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INTRODUCTION
One of the various overt attempts by both internal and external
forces to give a semblance of legality to the illegal cession of
Ethiopian territories and maritime outlet to Eritrea is the recourse
to the discourse on the observance of the rule of law. Thus, despite
the current misleading legal trial of strength between the Security
council, the Eritrean regime on the one hand and the Trojan Horse
government in Ethiopia on the other, there is no doubt that they
have made common cause to use and misuse the law to promote Eritrean
Lebensraum at the expense of Ethiopia. In this regard, the discourse
on the rule of law is intended to help them sail under false
colours. The discourse on rule of law is indeed very appealing to
any disinterested person or group for it implies that justice has
been done in an impartial and correct manner. And who dares to say
in public they are against justice? The problem is that the same
discourse can be used to legitimate the most horrible crimes and all
sorts of shenanigans. It was in the name of rule of law that the
League of Nations imposed arms embargo against Ethiopia while the
barbarous Italian fascists were bombing Ethiopians with poison gas.
It was also in the name of rule of law that the United States
Government imposed an embargo against Ethiopia even if she was a
victim of Eritrean regime�s devastating invasion in 1998. As if
that was not enough, the United States Government has been of late
trying to take economic sanctions against Ethiopia in the name of
the rue of law. It was also in the name of the rule of law that such
inhuman regimes as Nazism in Germany, Stalinism in the former Soviet
Union and the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia committed
genocide against humanity. This shows that the rule of law can be
misused as a certificate of respectability even by the bloodiest
dictators to justify their monstrous actions.
Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind that every
law is not a rule of law. Rule of law is diametrically opposed to
jungle law which is the characteristic feature of all dictators. In
contemporary politico-legal parlance, the rule of law is inseparable
from democratic rule and the respect of the fundamental rights and
liberties of citizens. It requires that the people have the right to
vote in and vote out of office freely their leaders when they don�t
rule in a manner as to promote only the national interest. Seen
against this background, it is a public knowledge that democracy
does not exist in Ethiopia. Neither are the fundamental human rights
of each and every Ethiopian respected.
Despite that, commitment to rule of law has become the hobby
horse of the Eritrean prime minister ruling Ethiopia since the day
the Ethiopian people have rejected categorically the Algiers
conspiracy and the botch up decision of The Hague based arbitration
tribunal. The idea behind such a new campaign is to intimidate the
Ethiopian people into accepting the cession of their territories to
Eritrea. To this end internal and external forces have left no stone
unturned to pressurize the Ethiopian people to comply with the
decision to violate their country�s territorial sovereignty.
Nonetheless, the Ethiopian people are opposed to this deceit as
reported recently by the Ethiopian private written mass media. The
inhabitants of Afar, Gulo-makeda, Badme and of Irob have in
particular expressed their determination to stay in their land and
to be opposed, if necessary, to any attempt to dislocate them from
it in the name of the �rule of law�. At first blush, this
patriotic defiance can be construed to imply that they are not law
abiding citizens. However, on a closer inspection, that statement
shows the total incomprehension and helplessness of those Ethiopians
in the face of the collusion of internal and external forces to
displace them from their land. It is impossible for them to believe
the possibility of the existence of anyone who can have an
overriding right against them on Badme, Gulo-makeda, Irob and on the
Afar region. For those innocent and helpless Ethiopians, EPRDF�s
diktat that �law� prevails over the well-being of Ethiopians is
impossible to fathom. Those Ethiopians may think that they are
ignorant about law. However, they are posing the greatest legal and
political right based challenge to anyone who has a rudimentary
sense of legality and justice. Their legal and political based right
has been enshrined in the United Nations Charter, in various
international legal instruments and endorsed even by EPRDF�s
constitution and ideology. That right is the right of self
determination. We have time and again urged EPRDF strongman not to
use a double standard against Ethiopians. We have said that although
anti Ethiopian, EPRDF�s ideology that any people by virtue of
being people have the right to self determination militates against
dislocation of Ethiopians from their ancestral homes.
Our intention here is not, however, to dilate on the principle of
the right of self determination. Our aim is to demonstrate in detail
the phony nature of EPRDF strong man�s recent argument that
Ethiopia has fought for the �rule of law� and not for the
respect of her sovereignty on this or that piece of land. Once this
done, we hope it will be very clear to the uninitiated reader why
the false accusation by the UN Security Council, by the Eritrean
regime and by The Hague based Border Commission that peace in the
Horn of Africa is threatened by Ethiopia�s refusal to abide by �international
law� is based on a deliberately distorted and partial (Eritrea
friendly) interpretation of international law. This will help us to
demonstrate why, contrary to the official propaganda in Ethiopia,
the blatant interference of British and American governments in
Ethiopian internal affairs is aimed at helping out their beleaguered
and inglorious client regime so that the cession of Ethiopian
territories to Eritrea can take place without endangering EPRDF
strongman�s grip on power. Finally, we will try to forward, by way
of conclusion, some suggestions as to what should be done to pull
the country out of the political and economic quagmire in which it
finds itself now on top of the war of Armageddon that Ethiopians
have been waging against the internal and external forces bent on
violating Ethiopia�s territorial sovereignty by high jacking
international law.
PART 1. THE HIGH JACKING OF INTERNATIONAL LAW TO ENSURE
ERITREA�S LEBENSRAUM
The current misleading legal trial of strength between the
Eritrean �Prime Minister� ruling Ethiopia and The Hague based
Border Commission might at first glance give the impression that the
former is genuine in his opposition to the Border Commission�s
ruling on Badme. However one is entitled to ask why so much
obsession only on Badme while the regime�s over all policy is at
variance with Ethiopia�s territorial integrity as is enshrined by
the UN and the AU Charters. The regime�s answer to this is that it
is not Badme, a �godforsaken village� or a piece of land here
and there as such which is at stake but the �respect of
international rule of law�. Ethiopians may then wonder why the
regime has sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers and spent
billions of dollars if the main and only aim was not to defend each
and every piece of Ethiopian land including what the regime
disrespectfully and imitating some of the Western media and
intellectuals calls the �godforsaken village� of Badme?
There are many people who admire very much the Eritrean Prime
Minister�s mental sharpness to find ready-made answers to any
question. Nonetheless, none of his ready made-answers on Ethiopia�s
territorial sovereignty and national interest can stand up even to a
cursor scrutiny. Because either they are completely false or very
contradictory. The contradiction becomes blatant when he pleads for
Eritrea or works for his personal sovereignty against Ethiopia�s
national sovereignty. Recall that he preached a lot about Eritreans�
right to self determination; but he is opposed to the application of
this same principle to the Afars and other ethnic groups who have
been annexed against their will to Eritrea. As if that was not
enough, he has been moving heaven and earth to prevent the
application of that same principle to Ethiopians living in Badme,
Gulo-makeda, Irob and Afar. To verify this, one can read the
provisions of the Algiers Conspiracy which stipulate among other
things that the UN should do everything possible to make sure that
population transfer caused by the demarcation take place with less
suffering to those concerned by such a transfer. �Unaware� that
for Ethiopians, Ethiopia�s land is priceless, American and British
governments have been shamelessly saying that they would construct
another Alitiena, another Badme and that they would send money to
displaced Ethiopians. But Ethiopians have never asked for
Americano-British charity to build another Badme or another
Alitiena. This clearly shows that the lot of Ethiopians is to be
displaced within Ethiopia while their land will be abandoned to new
Eritrean colonial settlers. The contradiction is also blatant when
EPRDF high priest feels that his absolute power is challenged. For
example, he speaks about the rule of law but we know how Siye
Abraha, who deserves to be decorated as a national hero for
deflating EPLF�s self deceiving image of invincibility, was
illegally thrown into jail and has since been deprived of his
fundamental constitutional right to be released on bail.
One can cite other examples to show why EPRDF strongman�s new
found commitment to the rule of law is a window dressing intended to
violate Ethiopian sovereignty. However, it would not be proper to
forget that what appears to Ethiopians false and contradictory does
not in reality matter for him. He is never concerned about his
personal integrity and trustworthiness in the eyes of the Ethiopian
people. After all, he has accepted Ethiopia�s destruction by
promulgating the �right of secession�. It is therefore essential
to bear in mind that the most important thing for him is not the
well-being of Ethiopia but the realisation of his life�s only
raison d��tre. Namely the independence and well-being of Eritrea
at the expense of Ethiopia. This is the very reason why we
Ethiopians cannot understand his disastrous decisions and policies
because in our heart of hearts and unconsciously we tend to believe
that he has to work only for our well-being. Alas, this has never
been the case as the experience of the last twelve years shows.
Consequently, for him all political, legal and economic mental
acrobatics are good as long as they help to further realise that
raison d��tre. On the other hand, logic, coherence and legality
must be sacrificed as long as they are obstacles to the realization
of that raison d��tre. That is why the letter and spirit of
international law is interpreted out of context of the time and
place in order to violate Ethiopia�s territorial sovereignty in a
manner without precedent in the history of international settlement
of territorial disputes.
Keeping the above in mind, it is not difficult to uncover the
secret behind the new found commitment to the �rule of law�. To
that end, we can begin our discussion by asking what and whose law
EPRDF�s strongman is talking about when he �argues� that rule
of law should prevail over the well-being of Ethiopians.
1.1. Jungle law masqueraded as rule of law
In the Western legal thought, the definition of law is of course
a moot point among legal pundits. But in Ethiopia, any peasant knows
what law means from their life experience, religious belief, et
cetera. They have fought against Eritrean expansionism as their
ancestors had fought against Turkish, Egyptian and Italian
colonialism. If past and present generations of Ethiopians have
fought for the territorial sovereignty of the mother land, it is
because they believe that the land is theirs and that no one can
have the right to take it away from them. It is a clear
demonstration of a callous disregard by the regime to the right of
the Ethiopian people to say that the life sacrifices made by them to
ensure their individual and collective rights on their land is not
important in comparison to the �rule of law�. If the rule of law
to which he refers is one that enables him to cede Ethiopian
territories to Eritrea, he is in fact telling us that Ethiopians
should not have fought against Eritrean expansionism. The truth
however is Ethiopians have fought for a rule of law which ensures
their absolute right on their land. But it is also a fact that the
sacrifices of Ethiopians have been nullified to enable Eritrea to
get in Algiers and in The Hague what it lost on the battle field.
Ethiopia, like any other country, is a sovereign nation and has
an inviolable sovereign right on her territory. This is the
underlying principle of international law. Any act which violates
such a fundamental principle of international law upon which is
based the current international system of states is illegal and a
threat to peace in the region and therefore should be combated
legally and militarily.
From this point of view, it should not be doubted even for a
second that EPRDF strong man is not referring to international law
which recognizes Ethiopia�s sovereign right when he talks about
his commitment to the rule of law. His view of �international law�
is the falsehood invented by Eritrean nationalists who love to
believe that Eritrea was sired by Italian colonialists. As a result,
the so-called �colonial treaties� of 1900, 1902 and of 1908 are
considered to be the basis of the birth of what is called the �Eritrean
nation�. That Ethiopian territory is supposed to have become
Italian ownership by the mere presence of Italians. But the Eritrean
prime minister goes further than other Eritrean nationalists when it
comes to Ethiopia. Because for him, the Ethiopian nation too was
born when King Menelik had concluded those treaties with Italian,
French and British colonialists. According to Eritreanised weyane
(hi)-story of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian nation is not older than the
�Eritrean nation�. Because of this political and historical
distortion, Ethiopia�s claim on what is today called Eritrea is
considered by Eritreanised woyane leaders and intellectuals to be
chauvinistic, �historically false� and above all �expansionist�,
therefore �illegal� because it goes against Italian �colonial
right�. TPLF leaders in general and their ideological and
political guru in particular do not want to listen that Ethiopians
had fought against Turks, Egyptians and Italians in this part of
northern tip of Ethiopia, that today�s Eritrea was Ethiopian from
the Axumite period to the arrival of the Turks in Mitsiwa�e
towards the beginning of the 16th century and since the 16th century
to the end of the 19th century Ethiopians had fought against foreign
aggression in this part of Ethiopia. For the Eritreanised weyane and
their leader, this is not history but a �story� concocted by
what they impudently call �Amhara court minstrels�. By making a
clean sweep of Ethiopian history, EPRDF�s strong man and his
minions consider colonial treaties to be the alpha and omega of
their mantra regarding Eritrea. Their �legal� and political mind
is conditioned by such a distorted historical and legal conception
of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Any argument which contradicts their
ideology is supposed to be the work of the chauvinist proponents of
greater Ethiopia, which the weyane guru and his sycophants, consider
to be non-persons to plead for the respect of the right of their
nation.
In other words, they expect Ethiopians to deny and forget their
history and their right on this (Eritrea) part of Ethiopia in favor
of the history and the �right� of Italian colonialists. Behind
the Algiers Conspiracy exists such a historical and legal distortion
of the history and the identity of Ethiopia. The acceptance of the
Algiers conspiracy implies that Ethiopians accept that their country�s
history is hundred years old and that Ethiopia like any African
country is, though indirectly, the creation of colonialism; that
Ethiopia, while itself being a creation of colonialism, has
colonised another creation of colonialism, namely Eritrea. Hence the
�rule of law� to which the Eritrean prime minister alludes to is
the European colonial law which had allowed Europeans to create new
European territorial possessions in Africa.
In this regard, the law which EPRDF�s strong man considers to
be so sacrosanct as to override the sovereign territorial right of
Ethiopia is based on colonial rules spelt out in the Berlin
Conference of 1884-1885 which had endorsed the �right� of
Europeans to share out the African continent among them. That
European colonial public law had considered mother Africa as an
unoccupied and unclaimed continent. According to that European law,
countries like Ethiopia did not have, �legally� speaking, any
right against Europeans. The European colonial law was supposed to
prevent war among Europeans. To that end, it stipulated that
European powers could conclude with local chiefs or kings�
treaties�. However the so-called treaties were in reality title
deeds which could serve as a proof when the African territorial
possession of one European colonial power was challenged by another
European colonial power. The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 had
devised mechanisms and procedures destined to solve litigation
between Europeans. What is however funny is that African chiefs or
kings could not invoke those �treaties� to defend their right
against colonialists. Per contra, a third party European colonialist
could invoke a treaty signed with an African local chief to
challenge the legality of the acts of another colonialist against
Africans. This means that European states could challenge Italy�s
invasion of Ethiopia in 1896; but Ethiopia could not have for
example invoked the Wuchal� unequal colonial treaty because its
destiny as an �unoccupied and unclaimed� land was to be owned by
Europeans and that in accordance with the Berlin Conference of
1884-1885.
In other words, Africans were not considered by colonialists as
human beings or if they were human beings, they could not have a
right that could be invoked against Europeans. It is true that on
the morrow of the Adwa victory, Europeans had been obliged to say
that Ethiopians were �black whites � and their religion, albeit
ancient, was nonetheless a part of Christianity. Theoretically, this
was indeed in marked contrast to their conception of Ethiopia before
the shining victory of Adwa. Before Adwa, they used to say that
Ethiopians were �barbarous� and their Orthodox faith was a �heresy�
because of its Alexandrian influences. Because of this Ethiopians
had to be converted by Europeans to the �true� Christianity. One
can therefore see that before 1896, European civilization and
European Christianity were the yardsticks to measure the �civilised�
or the �barbaric� nature of Ethiopians. However, despite the lip
service recognition that Europeans had paid to Ethiopian sovereignty
by sending their ambassadors to the Ethiopian capital city after the
victory of Adwa, they had never really accepted Ethiopian
sovereignty and the equality of Ethiopian black Orthodox
Christianity with Western European Christianity. Because of this,
the conversion of Ethiopians into the self righteous European
Christianity has always been high on the agenda. Pope Pius XI�s
blessing of Benito Mussolini�s tanks and poison gas to break
Ethiopians resistance, and as a result of which were exterminated
more than seven hundred thousand Ethiopians, was considered to be a
good opportunity for the Catholic Church to realize its age-old
dream of romancing Ethiopia. The current very aggressive European
Christian crusade to eliminate Tewahido orthodoxy from Ethiopia is
nothing but a continuation of that logic of Europeanising Ethiopian
Christianity.
On the diplomatic level, the repeated Anglo-Italian conspiracies
of 1891, 1894, 1902, 1906, 1915, 1925 to share out Ethiopia between
them can be cited as examples to show that the so-called colonial
treaties were not at all treaties in strict legal sense of the word.
Because, number one, there was no reason why Ethiopia should abandon
its population and territory to a European colonialist after having
fought against Turks, Egyptians and Italians during the reign of
king Yohannis. From this point of view the three Italian colonial
treaties were, to use a legal jargon, pactus leoninus (meaning
treaties entered into for the sole benefit of one party. Note this
expression was used by M. Garriston to describe the 1902
Anglo-Ethiopian treaty which deprived Ethiopia of its sovereign
right to construct dam on the lake Tana. source: proceedings of the
American society of International Law, 1960). For any reasonable
man, such kind of �treaties� cannot be legal because they were
vitiated by duress. But even from the colonial point of view
European territorial possessions in Africa were the result of
colonialism which was based on racism and barbarism.
The other point which shows that the so-called colonial treaties
were not treaties in the legal sense of the word is that they were
not intended to be binding on colonialists. If they had been legally
binding, then Europeans colonialists could not have repeatedly
conspired to share Ethiopia between them. If they had been binding,
they should have prevented colonialists from invading Ethiopia. The
unequal colonial treaties signed by King Menelik under the threat of
invading the whole Ethiopia were therefore void ab initio and not
binding on Ethiopia as they were not binding on Italy and Great
Britain.
We believe that this should be the principal argument of
Ethiopians. Ethiopians are better advised not fasten on the decision
of the Border Commission. All Ethiopian intellectuals should invest
their intellectual capital on showing the legal and historical
impossibility of exhuming still-born colonial treaties to delimit a
new border between Ethiopia and her former province of Eritrea. It
is only when we convince the world that the weyane policy of Eritrea
is based on utter lying and legal and historical distortion that we
can succeed in getting the renegotiation of the respective
territorial rights between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopians� aim
should therefore be the total rejection of the weyane theory that
Ethiopia colonised Eritrea. Because the weyane theory goes against
the established international law and international public opinion
that the banditry in Eritrea was an internal Ethiopian affair.
Because of this, the recourse to colonial treaty is a clear
violation of the various UN resolutions on the inviolability of the
territorial integrity of Ethiopia. But more importantly, it is
totally unacceptable for Ethiopia to exhume the still-born colonial
treaties after having sacrificed more than seven hundred thousand
Ethiopians in fighting courageously against Italian fascist
barbarism and robbery.
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, despite the 1928
Kelogg-Briand Pact, which made illegal any recourse to war as an
instrument of national policy, showed that not only Italy had never
intended to abide by those still-born treaties but that these
treaties were extinguished. Some EPRDF diplomats try to confuse
Ethiopians by confusing treaties concluded freely and colonial
treaties imposed on Ethiopia by colonialists who came from afar to
enslave the Ethiopian people and to take their land. They argued
that they did not know of any rule of international law which said
that treaties could be extinguished by war. It is a fact that war
does not necessarily extinguish treaties unless the main aim of the
war is to bring to an end a treaty in question. This is to say, it
all depends on the nature of the treaty. Assuming that the void
colonial treaties were legal, then the fascist invasion of Ethiopia
had extinguished them. Because the main aim of the fascist invasion
was to destroy the colonial treaty boundary which restricted Italy
to stay in Eritrea. In other words, the violation of that
restriction by the fascist invasion brought to an end the
theoretical raison d��tre of colonial treaties of 1900, 1902 and
1908.
In a patriotic bid to defend Ethiopia�s cause, some Ethiopians
argued that the �annexation� of Ethiopia by Italy had brought
Ethiopia�s existence to an end at least temporarily and that
colonial treaties could not be invoked to delimit the border between
Ethiopia and her former province Eritrea. This is statement need to
be qualified because although the moribund League of Nations had
erased Ethiopia from world map, Ethiopians were fighting and the
Italians had never completely controlled Ethiopia. In fact two third
of Ethiopia territory was under the control of Ethiopian patriots.
If that had not been the case, it would have been very difficult to
defeat Italy in 1941. So, unlike the case of some European countries
under Nazi occupation, Ethiopia�s existence had never come to an
end although it is perfectly possible to argue that until 1945
Ethiopian sovereignty did not exist in the eyes of European
international law because colonial law did not recognise the legal
personality of Africans. Africa was there to be occupied by
Europeans. So even if we are totally opposed to the racist and
Eurocentric conception of international law (because before the
arrival of colonialists in Africa, Ethiopia�s relationship with
the Western world had been based on mutual patronage and fealty) ,
one can argue that as far as the Europeans were concerned, Ethiopian
sovereignty did not exist.
The acceptance of the fascist invasion of Ethiopia by the British
government despite the 1902 agreement between Ethiopia and Great
Britain which delimited the border between the British colony of the
Sudan and Ethiopia and which also obliged Ethiopia not to construct
dams on lake Tana is a proof of the non-recognition of Ethiopia by
European international law. The British tacit approval of Ethiopia�s
invasion and their official acceptance of Ethiopia�s partial
occupation by Italian fascists had equally brought to an end the
obligation prohibiting Ethiopia from constructing dam on Lake Tana .
This prohibition which was a great restriction on Ethiopia�s
sovereignty and which made dependant the construction of a dam by
Ethiopia on getting a prior authorisation from the Sudan showed the
British governments� traditional anti Ethiopia position. To
demonstrate this point, it suffices to look at how the British
conducted themselves when they were invited by King Haile Selassie
to Ethiopia. That said, if one insists that Ethiopia was truly
recognised as an sovereign state by Europeans, the League of Nations�
decision to accept Ethiopia�s partial occupation as a fait
accompli was illegal because it went against the 1928 Kelogg-Briand
pact. The League wanted to legalise an illegal act, viz. war as
instrument of national policy by fascist Italy. The irony of history
is that the United states, which because of its isolationist policy,
was not at the moment a member of the League of Nations, was one of
the two countries which was opposed to the fascist invasion of
Ethiopia.
The same EPRDF diplomats wondered how the boundary could be
delimited if the colonial treaties did not exist. The answer is that
there would be no boundaries. The country would be as it had been
before the arrival of colonialists. That is what happened when the
UN, after listening to Eritreans� desire for reunification,
approved the reunification in the form of federation. If that was
not the case, those who would like to remain Ethiopians would remain
Ethiopians and those who would like to have a new state would have
their own state. And this process can done by democratic means.
One can also forward the argument that had it not been for the
impossibility to defend all Ethiopia against all European
colonialists on the Northern, Eastern and Southern fronts of
Ethiopia, King Menelik could not have signed a treaty willingly to
cede his own territory to an enemy. Didn�t the sovereign send a
letter to European powers informing them that if God gave Him the
strength, He would do all he could to reconstitute Ethiopia�s
historical territory? While accepting this, one may say that by
allowing Italians to stay in Eritrea, the sovereign had nonetheless
aimed to weaken his rivals from the Tigray. But if the aim had been
to weaken Tigray, the best way for King Menelik to disembarrass
himself from any rivalry coming from Tigray would have been to leave
the whole Tigray to Italian colonialists as they had insistently
demanded before the war of 1896. However, if we put aside the issue
of rivalry between Shewa and Tigray (which by the way was an
internal problem which cannot be invoked to justify the validity of
a treaty with a European colonialist), this argument itself shows
that the present day Eritrea is an integral part of Ethiopia. In
other words, if Eritrea had not been Ethiopian, there was no need
for Italians to conclude a treaty with King Menelik of Ethiopia. But
it did not happen like that. Italians had fought against Ethiopians
many times between 1882 and 1896 in what is today called Eritrea and
they were defeated each time. Therefore, it follows logically, not
to mention the other killing historical evidences in favour of
Ethiopia, that present day Eritrea is historically Ethiopian. This
is an incontrovertible fact, although the politically motivated
Border Commission of The Hague has lied by saying that Eritrea was
under Turkish and Egyptian rule before its colonisation by Italy. By
lying so barefacedly, it wanted to nullify the sacrifices paid by
our ancestors against Turks, Egyptians and Italians from the 15th
century to the 19t century. The Commission also wanted to disregard
the historical, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic and
geographical common Ethiopian origin of Eritreans that the United
Nations mentioned among other things as the main reason why it
decided in 1952 to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia.
That being said, just like other Eritrean nationalists, EPRDF
strong man also preaches that Eritrea should have automatically
obtained its independence in 1952. By saying so, he �repeals� a
decision made by the United Nations. He also retrospectively �repeals�
all Ethiopian laws which considered Eritrea as an integral part of
Ethiopia. What legal basis does he have to do that? No legal basis
except his jungle law.1.2. EPRDF Jungle law versus Ethiopia�s
territorial integrity as recognised by international law.
Nothing brings out more the lawlessness of EPRDF�s strongman
than his desire to retroactively repeal the United Nations decision
to reunify Eritrea with its mother land after having listened to the
majority of Eritreans desire to be reunited with Ethiopia. Whatever
might be his personal opinion regarding the way the United Nations
approved the reunification, he does not and can not have any legal
basis to repeal international law. It is impossible to imagine that
he can make a law in the name of Ethiopia against Ethiopia. But just
like other Eritrean nationalists, he wants Ethiopians to accept his
self serving argument that the colonial treaties of 1900, 1902 and
of 1908 are �sacrosanct�. For him, that they were void ab
initio,
that they were intended to serve only as a title deed for Italy,
that they were extinguished by Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935,
and that they were nullified by the UN decisions to federate Eritrea
with Ethiopia, that they were repealed by King Haile Selassie are
anti Eritrea arguments by Ethiopians to defend their country�s
sovereignty and territorial integrity. We repeat that, for him,
colonial treaties are the alpha and Omega of his Eritrea�s
existential breviaries. As such they must override over Ethiopia�s
vital national interest.
The reader should remember that for EPRDF�s strongman colonial
treaties are �sacrosanct� only as far as they help to violate
Ethiopia�s sovereignty. No matter if colonial treaties were
violated by others or were not even recognised by others. For
example, before the UN finally decided the reunification of Eritrea
with Ethiopia in the form of a federation in 1952, and desirous of
annexing part of Eritrea to its colony of the Sudan, the British
government had repeatedly argued that Eritrea could not be a viable
state and that Eastern Eritrea had to be given to Ethiopia and
Western Eritrea to the Sudan. This means that as far as the British
government was concerned, EPRDF strong man�s sacrosanct colonial
treaties of 1900, 1902 and of 1908 were non-existent. What is more,
the decision by the members of the UN Security Council and the
members of the UN General Assembly after 1947 that Ethiopia had
imperatively to regain its natural access to the sea what ever might
be the final destiny of Eritrea can be taken as an evidence to show
the non �existence of the so-called colonial treaties. In the eyes
EPRDF strongman, all that cannot anyway be used in favor of
Ethiopia. Because, it goes against the teachings of the EPLF.
.EPRDF strong man�s argument in favor of Eritrea is not
confined to this. When Ethiopian intellectuals argue that colonial
treaties are void, he inexpertly says this very argument can be
returned against Ethiopia. Don�t ask me why he is always bent on
dismissing every argument and every evidence which aims to defend
Ethiopian interest. No doubt that when he says Ethiopians�
argument about the invalidity of colonial treaties can be returned
against their country, he is referring to the border between
Ethiopia and Somalia in particular and between Ethiopia and Kenya
and the Sudan in general. What he forgets is that the present
Ethio-Somalia
border is not based on colonial treaties. It is based on what
Ethiopia believes is her historical territory. By concluding
treaties with colonialists, Ethiopia succeeded in stopping Italians
and the British from encroaching on her territory on the southern
and western parts whereas it failed on the Northern Ethiopia. All
the same, this Ethiopian conception of her territory had never been
recognised by the new state of Somalia. Because of this, Somalia had
never officially accepted the so-called Cairo resolution of 1964
which requires that Somalia accept the territory it had at the time
it got its independence. It wanted to create Greater Somalia, a
dream which had at the beginning the imprimatur of British imperial
colonialism. This was demonstrated by the British government�s
desire not to return to Ethiopia the Ogaden until 1948 and the Haud
until 1954. This is also another proof that colonial treaties were
non existent as far as the Europeans were concerned. If that had not
been the case, the British would not have hesitated to return to
Ethiopia the Ogaden until 1948 and the Haud until 1954. To make
greater Somalia a reality, Somalia waged two devastating wars
against Ethiopia. This is a clear evidence that there is no border
based on colonial treaty between Ethiopia and Somalia. Ethiopia made
every military effort to defend not colonial treaties but what she
considers is her historical territory. In other words, Somalis were
forced to recognize Ethiopia�s own conception of her territorial
sovereignty based on history. They also admitted that unlike them
whose illegal claim was based only on the mere presence of Somali
speaking Ethiopians in the area, Ethiopia�s territorial
sovereignty is a historical one.
There are sufficient historical evidences which show that Somali
Ethiopians used to pay taxes to the Ethiopian central government as
far back as the 15th century. This is to say that, the 1964 Cairo
Resolution according to which colonial boundaries inherited at the
time of independence should be respected can never be applicable to
Ethiopia. Ethiopia exists since several thousands of years although
its present territorial morphology is the result of the Herculean
efforts exerted by central and peripheral authorities during of
thousands of years. Ethiopia is not like Somalia, Kenya or any other
country in Africa south of the Sahara. Therefore, the deceitful
reference to the 1964 Cairo Resolution in the Algiers conspiracy by
EPRDF strong man is the result of his distorted conception of
Ethiopia that it came into existence in the year 1900s. But even in
that case, the EPRDF high priest does not respect the territorial
integrity of Ethiopia. The proof is that he has never hidden his
desire that some Ethiopians can separate from Ethiopia. If you ask
him why, the answer is that they have the �right to self
determination�. If you argue that besides the insuperable
difficulties in defining the word �self�, self determination
cannot be exercised against the right of the Ethiopian nation to her
territorial integrity as enshrined by the UN and AU charters, the
impudent answer he gives is such a �chauvinistic� conception of
Ethiopia had resulted in �thirty years of war�. So, here still,
there is no law but the diktat of the Eritrean prime minister. The
diktat of the Eritrean prime minister is therefore totally anti
Ethiopian and pro Eritrean. Nothing highlights this anti-Ethiopia
diktat than his position regarding Somalia�s right to be reunited
and his repeated statements in favor of the disintegration of
Ethiopia. He doesn�t want to recognize Somali-Land but he
recognizes the independence of Eritrea and even the right of
secession for some Ethiopian ethnics. Many foreigners including
former Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi, wrongly accuse the present
Trojan Horse regime in Ethiopia of being opposed to the
reunification of Somalia. In our view this amounts to saying that
Eritrea and Egypt are opposed to the reunification of Somalia or
that they love to see a strong united Ethiopia.
As a result of this historical and legal distortion and glaring
contradiction on the part of the Eritrean prime minister, the
Algiers Conspiracy stipulates that the Border Commission will
delimit the Border between Ethiopia and Eritrea as if Eritrea got
its independence in 1908. The EPRDF strong man has always rejected
that the Eritrean independence is the result of secession. He �argues�
shamelessly that Ethiopia colonised Eritrea. Under international
law, there is a great difference between independence obtained as a
result of secession and independence as a result of national
liberation from colonial rule. In the case of secession, it is
admitted that Eritrea was legally part and parcel of Ethiopia. In
the case of desalinization, Eritrea would have been annexed by
Ethiopia. EPRDF�s strong man wants us to accept that Eritrea
decolonised itself from Ethiopian colonial rule.
What could have happened if, for example, Western Eritrea had
been given to British colony of the Sudan and Eastern Eritrea to
Ethiopia according to the British proposal of the 1950s and assuming
that Eastern Eritrea got its independence from Ethiopia in 1991?
Could the Italian Eritrea of 1908 be reordered in such a way that
Western Eritrea would be taken back from the Sudan and be
reincorporated to Eastern Eritrea to reconstitute Eritrea when it
was in the days of Italian colonialism or would EPRDF strong man be
limited to recognising Eastern Eritrea as it would exist during its
independence from Ethiopia in 1991? We are obliged to present such
hypothetical questions to show that the Algiers conspiracy is based
neither on law, on history nor on logic. Despite that, the Algiers
conspiracy is to be implemented through violence not because it is
legal but because it is the raison d��tre of EPRDF�s strong
man. He believes that his desire is �law� because it is a �gospel�s
truth�. He doesn�t say it clearly. But there is no doubt he
believes �he is the state� as King Louis XIV of France is
reported to have once said. From the foregoing, it is perfectly
logical to give him the pertinent title of �the Eritrean Prime
Minister ruling Ethiopia�. For us, his maternal or paternal
ethnicity does not mean anything. What counts most as far as we are
concerned is not his primordial identity although a false but an
idealised primordial ethnic identity is at the heart of TPLF�s
anti-Ethiopia political philosophy. What matters for us is his
conviction, his words and deeds which show beyond any shadow of
doubt that he has made a deliberate choice to be Eritrean and not
Ethiopian even if he is at the head of the Ethiopian state and even
if he gets millions of dollars per annum as an emolument for working
against the vital national interest of Ethiopia while the Ethiopian
people suffer from recurrent famine. Therefore, no misunderstanding
should be allowed to exist on his point. Look at what he does and
ask what he believes in and don�t ask who his parents are. For us
any one, leave alone an Eritrean, is a good Ethiopian as long as
they are devoted to work only for the well-being of the Ethiopian
nation and to fight for the respect of her territorial integrity as
recognised by international law.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the new found commitment to
�international rule of law� is not a reference either to
Ethiopian laws or to international law. It is a personal desire
intended to reward Eritrea at the expense of Ethiopia. The big
problem of Ethiopia is that this personal wish, albeit its glaring
anti Ethiopianness cannot be judicially reviewed to ensure that it
is in accordance with Ethiopian legal system as it existed before
EPRDF�s taking of power and as Ethiopians believe it should be. It
is a personal wish against which no law or popular sovereignty can
be transcendentally invoked. We saw how Californians were able to
exercise their sovereign right to revoke an incompetent governor and
to vote in office Arnold Schwarzenegger in his place. We heard also
the British prime minister has been subjected to judicial enquiry
for having tempered with intelligence report in a bid to justify
Britain�s going to war against Iraq. Recently the Bolivian
president was obliged to resign because Bolivians were opposed to
his decision to sell Bolivian natural gas at knock-down. In
comparison to what has been happening in Ethiopia during the
disastrous reign of EPRDF, the fault of the former Californian
governor, that of the British prime minister and of the former
Bolivian president is nothing. Alas, Ethiopians are supposed to
applaud to the unprecedented crimes committed against their country.
While this the case, it is surprising to hear foreign governments
and international law specialists saying that the decision of the
Border Commission is in conformity with international law and that
Ethiopia should be abided by it. Tseggai Mebrahtu
Copyright � 2003 by Tseggai Mebrahtu
Next: Part II. In part II of this article, we will try to discuss
in detail the negative role of foreign governments and lawyers
against Ethiopia.
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