An Holiday Package of Injustice

Ghidewon A Asmerom

This Christmas season, while putting ribbons on gift packages of toys

and games for their children, U.S. diplomats at the UN have wrapped a

sanctions package against Eritrea. A war package made in Ethiopia but

paid by the United States Government. A package designed to deny

Eritrean children the right to live in peace. Previous US-wrapped UN

packages had denied three generations of Eritreans their right to

live in peace and heavy sacrifice had to be paid to secure those God-

given rights. Today, Susan Rice, like her predecessor, John Foster

Dulles, handed Eritrea a package of injustice. As she told her US
Holocaust Memorial Museum audience on December 10, Rice was willing,
"[figuratively speaking] to run naked in the West Wing of the White
House" to get her way. Such was her determination to hand Eritreans a
package of betrayal and blatant miscarriage of justice.



Per its Charter, the UN Security Council's mandate was "the
maintenance of international peace and security." Far from it, it has
long become an instrument where injustice is delivered to all nations
that are not willing to accept misguided U.S. prescriptions. Instead
of working for peace and security in fairness, justice and respect
for international law, the Security Council was forced by Rice and
her colleagues in the Obama Administration to serve their interests
via the minority regime in Ethiopia. With this the Security Council
has once more allowed itself to be an instrument of war and
destabilization rather than peace and security.

Truth be told, Susan Rice has an axe to grind against Eritrea.
Starting with the war of 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, Rice
was on a personal crusade to punish Eritrea. She was at the epicenter
of the war and the subsequent failed peace process that claimed
thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean lives. Just as she did these past
few days, fronting Uganda and Burkina Faso at the UN, and the African
Union and IGAD in Addis Ababa, she did exactly the same as she had
done in 1998. As she shoved her unjust sanctions package down the
throats of Security Council members today (December 23, 2009), so was
with her "peace plan” and the OAU at the Ouagadougou summit June 10,
1998 and the rest is history.

Susan Rice and her Ethiopian friends were also the architects of the
baseless allegation that has now become a "reason" for the UN
sanctions. Susan Rice had tried to cloak this sanction as if it was
the result of the findings of the "Somalia Monitoring Group Report",
but this is not the case. She was one of the first to set this
baseless accusation in motion as early as the first half of 1999.
Here is what Susan Rice told the US House Africa Subcommittee, on May
25, 1999, at the height of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war:

"Eritrea has delivered large quantities of weapons and munitions to
self-proclaimed Somalia President Hussein Aideed. …The terrorist
organization Al-Ittihad may also be an indirect recipient of these
arms."

Even before the existance of the Union of Islamic Courts, and long
before Al-Shabaab, Rice was willing to follow Ethiopian lead
reframing the Somali issue as Eritrea’s “proxy war with Ethiopia” and
"war on terror", setting the ground for wrong policies and exposing
the people of the Horn to war and misery.

Eritreans had prevailed before; and they shall prevail again.
Resolution 1907 has once more made one thing clear: Eritreans cannot
expect justice from Security Council.