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AU, UN sanctions against Ethiopia can pre-empt looming border war
2005-10-31 07:17:19
By Editor
It is ironical, even shameful, that at a time when eastern and the Horn of African nations are beginning to experience relative peace, Ethiopia and Eritrea are readying themselves for a senseless war over a disputed border territory.
Ethiopia has already massed 60,000 troops along its border with Eritrea. Its mission this time round goes against a United Nations’ verdict that the disputed Assad territory belongs to the latter.
Ethiopia’s President Menes Zenawi, who is still smarting from a controversial election and has quite a few serious questions to answer regarding poll rigging, appears bent on diverting domestic attention from the questions his opponents and poll observers have raised by provoking Eritrea to war over the Assad region.
It is embarrassing that half of Ethiopia’s over 88 million population has no food and the number will soar if recent weather forecasts that eastern and the Horn of Africa face a serious drought that could impact adversely on agricultural output.
At global level, Ethiopia has one of the highest numbers of malnourished children, not to speak of the lot of children working in hazardous conditions to eke out a living.
Then there are the thousands of refugees in camps in Kenya, Sudan and Djibouti unable to return home because of political instability caused by decades of civil strife. The refugee camps are the only homes they know!
With a border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea imminent, the region should brace for an influx of more Ethiopians, victims of President Zenawi’s bellicose posturing.
With the war in Sudan over, save for the troubled Darfur region in the west, Somalia teetering between civil order and renewed anarchy, northern Uganda appeared to be the only trouble spot the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) would deal with.
Efforts to sort and quell the Ugandan rebellion were recently given a fillip when the UN issued a warrant for the hunt of the rebel leaders’ heads.
Igad, a grouping of eight African nations – Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti Eritrea and Kenya – successfully midwifed the Somali and Sudanese peace deals and the outcome was hailed as a homegrown solution to Africa’s festering domestic problems.
The war between Ethiopia and Eritrea comes at a time when a recent United Nations report shows that the frequency and ferocity of conflicts in Africa had dropped markedly over the past three years.
There is evidence to back up the report. Insurgencies in Mozambique and Angola is no more; Rwanda and Burundi, save for sporadic flare ups, are enjoying some peace; Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Liberia are on course to peace.
DR Congo is not engulfed in a vicious war as it was three years ago, although the east remains palpable.
Needless to say, Africa’s longest war, the southern Sudan rebellion, came to an end last year and it is just a matter of time before Africa’s ’’forgotten’’ war – the Western Sahara’s Polisario Front’s quest for autonomy from Morocco comes to an end.
Why Zenawi relishes a relapse into the deathly past is difficult to guess, let alone understand. That the Ethiopian leader has defied a UN ruling and dispatched troops into the buffer zone patrolled by the UN peacekeeping force sends out a chilling message that Addis Ababa is not ready for lasting peace with Eritrea.
Thankfully, Eritrea’s President Isaiahs Afeworki has been slow in reacting to Ethiopian aggression, or else we would be talking about a full-scale war.
Addis Ababa should be made to account for its threat to peace in the region.
The way to do so is for the United Nations and the African Union, whose headquarters, incidentally, Ethiopia hosts, to impose tough economic sanctions against this Horn of Africa warmonger.
Zenawi’s latest round of jingoism is not only a shame to Africa, but to the civilised world too. For how long will Ethiopia’s neighbours feed and shelter innocent civilians fleeing a war they have no stake in?
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