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Though rhetorically challenged by Senator Feingold on Somalia, Jendeyi Frazer was given free reign to paint the Ethiopian regime as the only hope for peace and stability in the Horn of Africa and scapegoat Eritrea as a regional spoiler to peace. How ironic. I guess the best way to hide the truth is to just state the opposite.
The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa held a hearing to review U.S. foreign policy in the Horn of Africa on Tuesday March 11. Chairmen Feingold's admonishment of Ethiopia a few days before the hearing provided some hope to the Somalis, Oromos, and Eritreans packed the hearing room to standing room capacity.
Unfortunately none of the senators even mentioned HR 2003, a house bill that restricts US funding to the Ethiopian military, which has been stalled in the Senate. What the crowd got was good rhetoric on Somalia and ridiculous
unchallenged characterizations by panelist Frazer, the head Bush administration diplomat to Africa, about how Eritrea destabilizes the region.
In response to a simple question by Maryland Senator Ben Cardin regarding how realistic US efforts for peace in the Ogaden (a region the size of Texas) are Frazer fumbled response before finally concluding that the only real way to stop the violence in the Ogaden is to normalize relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia so Eritrea stops helping the Ogaden rebels.
Once Eritrea is out of the picture – poof - one of the world's worst humanitarian crises will just disappear. Never mind Ethiopia's year long blockade of trade and humanitarian aid, banishment of all international
human rights observers including UN officials, and the numerous massacres and public hangings, the decades of struggle between the Ogaden people and the Ethiopian central government. The Senators just ignorantly allowed this shameless scapegoating.
Though most of the hearing was related to Somalia, Frazer managed to consistently paint Eritrea as an isolated country acting as a spoiler to peace in the Horn through its support of "insurgents", while Ethiopia tirelessly fought against terrorists in Somalia and irrational rebel
movements. Maybe the Olympics should give her a gold metal in gymnastics for the way she flipped the truth.
First, Eritrea has done more for peace in the Horn of Africa than Ethiopia or US can even dream of. Eritrea is the key player in negotiating peace agreement between Eastern rebels and the Sudanese central government and
continues to help see the implementation through. This is the only lasting peace agreement between any of the major rebel movements in Sudan and the central government, which we are reminded of as we watch the US brokered North South Sudanese peace agreement fail and Darfur rage on. The EU even lauded Eritrea for its role and has pleaded with Eritrea to help with the Darfur peace negotiations which Eritrea now plays a prominent role.
Second, Eritrea in 2007 organized a hugely successful reconciliation conference held in Asmara with the broadest level of Somali leaders seen since the beginning of hostilities last year. Mind you, this is at a time when Frazer and Meles publicly failed, after multiple postponements, to hold a Somali reconciliation conference to help mend the discord they helped to create between the Somali people.
Frazer's continued the hypocrisy during the hearing by saying Eritrea would not let the Somali leaders leave Eritrea. The Somalis in the room did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Thirdly, Frazer, along with other panelists, also tried to imply that Eritrea was isolated internationally because "the US has absolutely no influence over the Eritrean government." What a standard. You know there are
other countries in the world besides the US and Ethiopia. Eritrea has seen tremendous improvement in diplomacy with the EU, China, and Middle Eastern countries (Dubia, Iran, etc…) who all invest and participate in Eritrea's
national development program. In the Horn, the Sudanese Eritrean border has reopened and trade is picking up, Somalis and the clear majority of the Ethiopian ethnic groups have close ties and even diplomatic offices in
Asmara.
As for Eritrea's support of Somali "terrorists"… Even Frazer has discontinued her grandiose statement that Eritrea should be on the official state sponsor of terrorism list. Looks like that ploy didn't pass the
straight face test. She even discreetly scaled down her claim of Eritrean support of Somalians to just saying that Eritrea funds Somali insurgents and "might" have trained some. But stay tuned, there's plenty of new distortions and transpositions of facts to come.
I wish the Senators were listening when Frazer, before the Ethiopian invasion, said there were 5,000 Eritrean troops in Somalia. How did you get that number? Where did they go? Did you let them all go? Did the US fighter jets wave to them as they flew back to Asmara? You would think Senators like Russ Feingold would know to ask Bush administration officials these type questions, especially after the trumped up Iraq and Iran intelligence reports.
Meanwhile, Frazer continued to regard the Ethiopian regime as the US's only real ally for peace and stability in the Horn. Funny how supporting an ethno centric minority regime that represents at best 5% of the Ethiopian population and has been in the center of the largest humanitarian crises in the world during 2007 is seen as our best hope for peace and stability. The US could do more for peace and stability in the Horn of Africa by simply discontinuing military funding for the regime which has initiating every
major crises in the Horn during 2007 (hint, hint, HR 2003).
No, but according to Senator Feingold, the Bush administration is asking Congress for a seven fold increase in funding for Ethiopia while actually decreasing the overall funding for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. So let me get this straight, the military responsible for far and away most war crimes during 2007 gets a seven fold increase in funding from the US in 2008. Interesting. God knows how many more innocent people Meles can massacre in the Ogaden and Somalia with this US tax payer manna.
So I was relieved to hear from multiple panelists that as compared to every other nation in sub-Saharan Africa, the US has the least amount of influence over the Eritrea government. Of course, this was depicted as a negative. As
if US political leverage with Eritrea through huge aid packages will lead to peace and security for Eritreans as it has for Ethiopians…
Similarly, near the end of the hearing, panelists David Shinn, former US ambassador to Ethiopia, said it was very "notable" that the Eritrean government would not accept large sums of aid unless it concluded the aid
was in the long term interest of Eritrea. What a crime, a government that isn't willing to pimp itself out to disastrous foreign interests.
Note to Feingold, a Senate interested in long-term peace and security in the Horn might want to support the forces of peace and security instead of banking rolling butchers.
Yohannes Sium
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