ETHIOPIA & PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR
9149 OU16 - Ethiopia – The Dinner Party
On my first visit to Addis Abeba – and after discussing the potential students with the Director of the British Council - I went back to the hotel to prepare for the promised dinner with these students. This was going to be held in the Ghion hotel; the only other sizeable hotel in Addis at the time.
Things then started to change up a gear. The phone went, and it was the ambassador's assistant to explain that in fact that dinner was going to be hosted by the Ethiopian Minister of Defence. The importance of this was that Ethiopia was then run by a troika of three rebel leaders.
One of these was Meles Zenawi, the president, another was Tamrat Layne, the Prime Minister, and the third was, Seeye Abraha, the Minister of Defence. The dinner, as I have said, was now being hosted by the latter. Even more of an honour, however, he had been in charge of the rebel army during the war, and turned out to be one of the great military strategists of the late 20th century. It was, thus, indeed a great honour that I was having a dinner formally hosted by him.
I turned up at the Ghion hotel, and met the ambassador -- James Glaze, the first ambassador I had ever met since my time at university -- and we chatted; trying to work out what it was all about. You don't meet ministers of such high rank without there being some reason for it. All of a sudden his cavalcade arrived.
The minister was in an armourplated car, with a number of protection officers. The car itself was closely followed by what was called a 'technical' -- a jeep with a heavy machine gun fitted on the back. It was a very impressive entrance. Other cars also followed. Thus, I first met the Minister of Defence. The others with him were, I later worked out, his senior military colleagues and in particular the head of intelligence.
It was a life changing moment. A couple of hours before I had been an ordinary – rather junior - lecturer at a British university. Suddenly I was thrust onto the international stage dealing with heads of government. I physically felt change overtake me for the first time in my life. But, even though his army had not long before killed half a million troops in the final route, he turned out to be a very pleasant person and I had no problem relaxing in his presence.
In any case, I had no experience of diplomacy at this level and decided the only way I could handle it was to treat him as an equal and laugh and joke with him as I usually did. Thus, I took liberties which I'm certain embassy staff would never have done.
Thus we sat down to dinner. It was fairly conventional western dinner, and there was plenty of it so I filled myself up. Unfortunately, my subsequent performance was not particularly helped by the fact that, after eating this very hearty Western meal, I suddenly discovered that this was to be followed by a full Ethiopia meal; and it would have been an insult to refuse this!
Over the first part of the dinner the ambassador asked some questions about the civil war itself. I remember a couple of memorable stories. One of the key ones was about the crucial battle of the Teodras, which was the turning point - and indeed the end - of the civil war. It had been seen by the West as a lucky breakthrough by the rebels. Seeye, though, pointed out that they had been planning the battle for more than two years, setting up the intelligence lines as well as the supply lines. This was far longer than happened even at El Alamein. He also explained that, some seven years before, they had planned the campaign to the end of the war, and had been accurate to within one month of the actual date.
Amidst this banter the ambassador was negotiating for a Kalashnikov that he could take home to add to his collection. Of course he could put it within the diplomatic bag without any trouble. But he was very insistent he wanted one with a walnut stock not the a plastic stock.
Another story about the war became my favourite, which I repeated many times later. It was about how they handled their prisoners. When these were captured they were given three choices. If you asked Westerners, as I later did, what these choices were, they were almost bound to suggest that one of the choices was that they would be shot.
In fact the three choices were; to join the rebels, and a number of them did and were very brave in support of the revolution. The second was to be taken across the border to Sudan to live there. The third one was the most surprising. It was quite simply that they would be allowed to go home. Admittedly, they had three months of indoctrination -- albeit just lectures -- before they were sent home. This was the stroke genius, for not only did give the rebels the moral high ground, but it was in terms of military tactics pure genius. Thus, the prisoners were eventually freed to go back to their homes, under the dictator Mengistou.
He, immediately recalled them into the army. Thus, in every major battle almost every company of his soldiers, when they came under heavy fire, had people amongst them who said "What should we do? Should be go home?" And they all then put their hands up and surrendered. It was typical of the military brilliance of Seeye.
The latter part of meal, though, was taken up with much more serious considerations. At the time Ethiopia included Eritrea; but with Eritrea wanting to go its own way - that is seceding. Seeye made it clear that the Ethiopian government supported this, since Eritrea had been their partners in the civil war. The problem was that, in recent years, no country had ever seceded from another in Africa. He was therefore negotiating, in effect, British government support for this. The ambassador was being asked for Eritrea to be recognised almost before it seceded. There was a lot of banter about this, with James Glaze ducking and weaving as ambassadors are supposed to do in such a situation.
One final anecdote: the Ministry of Defence cruelly took the micky out of our ambassador about his lack of knowledge of what was happening behind the lines, especially in case of the battle of Teodras. In particular they pointed out that they knew about the new water systems being installed at the embassy in case of the government falling. The ambassador was visibly shaken, since it meant that there were spies in his own embassy.
He came back, though, with the memorable quotation that "I wanted to put some spies behind your lines, you know the usual thing - businessman or academics - but MI6 wouldn't allow them". I sat there, as an academic, wondering where this put me!
As a dinner ended, my contact in the government -- Dr Fassil -- took me aside and told me that I would be meeting the Minister of Defence again face-to-face in the morning. He also discreetly said "Could you please tell the ambassador that we are perfectly serious about the secession of Eritrea and suggest that he clears this with his government". Thus, for the first time, I found myself as an ambassadorial runner; carrying messages of international significance! I was in the middle of negotiations for the secession of a nation! My life really had changed out of all recognition.
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