Analysis: New Ethiopian policy to handle disaster risk

from ReliefWeb

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

GAMBELLA, 27 September 2010 (IRIN) - Huge bonfires mark the Orthodox Christian feast day of Meskel on 27 September, which coincides with the end of the rainy season in the highlands of Ethiopia. This year rains were good; too good in some places.

The residents of the Cheffa Valley, some 350km northeast of Addis Ababa, will no doubt celebrate the end of the rains. When floods hit the area in late August [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=90287 ], buildings collapsed, houses filled with mud and some villages had to be abandoned while women and children camped at a school and men slept out with their livestock.

Adam Mustafa, 80, said the floods were the worst in his lifetime, a punishment from God; other residents blamed bad management of drainage canals and excessive run-off from the degraded highlands. Local officials blamed a changing climate.

Whatever the causes, help came from local government, welfare groups, the military, local business, UN agencies and international NGOs. A relatively small but effective operation provided immediate help with food, plastic sheeting, clothing, blankets, soap, water purification and healthcare. Military helicopters ferried supplies to stranded villages.

The valley was one of dozens of places across the country to face floods in 2010. Overall this year, the government estimates several hundred thousand people will be affected, while tens of thousands have been forced to leave their homes, at least temporarily, in seven regions. Floods continue to threaten some parts of lowland areas in the Somali and Gambella regions.

Disaster strategy

A new government strategy is under development to establish new systems to tackle perennial hazards including drought, floods and disease outbreaks.

Well-fed by rivers from the highlands on both sides, the broad Cheffa valley, green and sometimes swampy, has obvious agricultural potential - a thin furze of seedlings of a staple crop, teff, is sprouting in the alluvial soils of the flood plain. Some farmers are doing their first weeding, but the floods washed away their earlier planting attempts and they said they could not afford to buy more seeds. Longer-term recovery needs, such as seeds, will take longer to mobilize, local official Jibril Osman Wado told IRIN.

"If this situation continues yearly," said Wado, "farmers will find it difficult to survive." Wado is the zonal head of disaster prevention and food security headquartered in the town of Kemisse.

Health workers were still trying to dry out the files and stores at Kemisse's health centre. Fridges, supplies, drugs, computers and paperwork were swamped. Vacuum tubes for blood samples were caked in mud, medical records turned to pulp and operations disrupted.

"I feel for the patients who were sent back without service," said health centre administrator Hussein Said.

Handling the threat of floods - often overlapping with other natural or man-made emergencies - demands a coherent government response and the sound management of domestic and international resources.

But local officials are careful not to overplay the flooding situation - although it is "challenging", according to Wado - and to emphasise the importance of a recovery plan.

An ability to take relatively small disasters in stride is part of the government's "Disaster Risk Management" approach - a policy framework which looks at the cycle of preventing, mitigating and recovering from disasters in a coherent way.

Drawing on the "Hyogo Framework" [ http://www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/hfa.htm ], developed at the 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Japan, Ethiopia's draft policy promises a "paradigm shift". After decades of emergency and reactive relief operations, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said this month the country would no longer need food aid by 2015. The new policy marks an effort to break with the past, by prioritizing national preparedness and engaging the private and voluntary sectors and international agencies only where needed. In the past, "the disaster response structure was excessively reliant on external resources", the document states.

Coping better with disaster - and being seen to do so - is a key government objective, observers say.

Image issues

To the chagrin of Ethiopia's leadership, who have now been in power longer than the former regime of Mengistu Hailemariam, overthrown in 1991, the country struggles to shake off an association with starvation and beggary, analysts told IRIN.

This has been a good year for food security in the whole region but despite the good weather, Ethiopia's vulnerabilities - food insecurity being the most serious - have not gone away. In a country of some 80m, with two million more mouths to feed every year, even a small percentage of needy people translates into a formidable burden.

According to government figures, some five million Ethiopians - about 6 percent - require emergency food aid in 2010, amounting to some 650,000MT (3 percent of the projected national crop production of 18m MT). A further 7.5m people who are chronically food-insecure receive cash or food assistance through the government's Productive Safety Net Programme.

Ethiopia, whose modern history has been closely entwined with drought and food shortages, has been the scene of innovative programmes to mitigate food and climate risk: weather and risk insurance, safety nets, cash transfers and public works programmes.

The government has retooled its disaster response architecture several times since the creation of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) in the 1970s. In the latest policy a new Federal Disaster Risk Management Council, chaired by Meles, is proposed as the top decision-making body.

Numbers of those in need (and the definition of need), statistics about levels of malnutrition and the prevalence of diseases are closely managed and their political and diplomatic impact closely monitored, aid workers and observers told IRIN.

Some aid workers worry, however, that in the drive to shed the image of a country perennially in crisis and needing foreign emergency aid, the government is too quick to minimize problems.

The 2010 Humanitarian Requirements Document prepared by the government and its international partners refers to a "shift in targeting of beneficiaries for various interventions"; by using a new way of defining those who are eligible for food aid, the head count of the needy fell by hundreds of thousands.

Some aid workers worry that the very poor may lose out in the drive to show progress away from relief dependency.

A humanitarian observer told IRIN the government's approach was to "vapourize" any notion of Ethiopian dependency on emergency handouts.

Just as if it were thrown on a Meskel bonfire.

bp/mw

Mugabe's darkest secret: An £800bn blood diamond mine he's running with China's Red Army

Editors Note: I like this story cause it holds water in other African cases too.Ours(Ethiopia) is a typical example of hidden inter-party and regime deals are sealed with China on resources and bids .

By Andrew Malone

Across a remote tract of southern Africa, naturally fortified by mountains and patrolled by hundreds of soldiers with dogs trained to tear intruders apart, teams of mining experts are hard at work.

Yet they are not speakers of Shona, the native language of this land on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. No, thousands of miles from home, under a broiling African sun, these slim, pale-skinned figures are members of the Chinese military.

Working alongside henchmen from one of Africa’s most murderous regimes — headed by Robert Mugabe — the Chinese are here to oversee Beijing’s investment in the world’s most controversial commodity: blood diamonds.

High-ranking officials of China’s People’s Liberation Army, they have been striving to escape detection for their role in this blood-thirsty — but hugely lucrative — trade.

For here, carved out of the African bush, is a runway big enough for huge cargo planes. There is also sophisticated radar equipment, a fully-operational control tower and comfortable barracks for the Chinese officials overseeing the entire operation.

And twice a week, its wings wobbling on waves of thermals rising from this scorching corner of the continent, an Antonov An-12 cargo plane can be heard droning towards the airstrip.

The Antonov — developed by the Soviets and, like so much else, copied by the Chinese and manufactured en masse — carries men and equipment from a secret military airbase outside Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, whose job is to tear the gems from the earth. It deposits between eight and ten Chinese military officials, who work overseeing members of the Zimbabwean military, as well as local labour who work at gunpoint in slave conditions.

The departing flights leave with rough, uncut diamonds worth millions.

No flight plans are filed and there are no records of these trips. Such secrecy — and sophisticated organisation — is understandable. This is the centre of diamond fever, and the scene of the biggest diamond heist in history.

Here, at the Marange diamond fields in the far southeast of Zimbabwe, where four planes bound direct for China have thundered out of the secret bush runway already this year, astonishing natural wealth has been found in the soil. Indeed, so common are diamonds here that, for many years, local children used the ‘hard stones’ in catapults to hunt birds, not realising that they were firing unimaginable riches into the sky.

Searching for hope: Zimbabweans rummage through the dirt for diamonds before Mr Mugabe found out about mine. Now the area is considered a military zone - with people beaten to death who enter

But stomach-gnawing poverty — life expectancy here has halved to just 35 since Mugabe came to power in 1980 — led to a local diamond rush as news spread that riches were to be found.

Professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and plumbers as well as other workers all descended on the fields four years ago, hoping to find enough stones in the earth to survive as the country’s currency collapsed, with worthless notes blowing through the streets.

Yet all their hopes were crushed when Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the 86-year-old Zimbabwean president, and his ruling military junta, also came to hear of the rumours of such wealth.

Mugabe’s military — many of whom have been given training in torture techniques in China — reacted in characteristically brutal fashion, shooting hundreds of people, setting Alsatian dogs on others and raping women and children.

They wanted the diamonds for themselves. The carnage had the desired effect: the poor and wretched were driven from the fields, leaving the way clear for Zimbabwe’s military chiefs to move in.

Today, the fields are a military zone — and anyone caught there faces being beaten to death.

The reason for the secrecy became apparent during an undercover investigation at the fields, where I found conclusive evidence of collusion between China and Mugabe.
In an official — but highly-confidential — agreement between the two countries, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Mugabe’s military chiefs are plundering this diamond find, believed to be the biggest in the history of the world and worth an estimated £800 billion.

So vast are the riches that diamond experts believe the gems from Marange — in a country of less than ten million people — could account for more than a quarter of all diamonds mined around the globe, and could even trigger a massive slump in diamond prices if the stones come on the market and cause a glut.

Not that the people of Zimbabwe will see any of these riches. Instead, in return for the gems, the Chinese are paying Mugabe’s thugs in guns and ammunition, ensuring his regime can stay in power despite international condemnation of his atrocities.

The two countries — both with appalling human-rights records — are involved in a vile scramble for loot at Marange, and there is clear evidence that Mugabe and his generals are also personally stealing millions from the trade.

Secret documents obtained by the Mail reveal that the company given the rights to the diamond fields —called Mbada Diamond Company — is fronted by Mugabe’s trusted former personal helicopter pilot, with Chinese military officials as silent partners.

The documents reveal that the pilot — Robert Mhlanga, who has no experience of mining — was personally appointed by Mugabe, with Chinese partners named as Deng Hongyan, Zhang Shibin, Zhang Hui, Jiang Zhaoyao and Cheng Qins. With military camps set up around the perimeter, and three separate fences erected to keep out smugglers and spies, local villagers told me appalling stories of how they have been driven from the land at gunpoint.

Soldiers set their dogs on one girl, who was mauled and killed in front of her parents. The military said this was a warning to others to keep away from the fields; at least seven people caught near the fields were killed by the military in the last month alone and their bodies dumped

Lucky Sibanda, a local man, showed me the wounds on his back where he was attacked by dogs after the military caught him by the fields. ‘These Chinese men have hard hearts,’ he said. ‘They are taking away diamonds that could save this country. I hate them.’

The disclosures make a mockery of the decision by the Kimberley Process — the diamond watchdog set up in the wake of the diamond war in Sierra Leone — to allow Mugabe to sell gems from Marange — which is in the remotest, most inaccessible part of his impoverished nation.

And it comes as the issue is once again in the spotlight following supermodel Naomi Campbell’s controversial appearance at the war-crimes trial of Charles Taylor, the cannibal warlord who funded the bloodshed and slaughter of more than 200,000 people in Sierra Leone in a battle over diamonds.

For, while Mugabe insists these diamonds will be for benefit of his people, the truth is they are already being used to fund a war chest designed to keep him and his generals in power, while millions more are siphoned into their personal accounts.
That much was made clear to me during a chilling conversation I had as night fell this week near the diamond fields.

There, at a meeting in a car on deserted waste ground — set up after tortuous negotiations through a go-between — one of Mugabe’s most senior intelligence chiefs rubbed his hands with glee at the deal with the Chinese, and told me the weapons were being handed out to the military in preparation for a brutal new crackdown against opponents.

‘There is a memorandum of understanding between China and Zimbabwe — Beijing supplies weapons to us, and we allow them to mine diamonds.’ As well as paying a share of the diamond profits to Mugabe’s regime, he confirmed that China has agreed to supply military hardware to Zimbabwe.
‘It is a government-to-government deal,’ the official said. ‘It has been signed at the highest level.

Mocking the ‘monkeys in the West’ who have been outraged by Mugabe’s brutality, my source — a cold-hearted killer — predicted that the diamond deal with Beijing would mean they could stay in power indefinitely.

‘You can write 1,000 stories, and print them 1,000 times, but it won’t make any difference,’ smirked the official. ‘We have all the diamonds, so we have all the weapons — and we will kill anyone who tries to take anything from us.’

During an hour-long conversation, the intelligence source — whose identity I know, but who insisted I do not use his name or rank — also admitted that, without the Chinese pact, the ruling junta would have been driven from power. ‘But now we have all the guns we need,’ he said.

Of course, Zimbabwe is not Sierra Leone, where Taylor’s forces drove civilians from diamond fields there, brutally cutting off the arms of thousand of people. Mugabe, who is reported to be in poor health, is far too clever for that.

Never killing so many, or so openly, that the West would be forced to intervene, he has become Africa’s second-longest-serving leader by quietly terrorising the population, killing opponents and using his dreaded secret police, rather than wholesale slaughtering — with the exception of 25,000 members of the Ndebele tribe he murdered in the Eighties.

The country is run as a personal fiefdom for Mugabe and his military junta, all of whom live in palatial homes and expect a personal cut from every aspect of the country’s wealth — from road ‘tolls’ raising millions and going to their personal accounts, to companies set up to capitalise on the diamond find.

‘Just because they are crooks, doesn’t mean they aren’t clever crooks,’ says one veteran underground Zimbabwe journalist. ‘These guys were trained by the North Koreans and at Nanking Military Academy in China. They are thugs, but smart — that’s why they are so scary.’

To protect their wealth and grip on power, the junta runs three different intelligence services, hundreds of thousands strong. Countless opposition politicians have been murdered, not to mention hundreds of white farmers.

A human rights activist was jailed and tortured last month for giving Kimberley Process officials details of abuses at the fields, including the torture and murder of gwejas — illegal miners caught in the area.

The arms-for-diamonds deal between Zimbabwe and China was set up by General Constantine Chiwenga, a brutal killer and one of the so-called ‘dirty half-dozen’ military chiefs who run the country for Mugabe.

Believing the Chinese would be ‘more disciplined’ in extracting diamonds, Chiwenga struck the deal with Beijing during a trip to China last year in order to control sales for his personal benefit and that of Mugabe, who has more than £1.5 billion hidden in secret Asian bank accounts.

Already, an operation is underway to hide the bloodshed and abuses at Marange ahead of a series of visits planned by Kimberley Monitors to decide whether diamond sales should continue.

Mocking those ‘fools’, my source — who reports directly to Chiwenga — sniggered that they would just show officials ‘the good bits’ and would make sure that any traces of brutality were hidden.

Asked if he believed these stones are ‘blood diamonds’, the thug laughed again. ‘This is a military operation, not a civilian operation, and that means that of course they are. Are you a fool?’

Not that a worldwide ban on Zimbabwean stones would stop the flow of diamonds out of Marange. Gripped by diamond fever, even these Chinese communists are trying to make money on the side.

I watched as two Chinese officials approached illegal diamond smugglers at a notorious trading point just outside the Marange perimeter. They left after purchasing uncut gems for their own private sales.

As well as flying diamonds out directly from Marange, other shipments are taken out via a military base near Harare, while lorry loads of soil from the diamond fields are trucked overland to a port in Mozambique, and then shipped for processing on Chinese soil.

And, at a town called Manica, just over the border in Mozambique, Chinese and Lebanese dealers run an international smuggling hub, mopping up any diamonds being sold by the few gwejas still brave enough to risk their lives at the field.

Once the diamonds are cut, the best stones for rings and other jewellery are sold back into the diamond network through dealers in India and the Middle East. Commercial grade stones are used in industry, helping fuel China’s rise as a superpower.

During a visit to one infamous Lebanese dealer, who was surrounded by armed guards, I was told simply: ‘I don’t want to talk. If you have diamonds, show me them. If you don’t have any, leave. Now.’

My gruesome military source was correct: it is impossible to police these diamonds, whatever the Kimberley Process decides.

Borders are porous; officials are corrupt. I was offered blood diamonds within ten minutes of arriving in Manica.

Perhaps now is the time for a new ethical debate: should diamonds now forever be associated with, quite literally, having blood on one’s hands?

Only consumers can decide; Zimbabwe’s dead can’t.

ICC to open liaison office in front of genocide suspect PM

ICC President Sang-Hyun Song and African Union Commission Chairperson Jean Ping meeting in Addis Ababa (AU Website)

By Ankober

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is set to establish a liaison office in Addis Ababa to serve as its branch office in Africa, sources confirm.

Judge Sang-Hyun Song, President of the ICC, concluded a two day visit to the headquarters of the African Union(AU) in Addis Abeba and met with its Commission Chairperson Jean Ping, who reiterated the body’s commitment to end impunity, two months ago. The Economist in its issue on the week of the 20th June 2010 had also reported about the opening of the branch.

“How can such a big organisation that fights genocide, open an office in front of Africa’s top genocide perpetrator, Meles ?’’ our source posited.

While the letter by Genocide Watch sent in March 2009 to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, asking for a full investigation into the Ethiopian government’s complicity in widespread crimes against humanity is still hanging, the opening of the Branch in Addis Ababa just because it is the seat of the African Union is a travesty of justice for some of our respondents.

They added that organisations like Genocide Watch and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE) need to press ICC to stop from opening its branch in Addis Abeba before the full investigations of the High Commissioner are finalized.

“African states had feared that The Hague was stalling on financing a launch to the liaison office after African countries collectively resolved not to cooperate with the ICC in arresting and handing over Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir who is wanted by the court for war crimes he allegedly committed in Darfur.” Sudan Tribune reported.

The International Criminal Court is the only permanent international court established with the mission to help put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes, namely the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes.

Foreigners engaged in banking in Ethiopia, law prohibits

By Ankober

The banking sector in Ethiopia has been protected from involvement of foreigners and bankers by Banking Proclamation No. 1984.However, negating this Proclamation, the government in Ethiopia has been illegally allowing foreigners and foreign banks to invest in the sector.

Although, the regime and its ideologues have in various forums staunchly argued that the opening of the banking and telecommunication sectors to private or foreign investors would hazard the country security, economy and basically opposes their political ideology, since few years, a growing number of foreign owned banks and foreigners are being involved in the business sector.

For many, the 2007 announcement by Commerzbank, the second largest German bank, to open an office in Ethiopia was unexpected news and contrary to the law. The Bank opened its Eastern Africa branch at the DH Geda Tower 9 Floor Bole Sub city, Bole Road after the arrival of Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel along with the bank’s officials to Addis Ababa in 2007.The move then made many wonder whether there was political pressure at government to government level. The office was opened to perform representative functions and carry out market research.
Similar to this bank, different Sudanese, American and Chinese banks and citizens are involved in Ethiopia’s banking sector.

Details to come soon...

Ex-boyfriend charged with throwing battery acid in woman's face

Jarso Yohannes Adem

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn.-- A Twin Cities man is charged with Felony Assault, after police say he threw battery acid in the face of a former girlfriend.

Police were called to the 3700 block of Louisianna Avenue South in St. Louis Park on Tuesday and found a woman on the sidewalk suffering from chemical burns on her face and hands. She told them that her former boyfriend, 28 year old Jarso Yohannes Adem, had confronted her on the sidewalk, then splashed a soda bottle full of chemicals on her when she refused to talk to him.

A jogger heard the victim scream and followed Adem to a nearby parking lot as he attempted to run away. He pointed the suspect out to police when they responded.

Adem later told investigators he purchased a car battery a few days before the attack and poured the acid inside into the plastic bottle. He said he knew the victim's route home from school, drove to the scene and parked, then attacked her with the battery acid when she refused to speak to him.

He is charged with second degree Felony Assault. If convicted Adem faces up to 7 years in prison.

At this point there is no word on the condition of the victim.

(Copyright 2010 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)

'despotic intellectualism' Part I

Jordan Gebre-Medhin

By Ankober

The two so-called liberation fighters EPLF and TPLF ,now in power, have had formed their bases on narrow identity and ethnic based selfish ideologues of scholars from their own ethnic groups.What in Eritrea and Ethiopia is practically experienced by the suffering mass while the few (ethnics of those in hold of arms ) indulge themselves , is the premeditated implementation of the opinionated and cynically despotic intellectual outputs of those few scholars of those days.

One of these ''scholars'' was Jordan Gebre-Medhin.Born on July 21, 1944 in Adi Quansi, Eritrea and a Northeastern University associate professor in African-American studies, he died in 2008.Gebre-Medhin left Eritrea in 1965 for more education. He earned his doctorate in sociology and anthropology in 1979 from Purdue University.

Dr. Gebre-Medhin's book, "Peasants and Nationalism: A Critique of Ethiopian Studies," was the first major challenge to claims casting Eritrea as a subsidiary of Ethiopia, its neighbor in northeast Africa.The book provoked heated debate among political factions and drew favorable reviews from other scholars. This book and the rest of his works mainly informed and set as an agenda by external powers still remain to be the guiding philosophies of ethno-nationalist forces both in power and struggle in Eritrea and Ethiopia,especially TPLFites.Such devious scholars needed to be restudied their misguided and subjectively biased works need reinvestigation by stakeholders.Western philosophers take the highest share for toady's racism and human inequality,so do biased and double agent Ethiopian and Eriterian scholars for the mess in the region and these two states.

Here is one quote of him to corroborate my premises,

“The empire Menelik and Haile Selassie constructed was built on sand, without a solid foundation; hence it was always in a trend of progressive decomposition. Is a Shewan-Amhara Ethiopian Empire viable? History answers this in the negative.The Ankoberite insanity will be tempered by the solidarity of the oppressed masses in New Ethiopia and the working unity of New Ethiopia and independent Eritrea 1.”

Jordan Gebre-Medhin, “On the 1993 Referendum in Eritrea”, Ethiopian Review,April 1993.

Easternization of Meles proved at Adama's EPRDF Meeting

Haile makes a speech at EPRDF's Congress

By Ankober

Speaking at the opening of the 8th organizational conference of EFRDF in Adama town today,Meles Zenawi thanked the ruling parties of China and India for the good help and closer collaboration of the two respective parties.In his speech he thanked the parties and states of these two oriental states for working hand in hand being '' partner parties''.Similarly, representatives of partner political parties from Sudan and China,Communist Party of China (CPC) made speech and representaion at the Congress.This Congress is a clear manifestation and latency of Meles' and EPRDF/TPLF's inclination and politico-economical Easternization and shift from the West.Albeit there have been recent unconfirmed reports that Meles' and the West,especially US have been at loggerheads and the former is shifting its polices and partenerships to the East, this Congress has once again proved the cross sectional marriage of EPRDF/TPLF and CPC.

The Eighth Organizational Conference of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) opened on Wednesday at Geda Convention Center,in Adama ,Ethiopia.

EPRDF/TPLF Chairperson, Meles Zenawi said also opening the conference, "We have devised a plan which will enable us to produce surplus and be able to feed ourselves by 2015 without the need for food aid," .

Meanwhile, athlete Haile Gebresellasie in difference from the Party's trend and athletes history of participating in party politics, happened to make a speech recognizing the Party and endorsing the Five Year Growth and Transformation Plan (2010-15), designed by Meles Zenawi.

More than 1,600 members of the EPRDF, supporters and foreigners, and invited guests took part in the conference.The conference is expected to discusses the report of the executive of the EPRDF in its two days deliberations.The conference is expected to make large reshuffles within the Party-with the Chairman ,Meles predetermined to be reelected for another five year term.

Seyoum Mesfin removes Girma Wake replaces him with a man from Tigray

Tewolde (the new Ethiopian CEO),right

By Ankober

In similar step to other governmental agencies now Ethiopian Airlines has appointed a CEO from a Tigrean ethnic origin.Ethiopian was one of the few governmental agencies that was headed by an Oromo CEO.

Seyoum Mesfin,the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia , also the Chairman of the Board of Management of Ethiopian, has today replaced Girma Wake the long serving CEO of Ethiopian by Tewolde G. Mariam as Chief Executive Officer (CEO)-Designate of Ethiopian Airlines effective 15, 2010.

Tewolde will succeed Girma Wake as CEO effective Januray 1, 2011.Prior to his appointment as designate, Tewelde has been serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Ethiopian, steering the operations of the airline during a period of an unprecedented and profitable growth.

Tewolde has served Ethiopian for the last 25 years in different capacities in the marketing Division at the head office and at different area offices including India, Saudi Arabia and USA. He has also served the airline as Executive Officer of Marketing and Sales Division.Girma has been serving Ethiopian Airlines as (CEO) since February 2004 .Girma has served Ethiopian for the last 37 years.

Girma is 65 years old elapsing his retiring age.

Tis Issat falls drying

By Ankober (

Nom de guerre,

nom de plume )

The Blue Nile Falls are a waterfall on the Blue Nile river in Ethiopia also known as Tis Issat in Amharic are drying due to diversions to the Tis Abay hydropower stations, residents and experts from Bahir Dar confirmed. Climate change is also said to be the catalyzing factor.The Chara Chara weir, one of the dams constructed in Ethiopia, located on the main stem of the Abay River and Tana and Beles Hydro Electric Power Generation Project that has started generating 115 MW with its single turbine as part of the test trial in May 2010 are also the other major causes of the drying up.

''Abay River has become so low in level and the climatic condition and ecology of the area has been highly affected due to the diversion of the falls,Abay for tana beles hydro electric power and Chara Chara weir'' the source said.

The falls, situated on the upper course of the river, about 30 kilometers downstream from the town of Bahir Darand Lake Tana and considered one of Ethiopia's best known tourist attractions, also significantly decreased in flow, pressure and quantity. "It amazes me why the international community and environmentalist NGOs are so concerned about the building of GIbe III project negative social and environmental impacts while many residents around Abay River are being highly affected by the construction of these dams.'' a hydrologist in Bahir Dar stated.

A study conducted by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd last year entitled ''Estimating environmental flow requirements downstream of the Chara Chara weir on the Blue Nile River '' asserts that The local community also complain that they have no access to electricity, despite the fact that the power stations are located very close to their village. Furthermore development opportunities (e.g. a school and clinic), promised when Tis Abay-II was built, have not been forthcoming. Consequently, many people living in the village closest to the power station feel that they have gained nothing and have in fact lost as a consequence of the construction of the weir and the power stations (Gebre et al., 2008).

The Paper concluded '' there is little doubt that operation of the Chara Chara weir, in conjunction with diversions to the power stations, has resulted in some negative environmental and social impacts.''

The full report can be accessed here:

http://waterandfood.org/fileadmin/CPWF_Documents/Project_Documents/36/HYP-published_on_line.pdf

Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi speaks very good English

FRIDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2010 / BY HAMA TUMA, FOR THE OTHER AFRIK

Hama Tuma, Ethiopian author, poet and journalist, has been active in the political and human rights struggle in Ethiopia and Africa since the sixties. His satirical essays under the general title of African Absurdities have gained support from many quarters. Some of his books (English and Amharic) have been translated to French, Italian and Hebrew.

An intelligent dictator in my view point is as incandescently oxymoronic as an idiot savant, a fine mess, a little pregnant, or accurate rumors. The renaissance of oxymora in what concerns Ethiopia has not only been limited to the country’s "abundant poverty". In fact, we have recently seen the impossible possibility of an "Amhara Weyane". Indeed, some quarters have insisted on calling the tyrant in Addis Ababa intelligent in the face of a blatantly rigged election while at the same time insisting on calling Robert Mugabe a blundering fool. Confusingly incomprehensible.

This reminds me of the days when Idi Amin of Uganda was engineered by Britain and Israel to stage a coup against "Socialist" Milton Obote. An act the British media was quick to qualify and even praise as being "natively intelligent". Of course, one has to understand diplomacy to know that "Native" was none but the code word for a "near-illiterate-brute-soldier-of-British-colonialism". Caskie Stinnet couldn’t be more right when he said that "A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip."

Toe the line and your name will be affixed with a flattering adjective that translates into anything but what you think it is. The whole charade stems from two sources or motivations: The first one being that notorious racist prejudice which makes a coherent black person intelligent: "Surprise, surprise the Kaffir boy knows how to put words together!". The second is perfectly illustrated by what a surprised Italian fascist officer once expressed in a famous Ethiopian poem: "I saw the blacks eating like human beings".

On a number of occasions, some of my readers have expressed surprise at how I could explain the situation in my country and Africa as a whole and even think of debating with the "intelligent dictators" — who I have met many times — as I described the elegiac realism that personifies Ethiopia. But I assure them, without intending to be cruel, that the "intelligent dictator’s" actions were no different from that of a circus animal that masters its tricks to perfection. An English speaking "Kaffir" dancing to the tune of his master’s music. Intelligent!

Santiago Carrillo, the late leader of the Spanish CP once said: "to ask for Western type democracy in countries like Ethiopia and Vietnam is to bray at the moon". The man from Spain was arguing that Ethiopians had to make do with their blood thirsty colonel Mengistu and his semblance of democracy while he, Carrillo, a pro-Soviet to boot, stood behind the Moscow backed tyrant. Sure, the days of Carrillo, Mengistu and the Soviets are over, but have the propaganda strategies that kept them glued to power been laid to rest? Lest we forget, these African depots were intelligent for their remarkable puppetry capabilities as instruments of neo-colonial domination. Mercenaries!

The sarcastic use of "Intelligent" by some, and our own reduced standards, should be questioned, especially when no one is comparing the "intelligent" Meles with the worst western joke of a leader. And while the tyrants are aware of what is going on, they have used this prejudice to their own advantage as expected. They wear their "Yes Bwana" smile as a permanent fixture, and do the "Yes Sir Master" dance to perfection. Repeat the buzz words that please the ears of the donors and, presto or voila, there appears an intelligent man. Just like Meles when he danced for Sarkozy and Obama to the detriment of Africa at Copenhagen!

Do they see intelligent Meles as crafty, devious, sneaky, able to hide his ignorance, an intriguer, cruel, or a docile puppet, no. In fact, they clapped and diplomatically branded him as intelligent when Meles begged for a political opposition lest he becomes corrupt with absolute power. A political opposition that is all but lurking in the shadows after the last so called democratic exercise. The dictator of Turkmenistan made no fuss over his hard earned political situation when he said: there are no opposition parties so how can I give them freedom?! "Smartly unintelligent"?

Albert Camus once called an intellectual an unsuccessful idiot, while the late Walter Rodney defined a dictator as "one who elevates himself above all other citizens and often makes claims to be closer to God than mere mortals. Emperors, kings and nobles of the feudal period easily became dictators because they could justify despotic acts on the grounds that royal power and authority were of sacred origin. In more modern versions of dictatorship, the absolute ruler has to fabricate an elaborate cult of the personality to prove that he is more intelligent, more potent and generally superior to any other human being. Idi Amin fancied himself not only as a physical giant but also as an intellectual giant. Besides, he boasted of a direct line to Allah. Eric Gairy, our Caribbean ex-dictator, dabbled in obeah and convinced himself that he was better than the world’s leading scientists and would personally solve the problem of unidentified flying objects. This is the stuff of which dictators are made".

Back in 2008, TV personality Barbara Walters went to Damascus and called dictator Bashr Al Assad an intelligent and charming man. The friend of many African dictators, peanut farmer Jimmy carter, went to Korea and declared: "I find Kim Il Sung to be vigorous and intelligent". During a visit to Addis Ababa, Cuba’s Castro met with the Ethiopian despot and publicly declared "Mengistu is an honest revolutionary!". The same Mengistu, the mass killer, who once declared: "I hate hurting even a fly". Talking about flies, El Salvador’s General Maximiliano Hernandez was once quoted as saying that "it is a greater crime to kill a fly than a man because men are resurrected while flies die forever". From fly protector Hernandez to Rhodesia’s Ian Smith, apartheid surgeon Botha, kleptocratic Mobutu and the fiend Samuel Doe, America’s once admired and "intelligent" allies’ list is long. Not forgetting Nguema who said: "I am in permanent direct contact with God... the only man who can kill and will never go to hell". Nguema who slaughtered thousands in Equatorial Guinea had once been a very intelligent man.

Meanwhile, as Washington, London, Berlin and the EU bankroll the "natively intelligent" Ethiopian, one western diplomat in Addis Abeba has gone on record expressing his utter admiration for Meles Zenawi’s talent to lie outright and in more than four directions at a time. Indeed, the man is so intelligent that he can rig elections, slaughter hundreds and still stay in power! A fine and intelligent mess!

But, the admired native intelligence of Idi Amin — His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Conqueror of the British Empire [CBE] in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular and King Of Scotland” — fast evaporated when he started to step on British and Western toes. He quickly became a savage monster, a blundering fool, a bloodthirsty vampire, a flesh eating cannibal...

The "demonization" of all those who refuse to toe the line of the West is swift, cruel and relentless. Gaddafi, Mugabe, Sadam, among others, have not been spared. The very people who praise Ba’athist dictator, Bakir par excellence, as intelligent would not be caught dead uttering one word of consideration as regards Sadam, for example, though he was a close ally of America at one time. Mengistu was considered crude and cruel because he was pro Soviet and not because he killed Ethiopians en masse. The same goes for the new darling of Washington, a.k.a Meles, who has been doing more, but discreetly and in earnest. Anyway, who cares when his political alliance and consideration dictate his international qualification?

The West, back in the mid forties, considered Mussolini civilized and laughed in the face of Ethiopians who were doing their best to defend their country from colonialism. The fascist was intelligent as was Hitler, with whom many American companies such as General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil co., Ford, ITT, Chase National Bank, etc did brisk business. For a while, Nazism was swept under the doormat for the sake of business opportunities. "Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler and his book The International Jew inspired Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Fuehrer kept Ford’s picture in his office and Ford was one of the four foreigners to receive the German’s highest civilian award", wrote one fact finder. The intelligent West also did business with and backed the intelligent regime of apartheid in South Africa.

It will come as no surprise to hear some throwing tantrums over the use of the word "intelligent" as a misnomer. But a closer look shows that we have rather failed to understand what "intelligent" means to some people. Being intelligent to some is indeed synonymous to a brutal tyrant, a cruel murderer, a corrupt embezzler, a deceitful liar, an election rigger, a Western puppet, a brother killer, a fluent idiot.

And if English is the required language, sycophantic Meles alongside those fly loving tyrants and their wives whose fingers are nimble and expert in all things klepto, Grace Mugabe par excellence, are indeed intelligent. If we considered intelligence as such, would we complain about our rulers? Those people who do not mind making our lives miserably painful, while they luxuriate in the bounty of complex oxymorons showered on them by the West. As Churchill said: "Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."

All is but trivia, one would say. But, trivia, it is when we only consider the Kaffir boy. I say it is an important trivia, because Meles Zenawi speaks very good English!