Ethiopia Receives $37 million in Food Aid

I find this $37 million investiture a bit eyebrow raising, coming as it does from the U.S. The broad consensus is that the United States is playing the crony card with an African dictator again. In this case, the dictator is Meles Zenawi--an autocrat lumbering into his fifteenth year of iron-fisted rule.

The U.S. has been widely accused of supporting Ethiopia's involvement in the never-ending Somalia conflict because Meles' government is the only regional power willing to take on the metastasizing Union of Islamic Courts. The matter is further complicated by Eritrea's involvement and the resultant zero sum pissing contest between her and Ethiopia. I'm beginning to wonder if the transitional government in Baidoa isn't just a bit of shadow puppetry anymore. Somalia has been a basket case since 1991; now it's shaping up to be another Zaire.

You have to wonder what tossing $37 million into the coffers of a less-than-transparent regime is going to do aside from encourage further escalation. Meles is as unpopular as ever after the Ethiopian Elections Massacre of 2005, so a bit of misdirection is in order (say, a war perchance?). Instead of encouraging him to govern properly and release thousands of political prisoners, we're reinforcing his allocation of state resources into transnational war-mongering. It's a tacit go-ahead at the very least.

At this stage in world history, it seems prudent for Christian countries to let Muslim ones sort things out for themselves. Whether or not the UIC is in fact linked to Al Qaeda, you can bet on Somalia being a nice little petri dish for Islamic fundamentalism once you add the Christian crusader element.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it won't be the next Zaire. Maybe it will be the next Iraq.