Vicki: Ethiopia’s Kingmaker
By Fisseha Tecle
“Even her dog, a prize winning Afghan, was getting
more headlines,” wrote the Dallas Morning Herald back
in 2002, referring to the obscure diplomat Vicki
Huddleston
(http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/1007882.html)
Huddleston eventually managed to get some attention by
exaggerating the signficance of Castro’s opponents
during her stay in Havana. According to some reports,
Huddleston’s dissidents were “manufactured – and paid
– by the US.”
(http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/1007882.html)
April 26, 2006 — She is a big fish in a small sea — the Yankee Queen turned kingmaker in one of the most troubled and impoverished countries in Africa. She is the American
point woman in Addis Ababa, wielding a big stick,
throwing around the power and money of the US to keep
a friendly tyrant in power at all costs.
The US Department of State was caught flat-footed when
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his party were
trounced at the May 2005 Ethiopian elections. It’s
perhaps one of the greatest American intelligence
failures in the last few years.
The sensible thing would have been to correct a
mistake and support the aspirations of the Ethiopian
people for democracy. Instead what we got was a
superficial, knee jerk reaction. Surprised US
bureaucrats quickly huddled and decided to keep the
Zenawi regime in power no matter how repulsive it may
be.
Since early June 2005, the US Embassy in Addis Ababa
has taken on a partisan and very unpopular role in
Ethiopia’s domestic dispute. The embassy has been
engaged in overt and covert operations to discredit
and dismantle the opposition.
The public face of this campaign has been none other
than U.S. Charge D’Affaires Vicki Huddleston.
Kingmaker Vicki is now busy coercing elected city
council members of Addis Ababa to abandon their
leaders in jail and join a pseudo organization created
by the Prime Minister’s secret services.
At least 100 people who protested electoral fraud have
been gunned down by Zenawi’s security forces since
June 2005. Some 40,000 have been in jail, including
the top leadership of the main opposition party,
journalists and civil society leaders. Instead of
putting a stop to the carnage and reign of terror, the
likes of Huddleston are shamelessly blaming the
victims.
The situation in Ethiopia and the role of American and
British diplomats has some eerie resemblance to what
happened in Uzbekistan. The United States and the
United Kingdom sanctioned torture and murder by the
government of Prime Minister Karimov, according to
former Brtish Ambassador to Uzbekistan. It was done
in the name of fighting terrorism. According to
Ambassador Murray, “Karimov is one of the most vicious
dictators in the world, a man who is responsible for
the death of thousands of people. Prisoners are boiled
to death in Uzbek jails.”
Murray had the moral courage to speak up against such
egregious violations of human rights violations and to
resign from his post. Unfortunately, there are not
too many Craig Murrays, especially not in Addis Ababa.
(The whole story on craig Murray and Uzbekistan is
available at the following website.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/19/1452237)
Ambassador Huddleston came to Ethiopia having spent
her entire career treading such illustrious diplomatic
backwaters as Bamako; Tananarive, Havana and Port au
Prince. You see, Africa does not get the best and the
brightest, even when it comes to diplomats.
The bane of poor nations such as Ethiopia is being at
the mercy of the Yamamotos and Huddlestons of this
world – third rate diplomats with shallow or little
knowledge of the areas they cover. Years of internal
conflict and bad leadership have made Ethiopia
desperate and vulnerable, giving disproportionate
power to mediocre emissaries, to the alms givers and
their local cohorts.
* The writer is an Ethiopian analyst living in the US.
He can be reached at [email protected]