The report entitled “Ethiopia and Eritrea: Allergic to Persuasion”[1] released last week is directed at blaming Eritrea for Ethiopia’s refusal to implement the final and binding Decision of Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) and the International Community’s dereliction of responsibility. The neutral and Independent Border Commission was created by UN Security Resolution…… the five member body,  each party selecting two, is  headed by the eminent international jurist, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht. The Secretary of the Commission is the Chief Cartographer for the UN.

The neutral body’s decision has the full force of the law that obligated both parties to honor and implement.  We often hear ignoring UN Resolutions and international law has consequences, especially if the party is one the US or UK don’t like. Knowing full when there are no reprisals Ethiopia has refused to implement the Border decision.  One would think the international community would hold Ethiopia accountable for its violation of international law. No, the UN Security Council would not lift a finger against Ethiopia.  Instead we have two Chatham House experts, justifying Ethiopia’s intransigence while putting the blame squarely on Eritrea, an undisputed victim of miscarriage of international justice.

The authors of this report are two experts of the Horn of Africa.  Sally Healy is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House and Martin Plaut, a former Associate Fellow of Chatham House, is an Africa editor with the BBC World Service News. The two and by implication the Chatham House, in the pretext of analyzing “the ongoing confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea, six years after they signed a peace agreement” are on the record calling for the disregard of the rule of law and appeasing the lawless.

Healy and Plaut are telling the world that the border Decision shouldn’t be implemented as is, because the Algiers Agreement was a mistake. “The risks of signing up in advance to a final and binding adjudication did not seem to be fully appreciated by both parties at the time.” It is patronizing to say that the parties did not understand the implication of what they were signing.

First and foremost, perfect or flawed the issue at hand is that the Algiers Peace Agreement has become a binding international treaty when it was signed by two willing sovereign states. Furthermore, since the Delimitation Decision was agreed to be final and binding there is no room to persuade but to implement.

First, if Ethiopia had a long history of diplomatic experience as Healy and Plaut contend, then one would have to assume that Ethiopia signed the agreement with full knowledge of what it was doing. Second, if Ethiopia had “won” the war as the two experts imply, it makes no sense for Ethiopia to agree to Algiers, assuming as the authors do that Algiers was not in Ethiopia’s interest. But the fact that Ethiopia did agree, knowing fully well that any decision based on colonial treaties was more likely to be in Eritrea’s favor, says something about Ethiopia’s assessment of how the war went.

The Chatham House experts are also selling Ethiopia’s leaders short. It is degrading to impute that Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, and Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, did not know what they were signing. By the way, wasn’t Ethiopia an ardent advocate of the “final and binding” clause of the Algiers Agreement? Didn’t Ethiopia also argue, before the Commission, for an even stricter interpretation of the colonial treaties?  Isn’t it also why its submission in the western sector was so outrageous? Yes, all of this is in the 125-page Delimitation Decision our experts told us is “difficult for a layperson to absorb,” but since Sally Healy and Martin Plaut are not laypeople how come they missed it?

Did Eritrea understand the meaning of Algiers? Of course it did, notwithstanding Healy and Plaut’s patronizing misreading of Eritrea’s mind.  Eritrea as well as Ethiopia knew what Algiers meant. For reasons Healy and Plaut outlined, Ethiopia felt it had the right to a decision of its choice not necessarily based by an examination of the law and pertinent evidence but on issues peripheral to the conflict.

Eritrea’s insistence that the final and binding decision must be implemented is beyond reproach. That is why the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission rightly stated in its November 27, 2006 letter: “Eritrea’s insistence on strict adherence to the terms of the Delimitation Decision was a position which it was entitled to adopt in accordance with the Algiers Agreement.”[2] The truth is Eritrea knows well what it signed and is standing its ground because of it.

The authors had also the audacity to write “With hindsight, the Algiers Agreement may have been mistaken in placing quite so much emphasis on border delimitation…..”  If both Ethiopia and Eritrea had declared to the world that the border dispute was at the heart of their dispute, no more, no less, and had willingly entered into an agreement giving the EEBC a “mandate to delimit and demarcate the colonial treaty border based on pertinent colonial treaties (1900, 1902, and 1908) and applicable international law” and with no “power to make decisions ex aequo et bono”[3], then how is that the Algiers Agreement is mistaken?

Our Chatham House experts ask “It is also worth asking whether the ‘colonial borders’ methodology was the right one to employ in circumstances where one side had apparently already won the war.” For the moment, let’s leave their dishonest implication that Ethiopia had won the war aside, and let’s continue to read what they are telling us: “Africa is the exception in having its boundaries decided by third party treaties: most state borders represent the realities of power.” Of course we know Africa is not the only continent whose borders were decided by colonialists. There are many borders in Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Asia that are the legacy of colonialism and third party treaties. But are the authors advocating the establishment of borders through force (read: bloody wars)?  This is a strange prescription that promotes force over the rule of law.

The sanctity of colonial borders was not invented by Sir Lauterpacht’s Commission. As the authors surely know, the principle was the bed-rock of the Charter of the Organization of African Unity. In case the authors have forgotten, Ethiopia was the prime originator of the principle

By explicitly accepting the principle of uti possidetis juris, a principle that was implied by the Charter of the OAU, the Cairo Resolution of 1964 was giving pre-eminence to legal title over the “realities of power” as Healy and Plaut are advocating. African leaders, after witnessing bloody border wars between 1962 and 1964 (one involving Algeria and Morocco and another one Ethiopia and Somalia are good examples), adopted AHG/Res. 16(1) to avoid any redefinition of colonial borders, for they knew such an act would create more chaos and would be a threat to regional peace. So the problem is not with the principle of deciding borders based on colonial treaties, but with those who refuse to be governed by the norms of international law and with their apologists.

Let’s make no mistake, deciding borders on the “realities of power” means a redefinition of borders along ethnic, religious, or linguistic fault lines. This will have a more disastrous consequence. This consequence had been clearly articulated by President Tsirinana of Madagascar (then Malagasy) during the inaugural debate of the OAU: "It is no longer possible, nor desirable, to modify the boundaries of nations, on the pretext of racial, religious or linguistic criteria. Indeed, should we take race, religion or language as criteria for setting our boundaries, a few States in Africa would be blotted out from the map."[4] This is of course contrary to the prescription of our Chatham House fellows and the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Fraser. A year ago, February 1, 2006 to be exact, Jendayi Fraser in her wisdom took it upon herself to reinterpret the Algiers Agreement[5] in a total contradiction with the letter and spirit of the Agreement. She has yet to apologize for her blunder. No wonder the Government of Eritrea has refused to talk to her.

Oddly enough, the Chatham House report of deciding borders on “realities of power” might be giving Ethiopia a green light to continue occupying Somalia, claiming it as an Ethiopian territory. After all, a former Prime Minister of Ethiopia had unashamedly told African Heads of States, during the debate for the OAU Charter, that Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia are Ethiopian territories. His words: “Ethiopia had always existed in history for centuries as an independent state, as a nation, for more than 3, 000 years. That is a fact. Second fact: the historical frontiers of Ethiopia stretched from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, including all the territory between them. Third fact: there is no record in history either of a Somali State or a Somali Nation. That too is a fact.”[6] Of course the same Prime Minister had later said: “It is in the interest of all Africans now to respect the frontiers drawn on the maps, whether they are good or bad, by the former colonizers." This is a good example that flip-flopping had been a consistent trait of Ethiopian leaders, be they those of the past or the present.

Whether deliberately or because of a lack of knowledge, the report is replete with several myths that the authors have tried to pass as facts. Here are some examples.

Myth: Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, Seyoum Mesfin, only declared victory the morning of the verdict because he was mislead by an OAU’s erroneous message. Furthermore, he was confused because the Commission didn’t put Badme on its delimitation map …

Fact: One might use many words to describe the clique ruling Ethiopia, but “ignorant of what they were doing” cannot be those words. The truth is Ethiopian leaders declared victory intentionally as part of their disinformation campaign, first and foremost to deceive their own population. That was precisely why Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin declared victory the morning of the verdict, Prime Minister Meles gave a press conference two days later, and the Ethiopian members of the legal team, boasted of misleading the Commission five days later.

Myth:  It is Ethiopia’s "unequal match of diplomatic skills … vastly superior skill in diplomacy. … traditions of diplomacy put to excellent use”, that enabled it to “brilliantly disguise what was in legal terms an essentially weak hand.”.

Fact:  Healy and Plaut are contradicting themselves. On one hand they said Ethiopian leaders did not know the implication of signing Algiers, yet the authors have conferred on the same leaders, “unmatched diplomatic skills.” Not knowing what you are doing is not a sign of superior diplomatic skill. Ethiopia is getting away with violation of international law not because of diplomatic skills, but simply because the US and the UK want it to be that way.

Myth: The Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute remains unresolved because “Ethiopia’s greater weight in the world.” And “This arises from its far larger size and population, its status as the only African country never to have been colonized, its position as host to the African Union and its standing with the US in the Global War on Terror.”

Fact: We thought UN Security resolutions had the force of law. Ethiopia has blatantly told the UN Security council that it won’t abide by the border decision, knowing full well there would be no consequences for its rejection of the decision. Instead of calling a spade a spade and point to Ethiopia as the culprit, Healy and Plaut go out of their way to justify Ethiopia’s illegal actions.  

Ethiopian rulers, past and present, are good at selling themselves to the gullible West, to prolong their hold on power. Yesterday it was Emperor Haile Selassie who presented himself as a bulwark against the spread of Communism in the Horn of Africa; then it was Colonel Mengistu’s turn to claim that he stood against Arab influence. The current occupant of Menelik’s Palace sees himself as a leader in the War Against Global Terrorism. It is no wonder that the West, purely for its own geopolitical reasons has acquiesced to Ethiopia’s intransigence.

Myth: Ethiopia “is helped by the fact that it is a more open and amenable society than Eritrea: it has elections, even if these are flawed; it has an independent press, even if this is curtailed and journalists are locked up; and it has a greater ethnic diversity.”

Fact: This is a specious, self serving rationale. There is nothing in the Algiers Agreement that specified internal conditions as requirement for the implementation of the border decision.  There is irony here. Benito Mussolini justified his invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 under the flimsy pretext that Ethiopia was “ill-governed.” The Big Powers, then as now, implicitly bought into the justification for the invasion. The rest is history. They gave Mussolini green light. Hitler followed. By permitting Ethiopia to ignore the decisions of an Arbitration Commission created by the UN Security Council, the international community is creating a precedence it would very much regret later.

Myth:  “A further advantage for Ethiopia over Eritrea is the very positive relationship it has built with international donors. The amount of money at its disposal does have an impact on the country’s ability and readiness to wage war. Ethiopia is an attractive target for aid donors because of the scale of its poverty, its strong economic performance in recent years and the ‘pro-poor’ focus of its policies.”

Fact:

The fact here is the “positive relationship” of Ethiopia with international donors is a “purse-relationship”.  Healy and Plaut admit that Ethiopia is diverting resources meant to assist the country’s poor to purchase military hardware, an unintentional admission that the West has been the direct enabler of Ethiopia’s war machine. One would think that taxpayers in the donor countries would be upset if they knew the money they sent to feed the hungry is being spent to purchase armored vehicles and other hard-wares of war. Is this how taxpayers in the West want to see their money used?  If donors find Ethiopia attractive, could it be because so many of their NGOs have a vested interest in making sure aid keeps flowing into the country? Beginning with the Great Famine of the mid seventies, and the ones that followed in the eighties, a lot of people who went to Ethiopia to do good stayed there only because they were doing so well themselves. In the mean time, the NGOs became partners of the ruling elite.  With all the billions that was poured into the country since 1991, the plight of the poor has not changed much, not exactly a testament to the effectiveness of Ethiopia’s “pro-poor focus of its policies” Healy and Plaut would have us believe.  People who have genuine concern for the poor in the region would stop “enabling” Ethiopia’s war machine. How one can maintain a military machine as massive as Ethiopia’s, and have enough left over to help the poor is not clear.

Tekie Fessehatzion is Chair and Professor of Economics at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of Shattered Illusion, Broken Promise: Essays on the Eritrea-Ethiopia Conflict (1998-2000), and the editor of the special issue of Eritrean Studies Review, (Vol. 3, No. 2, 1999) on the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border War.