The last paragraph of this editorial is on the mark but much of the content that precedes it is an unfortunate example of an approach that is exceedingly rare for the Journal. You shoot from the hip with inadequate knowledge of recent history..
To call Meles Zenawi "increasingly autocratic" is to reflect the prejudices of neo-Marxist opposition elements who tried to topple his government by fomenting violence in the wake of the freest elections any nation in Africa has ever experienced in May 2005. Send a reporter to interview Meles and learn about recent Ethiopian history as well as some background about the history of Ethiopia's relations with Somalia.
To advocate "persuading [the Eritreans] to cease their support of the ICU" by forcing Ethiopia to grant border concessions is akin to the kind of thinking that came out of the Iraq Study Group in respect to Iran and Syria. Eritrea without warning or justificatiion invaded Ethiopia in 1998 and Ethiopia fought back. Eritrea was eventually soundly defeated after wreaking heavy damage among the very populations it wrongly claimed to possess. It has continued to refuse to acknowledge defeat and harrass Ethiopia at every turn. An incompetent border commission--in no sense a UN body--failed even to come to look at the border but "awarded" long-administered Ethiopian territory to Eritrea on the basis of old maps. Meles Zenawi correctly refuses to surrender Ethiopian citizens, who enjoy increasing progress toward an open society with economic prosperity, to an oppressive police state which deserves to be called the North Korea of Africa.
Paul Henze
The author, a former National Security Council Staff Officer, is the author of Layers of Time, a History of Ethiopia (London/NY 2000).