After watching Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin throw a gargantuan tantrum at the UN General Assembly a couple of days ago, one can only mutter words of despair about hard luck Ethiopia. Call it fate or whatever, Ethiopia has been dealt a cruel hand. God or fate, it matters very little which one, the sad fact is that either or both have been most unkind to Ethiopia. In less than a generation this haunted land has gone three famines, the Derg, and now this. It's Ethiopia's continuing misfortune that it's now TPLF's turn to rule.

Why has God been so unkind to Ethiopia, home of the most pious people on Earth? Gondar and Axum probably can boast more houses of worship than schools, and more priests than schoolteachers can. They have every right to expect a better deal from Providence. If nothing else they should have been spared the catastrophes that have been cascading on them with numbing regularity the past twenty-five years.

Who would have thought that a quarter of century after the Emperor was deposed, the Lion of Judah's reign, in retrospect would look the most enlightened when compared to the last two that followed? And who would have thought that Ethiopia would suffer more bloodshed the past year and half under TPLF than it would did under the seventeen years under the Derg? These things don't add up. Only in Ethiopia does each tyrant look worse than the previous tyrant whom he deposed in the name of the people does. This is Ethiopia's curse.

In his address to the General Assembly, Foreign Minister Seyoum made several references to the manner the League of Nations ignored Ethiopia's plea for assistance against Fascist aggression in 1936. He never mentioned the Emperor by name but it was clear he was referring to the Emperor's address to the League. The Foreign Minister drew a parallel between the two situations, although 65 years apart. Unfortunately, the historical analogy was false. This view of Ethiopia as a perennial victim has been passed on from the Emperor, to Mengistu, and now to the MLLT collective. They all have used it one way or another to ask for a special treatment from the West whose guilt for abandoning Ethiopia is expected to last forever. The Emperor used the "you-owe-us" argument to push his claim for Eritrea in the late forties. Asking for sympathy is something all of Ethiopia's rules have mastered into an art form. Fifty years later Ethiopia's current rulers are using the same tried and true approach to get a piece of Eritrea. They have elevated a border dispute into an act of aggression against Ethiopia for which Ethiopia's minority controlled government is demanding compensation to expand Tigray.

The Foreign Minster argued that Ethiopia's border dispute with Eritrea was tantamount to an act of aggression by Eritrea against Ethiopia comparable to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. This is an absurd reading of history that cannot be taken seriously. Actually the Foreign Minister Seyoum ought to be more careful not to take the Mussolini analogy too far. Given his love of bombast, his demagoguery, fixation with an alleged glorious past, and the Nome degurre he gave himself --the Chosen Prince-- the Foreign Minister, may find himself morphing into an Ethiopian Mussolini. By treating the General Assembly as if it were the League of Nations, the Foreign Minster was unfair both to history and the UN institution. But then fairness and common sense are not attributes one associates with Foreign Minister Seyoum.

It's unlikely that there has been any country in Africa that has benefited more from the various UN affiliated bodies as Ethiopia has over the years. There's no country in Africa to whom the United Nation's system has been more generous and more supportive. Yet Ethiopia's Foreign Minster blasted the world body because, he said, it had failed Ethiopia. What did the UN do to earn the Foreign Minster's outrage? Simply put, the UN advised Ethiopia to settle its border dispute with Eritrea peacefully. To do this, the UN recommended a cease-fire. Why was Ethiopia upset with the recommendation, because Ethiopia had wanted the UN to take sides: Ethiopia's? This, the UN could not do without jeopardizing its status as a neutral body. Nor could UN sponsored negotiations begin until the guns became silent. By the Foreign Minster's logic truth was on Ethiopia's side, and no investigation was necessary. Anyone who failed to appreciate this point, argued the Foreign Minister, was appeasing aggression. Thus, his blast at the UN system.

In his address the Foreign Minster was scathing in his attack of the UN Security Council because the Council dared advise Ethiopia that it was better to feed ones people than squander resources on war, especially if there's a possibility that the war could be settled peacefully. It's hard to find anything exceptionable to the statement. Ethiopia and Eritrea are two of the poorest of the poor, and it's a fact that if we go by published indices of well being, Ethiopia is poorer than Eritrea. This does not make Eritrea a whole lot better, but in the pecking order among the world's poor Eritrea might be marginally better. This is not saying a lot; nor is it something to brag about. But the fact remains that both are squandering resources that should have gone to alleviate poverty in each country. Eritrean leaders know this and that's why they are pushing for peace. Ethiopian leaders, too, know this, but they are still pushing for more war, because peace is not on their agenda. Ethiopia is ruled by a clique that prefers war for honorable peace, even if the terms of the settlement are exactly the ones Ethiopia had demanded before September. Going after the war option when the way to an honorable and peaceful settlement is on the horizon, is an abdication of national responsibility for which history will hold the TPLF responsible. Being ruled by people, who chose war over peace, death over life, and destruction over development, is a national curse that has long afflicted Ethiopia.

People in the thousands have died in the current conflict. Even if the minority-controlled government in Ethiopia did not care, the world will. The world must. At some point the Security Council has every right to say enough is enough. No nation has the sovereign right to take its people to the slaughterhouse, no matter how noble the leaders think their cause may be. The problem with Ethiopia's current leaders is that they think they should be able to do what they pleased as long as they can justify it in the name of national sovereignty. As a member of the UN family of nations Ethiopia's leaders have to abide by the rule of law. They have to demonstrate civilized behavior. However, listening to their Foreign Minister one assumes Ethiopia has a continuing problem of meeting the minimum standard of civility necessary to maintain membership in the family of nations.

It's Ethiopia's misfortune to be led by people who lack the basic understanding that membership in the community of nations entails obligations of civilized behavior. The world believes, and rightly so, that peace is better than war. That all attempts should be tried to bring warring parties together. Member nations are expected to explore all avenues of peace before they engage in armed conflict. This is what the world requires, but Ethiopia's Foreign Minister in his address to the General Assembly wanted to hear none of it. He was outraged that the Security Council dared give him the common sense suggestion to stop fighting and start talking. The Foreign Ministers shrill denunciation was all the more inexplicable given the simple fact that his government has spent perhaps as high as a billion dollars on arms, dollars it could have spent on development. Needless to say most of the money was diverted from assistance meant for development. Since members of the Security Council and others foot the bill for Ethiopia's arms purchases they have every right to say they would not contribute a penny towards more purchases. Yet they were blasted by the Foreign Minister because they demanded say in how their money is spent.

In comparing his address with that of the Emperor 65 years ago, Foreign Minster Seyoum was blasphemous. He gave himself importance he did not deserve. The Emperor's address spelled dignity; the Foreign Minster's reeked with petulance. The Emperor's Ethiopia was a victim of aggression even by the League's own admission, although it did not agree how to respond. In Seyoum's Ethiopia no one outside of official Ethiopia agreed that aggression was committed against Ethiopia. Since the international community did not agree that Seyoum's Ethiopia was a victim of Eritrean aggression, the world body could not accept Seyoum's demand. By his mere presence the Emperor dignified the League; Seyoum embarrassed it. Through the Emperor's appeal in the League Ethiopia became the moral conscience of the world; through Seyoum's tirade in the General Assembly, it was reduced to a moral outrage. Ever so the uncivil and uncouth, the self appointed "Chosen Prince" was an unmitigated disgrace to his country.

It's hard to believe that once upon a time world class diplomats had served Ethiopia. These are diplomats whose names one cannot mention in the same breath as Seyoum's. They served Ethiopia in her time of greatest crisis. They did not create the crisis as Seyoum's government has done. The crisis was imposed on them. On top of the list of Ethiopia's greatest diplomats was Lorenzo Taazaz, a diplomat's diplomat who had graced the world podium representing Ethiopia and the colonized people of Africa. Lorenzo Taazaz was Ethiopia's Foreign Minister in her darkest hour, during the Fascist invasion. As the Emperor's most trusted aide, Lorenzo was at the Emperor's side when Haile Selassie gave his famous speech at the League of Nations.

Foreign Minister Lorenzo was an Eritrean by birth, an Ethiopian by conviction, and loyal to a fault to the land of his adoption. Lorenzo served his nation as well as any Ethiopian has done before, then, or since. He was an Ethiopian's Ethiopian something Seyoum Mesfin can't claim, and if he did, no one would believe him. The fundamental difference between Seyoum and Lorenzo is that while the former disgraced his position, the Eritrea born diplomat ennobled it. Lorenzo was a patriot, one of Ethiopia's greatest resistance figures. Lorenzo belonged to that group of Eritreans who crossed into Ethiopia to fight Italian Fascism. These anti-fascist Eritreans were the first to cross international borders to fight the good fight against fascism. Before George Orwell's similar group made the term popular a few years later in their fight against fascism in Spain, the Eritreans comprised the first organized group ever to fight fascism. In a way they were the original members of the Lincoln Brigade.

Either in his patriotism or service to the Ethiopian people, Seyoum cannot hold a candle to Lorenzo. But had Lorenzo lived in the ethnicity crazed politics of TPLF's Ethiopia, Lorenzo surely would have been deported with the rest of Ethiopians of Eritrean heritage. Lorenzo's grandchildren and relatives along those of his anti-fascist Eritrean compatriots have been recently uprooted because the TPLF found them insufficiently Ethiopian. Born and bred in Ethiopia, the deportees were the off springs of Eritreans who gave everything they had for Ethiopia's liberation from Fascism. The TPLF, however, showed its gratitude by deporting them. This, too, is Ethiopia's curse. This God fearing land deserved better; the people deserve better than the leadership they have been getting. One day God will listen. God is not deaf. In the mean time, pray for The Accursed Land.