Well, in a way, I think 2005 was Ethiopia's voted Arab Spring, as that was when you really had, for the first time in its history, a really popular movement around the elections. I think most Ethiopians learned a very harsh lesson from those events and from the repression that has taken place over the last seven years.
But I do think that the Arab Spring also is a lesson that repressive governments can only repress for so long. Eventually there will be some kind of movement, whether it's armed or peaceful.
As I said, Ethiopia is a country of more than 80 million people. It's incredibly diverse. There are, as you know, very serious fault lines within the country on religious and ethnic grounds. The worst-case scenario would be some kind of implosion. Again, I think it's in the interests of Ethiopia's friends, donors, and diplomatic partners to apply the pressure and the leverage they have to ensure that scenario doesn't happen.
Again, I think it's a concern that the strategic thinking is sometimes very short term, such as the thinking that Ethiopia is considered to be more stable when you look at Somalia, when you look at Eritrea, and when you look at Kenya in 2007. It's seen as, okay, we can hold off on dealing with the problems there, because we have other more urgent emergencies and fires to put out.
But this is very short-term thinking. Ethiopia is too important to ignore—or not to ignore, but to shelve. It's too important, really, for the region, as well as of course domestically. That's I think even another reason why this very grim and worsening human rights situation must be addressed in a serious way.