Introduction: I spent the month of March 2004 in Ethiopia, having last visited the country briefly in July 2003, the purpose of this visit was to update myself on conditions and join Professor Stanislaw Chojnacki in further field research in the north. At the beginning and end of the visit I spent several days in Addis Ababa. The rest of my time I spent traveling in the north. I visited the border region to gain firsthand impressions of the problem with Eritrea and the activities of UNMEE.
 
The most noteworthy feature of Ethiopia this year is construction activity. Road rehabilitation and improvements are advancing everywhere. Some newly rebuilt sections of main highways have been completed and asphalted, even lined with white stripes in the center and along the edges. These include the main Rift Valley road, the road north for at least 50 km. into Kombolcha, the route across the Kobbo Plain, the highway from the valley north of Amba Alaji to Makelle and the route from Makelle to Adigrat. On the other hand, large stretches of major highways are still being worked upon, many by Chinese construction companies under contract to the Federal Government, and traffic for great distances is diverted onto twisty, dusty side roads with frequent delays for passage of trucks, busses and construction equipment. When heavy spring rains fall, the dust of the side roads turns into mud. We found this particularly true of roads through Tembien. Thus it was not the best time for easy travel by road in Ethiopia, though in 2-3 years, when much of the major construction is complete, travel will be greatly facilitated. Road improvement is also bound to have a constructive effect on the country's economy. Major highways are not getting all the attention. Feeder roads into hitherto inaccessible areas are being extended in most parts of the country by regional authorities. Thus Ethiopia is being opened up as never before in its long history.
 
Construction of all kinds of buildings, most of it private, is under way in Addis Ababa and in most provincial towns. New commercial and apartment buildings are being finished in Addis Ababa every month. Construction is evident from one end of Dessie to the other. I was astonished at the number of new buildings under way in a country town such as Abi Adi. Passengers landing at the new airports in Makelle, Aksum and Lalibela ride smoothly into town on newly paved asphalt.
 
Belg Rains: The little rains have been late this year but were beginning in late March. I experienced heavy showers in Abi Adi and Hagere Selam. Rain fell over Addis Ababa and neighboring areas of Shoa in late March and churches were praying for its continuation. The escarpment at Ankober was dotted with green terraces and some of the long valleys in northern Shoa and Wollo have fields of sprouting grain. Reports in April indicate that rain has continued in most parts of the country, bringing promise of excellent 2004 harvests.
 
Addis Ababa: The reorganized city administration has had a great impact on Addis Ababa and is widely praised by citizens. The city is cleaner and more orderly than I have seen it before. More side streets have been asphalted. The new Ring Road is for the most part finished and has changed traffic flow in parts of the city. It does not seem to have reduced the total amount of traffic, however. Getting from one side of the capital to the other in morning and evening rush hours may take as long as an hour. A huge new park is being built in the median of the streets that extend from the Menelik Gibbi down to Maskal Square encompassing the site of the old Lenin statue. It is being financed by prominent businessman Alamoudi. His mini-skyscraper at the west end of Maskal Square has made little progress since I last saw it in July 2003, but he is reported to have undertaken several other projects in various parts of the country, such as the renovation of the old hotel in Ambo. New restaurants continue to proliferate in the capital. At the top end of the scale, Castelli's now has to compete with Serenade, a sophisticated dining establishment recently opened by the Bagersh family, specializing in Mediterranean food. The Addis Ababa Hilton remains the preferred social center of the city, though the palatial Sheraton is the location of choice for fashionable weddings. Addis Ababa continues to expand in most directions, except on the north. Open spaces between the Ring Road and the city are rapidly filling up with new housing.

 
Addis Ababa University has returned to normal after disturbances in January. President Endreas Eshete told me that legislation has been passed to give the University autonomy and relieve it from bureaucratic restrictions that have inhibited its development. It will soon be chartered as an independent institution. I visited the Sidist Kilo campus several times, found it well maintained and lively with several thousand students. The same is true of the Arat Kilo campus which specializes in science. Large numbers of Indians have been engaged as instructors in science, mathematics and other undergraduate subjects. Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis, the new Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies took office in January and is already making a mark on that important institution, inaugurating new research programs, more efficient procedures and hiring new personnel. The same is true for the Institute of Development Research under Dr. Mulugeta Fisseha, who returned from the US to become its director a year ago. President Endreas is letting many of the recently established private colleges take most of the responsibility for training in management and business skills while AAU concentrates on academic subjects and expands its graduate programs. The private colleges are attracting thousands of paying students. Many have been accredited by the Ministry of Education and all aspire to that status. Private colleges, a comparatively new feature of the Ethiopian educational system, are springing up in most regional capitals as well. At Sheba College in Makelle I was impressed by its well-equipped computer laboratories filled with eager students.
 
Makelle University has completed a dozen more major buildings since I visited it 15 months ago. Like all provincial universities, its students are assigned on the basis of the national school-leaving examination, so only a small portion of the student body is from Tigray itself. The University has over 6,000 regular students and an equal number of night and part-time students. As everywhere in Ethiopian higher education, English is the language of instruction. The original emphasis on dry-land agriculture, education, management and law is now being augmented by addition of several other fields: medicine, nursing, history, archeology and cultural preservation. I was impressed with the energy and drive of its president, Dr. Mitiku Haile. The main campus is located on the heights of Enda Yesus above the city. It is supplemented by a newly built commercial-college campus on the western side of the city.
 
Eritrea and the Border Problem: Ethiopia's relations with Eritrea remain strained and prospects for peaceful resolution of the border problem seem remote. Eritrea itself is in the grips of serious political and economic crisis. Two-thirds of the population is expected to need food aid this year. The international community has finally recognized that independent Eritrea under the leadership of Isaias Afewerki has evolved into an oppressive police state. Isaias has jailed many of his closest associates; many others have fled abroad, some as far afield as Afghanistan, where a former minister works for the UN. Ten thousand refugees from Eritrea are concentrated in a camp near Badme under the care of UNHCR. Tigrayan government officials told me that an average of at least half a dozen more refugees cross into Ethiopia every day. More are believed to come and melt into Ethiopian society without being registered. Half are young men escaping military service; the others are mostly farmers and herdsmen, primarily Kunama but also Afars, escaping government controls. Ethiopia has announced simplified procedures for granting residence permits and citizenship to Eritreans.
 
No member of the "border commission" set up as part of the cease-fire agreed to by both countries in June 2000 came to look at the border or talk to the people living along it. Therefore it is not surprising that the commission's decisions, based on old maps, have proved impossible to implement, for it has misjudged many key locations and drawn lines that divide villages, separate people from their churches and cemeteries and block farmers from access to their fields. I stood on the edge of an immense gorge beyond the village of Ora, west of Zalambessa, and listened to villagers tell how adherence to the commission's recommendations would leave areas allocated to Eritrea without access from the Eritrean side. "The commission didn't have to study old maps," they said, "all they had to do was come and talk to shimagilles who have known all their lives where the border is." In the Irob region to the northeast the commission's "decisions" would cut long-standing, established communities in two and deliver part of the Irob population, which has never belonged to Eritrea and is not recognized as an Eritrean nationality, to what has become an oppressive police state. Irob attitudes on the border ruling are particularly sharp, for their area suffered severely from the Eritrean invasion in 1998-99, when clinics, schools and even churches were destroyed by the invaders and much of the population was forced to flee.

 
UNMEE, the United Nations mission patrolling the demilitarized zone on the Eritrean side of the border, has been restricted from carrying out its mission in Eritrea, but it gets little sympathy from the Ethiopians. I was surprised to find Ethiopian attitudes toward UNMEE so negative. The organization has a headquarters in Adigrat. The reasons are several. In spite of its problems in Eritrea, Ethiopians regard the UN as pro-Eritrean. They find no benefit from the $200 million its operations cost with its hundreds of Landcruisers and even helicopters and the ubiquitous presence of officers and enlisted men, who prefer hotels and restaurants in Tigray to what is available on the Eritrean side of the border.[1] Most of all Ethiopians resent the smuggling activities of UN personnel. People commonly refer to UNMEE personnel as "traders": "Some days our shops are stripped bare of sugar, coffee, goods of all kinds, even fruits and vegetables," people told me in Adigrat; "UNMEE people buy it all up and take it to Eritrea to sell for four or five times what they pay for it here." I was also told that UNMEE personnel are smuggling people from Eritrea in their vehicles and even by helicopter and making good profit.
 
While Eritrean officials and media keep urging the UN and the international community to force Ethiopia to accept the commission's unworkable rulings, Ethiopian leaders remain adamant that they will not surrender long administered territory to Eritrea nor let citizens be turned over to an authoritarian state whose own citizens are steadily fleeing. Ethiopia is talking to UN mediators eager to settle the problem while, until recently, Isaias Afewerki refused to receive them in Asmara.[2] Kofi Annan has extended the tenure of UNMEE to September 2004. When I talked to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on 30 March, he expressed the same firm views he stated in an interview with IRIN published the day before. Private newspapers in Addis Ababa have raised the specter of a new Eritrean attack. Officials in Tigray downplayed such concerns. They maintain that Isaias could no longer depend on his army's willingness to fight. Ethiopia is taking no chances, however. PM Meles told me "If Isaias tries to attack, he will not have the easy time he had six years ago when we had no forces in the region." The Ethiopian military is in evidence in the entire border region, from Shire to Irobland. We breakfasted in the new Remhay Hotel in Aksum beside tables of Ethiopian officers. Ethiopia has shown confidence in its control of the border region by allocating money for the reconstruction of Zalambessa which was totally destroyed in 2000 by the Eritreans before they retreated. I found this town of 35,000 busy with building activity on all sides.[3]
 
The Economy: The Eritrean invasion interrupted a process of economic recovery and reform that was gaining momentum in the late 1990s and then exacerbated by poor harvests and threat of famine. Economic momentum is setting in again. Prospects for the 2004 harvest are good. Coffee prices have begun to rise after a long decline. New investment has been coming more slowly than hoped for, but several significant new projects are under way.[4] The government has created favorable conditions for Ethiopians abroad who are interested in investing. It is urging entrepreneurs to take advantage of provisions of US and European legislation favoring development of textile exports and exports of ready-to-wear clothing, leather goods and handicrafts. It is eager to attract joint ventures in food-processing.
 
The Gilgil Gibe dam has been inaugurated, increasing the country's power generation capability by 40%. Stress is now being placed on expansion of small- and medium-scale water projects both for power and irrigation. I was pleasantly surprised at how often irrigation came up in conversations with people at all levels of society. Everyone talks too of the need to diversify crops. Potato-growing under irrigation is spreading. Driving south through Tigray, I passed great expanses of potato fields in bloom. I was told by officials in the north that they are working hard to counter attitudes of dependency that have resulted from continual deliveries of food from abroad to meet local shortages. The population is being warned to take measures to prepare for shortages by avoiding dependence on only grain, diversifying and storing production for future use. NGOs are shifting to programs for procuring grain through local purchase in surplus areas rather than delivery from abroad. Ethiopia still has to take measures to create a true national market in major commodities to ensure price stability and dependable year-to-year production, but the problem is now recognized.

 
Tourism: The 2003-4 winter season brought a substantial increase in tourism. Tour operators expect tourist interest to grow. Prime destinations continue to be the Historic Route and the Omo region, but Harar also continues to attract tourists. Little by little, improvements are being made that will make the country more attractive to tourists: new road, of course; the Bank of Abyssinia has put up place-name and distance signs along main roads; more and better-managed hotels are opened every year. Maintenance is becoming better understood. There is new emphasis on eco-tourism.
Press and Politics: Thirteen years of conditions for development of a vigorous private press and emergence of effective political parties have still not created flourishing democratic political and intellectual life. Taking time to read a pile of private newspapers toward the end of my stay, I was unimpressed by their quality. None of the English-language dailies or weeklies would merit much more than a C+. I was told that one or two Amharic papers are better, but weekly press summaries continue to give the impression of journalists too preoccupied with sensation, scandal, criticism, and entertainment with little attention to comprehensive, informative reporting or balanced in coverage of national and international affairs. Consequently most educated Ethiopians rely on foreign radio and TV, American newsmagazines and the Economist. These, of course, provide almost no coverage of domestic affairs. So political discourse in Ethiopia continues to take place as much on the basis of rumor, gossip and prejudice as on serious information.
 
Political Parties and Elections: Political parties are long on generalized criticism of the government but short on advocacy of alternative policies and approaches to the country's problems. Parties have been attempting to form coalitions to challenge the EPRDF in the 2005 national elections. None of these groupings has yet gained significant momentum and some have fallen victim to bickering among competing leaders. One of the groups has handicapped itself by accepting participation by exile members of remnant parties from the Derg era such as EPRP, MEISON and EDU. The ruling EPRDF is said to be planning to transform itself from a coalition of ethnic fronts to an all-Ethiopian party made up of interest groups: farmers, small businessmen, merchants, intellectuals, etc. but the process is moving slowly and time is short for this change in approach to be applied for the 2005 elections. An old friend, now a businessman, gave me a summary of the situation as he sees it soon after I arrived in Addis Ababa:
 
Political trends in the country are unhealthy. The real democracy we hoped would develop has still not materialized. I doubt if any kind of united opposition to the EPRDF will pull together. Meles Zenawi will come out well ahead in the elections next year because people have no confidence in anyone else to lead the country. They respect his high standing in Africa and his international status. Many of us would like to see some new leaders emerge to challenge the EPRDF in a serious way. We would also like to see more feedback from the experiences of Ethiopians in America, but this is not yet happening.
 
After a month in the country I saw no reason to challenge this assessment. I was, however, disturbed by the upsurge of ethnic violence that has been occurring this year. Troubles in Gambella resulted from a breakdown in local government in a weak, small state. It was compounded by failure of federal authorities to act to stem a deteriorating situation between rival ethnic groups. Violence cost lives and has disrupted development. Belated action now seems to be restoring calm.
 
Difficulties with Oromo students at Addis Ababa University in January were brought to an end by expulsion of those judged to be trouble-makers, but this action has sparked protests among students at high schools in several parts of Oromia that have provoked police action. Situations of this sort tend to feed on themselves. Authorities blame the difficulties on activities of supporters of the banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) which has a record of encouraging several kinds of violence. On the other hand, some observers told me that they felt the government was making a mistake by blaming all incidents on the OLF, for this creates an exaggerated impression of the extent of its influence. The OLF has never been a highly coherent movement. Some of its adherents have an unfortunate history of letting themselves be toyed with by Somalia (during Derg times) and, more recently, by Eritrea. The actual truth is difficult to determine because the movement has always been fragmented. Demands of some of its leaders for separation from Ethiopia are surprisingly unrealistic in light of the fact that the Oromo are acknowledged to be the largest single ethnic group in Ethiopia. They would seem to be serving the interests of Oromos better by engaging wholeheartedly in efforts to develop and country and enhance Oromo influence within it instead of advocating separatism based on little but linguistic affinity.[5]

 
I was happy to hear no reports during travels in the north of problems arising from radical Islamic influences, though I had gained some potentially disturbing evidence of the influence of Islamic fundamentalists in the south in late 2002. Relations between Christians and Muslims in Wollo and Tigray appear to be amicable as they have traditionally been. At several Tigrayan monasteries I learned of cooperative relations with Muslim inhabitants of surrounding areas.
 
AIDS, Emigration, Relations with the US: If graphic posters, signs and exhortations on billboards throughout the country, from university campuses to country towns, could reverse the spread of AIDS, the menace would be well on its way to being contained. The wide distribution of condoms in bars and hotels should also be having an effect. All these measures undoubtedly are of some benefit, but the affliction continues to spread. Basic changes in behavior have not yet taken place, particularly among truck-drivers and the military. Nevertheless the commitment of government at all levels, of educational authorities and of the churches is impressive. Ethiopia is getting a good deal of help in these efforts. The American Embassy signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government in early March to support an AIDS prevention campaign among the Ethiopian military.
 
Ethiopian-American relations are good. Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal has gained considerable popularity by travelling extensively throughout the country and encouraging American community participation in charitable and educational activities in addition to supporting a substantial economic assistance program. Many US-based NGOs are active in Ethiopia. One of the most effective is Project Mercy based at Ytebon in Gurageland. The U.S. military, operating out of its base in Djibouti, has been undertaking civic action programs in eastern Ethiopia. Ethiopia is enthusiastically supporting U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the entire Horn/Red Sea region. The United States is concentrating on prevention of terrorist use of Somalia and infiltration from Somalia into Ethiopia.
 
The brain drain from Ethiopia to the United States remains a subject of concern to both governments. It has the ultimately positive result of broadening Ethiopian-American interactions.
 
Cultural Preservation: A major purpose of my visit was to accompany Professor Stanislaw Chojnacki in research among churches and monasteries in the north. We had the enthusiastic support of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at AAU and the cultural and tourism authorities of the Tigray regional government. Tigrayan Tourism Commissioner Kebede Amare accompanied us on visits to several remote monasteries where we made important discoveries of art, manuscripts and other objects and conducted interviews on local history. This visit greatly reinforced the impression I have gained in research of this kind in recent years in Gojjam, Wollo and Tigray. Though it has been conventional wisdom that much of Ethiopia's cultural/historical heritage was lost during the Derg period and valuable materials continue to be sold, stolen or otherwise disappear, an enormous amount of cultural and historical material remains and needs to be registered, photographed, and studied. The level of preservation varies greatly. Some monasteries and churches (e.g. Debre Bankol, the churches of Adwa, many in Tembien, and Sawne in eastern Tigray) preserve their holdings under excellent conditions. In others ancient manuscripts are in deplorable condition. We visited active monasteries with as many as 80 monks, but at others only a single monk remained. At one with only one monk, however, we found that village priests in the area, with the assistance of local authorities, had banded together to protect the monastery's quite significant cultural holdings.
 
Orthodox church authorities would be well advised to take more consistent efforts than they have done to date to encourage their people to give more attention to protecting the country's historical heritage. We were pleased to hear from Dr. Mitiku Haile, President of Makelle University, that the archaeological institute he is setting up will work to develop programs for church authorities to become more effective in cultural preservation.

 
At Mai Adrasha, a short distance east of Enda Selassie, it was exciting to learn that a team under the leadership of Jacke Philips of the British Institute in Eastern Africa had just made significant discoveries this past winter season. The site, which came to attention a few years ago when villagers were digging for gold, appears to be a sizable Axumite town whose existence may span a long period of time, from pre- to post-Axumite periods. Some of this year's finds are on display in the branch culture office in Enda Selassie.
 
Publishing: On arrival in Addis Ababa I delivered the text of a book I completed last winter, Ethiopia in Mengistu's Final Years, to Shama Publishers. It will be out by the end of the summer. My Eritrea's War, published by Shama in 2001, was practically exhausted by the purchase last year of 3,000 copies by the Foreign Ministry for distribution to schools throughout Ethiopia. My history, Layers of Time, will be published shortly in a special low-cost edition for Ethiopia. A French translation, L'oeuvre du temps, is coming out in Paris next month. Many new books on Ethiopia have just appeared, notably Diana Spencer's Woman from Tedbab, an account of her extraordinary travels in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a re-issue of Ambassador Robert Skinner's Abyssinia of Today, his account of the country when he came to establish relations with the United States in December 1903. It has been reprinted by Tsehai in Hollywood, CA with a lengthy introduction by Ambassador David Shinn and a preface by Ambassador Brazeal.
 
 
Washington, VA
April 2004



    [1]"Wouldn't it be helping both countries more if the money spent for UNMEE could be used for development aid?" a senior Tigrayan official asked.
    [2]He is reported recently to have agreed to talk to Lloyd Axworthy, the former Canadian Foreign Minister whom Kofi Annan has persuaded to try to mediate the situation. Eritrea has not moderated its mendacious propaganda and persists in claiming that it was attacked by Ethiopia in 1998! As I demonstrated in my book Eritrea's War (Shama, Addis Ababa 2000) Eritrea's invasion of Ethiopia in 1998 had little to do with the border, but was an effort to topple the EPRDF government. Poor as his prospects are, Isaias has never given up this aim.
    [3]The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has just brought out a video on the border based on a professional survey of the border region and interviews with local inhabitants. It exposes the incompetence of the border commission and the shortcomings and injustices of its rulings as well as the sheer physical impossibility of demarcating the border in some locations according to its decisions.
    [4]The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in conjunction with the World Trade Organization recently issued an upbeat assessment of Ethiopia's economy and a positive estimate of investment prospects stressing the fact that Ethiopia, with 70 million people, represents a market for both capital goods and manufactures for consumers that is bound to grow in years ahead.
    [5]The eminent linguist and former director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Dr. Baye Yimam, in a recent lecture at Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo gave the following statistics on language in Ethiopia. The numbers of speakers, according to mother-tongue, are: Amharic - 17,372,913; Oromifa - 16,777,975; Tigrinya - 3,224,875; Somali - 3,187,053; Sidama - 1,876,329; Wolayta, 1,231,674.