I Didn't Do It for You (20 page)

The Commission's mood improved slightly during a series of field trips into rural Eritrea, but when it returned to Asmara in April, it curdled once again. The Guatemalan was now not the only rebel, he had been joined by his Pakistani colleague
and the men banded together to launch a putsch, forcing the Norwegian to stand down as chairman. Despite Qvale's sidelining, the atmosphere remained poisonous. ‘The feelings of mutual distrust and bitterness have increased rather than diminished,' reported Schmidt.
¹⁸
The Commission's quarrels were no secret in Asmara, nor–given its members' indiscretion–was much else. ‘Most of the representatives, if not all, talk far too much to any outsider who is willing to listen,' sighed Schmidt.

The Commission moved to Ethiopia, where they were meant to tour the countryside in an attempt to establish whether Haile Selassie's government was up to the task of administering Eritrea. A first-hand glimpse of the terrible hunger in Ethiopia's Welo and Tigray provinces might have stopped them in their tracks. But by arranging a busy schedule of receptions and urging the Commissioners not to waste their time on an arduous road trip, Ethiopian and British officials between them managed to ensure the Commission never ventured beyond Addis. The British Minister in Ethiopia struggled unsuccessfully to silence his conscience. ‘I myself have been rather torn between the feeling that the Commission
ought
to see how bad things are in Ethiopia before deciding whether she should acquire any further territory, and the knowledge that if it did so this would tend to diminish the chances for the solution advocated by His Majesty's Government,' Daniel Lascelles privately confessed. ‘The fact of the matter is that Ethiopia is not in the least worthy to acquire Eritrea or any part of it.'
¹⁹

The Commission's final report, drafted in June, faithfully reflected all the antagonisms and interference that had dogged its investigations. Its various factions not only failed to agree a solution, their interpretations of the facts on the ground jarred so wildly Commission members might have been visiting entirely different territories.

For the delegates of Norway, South Africa and Burma, swallowing the British version of Eritrea as a ‘bankrupt semi-desert', the colony was simply too backward and politically immature to stand alone. ‘Political and economic association' with Ethiopia was the only answer. Even in this majority group there was a divide. Burma and South Africa, worried about the rights of Eritrea's Moslem community, favoured federation, while Norway argued for total union. The minority report filed by the troublesome delegates of Guatemala and Pakistan warned that the annexation of Eritrea to Ethiopia would cause ‘constant internal friction'. Impressed by Eritrea's economic potential, they recommended complete independence after a 10-year period of UN trusteeship.
²⁰

Five men had somehow managed to come up with three separate answers to the question of what should be done with Eritrea. The UN General Assembly had travelled full circle, returning to its point of departure. Whatever gloss was put on the situation in public, UN officials did not mince their words in private. ‘Without a doubt, the Report of the Eritrean Commission can be considered a failure,' Cordier informed the Secretary-General. ‘The level of the Delegations was, to say the least, not equal to their task.'
²¹

In light of such fundamental disagreements, what, concretely, was to be done? A middle way must be found. In December 1950, after months of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations between the foreign ministers and ambassadors of interested nations,
²²
the UN General Assembly ruled that Eritrea should become ‘an autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown'–a phrase that in itself contained a world of potential ambiguity and internal contradiction. Resolution 390 A (V)–a number engraved on the heart of any Eritrean patriot–was passed and a special Commissioner appointed to oversee its implementation.
It was, as the man chosen for the Commissioner's post himself acknowledged, ‘essentially a middle-of-the-road formula…the best possible compromise'.
²³
While Eritrea's political parties had campaigned passionately for either annexation or independence, not one had ever called for federation. Nevertheless, that was what the international community, after years of fidgeting, about-turns and second thoughts, had determined they should have.

The new UN Commissioner for Eritrea, Bolivian Eduardo Anze Matienzo, arrived in Asmara in February 1951. A well-meaning, podgy diplomat with receding, curly hair, Matienzo had been appointed in the teeth of fierce opposition from Britain, which had ‘a jolly, fat Burmese' judge lined up for the job and feared a Latin American would work in Italy's interests. Eritrea, in the opinion of the British delegation at the UN, was once again hardly getting the cream of the crop. ‘He is an amiable but idle South American, quite friendly to us, but lacking in guts, commonsense, any knowledge of the position in Eritrea or indeed any of the required qualifications,' it reported. The British embassy in La Paz was a little kinder. ‘Reported honest and competent diplomatist, though conceited' it telegrammed London.
²⁴

Matienzo immediately plunged into a series of meetings with Eritrean village elders, political leaders and civic organizations, explaining that he would be overseeing the drafting of a constitution for a soon-to-be-federated Eritrea, complete with democratically-elected Assembly. The announcement hardly triggered dancing in the streets. ‘The Commissioner gained the impression that the population was mainly pessimistic,' he noted. ‘Part of the population had no real confidence in the idea of federation or the possibility of applying it.'
²⁵
As he prepared to set about turning UN Resolution 390 A (V) from abstract concept to concrete reality, Matienzo can hardly have
guessed just how testing the next 18 months would prove. He was about to lock horns with a lawyer who–notwithstanding the fact that this was not his country, not his homeland, not his fight–considered it a point of principle never to surrender an inch when negotiating on behalf of his employer, the Ethiopian Crown.

 

John Spencer, by his own reckoning, was to be more intimately involved in the drafting of the Eritrean constitution and technicalities of Britain's handover of power than any other Ethiopian government employee.
²⁶
Having agreed the broad lines of what he wanted with Spencer, Aklilou was content to oversee developments from Addis. Neither man entertained any doubts as to where their boss stood on the matter.

In public, Haile Selassie, while hardly faking enthusiasm for the federal compromise, had at least agreed to accept the inevitable. ‘The formula as adopted by the General Assembly does not entirely satisfy the wishes of the vast majority of the Eritreans who seek union without condition, nor does it satisfy all the legitimate claims of Ethiopia,' he told his nation.
²⁷
But it had become obvious that the formula was the only one that could obtain a two-thirds majority at the UN–better this, than an even longer wait for justice. ‘The solution has been adopted and the principle accepted,' he affirmed. The truth was slightly different. ‘The Ethiopians did not want federation of any kind, they never believed in any of it,' Spencer told me at his Long Island retirement home. ‘The Emperor really pushed our hands, he was all for taking Eritrea immediately. He said, “I insist on the full return of Eritrea to Ethiopia.” I told him, “No, you have to ease into it, you can't grab it all at once. Even if you want nothing to do with the Federation, you will have to slide into it gradually, bit by bit.”'
²⁸

So when Spencer flew to Asmara to take his place alongside Matienzo, a team of UN legal advisers and representatives from the British Military Administration, he was hardly negotiating in good faith. The Emperor, he knew, regarded the documents he was labouring over as so much meaningless paperwork, to be trashed as soon as the world looked the other way. ‘Was it hypocritical of me? Yes, I'd agree with that. But it was justified. I had said to the Ethiopians, “I'll help you get Eritrea” and that is what I did. They were desperate for access to the sea.'
²⁹

Spencer's aim was to strengthen the Federation to the point where Eritrea was so tightly bound to Ethiopia, total incorporation was only a blink away. Eritrea would be another province of Ethiopia in all but name. Matienzo and his advisers, in contrast, were committed to a Federation which was more than just a form of words. The relationship should be loose enough to allow independence, should the public ever decide to embrace it. Concession by concession, paragraph by paragraph, Spencer negotiated a better deal for the Emperor, ‘easing into it' as only a wily lawyer knows how.

The Federation's very foundations were built on shifting sands. As legal experts pointed out at the time, there was something innately problematic about the notion of federating the Western-style democracy Britain had introduced in Eritrea, in which the rights to an independent press, trade union membership and freedom of religion were guaranteed, with an ancient empire whose criminal justice system dated back to the 13th century and in which all real power lay in one man's hands. Burma's delegate on the UN Commission had recommended a system in which the governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia tackled domestic matters and a separate federal body handled defence, foreign affairs and inter-state trade affecting both territories, a clear carve-up of jurisdictions. Yet by the time Matienzo came to write his final draft, the three-body notion
had been rejected in the face of Ethiopian hostility. Once the Emperor had ratified the UN-approved Federal Act, ‘the organs of the Ethiopian Government dealing with Federal affairs would constitute the Federal Government', the report said.
³⁰
There was no word on how the promised ‘organs' would be created or how ‘federal' issues would be differentiated from ‘internal' matters. In the end, the only new ‘organ' established would be an Imperial Federal Council, composed of Eritrean and Ethiopian delegates, supposed to meet at least once a year to thrash out any problems. It was a murky, ambiguous formula, hard to grasp, easy to ignore.

Spencer's next challenge was winning a key post in Eritrea's government for a representative of the Emperor. As he admits in his memoirs, the UN Resolution 390 V made absolutely no provision for such a step. Yet the Ethiopian delegation, with typical brass face, informed a surprised Matienzo that this had always been ‘a generally accepted principle' during discussions at the UN. Eritrea's future Assembly, due to be split down the middle between Moslem lowlanders and Christian highlanders, would struggle to pass legislation, Spencer argued. Granting a Crown representative a role would stabilize the volatile mix. Matienzo put up a stiff fight, knowing the Moslem community would regard this as letting Haile Selassie in by the back door. But Spencer kept up the pressure, and events in South America worked in his favour. As Matienzo pored over the paperwork, he learned there had been a change of government in Bolivia and he had been declared
persona non grata
. With his homeland barred to him, his very status as negotiator challenged by the Ethiopians, Matienzo can be forgiven for being distracted.

By the time Matienzo came to draw up the final version of the constitution, the Ethiopians had won huge concessions. The Crown representative would have the power to formally
invest the Assembly's chief executive, send any legislation thought to encroach on Federal affairs back to the Assembly for a second vote and promulgate laws, all while enjoying ‘place of precedence' at official ceremonies. Eritrea's future ‘autonomy' was beginning to look distinctly compromised.

Spencer was to notch up a number of other triumphs, but Matienzo was not completely made of jelly. He stood firm on the issue that mattered most to Spencer and Aklilou, raised in what must surely qualify as one of the most obvious leading questions ever put to the UN. Once the Federal Act and Eritrean Constitution had come into force, they wanted to know, under what circumstances could the arrangements be amended or violated? Matienzo called in an international panel of legal consultants to settle what was clearly a crucial question. The panel's findings, from Haile Selassie's perspective, were disastrous. Once the legislation had been introduced, it ruled, Eritrea's future could be regarded as settled, ‘but it does not follow that the United Nations will no longer have any right to deal with the question of Eritrea'. The UN resolution on which Eritrea's Federation was based would ‘retain its full force', Matienzo's final report stipulated. ‘If it were necessary either to amend or to interpret the Federal Act, only the General Assembly, as the author of that instrument, would be competent to take a decision. Similarly, if the Federal Act were violated, the General Assembly could be seized
*
of the matter,' he added.
³¹

In his memoirs, Spencer simply blanks out the finding, choosing, just as his employer would later do, not to see the evidence of his own eyes.
³²
But Matienzo's conclusion–glossed over by Ethiopian historians but spelled out repeatedly in the Commissioner's reports and speeches
³³
–was crystal clear. Ethiopia would not be free to tinker, water down or abolish
the Federation, no matter how unhappy it became with the arrangement. Since the UN had guaranteed the Federation, the Federation could only be ended with UN approval. Aklilou raged at the ‘perpetual servitude' to which his country was being sentenced, just another form, as he saw it, of neocolonialism. For once, his words fell on deaf ears. It didn't take a genius, listening to the ‘theoretical' scenarios explored by the Ethiopian delegation, to guess Addis' long-term intentions. If he surrendered a future UN role in Eritrea's future, Matienzo must have realized, he would effectively be abandoning a state whose autonomy he was pledged to enshrine to its hungry, impatient neighbour.