Ethiopia and North Korea: Do the Right Thing

By Scott Horton

Time was when things were simple. In a speech that David Frum crafted for President Bush we learned that there was an axis of evil. It started with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and continued to Kim Jong-Il's North Korea. Iran was somewhere in between. The great threat of the axis of evil – apart from the obvious, namely that they were evil – was in their busy engagement with weapons of mass destruction and the risk that they would use these weapons and proliferate them among other irresponsible parties. In the meantime, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, discovering no weapons of mass destruction. Later, we learned that the United States never had actionable intelligence showing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the first place.

However, North Korea clearly did have weapons of mass destruction and was engaged in spreading them around the world. Our intelligence on that was ironclad. We learned that in doing this, North Korea had relied heavily on America's “closest non-NATO ally,” Pakistan. The North Koreans continued developing weapons and delivery systems and offering them to anyone who would pay cash on the barrel--like Ethiopia. The United States rewarded the North Koreans for this by entering into a settlement that the North Koreans proposed, and that the Bush administration previously stated it would never accept.

And now we come to yesterday's disclosures in the New York Times. It seems that the North Koreans have been busy, in violation of United Nations sanctions, selling weapons systems to Ethiopia. The United States knew all about this and decided to let it go right ahead. Now why on earth would the United States do that? Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzetti only hint at the answer to that question, and it comes buried deep down in the paper. They write:

The timing of the shipment was extremely awkward, as the Ethiopian military was preoccupied with Somalia and also quietly cooperating with the United States. Ethiopia began an offensive in Somalia to drive back the Islamic forces and install the transitional government in Mogadishu late last year. The United States was providing it with detailed intelligence about the locations of the Islamic forces and was positioning Navy ships off Somalia's coast to capture fighters trying to escape the battlefield by sea.

In fact, of course, Ethiopia has been acting as a U.S. proxy in addressing perceived problems throughout the horn of Africa and in East Africa. The targeting in Somalia is just a very small part of the total. As the AP reported, the Ethiopians have established three concentration camps (previously) in collaboration with the United States. Hundreds of people have been detained, often in brutal conditions, many complaining of torture and assault. FBI agents involved in the project have expressed outrage about what is being done.

So why has the North Korean arms deal with Ethiopia been allowed to go forward? Because Ethiopia has agreed to serve as a major regional outpost in the United States' torture-by-proxy archipelago. As an unnamed “senior American official” said of the Ethiopians in the Times report, “They seem to have the readiness to do the right thing.” It gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase “right thing,” doesn't it?