The end of the Cold War was quite a phenomenon; it seemed as if the once formidable Eastern Bloc was in total disarray while the situation unfolded in favour of the West in many parts of the globe. Regime change was the order of the day in many countries.

The West shifted its priority from confrontation to expanding democracy and freedom to these countries, at least in rhetoric. It tried to adjust itself to what was converging in its fold. For a moment it seemed as if modus vivendi was reached in the world.

The end of the Cold War also created an environment conducive for the only great power to meddle in the domestic affairs of sovereign countries at will. This was also true of Ethiopia.

The plight of the Ethiopian people had peaked: The dictatorial military-Marxist regime, led by Mengistu Hailemariam (Col) and the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a baptised-Albanian communist organisation led by the current Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, waged bloody civil wars; the former to extend its brutal dictatorship and the latter to implement the deeds of the former in a subtle, deceiving, and divisive way.

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There is a scene in the famous documentary, Mystery of the Nile, where the Egyptian professor who was part of the eight-person expedition, scoops water from Lake Tana and says, “My grandfather is a farmer in Egypt, and he asked me to bring him a sample of holy water from the source of the Nile.”

It reminds this writer of her days in Egypt when it seemed that most Egyptians did not know that their water came from the south and not the north.

“There is no plan to starve Egyptians or to fundamentally harm them,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had to reassure Ethiopia’s Egyptian neighbours, yet again.

Indeed, in the 1950s, when the Aswan High Dam was being conceived by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, not only was Ethiopia not consulted or reassured but the global situation was in such a state as to allow such a scheme without a quarter of the protest that Ethiopia now faces.

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