Located within the “beltway” surrounding Washington, DC, analysts from the Terrorism Research Center have convenient access to the artists colony and immigrant neighborhood of Adams Morgan, which, since the early 1990s, has become home to a significant number of Ethiopians as evident by the proliferation of East African restaurants and shops. The article above describes Addis Ababa as having “a reputation as one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most urbane and hospitable capitals. Ethiopian eateries are set beside Italian [Country Profile] restaurants and shops pour the country’s famous coffee from state-of-the-art machines,” so it is easy to see why and how immigrants from one capital settled so readily in the other.
The motives behind the Ethiopian exodus in the 1980s-90s was prompted by war, poverty, and limited economic opportunities under the Marxist regime, which had supplanted Emperor Haile Selassie in a 1974 coup. In fact, the Band-Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” of 1984 and subsequent Live Aid international concert in the summer of 1985 was aimed primarily at averting widespread starvation in Ethiopia, Eritrea (that it had previously annexed), and neighboring drought-ridden east African states. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union (now Russia: Country Profile) and Marxist regimes worldwide and the subsequent dawning of the New World Order, a wave of optimism swept across Ethiopia that in 1991 quickly deposed the Marxists and granted independence to Eritrea . As described in the article, that optimism has waned 15 years into the New World Order.
In 2005, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) won a third five-year term in a hotly contested poll that has his administration so alarmed that he has since jailed at least 130 leaders from the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) who now face trials on charges of treason and genocide. Such moves have alienated the international donor community that annually contributes approximately US$1 billion?up to one-third of Ethiopia’s governing budget. Zenawi’s seemingly repressive policies against opposition and increasingly intransigent and confrontational actions toward Eritrea, prompting international (including UN) concerns about a return to open war between the two neighbors over festering border disputes, all combine to leave little reason for optimism for the near future.
Notwithstanding Zenawi’s claim that nearly 85 percent of Ethiopia’s 73 million people live in “perfectly stable” rural areas, residents of Addis Ababa chafe under the glare of Zenawi’s paranoid eyes, and rural residents along the 1,000 kilometer (620-mile) frontier dread the prospects of returning to war, which cost over 80,000 lives from 1997-2000. That is over 20,000 more than the US total of 58,226 killed or missing American soldiers in the Vietnam War over a period three times longer: 1965-1975. Zenawi’s refusal to turn control of the contested town of Badme over to Eritrea, as required by an independent boundary commission and UN Security Council Resolution 1640, has had many repercussions. First, Eritrea mobilized forces to the border and demanded restrictions on, then ultimately full withdrawal of, UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) troops, including US, Canadian , European, and Russian peacekeepers. In January 2006, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested a variety of policy options ranging from maintaining its current configuration (in harms way), moving staff from Eritrea to Addis Ababa, restricting operations only to the Ethiopian side of the border, to fully withdrawing. In response, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton embarked on an ambitious diplomatic effort to avert the looming conflict. If Bolton’s efforts are not successful, Annan is considering withdrawing UNMEE since its mandate will expire by the end of March. Without an international tripwire, the two countries could easily be back at war and the “perfectly stable” 85% of Ethiopians in the rural areas will once again be embroiled in conflict. As such, the Washington, DC, neighborhood of Adams Morgan may see by year’s end another round of immigration of refugees fleeing the next war.
