Who is not "trustworthy"?

Lately, the term "trustworthy" (worthy of confidence; dependable (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)) has become the Ethiopian regime's spokeswoman, Salome Tadesse's, favorite word. She is fond of saying that the Eritreans are not "trustworthy", that, whatever they say or claim, the Eritrean government cannot be trusted. She repeated that word several times again last week when asked about the flare up of the war in the Burie front, where the four Ethiopian prisoners of war (POW) have since told the Eritrean media that the Ethiopian side had attacked Eritrean positions.

Let's examine the incident and the reaction of both governments as they occurred: The Eritrean government told the world on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2000, that Ethiopian forces attacked Eritrean positions at the Burie front, and provided some details - 200 dead or wounded Ethiopian soldiers and four taken prisoner, many small arms and communications device also captured in the assault. (Eritrean radio has since broadcast an interview with the four captured soldiers).

On its part, Ethiopia said nothing on Wednesday, the day of the incident. The next day, Thursday, the Ethiopian spokeswoman confirmed that there was some "skirmish" at the Burie front, and true to form, she accused Eritrea for starting it. The question is, why did Ethiopia wait 24 hours before confirming the story? Is it that they don't have contact with their own forces? That would be strange, this is the twenty first century, yes even in Ethiopia, and sophisticated radio communications and cell phone are available. However, this is how the Ethiopian government operated the past 22 months or so. It is a pattern of behavior, a modus operandi if you will, which has become too transparently crude. They consistently denied any fighting or called major battles "skirmishes", another favorite of Ms. Salome's. When confronted with irrefutable evidence, they relented and confirmed that their forces have indeed engaged in heavy fighting. That was the case in Tsorona, for example, in March 1999, the biggest battle of them all and a devastating defeat for Ethiopia. There, at Tsorona, when Eritrea reported fierce fighting, the Ethiopians denied their forces were even engaged in battle. And when pictures of their dead soldiers were shown on Eritrean TV and on many newspapers around the world, they completely denied those were their soldiers. The infamous quoted statement of the spokeswoman herself comes to mind. She asked incredulous journalists "how do you know the dead soldiers are Ethiopian?" Other infamous statements of hers included that the Tsorona scene was "a drama staged by the Eritreans" and "a figment of [Eritrean] imagination." Nice albeit boring clichs, Ms. Salome, but too costly for the dead Ethiopians whose mutilated and bungled bodies were strewn all over the Eritrean trenches for the world to see. The Ethiopian dead was estimated to be more than ten thousand in the three-day battle of Tsorona alone!.

To clearly show the pattern, let's go even further back to June 1998. The Ethiopians told the world that Eritrea first attacked Mekele, the provincial capital, hitting a school and "killing children." They exploited that incident to the maximum. The truth was, as was established later by independent eyewitnesses, that Ethiopian planes first attacked Asmara, the Eritrean capital, and the Eritrean air force retaliated "fifty minutes later." The latter destroyed several planes on the ground at Mekele. Unfortunately, the Eritrean planes also hit a school killing several people. The president of Eritrea, Isaias Afeworki, apologized for the accident and the loss. The school bombing was not intentional as Ethiopia made it seem. In contrast, the Ethiopians never even hinted any apology for bombing Asmara airport and killing and wounding many people there in the same day. Furthermore, the Ethiopian government is still exploiting that unfortunate bombing in Mekele as a deliberate Eritrean act, which was far from the truth.

In February 1999 Ethiopia fabricated a story again. They accused Eritrea of bombing another small town, Adi Grat in Tigray. This was a transparent ploy to launch an offensive. Everyone knew that Ethiopia was getting ready to launch an offensive on the Badme front. For weeks journalist reported that thousands of Ethiopian troops were heading towards the Badme and Zalanbesa fronts. On the sixth of February the Ethiopians unleashed an offensive, the biggest attack then. Unfortunately, many thousands of Ethiopians perished trying to dislodge Eritrean forces from well built trenches. Ethiopia used the now famous "Chinese style human-wave" frontal attack which resulted in thousands of casualties. Ethiopia denied the high casualties of course. Eritrea estimated it to be over nine thousand dead Ethiopian soldiers at Badma.

In addition to all the above mentioned record of zero "trustworthiness", PM Meles Zenawi told African Heads of State in Algiers last year (July 1999) that the Ethiopian government would not insult their intelligence and would tell them whether it would accept the Peace package or not, "no ifs, no buts". Zenawi not only failed to tell the Heads of State without his promised "ifs" or "buts" but waited months to give any hint on the OAU-sponsored peace deal he had "accepted" in November 1998.

So who is a trustworthy partner for peace in the region and who is absolutely, positively, not one? I will leave the judgment to the reader, because, any person with any common sense and intelligence can easily reach a conclusion for himself or herself by examining established facts.

Paulos