Badr Magazine 23 (Aug. 2014)
በድር መጽሔት፤ (ነሐሴ 2006)
Abadir M. Ibrahim*
In his Accra speech and, to some extent, in his Cairo speech, President Barack Obama put forward a message that African activists and scholars have been reiterating for decades. He took a shot at, among others, African dictators and kleptocrats who blame colonialism and the cold war for their own failures and excesses. The factual accuracy of the contemporary irrelevance of colonialism or the cold war is at best sketchy as colonial borders are still in existence and the effects of the cold-war are still pungent. Notwithstanding this important fact; the message of his speech was very powerful: Africans must take hold of their own destiny and look to the future rather than the past. However, a caveat President Obama could not have mentioned is that one of the things African human rights and democracy activists must withstand is the unruly enforcement of U.S. counterterrorism policy which is strengthening the hands and hearts of the same dictators he criticized.
The threat of terrorism of the Qaeda variant to countries in the Horn of Africa and to U.S. interests is immense. These are indeed difficult times for many African countries, especially in those with significant Muslim populations. Putting aside North Africa, Djubuti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and even Uganda, have seen some form of violence directly related to radical Islamist groups. While the U.S. lends a welcome support to African states in fighting terrorist organizations, it is interesting how the people living in these countries, and not least democracy and human rights activists, might not appreciate these efforts. The primary reason for this is that the U.S. often ends up supporting regimes that continue to cause their populations intense and prolonged suffering – or one should say – cause the root causes of terrorism. There are signs that this may be already the case in the Horn region and especially recently in relation to Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian regime has been a very important ally of the U.S. in the Horn of Africa, not only because Ethiopia is the largest and a comparatively more “stable” country in the Horn, but because it has been a vital windbreak against the expansion of Al-Qaeda’s influence in the region. The most audacious act of the Ethiopian regime that earned it the status as an indispensable ally was its invasion of neighboring Somalia to rid it of radical groups that, at the time, were controlling most of the country. While American alliance with Ethiopia is understandable from a short-term strategic point of view, the fact that Ethiopia is also a neopatrimonial dictatorship causes one to pause and think about what the long term consequences of such an alliance could be. There is no doubt that the U.S. has supported the Ethiopian regime in actual counterterrorism. However, it is also clear that the Ethiopian regime has been able to turn its new found counterterrorism resources and narratives towards its peaceful opponents and critics. The problem has been especially acute in relation to Ethiopia’s Muslim human rights activists whom the regime has found convenient to label as terrorists and subject them to terrorism trials.
Tension between the Ethiopian regime and large segments of its Muslim population arose when the regime took inane steps that are possible only under dictatorships. It decided that it will counter what it claims to be a local radical Islamist threat by forcefully propagating a sect alleged to be an adversary of radical Islamism i.e. the Ahbash sect of Lebanon. The same year that the government was making outlandish claims about impending Salafi radicalization and attendant threats, however, a book containing detailed empirical data was published by an independent scholar showing that the government’s claims could not have been true. According to this book, and according to later academic article, it is clear that not only is it untrue that the country faced imminent violence from Salafi organizations but it is in fact the unjustified violence from the government that could sow the seeds of radicalization in the future.
As may be expected, of course, the government’s ploy at social engineering has raised outrage on the side of Ethiopians, both Muslim and Non-Muslim, and has led to the most protracted same-issue protests in the country. At the time of writing protests were still going on and so were the persecution of protestors and activists. In response to the peaceful protests, the Ethiopian government unleashed an “Anti-Terrorism” campaign which saw security agencies perpetrate violence against peaceful critics of the government’s involvement in the praxis of takfir and excommunication. It was not uncommon for the government to crackdown on organized interest groups in the country in the name of protecting the constitutional-order. However, this was the first time that the regime would explicitly get in the business of the cosmic-order. Not only did it deploy Ahbash henchmen at its side but even the security agencies began getting involved in factional polemics.
These Muslim-constituency based protests are unique and interesting in many respects. First, unlike in most religiously oriented movements in the region, Ethiopian Muslim protesters and activists were calling for greater secularization rather than the infusion of religion into law and politics. Second, U.S. hegemony has not been an issue with Ethiopia’s Muslims. As a matter of fact, protesters have been trying to bring U.S. influence to bear on their side. The movement is also supported by Ethiopian communities in the U.S. who profess to deriving inspiration from the civil rights movement. Third, so far, protests have been distinctively peaceful, more peaceful than previous protest movements in the country, more peaceful than the ones that brought down Mubarak or Ben Ali and certainly more peaceful than the U.S. civil rights movement. Fourth, although initially confined to Muslims, it looks as if support for the Muslim protests has now gone mainstream. Backing is given to the protesters by major political parties with Christian constituencies and by prominent Christian community leaders. Support for the Muslim protest movement has therefore defied religious, ethnic and sectarian lines.
The peaceful nature of the Muslim protest movement and the impropriety of the crackdown against it have been widely recognized in human rights circles as confirmed by public statements by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Different U.S. agencies have also spoken against the Ethiopian regime’s excesses, in effect, providing third party confirmation of the legitimacy and the peaceful nature of this movement. For example, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recognized the peaceful nature of the protests and expressed concern over “increasing deterioration of religious freedoms.” The U.S. Department of State, on the other hand, has recognized that the trials of Muslim protesters are politically motivated.
Despite recognizing the violation of human rights, the U.S. has not made visible attempts to dissuade the Ethiopian government from violating its own citizens’ rights or abusing the counter-terrorism resources, capabilities and the narrative provided by the U.S. In a recent visit to Ethiopia, John Kerry made numerous speeches without reaching out to the Muslim community whose leaders were at the time sitting in cells tending to their tortured bodies. By not making a stand against the abuse of religious freedom and other rights, the U.S. may be undermining its own core interests and the region’s stability in the long run. It should be conceded that U.S. military support to Ethiopia can hold-off immediate collapse of a country that is considered to be among the most fragile in the world as revealed, among others, by the indices compiled by Foreign Policy, the Fund for Peace, and the Center for Systematic Peace. However, the long term stability of Ethiopia will depend on greater protection of human rights, safeguarding interests of major socio-political groups, decreasing group grievances, and increasing elite consensus and state legitimacy.
In the long run, both Ethiopia and the U.S. risk the permeation of radicalism for which fertile ground is provided by the alienation of large constituencies and especially the Muslim population of the country. There simply was and is no good reason to create concrete and personal local grievances where there are none. It would be unreasonable to expect the U.S. to cease promoting its core interests in favor of the promotion of its peripheral interests such as the protection of human rights. However, prioritizing the buildup of security infrastructure at the expense of other stability factors is, in the long run, detrimental to the core and strategic interests themselves.
While one could genuinely be concerned that U.S. policymakers might not be aware of, or do not personally care about the long term effects of their shortsighted policies; it is impossible to impute such distance and detachment to Ethiopian decision makers. Not only are Ethiopians personally closer to the facts and should be aware of them, Ethiopians should be concerned about the wellbeing of their own citizens. Terrorist attacks or police/army brutality hurt us in very personal and direct ways. The current shortsighted policies are currently exposing us to the later while only delaying the former.
A politically unstable security state that nervously awaits the next wave of political and civil strife should understand that the more time passes the more political and social trust among different groups will erode. With such erosion the chances of political stability are increasingly compromised. Without trust or political stability the strength of the security forces will only go so far. Let the recent experience of countries like Mali and Nigeria be a lesson. Both, known for their security centric stability and for contributing peacekeepers to ensure the stability of other countries, were unable to do anything in the face of their own deterioration. Soldiers and guns will always remain to be necessary to keep the peace, but they are not sufficient in themselves to build a country. For this lesson we only need to look back to our own history!
* Abadir M. Ibrahim is J.S.D. candidate; L.L.M in intercultural human rights law; LL.M. in international law; L.L.B.