Ethiopia: Feed them and bleed them

"Western donors continue to hand out billions of dollars in ‘humanitarian’ and ‘economic’ aid to Ethiopia’s Zenawi regime each year, turning a blind eye to the fact that their handouts are propping up a repressive dictatorship" The helping hand that feeds Ethiopians is the same hand that helps bleed Ethiopia. Every year, the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan and other Western countries hand out billions of dollars in ‘humanitarian’ and ‘economic’ aid to the regime of dictator-in-chief Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia. Every year, these donors turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the notorious fact that their handouts are used to prop up and fortify a repressive one-man, one-party totalitarian dictatorship. Today, Western donors have collectively embraced the proverbial principle to ‘see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil’ of what their ‘aid’ money is doing in Ethiopia. Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) pried open Western donors' eyes to see the havoc their aid money is wreaking in Ethiopia and unplugged their ears to hear the truth about the evil they are helping to spread throughout that poor country. In a report entitled, Development Without Freedom [1], HRW sketched out the architecture of a vast kleptocracy (government of thieves) whose lifeblood is continuous and massive infusion of foreign aid. The report represents a devastating indictment of Western donors and their client regime for crimes that, if committed in the donor countries, would constitute Class A felonies: ‘Led by the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the government has used donor-supported programs, salaries, and training opportunities as political weapons to control the population, punish dissent, and undermine political opponents–both real and perceived. Local officials deny these people access to seeds and fertilizer, agricultural land, credit, food aid, and other resources for development. Such politicization has a direct impact on the livelihoods of people for whom access to agricultural inputs is a matter of survival. It also contributes to a broader climate of fear, sending a potent message that basic survival depends on political loyalty to the state and the ruling party.’ HRW charges that Zenawi's regime has used Western aid to benefit its supporters by giving them special access to micro-credit (small loans designed for poor households) loans and benefits under the productive safety net program (multi-year cash payments to those vulnerable to famine to avoid disaster from food shortage emergencies). The regime has misused state educational facilities for political purposes and engaged in systematic political indoctrination of students, repression of teachers and purging of individuals who are unwilling to support the ruling party from their jobs. In sum, after 19 years and ‘investing’ US$26 billion in ‘aid’, the crowning achievement of Western aid in Ethiopia is the establishment and entrenchment of a one-man, one-party totalitarian state! The Western donors refuse to accept any responsibility for the misuse and abuse of their aid money in Ethiopia; and the conspiracy of silence to cover up the ugly facts uncovered by HRW continues. A few days after HRW released its report, a gathering of vulturous poverty pimps known as the Development Assistance Group (DAG) representing donor states issued a statement denying the undeniable. ‘We do not concur with the conclusions of the recent HRW report regarding widespread, systematic abuse of development aid in Ethiopia. Our study did not generate any evidence of systematic or widespread distortion.’ [2] DAG co-chair Samuel Nyambi was manifestly dismissive of HRW's findings when he arrogantly proclaimed that ‘development partners have built into the programmes they support monitoring and safeguard mechanisms that give a reasonable assurance that resources are being used for their intended purposes.’ In DAG-istan, what HRW found and reported simply could not happen. HRW made it all up! The report is all lies and fabrications! The fact of the matter is that it is in DAG's self-interest to bury the truth and keep covering it up even when the truth it is exhumed for public display. For DAG to acknowledge any part of the HRW evidence is tantamount to self-incrimination. They could never admit that the things HRW reported occurred under their watch. As the HRW reports demonstrates, DAG and the donor countries ‘have done little to address the problem [aid abuse/misuse] or tackle their own role in underwriting government repression… even though they recognize [civil and political rights] to be central to sustainable socioeconomic development.’ Huddled together in DAG-istan, the poverty pimps have collectively resolved to continue to do their usual aid business in Ethiopia because ‘broad economic progress outweighs individual political freedoms’. In ‘their eagerness to show progress in Ethiopia, aid officials are shutting their eyes to the repression lurking behind the official statistics.’ They say ‘their programs are working well and that aid was not being 'distorted.' They refuse to carry ‘out credible, independent investigations into the problem.’ The ‘donor country legislatures and audit institutions [have failed] to examine development aid to Ethiopia to ensure that it is not supporting political repression.’ They refuse to ‘wake up to the fact that some of their aid is contributing to human rights abuses’ in Ethiopia. The Western donors have ignored calls to ‘seriously weigh the impact that their funding has on bolstering repressive structures and practices in Ethiopia.’ They are unwilling to do a ‘fundamental re-thinking of their strategy.’