Warning!  

Stop!

Do not read further if you can’t handle the truth about Barack Obama. “Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.”

“I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue.”

Bite your tongue, Barack Obama!

When President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia last week, he shocked a lot of people by making the following  statement:

I don’t bite my tongue too much when it comes to these issues. We are opposed to any group that is promoting the violent overthrow of a government, including the government of Ethiopia, that has been democratically elected. We are very mindful of Ethiopia’s history – the hardships that this country has gone through. It has been relatively recently in which the constitution that was formed and the elections put forward ademocratically elected government.”

The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected!?!

Say what?!!!

On May 24, 2015, the “government of Ethiopia” held elektions and declared it had won it by 100 percent. Yes, by one hundred percent.

Even Kim Jong-un’ of North Korea did not have the gall to claim a 100 percent electoral victory in the March 2014 parliamentary election.

At least on paper, Kim Jong-un’s “Worker’s Party of Korea” won only by 88.3 percent (607 of the 687 seats).

The “Korean Socialist Democratic Party” won 50 seats. The “Chondoist Chongu Party” won 22 seats. The “General Association of Korean Residents in Japan” won 5 seats. The “Religious Associations” won 3 seats.

In Ethiopia, there are 79 registered political parties who “actively participated in the election”.

In May 2015, the “People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front” (EPDRF) party (the front organization for the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation  Front [TPLF]) won 547 of the 547 seats in “parliament”.

No candidate from the other 78 political parties even came close to winning a single seat!

On July 26, 2015, Barack Obama stood up in Addis Ababa and declared, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”

Obama in the Land of Living Lies or Land of 13-Months of Sunshine?

Barack Obama’s visit to the Land of 13-Months of Sunshine Ethiopia reminded me of the magical visit of a little cartoon animation girl called Sandy to the Land of Living Lies.

In the Land of Living Lies, Puff the Magic Dragon, introduces Sandy to such famous fibbers as Pinocchio and the boy who cried wolf.

Sandy: Puff, look!

Puff: That is the famous purple cow that no one has ever seen.

Sandy: And the pink elephant.

Puff: That some see too often. Don’t you think it’s odd that I, a dragon, should eat homework for lunch? Of course it’s odd, for it never happened. It was a falsehood, a canard, a prevarication. Oh, why beat about the bush. It was a simple lie told by a little girl named Sandy.

Sandy: Oh, those are silly lies.

Puff:  No, those are fanciful lies. And harmless fantasy OK. And it’s fun, too.

If there ever has been an election won by one party by 100 percent that is democratic, then there is indeed the famous purple cow that nobody has ever seen or the pink elephant that some see often.

But a single political party winning an election by 100 percent is a falsehood, a canard, a prevarication.

Oh, why beat about the bush. It is a simple lie told by the mighty President of the United States called Barack Obama.

Silly lies, fanciful lies, harmless lies told by Barack Obama after he met with Hailemariam Desalegn (Pinocchio) and Tedros Adhanom (the boy who cried wolf).

Stop! Not harmless lies, by any stretch of the imagination.

Barack Obama told dangerous lies that could plunge a nation of 100 million into civil strife and destruction!

Barack Obama is an extraordinarily intelligent guy.

But in the Land of Thirteen Months of Sunshine transformed into the Land of Living Lies, something happened to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama got on TV and lied right through his teeth. But that was not all.

To cover up his lie and distract attention from the real issue, which is why 78 out of 79 political parties did not win a single “parliamentary” seat, Barack Obama kept blathering about “the violent overthrow of a government that has been democratically elected.”

Ain’t nobody talking about no violent overthrow of anything.

But to justify his statement that the election of the ruling TPLF thug party by 100 percent, Obama kept on talking about a violent overthrow.

Of course, Obama was merely echoing and legitimizing the narrative of the bush thugs who claim they are under siege by terrorists and insurrectionists intent on overthrowing them by force of arms.

Obama’s aim was obviously  to elicit international sympathy and support for the TPLF and subtly demonize all who oppose the TPLF as inherently violent and terroristic.

Obama’s implicit message was that any opposition to the TPLF is violent and certain to be terroristic.

Thus, the ruling regime is justified in crushing all opposition, with the full support and blessings of America.

I have one simple question for Barack Obama.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the regime which claimed 100 percent election victory is not elected democratically, is it ok to overthrow it by “violence”.

Before you answer that question, think of Iraq, Barack!

Is Obama’s statement, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.” some sort of cruel practical joke played on the people of Ethiopia?

Had Obama lost his marbles when he made that absurd statement?

Did Obama say what he said in a jetlag daze?

The fact is on July 26, 2015, Barack Obama stood in Addis Ababa and declared to the world with a straight face, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”

Readers! I am in a real dilemma. Help me out!

I want to disagree respectfully with President Obama.

And I don’t want to insult President Obama’s intelligence by saying that he actually believes his words, “The government of Ethiopia that has been democratically elected.”

But what choice do I have!?

Anyone who believes the “government of Ethiopia” that claimed to have “won” the May 2015 election by 100 percent is “democratically elected” has no business being President of the United States.

For that matter, he has no business being the president of the town volunteer stray dog-catchers society.

In 2009, Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Congressman shouted at Obama, “You Lie!” during the state of the union address.

I thought that was disrespectful of President Obama. I had a few choice words for Wilson.

Six years later, I understand. (Sorry, Joe!)

If I had a chance to meet Obama, I would wag my index finger in his face and tell him, “Barack Obama! You lie like a rug!”

Is Barack Obama a pathological liar?

Could it be that Barack Obama is a compulsive liar? That is, he lies out of habit;  and through repetition he is hardwired to lie.

Could Obama be afflicted with the Pinocchio’s Syndrome?

There is no way on earth (or in hell) Obama did not know his statement, “The government of Ethiopia that has been democratically elected.” is a lie, a doggone lie!

But he said it without flinching, blinking or cringing. The marks of the practiced liar.

Everyone knows Obama is a lawyer trained at one of the best law schools in the world.

No one doubts he knows the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie.

For crying out loud, he is the President of the United States! He has to know the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie!!!

Obama’s categorical statement, “The government of Ethiopia that has been democratically elected.” is as false as the man who claimed  he is ten feet tall.

There has never been a human being in recorded history that was 10 feet tall.

There has never been a genuinely democratic election in the recorded history of humanity that was won by a single party by 100 percent.

When Obama stands up, looks into the unblinking eye of the camera and lies through his teeth, what is left for me to do but stand paralyzed in shock and shame?

As Obama’s tongue wagged and weaved a tangled web of lies, his body language was telling a different story.

The video, in contrast to the audio, of the joint press conference told a different story.

In the video, Obama’s body language spoke louder than his words; and told the truth that he was lying about what he said.

Immediately after he stated, “The government of Ethiopia that has been democratically elected.” Obama’s body language changed in the video.

His eyes gazed to the ground.

He tilted his head up and looked vacantly into the gallery.

He slouched on the lectern to show he is at ease as he lies through his teeth.

He tried to conceal the internal tension between his lying tongue and his virtuous conscience (the microscopic residue of that keen conscience we all voted for).

As Obama embellishes his lies with lawyerly gobbledygook, he struggles to conceal all verbal and physiological clues that he is lying.

He shows no emotional reaction of guilt as he weaves his tale of deceit about a thug-state elektion. He tries to suppress any disturbance in his speech content or pattern. But his vacant eyes don’t lie. They kept looking at the floor.

Obama flails in “hand shrugs” to cover up the fact that his tongue is saying one thing and his body saying, “That ain’t true. It’s a lie”.

Obama’s body stiffens. For a few seconds, he looked completely wooden, soulless. He was not talking.

He was just reciting talking points written for him by you know who, “Queen Grimhilde”, his National Security Adviser.

As Obama continued to lie, he spoke haltingly. He hesitated. He searched for the right words to embellish his lies, pretending to be cautious in his choice of words.

Obama made a tactical digression and droned on (no pun intended) about using a single standard to judge big and small nations on human rights.

But there was no one talking about China’s human rights record but Obama.

Obama kept on pattering during the press conference like a used car salesman trying to unload a hunk of junk on an unsuspecting customer.

The really funny thing was that when Susan Rice was asked if the election that the ruling regime in Ethiopia “won” by 100 percent was “democratic”, she busted out in the biggest belly laugh  by an American official anyone had seen in decades.  She simply could not control her laughter!

They say Emperor Nero laughed as Rome burned. I wonder if Susan Rice thought elections in Ethiopia are laughing matters.

But Barack Obama with a straight face stated, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.” Twice!

I want to be fair to Obama!

Is he really talking on the basis of informed policy analysis or regurgitating the script written for him by Susan “Svengali” Rice, his National Security Adviser.

In April, a month before the May 24 Ethiopian elektion, Rice sent Undersecretary Wendy Sherman to Addis Ababa with the exact same talking points.

Sherman showed up in Addis Ababa on April 16, 2015 and set the terms of engagement when Obama showed up in July 2015. She declared, “Ethiopia is a democracy that is moving forward in an election that we expect to be free, fair, credible open and inclusive in ways Ethiopia has moved forward in strengthening its democracy every time there is an election. It gets better and better. The United States believes no group, including  Ginbot 7 should attempt to overthrow or speak of overthrowing a democratically elected government.”

When Barack Obama showed up in Addis Ababa on July 26, 2015, he said exactly what Sherman said on April 16, WORD FOR WORD!!!

How is that possible? They must think we are all dumbbells.

Sherman’s statement sparked a firestorm. I took her to task for telling lies.

The Washington Post slammed Sherman and told her point blank to “swallow” her dumb words and “change her approach”.  Sherman  announced her resignation not long after that editorial.

But I have to hand it to Sherman. She was right in her prediction about the elektion.

It did get better. In May 2010, the ruling regime won by 99.6 percent; in May 2015, it won by 100 percent. It could not get any better than that!

Aah! Susan Rice, the invisible hand that rocks the cradle!

On what theory of democracy does Obama certify the democratic election of the “government of Ethiopia”?

In June 2009, in Cairo, Barack Obama gave the world his definition of democracy:

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years…

There are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy. (Emphasis added.)

When Obama says, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”, he is obviously saying “elections alone, without the other ingredients, make true democracy.”

By Obama’s own definition, did the ruling regime in Ethiopia “win” the election with 100 percent with Chef Obama’s “ingredients” of democracy?

On July 28, 2015 Barack Obama stood before the African Union and said:

I believe Africa’s progress will also depend on democracy, because Africans, like people everywhere, deserve the dignity of being in control of their own lives. We all know what the ingredients of real democracy are.  They include free and fair elections, but also freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly… Yet at this very moment, these same freedoms are denied to many Africans.  And I have to proclaim, democracy is not just formal elections.  When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society —  then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance.

On July 26, 2015 Barack Obama stood next to the guy in “charge” of the regime ranked “fourth worst violator of press freedoms” in the world and second worst in Africa by the Committee to Protect Journalists and declared, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.”

Barack Obama’s African Union speech reminded me of something Adlai E. Stevenson (democratic presidential nominee against Eisenhower) once said: “A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”

Barack Obama cut down the acacia tree of democracy in Ethiopia on July 26 by declaring, “The Ethiopian government is democratically elected.”

On July 28, he mounted the stage at the African Union and pleaded for restoration and conservation of democracy in Africa.

Such is the hypocrisy of Barack Obama, the lumberjack of African democracy.

Does Barack Obama know the difference between a real democracy and a democracy in name!?

In his Cairo speech, Obama also professed his faith in human rights as the foundation of democracy:

I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

When Obama said, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected” by 100 percent, does he mean that the people in Ethiopia today have the “ability to speak their minds”?

Does Obama mean that when the “EPDRF” (real name TPLF) has “won” the election by 100 percent, the people of Ethiopia have a say in how they are governed?

Does Obama mean there is rule of law in Ethiopia when one party controls political, economic and social institutions by 100 percent and “wins” elections by 100 percent?

How could Ethiopia’s elektion be called “democratic” when the ruling party has jailed, harassed and intimidated opposition leaders?

How could Ethiopia’s elektion be called “democratic” when the independent press is banned and journalists are jailed by the hundreds?

How could Ethiopia’s elektion be called “democratic” when the elections commission is in the back pocket of the ruling TPLF party?

How could Ethiopia’s elektion be called “democratic” when the mass media is exclusively in the hands of the ruling party?

By Obama’s own democratic standards, Saddam Hussein’s electoral victory of “11 million-to-zero” with a 100 percent voter turnout” would be equally democratic.

Did the U.S. declare war on a country that had the most perfect democratic election in human history?

Bear with me folks.

What is the alternative explanation for Obama’s lying declaration that the “government of Ethiopia is democratically elected”?

Obama is willfully ignorant?

Obama is incredibly uninformed and misinformed?

Obama is incapable of differentiating truth from lies?

Obama does not care about the truth or falsity of his public statements?

Obama has a habit of fudging the truth?

Obama is a simpleton?

Could it just be that Barack Obama is just a shameless liar?

I never believed Barack Obama would stoop so low; but stoop he did, lower than a snake’s belly.

The playwright Tennessee Williams wrote, “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!” 

Williams must have foreseen the advent of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is a liar and hypocrite!

For crying out loud, what happened to my friend Barack Obama on his way to Ethiopia!?

I am talking about Barack Obama who has accomplished so much over the past six years!

He passed health care reform which five presidents of the United States were unable to do over a century. (I believe health care is a human right.)

He ended the war in Iraq. (I opposed the war in Iraq from day 1.)

He nailed  that mass murderer Osama bin Laden. (It was sweet music to my ears when Obama announced in May 2011, “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”)

He got Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. (I believe in complete nuclear disarmament.)

He appointed the first Hispanic and the third woman to the Supreme Court and reversed Bush’s torture policies. (That is a big deal to me as a lawyer.)

He expanded wilderness and watershed protection by millions of acres. (Yes, I am a tree hugger and proud of it!)

He signed the Fair Sentencing Act reducing the sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possession from 100 to1 to 18 to1. Under federal law, selling 28 grams of crack cocaine triggered  a minimum sentence of 5 years in prison. One gram is 1⁄1000 of a kilogram.  (That is a super big deal to me as a criminal defense lawyer who has witnessed so many young black men do long prison time for crack cocaine.)

He saved the American economy from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression!

Of course, Obama has done many things I completely disagree with; too many to list here.

But I have never, never heard Barack Obama lie through his teeth than the time he said, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”

For crying out loud, what happened to my friend Barack Obama on his way to Ethiopia!

When I wrote my commentary “Shame On Me For Being Proud of President Obama!” in September 2014, I was very honest and unapologetic.

I argued that in as much as I detested shameless politicians, I made an exception for Barack Obama.

I liked Obama because he was young, charismatically magnetic, eloquent and even idealistic.

I liked Obama as a man and for his achievements and professed values.

I was proud of him, but my pride in the man had little to do with the fact that he could be the “first Black President.”  I judged Obama not by “the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.”  He exuded the virtues of integrity, probity, sincerity and honesty.

I convinced myself that the Barack Obama I proudly supported in 2007 and helped get elected President of the United States by mobilizing Ethiopian Americans had the character of a rising statesman, not a deceitful and snarly politician.

In July 2015, I finally found out for certain that Barack Obama has the character and moral values of a sleazy, greasy used car salesman in a polyester suit.

A bunch of bush thugs put on an elektion show and declare to the world they won it by 100 percent and Barack Obama cheerleads for them, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.”

Give me a “T”. Give me a “G”. Give me an “O”. Give me an “E”… “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.” YIPPEE! YIPPEE!

Could anyone tell me on which planet Barack Obama spends most of his time when he is not hanging out with African dictators and thugtators?  

They say politics is the second oldest profession in the world after prostitution. Is it possible that occasionally the two professions become one in one person?

What the hell is wrong with Barack Obama!?

A government that won an elektion by 100 percent is a “democratically elected government”!?

I take that statement as a personal insult.

I have struggled against Obama’s “democratic government” for nine and one-half years writing searing commentaries every single week, without missing a single week, on the crimes against humanity, aggression, genocide and murder committed by that “government”.  I am proud of my record of human rights advocacy in Ethiopia.

But I wonder if Barack Obama knows how he has demeaned, insulted and humiliated 100 million Ethiopians when he said, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”?

Why would the President of the United States stand in front of 100 million Ethiopians and lie his behind off?

Could it be that he thinks Ethiopians are dunces?

He must believe Ethiopians are so dumb and stupid that they cannot tell the differencebetween an election and  an elektion!?

He must believe Ethiopians are so dumb and stupid that they cannot tell the differencebetween democracy and democrazy!

Obama’s brazenfaced lie shows his total contempt for Ethiopians.

If he had any respect for the Ethiopian people and cared about how they felt about the May 2015 elektion, he would have handled the issue diplomatically.

But Obama did not give a rat’s behind what Ethiopians thought!

On September 2, 2012, Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Adviser, delivered a nauseatingly sentimental oration at  the funeral of the late dictator Meles Zenawi.

Rice said Meles was “tough, unsentimental and sometimes unyielding. And, of course, he had little patience for fools, or idiots, as he liked to call them.”

The people Zenawi called “fools and idiots” were opposition leaders, journalists, dissenters and anyone he did not like, which is pretty much all Ethiopians who held him in great contempt.

When Barack Obama said “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected,” for all intents and purposes he called all Ethiopians, and particularly Ethiopian opposition leaders, journalists and dissenters “fools” and “idiots”.

In the eyes of Ethiopians, Barack Obama has become Meles Zenawi’s alter ego.

But Ethiopians are neither fools nor idiots.

Truth be told, the “fool” and the “idiot” is he who “struts and frets his hour upon the in international stage” and tells tall tales about a democrazy “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Obama said he does not bite his tongue when he defends his “democratically elected government” (of thugs).

Well, get this Barack Obama!

One hundred million Ethiopians are sticking their tongues at you; and you know what, they are flipping you the bird as they stick their tongues at you!

If the Bard of Avon were alive, he would have called Barack Obama a “tedious fool telling a monstrous lie” for saying, “The Ethiopian government is democratically elected.”

If I were a man of the cloth, I would sit Barack Obama down and give him a hell and brimstone sermon on Mark 8:18: “Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?”

I would have lambasted him in the words of Jeremiah 5:21, “‘Hear this now, O foolish Obama,/ Without understanding,/Who have eyes and see not,/And who have ears and hear not.”

I would have chastised Obama in the words of Psalm 149, “Barack Obama, your tongue stings like a snake; the venom of a viper dripped from your lips” when you said, “The Ethiopian government is democratically elected.”

If I were a philosopher, I would have lectured Barack Obama on Plato’s “lie in the soul.”  Don’t lie about the most important things in life, Barack Obama!

If I were a philosopher , I would have lectured Barack Obama on Kant’s “categorical imperative” that there is an absolute and unconditional requirement upon human beings, particularly leaders of nations, to tell the truth. Without truthfulness by leaders, it is not possible to build a stable, harmonious and law-abiding society.

I know Obama’s favorite philosopher is Reinhold Niebuhr. Obama said, “The Ethiopian government is democratically elected.”

If I were a philosopher, I would have given Obama a discourse on what Niebuhr meant when he said, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

If I were a journalist, I would have asked Barack Obama to explain his 2009 statement in Cairo that “There are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.”, in light of his statement that the 100 percent election victory of the regime in Ethiopia makes it a “democratically elected government.”

If I were a polygrapher (lie detector operator), I would ask Barack Obama only one question: “Is the government of Ethiopia democratically elected?”

“Keep it Cool” Obama would pass with flying colors.

He would show no physiological changes in blood pressure, pulse, respiration or skin conductivity.

But I am none of the above.

I am just an average college professor and defense lawyer.

So, I will tell Barack Obama how I feel, my way.

Barack Obama! Your statement, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.” is a crock of  S _ _T! (Reader, pardon my “French”!)

Is Barack Obama really Barack Obama?

What happened to the Barack Obama who said in July 2009, ”Make no mistake: History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power.  Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

Where is the Barack Obama who said:

When the United States stands up for human rights, by example at home and by effort abroad, we align ourselves with men and women around the world who struggle for the right to speak their minds, to choose their leaders, and to be treated with dignity and respect. The abuse of human rights can feed many of the global dangers that we confront — from armed conflict and humanitarian crises, to corruption and the spread of ideologies that promote hatred and violence.”

Has anybody seen my old friend Barack Obama who said, “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.  That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.”

I have lost all respect for Barack Obama the man, and Barack Obama, the President of the United States.

How can I respect a man who lies through his teeth because he is too cowardly to speak the truth?

I want to be fair to Barack Obama.

American presidents have been caught in lies from time to time.

John F. Kennedy said the U.S. had no plans to militarily intervene in Cuba as he was planning an invasion of Cuba. He lied.

George Bush Sr. said there will be “no new taxes”.  He lied.

Bill Clinton said he smoked pot but did not inhale.  He also said he did not have an affair with “that woman” (Monica Lewinsky). He lied.

Richard Nixon said he was not a crook. He lied.

Ronald Reagan said he “did not, I repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else [to Iran] for hostages.” He lied.

(By the way, when Susan Rice said she had no idea about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, she lied. Her words were, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”)

But no American president ever told a whale of a lie like Barack Obama who said, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.”

In June 2013, Obama the hypocrite ripped into Robert Mugabe who had claimed to have won his election in Zimbabwe by 61 percent of the vote:

Just look at your neighbor, Zimbabwe, where the promise of liberation gave way to the corruption of power and then the collapse of the economy.  Now, after the leaders of this region — led by South Africa — brokered an end to what has been a long-running crisis, Zimbabweans have a new constitution, the economy is beginning to recover.  So there is an opportunity to move forward — but only if there is an election that is free, and fair, and peaceful, so that Zimbabweans can determine their future without fear of intimidation and retribution.  And after elections, there must be respect for the universal rights upon which democracy depends.

In July 2015, Barack Obama said the regime in Ethiopia won in a free and fair election without fear of intimidation and retribution.

But Barack Obama did not say to the regime in Ethiopia, “after elections, there must be respect for the universal rights upon which democracy depends.”

He just said they had a little chat about human rights”, (I suspect along with the weather and the tasty Ethiopian coffee).

When the ruling TPLF regime in Ethiopia declared victory by 99.6 percent in May 2010, Obama’s White House released a statement:

We are concerned that international observers found that the elections fell short of international commitments. We are disappointed that U.S. Embassy officials were denied accreditation and the opportunity to travel outside of the capital on Election Day to observe the voting.  The limitation of independent observation and the harassment of independent media representatives are deeply troubling.”

In May 2015, when that same “government” won by 100 percent, no concerns were expressed by Barack Obama or any member of his administration. They all came out and said it was a “democratic election” (except for Susan Rice who busted out laughingat the suggestion that election was democratic.)

The United Nations said the July 21, 2015  election in Burundi “won” by Pierre Nkurunziza for a third term occurred in an overall environment which was not conducive for an “inclusive, free and credible electoral process”. 

Nkurunziza “won” by 69.41 percent.

On July 28, 2015, Barack Obama stood before the African Union and said,

When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife — as we’ve seen in Burundi.  And this is often just a first step down a perilous path.  And sometimes you’ll hear leaders say, well, I’m the only person who can hold this nation together. If that’s true, then that leader has failed to truly build their nation.

On July 26, 2015, Barack Obama stood with the titular leader of the ruling regime in Ethiopia which “won” its election by 100 percent and declared, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.”

Does Barack Obama see the absurdity of his own logic?

When one party “wins” an election by 100 percent, isn’t that party saying, “We are the only institution that can hold this nation together”?

Barack Obama, the hypocrite of hypocrites!!!

What the hell is wrong with Barack Obama, for God’s sake?!?

What message is Obama sending to African dictators and thugtators?

When Obama says, “The government of Ethiopia (which won the elektion by 100 percent) has been democratically elected,” what message is he sending to the rest of the African dictators?

Is he telling Omar Al-Bashisr of the Sudan, who this past April won the presidency by 94.1 percent,  to pick up the slack and turn in 100 percent next time?

Is Obama telling Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya that he is disappointed with Kenyatta’s 2013 election victory by a measly  50.51 percent when his neighbors to the north are cleaning house by 100 percent?

What is Obama going to tell Paul Kagame of Rwanda who won by 93.08 percent in 2010 and rigged the constitution recently to become president-for-life. “Bro. Paul, learn from the TPLF. You gotta  shut’em down cold. Go for the whole enchilada in 2017. Hear?!”

What is Obama going to advise Yoweri Museveni of Uganda who won his election in 2011 by 68.38 percent? “Yo! Yo!  Yo! Museveni! What up with this 68 percent _ _ _T?  You’re making all your brothers look bad. Jack it up bro. in the 2016 election. Grand slam it! 100 percent. You dig!”

Is Obama going to tell Robert “Methuselah” Mugabe (who will be a thousand years old next year) of Zimbabwe to up his game from 61 percent to 100 percent?

(Mugabe is a different case. The other election thieves may be S.O.B.’s, but they are our S.O.B.s. Mugabe ain’t one of our S.O.B.s.  Let him go to _ _ll.)

What is Barack Obama telling all of the young people in Africa toiling for democracy?

Is he telling Africa’s youth “elections alone make true democracy.”

Is Obama telling Africa’s youth the U.S. will embrace and coddle the very dictators who have ruined their lives?

In 1995, in “Dreams of My Father”, Barack Obama wrote:

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

I really doubt Obama has seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless youth in Jakarta or Nairobi.

I know for sure he has not seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless youth in Addis Ababa.

Maybe Obama message’s to Africa’s youth is to chill out and look at their situation his way: It’s all about mind over matter. They should not mind their desperation and disorder, and it does not matter to him.

African lives don’t matter to Obama.

Do black lives matter to Obama? Can you handle the truth?

Barack Obama did not say a single word on July 26 or July 28  about the release of  young Ethiopian journalists Eskinder Nega, Woubshet Taye, Temesgen Desalegn, the Zone 9 bloggers, the young Muslim religious rights advocates and so many other political prisoners whose lives have been twisted by the bush thugs he praised as democrats and defenders of liberty against terrorism?

Does Barack Obama have the slightest idea of how the lives of these young journalists and human rights advocates have been “twisted” and “disordered” by the gang of bush thugs he praised as the “government of Ethiopia” and defenders of liberty against terrorism?

Does Barack Obama have the slightest idea of the lives of quiet desperation of millions of young Ethiopians as he proclaims, “The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected.”

Does Barack Obama have the slightest idea of the humiliation Ethiopians face every day and the untrammeled fury that is brewing to a boiling point in their hearts and minds under the rule of the bush thugs masquerading as a government?

Does Barack Obama have the slightest idea of what is certain to happen in Ethiopia if he continues to support his gang of  bush thugs just because they do his dirty work in Somalia and South Sudan?

At the funeral of President Nelson Mandela in December 2013, Barack Obama said Mandela was “a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

Will history say Barack Obama was “a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

Or will history say Barack Obama was a bosom buddy, friend, ally, partner and comrade of Africa’s bloodthirsty dictators?

I truly pity Barack Obama.

Barack Obama was destined for greatness.

But folly became his destination.

Africans had great hopes for Barack Obama. They cheered him on as he campaigned. They even invoked the ancestral spirits to lead him to victory and success.

Barack Obama in turn lifted up their spirits and souls with his lofty rhetoric after he was elected.

Today, Barack Obama has fallen from grace in Africa.

Barack Obama has returned the love and respect of the African people by embracing their dictators who disrespect their human rights and make their lives miserable.

Barack Obama has insulted the intelligence of the Ethiopian people by telling them an elektion won by 100 percent is a “democratic election.”

Barack Obama has incurred the wrath of the Ethiopian people, the African people.

To add insult to injury, Barack Obama stood before the African Union and pontificatedabout good governance and transparency.

He hectored, “Africa must end the cancer of corruption. Africans live in level of poverty that’s an assault on human dignity. The United States will work with you to combat illicit financing, and promote good governance and transparency and rule of law.”

Right after he completed his speech, he sat and wined and dined with the same corrupt and bloodthirsty thugs.

Barack Obama preaches good governance, transparency and rule of law to the African Union and lies in bed with the continent’s worst human rights violators.

Should I demand an apology from Barack Obama?

First, I owe Barack Obama an apology!!

I apologize for egging him on to visit  Ethiopia. When everyone in the human rights community and the media told him not to go, not to do it, I said, “Go ahead! Do it. Go!”

If I had known Obama would go to Ethiopia and stick his foot in his mouth, I would have joined the others and told him not to go. My apologies to Barack Obama!

I also want to apologize for the thug-state honor guard reception Obama got in Addis Ababa. I have seen better honor guard reception at a high school basketball event than the honor guard service given to Obama at Emperor Haile Selassie’s old palace.

The TPLF brought out the Kebele Guards  to honor Barack Obama, President  of the United States. What a doggone shame!!!

As I have said before, you can take the thug out of the bush, but you can never take the bush out of the thug!

Just compare Obama’s dignified honor guard reception in India with the reception he got in Addis Ababa by clicking HERE.

Now does Barack owe the people of Ethiopia an apology?

If I thought Barack Obama was a man of conscience and decency, I would ask him to apologize to the people of Ethiopia.

I would asked him to apologize to me personally.

After all, I have spent hundreds of hours mobilizing support for him when he was a presidential candidate. Twice!

If I thought Barack Obama had a shred of decency left in him, I would appeal to his sense of morality.

But I won’t bother to ask.

I know even if he were to apologize, his apology would be a lie.

I am so disappointed in Barack Obama.

I have no words to express my disappointment.

But I can get over my personal disappointment. I should have known better in the first place!

But Obama’s betrayal of the hundreds of millions of Africa’s poor is unforgiveable.

He inspired Africa’s poor to nurture the audacity of hope, only to snatch and switch hope for despair at their most critical moment.

I will be perfectly honest. From this day on, the name Barack Obama will be nothing more to me than a phrase I will use to describe double-talk, forked-tongue talk, sophistry and hogwash.

I swear it! If any politician tries to fool and dupe me to my face, I am going to tell him/her not to “freaking barrack me”!

Barack is an African name which means “blessed.”

But Barack Obama’s name will go down in Ethiopian history as “Baracurse”.  

In Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”, the Second Lord speaks of his “kinsman”:  “A most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.”

Well, Barack Obama ain’t no kinsman or friend of mine!

All did not end well with Barack Obama’s visit to Ethiopia. All has ended very badly for Barack Obama in Ethiopia!

Barack Obama will be a mere footnote in Ethiopian history.

Barack Obama is already the butt of jokes in Ethiopia.

They are already equating him with the proverbial man who claimed to have seen a bull gave birth to a calf (bere welede) [a local  idiom reserved for the worst liar in the community]  for saying a regime that won an election by 100 percent is “democratically elected.”

Two years from now after Obama has left office, he will be a simple case of mind over matter for Ethiopians. Ethiopians won’t (re)mind, and Barack Obama won’t matter.

Two years from now Ethiopians will forget Obama’s silly and lying words. They will forget about the meager pomp and circumstance of his visit.

Some Ethiopians, including myself, will forgive and forget what Obama said.

I have to forgive Obama because Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught me to forgive in his sermon, “Loving Your Enemies.”

But Barack Obama is NOT my enemy. No, he is not! I just happen not to agree with him on his policy in Ethiopia and Africa.

Dr. King said, “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.”

Truth be told, I am angry and disappointed at Barack Obama beyond my ability to use words. I don’t want to forgive him!

But I must for the reasons Dr. King explicated in his sermon; and because I believe Barack Obama knows not what he has said and done with his words to the poor nation of Ethiopia.

But I do despair over the fact that millions of Ethiopians will never, never, never forgethow Barack Obama made them feel in their home, in their city and in their own country — fools, idiots and jackasses – by telling them the thugs that lord over them today are “democratically elected”.

I can only hope that they too can forgive and forget.

I have also tried to practice Dr. King’s his maxim, “The time is always right to do the right thing.”  It is true, “There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”

I hope Barack Obama will do right by the people of Ethiopia.

As I write this commentary in despair, in distress, in desperation, downhearted and downcast, I thought of Barack Obama, the man who came to public service driven by the audacity of hope.

I thought of Barack Obama the lawyer who spurned the wealthy law firms and went into humble public service.

I thought of Barack Obama who inspired me to stand on the right side of history in 2008 and left me there high and dry in 2015.

Then deepest in my deepest despair, I thought of the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear scientist, upon seeing the rising mushroom of fire and dust:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu [the Hindu deity of order, righteousness and truth] is trying to persuade the Prince [involved in a power struggle] that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

Barack Obama, the most powerful man on earth, has no idea of the damage he has done to the nation of Ethiopia by telling lies to impress his “princely” partners in the “war on terrorism”.

He has no idea of the invisible forces he has unleashed, the fury he has uncorked and the passions he has stirred in the souls of millions of Ethiopians with his single sentence, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”

His seven recklessly deceitful words have sown the seeds of discord and disharmony which Ethiopians shall reap at great cost.

Barack Obama has kindled a fire of bitterness, ill-will, animosity and disgust in the hearts and minds of millions of Ethiopians, which one day will mushroom in fire and dust and even “ignite the foundations of the mountains.”

It is a vision visible to all who have eyes and can see.

Barack Obama has become Death, the destroyer of Ethiopia!

Melinda Gates travelled to Malawi with the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation foundation, Sue Desmond-Hellmann and visited several communities, where her focus was on the empowerment of women.

She met women farmers, community midwives, and toured health centres where she expressed happiness at Malawi’s Safe Motherhood Initiative, amongst other things.

Melinda Gates, who is married to Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, later posted photos on her Instagram account of her experience joining in on some of the chores like fetching water and washing dishes which rural Malawian women go through on a daily basis.

“During  my stay with the Gawanini family in Malawi, I joined the women collecting drinking water. I carried 20 liters and it was tough,” she said. She pointed out that “Chrissy (middle) is carrying about 40 liters. Many women do this every day.”

On washing the dishes manually, she said “women spend much of the day cooking and then cleaning up. It’s a reminder that it’s a lot more time consuming to do dishes when you can’t just turn on a faucet.”

The number of Saudis and foreigners put to death so far in 2015 is up 131 percent on the figure for all of 2014, according to AFP tallies. File photo – Image by: Gallo Images/Thinkstock

AFP | 05 August, 2015 14:47

Saudi Arabia put to death two Ethiopians, a Pakistani and a Saudi, adding to what a rights group has called a “campaign of death.”

The executions — typically carried out by public beheading — bring to 114 the number this year, compared with 87 for all of 2014, according to AFP tallies.

Ethiopians Argawi Aldo Heilan Meriam and Hadish Zel Alam had been convicted of beating a fellow countryman to death and robbing him, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

They were put to death in the southwestern Jazan region, it said.

In a separate case, Pakistani Esmat Sharif, found guilty of smuggling heroin hidden in his body, was executed in Jeddah, the ministry said.

The fourth condemned man, Saudi Mushasha Harisi, was executed in Jazan after his conviction for shooting dead another Saudi in a dispute, the ministry said.

The number of Saudis and foreigners put to death so far in 2015 is up 131 percent on the figure for all of 2014, according to AFP tallies.

“Saudi authorities have been on a campaign of death this year,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said in June when the number of executions had already exceeded last year’s total.

Under the conservative kingdom’s strict Islamic sharia legal code, drug trafficking, rape, murder, armed robbery and apostasy are all punishable by death.

The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for the punishments, but rights activists have raised concerns about the fairness of trials in the kingdom.

Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most prolific executioners, along with China, Iran, Iraq and the United States.

London-based Amnesty said the kingdom carried out a record 192 executions in 1995.

MOGADISHU, Aug 5 (UNHCR) –More than 100 Somali refugees from Kenya flew into the Somali capital Mogadishu on Wednesday, marking a new chapter in the voluntary return process.

Earlier in the day, two planes, carrying 116 people, took off from Dadaab camp in Northeastern Kenya. Dadaab is the largest refugee settlement in the world and hosts about 333,000 Somali refugees.

The voluntary returns came after the Tripartite Commission formed by UNHCR and the Governments of Kenya and Somalia, agreed to step up support for voluntary repatriations of Somali refugees.

The Commission met on 29 July and decided to scale up assistance to Somali refugees in Kenya wishing to return home and agreed on a strategy that envisaged the voluntary repatriation of some 425,000 Somali refugees over a five-year period. Beside Dadaab, other Somali refugees live in Kakuma refugee camp and in major towns and cities across the country.

Despite continuing security challenges, refugees have started to return to Somalia. Between December 2014 and early August, 2015, some 2,969 Somali refugees returned to the districts of Luuq, Baidoa and Kismayo, with UNHCR support as part of a pilot phase which has now ended.

Still more have returned spontaneously without receiving assistance from UNHCR. Under the current agreement assistance will be provided to returnees to any area of Somaliland, Puntland and South Central Somalia.

UNHCR support includes standardized financial and in-kind assistance to ensure safe and dignified return, as well as longer-term support to help returnees reintegrate in areas they once fled from. The majority of the returns from Kenya to Somalia will take place by road as was the case during the pilot phase. UNHCR will only facilitate airlifts for people with specific protection needs.

Comprehensive development efforts are planned for nine districts in South Central regions –namely Mogadishu, Afgoye, Jowhar, Balcad, WanlaWeyn, Belet Weyne, Luuq, Baidoa and Kismayo. Development efforts in these areas aim to strengthen access to employment opportunities as well as health, education and other public services to anchor returns in Somalia.

UNHCR together with the two governments involved will strengthen efforts to rally international support for comprehensive and community-based interventions to support the refugees and their communities.

A portfolio of humanitarian and development projects is being designed with the aim of creating a solid foundation for strengthening the resilience of the refugee and host communities in Kenya, preparing refugees for durable solutions, and creating conditions in Somalia that are conducive to meaningful and sustainable reintegration.

The portfolio of projects will be presented at a Pledging Conference that will take place later this year

The Tripartite Commission was established following the signing of the Tripartite Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Kenya, the Government of the Federal Republic of Somalia, and UNHCR, in November 2013 to govern the safe, dignified and voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees from Kenya.

Following more than two decades of instability in Somalia compounded by consequences of recurring natural hazards, urgent solutions are needed for the 1.1 million internally displaced Somalis as well as the more than 900,000 Somali refugees hosted in the region, about half of whom reside in Kenya.

Mike Gonzalez , CONTRIBUTOR

Forbes

By praising Ethiopia’s repressive regime for being “democratically elected” last week, President Obama was driving home once again something that should be abundantly clear by now: His administration marks a radical departure from previous ones when it comes to democracy promotion.

On the contrary, the Obama legacy will be one of propping up dictatorial regimes around the world. His praise for the government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn merely took to Africa what Obama and his foreign policy team have already done on a grander scale in Iran, Cuba and Burma.

To be sure, President Obama was standing next to Desalegn at a joint press conference in Addis Ababa when he spoke. Maybe he didn’t want to be a bad guest. And the President did add that the Ethipiopian government has “more work to do.” After a slew of criticism at home, he later also questioned why African leaders clung on to office rather than leave after their terms were completed.

But Mr. Obama didn’t have to go out of his way to call Desalegn “democratically elected,” let alone do it twice. Nor did he have to make excuses for his government’s horrendous human rights record by recalling the country’s past hardship and the relative infancy of its constitution.

Before leaving for Africa, human rights activists and think tanks had called on Mr. Obama to use his trip to promote economic and political freedom—something the president did only in the mildest of ways.

The Ethiopian government, for the record, has been roundly criticized by all major human rights organizations for holding sham elections in May in which Desalegn’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) claimed to have won 100 percent of the vote. Immediately upon Mr. Obama’s comments, the President of Freedom House Mark P. Lagon released this reaction:

President Obama unfortunately was fundamentally wrong in his comments about the parliamentary elections Ethiopia held in May, in which the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) won every seat.  Calling Ethiopia’s government democratically elected lowers the standards for democracy and undermines the courageous work of so many Ethiopians who fight to realize a just and democratic society.

And that’s just it. President Obama seems to have very little time for dissidents who fight brutal regimes in troubled lands. The reasons for that are many. My Heritage Foundation colleague Joshua Meservey, an Africa expert, brings up two when he tells me:

President Obama seems uncomfortable with democracy promotion for two reasons. First, he wants to distance himself from President George W. Bush’s agenda, a significant plank of which was democracy promotion. Second, I think he is a product of a certain liberal worldview that believes the U.S.’s and West’s past sins, such as slavery and the Crusades, disqualify them from pushing their values abroad, as doing so implies that the U.S.-led West’s model is superior.

Meservey is right, except what liberals don’t seem to get is that they are turning on its head one of the huge achievements of classical liberalism: the Enlightenment promotion of the idea that some rights are natural, and thus universal.

The 18th century Enlightenment was all about the universal applicability of such natural rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of property. Except that to modern liberals, the Enlightenment was all about dead white men, so promoting their ideas is culturally insensitive. Ironically, they resemble in this sense the conservatives of the 18th century, who shared Edmund Burke’s belief in each nation’s particularism.

Only up to a point, of course. Liberals still want to push their pet causes on others. Unfortunately these don’t include democracy or traditional human rights.

David Kramer, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights under President Bush, sees the hand of National Security Adviser Susan Rice in the Ethiopia faux pas, saying Rice has “had a long-standing interest in Ethiopia and… was a huge fan of the late President Meles Zenawi, who was no democrat, to say the least.” Ms. Rice’s sympathy for African despots is well known.

For the most part, though, Kramer’s analysis is the same as Meservey’s: Obama’s problems with democracy are larger.

“For the first year I put it down to ABB, Anything But Bush—Bush did it, so it was bad,” Kramer told me. “But seven years on that doesn’t explain it anymore. He’s the president who’s shown the least interest in democracy and human rights since Richard Nixon. It’s sad. For someone who constantly extols his past as a community organizer, this is pretty unexplainable.”

Million People Facing Hunger hunger in Afar Region

The mediation team for South Sudan, IGAD-Plus, meets in Addis Ababa to hammer out details of a compromise peace deal for the young nation.

Karin Zeitvogel

South Sudan’s warring sides got down to the tough business of negotiating a power-sharing and peace deal Friday, as the IGAD-led talks to end 20 months of fighting resumed in Addis Ababa.

But the talks appeared to hit some bumps in the road as both the government and armed opposition demanded bigger slices of power in a transitional government than what the mediating team has offered.

Power-sharing ratios

A source at the talks, who asked not to be named, said the government asked that it be given 70 percent of seats and portfolios in the proposed transitional government, that the armed opposition group led by former vice president Riek Machar be given 20 percent and other political parties 10 percent.

Machar’s SPLM-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), meanwhile, asked for the opposite — 70 percent for itself, 20 percent for the government and the remainder going to other opposition parties.

South Sudan in Focus has not been able to independently confirm this information.

Neither proposal is in line with what the international mediation team, led by East African bloc IGAD, is proposing. After the last round of peace talks for South Sudan failed back in March, IGAD drafted a compromise agreement that proposed that the government should have 53 percent of ministerial portfolios in a transitional government, the SPLM-IO should have 33 percent, and former political detainees and other political parties should share 14 percent between them.

IGAD’s final draft of the compromise deal was handed over to representatives of the government, SPLM-IO and the former detainees in Addis Ababa last month.

Former detainees

In another twist at the talks in Addis Ababa, government negotiators said Friday they no longer consider the former detainees to be a separate negotiating party because they have been reincorporated into the government.

South Sudan Information Minister Michael Makuei, who is also the government spokesman at the talks, said he is surprised that the former detainees are even sitting at the negotiating table.

“It is rather strange that they have now come to claim that they are not part and parcel of the government, but they continue to stand as an entity,” Makuei said.

“In the government position, we have deleted the list of the FDs (former detainees) from those who will be participating in the (power-sharing) ratios. Not only that, but we don’t even recognize their presence at the peace talks as an entity,” he said.

The warring sides have until August 17 – a deadline set by the mediators – to sort out their differences and sign a deal to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 2 million people.

IGAD told South Sudan in Focus in an email that it is optimistic that the warring sides will meet the deadline.

by Magali Rheault and Justin McCarthy

This article is part of a series on well-being and development trends in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on 12 nations that Gallup has surveyed every year since 2007.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Africa rekindled the debate over whether the U.S. or China exerts more influence there, findings from 11 African countries reveal that despite declining approval ratings of U.S. leadership, many Africans are still more likely to approve of U.S. than of Chinese leadership.

Approval of U.S. leadership has dropped in all of these countries since 2009, ranging from more tempered declines in the single digits in Senegal and Mauritania to large double-digit drops in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In all countries except Chad, U.S. leadership lost more approval than China’s leadership. It should be noted, however, that in 2014, relatively high proportions of Africans in several countries did not express an opinion about the leadership of the U.S. or China.

The highest approval ratings for both the U.S. and China in 2014 came from the Sahel region. Senegal and Chad had the highest approval ratings of U.S. leadership performance, while Niger and Senegal had the highest approval ratings of Chinese leadership performance.

In Eastern Africa, which Obama visited in late July, approval fell significantly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In this region, percentages of those who didn’t know or refused ranged from 11% in Kenya to as high as 41% in Uganda. Still, this does not fully account for the declines in U.S. approval in all countries such as Kenya, where approval dropped significantly and disapproval rose.

Of the three countries in Eastern Africa where Gallup has polled consistently over the past eight years, approval of U.S. leadership remains highest in Kenya — where Obama has family ties on his father’s side — with a majority of 58%. Still, approval of U.S. leadership among Kenyans has fallen 35 percentage points throughout Obama’s tenure, while approval of China’s leadership has gained five points.

The changes in views of the job performance of the two major world powers’ leadership makes ratings about equal in Kenya and Tanzania, while Ugandans are slightly more approving of U.S. leadership. In Kenya, where approval of Chinese leadership has been fairly stable except for a large spike in 2011, the declining approval of U.S. leadership since 2009 eventually closed the gap between the two.

Bottom Line

Since the launch of the World Poll in 2005, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where approval of U.S. leadership has been the highest in the world. After Obama was elected in late 2008, Africans’ approval of U.S. leadership topped 75% in many African nations. Although their approval has been declining in recent years, such a decline is not mirrored by an increase in Africans’ approval of China’s leadership. Rather, Africans’ attitudes toward China have remained relatively stable over the years.

The findings also underscore the need to analyze results at the country level because each one has its own specific needs and interactions with the U.S. and China. The two countries’ engagement across the continent also has been quite different, with greater emphasis on human development and governance for the U.S. and a deeper focus on infrastructure for China. But for Africans, the U.S. vs. China positioning in their countries is not necessarily a zero-sum game, but rather one of complementary roles in many areas in great need of investment and development.

These data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results are based on face-to-face interviews with at least 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted every year between 2009 and 2014 in Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±3.4 percentage points to ±4.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup’s Country Data Set details.

UN envoy reveals how sex slaves are ‘peddled like barrels of petrol’

• The women refused to practice ‘sexual jihad’, a Kurdish official has claimed
• He also claimed money, distribution of women has created a rift within ISIS
• ISIS published ‘price list’ of captured Yazidi, Christian sex slaves last year
• UN envoy verified the document as genuine after spending time in region

By JAY AKBAR FOR MAILONLINE

Daily Mail

ISIS fanatics have executed 19 women for refusing to have sex with its fighters, a Kurdish official has said.

He claimed the women were being held hostage in Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul, Iraq, which the terror group seized in June last year.

Meanwhile a UN envoy investigating Islamic State’s vile sex trade has said ‘girls get peddled like barrels of petrol’ and one can be bought by six different men.

She also verified a disturbing ISIS document which suggested the extremists sell the Yazidi and Christian women and children they have abducted, with girls aged just one to nine-years-old fetching the most money.

ISIS stormed the Sinjar district in northern Iraq last year and captured hundreds of women belonging to the Yazidi community, who the Islamists view as heretics.

Scroll down for video

Despicable: The UN’s special envoy for sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Bangura, said: ‘Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom’

The sex slaves who somehow escaped Islamic State’s clutches have told of how they were forced to marry fighters who physically and sexually abused them.

It is not known whether the 19 women executed – supposedly just a few days ago – were Yazidis or not.

They were put to death because they refused to ‘participate in the practice of sexual jihad,’ a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party in Mosul told Iraqi News.

Said Mimousini also claimed issues around money and the distribution of women have caused a rift within ISIS’s ranks.

In October, the terror group released a pamphlet which showed how much it charged for the purchase of its female captives.

ISIS’S DESPICABLE ‘PRICE LIST’ FOR YAZIDI AND CHRISTIAN SLAVES

A translated version of the document (left) was shared online by humanitarian and peace prize winner Dr Widad Akrawi, and reads as follows:

We have received news that the demand in Women and Cattle market has sharply decreased and that will affect Islamic State revenues as well as the funding of mujahideen in the battlefield, therefore we have made some changes. Below are the prices for Yazidi and Christian women.

The price for Yazidi or Christian women between the age of 40 – 50 is $43 (£27)

$75 (48) for 30 to 40-year-olds

$86 (£55) for 20 to 30-year-olds

$130 (£83) for ten to 20-year-olds

$172 (£110) for one to nine-year-olds

Customers are allowed to purchase only three items with the exception of customers from Turkey, Syria and Gulf countries. 

Dated and sealed by ISIS in Iraq October 16, 2014.

Its authenticity was debated until April, when the UN’s special envoy for sexual violence in conflict confirmed it was genuine during a trip to Iraq.

Zainab Bangura told Bloomberg: ‘The girls get peddled like barrels of petrol… One girl can be sold and bought by five or six different men.

‘Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom.’

The shocking document described the women it abducted as ‘items’ and claimed a decrease in demand of ‘women and cattle’ affected ‘Islamic State revenues as well as the funding of mujahideen in the battlefield’.

It then gives the prices of women and children by age, with one to nine-year-olds costing the most – around £110. The older the women, the lower the price.

Escape: ISIS stormed the Sinjar district (pictured in August) in northern Iraq last year and captured hundreds of women belonging to the Yazidi community

Exodus: The Yazidi people (pictured in Sinjar last year) practice an ancient religion which is a mixture of Islam and Christianity – and ISIS view them as heretics

The pamphlet – published on October 16 – goes on to say: ‘Customers are allowed to purchase only three items with the exception of customers from Turkey, Syria and Gulf countries.

Bangura said the fighters get to choose first and then ‘wealthy Middle-Easterners are allowed to

The UN envoy has previously said the best looking Yazidi virgins are sent to depraved slave auctions in Islamic State’s adopted capital of Raqqa in Syria, where they are stripped naked and sold to the highest bidder.

They have a marriage bureau which organizes all of these ‘marriages’ and the sale of women… They have a price list

She said Islamic State, which controls over four million people living inside its territory in Iraq and Syria, is unlike any other terror group.

Bangura added: ‘They [ISIS] have a machinery… They have a manual on how you treat these women. They have a marriage bureau which organizes all of these ‘marriages’ and the sale of women… They have a price list.’

An ISIS video released in November last year appeared to show an ISIS ‘sex slave market’ where fighters can choose among different Yazidi girls who are priced according to ‘desirable’ physical features.

Since then, several women who managed to escape their abusive captors have told of the pain and suffering they endured under ISIS rule.

Only last month, three Yazidi women who were forced to become jihadi said they were raped ‘five times a day’ after being traded as human cargo.

IS fighters talk about which female slaves to buy and sell

Twisted: An ISIS video released in November last year appeared to show an ISIS ‘sex slave market’ where excited fighters bargained over Yazidi sex slaves

The young women – Bushra, 21, Munira, 17, and Noor, 22 – were tied up, gang raped and burnt with cigarettes after being forced to marry ISIS fighters. Their names have been changed to protect their identity.

After escaping Iraq, the women were flown to the UK by international charity AMAR, which helps people rebuild their lives following conflict.

Bushra, who tried to kill herself when she was sold to an ISIS extremist, said: ‘The man who had bought me took me to hospital.

He raped me about five times a day… My sister was barely 14 when they raped her… I could hear her screaming but I couldn’t do anything as I was tied up

Bushra, former Yazidi sex slave

‘He told me he was going to rape me that same day, however ill I made myself. He took me home, tied up my hands and feet, and raped me.

‘He raped me about five times a day. My sister was barely 14 when they raped her… I could hear her screaming but I couldn’t do anything as I was tied up.’

Thousands of women and girls from the Yazidi community – an ancient Kurdish ethnic group based in the north of Iraq – have had their lives shattered by ISIS fighters, Amnesty International has said.

The organisation says hundreds, and possibly thousands, have been forced to marry, ‘sold’ or given as ‘gifts’ to Islamic State fighters or their supporters – and many held as sexual slaves are girls younger than 14.

Amnesty’s researcher Donatella Rovera spoke to more than 40 women who were fortunate enough to escape ISIS captivity in Iraq.

She discovered that some of these abused women and girls were so severely and irreparably traumatised that they have been driven to end their own lives.

Ethiopian in Toronto organized a Fundraising  event to Support the Families of Ethiopian Political Prisoners. The fundraising is next week on Sunday August 16, 2015.

Rwanda’s  Amavubi will face off with  Ethiopia’s Walia ibex in a Fifa international friendly game scheduled to be played in Kigali on August 28, 2015 www.soka25east.com can confirm.

The match will be used as  preparation by both sides for the   upcoming 2017 Africa Nations Cup qualifier against Ghana and Seychelles respectively .

The Rwanda Football Federation (FERWAFA) Secretary General Me. Jean Olivier Mulindahabi confirmed the development on Tuesday.

He told www.ferwafa.rw, “Ethiopia Football Federation sent us a request asking if they can play our national team on Friday, August 28 and there was nothing that could stop us from agreeing to their request,”

“They have a good national team and we believe they will give our national team a good test as we prepare for the Africa Nations Cup qualifier against Ghana next month as well the 2016 Africa Nations Championship (CHAN),” added Mulindahabi.

Amavubi who are ranked 91st in the World and 24th in Africa according to August’s FIFA Rankings is expected to start residential camp in preparation for the upcoming assignments on August 23, 2015.

The game against Walia ibex will leave Amavubi in a good shape ready to face Ghana, a game in which Rwanda will be seeking to register a good result to be able to remain on course of qualifying for 2017 Africa Nations Cup finals to be held in Gabon.

Currently ranked 95th in the world according to the FIFA World Rankings and 26th in CAF, Ethiopia is currently under  head coach Yohannes Sahle who has been at the helm since April 2015. Under the previous coach Sewnet Bishaw, the team  succeeded in qualifying for the 2013 African Cup of Nations after a 31-year absence and also reaching the World Cup 2014 play offs where they lost to Nigeria.

Sahle last week intimated to Soka25east.com that he was looking to get a friendly game ahead of the important game against Seychelles “we are very optimistic we will get a good side for a practice match that will go along way in ensuring we prepare well enough ahead of Seychelles”

After the Ethiopia friendly, Rwanda will host the Black Stars of Ghana in the second Group H qualifier in Kigali on September 5 before facing 2017 Africa Nation’s Cup hosts Gabon on September 12 in Kigali in build-up game for the continental championship which will be held in Kigali from January 18 to February 7, 2016.

Rwanda is second in Group H with three points, level with table leaders Ghana but the Black Stars have a better goal difference having hammered hapless Mauritius 7-1 in the opening qualifier while Amavubi won 1-0 away to Mozambique.

Scheduled Matches :
Fifa Friendly Match
August 28 : Rwanda vs Ethiopia

Afcon Group H qualifier
September 5 : Rwanda vs Ghana

Fifa Friendly match
September 12 : Rwanda vs Gabon

Source – soka25east.com

August 10, 2015 (JUBA) – The overall commander of the armed forces allied to the former vice president Riek Machar in Bahr el Ghazal region, has downplayed possibility of disintegration of the movement, asserting that clashes of ideas and viewpoints are always part of normal discussions.

SPLA in Opposition generals Gatwech Dual (R), Dau Aturjong (C) and Gabriel Tanginye pictured in Pagak on 8 December 2014 (ST)

General Dau Aturjong Nyuol, deputy chief of general staff for training of the armed opposition forces in reaction to recent claims of division in the rebel camp, argued that diverse views on public matters enhances engagement on critical and fundamental matters.

“There is a saying that two minds are better than one. This means that if you are two or more, you will have to discuss something with different approach, even when the objective is the same. The approach may be different, just like when you are going to a given place which is known to the two or more people. Some will take the short cuts and others may take long. Some will use airplanes, others may use vehicles and some will have to walk but still the destination is the same,” said General Aturjong.

General Aturjong, based in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, but who has not yet posed a significant military impact on the war in his home region, added that the objective of the movement was to transform the country so that it became feasible for anyone to participate in the nation building regardless of the means used to achieve the objective.

He accused president Salva Kiir’s government of not availing participation of the country’s citizens in the decision making process, further claiming that the government had been since squandering the wealth of the nation in corrupt manner.

“Every [thing] which the government of Salva Kiir and his friends do is cloudy. No one knows what that government does with the advance sale of oil and no one knows what it does with the international loans. Everything is done in the dark on behalf of the people and the country,” Aturjong said.

The top rebel commander said discussion about the means to achieving the objective would not divide the movement, even though it was the “wish of the government and some foreign mercenaries” to cause confusion in the leadership of the movement.

He said the rebel leadership was united and stronger than ever before. “We are all working together with comrade chairman. We want to bring this conflict to come to a speedy end because it is the interest of our people to be in peace but this should [be] the peace they will embrace and own,” he further stressed.

Aturjong pointed out that the peace agreement should address accountability, justice, system of governance, uphold democratic ideals and promote rule of law rather than promoting “rule of man and state of one man.”

He claimed that some elements in president Kiir’s government were working to cause division in the movement in order to continue to claim to stay in power through the use of divide and rule tactics.

“Some people in the government are wishing and working hard to see that there is division of the leadership. They are hoping any debate would put the movement in disorder and possibly weaken our position and support of our people,” he said.

“I think this is a little over-optimistic,” he said.

He said the people of South Sudan knew very well that it was president Kiir and his friends in crime who started the war in rejection of democratic political processes in the country, and that they will be held accountable by the people.

Sources emanating from the government earlier alleged that they were monitoring imminent split and defection from Machar’s opposition group and would welcome back to Juba those rebel commanders and officials who may decide to abandon the struggle and return to president Kiir’s leadership.

However, one of the alleged senior commanders, Major General Gabriel Tanginye refuted the allegations, saying he was still loyal to the former vice president, Machar. Also another senior general, Peter Gatdet Yaka, reportedly refused to travel to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where the group was being organized by Gabriel Changson Chang, former rebel finance chairman, in order to make a declaration.

DEFECTING GENERALS DEPORTED

Reliable sources told Sudan Tribune that the generals who were planning defection in Nairobi under the leadership of Gabriel Changson Chang were deported by Kenyan authorities who denied them activity in the capital, Nairobi.

“Kenyan authorities asked them to leave within 72 hours from Sunday. The defectors planned to hold a press conference to declare their split, but Kenyan security agents stopped them. They were told not to do it in Nairobi,” the source close to the defecting officials revealed on Monday.

He alleged that South Sudan’s army chief of general staff, Paul Malong Awan, came to Nairobi over the weekend in order to push for the declaration and return to Juba of the rebel commanders, but the process did not succeed as Kenya opposed further splits in the rebel camp which it saw as anti-peace.

He said the defecting generals including Major General Gathoth Gatkuoth and others left on Monday for the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. There was no declaration made in Nairobi.

Other sources said there was also further divisions within the defecting officers on their next move, with some wanting to reconcile with the rebel leadership, Machar, in order to stop the idea of splitting.

REBEL SPLIT IMMINENT

Meanwhile, one of the officials recently sacked by rebel leader Machar, has hinted on possibilities of forming a new opposition group parrallel to the SPLM-IO faction.

Maj. Gen Peter Gatdet was dismissed from the position of deputy chief of general staff for operations in the armed opposition movement.

When asked iawas still loyal to the armed opposition leader, a seemingly angry Gatdet replied, “Did you not hear that I was removed from my position?”

However, some officials, who spoke to Sudan Tribune on condition of anonymity, said the rebel’s former deputy chief for operations was sacked after he criticised the proposed power-sharing deal between government and the armed opposition faction.

(ST)

By ELIAS MESERET

Associated Press

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Seasonal rains have failed to materialize in some parts of Ethiopia, causing deaths of many cattle and other animals, officials and residents said on Monday.

While the government is not calling the situation in parts of northern, northeastern and eastern Ethiopia a drought, the impact is taking a toll.

Adamu Kebede, a truck driver, told The Associated Press he has seen hundreds of cattle lying dead along the main road that stretches from the Addis Ababa to the Afar Region’s capital, Semera. He said he has also seen dozens of trucks unloading emergency food aid.

The government said it is stockpiling food to prevent a shortage.

“The government has enough food stock and it is assisting farmers to continue their farming practices with improved seed items and drought-resistant crops,” Wondimu Filate, a spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, told AP.

Impacts of climate change often weigh heavily on Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers.

Rain-fed agriculture is the primary driver of the Ethiopian economy, contributing to nearly 45 percent of the country’s GDP and employing 85 percent of its population.

By Katie Riordan /  IRIN

HARGEISA, 11 August 2015 (IRIN) – Qader and Abdi are two weeks into their journey. Carrying only one empty plastic water bottle each, flattened, with no liquid to return it to its cylindrical shape, the two men figure they will be walking for another month-and-a-half before they reach the sea. From there, they will take a smuggler boat the short distance to Yemen, where another 600-kilometre walk lies ahead before they may reach their final destination, Saudi Arabia.

The pair – members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, which activists charge is systematically disenfranchised by the government – are walking along an uncrowded road connecting the capital of Somaliland, Hargeisa, to a northern port city. They walk because they cannot afford the roughly $150-200 that a series of smugglers would charge to take them from the Ethiopian border east through Somaliland to the port of Bosaso in the neighbouring semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

“We will walk until we become weak,” said 30-year-old Qader, who withheld his last name to protect his identity. He and his 19-year-old companion are dressed in dirtied long-sleeve shirts to shield them from the early morning sun, which will become unbearable by midday. They have made it this far off the good will of Somalilanders who offer them small change or meals as they pass.

There is a small risk they could be arrested so they veer off the paved road near checkpoints but quickly return so as not to lose their way. Although walking along roads in Somaliland – a self-declared nation that the international community still classifies as a region of Somalia – puts migrants like them at increased risk of robbery or assault, Somalilanders generally do not wish the duo ill will. Government officials have even been known to stop and provide food and drink to migrants despite their illegal status in the country.

When they reach Bosaso the help will likely come to an end and Qader and Abdi will have to pay. Unlike on land, which the destitute can traverse without charge as long as they can avoid arrest, the sea is only passable by ships operated by smugglers, who are more than happy to continue transporting people to war-torn Yemen for a fee.

Ever more dangerous journey

Migration to and through Yemen – historically the backdoor for migrants and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa trying to reach Saudi Arabia – has always put people at risk of death and inhumane treatment. Last year, there were numerous drownings in the Gulf of Aden and Human Rights Watch released a report in 2014 documenting “torture camps” where smugglers held newcomers for ransom.

But a civil war, precipitated by the departure of Yemen’s internationally-recognised government and a Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign to restore its legitimacy, has made an already perilous journey for migrants all the more death-defying.

“It’s very dangerous, and I cannot stress that enough,” said Teddy Leposky, an external relations officer for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, in Yemen.

Not only has the war given smugglers license to act more ruthlessly than before, but also the ability of aid agencies to provide services to migrants and refugees has been severely compromised and the conflict’s violence has been indiscriminate. Five migrants were caught in shelling near the Saudi border in May and, at the end of March, a camp for displaced people camp was bombed, killing at least 45.

But as migrants and refugees know, the grinding poverty, political persecution or violence that typically push them out of the Horn of Africa, do not conveniently abate as wars break out in their path. So they continue to risk life and liberty and end up on Yemen’s shores. According to figures from UNHCR, more than 10,500 people have arrived in Yemen since March when the bombing campaign began. Although some of those might be part of the 51,000 who are now also leaving, as war in Yemen has created a circular flow in the region.

Photo: J.Björgvinsson/UNHCR

Exhausted survivors of the Gulf of Aden crossing wait for help on a beach in Yemen (file photo)

“I know it’s a high risk, but I will take it,” said Fila Aden, 24, in a café in Hargeisa. He is familiar with what lies ahead. This is the second time he left home in Ethiopia for work in oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Although he struggles to provide a precise timeline of events, he estimates he was deported from the kingdom about a month ago after working there for almost a year.

Hiding the risks

Some aid officials believe that boat smugglers in Bosaso and Djibouti (for the Red Sea route to Yemen) may be downplaying the conflict in Yemen or flat-out lying to clients about the dangers they have seen.

Fila Aden in Hargeisa doesn’t doubt smugglers are sugarcoating forecasts, but he thinks the conflict in Yemen might actually work to his advantage. He is reassured by news that one of his friends just traversed Yemen and slipped unnoticed across the border with Saudi.

“We worry about Yemen. We could be accused of fighting [for a certain side] in the conflict. People are more paranoid now,” he said. “But looking at it from the Saudi perspective, they aren’t concerned about us. They are fighting a war in Yemen.”

As long as those like Aden are willing to go, there is money to be made. Several sources said the smugglers had doubled their asking price in Bosaso, which pre-war ran from $60 to $120 for the sea crossing. Omar, who asked that a pseudonym be used, smuggles Ethiopians from the border into Somaliland. He is fairly new, joining the ranks of the illicit business just five months ago. But the job has proven lucrative. He saw a drop in numbers around the time war broke out in Yemen, but Ramadan (which straddled June and July this year) was profitable, suggesting an uptick in those still willing to go to Yemen.

“People know damn well that they are taking a risk,” he said, when IRIN asked if smugglers were taking advantage of the war and luring clients under false pretenses. But he said smugglers too were taking extra risks, and more and more fearful of arrest. “I feel bad sometimes but what can I do? I have to make a living.”

No refuge any more

While Omar continues to facilitate a migrant march east, deteriorating conditions in Yemen have destroyed a refuge that many once sought.

Abdulqader Ahmed, a 17-year-old Ethiopian migrant, arrived in Yemen in March from Djibouti right as street battles began to erupt in the southern port city of Aden. He made his way to the UN-sponsored al-Kharaz camp nearby, too afraid to begin his journey north to Saudi Arabia. He watched as the camp ran short of food and water, with aid agencies unable to get supplies in. Finally, he managed to secure passage on a ship that evacuated him to Somaliland.

At a migrant response center in Hargeisa, where he was waiting to be repatriated back to Ethiopia, Ahmed said the war in Yemen had helped him reach the realisation that his goal of getting to Saudi Arabia would likely cost him his life. He now intends to return to farming with his father in Ethiopia, even though it will be almost impossible to earn a living.

For UNHCR’s Leposky, Yemen’s collapse is particularly concerning because of the country’s history of opening its borders to refugees and asylum seekers. He told IRIN that those arriving now in Yemen are making the costly journey across the sea only to find themselves in a similar situation, if not worse.

“It’s so unfortunate that a country that has provided protection and asylum to people for so many years is now in dire straits.”

kr/ag

AUG 13TH, 2015

Annette Weber

Senior Fellow of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
The content of this [report/study/article/publication…] does not reflect the official opinion of the DIPLOMAT NEWS NETWORK.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

– Two decades after achieving independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea is back in the European headlines above –all for a wave of refugees arriving in Europe. At the same time, a recent United Nations Commission on Human Rights report accuses the Eritrean regime of gross human rights violations. President Isayas Afewerki sees Eritrea’s regional and international isolation since its war with neighbouring Ethiopia (1998–2000) as evidence of a conspiracy between Ethiopia and influential Western states. Every month between three and five thousand Eritreans attempt to flee the total mobilisation instituted for national defence. Reintegrating the country in regional structures could build trust and neutralise the Eritrean narrative of Ethiopian aggression and international conspiracy.

In 2014, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 360,000 refugees left Eritrea, 37,000 of whom came to Europe. Altogether, more than 6 percent of the population have fled the country, despite Eritrea suffering neither famine nor war nor terrorism. It would therefore appear that emigration is driven by other motives. The main cause is in fact the potentially unlimited military service that was introduced in 2002. Both men and women are obliged to complete this “national service”, which must officially be completed between the ages of eighteen and fifty. While the duration is supposed to be limited to eighteen months, it can in reality last ten years or more. Apart from national defence, citizens may be ordered to work in agriculture, roadbuilding or mining. For the Eritrean government in Asmara, national service therefore represents a significant economic factor.

In the interests of creating a national identity transcending ethnic ties, the government has taken to rotating conscripts between locations (a strategy already applied by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front from which today’s governing PFDJ emerged). In combination with the lack of a time limit, however, the concept leaves young people spending long periods far from home without contact to their families. Where they are rewarded at all, conscripts are also so poorly paid that they are unable to provide for a family or make any kind of investment in their future.

The government, on the other hand, regards compulsory service as a vital safeguard for Eritrea’s national defence and independence. For the ideologists of the SWP Comments ruling party, the country’s defence and autonomy form an imperative more important than individual liberties. Fleeing the service is tantamount to treason, so returnees must expect persecution and imprisonment. Because it is more or less impossible to leave the country legally, a dense network of organised traffickers has arisen specifically serving Eritreans. A range of methods are involved. In “normal” trafficking, refugees are taken to Israel or Libya via Sudan. But traffickers also make money by kid napping refugees and blackmailing their families in Eritrea. A string of beneficiaries, including members of the border police and the Eritrean and Sudanese armed forces, members of nomadic groups in eastern Sudan and the Sinai, and trans-African trafficking networks, profit enormously from Eritrean asylum seekers, whose journey and ransom cost upwards of $10,000.

Background

Eritrea achieved independence in 1993, after thirty years of fighting against Ethiopian rule. The Eritrean and Ethiopean liberation movements were originally closely linked, having jointly toppled communist military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. This led to hopes of peaceful coexistence following Eritrea’s secession, for which ideal preconditions appeared to exist. The two states shared an interest in regional trade, while Ethiopia wished to use the Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab after losing its access to the Red Sea through the secession.

But only five years after Eritrean independence, war broke out between the two allies– over exactly those supposedly shared interests, such as Ethiopian access to the sea. The conflict quickly escalated, with border disputes leading to occupation of territory by both parties and air strikes on each other’s airfields. The war lasted two years and cost about one hundred thousand lives, before ending as a “frozen conflict”.

The Algiers Agreement of 2000 and the 2002 decision of the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) delimiting the border created the formal preconditions for peace. Yet Ethiopia refuses to this day to recognise the proposed border line and continues to occupy Eritrean territory. Neither the African Union nor the UN nor bilateral partners demand that Addis Abeba observe the agreements and implement binding decisions. Ethiopia is one of the West’s closest allies in the “war on terror” and valued as a stable (albeit repressive) regional power in the Horn of Africa. The AU even has its headquarters in Addis Abeba. Ethiopian preeminence creates a situation where the West is much more conciliatory towards Ethiopia than to other countries in the Horn of Africa, generally turning a blind eye to repression, human rights violations and anti-democratic measures. In fact the states in the region are not far apart in the relevant indices of human rights, political freedoms and democratisation. The Asmara government, in turn, sees Ethiopia’s refusal to implement valid agreements, in conjunction with the attitude of Western states, as a wholesale betrayal.

Human Rights and Liberties

Repression spiralled in Eritrea following the war of 1998 to 2000, with Isayas Afewerki instrumentalising the external enemy Ethiopia and the West’s “complicity” to largely suspend civil liberties, democratic mechanisms and rule of law structures. Instead, Afewerki established an autocratic one party regime under his rule. He was, like his cousin Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, initially the leader of the national liberation movement before assuming the presidency after independence in 1993. The parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2001 were cancelled, and the constitution adopted in 1997 never came into force. To this day political decisions are promulgated by presidential decree. Shortly after the war a group of Afewerki’s closest advisers, the so-called G15, criticised his policies as “illegal and unconstitutional”. Eleven of them were detained, and it remains a mystery where they are being held, whether they will ever face charges, and whether they are even still alive. According to the UNHCR report, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are common practice in Eritrea.

In 2001 President Afewerki closed all independent newspapers and had a number of journalists arrested. According to Reporters without Borders, sixteen journalists were still in prison in 2015, and Eritrea has occupied last place in its regular World Press Freedom Index for the past s even years.

The Economy

Investment in the future of the population has been sacrificed to the imperative of security. As in the rest of the continent, the Eritrean population is young, with more than 60 percent under 35 years of age. As already mentioned, many regard military service as an odious burden rather than a legitimate and necessary patriotic duty.

More than 70 percent of the population work in agriculture, which contributes less than 10 percent of GDP. Eritreans live largely from subsistence farming, livestock herding and fishing. Conscripts doing their national service also work on state-run farms. The mining sector has grown rapidly in recent years, with China and Canada most strongly involved in the country’s gold and copper mines. Russia and Turkey have also shown interest in the sector. The mining expansion was responsible for a jump in GDP growth from 1.3 percent in 2013 to 4.5 percent in 2014. The relatively high price of gold and copper in 2015 means that the government in Asmara can expect strong foreign exchange revenues. But with almost all resources channelled into the defence budget, Eritrea’s economy lags far behind its potential. The inflation rate is estimated to be 11 percent.

Remittances from migrants represent an important source of revenues, both for private households and for the government. In that context, growing numbers of Eritrean refugees arriving in Europe guarantee a steady flow of cash to the homeland. Eritrea introduced a diaspora tax to fund national reconstruction, and for a time this represented an important pillar of the government budget. The levy took 2 percent of the income of diaspora Eritreans, mostly collected by embassies without violating international law. But when the UN imposed sanctions in 2011, it became illegal to collect taxes abroad. The regime now instead demands payments to be made in Eritrea itself, treating the tax as a development levy enabling the state to invest in infrastructure without becoming dependent on foreign donors.

Regional Situation and Outlook

In the Horn of Africa the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is an important regional organisation, especially as a conflict mediator and integration motor. However, Eritrea suspended its membership of IGAD in protest after Ethiopia’s 2006 military intervention in the Somali civil war. Asmara applied to rejoin in 2011, but has yet to be readmitted. In response to the Ethiopian intervention, Eritrea gran ted asylum to the leadership of the “Islamic Courts Union”, which governed Somalia from June to December 2006. The UN Monitoring Group on Eritrea and Somalia also accuses the Eritrean government of having supplied military and financial support to the jihadist al-Shabaab militia in Somalia. This led to UN and EU sanctions against Eritrea. Eritrea has thus acted as a spoiler in the region, whose other states support the anti-Shabaab mission of the African Union (AMISOM).

The conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia is deadlocked and it is unlikely that they will be able to “thaw” it themselves in the foreseeable future. In view of the large proved. The country is part of a region, and use should be made of the regional mechanisms both for conflict mediation and for trade and economic integration. Regional integration of Eritrea could defuse the threat scenario of external intervention and thus delegitimise the regime’s policies. This would contribute to transforming Eritrea from regional spoiler to constructive actor. The African Union could assume an important function by for example assuming a security guarantee for Eritrea. The international community would need to increase pressure on Ethiopia to implement the Algiers agreements. In return Eritrea could be expected to curtail its military service and engage constructively in the region. The international community could assume the role of a guarantor of regional integration, and should work to neutralize the Eritrean conspiracy narrative. But to reduce Eritrea’s mistrust the West will have to pursue a more balanced policy towards the different countries in the Horn of Africa numbers of refugees, however, a solution for Eritrea is urgently needed. Above all, the lives of the population need to be improved.

The country is part of a region, anduse should be made of the regional mechanisms both for conflict mediation and for trade and economic integration. Regional integration of Eritrea could defuse the threat scenario of external intervention and thus delegitimise the regime’s policies. This would contribute to transforming Eritrea from regional spoiler to constructive actor.

The African Union could assume an important function by for example assuming a security guarantee for Eritrea. The international community would need to increase pressure on Ethiopia to implement the Algiers agreements. In return Eritrea could be expected to curtail its military service and engage constructively in the region. The international community could assume the role of a guarantor of regional integration, and should work to neutralize the Eritrean conspiracy narrative. But to reduce Eritrea’s mistrust the West will have to pursue a more balanced policy towards the different countries in the Horn of Africa.

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An asylum seeker has been discovered alive in the hold of a plane that landed at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport on Friday morning, after smuggling himself on to an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa.

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BBC News

The US has reopened its embassy in Cuba more than 54 years after it was closed, in a symbolic step signalling the warming of ties between both countries.

John Kerry, the first US Secretary of State to visit Cuba in 70 years, presided over the ceremony in Havana.

The US flag was raised by the same US marines who brought it down in 1961.

Cuba reopened its embassy in Washington last month. But issues remain, with Cuban leader Fidel Castro blasting the US for not lifting its trade embargo.

In an open letter on Thursday, Mr Castro said the US owed Cuba millions of dollars because of its 53-year-long embargo. The letter makes no mention of the reopening of the US embassy.

Historic visit

Three marines who lowered the American flag for the last time on 4 January 1961 raised it again during Friday’s historic ceremony in Havana. They are now retired and in their late 70s.

“I’m gonna love seeing that flag go back up,” said former marine Jim Tracy, 78, in a US State Department video released ahead of the ceremony.

At the scene – Will Grant, BBC Cuba correspondent, Havana

It is a typical hot summer’s morning in Havana – humid and sticky. But it’s a warmth which perhaps befits the moment in which Cuba and the United States finally put almost six decades of Cold War hostility behind them.

And the sea breeze off the Malecon, Havana’s seafront promenade, is refreshing the dignitaries that have gathered on the front lawn for this historic reopening ceremony.

If a lot of the diplomats present thought they’d never see this day, millions of ordinary Cubans certainly never thought they would. Crowds have started to build up around the perimeter fence – some carrying Cuban flags, others the Stars and Stripes.

But the flag that really matters today, the one going up the flagpole at the embassy, will be raised by the same three marines who brought it down in 1961.

Cuban leader Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama agreed to restore ties in December last year.

While trade and travel restrictions have been relaxed, the Republican-led US Congress has not lifted the trade embargo the US imposed on the communist-run island in 1960.

Cuba says the embargo – which it calls a blockade – is hugely damaging to its economy.

It says relations will be fully restored only once it is lifted.

Fidel Castro’s letter was published in state newspaper Granma to mark his 89th birthday.

Fidel Castro: Cuba’s revolutionary leader

• Castro survived over 600 assassination attempts to become the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century
• In 1959 he took power in the Cuban Revolution after several years of guerrilla warfare in the mountains
• The CIA sponsored an unsuccessful invasion by 1,500 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Castro took personal charge of the defensive operation
• In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war
• 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the US in the Mariel Boatlift in 1980
• In 2008 Castro stepped down from power and handed over the reins to his younger brother Raul.

How did Fidel Castro keep a grip on power for so long?

In it, Mr Castro said Cuba was committed to “good will and peace in our hemisphere” but added: “We will never stop fighting for the peace and welfare of all human beings, regardless of the colour of their skin and which country they come from.”

Fidel Castro led his country from the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, until 2006, when he stood down because of undisclosed health problems.

He passed on power to his younger brother, Raul, who embarked on a number of economic reforms.