The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 33
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Updates and Out-TakesHISTORY HELD HOSTAGE BY CIA’S COVERT DIVISION SECRECY AND LIES IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AROUND THE WORLD
II. Self-Determination Crisis WatchKASHMIR: SEEK OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEACE
III. Letters & CommentsREPLY TO CONNELL: CALL FOR BALANCE AND TOLERANCE
I. Updates and Out-TakesHISTORY HELD HOSTAGE BY CIA’S COVERT DIVISION
On February 1, 1999, the Clinton White House ordered the U.S. national security agencies to "retrieve and review for declassification documents that shed light on human rights abuses, terrorism, and other acts of political violence in Chile" from 1968-1990--a policy initiative taken after the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London. To date, some 7,500 documents, mostly from the State Department, have been released as part of the administration's special "Chile Declassification Project." But the CIA has been less forthcoming. In the first year of the declassification process, the Agency refused to release a single document on its own covert role in Chile's tragedy. Pressured by the National Security Archive (a nonprofit organization committed to more government transparency in security issues) last fall, the Clinton administration forced the CIA to reconsider its refusal to release files on its operations against the Allende government and in support of the Pinochet regime. To his credit, CIA director George Tenet did order his staff to search operational archives, and hundreds of documents were found, reviewed, and prepared for release. However, as the CIA prepared to transfer this collection to the State Department for final distribution, the covert division of the Agency--the Directorate of Operations (DO)--protested to CIA director George Tenet that releasing even the heavily censored documents would endanger CIA operations abroad. DO officials argued that, because the collection reflects a broad picture of how the CIA secretly intervened and influenced the internal affairs of Chile over a protracted period of time, it could shed light on similar current and future covert action in other nations around the world. Mr. Tenet agreed; during the week of August 7, he decided that, with the exception of 300 documents on the most widely known aspects of CIA operations in the fall of 1970, all documents on U.S. covert action in Chile from 1962 through 1975--including the first two years of support for Pinochet's military regime--would be withheld from release. Responding to this most recent attempt to cover up past CIA operations, Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, stated: "This collection of documents is, in essence, the 'Pentagon Papers' of a major covert war. While the CIA records are unlikely to expose previously unknown activities, they will shed considerable empirical light on the extent of U.S. involvement in Chile's internal affairs and covert efforts to undermine a democracy and bolster a dictatorship. "The release of these documents will serve both national and international interests. For Chileans, these documents are a roadmap to a secret history of their nation. For U.S. citizens, these records are critical to the understanding of the past and a discussion in the present of U.S. policy toward onerous regimes such as that of General Pinochet. They are fundamental to the ongoing public debate, at home and abroad, over the propriety and scope of CIA covert operations in the 21st century. And their inclusion in the Clinton administration's Chile Declassification Project is critical to the credibility and integrity of the U.S. government's commitment on promoting human rights, accountability and democracy." For that reason, in a July 31 letter to national security advisor Samuel Berger, the Archivist of the United States, John Carlin, stated that the CIA's "last minute reversal will fundamentally undermine the overall integrity of the project and will result in a significantly incomplete public record of these important events," and also urged the White House "to make every possible effort to convince the CIA to follow through on the commitments it made with respect to ensuring a broad scale declassification." Representative Nancy Pelosi, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote directly to Tenet: "It is time to allow the United States as a country, and the CIA as an institution, to put this past behind us--through the simple act of being forthcoming and opening your files for historical consideration. "The opportunity to do that is now."
SECRECY AND LIES IN U.S. FOREIGN
POLICY Secrets and lies have always been intrinsic to the functions of states. In a democracy, public tolerance of official secrecy tends to shift with the tides: in times of national emergency, such as war or civil unrest, people are willing to forgo open governance in exchange for safety and victory; in peace, the citizenry becomes more assertive, claiming its right to knowledge of past misdeeds and to informed participation in current affairs. Today that right is being asserted against continuing government efforts to bolster the secrecy system. During the long, dark winter of America’s cold war, a system of secrecy first devised in the crucible of the Second World War flourished. It took root and grew, reaching beyond the corridors of power in Washington to taint government operations across the country and around the globe. It served to hide not only the individual misdeeds and misadventures of successive administrations but, under the guise of “national security,” to conceal the rationales behind them. Presidents, policymakers, and legislators used the advent of the national security state as an excuse for their evasiveness. They assumed they could abrogate the people’s “right to know” without prior consultation--just as if the United States were engaged in an open, armed conflict. U.S. citizens accepted this curtailment, to a degree. Fearful of the prospects of a nuclear face-off, Americans allowed the erosion both of freedoms and of the presumption of openness that they had once taken for granted. As a result, secrecy spread its shadow over the crafting of foreign policy, the building of weapons, the birth of entire government agencies, the spending of federal funds, and, inevitably, the play of public debate. In the early 1970s, as public opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam mounted, publication of the Pentagon Papers revealed the military’s misdeeds in Vietnam, and FBI documents obtained by antiwar activists exposed COINTELPRO, a covert domestic surveillance program. Two seminal congressional investigations, named for their chairs, Congressman Otis Pike and Senator Frank Church, helped document government abuses and partially lifted the lid on state secrets. With the end of the cold war, however, the first broad-based movement for openness, accountability, and an end to secrecy grew, as librarians and archivists, academics and historians, Republicans and Democrats, human rights and public interest advocates, scientists, jurists, and even some members of the defense and intelligence establishment demanded declassification. Forged in the wake of a half century of covert operations, black budgets, and information controls, this new constituency is demanding, in the words of the bipartisan Moynihan Commission, that “it is time for a new way of thinking about secrecy.” Sensing this shift, the national security bureaucracy scrambled to renounce old habits. Agencies long submerged in the black waters of secrecy realized that they needed to surface and become part of the growing public debate over changing missions and shrinking resources. In February 1992, CIA Director Robert Gates announced the advent of “CIA openness” (“an oxymoron,” he admitted), promising more media briefings, academic conferences, and documents. In 1993, a scathing newspaper series documenting four decades of nuclear establishment radiation experiments on unwitting human subjects compelled the Department of Energy to launch its own “openness initiative.” Bill Clinton, the first post-cold war president, also took some important first steps to challenge the system he inherited. In 1995, after launching a government-wide review of the country’s secrecy policies, he signed Executive Order 12958, a directive to overhaul the classification system of U.S. national security information. The order drove a stake in the heart of one of the national security establishment’s most cherished beliefs--that secret documents must remain secret indefinitely--by requiring the “automatic declassification” of most historically valuable records older than 25 years. The executive order established an interagency review panel with the power to reverse agency classification decisions. In its first two years of operation, the panel declassified (in full or in part) more than 80% of the classified records it reviewed--a sharp indictment of past secrecy practices. Driving the executive branch’s incipient reform efforts was mounting public pressure for change. Simultaneously, Congress played a more limited role by opening discrete record collections where a compelling public interest existed--such as documents on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, on U.S. citizens missing in Vietnam, and on Nazi war crimes. In the wake of the detention of Chile’s ex-dictator Gen. Agusto Pinochet in 1998, both overseas activists and foreign governments joined the call for declassification of CIA and other U.S. government files. (Kate Doyle,<kadoyle@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> a senior analyst with the National Security Archive, is based in Mexico City. This brief is adapted from her essay in National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War.) Sources for More InformationCenter for International Policy Center for National Security Studies Electronic Policy Information Center (EPIC) Federation of American Scientists Information Security Oversight Office The James Madison Project National Committee Against Repressive Legislation National Security Archive
Candidates’ Internationalism A fascinating dichotomy exists between the major and minor presidential candidates. Both major candidates are squarely in the internationalist camp, while the minor ones are closer to the populist tradition of isolationism. There are, however, also striking differences between the internationalism of the two major candidates, and between the isolationism/nationalism of the two minor ones. The internationalism of Bush surfaced publicly in May when George W. signaled his support for a continued U.S. military presence in Kosovo--in direct opposition to the isolationist wing of the Republican party that opposes most U.S. military operations unless they are directly tied to protecting concrete U.S. interests--that is, lives, property, and corporate profits. According to Bush, Congress should defer to the presidency on foreign policy--resisting protectionist and isolationist tendencies that have popular resonance--and support what he has called a policy of “decidedly American internationalism.” Despite Bush’s own declarations supporting an internationalist foreign policy, Al Gore has warned that the inexperienced Bush would be held hostage by a Republican isolationist caucus in the Senate led by Trent Lott (who once boasted of his disinterest in international affairs, saying, “I’ve been to Europe once; I don’t have to go again.”). Gore himself is decidedly in the internationalist camp. President George Washington’s warning in his farewell address about the dangers of foreign entanglements has not been heeded by candidate Gore. Instead, he calls for the “strengthening and renewing of our key alliances” while also declaring “our willingness to use our strength to lead the world toward what is right and just." Then there are Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, who reject the internationalism of what Buchanan calls the “Beltway Parties.” They are America Firsters, who reject free trade leanings of the major candidates, demand that the international financial agencies be abolished or reined in, assert that the World Trade Organization and existing trade agreements subvert local, state, and national sovereignties, and declare that U.S. foreign policy is beholden to globetrotting corporations. Nader’s American Firstism, which is almost exclusively focused on global economy issues, is rooted in his decades-long battle against the control of big corporations. Buchanan, who has been associated with three administrations, also rails against what he calls “the gods of the Global Economy,” and, like Nader, speaks frequently about Chinese economic threat and the threat of cheap imports that are “dumped” into the U.S. market. But Buchanan’s isolationism is also evident when he is engaged in a broader foreign policy debate about U.S. national interests and national security. U.S. military involvement abroad should respond only to direct threats to U.S. national security. For that reason, in his acceptance speech at the conflicted Reform Party convention, Buchanan said he opposed the bombing of Kosovo and of Iraq. He asked who has murdered more Iraqi citizens: Saddam Hussein or Madeleine Albright, who defends a sanctions policy that has resulted in the deaths of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children. Buchanan says his isolationism is really just a call for independence: freedom from the multilateralism of the IMF, WTO, and UN that undermine our American sovereignty of our “sweet republic.” Foreign policy themes remain on the periphery of the campaign, but the views of the major and minor candidates will, if converted to policy, have a major impact on the daily lives of Americans. Instructive in this regard is an investigative article by John Judis in this month’s issue of American Prospect that examines the “conservative internationalism” of Bush, Cheney, and their circle of advisers. In contrast to the liberal internationalism of the centrist Democrats led by Clinton and Gore that, in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, engages the U.S. around the world to foster American values like democracy and human rights (albeit often as a cover for extending U.S. imperial reach), the conservative internationalism of the Bush team defines U.S. national interests and national security as more closely linked to strategic assets. They have “narrowed the definition of America’s overseas interests to defending the property rights of American investors,” particularly those of the inner circle, such as those of the oil industry. Cheney, for example, opposed the use of sanctions against governments in oil-rich Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and Burma. According to Judis, Cheney, when speaking at the American Petroleum Institute, attacked the Clinton administration for its “failure at the federal level to recognize the strategic asset of the oil and gas business.” What’s lacking in the presidential campaign is a clear articulation of a new internationalism that includes the cautious approach of Buchanan to military interventionism, the stated commitment of Gore to multilateralism, and the dedication of Nader to the promotion of core international values such as labor rights. When Secretary of State Albright stopped in at the meeting of the security forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on July 28, she was confronted by a new security environment. No longer is the Pacific a U.S. lake. The meeting came on the heels of the G8 meeting in Okinawa where 25,000 protestors, mostly Okinawans and Japanese, demanded that the U.S. close its bases on Okinawa and send home the 26,000 troops stationed on the island. President Clinton delivered a speech to the Okinawan people, promising to “reduce our footprint on this island” by completing a 27-step process of consolidating the U.S. bases. His pledge that the U.S. military would become a “good neighbor” was met by criticism from those who want the bases completely removed. Clinton argued that the U.S.-Japanese security alliance and the large deployment of U.S. troops has kept East Asia in peace and “gives people throughout this region confidence that the peace will be defended and preserved.” The end of the cold war, new reconciliation talks between North and South Korea, and China’s increasing engagement in multinational forums have all contributed to new pressures on the U.S. to reduce its military deployment in the region. Washington, saying that a strong U.S. presence is still needed in the region, has announced that it plans no troop reductions in East Asia. The demands by Okinanawan demonstrators that U.S. based be removed run parallel to demands throughout the region that the U.S. not deploy the planned National Missile Defense (NMD) and Theatre Missile Defense (TMD) that the Pentagon has proposed. New political and security initiatives by China and Russia to set a new Asia-Pacific security agenda threaten the traditional dominant U.S. role in the region’s security affairs--which are structured primarily by U.S. security pacts with South Korea and Japan. Thus far, the Pentagon has been reluctant to reformulate a security agenda that has changed little since the 1940s and 1950s. Until it does, Okinawa is likely to remain what Asia expert Chalmers Johnson calls “a cold war island.” At the ASEAN meeting, the presence of North Korea, heralded by its new promises to end its missile program and move forward quickly with South Korea on reconciliation talks, created new pressure for the U.S. to roll back its “forward deployment” of 100,000 troops in the region and to drop plans for its missile defense. According to an excellent report in the Washington Post by Doug Struck (July 28, 2000), the U.S. is “Hustling to a New Beat in Asia.” [ Around the World is a weekly column by FPIF codirector Tom Barry. ]
II. Self-Determination Crisis Watch
KASHMIR: SEEK OPPORTUNITIES
FOR PEACE An opportunity for peace in Kashmir was lost in the first week of August when the cease-fire offer by the Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen was revoked. The Indian government had accepted the offer and one round of talks about negotiations had been held. India has blamed Pakistan for the revocation of the cease-fire. The difference between a statesman and a politician is that the former seizes opportunities of peace and builds on them to make lasting peace, whereas the latter takes them just to make some immediate gains. At the end of July, when the Indian Prime Minister stated that the talks with the militant groups could be on the basis of “humanity” or “human values,” he appeared to rise to the stature of a statesman. But within four days knocking against the “framework of the Indian constitution,” he spoke like any other politician. The Kashmir problem is today, above all, a problem of human values or, rather, a loss of them. The tragedy of Kashmir is little known outside. What is still in circulation are picture post cards of the tourist paradise. In the last eleven years more than seventy thousand people have been killed in the “internal war.” There are more than fifteen thousand war widows and thousands of orphans. While some thirty thousand persons are in detention, mostly illegally, there are a few thousand who have “disappeared.” The whole social fabric of Kashmir has been rent apart. Even a casual visitor to Kashmir will soon find that there is not civilian government worth its name functioning there. The whole place looks as if it’ s under an occupation army. There is probably not a single family in the Valley which does not have the wound or the scar of the war. There is no redress available for people whose fundamental rights have been violated. Judicial orders are ignored with impunity by the security forces covered by the Armed Forces Special Act and other similar laws. It was in the eighties that a section of the Kashmiri youth began a movement for democratic rights and social justice. It received widespread support. The movement was suppressed ruthlessly. In its place came several militant movements. The Islamic identity of the Kashmiris, the latent anti-Muslim bias of the Indian establishment, and Pakistan’s machinations gave a religious and communal orientation to the movements. Thus the struggle that began as a secular democratic movement for self-determination, by a combination of factors, came to be characterized as a “religious war.” If the Sufi Islam of Kashmir, which evolved in the Valley over centuries with some of the finest traditions of culture and human values, was made to appear with the face of a militant Islam, the full responsibility for this should be shared between India and Pakistan. The competitive and militarized nationalisms on either side of the line of control gave international dimensions to the Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination. In Pakistan the religious right took the Kashmir issue “to liberate Muslim brothers and sisters from foreign occupation.” In India an obsession with territorial integrity made Kashmir a security problem. It should be recalled that both in India and in Pakistan the last decade was a period of heightened religious nationalism. The cease-fire offer was revoked because of the Government of India’s insistence that the talks will be held only within the framework of the Indian Constitution and that Pakistan cannot be included in the talks. A government which is a prisoner of the Constitution will not be able to solve the Kashmir problem, so wrote Kuldip Nayar, a highly respected journalist and Member of Parliament. The government is talking about the sanctity of the Constitution which has been amended eighty times and is now under review by a Commission appointed by the government with no authorization from the Parliament. The Indian leadership pretends to be unaware of the recent trends around the world, of refashioning, reworking, or even working around constitutions to accommodate minority rights and fundamental freedoms, to recognize nationalist and ethnic identities, and for devolution of power. It was found possible to reconcile the demands for the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales with British constitutional principles. In Sri Lanka, in spite of the current setback to the process for constitutional reform, it is widely recognized that constitutional restructuring is integral to peacemaking. The Israeli government, which has always maintained that Jerusalem is its eternal capital and the matter is “nonnegotiable,” is now willing to share the sovereignty of East Jerusalem with the Palestinians. The Government of India should realize that there can be several practical proposals envisaged around the constitution to deal with the Kashmir problem. Its unwillingness to explore them, as was shown when it rejected the autonomy demand of the Kashmir legislature, only prolongs the agony of the Kashmiri people. India has refused to include Pakistan in the talks. It insists that dialogue can be resumed provided Pakistan restores “mutual trust and confidence through concrete and tangible action including cessation of cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and hostile propaganda against India.” Occasionally arguments are also heard about the need for a tough positioning against a military regime. This may come as a joke to Kashmiris who have known only military rule for the past eleven years. The contentious matters should themselves be part of the agenda for talks, rather than be presented as preconditions. One thing is clear: there can be no settlement of the Kashmir issue without the participation of Pakistan in negotiations. There could be several modalities for such participation. It may be true that tripartite talks--India, Kashmiri groups, and Pakistan--may be premature. But there can be parallel talks and simultaneous talks, even in a third country. It appears India’s Ministry of External Affairs has lost its primers on negotiations and mediations. During the period of the cease-fire, was it not possible to communicate to Pakistan on a confidential basis that it could be included in the talks at a later stage? It is strange that diplomacy on such sensitive matters is carried on through public debate only. India has always maintained that it does not need any third party mediation. In New Delhi’s lexicon mediation means intervention. But it does not want to admit that it has already opened several windows for intervention by the United States on the Kashmir issue. The first window was opened by the nuclear explosions that India conducted in May 1998. With Pakistan following suit, the United States found there was an open invitation for intervention. With the Kargil conflict another window for intervention was given to the United States. While India recently celebrated the anniversary of the “Kargil victory,” it was conveniently forgotten that it was under pressure from the United States that Pakistan withdrew its forces to the line of control. The recent developments, including the cease-fire offer by Hizbul Mujahideen, follow a flurry of diplomatic activities beginning with President Clinton’s visit to the region. It may be worth recalling that the Oslo Peace Accords were negotiated secretly between Israel and the Palestinians, with the mediation of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, while the Madrid peace process initiated by the United States and Russia was officially still going on. There may be a small nation or a great personality that can mediate. or at least keep the channels of communication always open, between India and Pakistan. India should not rule out such a possibility. I was personally thrilled to watch the Korean Summit and its follow-up, as the leaders of the divided parts of Korea seized an opportunity for peace, placing human values above politics. The World Council of Churches was the first international organization which fostered people-to-people contacts between North and South Koreas. It took the bold initiative in the mid-eighties, after making contacts with several governments, including those in the North and the South, emphasizing the human issues involved. The Indian government should recognize that the Kashmir issue is now primarily that of avoiding further destruction of human values. It should make it clear that it is ready and willing to enter into talks with all shades of opinion in Kashmir and with Pakistan without pre-conditions. It should seize the next opportunity for peace and hold on to it. Otherwise the situation can become very dangerous, especially in the context of the looming nuclear arms race in the sub-continent. (Ninan Koshy <knkoshy@md4.vsnl.net.in>, formerly Director, International Affairs, World Council of Churches and Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School.) For related U.S. policy analysis, see: Sumit Ganguly and David Stuligross, “U.S. Security Challenges in South Asia,” Foreign Policy In Focus, April 2000, posted at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol5/v5n07southasia.html
III. Letters and CommentsREPLY TO CONNELL: CALL FOR BALANCE AND TOLERANCE
Dan Connell’s extraordinarily intemperate response [see Progressive Response: http://www.igc.org/infocus/progresp/vol4/prog4n32.html] to our outline of the causes and consequences of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia deserves a reply. 1. What Dan is really condemning is our attempt to produce a balanced, even-handed analysis of the conflict, preferring instead his own biased, one-sided approach. In doing so he joins a band of commentators, some journalists and some academics, who have become advocates for one or other of the belligerents in this war. Dan is clearly a partisan for the Eritrean cause, citing as evidence his travels to the country during the conflict. Paul Henze, on the other hand, has written with equal authority from the Ethiopian perspective. Anyone doubting this can look on the website of the Ethiopian government spokesperson for “Eritrea’s War Against Ethiopia: Causes and Effects, Reflections, Prescriptions” by Paul B Henze, posted at: http://www.ethiospokes.net/Opinions/January2000/o2501001.htm While Paul testifies to the saintliness of the Ethiopian position and attacks the Eritreans, Dan takes the diametrically opposite view, condemning the Ethiopians out of hand, and portraying the Eritrean cause as unquestionably right. In reality, neither position assists the process of reconciliation that must now begin between these two neighbors, since it merely reinforces the deeply held prejudices of the combatants. It does nothing to explain why two movements that had cooperated so closely at times fell out so spectacularly. All it does is point the finger at the opponent and spit blood. 2. Dan states “Isaias Afwerki did not fight this war, the Eritrean people did.” And he is quite right. Faced with a national emergency the people of Eritrea rallied to the cause. But he forgets that it is possible to state with equal force and accuracy that “Meles Zenawi did not fight this war, the Ethiopian people did.” Ethiopians were at least as patriotic as the Eritreans and at least as convinced of the rightness of their cause. To state this is merely to point to the obvious. It explains nothing at all. 3. Dan says that the MiG 29 is purely a defensive weapon, and declares that our description of the efforts that both countries made to re-arm is “one of the worst examples of the authors’ tendency to collapse the differences between the two sides.” He suggests that Ethiopia went on a spending spree that forced Eritrea to respond and buy "defensive" MiG 29s etc. This is simply not true. There is no evidence that Ethiopia expected the conflict in May 1998 ,and it had certainly made no preparations for it (apart from continued demobilization over the previous four years, and attempting to build up a national, rather than a Tigrean, army). Ethiopia acquired its SU 27s in December 1998 at exactly the same time that Eritrea received its MiG 29s (and probably from the same source). And to suggest that MiG 29s are defensive weapons is laughable; on that basis so are SU 27s. As Alex Last--the Reuters and BBC correspondent in Asmara--reported at the time, Eritreans were quick to claim that MiG 29s could reach Addis Ababa. In fact, both, of course, have an aggressive and a defensive role, as any weapons systems does. MiG 29s, for example, have a specific capacity for ground attack, having good visibility and maneuverability at subsonic speeds, and carry 3,000 kg bombs, as well as four rocket pods which can be used for air-to-surface attack. SU 27s carry up to 500 kg bombs (and can carry cluster bombs--unforgivably used by both sides) as well as air-to-surface rockets, and they do have a specific capacity for airfield attack (for which they have not been used). They do have a greater range--not surprising, as they operate from airfields south of Addis Ababa. Actually, neither appears to have been used across the border to any significant extent. More recently, certainly, Ethiopia did acquire four SU 25s, which are specifically designed for ground attack and were probably a major factor in the Ethiopian victories in May and June, as were the additional helicopters under the deal agreed in December 1999 with Moscow and delivered before the May fighting. But Eritrea also acquired attack helicopters from Italy after the war started (to add to the four it was lent by Ethiopia ,during the conflict with Yemen, that were never returned). Ethiopia certainly bought tanks from Bulgaria, but Eritrea acquired BM 21 rocket supplies also from Bulgaria, and APCs came from Eastern Europe or Libya during 1998 as well as 1999. And so the list continues. To see either side's acquisitions as simply/exclusively defensive (or offensive) is myopic. 4. Our critique of the Clinton administration’s efforts is that they were poorly thought out and implemented. At the same time, it is not a question of the U.S. “riding to the rescue” of anyone. African problems will be solved by Africans, but it is equally true that the continent has been, and continues to be, beset by difficulties that it cannot deal with at present for a variety of reasons. To his credit, the current American president has attempted to engage with the continent in a way that previous administrations have not. What are needed are better-honed policies, not isolationism. 5. The most hopeful factor to emerge since the conclusion of hostilities has been the more critical tone now being adopted toward both regimes on the internet. Eritreans, in particular, have now begun to question the actions of their leaders. This is long overdue. During the war of independence such debate was curtailed for reasons of national security. Since the emergence of an Eritrean state after 1991 it has been sorely lacking. What is needed now is a more open, democratic spirit in both Eritrea and Ethiopia that will encourage free speech, freedom of the press, and, above all, a tolerance of alternative views. Writing openly partisan pieces, attaching all blame to one side or another for the catastrophic war, as Dan does, only delays this process and reinforces the views of the leaders in both countries that an open, plural democracy is an unnecessary encumbrance that can be postponed to some mythical future. It does no one else any favours. - Martin Plaut <martin.plaut@talk21.com> and Patrick Gilkes <100102.434@compuserve.com>
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