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Human
Rights Watch (Washington, DC)
ANALYSIS
31 January 2008
By Tom Porteous
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.
Tom Porteous is the London Director for
Human Rights Watch. This article was
originally published by Guardian Unlimited.
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