in bed with the devil?

It’s funny how often a ‘poster boy for good governance’ turns out to be  yet another autocrat when the going gets tough. Funny how so many of them seem to immune from serious criticism (never mind sanctions) when they claim their actions are just part of the ‘War on Terror’.

Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia overthrew the dictator Mengistu Haile-Mariam, started to institute democratic reforms, accepted the demands of the World Bank and got himself onto Tony Blair’s Africa Commission. Then in 2005 he’s alleged to have fixed the election. In the demostrations that followed nearly 200 protestors were killed and thousands were detained.

Currently, seventy-six opposition leaders and journalists are standing trial for treason and ‘attempted genocide’. The Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) claims several of their supporters had been shot dead in a series of extra-judicial killings, and that some forty others are detained incommunicado and subject to torture. The government. The government says: ‘We have arrested people related to the terror plot only.’

Meanwhile, Meles is busy positioning himself as America’s key ally in the Horn of Africa through his actions in Somalia.