By Kenneth Roth
August 31, 2012
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
of Ethiopia, who died last week after a long illness, liked to portray
his country's leadership as collective. But there was never any doubt
about who was in charge.
As dictators go, he had much going for
him. Stunningly smart, strategic, practical, he cared about his country
and, by all appearances, resisted the kind of graft and corruption that
has plagued many African nations. During his rule, Ethiopia's economy
expanded significantly, and he played an important role in the wider
region.
But Meles' death points up the limitations of autocratic
rule. Because he failed to establish the rule of law and set up strong
democratic institutions, Ethiopia is likely to face a period of
uncertainty, and possibly one of serious upheaval. The odds of finding
another strongman of comparable skill are remote.
I had two lengthy meetings
with Meles before he took ill. In neither case did I mince words about
the increasing severity of his repression: the thousands of political
prisoners, the widespread torture, the counterinsurgency atrocities, the
suppression of independent journalists and nongovernmental groups. He
seemed to enjoy the opportunity to spar, as if tired of the sycophants
surrounding him.
During the first meeting, in his office in Addis
Ababa, he was accompanied by a single aide who left halfway through the
meeting. At the second, during a conference in Munich, he summoned me to
his hotel suite while his aides waited outside. Meles was not one to
need help managing difficult subjects.
When I fired questions at him, he answered quickly and decisively, never conceding a point but always remaining calm:
Why
was he blocking foreign funding for civil-society groups? Because they
should rely on domestic support the way his student group did during his
university days, and besides, the activists were just looking to get
rich.
Why did he accept massive international aid to the
government but refuse to allow international aid to Ethiopian
nongovernmental groups? Because the government could stand up to foreign
manipulation while private organizations wouldn't be able to.
If
Meles wasn't corrupt in the traditional sense — no fancy cars, Swiss
bank accounts or foreign villas — he did have ways of rewarding the
faithful. As a detailed on-site Human Rights Watch investigation showed,
the ruling party tended to steer donor-supplied benefits such as seeds
and fertilizer to party supporters while punishing opponents by
withholding services. Meles told me he opposed this manipulation, but he
refused to announce his opposition publicly so local officials could
hear it. "We have other ways to communicate," he told me, but his
government didn't stop the practice.
International donors were
complicit in this sleight of hand. U.S. officials and their European
counterparts dismissed or ignored what they didn't want to see. They
prized the "stability" that Meles promised. He helped to negotiate peace
in Sudan and sent peacekeepers, aided counter-terrorism efforts in
Somalia and, though ruthlessly, kept the lid on Ethiopia's multiethnic
society.
So rather than send investigators to the field the way
Human Rights Watch did, Western donors commissioned a "desk study,"
which concluded from a distance that donor safeguards were sufficient to
prevent such manipulation from happening, so it must not have occurred.
Aid continued to flow without reprimand.
