Meles Zenawi Quotes
The most stupid mistake a counter-insurgency operation can make is alienating the population. If you alienate the population, you're finished.
Perry, Alex. "A Talk with Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi." Time, 15 Aug. 2007.
Clark had commanded the American and NATO forces in the Serbian War where all the military and political objectives were accomplished with heavy losses to the Serbian’s and none to the allied side—what many think was the most successful war in American History. Like Eisenhower in WWII one great challenge for Clark was the political and strategic one of keeping the coalition of all the allied governments working together. His perspective had been like Eisenhower’s and other officer’s perspectives in history, which was much wider and geopolitical than the views of most military officers.
At the time he was commenting on the War in Afghanistan.
See {620340} for a similar quote. However, there are many who disagree {620377} and who point to the Vietnam War as just one counter example. The American military leaders after not having very much success with Peters’ approach, shifted to one which placed high priority on hearts and minds and had more success. Arguably, the kind of ruthlessness that would be required to defeat an insurgency with a strictly military approach would require too brutal and barbarous treatment of civilians who may aid insurgents, that Modern Democracies with their open media are incapable of. In the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the total number of civilians killed by the military was tiny, compared to the 20 million Russians killed by the Germans in their attempted invasion of Russia. The entire Gaza war produced only about 1000 civilian deaths out of 1 million people was one tenth of one percent compared with the American civilian casualties at the hands of the British in 1776 was over 100 times greater.
Mengustu seized power in a coup. However his Marxist Dictatorship was very unpopular and a civil war soon started. The poorly armed opposition used guerrilla warfare insurgency techniques. Since the government was hated by most people there was much support for the guerrilla in the villages and countryside. Mengustu adopted a policy of genocide as described by this chilling quotation. The areas of the country which were sympathetic to the revolutionaries were then systematically starved by the government withholding food. There was a bad agricultural crop but international donors including the United States provided much food aid. However this was withheld by the government from the areas where there was any support for the freedom fighters. Over 1 million Ethiopian citizens were starved to death. This quotation was one of the important documents that proved that there was a systematic government policy to commit genocide—in this case to “drain the sea”. After the revolution was successful, Mengustu was convicted of Crimes Against Humanity but escaped to Zimbabwe where he was given sanctuary by his fellow dictator, Robert Mugabe.
There is a technical issue of whether or not this was genocide in that the exterminated people were not of one race, religion or ethnic group, but the people who were residents of the areas which were giving “aid and comfort” to the freedom fighters.
Meles Zenawi Asres was an Ethiopian soldier and politician who ruled Ethiopia as President and as 2nd Prime Minister of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. He was considered the founder of the Federal state of modern Ethiopia
