THE C.I.A. IN AFRICA

THE C.I.A. IN AFRICA By Aleme Eshete www.ethiopiansemay.blogspot.com (This article has first been published in 2001 in the U.S based Ethiopian Electronic Distribution Network (EEDN) as part of the discussion between me and Professor Donald Levine (a well-known specialist in Ethiopian studies and author of “Wax and Gold”), and in response to his response regarding my article on:” THE SLAVE TRADE IN FALASHA OF ETHIOPIA”) - see in this series Greetings again Professor Levine. This chapter deals with the political issues you have raised in your response. Let us circumscribe our subject. I will not be talking as you did in general terms about U: S, or U.S official government politics towards Ethiopia, the State Department etc. Instead, I will talk about the CIA - the invisible unofficial, U.S government that has been misgoverning, mismanaging through its proxies in a large part of the Third World, above all in Latin America, but also, in Asia, and in Africa since the end of the Second World War. We all know the CIA is well present in the Universities in the U.S and Europe, among scholars and students. In general while lecturing on the Third World, Western scholars shy to talk about the CIA. They talk about our under-development, about our poverty. They talk about our famine; they talk about our civil war; about our “tribal wars” particularly in “primitive“ Africa, - as if they were all homemade homegrown problems for which we are entirely responsible, as “free” people. You characterize the Ethiopians, particularly those in the Diaspora as addicted to blaming others for their misfortune. You accuse me of “Indulging in postures, of blaming others...” With our hands tied as proxy colonial subjects, burning what ever we produce in successive proxy wars, destroying scarce infrastructure, robbing the tiny reserve of foreign currency or gold, in short, mismanaging our economies through its brutal proxy regimes, who as Arion wrote in Tobia (Meskerem 17.) are commonly assassins and outright robbers I. U.S POLICY TOWARDS ETHIOPIA