Western policy towards Africa is ill-informed and
inconsistent. That's the message of Ethiopia's prime minister,
Meles Zenawi, in his
interview in the Guardian last week. And there's some
truth in what he says. But Meles should be careful what he
wishes for.
If the west was better informed about the war
crimes and human rights abuses committed by Meles' military
forces in Somalia and
Ogaden, western taxpayers might balk at the thought that
their governments are providing Ethiopia with hundreds of
millions of dollars of military and economic aid.
And if western governments were more consistent and less
selective in their reaction to human rights abuses around the
world, they might be less inclined to turn a blind eye to
Ethiopia's failure to abide by international norms in pursuit
of its military objectives in
Somalia and Ogaden.
Last year, Human Rights Watch documented a disturbing
pattern of abuses
by all sides, including Ethiopia, in the dangerous armed
conflict which erupted after Meles sent his army into Somalia
to dislodge the Islamic Courts Union, a group which many say
has links to international terrorists. In its subsequent
struggle with Somali insurgents, Ethiopia has committed
serious violations of the Geneva conventions including the
carpet-bombing of residential districts of Mogadishu, the
deliberate targeting of hospitals and arbitrary executions.
Human Rights Watch has also documented abuses by Ethiopian
forces in its simultaneous counter-insurgency campaign against
the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in the Somali
region of southeastern Ethiopia. These include the systematic
use of rape, torture and execution as a means of terrorising
and collectively punishing the civilian population, a partial
trade blockade of districts deemed sympathetic to the rebels
and the destruction of villages.
There are good reasons why Ethiopia's western backers do
not jump to condemn Meles with the same speed with which they
rightly condemn, say, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Sudan's Omar
al-Bashir. In his almost 20 years in power, Meles, a former
rebel leader, has transformed Ethiopia from a war-torn,
famine-prone dictatorship into a relatively stable state which
combines elements of both democracy and authoritarianism. He
has won plaudits from donors for poverty reduction and good
economic stewardship.
Meles' supporters also make allowances for the fact that he
is the key regional player operating in a tough neighbourhood.
Somalia is a failed state; Eritrea is a closed dictatorship
that has picked fights with most of its neighbours; Sudan
defies the UN and the international criminal court in their
efforts to secure peace and accountability in Darfur; and now
Kenya is slipping into its worst political crisis since
independence.
But above all western politicians and diplomats warm to
Meles, because they concur with his analysis that he is a
bulwark against the spread of Islamist militancy in the Horn
of Africa. Meles plays this card well. He is helped by the
fact that the influence of political Islam is strong and
growing among the large Muslim populations of the region.
Furthermore, Islamist militants, some with links to
international terrorist organisations, are operating in
Somalia, Kenya and elsewhere in the Horn.
But, while these considerations can help to nuance the
west's diplomatic, economic and military relations with Meles,
they can be no excuse for the war crimes and gross violations
of human rights that Human Rights Watch has
documented
in Somalia and Ogaden. These unjustifiable acts are not only
morally repugnant; they are also counterproductive. They serve
to undermine international respect for the rule of law and
they are likely to sharpen radicalisation and conflict in what
is already one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
The west's failure to acknowledge the reality of what is
going on in these remote and inaccessible places and its
failure to call for full investigations and accountability
leaves the impression that when it comes to counter-terrorism,
anything goes. It is a shortsighted policy that is already
backfiring in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon - and it
will backfire here too.
