechu, the former President’s special assistant. The palace force managed to put under its control the so-called “elite military” force of 400 so feared by the EPLF as to be a target of an orchestrated ploy to send it to Addis so that EPLF’s march to Asmara is cleared of from the fearsome millitary force. This is if we take Mr. Tibebe’s claim seriously. Tragic indeed that the “elite” force was deceived and quickly put under control by Palace force under Cap Mengistu Gemechu without putting up a fight.

• The coup failed, in part, also due to breakdown of the original plan to shoot Col Mengistu’s plane and, in part due to the subsequent breakdown of communication between Gen Kumlachew, the Sparta special force of more than 7000 under Gen Wubetu, Gen. Abera Abebe, the head of Defense Ministry’s Head of military operations and training. He was put in charge of leading the operations for the coup. But the late General Abera fled the premise after shooting Maj. General Habte Giorgis Habte Mariam, the Minister of Defense inside the building of Ministry of Defense instead of coordinating and deploying the forces under the command of Gen Kumlachew and Gen. Wubetu.

• Mr. Tibebe makes yet another claim without adducing evidence of direct and active role of the CIA in the coup either through Maj. Dawit or with one or more of the coup leaders. Mr. Tibebe writes: “the 1989, coup was initiated by the CIA, led by Major Dawit, orchestrated by Mr. Issayas, and conducted by General Fanta Belay and by others under him”. He continues “I have no doubt that you have read Major Dawit’s article written on June 29, 2009, because his response was prompted by your article. In his article titled “The Way Forward for Ethiopia and Eritrea” this is what he said regarding his role in the 1989 coup.

“After I left the Derg at the end of 1985, I became actively involved in the effort to overthrow the regime through the movement we had established, The Free Ethiopian Soldiers Movement. The first attempt was the failed coup of the generals. I and my colleagues did the external arrangement for the coup. During those times I went into the area controlled by the EPLF in Nakfa”. (Major Dawit Woldegiorgis).

• The foregoing quote by Mr. Tibebe taken out of Maj. Dawit’s article does not state or prove, contrary to the writer’s misleading quotations that Maj. Dawit, along with the CIA was behind the coup. The above quote, the article in its entirety, or the book written by author do not argue or give any indication that CIA had a direct or an indirect involvement. Maj. Dawt did not, anywhere, in the book tells the story of CIA’ involvement in the coup. Maj. Dawit did not say nor does any other person claim that the EPLF was the one that “orchestrated the coup” as the writer flatly asserts and misleadingly attempts to defend those assertions. What is intellectually dishonest is stacking quotations that have nothing to do with his utterly false thesis with regard to the details of how the coup came about, who led the coup and many others details of coup and its tragic conclusion.

• Despite the writer’s insinuation, Maj. Dawit did not hide anywhere in the book and articles he authored that he worked hard to topple Col Mengistu’s regime. His efforts to find an alternative by establishing contact with opposition forces including the EPLF are subjects he has dealt with profusely and openly in public. He and Major Seleshi even met with Ato Mersha Yossef, among The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front (EPRPs) leadership then, in their bid to find allies to their pursuit of an all inclusive peaceful solution for Ethiopia’s political crisis. I know the writer may not be privy to this and other facts that have not been made public.

• The author even brings the tape recorded messages of the former President to back up his patently false thesis full of fabrications. All those who have listened to Col. Mengistu’s tape would agree that it is nothing other than a condemnation and scapegoating of most of those under that system and all those against him as evil and unpatriotic. Of course, he would like us to believe and to think of him as the immaculate saint. Let it be known that Col Mengistu executed more than 40 of Ethiopia’s brightest and best generals while the number of generals killed or captured by EPLF and TPLF remains a negligible 5 during the course of seventeen years of war with EPLF, TPLF, the Somali invading forces, and conflict and war with other Ethiopian opposition groups such as EDU and EPRP combined. If there is anyone who should take the prime responsibility and a culprit for the demise of the Ethiopian Armed forces and the march of both liberation front’s to Asmara and Addis Ababa, it is none other than Col Mengistu and his political, economic, military policies, and including the meddling of his top cadres like Sergeant Legesse –the supreme commander of the Military in Tigray and prime culprit for the loss of Tigray to the TPLF– and other inept loyalist cadres of the former president in military matters at the expense of those with professional know how, expertise and experience. Indeed, these were the professional commanders whose top leadership, for the most part, constituted part of the leaders of the attempted coup of 1989.

• The Achilles hills of the Derg/PDRE regime when it comes to its military policies and handling of millitary problems and affairs are amply documented by many writers including in Dr. Gebru Tareke’s recent book, The Ethiopian Revolution. He has dealt with such issues as argued above and many other challenges faced by the Ethiopian military leaders. It provides a fairly objective account of the war in both Eritrea and Tigray. In fact, a serious understanding with regard to the origin and tragic conclusion of the attempted coup of 1989 can only be understood in the context of the politico-military and other problems in Derg/PDRE Ethiopia as well as the attendant strategic and tactical challenges the leaders of the 1989 coup encountered when prosecuting the war in the North.

• It cannot be comprehended with useless allegations and tabloid like fabricated accounts by certain writers–whose discredited account Mr. Tibebe chose to use –who bring external forces such as the CIA and EPLF etc as the main causes and leaders of the attempted coup 1989. This is not to suggest that the CIA did not want to topple the communist regime of Mengistu. Surely it was the Cold war era; the CIA would have a vested national interest to engage in such activities the pursuit of keeping at bay the spread of communism of which the Derg/PDRE regime was among many in the third world. Surely, there were such Ethiopian forces that were supported, in many ways, by the CIA. Commodore Tassew Desta’s book “Ye Tigil Tizita” gives a good account of the role of the CIA and opposition forces like EPDA that included the Late Mr. Dereje Deresa, Mr. Kifle Wodajo, and many others in a bid to overthrow the Derg. But, so far there are no concrete evidences that directly link the CIA with the coup leaders 1989, leave alone instructing them to do this and that. And for the EPLF even less so. As the author weaves them together as the masterminds and leaders of the coup. Pathetic indeed.

• Whatever claims are made by Col Mengistu against Maj. Dawit and many others, they should be taken with a chuck of salt instead of a grain of salt. It only proves the writer’s gullibility to take what the former president says to be the truth and the only truth in his attempt to score a point. Even then, as argued in my previous article, nowhere does the former president says the EPLF was the one that planned and orchestrated the coup of 1989. How one can be so audacious and full of himself to make such the same foolish statement in attempt to twist and distort history to prove a political point.

Mr. Tibebe writes: “Reading Major Getachew Yerom’s book would shed some light regarding the role of the CIA in this coup.”

What light would that be? Why not cite to any particular fact that establish his point. Where did Major Yerom assert that EPLF or the CIA orchestrating the coup? Simply stating a book “shed some light” does not allow you to make the leap and boldly assert that the CIA was involved. It was not a secret that the US wanted Mengistu removed, that it had dealings with TPLF and EPLF. But where is the evidence that the generals receiving orders from the EPLF or the CIA for that matter as Mr. Tibebe sadly asserts ? If one stretches this fact to its limit, one cannot draw a reasonable inference other than that the US would have supported the coup makers if they succeeded. Any other inference is a mere speculation.

Mr. Tibebe’s bold and offensive claim is encapsulated in this paragraph: “The facts are that Major Dawit had a primary role in recruiting generals like Fanta Belay; the facts are, Major Dawit had several meetings with Issaias; the facts are Issaias wanted chaos and bloodshed in Ethiopia; the facts are, the 1989, coup was initiated by the CIA, led by Major Dawit, orchestrated by Mr. Issaias, and conducted by General Fanta Belay and by others under him. I have no doubt that you have read Major Dawit’s article written on June 29, 2009, because his response was prompted by your article.”

The above paragraph shows Mr. Tibebe’s proclivity to draw conclusions based on mere speculation. The fact is Maj. Dawit and Gen. Fanta had limited communication. Other than that one cannot say who recruited who. There is also no evidence that Maj. Dawit recruited “generals like Fanta Belay.” Speculation. Maj. Dawit had dealing with EPLF. So what? A fact written about exensivly by Maj. Dawit himself. The coup leaders were motivated by bringing peaceful resolution to the war and to the extent peace requires the cooperation belligerent forces, it is not unusual that contacts would be made. It is significant that Maj. Dawit initiated the contacts and he went to EPLF to begin negotiations.

The assertion that EPLF directed the coup cannot be made with such flimsy speculations. This is a significant part of our history. This is the story of many brave men who sacrificed their lives. The coup plotters, particularly generals Merid, Demissie, Fanta, and Abera Abebe, have been plotting to get rid of Mengistu for several years. It is written by many that Mengistu shuffled these generals from various posts, including removing Gen. Fanta from his post as Air force commander; several times because he was concerned they were plotting to overthrow him. He himself has stated that the Russian intelligence came to him several years before the coup and informed him of the suspicion that these generals were plotting against him. The difference between our analyses of the historical fact is clear. Mr. Tibebe ignored the personalities and motivation of the individuals involved in the coup inside Ethiopia. He ignores several books and accounts of individuals who were involved in the coup. None of these people share his view. Mr. Tibebe, however, ignores these specific facts. Mr. Tibebe claimed that I was perhaps asleep during “part I” of his metaphorical movie that showed the role of Maj. Dawit and others in the US. I think the problem with Mr. Tibebe is that he was watching science fiction version.

As yet another example of Mr. Tibebe’s proclivity to jump to conclusions without factual basis, I would like to cite his description of my book review of Derege Demissie’s book, Abate Yachin Seat. Mr. Tibebe wrote, “The claim that the book is written with an enormous research and even from documents obtained from US State Department record through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is ridiculous and laughable. The book has one record found through FOIA which shows the denial of General Kumlachew Dejene’s asylum claim in American embassy in Addis Ababa.”

Well, Mr. Tibebe paid attention when reading the book; he would have learned that Derege did receive a lot of information through the Freedom of Information Act. He has referred to the source in describing how Mengistu’s plane returned to Addis, for example. The fact that the over one hundred pages of information he received was not attached to the book does not mean he did not receive several documents. Before he finds something laughable, I hope he digs a little deeper in the future. Additionally, the interviews Derege conducted of many participants in the coup and personal recollections of his conversation with his father, the late Gen. Demissie Bulto, are incredibly important facts.

I never made the claim that the notes of Gen. Demissie were from the coup days. Again, if you read the review I wrote properly, you will discover they were correctly identified as notes from two major military operations in the North. I merely point out these misrepresentations because they are symptomatic of your thinking and writing.

Finally, let me make it clear to the readership once again that I have neither the time nor the interest to debate Mr. Tibebe on whether or not the opposition should engage with the government of Eritrea. In deference to the readership let me also make it very clear too, as the writer did, that I do not know Mr. Tibebe Samuel Ferenji. It is true that we have met or seen each other a couple times several years, to be more exact, more than a decade or so ago. I understand that the author was politically active since he was 13 and as he claims an “independent thinker” too. Well and a good. The words I used to describe the writer such as “sudden appearance” and “zealous” in my first article is due to the fact that I have never seen Mr. Tibebe in person in any social or even political activities organized by various opposition groups in the past decade to expose and oppose the fascistic minority regime of Meles Zenawi. At least here in this part of the United States where I live. I bring this to clear any shadow that may linger in the readership that Mr. Tibebe and I may have problems of personal or political in nature.

In part, that is why I do not find it compelling to debate with him or any other critiques giving advice from their fountain of wisdom on how and with whom Ethiopian opposition groups should conduct their affairs and what kind of strategy they should follow etc etc. On the issue of engaging with the government of Eritrea a life and death mater for the writer where he zealously and repeatedly pontificates, I have already made myself very clear in the previous article as follows “ …Several Ethiopian groups have made the liberation of Ethiopia from the ethnocentric minority mafia groups in power their paramount objective. Indeed the liberation of Ethiopia from the Apartheid like anti-Ethiopia minority dictatorship that has imposed a quasi-internal colonialism with its political, economic, and military domination over the rest of the Ethiopian people has become the prime and overriding task of our times. Those groups will do that by any means necessary within the bounds of international law and democratic principles including respect for each other’s views. Freedom and democracy are our rights. If we need to struggle for it, we will. If we need to find allies who will help us gain our freedom, we will form alliances. Throughout history all alliances were formed to promote mutual interests. Alliances were formed out of pragmatic necessity as opposed to based on moral Puritanism. We will keep our eyes on the prize!” .

I agree that our Ethiopia is in grave danger indeed. But the most potent danger facing Ethiopia and our people comes from none other the ethnocentric minoroty dictatorship of Meles Zenawi that has stranglehold the Ethiopian nation and our people. Our task then is to liberate our country from the chains and bondage imposed by the internal cancer eating away our country and people. By all and any means neccessary! If Mr. Tibebe and others have the political wisdom and strategy otherwise, nobody has held them not to do so. Let them show us that they are worthy and able to bring about the change we aspire. Let them walk the talk. The talk they have started after prolonged absence or a no show in the struggle many others have waged consistently to see a United and Democratic Ethiopia.

Note to the readership and the young generation:

I have received several e-mails in response to the original article I wrote on this topic posted on Ethiopian websites. All those who have keen interest in finding more about our recent political and military history are served better to do their own readings and research instead depending on many false prophets and pseudo historians out there with no respect for historical truth and Intellectual honesty. I urge the readership to evaluate and come to their own understanding and judgment by discerning the facts from fictions on these and related issues. This could be accomplished by a comparative reading and research on all the available literature, and when possible speaking with and interviewing the military and political actors of the Derg/PDRE regime era, including about the conduct of the war in both Eritrea and Tigray. Few of the relevant books include Miskernet, Ye Letena Mengisu Haile Mariam Tizitawoch by Genet Ayele, Ye Tigil Zemen Tizita by Commodore Tassew, Yewogen Tor Tizita by Maj. Mamo Lemma, YeTor Meda Wullo by Brig Gen. Tesfaye Habte Mariam, Tisnat and Meswatinet by Maj. General Hussein Ahmed, the Ethiopian Revolution by Dr. Gebru Tarake, Neber Vol I and II by Zenebe Bekele. Ethiopia Ferje by Maj. Getachew Yerom, Abate Yeachin Seat by Derge Demissie, Kidhet Be Dem Meret by Maj. Dawit Wolde Giorgis, Ye Tor Meda Wullo form East to North by Brig Gen. Kassaye Chemeda,. There are also many other works of scholarship that deal with the genesis of problems in Eritrea and the political conditions in the country in books written by Dr. Daniel Kindie, Dr. Shumet Sishagne, Dr. Aregawi Berhe, Ato Kiflu Taddesse, and many others.

By Lauren Gelfand :

NAIROBI, Kenya — It’s easy to confuse the interior of Nairobi’s Habesha restaurant with a lost corner of Ethiopia. The smell of frankincense and thick, dark coffee waft through the air as the latest tunes by Teddy Afro vie to be heard over the Amharic-language patter of denizens from Addis Ababa, Lalibela, Mekele and Gonder. There’s a good reason for the resemblance: Many of Habesha’s clients are in exile for speaking out against the Meles Zenawi’s regime. 

And if the 2005 elections as well as this year’s campaign season are any indication, it might be even harder to find a table at Habesha come May’s parliamentary polls.  

On the surface, Ethiopia is a stable, prospering nation, cultivating strong relationships with the international donors who have for more than a generation funded food, health and infrastructure projects for the country’s 85 million people. The United States has called Ethiopia a key ally in the Horn of Africa, representing a bulwark against increasingly isolated and sanctioned Eritrea and a comparative oasis of calm compared to perennially chaotic Somalia. 

But according to human rights advocates, free speech campaigners and opposition politicians, beneath the surface is a regime that wields power with impunity, repressing dissent, opposition and difference of opinion. 

The aftermath of the 2005 elections — which saw the defeat of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy — sent hundreds to the morgue, thousands to jail and countless others into exile. Meles subsequently tightened restrictions on charities and civil society groups, implemented an anti-terror law and forced through the passage of a media law that has silenced virtually all of the country’s independent press. 

International media operations have also been restricted: Voice of America has reported that since Feb. 22, static has clouded its daily Amharic-language shortwave broadcasts. A government spokesman has denied any impropriety on the part of Meles’ administration, instead accusing VOA of capitulating to a “smear campaign” by “opposition Web sites in the diaspora” ahead of the polls. 

Violence has also clouded the electoral campaign. On March 2, two opposition politicians were brutally beaten — one of them fatally — in Meles’ home turf, the Tigray region in the north, on the border with Eritrea. 

Despite representing a fraction of the population, the Tigrayans have made up a substantial portion of the political and military elite since Meles became prime minister in 1995. They also control the country’s leading corporations and, by extension, most of its trade. The vast majority are loyalists of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the guerrilla movement cum political powerhouse that seized power in a 1991 coup. 

But in the aftermath of the violent and still-unresolved conflict with Eritrea that ran from May 1998 until June 2000, Meles’ one-time Tigrayan allies have become nemeses, among them the former Defense Minister Seye Abraha. This splinter movement, amalgamated into a coalition of opposition parties, has emerged as a significant threat to Meles’ monopoly on power, presenting the only viable challenge he has seen from his own ethnic group since he took office. 

The coalition — known as Medrek (the Forum) — groups together ethnic and non-sectarian parties, both new and old, into an emboldened opposition movement that has confronted Meles and his ruling coalition on a number of fronts, with varying degrees of success. That success has come at a cost, however, with the fatal beating of parliamentary candidate Aregawi Gebreyohannes being a grim example. 

But Meles is facing difficulties as well, with the recent emergence of evidence suggesting that food aid was once again being politicized by the ruling party. In a country where one in five people faces chronic food shortages, millions of dollars in international assistance in the form of grain, cooking oil and even cash, were allegedly being diverted to ruling-party politicians to buy the loyalty of the citizenry. It was, Abraha said in a widely circulated article in January, “the weapon of choice to squeeze [Ethiopians] into following the one-party system lockstep.” 

The revelation was all-the-more damaging in the context of a new BBC investigation into TPLF machinations in the 1980s, at the height of the Ethiopian famine, through which millions of dollars in food aid was diverted to buy weapons. 

The food aid revelations have coincided with a newfound coordination of donor government policy toward Ethiopia, suggesting a shift from the previous emphasis on stability at the expense of democracy and republican values. 

In the past, U.S. and European policy toward Ethiopia often worked at cross purposes, with a hard line from one meaning a soft touch from the other, and vice versa. The differing responses to 2009’s Anti-Terror law illustrated the contrast in sharp relief: While condemned by the U.S., the law’s passage was followed by a European assistance package worth some €250 million, according to Human Rights Watch. More recently, opposition parties have excoriated the Obama administration for its perceived failure to address human rights abuses by the Meles government, though they were heartened by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to leave the country off of her first Africa tour. 

Now, however, support for the opposition — both overt and tacit — seems to be coalescing, with donors ascribing a legitimacy to the upstart coalition that none of its predecessors ever enjoyed. 

This is not, however, likely to translate into a stunning upset at the polls. Meles’ ruling coalition is too entrenched, too powerful and too committed to its own survival to compromise its position, and the risk of violence continues to overshadow poll preparations. None of the four major election observer groups from the United States is planning to monitor the voting, while the European Union is so far only “considering” whether to dispatch its own team. 

Nor is it going to impel the release of five independent journalists languishing in prison on trumped-up charges of treason and malfeasance. 

“The West thinks stability in Ethiopia is more important than democracy,” one rueful exile at Habesha says, sipping coffee that smells like home. “Destabilization is the only way to change.” 

Lauren Gelfand is a freelance journalist and analyst now based in Nairobi, Kenya, with an interest in security and defense issues. After beginning her career as a wire service correspondent, working on three continents for Agence France-Presse, she currently serves as Middle East and Africa editor for Jane’s Defence Weekly magazine. She writes in French and in English for a variety of publications.

The most evil bloody tyrant of Ethiopia,  Meles Zenawi,  continues to attempt to fool the Westerners once again. The tyrant Meles Zenawi tells Paul Vallely that the report the Live Aid money was spent on weapons was based on lies. However, Meles Zenawi did not say any thing if some of a $100m donation was spent on arms. The Zebra face tyrant, who was one of the leaders of the rebel group the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front, is now a multibillionaire on aid money.

Tyrant Meles Zenawi without Make Up

In an interview with The Independent, the pathological liar Meles Zenawi said that the BBC had fallen for lies put out by his political opponents on the eve of the sham general election which he has already won in Addis Ababa next month.

The tyrant said that the notion that a decision was taken to spend 95 per cent of aid on the military is a complete lie,” but he did not say how much money he and his cronies had used to buy weapons and open a restaurant in London.

The tribal dictator  attempted to conceal the facts about the embezzlement of aid money by saying that the terrorist rebels from Tigrai (TPLF) did not need to buy arms because they were provided weapons by the Ethiopian troops.

The tyrant who is now starving 15 million people in Ethiopia also stated that it would have been completely suicidal to starve the people in Tigrai  to buy guns.

The tyrant silly excuse can only be bought by Bob Geldof and some clueless Westerners who   never heard Winston Churchill’s saying “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.”

By ADAM NOSSITER

DAKAR, Senegal — Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria said Monday that about 500 people had died in weekend ethnic violence near the central city of Jos, considerably more than what had initially been reported.

A government spokesman said Sunday that the dead numbered more than 300. The victims were Christians killed by rampaging Muslim herdsmen, officials and human rights workers said, apparently in reprisal for similar attacks on Muslims in January.

The head of a leading Nigerian rights group, Shehu Sani of the Civil Rights Congress, said in a telephone interview on Monday that his organization had counted 492 bodies, mainly in the village of Dogo Nahawa.

A spokesmen for the government of Plateau State, Gregory Yenlong, said the number of dead was about 500. “Those that were injured have been dying,” he said. “The communities are taking inventory.”

Those figures, however, did not seem to represent the final tally.

Shamaki Gad Peter of the League for Human Rights, who was in the Dogo Nahawa area, put the provisional death toll at around 250.

In Abuja, the Nigerian capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it could not yet give an estimate of the number of dead as its representatives had not been able to reach all of the villages that were attacked.

The killings took place in Plateau State near the city of Jos, for years a hotbed of ethnic and religious violence near the dividing line between the country’s mainly Christian south and Muslim north.

Hundreds on both sides were killed as recently as January, though the victims this time were Christians, according to the information commissioner for Plateau, Gregory Yenlong, and a local human rights organization.

Many appeared to have been cut down with machetes after being driven from homes set ablaze by attackers in the predawn darkness, said Shamaki Gad Peter of the League for Human Rights, a Nigerian group.

Mr. Yenlong said the attackers were “hoodlums, Fulani herdsmen” — Muslims from a neighboring state, Bauchi, who were going after Christian members of Plateau’s leading ethnic group, the Berom, in the villages of Ratt and Dogo Nahawa.

“They attacked those villages and killed well over 300 people, mostly women, children and the aged,” Mr. Yenlong said. “They killed them unprovoked. Innocent people were massacred.”

Witnesses, including Mr. Peter, spoke of bodies littering the streets of Ratt. One victim was less than 3 months old, he said.

“I’m seeing more than 20 corpses right now, women and children who have been killed,” Mr. Peter said. “Virtually every house has been burned down. Corpses of people are littered about. They were slaughtered with machetes. I can see the cuts on their head and neck.”

Mr. Peter said the attacks began around 2 a.m. and lasted around four hours.

The attacks come at a time of political crisis in Nigeria. The acting president, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, was appointed by the National Assembly to rule in the place of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is gravely ill. Mr. Jonathan sent troops to Jos in January to quell the violence, but his authority in the country is uncertain.

Mr. Peter said security forces were scarce on Sunday. “There are two military personnel just hanging around,” he said.

One man who was present during the attacks said the killers began firing guns, then poured gasoline on the roofs in Ratt.

“We saw the Fulani coming, and they started shooting,” said the man, Yohanna Kudu. “They used machetes to kill our women and children. Some of the children were burned inside the houses.”

He added, “We thought the military would protect us.”

Source: ny Times

Bob Geldof is furious at the BBC story about NGO funds buying rebels’ arms, but the politics of delivering aid are always complex

There are some things that are just too sensitive and difficult to inquire about, and the idea that considerable sums that ordinary people around the world – but especially here in the UK – raised to aid and help their starving fellow humans in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s is one of them. Band Aid and the accompanying humanitarian efforts on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians threatened with famine in the northern province in Tigray was much more than just an important moment captured in a rock concert. It was transformational. It changed forever how politics, aid and the electronic media would function in response to humanitarian needs.

For western politics and aid, what happened in 1985 was the big bang. Nothing would ever be the same again. Even more fundamentally than that, it said something about who we were and what we were all capable of. For any of us who were there at the concert, gave money, lived through it and got involved, in however small a way, it was quite simply life-affirming.

But it also made Band Aid and the entire humanitarian response to the famine in Tigray almost holy; only the shameless or mendacious would subject it to critical review in the way that Martin Plaut of the BBC has done this past week when, after nine months of research, he found what he and the BBC World Service believe is credible evidence that aid money from famine relief efforts was used by the rebel group fighting Ethiopia’s military dictatorship under Mengistu to buy arms.

Many of the humanitarian relief agencies involved in Tigray Province and Ethiopia in 1985 have understandably reacted with horror. They have swiftly and universally condemned the BBC for the report, saying that their scrupulous oversight of the aid could not have let this happen, and nothing of the sort happened.

But why the strong and blanket reaction without a hint of wanting to know more?

Let’s get some things straight: humanitarian operations in the midst of large-scale civil wars where territory is held by rival powers are almost always politicised and misused. The idea that this never happens and that NGOs are never put in situations where, in order to get the aid delivered, they have to work with and often through the powers that control the territory where the suffering is taking place is a ridiculous fantasy. It’s happening now, in Congo; in my own country, Somalia, where al-Qaida-affiliated groups have dictated how the World Food Programme delivers emergency food; and also in Zimbabwe, where I have just spent two weeks talking to aid workers having to work through government bodies in delivering aid to prisoners of Mugabe.

One aid worker told me: “There is a really bad outbreak of measles in townships with huge HIV infection rates, but we can’t mention or talk about it if we want to remain here.” Those are just three examples; there are many more.

Plaut is a first-class journalist. He hasn’t just come to this. He was actually there on the frontlines in Tigray, with his wife, a nurse, in 1984, as the famine was brewing. One of his main sources, ridiculously dismissed by Sir Bob Geldof on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday as an exiled malcontent and “not a credible voice whatsoever” on this story, was actually a founding member of the rebel group, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and one of the main military commanders in the Ethiopian civil war in 1985.

The BBC’s assertions and evidence need to be seriously and open-mindedly followed. Their assertion is that aid agencies in the mid-80s had to work through an organisation called the Relief Society of Tigray (Rest) in order to get to the starving people. The Ethiopian dictatorship did not control the province. But Rest was undeniably the humanitarian wing of the rebel movement. Of that, there is no doubt.

So, effectively, the relief agencies were working and channelling their efforts via the rebel group, the TPLF. I am absolutely sure that all the NGOs were extremely diligent about how their money was spent in getting relief to the people who needed it. But they did not have oversight and control of Rest. In fact, they had no way of knowing whether the official buying sorghum for them from Rest was an independent local aid worker, or a member of the rebel group posing as one.

I know the TPLF very well. I was based as a reporter in Addis Ababa immediately after the rebel group came to power in 1991. The TPLF is the most ruthlessly organised and efficient guerrilla group I have ever encountered. The fact that this peasant army, with thousands of women among its ranks, overthrew the might of the Mengistu regime proves that. These rebels were drawn from the very families and communities that the Ethiopian regime was trying to starve. I have no doubt in my mind that, faced with a government that was using famine as a tool of war against them, the TPLF would seek to use the ocean of money coming from around the world, in response to efforts like Band Aid, to buy the weapons that would rid them and the rest of Ethiopia of what was a horrendous regime.

The politicising of aid is a fact of life everywhere. The challenge is to stop it getting in the way of saving lives. As Plaut says, in Tigray this politicising did not get in the way of saving lives, and perhaps that is why many didn’t ask questions. As a Somali, looking at what happened in my country during the US-led humanitarian intervention in 1992 and what is happening today, what I find unacceptable is that a humanitarian operation can be elevated to the status of being above criticism.

‘They Want to Drive Us Out, but They Will not Succeed’

The Ethiopian Tyrants Supreme Court today ruled against four independent media houses, forcing them to pay fines that were originally rendered void under a 2007 pardon. The four publishing companies, Serkalem, Sisay, Zekarias and Fasil, must now pay a total of 295,000 Birr (approx. €16,100) – more than the average Ethiopian would earn in a century, according to income figures from the International Fund for Agricultural Development.  

The  sham Court overturned the previous ruling, ordering the four houses to pay fines ranging from 15,000 to 120,000 Birr (approx. €830 to €6,600) according to an emailed statement from Eskinder Nega and Serkalem Fasil, co-owners of the Serkalem publishing company.

“It’s nothing in the American or European context, but for us it’s huge,” Eskinder Nega told IPI by phone from Addis Ababa. “This is the largest fine that has been imposed for a criminal charge, ever. The largest fine against a publisher until now was 15,000 Birr (approx. €830).”  Nega and his wife Fasil must pay 120,000 Birr (approx. €6,600) – the highest of the upheld fines.

Because the publishing house proprietors, Serkalem Fasil, Eskinder Nega, Sisay Agena, Zekarias Tesfaye and Fasil Yenealem, are unable to pay the high fines, the government has requested that the court “freeze all liquid and fixed assets” belonging to them.

“In the run-up to 23 May elections, developments such as these are unfortunate evidence of the pressuring of the independent media,” said IPI Press Freedom Manager Anthony Mills. “No elections process can be deemed to be fair and transparent if it is accompanied by intimidation of the press. The fines are exorbitant and unwarranted. They should be dropped immediately.”

Nega told IPI that the Supreme Court ruling appeared to be an effort to force him and the other defendants to leave the country – as have many of their colleagues over the past few years.

“They want to drive us out, but they will not succeed. We will continue to apply for publishing licenses and push for our rights, including press freedom,” Nega said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

The four publishing houses were shut down in 2005 during a notorious post-election crackdown on the political opposition – and the independent press. Their owners, Fasil, Eskinder, Agena, Tesfaye and Yenealem, were jailed along with several other journalists, on charges ranging from genocide to subverting the constitution.  Fasil gave birth to her child while in jail.

The publishers were acquitted in 2007; however, the editors from their publications were sentenced to life in prison, and fines were imposed against the publishing houses, Nega told IPI.  Later that year, the editors were freed and the fines dropped under a presidential amnesty. Since then, all of the imprisoned editors have left the country, where they are living in exile.

Since the 2007 presidential pardon, the Sisay and Serkalem houses have repeatedly applied for publishing licenses, which they continue to be denied. At the same time, the Ethiopian government continued its courtroom attempts to force the Serkalem, Sisay, Zekarias and Fasil publishing houses to pay the 2005 fines.

Thirteen political publications closed down during the 2005 offensive against the independent media remain shut.

“The election will be democratic free and peaceful”

Said the tyrant when he lied to the World, to fool,

But Ethiopians said “Yetebela Ukub”, for real,

A little push needed for the regime’s downfall,

Our dear mother Land to prevail!

The game of the Dracula goes as follows

When I win elections, it is by abiding laws

I am starting only for the fourth terms

But if the “opposition” wins,

That is “against rules”,

so it will be not accepted, as it is “Fursh”

It is so easy like we played our “Biy chaweta”

During childhood innocence “tezeta”

If I win, I win, but if you win “Biyun Amta”

Because I’m big, “Wa, Endatemeta”!

“Revolution eats its children”

Said “Mengistu”, the previous DEMON,

We didn’t know DRACULA follows, even the worst one,

No, he said, it is “revolutionary democracy” to win

And so, parliament candidates were for dinner to be eaten!

Aregawi Gebre-Yohannes and million martyrs not forgotten

Let their souls rest in peace, all Ethiopians, we mourn!

We believe in “give and take” says the tyrant.

Yes, he gave our mother land and took her wealth in fact

He gave her gold and rivers and took AID for the peasants

He gave sovereignty of a country and took fake development

What is the answer to this and where to start?

Why don’t we take him to court and give him defeat?

Mother land to prevail, we have to just unite!

Internet closed, journalism silenced

Mass media served only tyrants indeed

Justice suffocating in one mans hand

Peasants should vote for a tyrant or forget about land

Student like wise denied jobs or scholarship outside

This is “Democracy Ala Meles”,

Please come participate on the election field!

( 03/03/2010 WEGESHAW)

Petitions Team

Office of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Human Rights UNOG-OHCHR

1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Dear Madam High Commissioner,

No one has ever been brought to justice in Ethiopia for the massacre of 424 Anuak in Gambella, Ethiopia on December 13-16, 2003, and genocidal massacres that killed one thousand more Anuak in 2004. Investigations by Genocide Watch in early 2004 revealed the Ethiopian government’s planning, execution and cover-up of these massacres. Please see the following link for the Anuak Genocide Evidence. Anauak Genocide Evidence . Since then, the Ethiopian government, under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has continued to commit more crimes against humanity throughout Ethiopia and in Somalia. The killings in the Ogaden are genocidal. A culture of impunity exists. Investigation by the High Commissioner for Human Rights is critical.

This letter is a follow up to Genocide Watch’s March 2009 letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, asking for a full investigation into the Ethiopian government’s complicity in widespread crimes against humanity. We have never received a reply to that letter.

We are particularly concerned with the use of starvation and the blocking of food and other humanitarian aid to the Ogaden region of Ethiopia that is now inaccessible to anyone but the Ethiopian Defense Forces. Human rights investigators and journalists indicate that the Ethiopian government is using indiscriminate terror against civilians in response to an insurgency movement in the Ogaden.

We believe these past violations and ongoing concerns provide justification for swift investigation by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. No legal investigations are being pursued within Ethiopia. Exacerbating the risk of widespread abuses is the passage of new repressive laws in Ethiopia that criminalize the work of human rights defenders.

We recommend specific investigation of persons named as planners of the Gambella massacres in a secret 16-page memo in Amharic obtained in the week following the 2003 massacre from the office of Omot Obang Olom, current Governor of Gambella Province:

“…meeting on September 24, 2003 in Addis Ababa in the office of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The Prime Minister was there, along with the Vice Prime Ministe; Addisu Legesse, Sebhat Nega,senior TPLF official, Information Mminister, Bereket Simon,  Chief of Gambella Security, Omot Obang Olom, Head of Federal Security; Alemayheu or Almeu Almeru, Minister of Federal Affairs; Abay Tsehaye, Chief of Staff of the Ethiopian Armed Forces, Samora (Mohamed)Yunis, Chief of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General, Yohannes Gebre Meskel and Minister of Defense, Abadula Gemeda.

They met to discuss security issues in Gambella…. It was at this meeting that plans began for the massacre of December 13, 2003… It was in the third week of November that a list was compiled by Omot Obang Olom of those Anuak to be targeted. The first list contained five hundred and twelve Anuak names, which probably was longer by December 13^th. Some of the Anuak in prison in Addis and some of those in prison in Gambella were on the list.”

According to testimony obtained in Genocide Watch’s two human rights investigations in 2004, the targeting of the Anuak was ordered by the High Commander in Chief of the Ethiopian army in Gambella, Tsegaye Beyene, with the direct authorization of Dr. Gebre-ab Barnabas, an official of the Ethiopian government’s Ministry of Federal Affairs. The Chief of Police, Tadesse Haile Selassie, was also involved in carrying out the orders. Please see appendix I: for list of names of Alleged Police Perpetrators Identified by Federal government of Ethiopia Evaluation on 2 August 2004.

At the time of the 2003 Anuak massacres, the obvious motivation for displacement of the Anuak was exploration for oil by Chinese petroleum companies. There is now evidence that the Ethiopian government’s plan for expropriation of Anuak and other groups’ land is much larger.

Since the 1974 takeover of Ethiopia by the Marxist-Leninist Mengistu regime, all land has been the property of the state. Land ownership has never been returned to the people who have farmed it for many generations.

In the past month, contracts have been signed granting 99 -year leases to huge tracts of Anuak land to Chinese, Indian, and Japanese companies for agricultural production. The leases are being granted for as little as one dollar per hectare, with all the money going directly to officials of the Meles Zenawi government. Signing ceremonies for these leases have included no Anuak. Meles Zenawi has become one of the richest dictators in the world.

Gambella province, the Anuak peoples’ homeland, has very fertile soil and abundant rainfall. The Anuak are being moved off their land. Similar “land-grabs” are also being executed in many other areas of the Ethiopia.

Deportation or forcible transfer of a population and persecution of any group on political, racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious grounds are crimes against humanity outlawed by Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. We call on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take action to protect Ethiopians from a government which has not only violated its responsibility to protect, but is terrorizing its own people.

As one Anuak woman concluded in her testimony regarding the brutal murder of her husband by Ethiopian defense forces: “Why are the other human beings in this world not doing anything to stop these people and bring them to justice?

Will the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights investigate Ethiopian officials for crimes against humanity? Will the leasing of vast swaths of Ethiopian land to foreign corporations and forced displacement of Ethiopia’s farmers be stopped? Above all, will Ethiopia’s most powerful politicians ever be brought to justice for their crimes?

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Gregory Stanton

President of Genocide Watch

P.O. Box 809

Washington, D.C. 20044 USA

E-mail: genocidewatch@aol.com

Web: www.genocidewatch.org

Alemayehu G. Mariam:

If democracy is a government of the people, kleptocracy is a government of thieves.

Last week the secret world of Meles Zenawi’s kleptocracy, famine aid-sharking and money laundering in Ethiopia was exposed by two of his former comrades-in-arms in the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Gebremedhin Araya, a former treasurer and TPLF co-founder Dr. Aregawi Berhe, detailed the scam used to swindle, hustle and con millions of dollars from international famine relief organizations in the mid-1980s. The two former top leaders accused the TPLF leadership, including Zenawi, for taking tens of millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the Tigrai region to buy weapons and enrich themselves. Gebremedhin said he personally handed cash payments and checks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to Zenawi and Sebhat Nega, the top two TPLF leaders who controlled the cash flow of the organization. Although Gebremedhin was the treasurer, he said he was not privileged to know what happened to the money after he delivered it to Zenawi or Nega. The incriminatory evidence, (including a candid photograph of TPLF cadres counting and recording wads of cash handed over to them by a foreign aid worker from a large satchel on the floor), is shocking as it is damning and irrefutable.

In 1984/5, at the height of the catastrophic famine, nearly a quarter of a billion dollars were raised internationally for famine relief in Ethiopia. Michael Buerek of the BBC who visited the Tigrai region at the height of the famine in 1984 described the situation as “a biblical famine in the 20th Century” and “the closest thing to hell on Earth” (See video[1]).

According to the available evidence, normal delivery of emergency humanitarian aid to the Tigrai region in 1984 was virtually impossible because of rebel activity in the outlying areas and bombardment by the military junta. The road normally used to deliver aid supplies to the Tigrai region from the capital had become unusable because of rebel military activity. The various international famine relief non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had to find alternate routes to quickly deliver relief aid to victims in rebel-controlled areas. Many of these NGOs eventually set up shop in eastern Sudan close to the Tigrai border in an attempt to deliver aid quickly. The large concentration of NGOs and the publicity surrounding the enormous fundraising efforts by various international celebrities for Ethiopian famine victims caught the attention of the TPLF leaders who saw a lucrative business opportunity for themselves delivering relief aid to victims in areas their controlled.

According to the former TPLF leaders, Zenawi and his top cadres hatched out and successfully executed a scam to use a front “humanitarian relief” organization called “Relief Society of Tigrai” (REST) for aid delivery. The TPLF leaders managed to “convince” the various NGOs operating out of the Sudan that REST is a genuine charity organization completely separate from the TPLF, the declared military wing. In fact, REST was the other face of the TPLF coin.

The evidence further indicates that to magnify the severity and extremity of the famine situation for the NGOs, the TPLF leaders ordered the exodus of large numbers of victims into the Sudan creating a mushroom of refugee settlements in the Sudanese border areas overnight. Using different techniques and methods, the TPLF leaders stage managed an elaborate marketing “drama” for the NGOs to buy and deliver aid to the large famine-stricken population inside Tigrai. This was done principally by organizing a small group of their most trusted and inner circle members to pose as “grain merchants” and solicit business from the NGOs.

The deception games, or more accurately the famine aid-sharking scheme, played on the Western NGOs were varied. At the onset of the scam, they used a three-staged process. In stage one, one group of TPLF/REST officials masquerading as legitimate grain merchants would approach the myriad NGOs and offer to sell them substantial quantities of grain for quick delivery to the famine victims. At the time, the TPLF had acquired and stashed in secret warehouses grains from various sources, including NGOs, for use by its fighters. These secretly stashed grain stockpiles were in fact being offered for sale to the NGOs. The TPLF/REST “grain dealers” would complete the sale transaction and return back to their hideouts with the payment from the NGOs. Gebremedhin said he delivered to Zenawi and Sebhat Nega the cash and check payments from the NGOs.  He described the scam with mind-numbing simplicity:

I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. The NGOs don’t know me because my name was Mohammed. It was a trick assigned (created) by the top leaders for the NGOs. I received a great amount of money from the NGOs and the money was automatically taken by (the TPLF) leaders. The money, much of it, the leaders put it in their accounts in Western Europe. Some of it was used to buy weapons. The people did not get half a kilogram of maize.

Once the purchase was made another group of TPLF/REST operatives would take over the responsibility of delivering the relief aid inside Tigrai. In the second stage, TPLF/REST officials would facilitate spot checks of grain stockpiles in their own secret warehouses. But the warehouses were tricked out. Gebremedhin said, “if you go there, half of the warehouse was stacked full of sand.” The NGO representatives would perform visual inspections of the stockpiles, give their approval and cross back into the Sudan to conduct additional grain purchases.

In the third stage, the same or different group of TPLF/REST officials would go back to the NGOs and make a pitch for additional sales of grains for delivery in a different part of Tigrai. These offers did not involve any new or fresh supplies of grain. Instead, stockpiles of grain already in secret storage facilities in various locations throughout Tigrai were trucked around to new locations, giving the appearance to the NGOs that fresh supplies of grain were being bought in and delivered. Since the aid workers have no means of independently verifying the grain that is being shuttled from one location to another from completely fresh shipments, they would perform cursory inspections and make payments. In that manner, TPLF/REST was able to sell and resell multiple times the same previously acquired stockpile of grain (and sand) to the NGOs generating millions of dollars in revenue. TPLF/REST used various ways and techniques in 1985 to maximize its business transactions  with the NGOs and in selling grain shipments sent by donor countries.

Gebremedhin Araya (L); Max Peberdy (C); Tekeleweyne Assefa (R)

Dr. Aregawi told the BBC that of the $100 million that went through TPLF hands at the time, $95 million was diverted for weapons purchases and other purposes not related to famine relief. He stated that the TPLF stage-managed “dramas” to “fool the aid workers”. A recent BBC investigation identified a 1985 official CIA document which concluded: “Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.” Robert Houdek, a senior US diplomat in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, was quoted by the BBC saying that TPLF members at the time told him that some aid money was used to buy weapons. An aid worker named Max Peberdy stated that he had personally delivered to TPLF/REST officials $500,000 in Ethiopian currency to purchase grain.

The prima facie evidence of massive relief aid diversion by the TPLF is compelling and damning[1]. Those accused of involvement in the wrongdoing have dismissed the evidence as “rubbish”; they have not called for a full fact-finding inquiry into the charges to clear their names of such serious and grave charges. Until such inquiry takes place, the evidence of aid-sharking and theft stands unchallenged and unrefuted. To be sure, very little of the famine aid money in 1984/5 channeled through the TPLF went to help the hungry, poor and dying in Tigrai. Nearly all of it (95%) was diverted for military and other purposes. Bob Geldof who organized Live Aid/Band Aid in 1984 collecting tens of millions of dollars in donations recently threatened, “If there is any money missing I will sue the Ethiopian government.”

The systematic plunder and pillage of Ethiopia over the past two decades can now be put in clear perspective.

We now know:

Why Ethiopia’s only outlet to the sea was signed, sealed and delivered, overriding contrary advice by international diplomats;

What went down in the deal to hand over Badme to the aggressor in binding international arbitration following the aggressor’s decisive military defeat at the cost of over 80,000 Ethiopian lives;

How the May 2005 elections were stolen in broad daylight;

Why the missing millions of dollars worth of gold bars from the national bank in 2007 are still missing; Of the secret sweetheart deals that turned over the country’s gold mines to cronies at bargain-basement prices;

How state enterprises were given out to family, friends and supporters for pittance in the name of privatization;

About the secret deals made to demarcate the border between the Sudan and Ethiopia;

About the fire sale of millions of hectares of farmland to foreign “investors”;

About the no-collateral bank loans in the millions of dollars to friends and supporters and the 1.7 billion birr ($141.6 million) loan to Messebo Cement Factory, one of the many companies owned by the “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray” (EFFORT a/k/a Zenawi, Inc.,), which sent the Development Bank of Ethiopia careening into insolvency);

About the monopoly of the cement business by Zenawi, Inc./EFFORT;

About the multi-million dollar child-trafficking business in the name of inter-country adoptions;

About the secret deals to sole source the construction of the Gilgel Gibe dams to an Italian company;

About the “genocide and interhamwe” scare talk;

About the corrupt procurement and contracting practices that direct state business to cronies, supporters and friends;

About the rampant nepotism, patronage and clientelism;

Why draconian “laws” we enacted to criminalize NGOs and the independent press; and on and on and on.

We know because we now have the blueprint for the perfect kleptocracy!

One must grudgingly admire these con men for their sheer audacity, genius and creativity in ripping off so much money from the charities in the mid-1980s (and for the last two decades from the Ethiopian people). Even Ali Baba and his 40 thieves could not have pulled off such a brilliant scheme to sell and re-sell the NGOs the same sand as grain over and over again. Even Hermes, the Greek god of thieves, would not have been able to come up with such an exquisitely perfect plan to hoodwink and bamboozle gullible NGOs of millions of dollars. They truly deserve the title, “A New Breed of African Thieves”.

The facts are plain to see. We know now that these thieves did not stand for the people of Tigrai at the critical hour in 1984. They sure as hell do not stand for the people of Ethiopia today. They stand for themselves and no one else. They will try to cling to power by creating enmity and polarization between the people of Tigrai and their brothers and sister in the rest of Ethiopia. That is the ONLY way they can stay in power. As an old Ethiopian saying teaches, disorder and chaos creates ideal conditions for thieves (Gir gir le leba yimechal.) The Ethiopian opposition today is in a state of gir-gir (disarray, discord and mess). When the core of opposition  political activity revolves around ethnic bashing, finger pointing and finger wagging, the ideal conditions for thievery are created and maintained. But there is a way to deal with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves:

Close ranks regardless of ethnicity or regionality; reaffirm our basic humanity in our Ethiopianity; renounce our old enmity; openly declare our steadfast unity and trumpet our Ethiopian nationality at every opportunity.

When we have done these things, we will have freed ourselves from domination and rule by a kleptocracy — a government of thieves, by thieves, for thieves!

We should all thank BBC’s Africa Editor, Martin Plaut, for his extraordinary investigative work in this affair.

FIGHT CRIME.  SAY “NO” TO THIEVES!

Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org, allafrica.com, newamericamedia.org and other sites.

[1] See 1984 BBC video at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8321043.stm

[1] See details of the scam in excerpts from Gebremedin Araya’s Amharic manuscript: Pt. 1, http://www.ethiomedia.com/course/telat_ena_ethiopia.pdf

Pt. 2, http://www.ethiomedia.com/course/tplf_crimes_against_humanity.pdf

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