ETHIOPIA & PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR
9135 OU19 - Ethiopia -- FC0 Briefing
There was a great deal to do before we started teaching in Ethiopia. We had to put together a complete programme; of a type - a mix of distance and face-to-face teaching - which the OU had never delivered before. Originally this saw me teaching in Ethiopia in three-month stretches. Fortunately this never happened, and I was able to cut back to two weeks at a time. But it was not a prospect that I particularly looked forward to.
In addition we had to bring together all the material and equipments we needed for our offices in Ethiopia. There were hundreds of books, all the course material - which was as extensive - and a number of PCs and printers. All in all this weighed several tons and had to be air freighted out in advance. In fact, in common with most things sent by air in this way it was inordinately delayed, and arrived at almost the same time as I did.
Realising the diplomatic sensitivity of the mission, I contacted the FCO and asked for a briefing. Thus it was that I visited the FCO's marvellous Victorian palace on Whitehall. Very few people get to see inside it. The thing that impressed me most, as I was taken through to the offices, was the Durbar Court. This was created for Queen Victoria when she entertained the Indian rajahs. It is the marvellous confection of mosaics. In contrast, the offices which surrounded it were pretty dingy and rundown, but that's always the fate of government offices.
My contact, who was the desk officer in the FCO, was a very bright young man; but I was never quite certain of his role. So much of my work seem to revolve around SIS activities, and specifically MI6, that I always had a suspicion that he worked more for them – or possibly the FCO’s own SIS operations - and not just for the FCO. Not least, the fact that my quote of £½ million for the project was immediately accepted, and just as quickly funded when there were government cutbacks on everything else, seemed to me to indicate that it was coming out of SIS slush funds.
Even so, the meeting was essential and was excellent in terms of the detail it gave me. As one aside, I remember him saying we don't want to let Ethiopia slide into the same position as Somalia. This was just before the Americans were driven out of Somalia; and the whole place once more became a disaster area. I remember him specifically saying "Somalia is basket case, which will take decades to recover" as indeed still seems to be the position.
In terms of Ethiopia he gave me a very good appreciation of what the FCO knew. The country was run by the triumvirate of President, Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence. By that time, of course, I knew that all these were going to be our students. He also explained how they had spent 17 years fighting their way out of Tigray province to capture the capital.
Most important of all, he explained to me what our role was to be. Theirs was a Marxist government, even though – to confuse maters - the previous government it had overthrown had also been Marxist. However, the new government wanted to bring the country into the global economy and as such were starting to move towards social democracy.
It was to be our job to encourage and guide that move. I put my own point of view to the FCO, which thereafter I insisted on with all my staff in Ethiopia, which was we could not interfere in the way that Ethiopia developed. At that time, around that time the Berlin Wall had just come down and there were many so-called consultants rushing everywhere in Eastern Europe desperately selling their solutions as the answer to communism. I thought this was potentially a disaster, as in many ways it was, and I didn't want this to happen in Ethiopia. Hence, I said we would never provide definitive advice to the Ethiopians, but only help them come to their own decisions. I'm glad to say that the FCO agreed with this approach, and over the whole of the four years that the project lasted we, and they, stood by this principle.
It was very difficult to do, for you would see the students' eyes light up as a new subject came up -- albeit in all innocence on our part -- where they saw this as a key area for Ethiopian development. At that point we had to back-pedal and insist they make their own decisions. Obviously, our teaching still had a major impact on the perspective they adopted in taking these decisions. But, we were not going to take those decisions ourselves.
The FCO agreed entirely with this. The FCO, on the other hand, made sure that I was aware that my reporting route led through the embassy as well as through the British Council. Thus, on each visit I reported to the Ambassador. In his absence I reported to the Head of Mission who, for a long time, I thought was the deputy in the embassy. It was only some time later I found that, of course, the deputy was the Deputy Ambassador. The Head of Mission was instead the head of intelligence, reporting to the SIS. Thus, I too was one of those academics who was out there on behalf of MI6. I was never formally made aware of this. On the other hand they never needed to, since I provided reports of all my activities, and everything said by the Ethiopia government, without any requests for this. With my direct access to the President, I guess I must have been one of their top operatives!
On the other hand, I was quite open about this with the government out there. I quite simply said that I would be reporting back everything they told me. So if they didn't want it to get back to the embassy then they should not tell me about it -- or at least should ask me not to report it. In fact, as far as I could make out, they never did hold anything back. They saw no reason, for everything they were doing was -- they (and I) thought -- totally above board.
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