Etiopía (Continuación)

When Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Ethiopia last year, he met a young blogger named Natnael Feleke. When he returned a few months ago, Kerry found that Feleke, along with five other bloggers and three journalists, had been arrested — the latest in a long line of journalists the Ethiopian government has detained on the claim that they were trying to incite terrorism. Although Kerry addressed the arrests with officials he met, and President Obama has spoken forcefully on the importance of good governance in Africa, preoccupation with immediate security priorities — in particular counter-terrorism — trumps the fine words.…  Seguir leyendo »

I was confused the first time I saw a giant billboard in Addis Ababa advertising Members Only and stressing how “membership has its pleasures,” accompanied by a stark silhouette of a leggy female figure. It reminded me of advertisements in New York for so-called gentlemen’s clubs — not the sort of places you tend to find in Ethiopia’s capital, where levels of disposable income and where that money goes differ markedly.

Members Only turned out to be the latest condom brand released by DKT Ethiopia, an American nonprofit that since 1989 has sold Ethiopia’s most popular brands. DKT’s condoms are usually sold well below market cost, heavily subsidized, as part of the effort to tackle problems like H.I.V.…  Seguir leyendo »

I am jailed, with around 200 other inmates, in a wide hall that looks like a warehouse. For all of us, there are only three toilets. Most of the inmates sleep on the floor, which has never been swept. About 1,000 prisoners share the small open space here at Kaliti Prison. One can guess our fate if a communicable disease breaks out.

I was arrested in September 2011 and detained for nine months before I was found guilty in June 2012 under Ethiopia’s overly broad Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, which ostensibly covers the “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt” of terrorist acts. In reality, the law has been used as a pretext to detain journalists who criticize the government.…  Seguir leyendo »

Beware the open mike. Last week Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi summoned senior politicians of all parties to discuss Ethiopia’s plan to dam the main tributary of the Nile river. One proposed sending special forces to destroy the dam. Another thought buzzing the dam site with jet fighters might scare the Ethiopians off.

Ayman Nour, a former presidential candidate and a more sophisticated player, suggested that Egypt support rebel groups fighting the Ethiopian regime.

“This could yield results in the diplomatic arena,” he said. None of them realized that their discussion was being broadcast live by Egyptian state television.

All students of geopolitics are familiar with the legend that Egypt has privately warned the governments upstream on the Nile that it will start bombing if they build dams on the river without its permission.…  Seguir leyendo »

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, who died last week after a long illness, liked to portray his country's leadership as collective. But there was never any doubt about who was in charge.

As dictators go, he had much going for him. Stunningly smart, strategic, practical, he cared about his country and, by all appearances, resisted the kind of graft and corruption that has plagued many African nations. During his rule, Ethiopia's economy expanded significantly, and he played an important role in the wider region.

But Meles' death points up the limitations of autocratic rule. Because he failed to establish the rule of law and set up strong democratic institutions, Ethiopia is likely to face a period of uncertainty, and possibly one of serious upheaval.…  Seguir leyendo »

The death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi deprives Ethiopia — and Africa as a whole — of an exceptional leader.

We both knew him from his days as a guerrilla in the mountains of Tigray, northern Ethiopia, fighting against the former Communist government in Addis Ababa. “Comrade Meles” (he was christened Legesse but took the nom de guerre Meles in his early revolutionary days after a colleague who was killed) rose to become first among equals of the rebel fighters who took power in 1991.

His ascendancy was due to force of intellect: In those days of collective leadership of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, Meles was best able to articulate a theory linking state power, ethnic identity and economic policy, making Marxist-Leninism relevant to the demands of winning a guerrilla war.…  Seguir leyendo »

La reciente muerte en Bruselas del primer ministro etíope Meles Zenawi finalmente arroja luz sobre su misteriosa desaparición durante dos meses de la vida pública. El gobierno de Etiopía había negado enérgicamente los rumores de un grave problema de salud causado por un cáncer de hígado. Ahora que se pudo comprobar lo peor, Etiopía y el resto de África oriental tendrán que aprender a vivir sin la influencia estabilizadora de su gran dictador-diplomático.

Sin duda, Meles era ambas cosas. Etiopía sufrió una transformación considerable durante su gobierno dictatorial desde 1991, cuando su grupo minoritario de Tigray en el norte del país llegó al poder tras el derrocamiento del odioso régimen del Derg, liderado por Mengistu Haile Mariam (que hoy todavía disfruta de un retiro confortable en la Zimbabwe de Robert Mugabe).…  Seguir leyendo »

No one here knows the news. Not the locals and not the handful of anthropologists like myself scattered in this corner of rural Ethiopia.

The prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is missing, reported seriously ill and in a European hospital. I only caught wind of it as I boarded a plane to Addis Ababa and a Google alert came up in my e-mail. The official government spokesman painted a rosier picture: After 21 years of tireless service, doctors have advised him to rest for a few weeks to recover from health complications caused by overwork. We are assured everything is proceeding normally.…  Seguir leyendo »

Next time I travel to Ethiopia, I may be arrested as a terrorist. Why? Because I have published articles about Ethiopian politics.

I wrote a policy report on Ethiopia’s difficulties with federalism. I gave a talk in which I questioned Ethiopia’s May 2010 elections, in which the ruling EPRDF party (Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front) won 545 out of 547 seats in the Parliament. As part of my ongoing research on mass violence in the Somali territories, I interviewed members of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist rebel group in eastern Ethiopia that the government has designated as a terrorist organization.…  Seguir leyendo »

Little guys often make up in aggressiveness what they lack in size - and tiny Eritrea, the Horn of Africa's plucky bantam, is no exception. The Red Sea nation of 5 million people is currently engaged in verbal fisticuffs with the United Nations, the US government, and its giant neighbour, Ethiopia (population 77 million). As they say in boxing, it is ducking and weaving like a good 'un.The problem with this latest David and Goliath act by Eritrea's mercurial president, Isaias Afwerki, is that even the smallest miscalculation could bring disaster. An estimated 225,000 troops are now within glaring distance of each other along the disputed Eritrea-Ethiopia border.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nine years ago, two nations began the first modern war in sub-Saharan Africa, leaving in two years more than 100,000 dead. Today Eritrea and Ethiopia could reignite their old border conflict. Arms and money from radicals throughout the Middle East, as well as troops trained in Eritrea, have strengthened an insurgency in Ogaden Province, in southeastern Ethiopia.

A new war in the Horn of Africa would destabilize the region and bolster radical Islam’s push to build a Muslim caliphate.

Sadly, Congress is poised to fuel the march toward war by passing a bill that threatens to cut off technical assistance to Ethiopia, one of our closest allies, if it does not, among other things, release political prisoners, ensure that the judiciary operates independently and permit the news media to operate freely.…  Seguir leyendo »

In the world of palaeontology, Lucy is like Brangelina, Nelson Mandela and the Queen rolled into one. She is by far the most famous fossil in the world. She has the diminutive stature of a chimpanzee and a pelvis that suggests she walked upright; that combination makes her a platinum milestone along the path of human evolution.

And that is why the 3.2 million-year-old is leaving her home country of Ethiopia and embarking on a celebrity tour of America. The first stop on her six-year odyssey is the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where she went on display on Friday.

But some of the country’s most respected museums have refused to participate in what promises to be one of the most lucrative science exhibitions ever staged.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rising tensions in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, combined with chronic instability in neighbouring Somalia, Eritrean enmity, and human rights concerns, are testing US support for the Addis Ababa government led by Clinton-era good governance pin-up Meles Zenawi.

The Bush administration welcomed the recent release of 38 opposition politicians detained after violent protests over the conduct of elections in 2005. But it has kept quiet over Ethiopia's subsequent expulsion of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) workers from Ogaden's Somali regional state, following claims they were aiding Ogaden National Liberation Front separatists (ONLF).
The ICRC condemned Ethiopia's action, warning it would have "an inevitable, negative impact" on an already impoverished, largely nomadic population.…  Seguir leyendo »

"Get it done quickly and get out." That, says a senior U.S. diplomat here, was the goal of the little-noticed war that Ethiopia has been fighting, with American support, against Islamic extremists in Somalia. But this in-and-out strategy encounters the same real-world obstacles that America is facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Conflict is less the problem than what comes after it. That's the dilemma that America and its allies are discovering in a world where war-fighting and nation-building have become perversely mixed. It took the Ethiopians just a week to drive a Muslim radical movement known as the Islamic Courts from Mogadishu in December.…  Seguir leyendo »

This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly violated two UN security council resolutions. To complete the picture, one of these resolutions contravenes the charter itself.

The complete impunity with which Ethiopia and the transitional Somali government have been allowed to violate these resolutions explains the ruthlessness of the military assaults that have been under way for six weeks now.…  Seguir leyendo »

Somalia's internationally recognized government pulled off a stunning military victory over its Islamist rivals, taking control of the capital, Mogadishu, and the key port city of Kismayo last week. This may appear to bode well for the containment of Islamism on the Horn of Africa. But unless America plays a constructive role in Somalia’s next stage, the conflict could become a regional war and a new field of jihad.

The success of the Transitional Federal Government and its current prevalence were made possible entirely through the help of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, many of them trained and equipped by the United States.…  Seguir leyendo »

If the 20th century taught us anything, it was that powerful armies can be brought to their knees by small groups of fighters who are not afraid to die. Small Vietnam humiliated mighty America, and the "stone-age" mujahideen of Afghanistan sent the Soviet army packing. With all this so apparent, why has the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, sent his army into Somalia?The transitional government had been fighting a civil war against the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). Meles may think the former has the people's backing, but that poses the question: if it's so popular, why does it need the Ethiopian army to fight for it?…  Seguir leyendo »

Undeterred by the horrors and disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With US backing, Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.But this brazen US-sponsored bid to topple the popular Islamists who had brought Somalia its first peace and security in 16 years has already begun to backfire. Looting has forced the transitional government to declare a state of emergency. Clan warlords, who had terrorised Somalia until they were driven out by the Islamists this year, have begun carving up the city once again. And the African Union, which helped create the transitional government, has called for the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from the country, as did Kenya, a close US and Ethiopian ally.…  Seguir leyendo »