One Ethiopia

Another Lie Fades When Put to the Sun Test

2006-04-16T08:09:00.000-04:00

So who was it really who first said that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Was it Joseph Goebbels or was it Vladimir Illych Lenin? Actually, when the choice is between those two men, the difference fails to impress. The tyranny that is the EPRDF would not have cared who made that observation first. What matters to Meles and company is that there might be a chunk of truth to the saying. And so, the regime has adopted the tact as its most important weapon of survival next to the sniper’s gun trained on fleeing demonstrators. Indeed, Meles Inc does not even have one ministry of propaganda or one Goebbels. Instead, every minister, every diplomat, every officer and agent of the regime who is high enough in rank to possibly be called upon to speak on behalf of the regime is trained in the art of the lie. It seems that lesson number one in the training regimen is “when in doubt, lie like hell”.

What else would impel a minister of finance to call a press conference and announce to the world that Ethiopia is on the verge of graduating from the ranks of the poor? In an earlier post It Is All Big Lie, I reported how asinine it was to tell such a bold face lie when the world knows the truth to be different. Well we now learn from the publication capitalethiopia that no less than the IMF has corrected the record. According to this report, the IMF is insisting that the average growth rate of the Ethiopian economy over the last three years has been 4.68%. That is far short than the 7% average annual growth proclaimed by Minister Sufian Ahmed and even a shade less than my own calculation of 4.75%.

That of course still ignores the fact that what the minister was insinuating was about sustaining growth at nearly double the record of the last several years going forward when the reality is far bleaker. One does not need training in economic forecasting to see the bleak circumstances reported by the Capital and the one or two pubs still around. The reports are worrisome. It seems that the country is more likely to experience economic contraction than growth over the next couple of years. So, Ato Sufian and others will be well advised to spend their energies looking into finding ways to steer the economy out of danger before it begins to roll down hill uncontrollably. Every day they spend sitting around the conference table trying to come up with another clever lie is a day that passes without giving the economy the attention it deserves.

It Serves No Purpose to Burn Bridges

2006-04-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

In the weeks leading up to the congressional hearings on HR 4423, but specially since the committee approved the bill in a 6 to 4 vote split along party lines, the Ethiopian immigrant community has been engaged in a heated discussion of whether one or the other political parties might have an ideological affinity with the causes of our community. In the early stages of this conversation, much of the discussion was centered on the sense of betrayal many felt upon observing the partisan alignment of the members of the Congressional Subcommittee on Africa. To the surprise of many observers, Democratic members let it be known early in the process that they are quite pleased with the record of the Meles regime. Equally surprising to some was the realization that the Republican chair and the other members from his caucus had serious concerns over the political developments in Ethiopia but especially about the way the Meles government has been conducting itself over the last year or so.

Two historical facts explain much of the community's consternation over the unexpected alignment of the members of the Africa Subcommittee. First, many had thought that the Republican congressional majority would support the position of the Republican administration as it so often supports the foreign policy position of President Bush. The White House and the State Department have consistently supported Mr. Meles even when he goes against what appears to be America’s long term national interest. The war on terror is so paramount to the Bush doctrine that a tyrant such as Meles could receive pass after pass for everyone of his transgressions as long as he is viewed to be an important ally by those who direct the war on terror. Readers know the record and I don’t believe I need to enumerate all of the times the Bush administration went against America’s long established ideals in supporting a man who would not allow his people to enjoy basic human rights such as the freedom of speech, the right of free assembly and the right to chose their political leaders. And so, many had concluded that no self-respecting congressional committee which constitutes a Republican majority would even debate let alone pass a bill to censor Mr. Meles and to direct the Bush administration to pursue a different course in its Ethiopia policy.

The other historical fact pertains to the common settlement patterns of Ethiopian immigrants in the process of our long march towards assimilation into American society. Many of us often arrive as students or illegal immigrants and settle in poor urban centers where the rent in cheap and public transportation is easily accessible. The communities where we first settle often tend to be where ethnic minorities constitute majorities. These urban communities are often represented in the U.S. congress by Democrats. Thus our first contacts with representative government, whether it is when we seek help to regularize our legal status in the U.S. or trying to bring family members once our status is legalized, is with the offices of our congressional representatives which often tend to be a Democrat and sometimes a Black Democrat. From these early beginnings, many of us go on to establish long term relationships with our representatives and with the Democratic Party. The reactions over the last few weeks indicate that our community had invested a lot of emotion into the relationship with the Democratic Party and thought of it as something special when no special relationship existed.

If truth be told, seldom do we sit back and examine the ideological bent of either party, especially on the question of how they would handle the struggle of our compatriots back in Ethiopia. All of our preconceived ideas about how congressmen from either party would vote are just that, preconceived and not guided by systematic examination of American electoral politics. The heart wrenching lack of support by Democrats in the Africa Subcommittee is not a reflection of the nature of that party any more than the support by all of the Republicans on that subcommittee is a testimony to the character of the Republican Party.

All you have to do is go beyond the vote on the subcommittee and look at the party affiliation of the representatives who have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. You will see a radically different alignment of the two parties. Of the 15 co-sponsors who have so far signed in support of HR 4423, fully two third are Democrats (Loretta Sanchez of California, Ms. Zoe Lofgren of California, Mr. Charles Range of New York, Mr. John Barrow of Georgia, Ms. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, Mr. Ed Towns of New York, Mr. Martin Sabo of Minnesota, Mr. Jim Moran of Virginia, Mr. Allen Boyd of Florida, and Ms. Diane Watson of California). Republicans, including Congressman Smith of New Jersey, Mr. Frank Wolf of Virginia, Mr. Ed Royce of California, Mr. Rohrabacher of California, and Mr. Tom Tancredo of Colorado constitute only 5 of the 15 cosponsors. In my own hometown, we are blessed with two congressmen, one Democrat and one Republican. Most Ethiopians in this town happen to live in the Republican district and have had years of relationship with him. However, we have yet to succeed in our effort to encourage him to sign on as a cosponsor. The Democrat on the other hand, signed as a co-sponsor at our first visit. Now of course in order to understand how things in our town truned out that way, you need to know that the Democrat is a freshman congressman standing for his first re-election bid this coming fall while the Republican has been around since 1992, is a senior member of the Republican congressional leadership and is nearly certain of being re-elected.

This brings me to the central message of this post. Very often, indeed far too often, what matters to the representatives we send to Washington is how an idea plays back home in their district. In my part of the country for example, there are very few Ethiopian immigrants. However, among us, there are no known EPRDF supporters. We had secured over two hundred signatures, mostly college students, in support of HR 4423 and together with the half-dozen Ethiopians here, we were able to secure a co-sponsor. To our congressmen, that petition represents over 200 potential votes in November.

My other representative, who actually has some personal connection with Ethiopia having spent part of childhood in Addis, does not worry about a meassley 200 votes. He worries about several military bases in his district. He worries about supporting the troops who fight the war on terror. As a member of the Republican leadership, he is responsible for making sure that his party continues to constitute a majority in both houses of congress. So, our only hope for getting him to sign on is to get him to understand that Mr. Meles’ tyranical government breeds potential terrorists. Our task is to cast our cause as one which advances his cause, not retard it. We are working hard to get him to appreciate that if they continue to be denied of their rights, the people of Ethiopia will at some point take matters into their own hands. At some point, they will begin to try to defend themselves by whatever means necessary.

The point in relating this story is to underline the nature of American politics. One Tip O’Neil who served as Speaker of the House between 1975 and 1985 once said that in America “all politics is local”. What matters to a representative is how an idea plays among his constituency. I know Rep. Payne has several influential members of the Ethiopian community living in his district. These individuals happen to have strong business ties with the Meles regime and thus had successfully persuaded Mr. Payne to see things their way. Actually, that is not their way – it is the American way. Had, Mr. Payne lived in my district rather than in New Jersey, I suspect he would have been more sympathetic to the Ethiopian cause in the course of the HR 4423 debate.

Just as there has never been a special bond between Democrats and Ethiopian immigrants so far, there should not be a special animus between us going forward. Like I said before, you only have to look at the 10 out of 15 cosponsors to understand that most Democrats are likely to eventually stand with us as this bill winds its way to the President's desk. God only knows, we desperately want them to do so. Indeed, my concern is how we are going to get enough law makers from the President’s party to go against their President and side with us so that, together with the Democratic votes we could actually make this bill become law. That is a big hurdle for us to jump cross. Except if we organize effective strategies and we persist by calling and visiting our representatives frequently, most congressmen would not even think of what goes on in Ethiopia. Never mistake that the knowledge Reps Smith and Payne have about Ethiopia is an indication of the depth of understanding other representative might have. These two have had long services on the Foreign Relations Committee of the House and have had dealings with Ethiopian issues for long. Most of the other 480 or so representatives and 100 senators, could not even place Ethiopia on a map. It will matter only if we make it matter by reminding them that we as their constituents want them to vote one way or the other.

All of this amounts to these two points. First, both Democrats and Republicans are potential advocates for our cause if only we made the right plays. Second, we don’t have anywhere near enough support for our cause to be castigating let alone casting aside any political party as a disloyal partner. As they say in this country, you should never burn your bridges. You may need to cross that river again. We should not be too quick to condemn or write off the Democratic Party. Throwing ill conceived tantrums is one of those features of our national character that I often regret. I hope, going forward, we will be mindful of how we discuss our political leaders here in the U.S. as well as in Ethiopia.

Observations on Developments in the News

2006-04-08T20:41:00.000-04:00

Charles Taylor Shipped to Liberia: Sometimes the news I find to be of interest are not reports on developments in Ethiopia or about Ethiopians abroad. Sometimes, developments elsewhere in the world hold great potentials to impact life in Ethiopia in profound ways. I thought that the news about Nigeria’s handover of Liberian strongman Charles Taylor to the Liberian authorities and subsequently to the U.N. tribunal on Sierra Leone would impact the future of Ethiopia almost as much as it would that of Liberia or Sierra Leone. Many in the mainstream media ballyhooed the news as the dawning of a new day in Africa. There thinking was that perhaps this will start the ball rolling on the repatriation of so many other strongmen with blood in their hands who took refuge in neighboring countries. Among the many names mentioned was that of our own butcher Mengistu.

But to me, it is not the prospect of Mengistu’s repatriation that makes the developments in the Taylor case of interest to Ethiopians. The relevance of the Taylor case to Ethiopia actually has to do with the prospects of finding a peaceful resolution to the current political impasse rather than to visiting revenge on butcher of yesteryear. You see, we have in our middle a man who just might have crossed the point of no return as far as being able to live a free man as a private citizen in his own country. I speak of Ato Meles, he who refused every opportunity to access one graceful exit strategy after another. Instead, as the popular struggle continues to loosen his grip on power, in his conundrum, he deploys ever more irrational and more repressive measures against the people in a desperate effort to hold on to power.

The more blood Ato Meles spills, the less likely it becomes for him to walk out of the PM’s office on his own two feet. It certainly becomes less and less likely for him to retire to a nice retreat by the lake in Awassa or Bahir Dar. A decade and half ago, Mengistu was in exactly the same situation. His backers, the USSR, had given up on the world socialist movement. His economy was in shambles. His army was demoralized after fighting for decades multi-front wars that seen to have no end. As his demise becomes obvious, people who lost loved ones as well as those who were themselves victimized by his goons were lined up to tear him up at the first opportunity. It was at such a juncture that Colonel Mengistu was encouraged to skip town with his skin intact. He was always thought have street smarts. He assessed the situation and took the first opportunity to skip town.

As recently as last week, I as many others, was expecting a similar end for Ato Meles. Then came the headline: “Africans hope Taylor case sets precedent”. And what a precedent it would be for us, should it actually represent a new African reality. It would then mean that Ato Meles will see no reason to flee if he is going to find himself back in Kerchele or in Kaliti within a year or two. Thus, the story about the capture of Charles Taylor, the purveyor of death and suffering in Liberia and Sierra Leone, struck me not as a harbinger of hope but as a recipe for prolonging Ethiopia’s misery.

Colonial Viceroy II: It was a beautiful thing. The congressional hearing on Ethiopia, that is. Finally, it was not just Ethiopians who were characterizing the events which unfolded of the course of the last year as a heist. Witness after witness, congressmen after congressman declared that what the Meles regime stole was not just the election. It was not even state power that was stolen. These hearings declared that Meles and company stole the hope of a country that has suffered for so long. The hearings made it clear that the heist was meant to blow out the flicker of hope which had began to rise in Ethiopia. Even though all of us have heard the stories before, it was heartening to hear it from new faces and new voices. It was nice for a change to hear American public officials state the facts as they were. Yes there was the ever illusive Donald Yamamato skirting around every congressman’s question. But, the congressmen themselves, including those who ended up voting against the bill, were right on the mark in their comments.

The last twelve months have seen one Ethiopian hero after another rise up and defend our people and our cause. I counted three such heroes in that hearing, including two I have never heard of before. Eloquent, passionate and brave in their delivery, these men and the lady made me proud to be an Ethiopian. Of course there was another Ethiopian who had the unenviable task of defending the indefensible act of Meles. I actually felt sorry for him. I know I should be angry at him. But I had no anger for him that day – only pity.

And then there was Congressman Chris Smith. He was one of those people who sometimes pickup a foreign people’s cause and fights against the odds and refuses to veer of from the truth that he knows to be there even when he is going against his government, perhaps against his party’s leadership. Congressman Smith is quickly turning himself to be a later day Sylvia Pankhurst as it relates to the cause of Ethiopia. Just as Mrs. Pankhurst became the spokesperson for the cause of Ethiopian freedom in London working against established British policy of collaboration with Fascist Italy in the 1930s, Rep. Smith is working to get the U.S. government to wakeup from its slumber and to smell the odder of the bedfellow it has chosen in the Horn of Africa.

For that, he got declared “colonial viceroy 2” by Meles and company. I knew this was coming, the moment I watched the proceedings. I only hope that Mr. Smith knows that Ethiopians are not at all like that. These are carefully calculated moves intended to draw a reaction from Mr. Smith. I also hope someone who has contact with Congressman Smith’s office would let them know that the developments during the week of March 28 through April 3rd have made him a folk hero. In my eyes and the eyes of many other Ethiopians, that shameful letter meant to demonize him actually amounts to a beatification of the congressman.

What next for HR 4423: Before, I go too far from the congressional hearings, let me remind my compatriots in the U.S. to build on this and to bring this to a successful close. We need to intensify our efforts to find support for the bill in the full House and to find sponsors of a companion bill in the U.S. Senate. No effort is too little and no group too small to have an impact. Let me recite a story to show what a few men could do. I happen to know that six ordinary Ethiopians who live in Florida and Georgia, working together, were responsible for getting the support of two of the first 9 cosponsors of the HR4423. I know there are more talented individuals and much larger Ethiopian communities in cities and states across the United States. Let us all go out in force over the next few weeks and knock the doors of our congressmen to get the bill passed and to secure sponsors for a senate version. All it takes is announcing who you are (a constituent, a voter) and what you want your representative to do (to support HR 4423 and thereby stop tyranny and bring back hope to 77 million fellow human beings).

It is Dessie and Awassa now: We have been witness to this before. One week it is Gondar, the next week it is Ambo. The people of Ethiopia refuse to give up and bow down in the face of repression. Young people across the land are fighting tyranny. What a heart warming story it is. In spite of Meles’ claim about an evil network of trouble makers launched by the devilish CUD, all of this is taking place spontaneously. Without coordination, without a great design, without central orchestration, without even any communication between independent groups, Ethiopia’s children are fighting the evil which tries to sniff out their hope for a better tomorrow.

The last word about the Ethiopian Intifada was that the children of Dessie have laid siege to the government in Dessie and have taken control of the city. Though the numbers are less spectacular, you hear the same in Awassa. The children of Addis of course never sleep. Nor do those in West Gojam and Wolega. When a people get even a whiff of freedom, there is no stopping them. Like the heroine Birtukan Medekisa said, CUD is but the spirit of the new Ethiopia. You cannot bottle it up with sheer force. You cannot sniff it out by detaining a few people or a few thousand.

Is it a change of heart or just another flimflam in the shell game? There is a pattern in the way the Bush administration conducts foreign policy this days. First it takes indefensible positions which appear to be at odds with the long term national interest. Subsequently, when things do not work out, instead of admitting error and making a clean break, the administration gives convoluted explanations about a goal achieved and the pursuit of a new set of goals given the new realities. I thought the comments of Ambassador Vickie Huddleston, Charge’ d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa might be the first indications of a change of heart or a coming to one’s senses for the U.S. Of course, since the U.S. is committed to the cafeteria approach in its policy prescriptions – a presentation with a little bit for everyone – it is rather difficult to be sure if there is a real change of heart here.

There is the encouraging statement that "we remain very, very concerned about the CUD leaders and the civil society (members) who are detained. We feel that, in the end, their release is absolutely necessary to a reconciliation process. It can’t go on like this, for this process both sides need to be ready to compromise. To have a dialogue with all the opposition it is terribly important for the future of the country and it is certainly an objective and a priority of our government. We are now 39 days before a year after the elections, it is also five months since the riots in November and the tragedy that followed, I think it is now time to move forward and for commitment. We would like to see more progress, better respect for human rights, a more professional security forces and faster movement so that the opposition parties feel that they are really listened to".

But there is also the statement that “the government should speed up the ongoing trial of 111 opposition party leaders, members and journalists who are currently facing charges of attempted genocide and treason stemming from mass demonstrations against the May 2005 parliamentary elections.” And if the Reporter is to be trusted, Ms. Huddleston also made the following, even more heinous comment: “As much as we would like to see the opposition leaders out of jail -we doubt that is going to happen immediately - we say let the process go ahead, because there is a process under way.”

So, I am left with the question I opened this section with still begging for an answer. Is the Bush administration having a change of heart but just unable to find the right language for announcing its about face, or is this just a flimflam meant to mollify the increasingly restive Ethiopian populace? Time will certainly tell where we stand.

Good Night and Good Luck

2006-03-27T19:00:00.000-05:00

I only rented it because it featured George Clooney, one of my wife’s favorite Hollywood actors. It did not hurt that it was part of the Oscar buzz just a few weeks back, with Clooney a nominee for best director. Otherwise, I had no clue what the story line of this movie was when I picked a copy at Blockbuster Videos Friday evening. We finally got around to watching the movie just before the Sunday midnight deadline for returning it to the store.

It turned out to be a movie about an American political drama of yesteryear. It dealt with one of the darkest days in the history of American civil liberties — the Joseph McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s. It is a story many Americans would rather forget. Yet I found the movie centered on the work of the famed CBS News anchor Edward R. Morrow, a key player in the fight to bring Mr. McCarthy’s witch hunt to an end, to be a compelling and riveting drama.

Perhaps it was because the story of Senator McCarthy reminded me of one man’s capacity to do evil when good people are afraid to speak out even in a country such as the U.S. Perhaps it was the story of Morrow and of CBS news standing up to be counted and saying enough is enough, at great financial and personal risk to themselves. Perhaps it is the uncanny resemblance between the methods Joseph McCarthy deployed in getting away with it all for nearly five years and the system of terror being unleashed half a century later by another man in a country more than seven thousand miles away. There is also the fact that, just like Morrow in the U.S., some of the key players in the fight against the festering tyranny in present day Ethiopia are reporters, albeit not TV superstars like Morrow. Instead, these are men and women who are, for the most part, unknown to anyone other than their immediate families and their coworkers at the rags where they labor.

Nearly every Ethiopian has heard of the names of Hailu Shawul, Berhanu Nega, Merera Gudina, Ledetu Ayalew, Bertukan Medeksa and the other stars and mega stars of the Ethiopian democratic movement. However, most of us would be hard pressed to name three or four members of the Ethiopian free press. Yet, these are the key actors who carried the messages of the movement leaders to the people and brought the heart wrenching and heart warming stories of the hopes, aspirations and frustrations of the often forgotten people of the Ethiopian provinces to Addis and to all the other cities. They made it their mission to let all of us know that we are in this together and that no one was spared from the wrath of Meles.

Joseph McCarthy counted on people being afraid to be involved or just plain uninterested as long as they are not personally impacted by his witch hunt. Regrettably, his assumptions about the reaction of the American people turned out to be right for too long. He used his bully pulpit that was the House Un-American Activities Committee to charge, indict and convict anyone of being a communist and a spy for the USSR by simply saying so. He would routinely concoct stories about ordinary citizens and use the committee hearings as a forum for convicting without evidence those who had been charged. The hearings were often the platform for establishing or reinforcing his credentials so he can comfortably go after his next victim. No, he did not stop at the common man. He routinely manufactured charges against prominent citizens who spoke against him and against the work of his committee. His objective in the high profile cases was to discredit his detractors within their professional circles or worse, within their families. His tactics could and did work only as long as other Americans refused to speak out. As long as people simply went about their business too afraid or too busy to take a stand even as he stripped away their precious civil liberties, then McCarthy’s strategy worked like clockwork.

Meles and before him Mengistu perfected bullying tactics McCarthy would have been proud to call his own. Each of them deployed these tactics and reaped great benefits. To destroy someone, all McCarthy had to do was to label him or her as “a known communist, or a card carrying member of the Civil Liberties Union” or some such nonsense. Mengistu and his henchmen would deem you to be “counter revolutionary, abiyotu yemetaber or an adhari” and tag you as such even if all you did was to ask for the name of the one country or two where Marxism had lifted people out of poverty or let people be free of tyranny. Today, if you spoke disparagingly about Meles and his gang, you would be deemed to be a “chauvinist Amara, an anti-peace element” or worse. It matters not that it was not illegal to be a communist, or a member of the Civil Liberties Union in the 1950s America, just like it is not illegal in Meles’ Ethiopia to be Amara. Just the same, simply to be so labeled sealed the victim’s fate socially and professionally. Fifty years after America exorcised McCarthyism from American political life, people in Ethiopia are sent to prison or shot on sight for engaging in activities that are legal under the laws passed the regime.

America in the 1950s had Morrow and Paley to stand up to the sinister designs of Joseph McCarthy. Ethiopia in the first decade of the twenty first century has its own Morrows and Paleys. Sure, we don’t know their names and faces, but they are there. Some of them are walking the streets of Addis, out of work but thankfully out of prison. You find many others in Meles’ prisons. You find them in exile in just about every country. You find them manning radio broadcasts and cyber journals all over the world, trying to keep the flame of freedom burning. Unlike the America of the 1950s, our reporters come from both sexes. Women stand shoulder to shoulder with the men and discharge their heroic duties. Some of them are even expecting, but they don’t begrudge their circumstances any more than the men. They toil on until they are free to do what they were trained to do.

America’s Morrow and Paley were not trying to change anything. They were trying to protect the liberties Americans had been enjoying for 175 years which had recently come under McCarthy’s attack. Ethiopian scribes have a much bigger burden to bear. They are blazing new frontiers unknown in our history. Their struggle is based on a belief that we too have God given rights to news and information, a right to the truth about our country and about the activities of those who rule over us. They put their lives in harms way so we might know what our compatriots on the other side of the country, the other side of the city or on the other side of the world are experiencing. They earn their badges of honor everyday standing up and irking the deceitful one by reporting on his doings; fully aware but undeterred by his usual retributions.

These are new grounds in our history. If we succeed to hold on to it against the odds, Ethiopian historians will have a new kind of hero and heroine to write about. Until then, I bid my fellow Ethiopians, good night and good luck.

It Is All A Big Lie

2006-03-16T22:22:00.002-05:00

One of the distinguishing features of the Meles oligarchy is its predilection to engage in an endless series of lies. For sure, from time to time most governments and government officials lie or otherwise engage in the dissemination of misinformation in pursuit of strategic advantages. For example, in the course of just three years, we in the U.S. were blessed with the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski” lie and “Saddam has illegally accumulated weapons of mass destruction” lie, to name two particularly notorious lies. We can go back in history and point to heinous lies such as Mussolini’s lie about his purpose of occupying Ethiopia (to eradicate slavery and to civilize the wild and crazy Ethiopians), Hitler’s lie about his plan to exterminate the Jews and Stalin’s lie about his death gulags. What sets the Meles oligarchs apart is not that they lie but that, without exception, all of their public utterances meant for foreign consumption (which is nearly everything) and most of those meant for their nationals are laced with lies.

The key report coming out of Addis today was one more example of how the Meles gang has mastered the art of the lie. One Sufian Ahmed, Minister of Finance within the oligarchy was reporting the great news about economic developments in Ethiopia. Never mind that we have been reading how the Ethiopian economy is being ravaged with unsustainable price inflation arising from the escalation in the price of food grains on the one hand and the price of imported oil on the other. Set aside the story which was reported only a few days earlier that the Ethiopian balance of payments and foreign currency reserve position had deteriorated dangerously and might choke off the last breath of the Ethiopian economy. Just ignore the story about commercial banks drowning in excess liquidity because businesses were in no mood to borrow and expand their operations. So much so that private commercial banks were pleading with the government to be allowed to buy government bonds and bills so that they might earn with some of this extra cash that is sitting in their volts.

I can go on and list dozens of reports mauling over an economy which is anything but well. Yet Minister Sufian had the temerity to declare that “The end of poverty in Ethiopia is in sight!” The occasion was the announcement of a revision in the projected growth rate of the economy for the fiscal year which runs from July 7, 2005 to July 6, 2006. The essence of his report amounts to a projected growth rate of 5.6% in real GDP at factor cost during the current fiscal year. If the projection holds, it would be the third year in a row that the economy would have grown. The average growth rate over these three years would amount to 7% per year.

According to Reuters, “Finance Minister Sufian Ahmed told journalists that sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation could jump to the ranks of middle-income nations if current growth was sustained through coming decades.” He is further quoted saying that “if the trend continues for the next 20 years, Ethiopia would come out of poverty and be among middle-income nations.” This is big talk for a country which has been unable to feed itself, much less jump to the ranks of middle income countries. Strip away all of the hoopla and spin, what you still have is a desperately poor country hardly able to maintain its dismal economic condition which could easily deteriorate even further.

Look at that impressive statistic closely and you would note that its notoriety rests entirely on the unusually high growth during 2003/04. That year, according to government statisticians, the economy grew 11.6%. That growth followed a year when the economy declined 3.9%, a fact that Minister Sufian chose to set aside. Clearly, neither the decline during 2002/03 nor the spectacular growth in the year which followed were on the normal growth path of the economy. The phenomenal growth in 2003/04 can only be explained as a return to normalcy recovering what was lost in the major decline during 2002/03. So, if you look at the average annual growth rate over the last four rather than three years, you will find that it is a more realistic 4.75% instead of more than 7% the minister sought to spin. Whoever said that “there are lies, damn lies and statistics” must have come across something like this.

Of course 4.75% growth rate in GDP in the face of 2.3% growth in the population of Ethiopia leaves you with only a pedestrian 2.4% growth rate in per capita real GDP. At that rate, neither Mr. Sufian nor I would be around to cheer our compatriots as they join the ranks of the middle income citizens of the world.

Let us look at the numbers a bit closer. According to the International Monetary Fund, an institution which is on very friendly terms with Mr. Meles and his oligarchs reports that Ethiopia’s annual per capita real GDP (the closest indicator we have to what an average Ethiopian soul earns in a year) averaged a dismal US $120 during the 1980-85 period. Six more years of Mengistu and another ten years of Meles later, the average during 1993-2001 years had declined to US $100. (Every time I relate this information to my American friends, they always think I am kidding -- $100 per year for every living Ethiopian is a very difficult number to comprehend). The IMF also reports that the average for all low income countries during 2001 was U.S. $430, 430% of the Ethiopian average. So, the Ethiopian people do not have a prayer to even enjoy the average income levels for low income countries.

Regrettably, the IMF does not have per capita data for Ethiopia beyond 2001. The data we have is enough to show to all who care to consider such things, the ridiculous nature of Mr. Sufian’s pronouncement that Ethiopia will soon be joining the ranks of the Middle Income Countries. World Bank data shows that by 2004 a country needed to have per capita real GDP of between U.S. $826 and $10,065 to be classified as a middle income country. The wide range between the high and low ends of the group notwithstanding, it remains that even the lowest level for this group is more than eight times as high as our current per capita GDP. If we can sustain the average growth rate of the last 4 years, it will take 31 years for us to just double the current $100 per capita to $200. It will take another 31 years to approach the $430 average (actually $400 but I will give the minister the difference) for all low income countries. At current growth rates, we have to work at it for 93 years to get to the $826 mark which, according to Mr. Sufian, we are destined to get in 20 years. Of course, all of this is based on two major assumptions. The first assumption is that the other countries will stay where they are with out making any progress in the mean time. The second assumption is that we can sustain the average growth rate attained over the last 4 years. If either of these assumptions does not hold, then it will take centuries, not 20 years for us to join the ranks of the middle income, if at all.

The rhetoric of Ethiopia coming out of poverty in 20 years is just that: an empty rhetoric. It is not meant to inform the reader. Instead, it is meant to mislead the reader and to buy credit where credit has not been earned. I only wish this was a slip of the tongue or an unusual exaggeration; but it is not. This is the norm for the EPRDF. The operating assumption has always been that no one will take the time to check the facts. Therefore, their modus operandi has been to tell the sweetest tale possible, regardless of whether or not it jives with the truth. The minister’s pronouncement that twenty years hence we will no longer be among the poor is not a technical error. It is a statement manufactured with full deliberation to achieve two specific ends. On the one hand, the statement is expected to mollify the Ethiopian people who have lost ground over the last 15 years (going from $120 to $100 in annual per capital GDP). It is also meant to reassure the donor community, a key constituency about which the EPRDF has been concerned as more and more countries question the sustainability of Meles’ revolutionary democracy.

The thinking in the palace goes as follows. If people believe that there is a reasonable chance of moving in 20 years from the bottom of the low income group even to the bottom of the middle income category, many would pause to reevaluate their critical comments about Mr. Meles’ frequent outbursts of butchery and his refusal to step aside even when the people loudly ask him to. After all, hunger and poverty have now been our national shame for more than a quarter a century. As such, if the EPRDF could indeed eradicate poverty in 20 years, perhaps many among us and certainly most outsiders would view the sacrifices justifiable. At least that is the thinking which under girds this lie, and that thinking reflects the low regard the EPRDF has for its audience – thinking that the people will believe anything, especially if it is repeated often enough.

Ours Race Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

2006-03-13T00:28:00.000-05:00

The carnage and the indiscriminant shootings of unarmed and peaceful citizens by a regime bent on intimidating a population has now become old news, not worthy of mention in civilized conversation even among Ethiopians. The nationwide crackdown against dissent and the appearance of dissent has been going on for so long, mass arrests, beatings and murders transpire unnoticed beyond the immediate circles of the victims. Like the afternoon rains of mid August, these events have become so much a part of normal life, they elicit little fanfare or special note. Any notion that the fix is just around the corner has by now dissipated. Indeed, if you browse what is left of the Ethiopian free media or read the exchanges in Ethiopian discussion groups, you are bound to notice a great deal of pessimism about a seemingly lost cause.

The internet news aggregators only post reports received from such news stalwarts as Xinhua, China Post and People's Daily Online each of whom regurgitates government propaganda originated by ENA or Walta – a favorite topic being the billions in investment dollars pouring into Oromia or Afar or Amara states every other week. Meles’ brilliant strategy for isolating Ethiopians from each other and from the rest of the world through a complete news blackout has been a rousing success. His plan to annihilate the once young but vibrant private press went without a hitch. The publishers, editors and reporters find themselves in prison, or on the run. Even the ever buoyant weblogs, including this one, have of late been unusually quite for lack of news to report and developments to analyze.

Quite understandably, the mood of Ethiopians which resembled the dawn of a bright and shinny morning immediately before and after the election, is getting increasingly gloomy. A great deal of pessimism is an air, and I can relate to it. Ten moths of waiting for a resolution, ten moths of daily crackdowns, ten long moths witnessing innocent thousands detained, ten months watching our brothers and sisters hunted down for the crime of running for office or supporting legal candidates is enough to unglue anyone’s nerves.

This is especially true for so many who had taken the EPRDF at its word. Many who had long thought of the TPLF as nothing more than an invading army had begun to grudgingly think that perhaps the EPRDF was finally going to allow a free political contest. This group which constitutes the majority among Ethiopians finds it particularly disconcerting to witness the TPLF returning to its guns. It is easy to understand how such people could find this ongoing saga tiresome. Few people like a journey which seems to have no known terminus.

Of course the depth of the disappointment is attributable to the unwarranted trust the people had placed on the EPRDF. On the matter of the election, they took it at its word. For years, the Ethiopian people had been skeptical about the regime and any of its pronouncements. The regime had ruled without consulting large swath of the population. It had consistently conducted itself and taken many actions the public viewed to be at cross purposes with the national interest. Consequently, the Ethiopian public had low expectations and little to trust in the promises of the government. Until, that is, the government announced an election open to all comers and, for the most part, conducted itself as if it meant it.

As the campaign progressed, gradually people begin to believe that perhaps there was a chance that there would be an open election and that their votes would, for once, matter. So, everyone dug in and made the push towards a successful election, with the hope that by the end of the election all of the hurdles to our emancipation will be removed. Ethiopians and the entire world now know that the EPRDF was not reformed after all. Although the people’s candidates won the race, there were no medals or flower bouquets waiting for them at the finish line. As it turned out, the electoral race was not really a competition but a show – like one of those fixed boxing bouts. The only problem is those who were supposed to lose and make the favorite look good end up winning.

Having expended much energy and emotion at the election and its immediate aftermath, many of us have been laying low trying to regain our balance and sort through what just happen. Thankfully, there are increasing signs that the period of dazed disorientation is coming to an end. Many elements of the people’s movement are beginning to find their bearings and resume the struggle. Even in these early days of the new phase of our struggle, it is already clear that this is not going to be a sprint but a marathon. Our adversary is clever and very well positioned. Thus to succeed in our drive towards the goal of a free, democratic and prosperous Ethiopia which lives in peace within secured borders, we have to have the stamina of long distance runners and the wisdom and tenacity of a colony of fire ants.

While every citizen can and must play an important role in this struggle, we cannot afford a fragmented and disorganized effort. To optimize our efforts, we need to learn to work within institutionalized frameworks. We need to be able to live and work together even when we don’t see eye to eye on everything. We should resist the temptation to view every difference of opinion among us as though it were a hill to die over and an occasion to splinter our institutions. One of the enduring lessons of the last election should be the great dividend that cooperation across party lines pays. We witnessed that together, ill financed and inexperienced political forces shook the Ethiopian landscape. That lesson should never be lost on us again. This journey is long and will have many ups and downs and many turns along the way. We should never allow such events to divide and weaken us.

Many of our compatriots paid the ultimate price. I am certain that many of the victims of the June and November massacres were not even involved in the struggle. They were bystanders who were caught in Meles’ calculated move meant to scare the population into submission. Many parents lost their children and many children lost their parents. Sad as all of this is to the individuals who lost their lives and to their families, the most grievous damage that has been visited on our collective struggle is the loss of our leaders.

Meles knows this fact quite well. He launched his treasonous act with great care and continues to stand firm on this matter because he believes that our cause will be lost without our leaders. That is one reason why we need to rally around what remains of our leadership and prove him wrong. Certainly the men and women who engineered the election victory and who had the temerity to march forward in the face of great personal danger deserve the reverence with which we hold them. Yet I refuse to believe even for a second that our land of 77 million people is endowed with only two dozen leaders. There are out there thousands of able leaders waiting to be discovered. We need to identify and encourage the leaders among us to step forward. No one is born an experienced leader. That comes with time and maturity.

Each of us needs to search our souls and listen to our hearts to define our appropriate roles in this long journey. Our aspiration is no less than the emancipation of all 77 million of us. That august aspiration requires the full engagement and the maximum effort of each one of us. I recall hearing Dr. Berhanu Nega once state that neither he nor his party were in it liberate anyone. He said CUD was just a collection of people who want to liberate themselves. I know that kind of thought and language is very untraditional, but it is quite to the point. While it is important for us to work together, each of us must join in the fight to secure our own freedom. Certainly today we are not free from fear, free from deprivation, free from anarchy, free from war or free from oppression. As they say, freedom is not free. We must go out and struggle to secure it and once in hand continue to struggle to ensure we don’t loose it.

It is not necessary or even possible for all of us to join political organizations. But it is necessary for all of us to identify at least one political organization among the opposition parties and support it financially and morally. It is not possible for all of us to be lobbyists on behalf of our cause. But it is both possible and necessary for all of us who live in the West to make material contributions to the collective effort to influence the policies of the major western powers towards Ethiopia. It may not be possible for all of us to show up at rallies, but it is necessary and possible for each of us to write letters to the editor of our hometown papers and letters to our congressional representatives.

Each of these tasks is tedious and any benefits which might accrue would not be noticeable for years. Yet these are the necessary steps we must take to get to the promised land. We are fortunate to have among our compatriots many of the greatest distance runners to live on the planet. Let us closely observe and learn from their training methods. Let us monitor and learn from their race strategies. These who frequently travel on Belai Zeleke Road in Addis have had the privilege to come across these fantastic men and women in training. They trudge up the Intoto Hills down to Sululta and back up the hills and down to Shola Gebeya and perhaps back up again. They do this day in day out, every single day. To succeed at the world stage requires tenacity; and tenacious they are. They train hard in order to prepare for easy victory.

Our preparation to assure ourselves of ultimate victory requires no less sweat or tears than the preparations of our glorious athletes. There are no quick rewards in the race we are in. Our struggle is a long trudge up a steep mountain. We need to have no less than the stamina of the marathon runner. And by God, I believe we are up to the task.

Hurdles in the Transition to a Free Society

2006-03-05T22:03:00.000-05:00

It is quite understandable for any Ethiopian to be upset and consumed with what went wrong in our country over the last 10 months. Too many of us feel cheated watching the event which was meant to usher in our emancipation from tyranny, war and poverty turned into fool’s gold. I am certain that even those among us who still have soft spots in their hearts for the murderous regime wish things in our country were somehow different. I would venture to say that even Meles, the very architect of our precipitous decent to the dark days of midnight knocks, disappearances and gulags, would not choose the course which led us to the current state of affairs if he could rewind the clock back to May 16, 2005. I continue to believe that even a man who seems to value his personal ambition over the wellbeing of his compatriots would travel a different course given a chance at a do over.

In any event, sooner or later, the citizens and the leaders of the nation have to start to think of how we are going to proceed going forward. Even while we are in the middle of our struggles over the unfinished business associated with the last election, we the people must begin to develop and discuss ideas of how we will proceed the next time around so the situation does not get out of control again. We must begin to contemplate and develop a clear consensus how we would govern ourselves whether or not Meles and his gang continue hang around the scene. After all, our cause is the eradication of all prospects of tyranny, not the removal of its current edition. In the course of one generation we squandered two separate opportunities for democratic transformation. We were so focused on the troubles at hand, we failed to prepare adequately for the fundamental task of laying the foundations required for the transformation of our system of government.

As most of you do, I often worry of what will come after Meles and what we citizens are doing to make sure that whatever replaces the EPRDF is accountable to the people of Ethiopia. It often occurs to me when I lay awake at night, when I am driving through the lonely back woods of the state I live in, or during lazy summer days as I follow behind my lawn mower letting the soft purr of the engine block out all other noise. My mind wonders solving the problems of the world. When my thoughts return to our country and our people, nearly always I come back to the same question. What guarantees do I have that the third political transition of my lifetime will be any better than the first two? What are we the people doing to make sure that when change comes, we the people rather than politicians with the escort of armed men are in the driver seat? What does it take for us to mold our country in our own image and to establish a system of government that is accountable to us? What is it that we must do to ensure that the next government understands its charge is to govern on our behalf and not a mandate to rule over us? How do we groom and develop leaders who understand that we elect them to office because we like their ideas and we will remove them from office if their deeds fail to please us?

Much needs to be done but much has already happened over the course of the last few years both to educate many of us about the requirements of participatory democracy and to highlight some of the dangers which lurk in the background. Yet many obstacles still remain which place in doubt whether the next transition will lead to the emergence of a government constituted by the people which governs Ethiopia for the benefit of all of the people of Ethiopia.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle we must overcome is what I call the curse of Ethiopiawinet. This refers to the condition that seems to prevent all of us from recognizing that the country we so desperately love is home to 77 million other citizens each of whom love her just as deeply as we do. The depth of our affection for our country is such that too many of us believe that we have the right to mold it to our personal preferences even though we must share it with 77 million of our compatriots.

As reported in another post, I have traveled more than once around the world. As I meat and learn of the history and cultures of other people, it never ceases to amaze me to learn again and again that no other people love their country quite like the way we love our Ethiopia. You see, we just don’t love our country; we guard her jealously like a man protects and guards his wife. A man cannot tolerate even the remote possibility of someone else having loving thoughts for her. I hope you can see the picture I am trying paint here. There is the love of one’s first born child, but you are glad to share your child with your wife/husband. There is the love of one’s parents whom you graciously share with your siblings. And then there is the love of one’s spouse – the one meant just for you. That is how an Ethiopian loves his country.

A love so intense that if other citizens have other ideas, we go to war with them, we call them all sorts of names and we forget that each of us has the same right to the country we must all call home. Your college roommate, your coworker, your next door neighbor and the listro working at the corner stand are all citizens of the same country with the same rights to hold and to forward their views of what Ethiopia should be. To have a different opinion is not to be treasonous. To be on the same Ethiopian team should not mean to sing from the same sheet of music. Sometimes one just feels like singing a different song and that should be ok.

Until such time that all of us learn to keep in the forefront of our collective minds that old but simple maxim uttered by our last emperor, “Hager yegara new…”, we will have a great deal of difficulty building the Ethiopia we wish to live in and I wish to leave for my kids and grand kids.

The second obstacle blocking the path to a successful transition is the tendency of so many of us to obsess over issues and incidents which transpired centuries earlier. While the problems which ravage us today and those which threaten our future scream loudly for our immediate attention, we spend much of our time either glorifying or condemning the past. We stuck in the middle of a three-decade long nightmare, crouching under the weight of repression by successive tyrannies. Yet we spend much of energy not fighting tyranny but squabbling with one another over the purported crimes of our forefathers.

Yes understanding our true and complete history is important. Yet in the scheme of things, it is not nearly as important as feeding our children, providing healthcare to our ailing parents or recreating our country so that every citizen can explore history or whatever else strikes his/her fancy unencumbered by fear of a totalitarian regime or by material deprivation. I understand that most of us would like to live and work within the cultural context we feel most comfortable in. Living in a foreign land, I know what it means to have to learn a new language and to maneuver within a new culture. But these are issues that are best addressed when we are in charge of our destiny and we have secured for ourselves the right to decide what is appropriate for us. Thus the first fight we must win is the fight to be free of tyranny. It is only as free men that we can rationally decide for ourselves whether we should have one national language and if so what that should be.

The final obstacle which we must overcome is the dearth of skilled political leaders. We need leaders who have not only the ability to convince the common man to vote for him/her but also the wisdom to inspire other head strong politicians to follow their visions for the country. We need men and women who are not only great tacticians but also great strategists. We need leaders who have the talent to analyze the many problems at hand and also have the wisdom to anticipate and plan for the problem which is destined to visit us in a decade. Most of all We need leaders who believe in the virtues of freedom and who believe that free men can move mountains. We need leaders who understand and appreciate that a truly free Ethiopia is capable of eradicating poverty and leaving in peace within its borders.

I don’t know what it takes to grow such leaders. But I am confident that we have in our midest thousands of capable leaders who can fit the mold I outlined above. There are a number of things we as citizens can do to ensure that such leaders do come to the forefront. All of us should have the temperance to accept new ideas even if they sometimes sound counter intuitive. We should recognize that a democratic solution requires flexibility and our national obsession with what Ethiopian college students call “principle” is a double edged sword which kills friends just as often as it kills enemies. Visionary leaders have to have the ability to persuade others to see the virtues of their ways. When their power of persuasion fails them, to find a common ground and to advance the greater good, visionary leaders find appropriate redress acceptable to the other side. In democratic politics, very little is non-negotiable, truly off the table a priori. The kind of leaders we need will only emerge when we recognize what their task requires and give them enough room to maneuver. When we are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those who step forward and make themselves available for public service, when we are willing to disagree without being disagreeable, and when are no longer quick to equate a change of mind with a change in allegiance, only then will we have visionary men and women step forward and assume the positions of leadership which we so desperately need to fill.

Such are the thoughts which run through my head as I walk the lonely beaches of the Atlantic in the middle of winter or blow the Fall leaves with my power blower which loudly purrs blocking all of the ambient noise. The serenity afforded by the empty beach or by the noise cascading from the blower frees my mind to revisit events from my past, from childhood memories to yesterday’s goings at work. It is on such occasions that I free myself to daydream and to think of what is possible in my Ethiopia.

A Toast to the Modernday Shepherd

2006-02-20T15:42:00.000-05:00

Centuries before there was the internet, long before there were newspapers bearing editorials and readers’ opinions, when the kings and princes of Ethiopia wanted to know what their subjects were thinking, they ask a trusted servant to go out to the villages and listen and report the newest songs of the shepherd boy. Much as is the case in rural Ethiopia today, in those bygone years, shepherd boys perched on their lookout posts at the top of the hill, normally serenade their herd grazing in the valley below with songs of new found love and of the sweet nothings a lover tells his enamored. At times, the shepherd sings of pride and devotion to the family honor. He sings of his incomparable village and of his dedication to protecting it.

When times are difficult and especially when the difficult times owe their origins to bad governance, the shepherd boy retools his songs. He sings of the shame of the shepherd who betrays his flock and abandons his charge when darkness comes, an obvious reference to the failings of those in authority. He sings of the ‘agasses’ that focuses on filling its ravenous belly and forgets to take note of the pack of hyenas circling to devour it. The shepherd is but a trumpeter who gives words to the pain and suffering of every family in his village. His songs seek to shame those in authority to wake up to their responsibility. They warn of the shameful end of the house that misrules its subjects.

As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. About one hundred years after the first newspaper in our country came into being, the modern day counterpart of the shepherd who now wielding a microphone is still the most reliable witness of the mood of the people. Yes, some things have changed. Where once you had to be right there in the fields to catch the shepherd’s creation, today, technology makes it possible for you to enjoy songs sung thousands of miles away and renditions recorded years ago. Yet, now as was then, the Ethiopian musician captures the sentiments and soul of our people in his songs better than any reporter, editor or social commentator had ever achieved through the written word. I would dare argue that over the last fifteen years, collectively, Ethiopian musicians have been the conscience of the land and the voice of the people. Their lyrics faithfully and meticulously record the nature and causes of the complex problems we face. The current crop of musicians, the proud heirs of the old shepherd boy, do not stop just at vocalizing our pain and pointing to what is broken, they also point us in the direction of our salvation.

The new breed of shepherd is our newest kind of philosopher, teacher and preacher. Readers know what I am speaking about. If you are the average Joe, you have been moved to near tears more than once by the poetic lyrics of a string of musicians, young and old, male and female. Each of us has our favorites. I have mine, but I will not single one out for I know each of them to be equally heroic. Some have taken up the cause on a fulltime bases and use their music to rally the people to our common cause. Others have substantial repertoire woven into their regular acts that remind revelers of the unfinished business which await just outside. Nearly without exception, today every Ethiopian performer tells the story of a people consumed by the cannibals among them. These days, in song after song, nearly every entertainer reminds us of our shared values and shared history and goads us to dig deep within our souls to find that which unites us instead of obsessing on what divides us.

Today’s entertainers, much like their predecessors who whistled from every “mama” and every hilltop in years gone by, serve as the Harris Poll of Ethiopian society – reporting the mood of the nation for the benefit of anyone who cares to listen. These men and women witness and agonize over the cries of our people and lend their voices to the voiceless. Working at times in a cappella groups, sometimes in solo renditions, they have responded to the call of their forbearers. At substantial costs to their careers and at great personal risk, each of them has had the mettle to step forward and take up the role that tradition bestows and love of country demands. If you doubt their effectiveness, if you sometimes wonder whether that their songs may be promotional gimmicks, just take a look at Mr. Meles’ “list of the virtuous Ethiopians” – that list which includes the men and women most feared by Mr. Meles. Our glorious new shepherd boys have proudly assumed they positions on that list of heroes and heroines.

For that, I toast each and every one of them.

The Newest Props in Ethiopian Political Theatre

2006-02-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

So we are now in the stretch drive, in the last few innings of the contest for the soul of Ethiopia. Lined up on one side are the disjointed and sometimes dispirited remains of opposition parties, the unrecognizable remnants of what once were civic society organizations and the tarred and feathered but always resilient public trying to save the day with a last ditch effort. Crouching on the other side is none other than the badly wounded and terribly humiliated Mr. Zenawi, the Hurricane Katrina of African politics. His is hunched over from exhaustion, having just run roughshod over everything in the field of play, over the other team, over the arbiters, over the cheer leaders and over the spectators. Yet he is swinging away hoping that the opposition will be tired of serving as his punching bag, worn out from taking all of the arrows and bullets coming their way and submit to his will, and declare “No mas, no mas” ala Roberto Duran in that 1980 boxing classic.

If one forgets where we came from, if one does not look back and recall where we were even a year ago, it is quite easy to be discouraged by the current scene. But take a look around the internet and examine what the prognosticators, our cyber talking heads, were saying last year this time. Examine what was the consensus view just three months before Election’05 and you will recognize the unmistakable progress we have made in the march towards our final destination. If truth be told, last year this time, few of us outside Ethiopia even knew just when the election was to take place let alone take active roles in its orchestration. Most of us had a vague idea of a forthcoming election. All of us believed that Meles and company would not allow any serious opposition to organize let alone seriously challenge for the people’s vote. A year ago this time, most of us had so little respect for the strength of the opposition, we would not donate money or read its literature. A year ago this time, most of us in the Diaspora had little idea of the extent of disdain the voting public had for the EPRDF gang. We traveled back home, saw the shinny airport terminal and pretty people walking around with cell phones stuck to their ears and falsely concluded that Ethiopia was on the rise again. We wrongly assumed that people felt secure, comfortable and positive about their prospects and about their government.

Our travails over the last ten months have helped us attain one of the key requirements for ultimate success. A well known maxim stipulates that to succeed in battle you must “know yourself and know your enemy”. That we now have done.

We now know what lied beneath the façade of political serenity and appearance of emerging economic prosperity. Today, we also know that our people are determined to be free of fear, free of poverty and free of tyranny and are united in their pursuit of freedom. A year of watching, reading and listening later, we now know that there are among us many men and women who have the vision, the intellect, the tenacity, the love of country and the bravery to lead us in our struggle. Today we know that those who come everyday face to face with their oppressor, with their brother’s killer have no fear of their adversary – only disdain and ever intense determination.

Nine months after their election victory was stolen, eight months after the other side declared an open season on them and launched a campaign of harassment, beating and killing, and three months after they were unceremoniously rounded up and thrown into prison, the leaders of the opposition show no sign of surrender. Today we see the ONC reduced to a shadow of its former self, all of the offices of the CUD closed and the CUDP practically band as a domestic organization and the OFDM apparently destined to meet the same tricky fate as the ONC. The other side is busy trying its utmost to break up and frustrate the opposition. Yet, the leaders of these organizations and the people who support them take every thing in stride and march forward undeterred.

The other side did not stop at reversing the peoples’ will expressed in Election’05. It has dug in and is putting to use the power which comes with sitting in Menelik’s Ghibi in its effort to stay in office well beyond 2010. As always, the other side is playing smoke and mirrors in its effort to weather the political storm it unleashed trying to cow a determined citizenry. It is setting up an elaborate stage with all the customary props as it gears up to orchestrate a grand show – a show of “fair trials, outside observers and independent investigations”. Only the very uninitiated will believe the story line that would be told in this stage production to be anything but a grand show rivaling in its wizardry anything a Broadway production could come up with.

The stakes are very high for the producers and directors of this planned show. Yet they know that for them to survive and indeed to thrive, the show does not have to be a hit. It just has to be staged. It matters not whether the plot line is convincing. They care very little whether the patrons or the critics find the show enjoyable. What matters is that there is a show. They have had a long laid plan to take care of the rest. They have a network of very effective apologist who can spin anything. They are the ones who were able to get the outside world to get hang up on the point that the opposition increased its presence in parliament ten fold or twenty fold. Never mind the obvious flaws in the process; much progress has been made in the democratization process just because the opposition has won more than 200 seats.

All they want is a chance to stage the show. The show actually has multiple plot lines unfolding concurrently – just like one of those Law and Order episodes. One of these plots will have a group of independent investigators review the Addis Ababa massacres of June 6-8, 2005 and of November 1-4, 2005 with a view to vindicating the commander in chief who ordered the security forces of the country to shoot into crowds of unarmed civilians. This plot will conclude by finding Mr. Meles to have had good cause for killing several dozen of his subjects who were threatening no one or nothing. Perhaps, the investigation would even stumble on to some “critical clue” which would be helpful for the other plots that will be running concurrently. And if they stumbled onto something, they are sure not to sweep it under the rug. After all, these are independent investigators who were selected by the independent parliament to look into two very disturbing outbreaks of state directed violence.

The second plot line calls for “a fair” trial of those accused to have been engaged either in an act of treason and genocide or in conspiracies to engage in treason and genocide. Perhaps this is the most difficult act for the producers and directors of this play to launch. Their problem is not because they would not find “a fair district attorney” who would agree to prosecute the case. It would not be for lack of a “fair judge” to hear the case. Nor would it be for lack of “fair and reliable witnesses” or a fair amount of evidence. The biggest problem the director of this play is going to have is finding those who would be cast as villains in the show to agree to take part in staging their own vilification.

We saw a couple of weeks ago, the leaders of the CUD who find themselves in the grip of the producers and directors of this show refuse to take up their assigned roles. They announced that they are not going to take part in this show which is masquerading to be a trial. Certain in their knowledge of the law which insists that the court try criminals, not citizens who hold political views different from the prime minister, the CUD leaders concluded that to continue to participate in the charade is to legitimize the show. They announced that they will not give cover to the political cabal or afford even an appearance of legitimacy and pretext to the spin-misters by agreeing to take up the roles of criminals in Meles’ grand show.

So Meles and his gang have been huddling to come up with a strategy for disarming the CUD leaders. As luck would have it, one Louis Michel, EU Commissioner for International Development, came strolling to town this week and seemed to agree with Meles’ plan to prosecute the leaders of CUD and their compatriots who are unjustly jailed and illegally denied bail. Or perhaps it is not luck at all; perhaps that is what Meles trekked to Brussels last week for. In any event, Meles dropped the other shoe, the other piece of the puzzle, and gave us a hint of the third plot line. He suggested and Michel anxiously agreed (or was it the other way around) to have “independent outside” jurists to observe the “fair trial” by a “fair court” following the “fair and independent investigation”.

The only problem that the Great Leader must now solve is getting these patriots to agree to the plan and to play their roles. If they refuse to acquiesce to the demands of the producers of this show, if they stand firmly on their announced decision not to take part in the exercise henceforth, they will throw a monkey wrench into that plan. The show would then have to be canceled. In that instance, the plan for 2010 would also need to be revisited.

Yes, we have come a long way, indeed. We have taken the tiger by the tail and we won’t let go. Mr. Meles has no idea how close he comes to the truth every time he brags about how Ethiopia is nearing to be a real democracy. And when you think that only last year we would have settled for a few more seats and just a little more opening up of the economy. We have come a long way, baby!

A Picture is worth a thousand words!

2006-02-15T12:39:00.000-05:00

In baseball, they call it the stretch drive. It is the middle of the second half of a very long and boring game. The excitement of going to the ball park and sitting in the sun with friends or sons is wearing out. The conversations are dieing down. The effect of all that beer is making you feel woozy. As is always the case in baseball, there is not much action, a strike out here, a ground out there and little real excitement. So by the sixth inning, you begin to think about the office and worry whether it was wise for you to call in sick from work today. You second guess the wisdom for taking your son out of school just to sit through another boring game, score tied 1 to 1.

The stretch drive is the late hour of a baseball game when a manager earns his keep by making the right call: whether it is sending in thee right pinch hitter or bringing in the pinch runner before the sure hitter comes to bat. A nice bunt here and a sacrifice fly there, a relief out here or an intentional walk there and you have the game won or lost with the last at bat or the last pitch. If excitement was the sole purpose, baseball would have been played over three innings. But, baseball is both a test of skill and a test of will and so it is played over 9 or more innings. To flourish, you have to be at the top of your game even during the boring stretch drive when there is little action, but a repetitive defensive struggle. And although it would be hard for you to believe this while you are sitting through the stretch drive, that is actually why you keep coming back to the ball park.

The struggle of our people too is in the stretch drive. There is much action without real movement and much movement without real progress. The game plan seems to change every day but it is really the same. All sides including the refs seem to have shown their hands, but then you see each side taken by surprise by the other’s maneuvers. It promises to be a long and ugly stretch drive. It is all part of the game – only the naïve would have thought this game to be played clean or to be brief.

I suspect it is this feeling of unease that our now regular contributor, H. Gabriel was sensing when he put together yet another well articulated piece. I invite you to enjoy his take on developments over the last several days. As always, I have reproduced his contribution in its entirety.

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I have a confession to make. Like most Ethiopians, I routinely (almost daily since May 15th) check the various Ethio-websites. Most of the time I am encouraged that the demise of the neo-apartheid system in Ethiopia is very near. I feel that way not just because of the candlelight vigils in DC or some demonstration in some part of the globe; nor because I read about some incredibly brave students saying enough is enough to occupation and slavery or because the EU yanked their direct budget support. I feel optimistic because the combination of all I see, read and hear tells me that the rope is tightening around the neck of the evil that is eating away at my country, my home, my birthplace.

Some times however, like this last week, I get discouraged by what I see, read and hear. First, I read the melancholy letter of Berhanu Nega’s sister. The letter appears to be a sober assessment of the Ethiopian reality. Simply put, I believe her assessment is that vigils, letter writing, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue etc. alone are not going to bring down the EPRDF. We need to intensify the non-violent struggle even more. Although, I agree whole-heartedly with her assessment the tone of her letter reminded me that it may take a lot more that what most of us think, to tighten that rope.

Then, the invitation of Meles to the “Summit of Progressive Governments” was very disappointing. What more does this animal have to do for the world to see him for what he is? How many more innocents does he have to kill for them to say I will not break bread with someone whose hand is drenched with the blood of children? It’s like we are watching the same movie but they think it is a “Drama” while we know it is a “Horror”, with Meles playing Freddie and Jason combined together.

Then last night I saw the BBC video of the summit and really understood what the various print articles meant when they said, “Behind the icy diplomatic exchange, however, the body language told a different story”. Meles was no longer the little Napoleon with the designer shades and the arrogant frown on his face. He looked like a little boy who was ready to pick up his marbles and go home. He had his chin in his hand with an ugly scowl on his face. Blair was huffing and puffing and looking at Meles sideways. The body language did say it all. Blair’s body showed his disgust with Meles. Meles’s shriveling demeanor showed the verbal whipping he has been getting for two days.

This video made my week. It made me realize, albeit slowly, the world is seeing Meles for who he really is. Yes, it is not just one method of struggle that is going to get rid of the EPRDF. It is the combination of the letter writing, Pennsylvania Avenue marching, budget support yanking, One Ethiopia bloging etc. that is going to tighten the noose around the neck of the EPRDF. Some are paying the ultimate price while most of us are just cheerleading. However, anyone who has gone to a football game understands that cheerleaders (band and all) are important arsenal for a team to win.

You got to watch this video. It will make your week!

H. Gabriel

Readers' Comments on My Concerns Regarding the OLF

2006-02-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

My last post http://oneitiopia.blogspot.com/2006/02/tiptoeing-around-2000-pound-gorilla-in.html asking readers to share their views on whether there is reason for Ethiopians to be concerned with the designs of the Oromo Liberation Front netted us the most thoughtful responses I have ever had the pleasure to receive here at One Ethiopia. I am grateful to readers who responded with their sobber assessments of the work and ambitions of the OLF but also of the proper role of ethnics politics in today's Ethiopia.

Many of the most impressive responses were posted to the site as comments at the end of the post. I am so impressed with the maturity a couple of the respondents exhibited, I have decided to publish a few of these as a separate post. We trust readers will not be disappointed.

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H. Gabriel said...

What is to be an Ethiopian? Thank you for your post about this critical issue. I have also been thinking a lot about this issue. Why is it that all the PDO and LF’s want to destroy the spirit of Ethiopianism that is shared by the great majority of Ethiopians and not just the so called Amhara’s. What is it about this sense of pride in being an “Ethiopian” that drives them nuts? Why do they constantly try to denigrate the history (at least the positive part) of the only black nation that defeated European colonialists? Why are they constantly trying to dismantle the positive aspect of nation building that has taken place? The culture of central Ethiopia especially is not just the Amhara or Oromo but a malange that also includes the Tigre, Adere, Gurage and many others. Every nationality had participated in the greatness of Ethiopia. Life in Addis was and still is where the Eritrean, Tigre, Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, Somali and Adere colassed and created their own urban social and political outlook.

I recently saw a video of Mohamud Ahmed and Ali Birra singing together “Almaz meneda new” in Amharic and Oromigna. It brought tears to my eyes. It took me to the days of my youth. I remember when Ali Birra first did his rendition in Oromiga. A lot of non-Oromos learned that song because it hit a nerve. It hit that something inside that tells you this is part of your cultural heritage also. The same with many of Mohamud Ahmed’s guragega songs. They don’t just belong to the gurage. Just like the kitfo, they belong to all of us. That is what people call a melting pot. There certainly was and still is the urban and rural divide, like anywhere else in the world. The city slickers jokes were equal opportunity. It was equally dished out to the Gondere and Menze as well as the Oromo and Gurage. Ethiopia was a feudal empire just like all of medieval Europe. However, the Scottish are as proud of British history as the English. Why can’t we equally be proud of Dej. Balcha Aba Nefso as Atse Menelik, as men who made the white man shake in his boots! By the way, my screen saver for many years has been a fierce picture of Dej. Balcha. When I see his eyes I see the eyes of all our forefathers that gave their life protecting our country.

Meles &Co. and all the LF’s would like us to think the struggle is between the center and the periphery; between the Neftega Amhara’s and other oppressed nationalities. To create the new democratic federal Ethiopia the “old” system has to be dismantled and a new one based on the ethnic and linguistic differences has to be created.

It is certainly true that there needs to be devolution of political and economic power from the center to the regions. The feudal (not necessarily just Amhara) economic relationship basically ended with the 1974 revolution. Unfortunately, the government became the new “feudal” landlord under the Derg and now under the EPRDF.

By now, we know Meles is playing smoke and mirrors. The EPRDF is in fact strengthening the center while pretending to push power to the regions. Although, the regional institutions look democratic on paper (just like the constitution) they are merely tools for Meles & Co. to control the daily life of everyone in the nation. As to the rhetoric against the Neftega Amhara, that is just the rallying cry of raising the ghost of the past to demonize any political opposition. If there are any “Neftegas” today, they are the Agazi troops that are terrorizing the nation from one end to the other.

Ethiopia is a nation where the major ethnic and linguistic groups have a common historical and cultural reference points (good and bad). The PDO and LF’s are focused on what divide us vs. on what unite us. They are more interested in telling us that one’s Addis Ababa is another’s Finfene. We can’t be as proud of the Geda system as the Axumite Empire and so on. I appreciated Berhanu Nega’s (dully elected mayor of A.A.) response to this divisive ploy of the EPRDF. He welcomed the Oromo regional government to Addis as a source of revenue for the Addis Ababa government. If the people of Addis Ababa want to change the name to Finfene, that is their prerogative. Not some PDO or LF’s unless they plan to ethnic cleanse five million people from their homes of generations!

That is why they all hate and demonize the CUDP. As Birtukan Mideksa said Kinjit is a “spirit”. A “spirit” of a federal democratic Ethiopia. An Ethiopia, that is ready for the new while preserving the good of the past.

Anonymous said...

Thanks One Ethiopia.

You expressed the feeling of most Ethiopians who believe that all our problems will only be solved through a united, democratic Ethiopia.

The position of OLF is clear to every one. I do not see them changing it soon. On the other hand, there is a tendency to exaggerate significance of OLF.

I do not believe that OLF is a legitimate representative of Oromos, nor do I believe the Oromo question can only be solved through OLF. I know there is a growing sentiment in favor of OLF among young Oromos but one can't be sure how deeply rooted it is. It is more like an act of defiance against Melese’s tyrannical regime. I remain to be convinced that the young demonstrators who raise OLF’s flag agree with the extremist position of the party, i.e. secession of Oromo zone.

Moreover, OLF is a hallow organization which has been splitting again and again and changing leadership every time they face an obstacle. Since the debacle with TPLF a decade ago, OLF has deteriorated in size and political significance. It has been ridiculed even by its members, and lost too many leaders and supporters. Even now there are two independent groups who claim ownership of the party.

Abdisa

Ethio-Wolqait said...

There is nothing that causes me pain deep in my heart every time I hear, read or see somthing that is intended to divide our Ethiopia. These days the issue of the Oromo particularly of OLF sympethisers is worrying me more than anything. Some of them have even went as far as claiming that they are not Ethiopians. I think this is a deliberate way of trying to create an Oromo nationalism and state. Thus, playing the same game the EPLF and TPLF played during separatist movement.

During my time in Addis Ababa just about 5 years ago,I did not see anything that can be compared to what I am hearing and reading on the cyber world.

All in all I keep asking myself...Is it really that bad on the ground?? Do the Ethiopian people, be it the urabn or rural residents hate this much? Do the Oromo people really want to secede? Does the secession of Oromo solve the root cause of the Oromo people? Can the Oromo problem be solved with out solving the problems of their counterparts? Assuming that Oromo secedes, can it really exist peacefully and develop economically? What is the guarantee that the OLF is not going to be another dictator just like the current day LFs? What is the input of the rest of he Ethiopian people in the dicision making?

Dessalegn said...

I think most of us, understandably, have a lot of trouble relating to ethnic nationalism. I know I did, for a long time.

But as the years have passed by, and I have seen ethnic nationalisms in all their manifestations throughout the world, including the country where I live, Canada, I have come to accept the phenomenon has part of human reality.

I find it helpful not to look at the organizations that push ethnic nationalism, but the people who feel pulled towards ethnic nationalism. What makes them tick? What is it that attracts some Oromos to ethnic nationalism? Is it purely a top-down movement of propaganda fooling the masses? Surely not. There must be some grassroots sentiment that is being harnessed.

The reasons behind this grassroots sentiment are complex, but the solution always involves empowerment through some sort of democracy, democracy defined as the leadership being a reflection of the people's wishes.

Further, it involves accommodation of ethnic nationalist sentiments to some extent. Accommodation comes through negotiation, which requires tact. The LF knows all too well that it has emotion on its side, and that any action than can be interpreted as alienating is to its advantage. Therefore the other side must be sensitive to this and be careful what it says and does.

This is how ethnic nationalisms have been successfully managed throughout the world. I think it's a lesson we ought to learn from the Canadas and Indias of the world.

Abdisa said...

Dessalegn,I agree with you the solution is a democratic system in which every Ethiopian has a stake. For that to happen, the system should guarantee individuals right for free speech, association, ownership of property including land, religious belief, etc.What is the role of OLF in this context?

No one argues the fact that ethnic nationalism is a legitimate issue and any political solution to the crisis in Ethiopia should include organizations with ethnic agenda. However, a number of questions need to be answered regarding OLF.

Is it the one and only party that can represent Oromo people? Is it really possible for one party to fully represent any ethnic group? What is the role of ONC and OFDM? Does OLF have the proper agenda and capacity to solve the problem? What should be done about its misrepresentation of the crisis in Ethiopia between Oromos and other Ethiopians?

Abdisa

Gooch said...

Abdisa,It's difficult to know what the OLF's role should be because we don't know the extent of public support for it. We can guess, but we'll never be sure until it participates in elections. Its role will be defined by the people.

A free election with the participation of the OLF would be fascinating. I think the performance of CUD, ONC, and OFDM in Oromia really surprised everyone in these past elections. I would suspect that the OLF would have its work cut out for it if these parties play their cards right. On the other hand, there may be a re-alignment of forces that we can't foresee at the moment. Ah, it's all guesswork.

One thing for sure, though, the moderating effect of democracy and elections will work on the OLF, too.

Tiptoeing Around the 2000 Pound Gorilla in Our Living Room

2006-02-05T14:13:00.000-05:00

I first came to Addis in the mid-1960s to attend Bede Mariam Laboratory School on the campus of what was then HSIU as a seventeen year old high school senior. I was raised in a small farming town and went to school in a provincial capital which did not enjoy piped water or electricity until the year before I left for Addis. So, when I arrived in Addis my senses were overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of everything new in the big city. From high rise buildings to paved shinny roads, from flashing neon lights offering all sorts of tempting goodies to the endless stream of traffic on the roads – everything I saw, everything I came across as I explored the streets of Addis was new. The experience was exciting and intimidating all at the same time.

I was excited to be in the middle of all of the action. My excitement was further enhanced with the knowledge that what is keeping me from being one of the big city boys was only my age. Like all college bound young men of the day, I knew that in time I would be one of them – a big city cat. But part of me was also scared because I was an outsider not familiar with the ways of the city people. I have never seen more than one car at a time. If truth be told, the only time I rode on a wheeled means of transportation was when I took the bus to come to Addis. So there was plenty to spook me. I was scared of crossing the street. I was scared of city folks cheating me out of what little money I had. I was scared because I stood out like a sore thumb with the way I was dressed and the way I gawked at everything. City folks looked to be so all-knowing cool. Even the students who came from other provinces seemed to be hip and much more knowledgeable of the ways of the city. (I promise this is not really about me. I am actually going to make a point about the current conditions in our country.)

When school opened on September 28 as it always did back then, thousands of students flooded the campus, a few of us belonging to Bede Mariam, most of them attending the university proper. As we shared the same campus and facilities with university students, I was in awe with my surroundings. Although I did relatively well in the classroom from day one, I felt as though I was not ready for college. Intelligent and purposeful discussions on the fate of our country pervaded the entire campus. Much of what was talked about in formal and informal settings seemed to be well beyond my grasp. The key doctrines which under gird the endless discussions among students were totally alien to me. I felt doubly ashamed both because I had not read any of the doctrinal material which was obviously well known to everyone else but also because I could not intuitively follow much of the logic of the student debates.

I found two particular threads in these debates to be especially bothersome. One thread was engaged in a discussion of the relative suitability of three alternative political systems for organizing Ethiopia’s social, economic and political affairs. In point of fact, there was little real discussion on the nature and merits of the traditional feudal system. Observations on feudalism were made only to serve as points of departure for highlighting the virtues of one or the other of the modern alternatives. So the debates boiled down to whether our country would be best served by transition to capitalism or socialism. It seemed to me that the most confident and enlightened among the students had already made up their minds on two related points. These individuals, of whom I must admit I was in awe, eloquently articulated the view that the country had already transitioned or was well on the way to transitioning to capitalism and that capitalism was incapable of resolving the peculiar problems Ethiopia was facing at the time.

The second thread deliberated on the issue of Ethiopia’s nationalities. Most discussants sought to explore alternative approaches to ending all vestiges of unequal or exploitative relationships among and between Ethiopia’s diverse people. A vocal minority championed the Leninist doctrine regarding the rights of Ethiopia’s nationalities to determine for themselves whether they wish to continue to be part of the Ethiopian state and what role the Ethiopian state would have in their lives if they chose to stay a part of it.

None of these arguments sat well with me. Yet I sat quietly through countless hours of debate. By the Christmas break, I had decided that I did not have what it takes to be in the company of these bright young men (few women in their company) who impressed me with the breadth and depth of their knowledge of things that I never had the occasion to contemplate. So, like many other students, I stepped aside and left the playing field to those who were engaged in a debate about the future of my country, my future, even though much of what they said grated on my sensibilities.

I did not understand nor feel right with the emerging consensus that our traditional system must be thrown out in its entirety instead of being reformed. I did not understand or feel right that no one was exploring whether it would not be either possible or preferable to fix those aspects of that system which make it difficult for more Ethiopians to enjoy greater liberty and more prosperity and to retain those aspects which defined our national character and represented the sum total of our shared experiences as a people and as a country. I did not understand why these bright young men believed that the best alternative to our traditional system must be the one system which affords its citizens even less individual liberties and less room for personal ambitions just because it held the promise for the quickest transformation of the country from a traditional agrarian society to a modern industrial one. I did not feel that socialism was the best choice for my country and for me. Yet, I did not express my sentiments for I did not believe I had anything worthy of sharing with such very enlightened company.

What I found even more bizarre was the very notion that it was ok for a nation to splinter into any number of little Bantustans instead of working on resolving any inter-community grievances. As a child, of the many stories I read in those Amharic readers (yeminibab metsahift), nothing caught my attention or stimulated my senses like the stories which were meant to nurture patriotism and love of country. I found particularly enjoyable such books as “Araya”, “Ato Temachu” and the like, which recount historically accurate fictionalized events of what our ancestors had to do to keep the country intact and to fend off invaders. Throughout my childhood, when I read one of those stories, I would dream of taking part in a campaign to help save my country or to assist a hero facing a particularly difficult situation. Like many children of my time, I was raised and taught that I had a duty to defend my country from all enemies foreign or domestic. Consequently, I found the very idea of secession to be obscene and not appropriate for debate among Ethiopia’s most privileged group of young people. But, I said nothing because I believed those who spoke with such confidence and swagger either knew something which was beyond my limits of comprehension or would shout me down and expose me as the imbecile that I might be.

It took ten more years of growing on my part and observing the country descended into a gut wrenching fratricide for me to realize that my intuitions were right on the mark in the first place. Thirty more years later today nearly all Ethiopians agree not only with my surmise that socialism was an utter failure but also with my belief that we should not have kept quiet and allowed those bright, brave and naïve young men to take us down a path that they did not fully understood and we did not fully agree to. I now hold a firm belief that I should have stood up and shouted down those hot heads when I first heard that foolishness. I also believe that there was a real chance to cut all of that experimental foolishness in the bud. What is more, if the sentiments of my circle of friends are any indication, most Ethiopians have also surmised as such.

At about the time the socialist revolution got in full swing, the country descended into a complex multi-pronged civil war. Among the protagonists were those who had been articulating the Leninist doctrine and advocating dumping the traditional feudal system in lieu of socialism. Just when the country was on course to join the world socialist movement, these people went to the bush for all sorts of reasons including for the declared purposes of “liberating their nations” or fighting for a more perfect form of socialism. Then it all began to make sense. I had it right all along. The end game of those who spoke so eloquently and tirelessly about a people’s right to self-determination had always been secession and not liberation. Their driving ambition might as well have been the breakup of Ethiopia in to several smaller fiefdoms for the purpose of providing more ego maniacal individuals with more chances for lordship.

Why is this story worth telling today?

Right about now, if you have not already quit on me, you are probably asking why I bring up this nearly forty years old story when today the country is in the throes of another convulsion. The short answer is this. We are once again at the cusp of another radical transition and once again I am beginning to feel uneasy about key threads in our national discourse. I can list several areas of concern but I will limit myself in this post to just one issue regarding which we need to come together in short order lest we lose another opportunity to avert another ye-igir-isat.

Nearly forty years after I first came to Addis, my hair is mostly gone and my teeth will soon follow. I have gone more than once around the globe and feel more secure with my instincts. I refuse to hold back when I see wrong done to the country and to the people I love dearly just because somebody might disagree with me. I no longer fear other men. I fear only my God and our forefathers who might be looking down at all of us. So, I will speak my mind. Besides, one good thing about cyberspace is that I can get things off my chest without being booed or shouted down. So here it is. The first issue which has me worried is the Oromo Liberation Front. Its name and its propaganda grate badly on me.

The name of any organization is its trade mark, the carefully crafted catchphrase that is meant to tell a great deal about the nature and purpose of an organization. It is for this reason that many organizations jealously guard and protect their names through registered copyrights and trademarks. I do believe, therefore, that the Oromo Liberation Front selected its name carefully because it describes its mission, its vision and its purpose well.

On my part, when I hear the name Oromo Liberation Front many questions and much discomfort pops in my head. First among these are the questions: liberation for whom and liberation from what? I am astute enough to know what a liberation organization does. Just the same, out of basic respect for the right all people have to define their mission and ambition, I referred to the official documents of the OLF. These documents state that the mission of the OLF is “to lead the national liberation struggle of the Oromo people against the Abyssinian colonial rule.”

It is all right there, in black and white. I know our people are as good as any when it comes to playing with words. So, I am sure there are many interpretations of this credo doled out by the OLF depending who they are talking to. Yet when you strip all the semantics away, what is left is an organization which defines its mission in exactly the same terms as the ELF and EPLF did when they set out to break up Ethiopia. Reasonable people can only surmise that the ultimate purpose of the OLF, its rason d’etre, is to bring about the secession of Oromia from Ethiopia.

Once during my second year at HSIU (which in my case meant during my freshman year), I got the courage to ask one of those all knowing Maharajas why the rest of us should be supporting or even standing idly by when it was obvious that the Eritrean students were only interested in breaking up our country. He responded by asking me why I would wish them to share in our misery instead of letting them break free and fend for themselves. Others told me that the threat of secession was actually a negotiating ploy intended to force the masters of the feudal system to loosen their grip rather than an expression of a real desire to permanently separate from Ethiopia.

I am sure these days there are equally noble and high sounding reasons offered to explain why we should all focus on the main problem confronting Ethiopia today instead of being sidetracked by the minutiae in the political philosophy of one of the opposition organizations fighting the common enemy of the Ethiopian people. I am aware that the OLF is one of those angafa organizations of the land whose motives and methods an ordinary mortal like me is not supposed to question. However, I sense that I am being set up to fall into the same snare for the second time.

I ask my fellow Ethiopians if we are willing to yet again sit quietly and watch the same disastrous scene replayed once again? I, for one, am not going to be tiptoeing around the 2000 pound gorilla sitting in the living room and pretend that it is not there. I am not a bright eyed seventeen year old innocent child from the farm anymore. I have been bitten by this snake once before. I insist that we address it and address it now.

I find the very idea of an Ethiopian liberation front that does not seek to fight for all oppressed Ethiopians to be rather offensive to my sense of citizenship. I also find any suggestion that I have no right to speak on this matter except if I were an Oromo to be an affront to my intellect. Speaking of the Oromo identity, I find the OLF’s notion of what constitutes the land of the Oromo to be an affront to the right of a people to self-determination it recites ad nauseum in its manifesto.

I was reassured by comments made about the OLF both by Ato Bulcha Demeksa and Dr. Merera Gudena during the debates which preceded the 2005 election. Ato Bulcha emphatically stated that the political agenda of his organization differed from that of the OLF only on their respective choices of the method of struggle – armed struggle vs. peaceful and legal struggle. Dr. Merera essentially characterized the OLF in the same terms – a body fighting for the rights of the Oromo to enjoy democratic rights and to be free of poverty within the Ethiopian state. If these prominent Oromo personalities have it right, then millions of other Ethiopians can be reassured that the OLF is a friend and not a foe.

That said, the OLF has yet to clarify its purpose, its mission and its positions to the Ethiopian people. It is up to that organization to spell out its vision for Ethiopia in the clearest terms instead of cloaking it in the language of Leninist double-speak. The fact that we are fighting to liberate ourselves from an oppressive minority fascist clique does not mean that we can or should ignore other festering problems. The fact that Mr. Meles is an equal opportunity oppressor, terrorizing every village and every town in Ethiopia, does not mean that we should not pay attention to the machinations of lesser evils who stand to destabilize our country tomorrow.

It is up to the OLF to decide whether it is ready to join the Ethiopian people in the fight against tyranny. Alternatively, it could continue its current effort to use this crisis purely for its partisan advantage and for the purpose of boosting its partisan capabilities. It could continue to paint the crises presently engulfing our country as a fight between the government of Ethiopia and the Oromo people as if all other Ethiopians are either exempt from tyranny or worse, are siding with the government and taking part in the persecution of the Oromo people.

Regrettably, the OLF has been successful in casting the current crisis in Ethiopia as a conflict between the Oromo on the one side and all other people on the other side. So successful that even reporters and academics are beginning to characterize it as such. You hear international human rights campaigners and high ranking officials of foreign governments reporting the carnage perpetrated by the EPRDF regime across the country as crimes committed against the Oromo people.

My concern arises from the knowledge that misrepresentations of this magnitude often tend to snowball into more substantive structural problems if they are not addressed early. As I said earlier, our days of innocence are long gone. We have long ago debunked the notion that we should focus on the greater cause and ignore or even collaborate with those whose expressed purpose runs counter to our sense of Ethiopiawinet just as long as we are fighting against the same enemy. So, I invite the OLF to clarify itself and to express its willingness to work with other Ethiopians to end tyranny and to lay the groundwork for a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Ethiopia.

Of Bumper Crops, Hyper Inflation and Export Embargo

2006-02-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

The economic news reported by the various organs of the EPRDF government has gotten me completely confused. Let me assure readers that I am an avid reader of Ethiopian news and consider myself to be sufficiently literate to understand what I read. So the problem is not that I have not taken the time to study what is being reported, because I do. And I do believe that it is not a reflection of any shortcoming I might have in comprehending the written word. I had the privilege of sitting through enough boring economics lectures to be able to read and understand government PR. So I have also ruled out incompetence in basic economic principles as the source of my confusion.

None of the usual suspects can explain my current state. My theory is that the level of confusion I am experiencing is actually what the masters of disinformation intended it to be. I believe I am actually getting the complete message. This government has a well established pattern of news reportage. When these veterans of misdirection and surprise attacks expect some really bad news in the horizon, they strategically place in the media sufficient numbers of misinformation with the expectation that this may turn away or destruct the reader from the real news when it finally breaks. It sounds like one of those conspiracy theories, but please hear me out and look at what has been happening over the last several days.

Dateline Addis Ababa, 28 Jan 2006: Ethiopia sees 15.1% increase in agricultural production in 2005-06 , Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA). This headline was carried by a great many papers and online sources over the weekend. The DPA story leads with the following statement: “Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says the country's agricultural production indicates a 15.1 per cent increase during the current harvest season and its overall economy would register a "double-digit" growth at the end of the current fiscal year ending in June, the local press reported Saturday”. Apparently in an attempt to enhance the credibility of his comments, the Prime Minister attributed his determination to “projections … established by a joint assessment team from the government and donors.”

The PM slyly mentions that the projections are corroborated by donors. That is an admission that the reading public finds his staff and their reports not worthy of their trust. So, to ensure that the reader takes these reports as rock solid facts, he casually stated that the projections were established by a joint team of the government and donors. He effectively said you can bank of this and for a couple of hours I did. I was delighted about the prospects of my siblings and cousins who try to make a living scratching the earth. I even thought that may be I don’t need to send as much money to my folks this year. Thoughts of a vacation in the Canadian Rockies swirled in my head. (Awassa-Langano yayehushi….).

Not even three full days had passed after the story of a 15.1% increase in the harvest broke when word came of a government so distressed of developments in the market place for cereal crops, that it was moving to ban all exports of grains. Dateline Addis Ababa, 31 Jan 2006: Ethiopia bans exports of four grains to stabilize local market , Source: DPA. Now if that does not throw you for a loop, you are a better person than I am. I read and reread these stories trying to understand just exactly how they might be reconciled. Anywhere else in the world, a 15.1% increase in harvest would constitute a major bumper crop. Such developments some times even spell disaster for the farmer and a windfall for the consumer as farm prices plummet. Indeed the ridiculously expensive agricultural subsidies in North America, Europe and Japan owe their genesis from repeated disasters faced by farm families in the 19th and early 20th centuries following unusually large harvests and the low prices that usually follow. These agricultural price support schemes, which now make it difficult for the Ethiopian farmer to make a decent living, were put in place as a safeguard against those times when the marketplace might turn a great harvest into a financial ruin by depressing grain prices.

So, you must understand my confusion. When supply increased by a full 15.!%, grain prices surged so much that a government committed to the ideals of a free market found it necessary to go against its principles and intervene in the market place. It intervened not by propping up prices but by embargoing the shipment of farm produce from low price markets to high price markets. I am confused because I had always thought that a major increase in supply reduced prices, not escalate them. Something else must be going on here.

I am also confused because I thought I heard the Prime Minister tell that man from the BBC that his party is the peasants’ party? Did he not tell that reporter that the TPLF was nurtured by the peasants during its guerilla days and that the TPLF now rules on behalf of the peasants? Then, why is he concerned about a development that graces the peasants with a rare double fortune – a bumper harvest at a time of surging prices? Why is he trying to snuff out the blessing God brought to his people? Why would he do that, except perhaps if he is trying to win back the support of those wily city folks who voted 23-zip and 137-1 against his party? That does not sound right either – after all these city people have been saying about the TPLF rule since the election.

Apparently I am not the only one confused by these turn of events. The once zany and now Abesha-like – I would not touch politics with a ten foot pole – sedate and careful Meskel Square reports “I'm no economist, but I thought exports were generally a good thing - or at least a neutral thing. Will banning exports of native grains really bring local prices down? Or will it damage local grain producers by cutting off their small amount of foreign income, thereby piling extra pressure on to the domestic market? You tell me. I only got a 'C' in my economics O' Level.” Join the crowd, Andrew. You have now become truly one of us, at least in your state of mind. (You better take good care of your passport though.) I bet you were even more confused after you read what the state journalists reported the very next day.

But you should not worry too much, Andrew. After all, no less a distinguished character reference than Mr. Bono just two days ago told us that “I know Meles Zenawi. I have sat with him on more than a few occasions. I know his story. He is a regarded macro-economist, believe it or not.” I just knew that there was something else to it. The macro-economist must have another explanation, those macroeconomists always do. You can go to bed tonight knowing that, according to Mr. Bono, Mr. Meles “is a person who deeply cares about the poor in Ethiopia and has done some great things. But he's bipolar.”

Dateline Addis Ababa, 31 Jan 2006: Enterprizes exporting agricultural products awarded for outstanding performances. Source: ENA. This morning, I had the distinct misfortune of coming across a report by that eternal source of veritable truth, the Ethiopian News Agency. It was a story about awards to exporters of the very agricultural products which were banned the day before. According to ENA, “Addisu Legese awarded the prizes to the exporters who stood one to third in their export performances involving one or the other of cotton, spices, tea, wild gum, cereals, live animals, legumes and pulses, fruits and vegetable, oil seeds and coffee.” I suspect Andy at Meskel Square must be feel even more conflicted this morning. He is right. Exports are good to an economy – just look at China and Japan. In Ethiopia, exporting agricultural products is such a good thing that it merits a special award – in addition to the profit that is. But, apparently they banned it without telling that Deputy Prime Minister who must have been furiously evaluating all of the candidates to select the best exporters at the very same time some one else was banning exporting.

Looking around the internet, I read all kinds of speculations. One commentator said that it is aimed at those folks north of the border. Hum…isn’t that using food as a tool of war? I swear I have heard that somewhere else before. I also read that the embargo is meant to punish Ethiopians abroad who are relentless in the fight against tyranny. I know I have been hearing reports that over the last few years, the powers to be in Addis have been reduced to eating yeGojam neCh teff as those living abroad bought up all the magna that Minjar grows. Perhaps a young EPRDF strategist trying hard to impress his higher ups came up with this creative retaliatory strike. “If they don’t behave, we will reduce them to eating Big Macs!!”

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. What they have been reporting tells me that either the EPRDF is a heck of a lot more incompetent than we guessed even in the worst of times or something really big is in the offing. Could they really be so lost? Didn’t we all thing that PR is their forte? Stay tuned, for I believe there is more where this came from.

Standing Out of the Shadows of Tyranny: A Guest Post

2006-01-30T17:01:00.000-05:00

(One good thing about having your own blog is you can do whatever strikes your fancy. Of course, readers are free to go elsewhere if your sense of propriety is out of wack or if you fancy foolish notions. All of this is my intro to something this site had not engaged in in the past. For the first time (but hopefully not for the last time) we are posting a piece authored by someone else.

We had priviously posted notes received from this guest in the comments section of this site. The author submitted the current post as a comment. However, we felt that the piece should be read by as many of our visitors as possible and so we are posting it on its own.)

A New Comment on "You Can Fool a Lot of People For a Long Time!" by H. Gabriel

Dear Eth4life;

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the Ethiopia we should work on leaving behind for our children. I fully agree with you. As you said, "They deserve to stand in the sun light out of the shadows of tyranny". You also raised a critical question that was also raised in a previous posting by One Ethiopia. What can each one of us do today (not tomorrow) to enhance the democratic process in Ethiopia? Here are my thoughts:

1. Support CUDP and UEDF financially, politically and in every way we can. At this point in time, I don't see other organizations that are struggling for a democratic federal Ethiopia where the right of the individual as well as the group is respected. These two organizations (for the most part) are being led by people who have been committed to the democratic process in Ethiopia. They have been and continue to pay the "price for freedom". Eth4Life is right that freedom is not free. We can actively be part of these organizations or at least support them financially. If we have doubt about their Support Organizations in the Diaspora, we can indirectly send the money to members in Ethiopia and/or others who are at the mercy of the EPRDF for their daily bread.

2. Support all the free press. We need to understand that there needs to be a big enough tent to accommodate even those who we may not agree with. If Ethiopian Review seems "out there" sometimes, we should still appreciate the big picture. This guy is at least walking the walk even though sometimes it is hard to tell which way he is going. Sometimes it appears his fingers are typing the words before his brain processes the ramifications of what he is saying. After all the inappropriate comments he made about Berhanu Nega, I still have not seen a public apology. Anyway, we should support him, since he is providing an invaluable service in the fight against the tyranny of the EPRDF. Actually, Mengistu was a tyrant. Afeworqi is a tyrant. Meles is worse than a tyrant. He wants to kill the spirit of a nation he is supposed to lead. He loath and despise what Ethiopia means to most of the people that inhabit the land. Much better writers than me have vividly described what Meles means to Ethiopia, so I won't waste you time here. We should also encourage others to come into the field; Internet, print as well as radio and TV. They can be local in the diaspora or targeted to Ethiopia. We can support them financially and make them viable businesses.

3. Fully and actively engage by non violent means in the fight against the EPRDF. Implement the directives that were given by the CUDP as a starting point. Improvise and be imaginative. I just read today about the incident at the Stadium. Can you imagine of the impact if everybody in the stadium gets up and turn their back as a symbolic gesture in a big match attended by Meles and his cronies. Can you imagine if everybody at church one Sunday all over Addis hymns "Egzio meharene christos" as a protest at the same time. The same at the Mosques during Friday prayers. However, we need to organize such activities in a clandestine manner so we don't have the fiasco of hooting the horn during the OAU summit. I believe the beginning of the end has already begun for the EPRDF. In the next six month we will start seeing this minister and that minister jumping ship. Eventually, Meles might join the Derg members in the Italian embassy. His fathers dream will be fulfilled if the Italians give him citizenship. At this point, my concern is what happens next? What kind of transition are we going to have? Are we going to have a Rwanda like transition orchestrated by the EPRDF/OLF and all the other LF's or are we going to be ready to take this opportunity to be free? The only way we can have a smooth transition to democracy is by actively supporting the organizations we believe can bring democratic governance. As I said above, the only two I see are CUDP and UEDF. We need to race against time so we are not caught with our pants down again. Agitate and organize. The EPRDF is using its SS (Agazi) troops because it does not trust the non Tigrai troops. These other troops have mothers and fathers , brother and sisters that are suffering. They are not immune to the anguish in every corner of the nation. CUDP and UEDF should actively recruit these men so when the time comes, they know which side they will be standing on.

By the way, I am getting a complex not having a handle like you guys (Eth4Life and OneEthiopia). Maybe I will be EthioForever. I think Meles already has EthioHate, EthioDestroy (sounds like a Humvee with a bunch of Agazi troops) and EthioDivide. Berhanu Nega has EthioSave and EthioLove and Birtukan Mideksa has EthioBeautiful and EthioCourage.

In the Trenches of the Information War

2006-01-28T12:18:00.000-05:00

I read on Ethiomedia.com, a site I trust immensely and visit religiously almost every day, a report which was first published on December 7, 2005 by the student newspaper of the University of Manitoba. That report (http://umanitoba.ca/manitoban/2005-2006/1207/1621.ethiopia.information.shortage.php) propagates numerous erroneous notions regarding the political chaos engulfing our country. I found its characterization of the historical background, its description of the protagonists and its reportage on the demographic characterstics of the country substantially in error.

Consequently, I prepared a document highlighting the most obvious and most critical of the errors and forwarded it to the editors of the Manitoban on December 8, 2005. I also shared this report with Ethiomedia when they posted the Manitoban report. Ethiomedia immediately removed the item from its site and published this post two days later. Some 8 weeks later, The Manitoban has neither published nor acknowledged receipt of my e-mail. The document is published below both to serve as counter point to the Vanderhart report for the benefit of visitors to this site but also to highlight the need for vigilance by Ethiopians everywhere to monitor and respond to erroneous reports which confuse the public and rrode support for the cause of the Ethiopian people.

One Battle in the War Against Disinformation

Dear Editor;

As I read the story by Tessa Vanderhart titled “Ethiopia: Information Shortage”, I was torn between expressing gratitude and lodging a complaint. The Manitoban is not just one of the few Canadian papers reporting on the unfolding political crisis in Ethiopia, it is in deed one of a handful North American media outlets having something to say on this matter. For that, I and 77 million other Ethiopians are grateful. Many western media institutions seem to find the very concept of an African people fighting for basic human and democratic rights to be such a fringe notion, that they skip over news of violence perpetrated by government forces on incipient democratic movements as something not worthy of reportage. Repression, they seem to say, represents the norm. Just as the warm tides of the Gulf of Mexico do not make news, African strongmen quashing an emerging democratic movement by turning their armies on their population are deemed to be the routine norms of nature not worthy of special note either in the morning paper or in the evening news. The Manitoban stepped out of that tired old mold and dedicated substantial space to examining the recent political developments in Ethiopia. For that, you are to be commended.

I would have liked this note to end at that. Unfortunately, I must point out a number factual errors and ambiguities in your report, including some errors on substantive matters. Given the depth of frustration Ms Vanderhart expressed regarding the lack of accurate information on Ethiopia, I surmised that you might be interested in getting feedback and corrections when there are obvious gaps in your understanding of some key fact so that you can fill the gaps for your readership. Hence, I took up the task of writing this note to you.

I will begin with the basic demographic facts of the people of Ethiopia. The website of the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC reports that according to the last census conducted in 1994, the ethnic background, the mother tongue and religious mix of the Ethiopian population is as reported in the table that follows. (Source: http://www.ethiopianembassy.org/population.shtml). These proportions are essentially the same as the results from the 1984 census – which was the first ever census conducted in that country.

Ethnic Group by Self-identification (%):
Oromo 32.1, Amara 30.2, Tigrawi 6.2, Somalie 6.0, Guragie 4.3, Sidama 3.4 and all others 17.8.
Ethnic Group by Mother Tongue (%):
Amara 32.7, Oromo 31.6, Tigrawi 6.1, Somalie 6.0, Guragie 3.5, Sidama 3.5 and all others 16.6.
Population by Religion (%):
Christian 61.6 (o/w Orthodox 50.6 Protestant 10.1 Catholic 0.9), Muslim 32.8 and Traditional 5.6.

Two basic facts stand out from both the 1984 and 1994 census. The first is that the Amara and the Oromo people are nearly equal in number; the two languages are spoken by nearly the same number of people; these two groups of people constitute about two-thirds of the total Ethiopian population and that no other ethnic group numbers more than one fifth of either the Amara or the Oromo. The second fact supported by the census is that Ethiopia is a decidedly Christian majority country, with Muslims constituting approximately one-third of the population. Orthodox Christians constitute an absolute majority of the population.

It is in the face of these facts that one can understand the depth of the grievances of the Ethiopian people against the current government. The EPRDF government which has ruled the country over the last 15 years is dominated by the minority Tigrawi ethnic group which number just a shade above 6% of the population. While the EPRDF is technically a coalition of several regional ethnic parties, it was established, controlled and directed by the victorious Tigrawi People Liberation Front (TPLF) army which ousted the military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. Indeed, the other constituent parts of the EPRDF were themselves established by the TPLF on the eve of its ascension to power to provide it a mask of national character and legitimacy.

Hence, your statement that “three tribes of people substantiate much of Ethiopia’s population: the Amharic tribe, which is represented politically by the EPRDF, the Oromo, which are the largest group by population, and the Tigrayans” is erroneous in several regards. The architects and leaders of the EPRDF, including the Prime Minister and all other key officials of the government are entirely Tigrayan. Perhaps even more to the point, the Amharic tribe is not represented politically by the EPRDF. On the contrary, the EPRDF promotes itself as the power which liberated Ethiopia from the “Amharic tribe”, to borrow your phrase.

Before I go too far from the subject of the identity of the EPRDF I must also report that your statement that “in 1991, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) seized power from the socialists” incorrectly implies that the EPRDF themselves are not socialists. The fact of the matter is that the TPLF was established as a socialist liberation organization, nurtured and supported by the world socialist movement during its days as a guerilla army. Today it continues to rule as a Marxist Leninist organization with members of the Marxist Leninist League of Tigrai (MaLeLeT) occupying every single national security position in the TPLF/EPRDF government. Its policies which include government ownership of every square inch of land, continued ownership of large public corporations, stringent control over private investment, setting aside of key areas of the economy such as transportation, telecommunication, power generation and distribution and electronic media exclusively for government monopolies belie its claim to conversion to the ideals of liberal democracy and free market economy and lay bare its socialist identity.

A paragraph which appears to report the comments of one Conrad Evans continues to further confuse the basic facts. Evans seems to suggest that the opposition is drawn from the Oromo only. The fact is the opposition is equal parts Amara and Oromo but counts as its supporters majorities in nearly every ethnic group including the majority of the Amara. The exception, if any, might be the Tigrayan people where the TPLF is based and exercises absolute control over the lives of the population there. Clearly the opposition which received the vote of the Amara and the Oromo blocks could and did win a parliamentary majority. The opposition and their supporters believe they did win. Nearly all Ethiopians who can read, read and speak the Amharic language which is the mother tongue of the Amara. Amharic also happens to be the official language of the country for nearly 200 years and is the preferred language of private press. The suggestion that Amharic is “not the native language of its readership, but rather the Amharic government” errors both with regard to the native language of the readers and as well as about the native language of the government. The government is Tigre not Amara and the opposition is Amara and Oromo not just Oromo.

From where I stand, the comment I found to be not only in error but perhaps maliciously so is your comments about press freedom in Ethiopia and the position of the CPJ in it. The sad fact is that in Ethiopia today there are only three kinds of journalists: those who work for the government those who work for media outlets owned by the ruling party and those in the private press who must sell their soul to the government to stay alive and support their families. The CPJ has been actively monitoring developments in Ethiopia since day one. Its reports reflect the consensus view of most Ethiopian reporters, publishers and editors working for the private press as well as those of the majority of the people. As I write this, I tried to unsuccessfully locate a news report by a South African journalist who visited Ethiopia some three months ago. He reported that practically no one buys the government rags, no one watches television news or listens to the radio news programs because no one trusts anything they report. This reporter wrote how people are so desperate for news they line up to buy papers published by the private press even when these papers are known to embellish the news to fit the readers’ desire. So, I think, it behooves you to check the fact out a bit more thoroughly before you dismissively write about the CPJ “…not only is the information from the CPJ without attribution and not subject to any scrutiny, it is also ignored by the mainstream, international media.” The CPJ maintains a data bank of the names, dates and places of the arrest, interrogation, beating and detention of Ethiopian journalists. It receives its information both from Ethiopian based human rights organizations, from the reports of its affiliated organization in Ethiopia, and from court records. Furthermore, the international media does not ignore the CPJ’s reports. It is true that the media does not ballyhoo these reports both because persecution of reporters in a common occurrence worldwide but more importantly, because media managers do not believe that Western readers have any interest in such issues.

I also found the following statement to be rather puzzling. In describing the unworthiness of the Ethiopian Amharic language private press, you wrote “For example, recent criticisms leveled against Prime Minister Zenawi focused not on his politics, his government’s tendency to violence, his treatment of Eritrea, or even the unconstitutionality of the election (all common complaints in the English-language media of the country) — but rather accusations of ballot rigging.” One wonders how a paper becomes scandalous just because it wrote about persistent accusations coming from every opposition party and from international election observers including from the European Union (EUEOM) and the Carter Center. These institutions report that the government prevented the election and vote counting process from operating in a fair and transparent manner. These institutions reported that taken together, the government’s actions constitute rigging of the election. Indeed, it is not just possible but likely that the opposition would have won the election except for the government’s intervention in the vote counting process. On May 24, one week after the vote counting was suspended in the face of early reports showing the government losing by a wide margin; the EUEOM rang the alarm bells loud and clear warning of massive fraud (http://www.et-eueom.org/statement0524.zip). Opposition parties and their supporters remain convinced that they won the vote except for government fraud. So, I see nothing wrong in the free press reporting on a sentiment that is so broadly held.

From that point on, your hold on the facts got ever so tenuous. You wrote that the Amharic language papers are “vocally critical of the government’s actions — in stark contrast to the rest of the country’s media sources”. Perhaps you do not realize that nearly all English language papers are government owned, with the sole duty of trumpeting the political line of the party. Of the two private English language papers, the Reporter is run by a former editor of the government owned Ethiopian Herald, with continuing strong ties with the ruling clique. The Addis Fortune once had an independent streak in its editorial content. However, when all hell broke loose in June, it quickly lined up behind the government. Given the reality of the Ethiopian government and economy, I fully understand why Fortune had to do what it did do. But, to conclude that those who did not tip toe along the same line are some how fringe or lunatic is way beyond reason.

Your frustration with your inability to substantiate information which originates from one or the other side is understandable and par for the course in Ethiopia. The country is gripped with fear. The government has deliberately created this environment of fear and uncertainty as a means of controlling the peoples’ actions if not their thoughts. From the start, the government has resisted the emergence of viable private news organization. It continues to refuse licensing private radio and television organizations even though it has laws on the books authorizing the establishment of such organizations. One of the reasons the government refused to turnover the administration of the city of Addis Ababa to the opposition which won 137 of the 138 seats in the city council was because the city council has a powerful radio station which can be used as an alternative news source. So, you should not be surprised that “we only know what the Ethiopian government wants us to”. I invite you to take a look at a news clip from Britain’s Channel4 TV news broadcast at the following link. http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=1271. You will note that your frustration with the lack of information is shared by many including diplomats, citizens, media organization and business people. It is a sinister attempt of the government to keep everyone in the dark and to share only that which will make it look good.

Thank you for your consideration.
One Ethiopia

Thinking Aloud of Events in the News

2006-01-22T14:45:00.000-05:00

1. Another Reporter Expelled, another Hole in the Iron Curtain Plugged

A week seldom passes when we do not hear of the desperate efforts of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s regime to put a complete black out of Ethiopian news from the ears of the Ethiopian people as well as from the international community. We hear of the abolition of the independent private press one week and of the jamming of VOA and Deutsche Welle radio programs the next. That Orwellian task of blanketing the nation with an iron shroud is nearing its completion.

Yesterday, word came that one of the remaining sources of real news on the cataclysmic events unfolding in Ethiopia is no more. The regime apparently expelled one Anthony Mitchell who was serving as a reporter for the Associated Press. In so doing, the regime removed one of the very few remaining reporters not on the government’s payroll. The explanation for the deportation of this reporter was almost comical. According to the government’s mouth piece, Mr. Mitchell was “engaged in disseminating news ‘tarnishing the image of the nation’”.

Mitchell was perfectly welcome to report, right smack in the middle of a political crises of galactic proportions, on the heroic acts of American GIs on a mission to rescue two miserable cheetah cubs (Parable of Two Cheetah Cubs and 77 Million Ethiopians). His report that Ethiopia had caught the international bug and is engrossed in watching the ridiculous for entertainment – with its very own version of American Idol – was proper and in keeping with “journalistic ethics”. Certainly, his reportage of the government’s plea for food to save the millions of our compatriots who are for ever on the verge of starvation was commendable and in line with government doctrine aptly called the Cargo Cult by ethiopundit. But he crossed the line when he reported that the regime is killing again. It is one thing for him to report on “the hooligans” who “throw hand grenades” and make “the police panic”. But reporting that the security forces shot live bullets at a peaceful religious procession with the intent to kill can only do one thing – tarnish the image of the nation. Now it is not as if they have a pristine record to protect. What angered the Great Leader is the exposure of what he and his propaganda network had worked so hard to keep from the public. Like the fictional vampire, the handiwork of the Great Leader and his gang cannot stand the light of day.

Of course, Anthony Mitchell must be thanking the gods. Mr. Meles just punched his meal ticket for him – placing his career on a new trajectory. Mitchell is now one among those reporters who have had the mettle to write stories good enough to irk an entire government to the point of deporting the messenger. He can be proud of the fact that his work was found to be worthy of receiving the same treatment as that of the reporters of VOA and Deutsche Welle – a group the people of Ethiopia call heroes.

The rest of us are now left with such Chinese stalwarts as Xinhua, China Post, and the People's Daily and the new news-for-hire outfits such as AllAfrica.Com's Sponsor Wire and its rival I-Newswire. The last two are newly minted creative outlets presenting adverts and press releases as though they were news items. The Great Leader and his minions have quickly picked up on these opportunities and have repeatedly used them to place “news” that is not news on the internet and elsewhere.

2. “They are Shooting Again!”

Here we go again. It seems as though the very thought of two or more Ethiopians getting together out in the open scares the devil out of our Great Leader. Why else would he try to stop us from hanging out with each other? Remember May 16. That was when he forbade us from coming out on the streets of Addis either to celebrate our victory or to demonstrate against the theft of our vote. We all know what happened when a few people defied a decision that was based only on his irrational fear of large numbers of Ethiopians coming together. On June 6th and 7th he let the blood of the young and the innocent flow over the streets of Addis. We then saw his reaction to people blowing their horns on the streets of Addis on the 1st of November. That too triggered his neurotic fear of Ethiopians coming together and once again he ordered his goons to kill and kill indiscriminately. On the occasion of the annual Demera holiday celebration, we witnessed another episode of a nervous Prime Minister ordering his troops to disrupt that religious event and to hunt down those who dare address their displeasure at those who were usurping the hallowed titles and uniforms of the revered leaders of our faiths.

So no one was surprised when word came that the regimes designated Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church wanted to cancel Timket. Sure, everyone was enraged, but no one was surprised for we have seen it all. But, that must have driven the parish priests throughout Addis to near revolt, for we learned the next day that Timket was on again. I am certain nearly all who visit this page are Ethiopians and so you need no explanation from me about what goes on during the observance of the Timket-Ketera-CanaZegelila holidays. Timket is the only day when believers are allowed – indeed encouraged – to engage in an unabashed display of joy at a Christian religious occasion. It is by far, the biggest open air festival in every town and village across Ethiopia. Heck, many a young man meets his wife here.

The very prospect of this festival where for ages Ethiopians have enjoyed two-days and two-nights of unrestrained celebration must have scared the regime to its wits end. Millions were expected to be out in the open all across the country – hundreds of thousands in Addis alone. So, what is a desperate regime which fears nothing more than its own people coming together to do but order the troops to be vigilant and shoot to kill at the first sign of trouble.

By all account, there was no reaction from the people even when provoked by the heavy presence of security forces. The only act which might be deemed offensive apparently took place when the officially designated Patriarch of the EOC showed up in one of the processions. Apparently, the events of the Demera Holiday of September 26 repeated – worshipers serenading the Patriarch with chants of “leba”. For that, the security forces were ordered to shoot into peaceful religious processions at Sidist Kilo, at Menilik Adebabay, at Yeka, and several spots across the city.

You Can Fool a Lot of People For a Long Time!

2006-01-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

I know what a democracy looks like, because I live in one. I also know what a communist dictatorship is, for I once lived under such a system. I have traveled and lived in many parts of the world including in Soviet Russia, in the United States, in Tito’s Yugoslavia as well as in numerous places across Europe, Africa and Latin America. I have personally experienced and witnessed the workings of a broad range of political systems: political systems ranging from democratic to autocratic and everything in between. I have observed feudalism at work just as I have fascism. I have studied theocratic governments centered on Islamic and Christian doctrines. There was a time I believed I had seen it all. But then I came face to face with what had befallen the people of Ethiopia – the government of Meles Zenawi. It is one of a kind and I know not what to call it.

In all of my years, in all of my travel and study, I had never seen a system quite like the system installed to enable Meles Zenawi to rule over the people of Ethiopia in perpetuity. His methods for keeping his hold on power are incomparable. His ability to corrupt any national institution from the church to the mesjid, from the courts to the armed services and from the press to the judiciary is unmatched by any I had come across in my many years. His willingness to resort to violence at the slightest hint of dissent, no matter how meekly it is expressed, is unprecedented in modern history. We who live in the information age can be forgiven if we believe that the violent spasm we now see repeated daily was unleashed only because the people rejected him at the polls. Those butchered in Gambella were not engaged in a heated argument over an election. The Sidama people who met a similar fate in Awassa had no election to decide the fate of their home town. Neither the parishioners of Lideta Mariam in Addis Ababa nor those of Qusquam Mariam in Gondar were threatening the regime when they perished in the hands of Mr. Meles right smack in the middle of church services.

He came to power as the leader of the Marxist Leninist League of Tigrai. He ascended the throne of Menilik by vanquishing the Workers Party of Ethiopia, an organization separated from his own only by a minor ideological schism. Someone once reported that when his TPLF forces “liberate” a town, they take down the pictures of Marx, Lenin and Engles from the town square and replace them with larger pictures of Marx, Lenin and Engles. He kept intact all of the systems his predecessors installed to control the population of Ethiopia. The kebele association, the peasant association, the cadre network and the people’s militia, all of them creations of the Dergue were kept essentially intact with the only changes being the identity of people who manage them. He continued the state’s absolute control over the economic life of the population. Every square inch of land stayed in the hands of his government so that every farmer, every homeowner and every business in the land is his tenant. Every line of business was either subject to tight government regulation or set aside exclusively for state enterprises.

The one notable difference from his predecessor was his radical notion of allowing commercial enterprises to be owned and operated by political entities other than the government proper. He created a series of enterprises directly controlled by him and his inner circle and operated for the benefit of that inner circle. He transferred ownership of some of the most lucrative state enterprises to these party owned firms. He afforded these firms first dib at any business transaction in the land, subverting all principles of the market economy. Yet he sold his program of diversion of public property into sectional ownership and control as part of his agenda for the privatization of state enterprises in the context of the liberalization of the Ethiopian economy. Consequently, actions which under the laws of much of the free world would constitute theft by conversion, were successfully sold as just one of the bold steps of a determined adherent to free market capitalism in the long process of freeing the Ethiopian economy from the tight grip of government.

Amazingly, despite the overwhelming evidence attesting to the barbarity and indecency of the principal actors of his regime, people who should know better, prominent citizens and leaders of governments around the word, proclaim him a disciple of liberal democracy and a champion of free market economy. The World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations, institutions which for decades stood as the incorruptible symbols of hope for oppressed people everywhere, sing their praises to him as they honor and decorate him as a living legend. Diplomats whose profession elevates making statements with room for equivocation into an art form, dare make unequivocal statements profusely attesting to his virtues: a renaissance man, a new kind of African leader, the only leader in the region who is moving his country towards democracy and development. The leaders of two of the world’s most democratic countries single him out for praise as a peace seeking terrorist fighter committed to drag his country and all of Africa kicking and screaming into the era of liberty, prosperity and peace.

The people of Ethiopia of course have always known something entirely different. From the very first days of this regimes’ ascendance to power, Ethiopians everywhere have sought to unmask the nature of the regime for all to see. Many in the international community are only now beginning to see the barbarity of this regime. Over the last twelve months, nearly all of the large international human rights organizations ranging from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International as well as free speech campaigners such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN have launched major campaigns to bring to light the story of the Ethiopian people’s struggle for freedom and the nature and tactics of the oppressive regime that seeks to keep them in fear and bondage through sheer brutality.

From time to time I have wondered aloud just how this regime succeeded in keeping a barbaric repression carried out in full view of 77 million Ethiopians a secret from the world. Sure, the regime sought to keep prying foreign eyed away from what goes on in the country. But it never fully succeeded. There have been recurring alarms and warnings given by many a report about the unparalleled control the regime exercises over the lives of the Ethiopian people. Only the international community’s eagerness to go along with the charade kept the secret going.

The IMF and the World Bank are fully aware of the slight of hand of the regimes minions in their reportage on the purported reform agenda. They simply chose to look the other way. These institutions ignore the dirty little secrets of government control over every aspect of the life of the Ethiopian farmer, from deciding on the size and location of his plot, to determining access and pricing of fertilizers and credit, from the marketing of his produce to its pricing. They ignore the fact that the regime retains approval authority over every aspect of private investment, from the selection of the line of business, to facility location, to capitalization to the marketing plan. In the face of the regimes absolute control over the economy, a control scheme which would have earned the envy of many a Marxist dictator, these institutions praise the country’s progress on such obscure standards as the Millennium Development Goals or its performance on such macroeconomic parameters as growth, rate of inflation and external reserves.

All of the major countries of the world have adequate representation in Ethiopia. After all Addis is still the diplomatic capital of Africa. Every single one of them can be assumed to be fully apprised of humanitarian record of the regime. As can the United Nations and that disgraced organization which calls itself the African Union, each with thousands of officers stationed in their headquarters there. So if they sing the praises of the democratic transition unfolding in the country, it is not necessarily because they lack information. Other considerations influence their judgment.

Among the Diaspora, there has been much said about what the international community does and does not know; much talk about what the international community should have and could have done. Yet, deep down, Ethiopians have known all along that in the end it is up to them, the victims of this regime, to decide how and when it is to be removed. It would have been naïve to expect a not-so-enlightened world to rush to the rescue of the Ethiopian people. It did not happen in 1936, it did not happen in 1976 and it would not happen in 2006. We have to dig our way out of this and we will.

Yes It Is Time!

2006-01-14T01:10:00.000-05:00

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.” -- words of renowned classical economist John Stewart Mill, 1859.

Social anthropologists theorize that prolong exposure to war such as that which has persisted in Ethiopia can cause a shift in the attitudes of a people towards conflict and its resolution. Although it experienced full-scale war only sporadically, Ethiopia has never known a full decade of real peace since Mussolini's attempted conquest in the 1930s -- war has been a constant. So much so that landmark events of family life such as births, deaths, and weddings are often catalogued and recalled with reference to the names and places of the battles and of the heroes who fought in them. It is no wonder then that the disposition of the people of Ethiopia towards matters of war and peace has indeed been radically altered by the pervasive stress associated with living under wartime conditions for so long.

Throughout the 1980s, the civil war was the all consuming issue not only for the government and the army but also to the average citizen. Ordinary citizens were suffering from economic deprivations arising from the war. The scars of war, the very physical reminders of the barbaric fraternal carnage were everywhere. The patriots’ village and the orphans’ village (yejegnoch amba, yehitsanat amba as they were known in Amharic) as well as all the other facilities built to look after the casualties of war were no sooner opened for business when each quickly filled to overflowing. Hospitals and clinics, city streets and country roads were overcrowded with the living casualties of the war. As the war dragged on and the cost escalated, the morale of the population and of the fighting men and women deteriorated. As a consequence, beginning during the last years of the Mengistu regime and continuing through the first decade of the EPRDF, a striking new development in the Ethiopian psyche set in. An atmosphere of pervasive pacifism descended on the land with the attendant readiness to negotiate any issue and to hold nothing sacrosanct.

This fundamental attitudinal shift was a major departure from the traditional Ethiopian posture. Historically, Ethiopians of all ethnicities and religious faiths have had clear notions that such things as national sovereignty, territorial integrity, freedom to worship, and other ideals which they hold near and dear to their hearts were inviolable. All comers knew that Ethiopians stood prepared to fight, to bleed and to die for these ideals. It is this mark of our national character, our shared mold and bond which seems to have been broken by our exposure to years of war and repression. The progressively expanding guerilla war of the 1970s, the full-scale civil war that followed it and the pervasive repression and harassment in the hands of successive communist gangs masquerading as governments, eventually rendered Ethiopia into a nation of near zealot Gandhists, committed to avoid violence, no matter what the circumstances were.

Everywhere one looks, the virtues of non-violence are proclaimed ad infinitum. In the first years of the 1990s I could hardly hear myself think for the all the din created by the international community's songs of praise showered on the TPLF and EPLF for quickly and peacefully reaching an accord on the terms of Eritrean secession. Those who comment on such matters could not find enough superlatives to praise the defeated Ethiopian army for peacefully breaking up in disarray instead of staying together and seeking to negotiate terms of surrender that might include some protection for its members. Newspapers and journals were filled with endless praise for the peace loving and disciplined Ethiopian people who did not allow the situation to deteriorate as it did in Somalia.

The TPLF and its partners carefully encouraged this incipient pacifism. Meles and his gang bragged about a future Ethiopia that would not need an army. Nonviolence and pacifism was their mantra. Nonviolence was enshrined in the EPRDF constitution. It proclaimed that henceforth only those that swore against ever raising arms for any reason might participate in the political life of the country.

Save for OLF and ONLF, all noteworthy opposition groups quickly jumped on this bandwagon and pledged to wage their struggles peacefully. Even those groups which had sought to retain armed struggle as an option for advancing their political causes, found the goings too tough in this age when all of the affairs of the civilized world are orchestrated from a single power center.

In part to comply with the requirements of the EPRDF constitution, but primarily because of the torrent of pacifist sentiments cascading over the Ethiopian political landscape, all of the opposition parties which took part in the 2005 election were adherents of the principles of non-violence. Not one of the major opposition parties had entertained the need to create even small self-defense units within their organizational structures. Many opposition leaders, but particularly Dr. Berhanu Nega of CUDP eloquently articulated his vehement desire to bring about an end to the long cycle of violence. Speaking on behalf of CUDP, he hammered home the argument that if we relapsed to raising arms once again to remove our current oppressors, then we will have to raise arms later to remove our liberators. He sold to the Ethiopian people the notion that it is only when we are able to free ourselves without relying on an armed liberator that we can blaze into a future where the very need to raise arms would never come.

Much has happened since those heady days of April and May. Today we witness the Ethiopian opposition being methodically dismantled by the Meles Zenawi regime for the crime of having peacefully won the hearts, minds and votes of the Ethiopian people. Dr Berhanu and practically all of his colleagues find themselves in the grip of one who has no use for peaceful resistance. And yet, the opposition continues to seek solutions for its troubles exclusively in the sphere of peaceful negotiations or legal absolution in Meles Zenawi’s courts. It prefers to wage a non-violent peoples’ struggle against a well entrenched soulless tyranny.

Given the nature of our opressors, this is of course the height of folly. The other side refuses to abide by the law. Meles and his core constituency routinely ignore the norms of civilized political discourse, resorting to crude tactics of intimidation even when engaged in what were billed to be peaceful pre-electoral debates. The leadership of the TPLF often questions the manhood of the leaders of the opposition and challenges these individuals to go do what the TPLF had to do to take power from its doctrinal twin, the Workers Party of Ethiopia. I will never forget the exchange between defense minister Aba Dula and ONC chair Dr. Merera. Aba Dula was literally challenging the good professor to a fist fight, much like a tipsy young man in a Nefas Silk watering hole might do on a Saturday evening.

The TPLF engages in retributive violence against the person and property of members and supporters of the opposition as though it were not a government but a branch of an urban gang. Meles’ government has no qualms about launching the security forces of the country into combat against citizens who try to peaceably express their grievances. From Addis to Gondar to Awassa to Gambella to Ambo to Dire Dawa and Bahir Dar, it never passes on any opportunity to show its willingness to use all of the resources at its disposal to quash anyone who disagrees with it no matter how meekly. It welcomes confrontations, for these occasions provide it with the opportunities to remind the restive public what the price of dissent is.

Certainly, there had been several instances when oppressed people had been able to successfully resist their oppressors using non-violent mass movements. In India and in the American South during the 1940s, 50s and 60s as well as in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004-05, freedom fighters employed civil disobedience to bring their respective struggles to successful conclusions. These countries and communities share certain critical attributes which contributed to the success of their civil disobedience. In each case, by and large, the peoples’ oppressor relied on legal means -- granted, these tend to be farcical laws legislated and administered by non-democratic/non-representative institutions in order to maintain the oppressive regime in place. In Ethiopia, the TPLF’s preferred method of governance is deceit and underhanded shenanigans on the one hand and violence on the other. Even in the Jim Crowe South, there were well established laws delineating what the government or the majority population can and cannot do to the minority. In Ethiopia, the law is always in flux, sometimes changing daily to accommodate the ever changing needs and whims of the regime.

Another key factor that all of these people had going for them but which is absent in Ethiopia is an international community keenly interested in their affairs. The same cannot be said of Ethiopia. When each these people were engaged in their peaceful resistance movements, the world was closely monitoring their progress. In the American South as well as in Eastern Europe, the international community stood with the freedom fighters, denouncing every move made by the oppressive regimes and encouraging the freedom fighters to go on. At least for now, the Ethiopian people are on their own. The rest of the world seems to be too preoccupied either with events it finds more worthy or, even worse, too busy piling praises on the purveyors of oppression. Indeed, had it not been for the presence of large numbers of our compatriots around the world, I am afraid that even the sporadic coverage the crisis receives would not have materialized.

For 15 years, the TPLF preached peace even as it practiced terror. If you are reading this, you know of the litany of abuses—physical, mental, economical and spiritual abuses—the Ethiopian people have been subjected to over these years. By all account, the last six years—the years since Meles and Isaias had a falling out—have actually been the best of the Meles years. Apparently, Mr. Meles felt a bit naked when he parted ways with his allies and protectors. Yet, we see what he is prepared to do when his grab on power is threatened by the people’s peaceful movement. He has no mental hiccups about killing innocent men, women and children, indefinitely incarcerating tens of thousands, stealing an election, destroying the political opposition, perverting the judicial system or corrupting the national security institutions.

Let us face it; this man will not go away peacefully. He is determined to hold on. We cannot wait him-out for he is only 50 years old. We cannot appeal to his conscience. He has none. We cannot seek pity from the international community, for it is falsely enamored with him. So, what are the choices left to us? What is our strategy for removing the tyrant who, as you read this, is terrorizing the entire country?

There is only one other option left. We all know it. We are just afraid to face up to it; afraid to raise it in public forums. The people know it and only seek leadership to prepare them. Our leaders know it, but are afraid of the responsibility of sending someone’s child in harms way. Our backs are to the wall. So it is time to think and discuss the only real alternative we have left.

When he found himself in circumstances similar to that of the opposition today, Meles had no qualms in doing an about face on his “Ethiopia has no need for a large standing army” pledge. When in 1998 Mr. Isaias made a badly calculated move against Ethiopia, Meles ordered the propaganda machine to re-energize the Ethiopian people. The machine whose duty had been to castigate and label as chauvinist warmonger any one who questioned the wisdom of the Eritrean arrangements and the ill advised decision to demobilize the nation’s defense forces, stopped that campaign just long enough to help drum up support for the impending war.

During its first seven years of its rule, the TPLF made it plain that it views Ethiopian nationalism as an expression of latent militarism by the revanchist elements of Ethiopian society. Consequently, public expressions of nationalism had been rendered a cultural taboo and of dubious standing under the law. So, when the Eritrean army rolled across the border, the TPLF found itself unprepared for it. For two years, it tried to avoid the inevitable. For two years, it dickered at the OAU and at the UN. For two long years, it toiled in Washington, in Kigali, and in Ouagadougou.

In the end, none of the diplomatic maneuvers and the talk of peace achieved anything. It was only the decision to send our young men to war that dislodged the enemy from the trenches. In the end, it took a willingness on the part of some Ethiopians to die for the right cause to achieve the spectacular victory. In the end, Ethiopia had to set aside pacifism and nonviolence to regain that which was rightfully hers.

The Ethiopian democratic movement today can learn a great deal from that recent episode of our history. Appeasement has never guaranteed peace. In fact, history has shown time and again that appeasement frequently leads to war -- a willingness to fight is the precondition for peace. If we refuse to diligently consider all our option now, we will not only prolong our suffering, we will likely saw the seeds of an uglier war. If we have the wisdom to know that placing some lives at risk now can save many more lives in the future, the next war could be avoided.

John Stewart Mill also said that “the person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." Mill who is primarily known for his classical free market economic theory, eloquently argues that a man must be ready to die so that he might live and he must stand ready to lose his liberty in order to gain his freedom. This soft-spoken but powerful advocate of freedom tells us that a people intent on pacifism at any cost will invite aggression; a people who are not willing to fight to defend what is theirs or to protect what is in their national interest are sure to invite aggression except if others were to pity them or fight for them.

It is time for Ethiopia to openly debate and decide whether freedom is worth fighting for.

America’s Most Treacherous Scout in the Global War on Terrorism

2006-01-02T19:57:00.000-05:00

As America was preparing to launch the global war on terrorism on the aftermath of September, 11, all sorts of unsavory characters volunteered their services in exchange for rewards ranging from monetary compensation to political support. Somali warlords and Pakistani village chiefs, American mercenaries and Uzbek tribal heads, private citizens, military commanders and heads of states came forward offering information, safe passage and/or fighting men to the U.S war machine. Given their unfamiliarity with the terrain where the battle was to be fought, U.S. forces were particularly eager to find resourceful partners who are familiar with the global terrorist network. Those who have had some success in battlefield encounters against Osama Bin Laden’s terror network were viewed with particular esteem and quickly invited to come on board.

It is in this hour of America’s great need that one Meles Zenawi stepped forward with overtures of collaboration. Mr. Meles then as now was the strongman of Ethiopia, a country surrounded by some of al Qaeda’s preferred stomping grounds. In the years before September 11, Sudan in the west and Somalia to the south of that country had served as either headquarters or as training ground for Osama and his al Qaeda boys. Additionally, al Qaeda’s home turf in Saudi Arabia and Yemen was just a few miles across the narrows of the Strait of Bab el Mendeb on the Red Sea.

So, it was not a surprise to anyone when those responsible for planning America’s war on terror eagerly listened to Mr. Meles’ overtures. In addition to the strategic location of his country, the Ethiopia strongman bragged of the success of his security forces in crushing into near extinction the forces of al-Ithad al-Islamia. Al-Ithad al-Islamia is of course the Somali based operating wing of al Qaeda that was partly responsible for driving the United States out of Somalia in 1993-94. Mr. Meles offered the services of his experienced security forces to man the southwestern front of the global war on terrorism. So when, President Bush, having failed to secure the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council for his plans to invade Iraq, was reduced to constituting the coalition of the willing, the Ethiopia strongman stepped forward and grabbed a lead role for himself within that coalition.

Given the chance to be of service to the only remaining superpower, Mr. Meles and his security forces performed rather well. His security forces quickly assumed complete control of the troublesome territory that is the Horn of Africa, including every square inch of Somalia. In the glow of that success, Mr. Meles presented himself not just as an effective warrior and a loyal supporter of President Bush, he also cast himself as a visionary leader who understood the need to contain radical Islam from spreading into the African heartland. He often spoke of his fear of the devastation that would ensue should the 25 million strong Ethiopia Muslim population be radicalized and of the need to avert that real possibility by taking the fight to the home bases of the agitators – meaning al Qaeda. In Washington and in London, such words were music to the ears of those who must plan and execute the war on terror.

Unknown to all but to Mr. Meles, those fateful events were meant to set up the U.S. and Britain into backing one of the most ruthless dictators ever let loose on any country. The smooth talking Mr. Meles who is equally adept citing Karl Marx’ Das Kapital as he is Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, called in the favors President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair owed him early and often. He was able to extract well in excess of $1.5 billion per year in aid, above and beyond the emergency food aid which Ethiopia seems to be forever condemned to need. Equally importantly, he was also able to legitimize his ruling clique which came to power by overthrowing a rival communist gang in 1991. He got himself invited to serve on Tony Blair’s Africa Commission, where he demonstrated his facility with Jeffersonian notions of democracy as well as with the virtues of unfettered capitalism. In his capacity as member of the Africa Commission, Mr. Meles advocated for improved governance and economic liberalization as a necessary condition for development. He also spoke eloquently of the need to re-center Africa’s economic development efforts on the needs of the poor and women.

It is these carefully choreographed performances which had make it difficult for the U.S. and British governments to give credence to the recurring charges of government by terror over the years and to respond appropriately to the disturbing events which have been unfolding over the last seven months. Nearly seven months ago, just after Blair’s Africa commission put together its blueprint for African salvation, and as the exclamatory point in the canonization of Meles the Magnificent, Ethiopia was set to have its first truly multi-party election, where all candidates were allowed to campaign.

Unfortunately for Mr. Meles, a strange thing happened on the way to his planned sainthood. The election that was set up to be a landslide victory for him turned out so badly that Mr. Meles stopped the counting of the votes after just one third of them were reported. Instead, he declared a state of emergency and pronounced his party the winner. When citizens objected to his mischief, he shot dead more than one hundred unarmed protestors in two of his most violent outings. The entire leadership of the opposition, including about a third of the elected parliamentarians he finally recognized were arrested and charged with treason and genocide, offenses punishable by death. Nearly every member of the private press and the leaders of civic society were also arrested and charged similarly. Members of foreign media and foreign academics who regularly write on Ethiopian political and economic developments were not spared of this fate either. About a dozen American and European reporters, including six reporters working for the U.S. government owned Voce of America, publishers of online magazines and weblogs and several American and European academics were charged with the same offenses.

The U.S. seems to be greatly disturbed by these developments. However, the national security team is finding it difficult to formulate an appropriate response to the gruesome acts of one who has so ably supported America’s war on terror, especially when the war is not fully won. Mr. Meles, of course, keeps reminding the U.S. that without him, not only is the troublesome failed state of Somalia likely to be the next Afghan-like training ground for al Qaeda, he emphatically states that there is also a real possibility for Ethiopia proper being quickly overrun by the Jihadist movement with the support of Ethiopia’s Muslims.

The reality, of course, is much different. Ethiopia has a population that is two third Christian and one third Muslim. Consequently, it is not just whiz kid Meles that recognizes the necessity of interfaith peace between Muslim and Christian Ethiopians. Given Ethiopia’s demographic mix, a radicalization of any segment of the population can easily destabilize Ethiopia and the Horn sub-region. This nugget of truth is widely accepted and deeply ingrained in the mind of every Ethiopian—a fact that allowed Ethiopia’s people to consistently reject fundamentalist movements of either faith whether they are advanced by foreign or domestic agitators. The result has lead to peaceful interfaith relations that has lasted since the end of the Ethiopian Crusades in the 1400s. Six hundred years without inter-religious conflict did not materialize just by happenstance. It is the result of a coherent plan for interfaith peace developed through extensive village level consultation over the centuries and promoted by successive Ethiopian governments. Vigilance and containment of radical elements has been at the heart of every Ethiopian government’s policy for six hundred years, a fact that is likely to continue well beyond the Meles regime.

Meles’ self-congratulatory chest thumping and claim of credit for the absence of radical Islamic movements in Ethiopia is but another instance of grabbing credit not earned. Unlike Mr. Meles, the opposition in Ethiopia is supported by all segments of society – Christians and Muslims as well as the myriad of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups. Mr. Meles’ claim that but for him, the Horn of Africa will quickly fall under the spell of al Qaeda could not be farther from the truth. The U.S. must quickly re-examine its relationship with a man who does not share its ideals or control any ground except by sheer brutality. Should this pseudo democratic sycophant be allowed to persist in brutalizing Ethiopia much longer, it is not too difficult to see Ethiopia and the Horn destabilized. Insisting that Mr. Meles count the peoples’ vote and respect their human rights would advance the interest of the U.S. as much as it would advance that of the people of Ethiopia.

A Personal Note to Mr. Alpha Konare: So, Whatever Happened to the AU?

2005-12-23T20:13:00.000-05:00

Fully a month after the first massacres at Mercato, I sent the following letter to the editors of a well know Addis publication expressing my frustration at the deafening silence of the new AU which proclaims itself to be the guardian of good governance in Africa. I was first surprised when the publication thought the issue I raised not worthy of publication on its pages. That was before I learned that the once well connected pub, a darling of the diplomatic community in Addis, knew something better. Unknown to me, you and your staff were not just quiet but were actually busy drafting a most glowing commendation to the Ethiopian authorities for the manner they conducted themselves during and after the election of May 15.

Although, it has now been more than 6 months since I put these words to paper, I believe that they are worthy of sharing with you and posting in the most public of places if for no other reason that to shame you personally and the AU. After all the central tenet of the AU-NEPAD peer review system is the notion that political leaders would be too ashamed to engage in their usual ways if they knew the world was looking. As the saying goes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. A little shame might nudge the AU to think more clearly next time another sycophant massacres his people.

So, Whatever Happened to the AU?

It was only three years ago that the heads of states and governments of Africa adopted the AU charter with much hoopla and fanfare. The leaders spoke eloquently about the birth of a new African supra-state organization which will be guided by the experiences of the past and the urgent needs of the future. The leaders said that experience has shown that the number one problem of Africa had been the absence of good governance and that the way forward requires that that problem be resolved first and foremost. So, the leaders pronounced a peer review system that will prevent political leaders from going on a rampage against their own people. They spoke of an of active AU which will closely monitor developments in every member state and step in with appropriate remedy before minor problems build up to be major ones.

You and your colleagues were caucusing in Sirte, Libya as those heart wrenching pictures from Addis that popped up all over the media were piling up. All the reports from the summit seem to suggest that you have yet to drop those noble pronouncements from the AU charter. So, we the people must ask you whether you ever heard of the little problem in Ethiopia. Now I can understand if the you did not realize that there was genocide going on in Darfur until after thousands had perished. After all Darfur is in the middle of the Sahara, away from all of the beach side or high mountain capitals you dudes like to hangout. But none of the Addis massacres was more than 5 kilo meters from your fine offices. Even those in Bahir Dar and Gondar, and Awassa and Ambo and Jimma and Dire Dawa are no more than a few hours away – by car. One of the flash points, the Technical College, was actually just a few hundred meters from your HQ. So, what happened to you? Why were you silent? Were all the declarations in Durban just talk?

I have read the call of your offices for the victim to be quiet and take it for peace's sake. I am sure if you were to respond to me in person, you will speak of working behind the scenes and of quiet diplomacy. More than anything else, what the African people would really like is to see is those governments who turn on their own people be publicly ridiculed by their peers. What is a peer review good for if the findings are not published for all the world to see and cheer the good guys and jeer the bad ones? Why do you need to wait for the five year cycle to come to conduct a review when a government is butchering its own people right in front your eyes? I know that if half as many people as died in Addis died in an interstate skirmish, you would be out there issuing declarations of restraints on all sides, because that is a safe statement to make. In Durban in 2002 you gave the impression that the AU was no longer interested in playing it safe and was determined to take the bull by the horn. The AU charter and the NEPAD protocols gave us so much hope only to be dashed at the Mercato in Addis.

Everything is Backward in Opposite Land

2005-12-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

There is a witty cartoonist in San Francisco named Mark Fiore. A little over a year ago, he produced a short talky about political spin in Washington, DC called OppositeLand (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/fiore/2004/10/10_201.html). A character bearing a striking resemblance to President George W. Bush welcomes the viewers to OppositeLand, proclaiming it to be a land where fiction is stronger than truth and where wrong is right, weak is strong, bad is good, dirty is clean and where down is up. The character frolics throughout this short clip which ends with an emphatic declaration that “things are really looking up in good old opposite land”.

And then there is a Filmation Associates animation called The Land of Backwards http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/detailed.cgi?film=27324&p=c. Here too, things work quite opposite from the norms we earthly critters are accustomed to. The film plot traces the experience of the Adventurers' Club in The Land of Backwards where everything is said and done the other way around. The young club members have to rescue the famous poet who's been kidnapped by a bad character. Problems arise when the good guys are arrested and thrown in jail for returning stolen jewels. The fate of the gang of adventurers goes from bad to worse until just before the end when the kids figured out how things work in the Land of Backwards.

Either of these satires could easily be depicting Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia. In Ethiopia today, the winner of the peoples vote loses the election. The killer of peaceful protesters prosecutes the victims. In Ethiopia, a call for an investigation into the killings of protestors leads to a trial of those who demanded the investigation instead of the perpetrators. In the opposite land that is Ethiopia, he who violates the constitution he took an oath to uphold, he whose loyalty to country has always been in doubt, he who repeatedly flaunts the national interest in pursuit of his personal interest, he who undermines the nation’s security and territorial integrity charges with treason those who shout “the king has no cloths”.

And so, we learn that Mr. Meles has directed his courts to try 131 upstanding citizens made up of the leadership of the political party known as CUDP as well as more than a dozen journalists and other members of civil society.

The CUDP is of course the party which was winning the May 15, 2005 election by a large margin on the day the vote tally was stopped by order of Mr. Meles under a declaration of state of emergency. The leaders of the CUDP who today find themselves charged with all sorts of atrocities were the very ones the people elected to parliament, to the council of the City of Addis Ababa and for seats in regional councils. One of these leaders was elected mayor of Addis. Had the vote count been allowed to proceed without interference from Mr. Meles, one of the other CUDP leaders would now be seated at Mr. Meles’ desk.

The reporters, editors and publishers Mr. Meles charges with treason and genocide were members of the fragile private press which was making a valiant effort to provide the public with alternative source of news when Mr. Meles decided to deny the opposition access to the state owned media which he deemed worthy of serving only as his partisan propaganda outlet. Interestingly enough, some of the reporters charged with capital offenses work for foreign news outlets and may even be foreign nationals.

At least two anti-poverty campaigners are among those charged with treason and attempted genocide. These individuals crossed Mr. Meles by insisting that he should respect the law which provides for members of civil society to serve as election monitors. In the final weeks of the campaign, when the Meles government sensed danger from the mood of the electorate, it sought to reduce the number of registered election observers who could have access to polling stations and tallying centers. Not only did Mr. Meles’ election board decertify the three highly respected American election monitoring organizations that had been in the country for months setting up their networks, it also refused to certify any Ethiopian civil society organization as an election observer. The two key campaigners charged today with these crimes fought to the very last days of the campaign to get their legal right to serve as election monitors to be reinstated. Although their legal victory came too late for them to take advantage of it, their campaign raised Mr. Meles’ ire so much that they now find themselves in serious trouble.

In defining the nature of the actions of the accused which constitute genocide, Mr. Meles and his boys stated that "the accused … conspired with the intent to cause physical and mental harm to the people of Tigrai region and … to isolate members of the EPRDF from society". The falsehood of the charges notwithstanding, I find the charges themselves to constitute a curiosity. The harms caused are suggested to be mental, physical and isolation…begging for the question just what kind of harm comes from isolation if not mental or physical.

I am no lawyer but I am curious as to how Mr. Meles intends to show any one of the following points. (1) How does isolation from society, if achieved, lead to physical or mental harm? (2) How does an action targeting the EPRDF cause harm only to the people of Tigrai and not the Amara, the Oromo, the Sidama, the Guragie, etc. when the EPRDF supposedly draws the overwhelming majority of its members outside of Tigrai (as evidenced by its majorities in parliamentary delegations of all regions and all regional councils except Addis)? (3) How can anybody isolate the EPRDF from society when, if the election results are to be trusted, the EPRDF is supported by all segments of society? (4) What is it that the CUD, the media people and the civil society leaders did which constitutes an attempt to isolate the EPRDF from society? (5) Finally, if I were a juror in this case, I would like to know what specific action(s) taken by the accused threatened the physical and/or mental well being of the people of Tigrai or of any other group of Ethiopians?

The fact is, although much has happened over the last seven months, most of us recall incidents that hinted at the broad outlines of what was on Mr. Meles’ mind. We saw first Mr. Meles and then his spokesman, Mr. Bereket, liberally invoking the Interhawme code word when speaking of the CUD in particular. This is in spite of the fact that it was Mr. Meles and his gang which insisted on identifying people and organizations by their ethnicity, addressing the CUDP as the Amara Durgists and the Guragie chauvinists, the UDEF as the lapdogs of the Amara and the surrogates of the terrorist OLF, etc. We even recall how things got so bad that the EUEOM had to publicly plead with the PM to desist from hate speech. We also recall the papers which were circulated in Addis on the aftermath of the June killings directing citizens to keep their eyes on Tigrayan residents of Addis. We recall the energy expended by the CUD leadership denouncing those who were trying to incite inter community violence in its name and asking all of its supporters and other citizens to remember that above all else they are all Ethiopians. It is ironic that the very people who valiantly fought against intercommunity violence are now charged with attempted genocide while those who tried to set it off sit in judgment. Such Orwellian absurdity is the norm in the Land of Backwards, in Opposite Land.

Racketeering: The Political Philosophy of Tyranny

2005-12-12T21:14:00.000-05:00

The first week of December was notable for the lack of news on the home front. Given the precarious situation the country finds itself in, the brevity of news can be disconcerting to say the least. The gag order issued by the Great Leader right after his second manic episode, prohibiting the publication of anything regarding the views and conditions of the leaders of the opposition and/or of the population together with the detention of nearly all independent minded editors, reporters and publishers of the private press, has left us looking for news in every nook and cranny for something anything on the conditions of our country and our people. The situation got so desperate, I even scanned the pages of WIC and ENA hoping to find bits of reporting I could decode to get a sense of what is really going on in the country.

In that state of semi-desperation, I stumbled on to the website of the once great Addis Fortune. It is there that I came upon an entry that gave me a clue that the dearth of news was beginning to un-nerve even those who were responsible for the situation in the first place. Apparently, the Great Leader and his adjutants are a bit worried that there has not been any good news about their fiefdom published by any organ other than those owned, operated or directly controlled by the ministry of disinformation. The December 4 issue of Fortune reports that the Great Leader and his boys had found the place so unbearably quiet that they embarked on the task of creating news, even if by trickery and racketeering.

This once great paper to which I once contributed several entries, run(http://www.addisfortune.com/web_issue/news/news_013.htm), an interesting story under the heading Ethiopian Returnees in Defense of Foreign Aid to Ethiopia – a story that bares the souls of the Great Leader and his minions. As expected, the author took great pains not to antagonize those who hold the power to harm his person, his employment condition and his family members. However, he could not succeed in completely sanitizing this amazing story.

It pertains to a meeting of three dozen or so Ethiopians who had returned from abroad to establish business interests. These are what the paper refers to as returnees, even though some among those named in the story are at best regular visitors to Ethiopia with residences abroad. But, that is not what this story is about.

The story was about the familiar con job of the Great Leader. These individuals had been hoodwinked into assembling at a hotel for the reported purpose of discussing with representatives of the Great Leader any problems they might be facing. However, just like the good old days at the wooyiyit kibeb, as the meeting began, the plants among them and the cadres of the Great One began talking about the worldwide movement of Ethiopian patriots.

Apparently, the meeting quickly moved into a formal discussion of the merits of the effort of Ethiopians abroad to bring the injustice transpiring in Ethiopia to the attention of the world. Then, quite suddenly, one of the plants among those gathered proposed a resolution condemning the call made by Ethiopians abroad for friendly nations to stop providing the tyrant with the material means for oppressing his subjects. Just like that, those who assembled to discuss the country’s economic policy framework, unanimously passed a resolution which condemns their fellow citizens for standing up for their country.

According to Fortune, the returnees passed a unanimous resolution which stating "we call on our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to desist from such a negative and counterproductive campaign". Stunned at the turn of events, several of them spoke with the paper after the session was over, complaining that they were set-up to take part in a sting operation. A participant who told Fortune that “he thought the meeting was called to discuss the problems the returnee community is facing during this time of crises stated that "we were literally coaxed into agreeing on the resolution. If this is what they wanted, we were not in a position to go against it."”

In free societies, this is called racketeering: forcing individuals to engage in an activity against their freewill through bribery, fraud and intimidation. The story reported here is a perfect example of racketeering, exhibiting every aspect of this definition. True to form, the Great Leader is not beyond bribing even his own underlings if it serves a particular purpose. In this case, you have these individuals who took great risk packing up and returning home and exposing their resources to the whims of a most whimsical government. Such individuals are bound to be susceptible both to negative and positive enticements. Given the personal stakes for these individuals, bribery as well as intimidation can be effective tools. It is obvious some of the returnees were afforded one of these options and others the alternative. And of course, in true Meles form, most of the returnees were simply duped into taking part in something totally unanticipated. This is of course the gang which perfected the bait and switch tactic of negotiation. One only need to recall the numerous false offers of negotiation during the last 6 months to appreciate how effective this tactic can be when deployed against trusting subjects, a common attribute of our people.

Speaking of Fortune, it pains me to see that once pioneering publication, squeezed and reduced by the regime into a shadow of its former independent self. I find it distressing to read not only its editorials but even the news it purports to report. The December 4th edition of Fortune is a perfect example of a paper whose independent spirit is nearly extinguished by the heavy hands of the regime. It ran an editorial on the need for reconciliation between the government and the (http://www.addisfortune.com/web_issue/editor_note.htm) opposition – a timely and noble topic for the paper to address at this point in our history. Regrettably, the way the editors run roughshod with the constitution and the record of the last 6 months and tiptoe around issues trying to pick and chose “safe” language only serves to illustrate the cloud of fear and uncertainty under which they operate.

In one outburst that cries desperately for clarity, brevity and honesty, it states that “aside from what is possible for the ruling party to do legally, it (the EPRDF) has the not so attractive option of trying to encourage - even after all these upheavals - the resurgence of an opposition force that could unquestioningly accept the legitimacy and authority of the constitutionally based institutions, including parliament, the national electoral board and the judiciary.” Of course readers know that opposition forces and the people of Ethiopia need tolerance, not encouragement, to be a force to contend with. The editors of Fortune know this fact as well as the next guy. They also know that a government does not gain legitimate authority because it has the right to kill, incarcerate or deport those who resist it. A government earns its legitimacy when it is seconded or deputized by the people to act on their behalf. To be legitimate, a government has to be designated the Inderasae of the people.

During a moment of high risk candor, Fortune continued, “the EPRDF-led government appears to be in a better position now than at any previous time to push its political arch-rivals to accept this in exchange for them to be integrated back into the political system under a mutually understood formula.” I for one am not in a position to know whether the leaders of the opposition who have been incarcerated for 6 weeks and incessantly harassed for 5 months before that are so broken that they would accept an offer to be “integrated into the political system” in exchange of their recognition of the legitimacy of the EPRDF. Nor am I in a position to judge them should they decide to take this or any other extraordinary step to save their lives in these extraordinary times. I suspect the editors of Fortune are far better informed than I about what is contemplated by those in authority. I find it interesting that they consider this to be a credible scenario.

Perhaps as pay back for the candor, Fortune writes “this formula could make clear that the opposition camp and their sympathizers will stop their… demonising (sic) of the EPRDF, and will abandon their exaggerated rhetoric and highly destructive and often ill-informed campaigns.” If this is what it takes, then integration is overpriced. It also seems to me that Fortune is paying too high a price for candor.

Over the weekend, I stumbled into The Manitoban, a newspaper of the University of Manitoba, a Canadian university. The paper quoted Ato Tamrat Giorgis, the editor of Fortune in a story it ran on press freedom (http://umanitoba.ca/manitoban/2005-2006/1207/1621.ethiopia.information.shortage.php)

in Ethiopia. The Manitoban writes “he (Tamirat) said that, “technically and legally,” no newspapers have been shut down. Instead, many newspaper editors went into hiding as a result of the government’s published “Wanted List,” even though they were not identified on it.” The Manitoban further quotes Tamirat as stating that “the newspapers that have been indirectly shut down, he said, are: “completely confused, misinformed at large — shadow journalism.”

Speaking about his paper, Tamirat stated “we try to be as objective as possible, and therefore I don’t think the government has any reason to have any problem [with Fortune],” he noted. Some people even suggest that the publication has taken a stance that is ‘soft’ with the government on several issues — but Giorgis said that Fortune is not considered to be completely pro-government.”

I suppose Ato Tamirat believes that knowing that Fortune is not “completely pro-government” makes his readers feel more secure. Having lived in Ethiopia during Mengistu’s reign of terror, I cannot judge him because I do not walk in his shoes. But, it is a sad commentary on the conditions in Ethiopia for a “newsman” to feel that he has to earn his freedom by acting as though he is a paid cadre of the regime he fears so much.

What is on the Minds of Ethiopians – the Disputed Border or the Disputed Election?

2005-12-02T19:11:00.000-05:00

There is an Amara proverb: One cannot awaken he who is determined to be asleep. The person who coined that proverb must have had a premonition of the fate of his countrymen in the first decade of the 21st century. For this has been a difficult and lonely time to be Ethiopian.

Our best hope for a free and democratic Ethiopia was rudely dashed by one who had repeatedly and consistently refused to entertain any notion that Ethiopia is anything but his private dominion. Our women are killed while trying to protect our children from beating and deportation to concentration camps. Snipers and machine gunners trained to engage organized enemy forces are set on our men and boys who peacefully march to express their grievances. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are held in open air concentration camps infested with all sorts of tropical maladies from malaria to poisonous snakes. The less fortunate among our leaders are summarily executed, with the more fortunate ones only rounded up, charged with treason or other similarly contrived charges and held in prison for years without trial, without definite dates for release. Members of the private media and leaders of civic society organizations who express dissenting opinions face similar fates. The state controlled media is reduced to serving as the private propaganda outlet of the hostage takers, inundating the captive population with a never ending barrage of carefully orchestrated program of misinformation, intimidation and character assassination. What little private press survived a 14 year reign of harassment and intimidation, was brought to an end when publishers, editors, reporters and newspaper vendors met the fate of our elected officials during the final campaign to rid the landscape of anyone and anything that smells like a threat.

It is in the face of this unprecedented and complete lockdown of the big prison that is Ethiopia that Ethiopians looked for help from the unified global community of which they believed to be a member in good standing. The people were confident that the world would stand with them. After all they had just performed marvelously in the democratic game played under the rules established by the new world order. Ethiopians believed that central to the new order is the notion of government of the people, by the people, and for the people – a government which the people set up and which the people can change peacefully, through the ballot, if they so choose. Having exhibited the kind of discipline, resiliency and single mindedness in the pursuit of the democratic alternative reminiscent of the performance of their Olympic heroes, the Ethiopian people believed that they are fully justified in demanding that the arbiters of the new world order step in and ensure that their victory is not appropriated by the slight of hand of their suppressors.

Words cannot describe the disappointment and dismay of the Ethiopian people. Those who so repeatedly and publicly pledged to stand with anyone anywhere in the world who fights for freedom, those who lead the very country which leads ‘the free world’ and those who “vetted” and “certified” the commander of the Ethiopian gulag to be “a new kind of African leader”, “a renaissance man”, and a man who can be trusted to be a strong ally, now anxiously look the other way when they face the anger and wrath of Ethiopians worldwide. In the early days, they even had the audacity to condemn the victim for inciting the killer into violence. Though they have given up on that that particular line, they are still unwilling to meet their obligations to Ethiopia and to the new global order.

Today, when Ethiopians in London, in Washington, in Ottawa, in Brussels, in Paris and elsewhere confront the world’s power brokers, they try to change the subject to something, anything. Their new found and preferred diversionary tactic is to point to the dark clouds of war hanging over Ethiopia. At every forum where Ethiopia merits a mention, they speak of the gravity of the crisis on the Eritrean border. They report on the count of the army divisions deployed by one or the other side. They discuss the length and depth of the trenches dug and of the deployment of tanks and field guns. They rehash the body count from the last bloody episode. Each of these is meant to scare the Ethiopian people into believing that they face something which is of greater danger to their immediate security than their domestic problem. It is also intended to show that they have not really forgotten Ethiopia and the plight of Ethiopians. This is meant to alert us that they are just working on something even more urgent which must be addressed right away, lest Armageddon be visited upon us.

Perhaps the end of the days is around the corner. How else can I explain agreeing with Isayas Afworki of all people—not once but twice? Of course, the border crisis was manufactured to divert attention from what is going on across Ethiopia, from Addis, Ambo and Awassa to Zege, Zuway and Zarema. Only one other time, when he called the AU the club of dictators, had I ever agreed with Mr. Afworki. Never mind that calling these two issues correctly would not exempt Mr. Afworki from a straight jacket; as one who likes to give the devil his due, I must admit he called each of these correctly.

Why don’t they ask us what matters to the average Joe in Abeshaland? If they did, we would tell them that Eritrea is Meles’ problem. Our number one problem today is Meles. If another war starts, it would cost us the lives of our children, but in the end it would not change anything. In the last war, more than 70,000 of our young men lost their lives and limb. And just what did we get out of it? Absolutely nothing!!. That war was not fought for us. It was like one of those children’s arguments over whose prick is longer. It was fought to protect the egos of the two contestants, and contestants we were not.

If we could select our fights, we would fight to be free from tyranny. We would fight to protect the dignity of the Ethiopian man who must cower in fear in front of his wife and his children not to displease the commissar lest he might be beaten up or taken away. If we could choose our fight, we would fight to protect our women from the indignity of rape and beatings by the cadres of our master and their friend.

The border conflict is a contrived story talked about to serve as a diversion from our real issues. When Mr. Yamamato travels to Addis and to Asmara to discuss the border issue, when the disgraceful Koffi Annan sends his special envoy to persuade Meles to stand down, the Ethiopian people know you are not doing it for us. If we could talk to them, if they had asked us, here is what we would tell these two gentlemen. If you really want to help, please, tell the hostage takers to release the political prisoners and to allow the winners of the last election to form a government. We will tell you to take some of the loot you are scheduled to send to Ethiopia and spend it on chartered flights to destination they prefer to go...Zimbabwe included. There would be no hard feelings.

When Javier Solana treks from the snow and cold of Brussels to Addis and Asmara, they would ask him why he and the rest of the European Commission would spend European taxpayers’ money on a large election monitoring team if they didn’t intend to act on their findings. They would ask him why, if the Commission cares about the other 77 million Ethiopians, it would continue to hold the bloody hands of the one tyrant. Finally, the Ethiopian people would advise him that if he cannot understand or appreciate their pain, he should expend his energy where it might be more fruitfully deployed.

As to the AU... The AU is an embarrassment to all Africans. It sits quietly right there in Addis, not a full block removed from where some of the killings took place. It allows its own compound to serve as a holding pen for those rounded up. The AU leader Konare rides to Berlin and to Abuja with the Butcher of Addis in a chartered jet paid for by the Ethiopian people while innocent Ethiopians were still being killed in his back yard. This goes on before the ink dries on the new peer review provisions of the AU charter. What a disgrace!! The only comfort I draw about the AU is in the knowledge that if we could hold a referendum, the people of Africa would vote overwhelmingly against it. The AU is neither created nor governed by the people of Africa. It is, as Mr. Afworki said, a club for tyrants, established by tyrants.

The Parable of Two Cheetah Cubs and 77 Million Ethiopians

2005-11-27T22:37:00.000-05:00

For a country such as Ethiopia, it is always tough to be noticed by the West. It is not a Thailand or a Tahiti with white sands and tropical resorts to which the affluent hordes from the North come for some sun and fun in the din of winter. Nor is it an oil rich Saudi Arabia or a Venezuela whose every move is monitored by nervous bankers and commodity traders in New York and Zurich. So, it was a surprise and a nice change of pace to see so many Western news outlets carrying an AP wire story datelined from Ethiopia this Thanksgiving weekend.

For a change, a country that had suffered so much over the last six months, nearly out of sight of Western media, was being written about by great city papers and talked about by small town radio and TV stations. This Thanksgiving weekend, this ancient land of 77 million people was finally getting its share of publicity. All sorts of papers from Europe to North America and from Australia to South Africa, French and Spanish wire services, online specialty journals and trade publications carried reports on Ethiopia.

Like millions of Ethiopians that immigrated to the West over the last three decades, I find the lack of reliable news coverage of Ethiopia during times of crises to be disconcerting. I spend hours every day trying to find news on developments in my homeland where so many of my family still live. Often, I have to settle for press releases issued by one contender or the other – reading between the lines to finagle the small credible nuggets of truth from the pile of partisan spin. So, I was ecstatic when my news search engine returned several pages of listings of news items on Ethiopia on the morning of November 26, 2005. I poured a nice big cup of coffee and sat on my comfortable chair in front of my computer and anxiously clicked the first Item of note.

It was a report from eitb24 (http://www.eitb24.com/noticia_en.php?id=107926), a website which proclaims to be The Basque Information Channel. It carried a news curiosity about a pair of cheetah cubs discovered by U.S. troops scouring the Ogaden region of Ethiopia for the trails of Al Qaeda. It seems that a small town innkeeper in the tiny eastern town of Gode is raising two cheetah cubs for the amusement of his patrons. The GIs, candidates for PETA membership back home or just properly raised Midwestern boys, were upset by the sight of two hungry young cheetah cubs and sought to persuade the innkeeper to free the cubs only to be told that he had invested some $2000 to acquire them from a poacher and would not relinquish them without due compensation. That is the Somali equivalent of “Joe, let Uncle Sam rescue them for a measly $2000”. These poor souls patrolling the Ogaden were touched by the incredible cruelty of it all and reported the story to the wild life offices in Addis Ababa which in turn leaked the news to the AP scribe in the area.

The rest as they say is history. For the period beginning 12:00PM on November 25 and ending 6:50AM on the 27th (EST), my news search engine picked 182 separate html links about this story. No other news event pertaining to Ethiopia this weekend or, as best as I recall, during any other 43 hour period garnered even half of 182 English language reports on the internet.

The historic election of May 15, 2005 where more than 90% of Ethiopia’s registered electorate waited in line for up 24 hours to cast its vote did not merit reporting on 182 independent occasions. The suspension of the vote counting when it appeared that the ruling party of Meles Zenawi was loosing and loosing badly did not merit 182 independent English language reports. Not even when the EU election observer team rang the alarm bell on May 22nd that the government of Ethiopia was in the process of stealing the vote did 182 English language news outlets in the West find the event worthy of their web space or airtime. When 42 protesters were shot dead by the government’s security forces on June 8 following Mr. Meles’ decision to extend Marshall law for another month, western media did not find it interesting news – at least not as interesting as two cheetah cubs held for the entertainment of bar patrons in a far away border town known for illegal guns and other contraband. During the first week of November, when the government resumed its murderous ways killing to the tune of hundreds, when all of the leaders of the main opposition party were arrested, when elected parliamentarians were killed by police, when the elected mayor of the city of Addis was arrested, when boys as young as six and mothers trying to shield their husbands from beatings were killed by the security forces with the aim of intimidating the population, when tens of thousands of citizens were rounded up and barricaded in malaria infested open air concentration camps (in actuality holding pens reminiscent of cattle stockades except these are made of razor wire high fences) western media did not find any of it worthy of its efforts or of its readers time.

The media sure enough got word of these lovable cheetahs holed up in the remote eastern town of Gode and of the GI’s heroic act of rescue. As it so happens, only a week earlier more than 30 political prisoners were killed purportedly trying to break out of prison in the town of Kebridehar, some 100 miles away. When that story was not carried even by a single news outlet (recorded on the internet) save for a few Ethiopian websites, I thought that it was perhaps on account of the inaccessibility of the region. Now, of course, I know better.

I have lived most of my life in the West. Yet, I still don’t know what it is a nation must do to get a little attention. Over the years, I have heard comments made in jest (or so I believed) about Africa’s best hope. The best thing going for Africa, the comment goes, is the wild beast which lives there -- the lion, the elephant, the giraffe, the great ape and of course the loveable cheetah, that sleek model of efficient locomotion. The people, they say, only get in the way of our enjoyment of those great creatures of the savanna and of the jungle. Perhaps that comment is not too far removed from mainstream opinion, at least as perceived by the media which must seek to select the news that is worthy of circulation in the mainstream.

Using Your Loot Wisely: Lessons from the Final Days of a Tyrant

2005-11-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

When I read Mr. Paul B. Henze’s “Comments on Comments”, I thought I was finally seeing some wisdom in the way the Great Leader and Chairman of the Politburo, aka PM Meles Zenawi, spends the billions he accepts from his sponsors on behalf of the Ethiopian people. By all accounts, much of what he has bought with the billions he has spent to date has been farcical.

To the uninitiated, let me recount just a couple of Meles’ investments and what he netted from them. Meles financed a two and half year war with Airtra, a war considered by all (and recently even by the Great One himself) to have been a meaningless war. By most estimates, the Great Leader and Chairman not only expended the lives of some 70,000-100,000 of our young men, he also pumped more than $1 million per day to feed and equip the fighting men. If you just count the material loss, that right there comes to well over $1 billion. Considering what he got out of the deal (of course we don’t ask what we the people get out of the deal for it is never about us, it always about him), that was a foolish way to spend money even when it is not his own money. After all, what did fighting two and half years costing the lives of well over 70,000 young men and expending $1 billion plus netted the Great Leader? The conquered territory was given back gratis. The military victory was not leveraged to extract settlement terms to our liking….whatever it is we were after at that point. Instead, out of the jaws of victory, the Great One finagled a great loss for Ethiopia via international arbitration.

Another investment outlet Mr. Meles chose for the loot was hiring a high powered international legal team to defend the good name and honor of the Great One and of his circle of friends in an alien court. That adventure turned out to be comedic. Like all good lawyers do (here is hoping that my own offspring who is in training would not be as good as them), these great legal minds took the money, initiated legal action in a Virginia court and then disclosed to the Great One that, of course to proceed, he and his associates must abandon their immunity. Not exactly a small matter for one who for 14 years has done all sorts of things behind the veil of immunity. So, he plucked a few from the newest checks he received, paid his bills and withdrew his petition from the court. In the process, he has opened himself for further action under U.S. law. The whole idea turned out to be just a few million dollars misspent.

Now comes evidence that the Great One might have wisely invested some of the funds he received from his sponsors. As everyone knows by now, anyone and everyone in the world with any conscious has been lining up to politely point to him that neither ordering the security forces to shoot into peacefully assembled crowds nor killing women and children in any circumstance is civilized behavior. It looked like old friends and allies were abandoning ship as fast they can and even people who hardly know him or Ethiopia were coming out of the woodworks to condemn his handy work. For five months now, he has been truly in need of friends.

Just like that a friend from whom we have not heard for quite some time dropped in last week to stand up and get counted. I am speaking of none other than the one and only Paul B. Henze.

My thoughts when I saw his byline on the internet was about the bundle the Great One was preparing to pay to setup a spin network. Henze was quite agitated as if something personal has happened to him – not just like a well compensated aide de camp ought to be. For a guy who spent much of his adult life in the spin business, his message was neither smooth nor effective. One gets the sense that he was either awakened in the middle of the night and ordered to send out something or was given a statement to which to affix his name and to simply transmit to the usual media outlets.

So, Henze writes “having been in close and almost continual contact with the TPLF leadership since 1990, I find it difficult to regard these men as dishonest and inclined toward fraud.” That is political speak for “I have been continuously on Meles’ payroll since 1990 and he has always paid me on time”. As if God or the Ethiopian people did not know, then came the confession that Meles and his boys “started out as student rebels infected with Marxism-Leninism… They did not find it easy to shed the illusions that Soviet propaganda among students in the 1960s had left with them”.

I did not make that up. Henze wrote that Meles and his boys have had a hell of a time shedding their Marxist-Leninist ways. I guess at some point Meles’ analyst must have ordered him to jut reconcile with his deformity and live with it, because that is how he has been ever since the rest of us became acquainted with him in 1991. I don’t think any Ethiopian had detect Meles trying to shed his commy pinko ways.

If truth be told, Ethiopians always believed that the TPLF was never a born again democratic party and that Meles had never really been baptized in the holy spirit that is free market capitalism. Well, Mr. Henze now declares that we had been right all along. Henze writes, “they did not find it easy to shed the illusions that Soviet propaganda had left with them. But the best of them--Meles, Seyoum, Berhane Gebre Christos and others--were mentally sharp and had the independence of mind, in spite of their isolation in Tigray, to realize what was happenin! in the world of the 1980s.”

By the 1980s, what Ronald Regan used to call the ‘evil empire” was collapsing and the West was decisively winning the cold war. By the late 1980s, those mentally sharp boys could see that anyone caught worshiping at the altar of Marx, Lenin, Mao or Hoxha would be condemned to eternal banditry. Like the rest of us, Henze infers that Meles and his boys did what any mentally sharp person would do in the circumstances: confess seeing the error of their ways and profess rebirth as democrats entrenched in the Jeffersonian tradition.

I found this to be interesting reading. I could only imagine how Henze’s paymaster must be thinking when he reads this piece. Meles must be asking whether Henze too was not trying to distance himself from the train wreck that is the Meles regime. Aren’t good buddies supposed to go down with the captain of the ship? I was contemplating these thoughts as I read the initial paragraphs. Then came the mea culpa. Henze actually writes that Meles’ policy on “ethnic structuralism”, “his reliance on peoples democratic organizations” as his vehicle for dividing and weakening the population and his “dogma on land ownership” were bad decisions.

Wow!! Is that a split or what?!

Then in an angry outburst that seems to be screaming “we did not do everything wrong!!”, Henze brags about the great things his employers did over the years. As evidence of the highlights of the mentally sharp Meles’ 14 years in office, Henze tells us that Meles and his boys
“(1) opened the society to creation of free institutions--political parties and other kinds of organizations; (2) they encouraged exiles to return and be active politically; (3) they removed restrictions on internal movement of citizens and granted passports freely; (4) they adopted a completely neutral, but not hostile, stance toward religion; (5) they permitted an independent press; (6) they committed themselves to establishing a system of rule of law and set in motion a process for drafting a new constitution; (7) they restored relations with the outside world.”

Like something uttered in a fit of rage very little of this comes even close to being right. Let me just point to the absurdities of some of these claims.

So, Meles opened the society to free political parties and other organizations? Let us see. First there were those exile organizations, including COEDF, who were invited to discuss potential participation in the transitional process. The U.S. government certified the sincerity of the offer, and so opposition organizations sent delegations to Addis to participate in what was to have been a conference of reconciliation. There was one little problem however. As each of the delegates arrived at the Addis airport, they were picked not by officials riding limousines but by the TPLF security forces riding military trucks and were taken to prison. One by one, all of those who did not get word about what was waiting for them and did not abandon their flights in Cairo or Frankfurt, were put in jail without trial and without charge. After many months, many managed to get out but one brave delegate, Ato Abera Yemaneab, still remains in prison some 12 years later. Of course, there was also the expulsion of OLF as well as the never ending persecution of AAPO and its leaders. I do not know what Mr. Henze had in mind when he speaks of the opening to establish free political parties. Perhaps he means the OPDO, APDO, AAPDO, SPDO or some other PDO. Until this last election cycle, there was NOTHING which even resembles free political activity in Ethiopia.

They encouraged exiles to return and be active in political activity. Which exiles might they be? Is he speaking of Ato Abera Yemaneab here again?

Mr. Henze credits Meles with the distinction of “removing restrictions on the internal movement of citizens” – the very same Meles who granted every Ethiopian with his/her very own Bantustan to belong to. I can only conclude one of two things is going on here. Either Mr. Henze is swallowing hard and paying back his paymaster or perhaps Meles is really that good…so good that he can keep even his closest allies in the dark.

Ethiopians, Mr. Henze tells the reader, are blessed with an independent press. Well, there is Walta, there is Iftin and of course there is Addis Zemen and the Herald. I don’t know why he stopped there. He should have also reminded us of the free electronic media law authorizing privatly owned and independently operated radio and television companies such as ETV, Radio Fana, etc..

According to this witness, Meles and his mentally sharp boys “committed themselves to establishing a system of rule of law”. He is quite right there. They did establish a system of rule of law. That fills the bill unless you are so picky that you point to the small matter that under this system, the law is malleable and may be altered at the whim and discretion of these boys. If they want to charge someone with corruption as a convenient way to remove him out of sight, they cook such a law overnight. If the judge orders bail for those charged under the law, the boys just cook another law making the offense not bail-able. Even better, they make the law such that the executive could disobey with impunity any decisions of the court. Heck for a small mater as disobeying the court, they don’t even have to write up a whole law. The judge commands no army so they just tell the judge “make me release him if you can”. If the executive wants to arrest the entire leadership and membership of the largest opposition party including elected parliamentarians, just cook a law to withdraw the constitutionally guaranteed immunity from the parliamentarians and charge them with treason. That is the system of law Mr. Henze is crediting Meles and his brainy boys.

I am not sure how Mr. Henze finds the government’s position towards the Ethiopian Orthodox church neutral when Mr. Meles removed the head of the (independent) Ethiopian Orthodox Church and appointed a political hack as its patriarch? It just so happens that church doctrine forbids the deposing of a patriarch and grants the power to elect a patriarch only to a duly constituted synod, not to the infidels of the politburo.

Oh, yes Mr. Meles and the boys have friends – powerful and influential friends allover the world. They have all kinds of relationships with all kinds of people – politicians, rock stars, ex-presidents, renowned academics and fertilizer merchants. Recently, though, these friends are getting less cozy with the mentally sharp boys and increasingly less happy with them as some of the blood in Mr. Meles’ hands splatters on to them.

Although the attempt turned out to be ineffective, quite unlike Meles’ other friends, Mr. Henze made a valiant (and may be even an earnest) effort to earn the retainer the Great One has been paying him of the years. Too bad he looked so feeble in the process. I guess, the deeds of some individuals are just indefensible.

It Is All About the Show

2005-11-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, the VOA Amharic program broadcast an interview with Dr. Beyene Petros – a man that has come to represent the grace and calm which once was the hallmark of what is to be an Ethiopian. The interviewer wanted to know why he and his associates abstained from voting on the bill authorizing the establishment of a mechanism to investigate the state sponsored terror against the Ethiopian people. In explaining the vote of his block in parliament, Dr. Beyene spoke of the language in the resolution which presumes the guilt of the CUD and of other improprieties which reduce the entire exercise to one of confirming Meles’ allegations. He explained why it would not be appropriate to cast even a no vote. He stated that because there exists an urgent need for an independent investigation to identify and bring to justice those who gave the shoot to kill order, his party could not vote no on a bill to investigate the murders of innocent citizens. However, given that the modalities outlined in the draft bill fall far short of establishing an appropriate process for achieving that goal, they could not vote yes. So, the only real option was to vote no.

I got curios as to the language in the bill. Hoping to find out the exact language of the bill, I logged on to the Ethiopian Parliament website http://www.ethiopar.net/. What I found was that, just like everything else in Meles’ Ethiopia, the parliament and its website is all about show and no substance.

A website is God’s gift to those who seek the cheapest way to publish the most current information about the product or service of an organization. As best as I can tell, the only service a parliament performs is to initiate, debate and enact laws. So I expected to see perhaps the transcript of the debate or at least a copy of one of the two most important pieces of legislation acted upon by the third parliament of the FDRE. Oh, but no! Neither the draft bill nor the final piece of legislation were to be found anywhere in that website. For that matter there exist no entries about the work of parliament over the last five years. The last entry for bills adopted or debated was during the 1999/2000 session. It is as if the parliament did not exist over the last five years. Of course I know that many have said that it never really existed and still does not.

The front page of the website greets the visitor and announces itself to be the website of the Ethiopian Parliament. At the top of the page, there is a scrolling banner which reads “DRAFT RESOLUTION ON THE REPORT SUBMITTED BY THE GAMBELLA CONFLICT INQUIRY COMMISSION”. I looked further down the page and noticed a choice of Amharic, English or archive. I paused for a moment to consider what these choices might imply but my attention was drawn to an html link The Seventh ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly 16-19 February, 2004 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I clicked the ACP-EU link only to find an old general information packet prepared of the delegates of a joint assembly of the parliaments of ACP and EU countries held nearly two years ago. So I proceeded to select the English language choice and went to the main site.

That takes you to a page which gives you choices of going back to the parliament home page, or proceeding to Basic Information, General Information, The House of Peoples' Representatives, The House of the Federation and Current Developments. I was attracted to the current developments sub-heading. The tag line for this link reads “Current Developments will treasure a wealth of information for you on what is currently happening in parliament, what the committees are doing, and the day to day schedules of various activities of the two Houses. It also provides you with information about the day's agenda, minutes of the parliamentary sessions, news and press releases.” The Ebonics aside, it still seems to be the most likely place for me to find the information I need. And so I eagerly clicked the current developments link and presto! that took me to another page with the following links: The House of Peoples' Representatives, The Committees of the House of Peoples' Representatives, The House of the Federation, The Committees of the House of the Federation, and The Press of the Parliament. Well guess what is behind each of these curtains! Well door number one contains nothing as did door number two and every other door. When I clicked, I found empty pages.

So I went back and visited each of the other links on the main page. The Basic Info link gives you information about the country: geography, demography, history, etc. The General Information link takes you to a page which reports on the government of the FDRE and the history of parliament. The link for the House of Peoples’ Representatives has many html linked pages which contain no information. It has a list of bills passed but the link to only one of them actually takes you to a Negarit Gazeta. The rest don’t take you anywhere.

Interestingly enough, of the many other links on that page, the only one that has the info it alludes to is the one titled Educational Status of the Members of The House of Peoples' Representatives According to their Electoral Region (2000-2005). It reminds you of the elite school listing the SAT scores of its freshman class and/or the educational background of its faculty – no mention of what the members have done individually or collectively in their capacity as parliamentarians. What there is, is a long expose on their educational attainments.

In the end, I could not find either the draft submitted to parliament or the approved bill authorizing the establishment of a body to investigate the government’s murderous spree. The website of the Parliament of the FDRE contains no mention of what the Parliament did in this or any other matter over the last several years. Of course this is in keeping with the reality of the Ethiopian parliament. After all, in 14 years, it has never initiated a bill. It has never successfully amended a bill or voted down a bill. It is meant to serve as a rubber stamp body. No more, no less. Its mandate is to assume the position of the legislative branch only for the purpose of completing the organizational chart outlined in the constitution. It is there to show the world that there is a legislative body. Its existence presumes that the observer would not have any reason to look beyond the form and dig into whether this parliament actually does any thing.

In EPRDF land, it is form over substance. It is all about the show!!

The West's Urge to Cuddle With a Tyrant

2005-11-12T19:10:00.000-05:00

I often wonder why a people who have been so successful in nearly all walks of life can sometimes be utterly wrong and disdainfully stupid when it comes to their understanding of the issues that matter to people of other cultures. I am of course speaking of Americans and Brits in general but especially of the foreign policy wonks who are assigned to any African, Middle Eastern or Asian desk by these two otherwise very successful nations. They miss the most obvious shift in public attitudes. They mistake a people’s patience for either fear or love. They routinely miscalculate the balance of political power in emerging civil and military conflicts. The people who report on developments in these regions fare no better.

A case in point is a recent article by the Eocnomist.Com on the unfolding political drama in Ethiopia. I was disappointed to note that a publication which has served its readers with distinction for so long got the current Ethiopian problem so wrong. The intro appropriately refers to these developments as “the carnage committed by Meles Zenawi”. The facts reported in the first few paragraphs thus are consistent with what has been reported elsewhere. Its transgression perhaps arose for the urge to make its report “fair and balanced”. It ran into difficulties trying to find creative ways to balance the report on the carnage with something, anything positive to say about Meles. In the process it insulted the dead, it infuriated at least one reader and it broke its reputation for intelligent but thorough reporting.

Mr. Editor;

In your assessment of how the west might encourage Mr. Zenawi not to be so callous with the lives of Ethiopians, you ruled out using the west’s purse strings as leverage because you believed that to be “not a very effective stick for beating Ethiopia”. You cite as the basis for your conclusion the fact that “Mr Zenawi's supporters argue that his authoritarian methods, however ruthlessly on display in the capital, have helped to complete roads, clinics and agricultural extension projects in the famished countryside, where most Ethiopians live”.

Given all that has gone over the last several months, one wonders who these supporters might be. One also might wonder how these supporters failed to give some consideration for the possibility that those who live in Mr. Zenawi’s beloved and famished countryside might actually consider living under ruthless tyranny to be too high a price to pay for roads, clinics and agricultural extension projects. Of course, there remains the matter of the unfounded premise that there are roads completed, clinics built or agricultural extension works carried out in that famished country side. Except if one takes the work of the fertilizer businesses of Mr. Zenawi’s party companies to constitute the agricultural outreach of Mr. Zenawi’s government, there is no evidence of any of these alleged gains.

I found your very next sentence even more troubling. You write that “blood-spattered as he now is, Mr. Zenawi has earned plaudits for growing more food and overseeing one of Africa's more effective strategies for reducing poverty.” Again one would have expected the Economist to have considered the sources of those plaudits and to have expended some effort to substantiate whether the claims are reasonable.
You are well aware that Mr. Zenawi has held absolute power for fourteen and a half years. He has held power without checks either by a legitimate and organized political opposition, an independent judiciary or a meaningful legislative body. He has had a decade and half of free reign where his word has been law. He came to office pledging to end hunger in Ethiopia and to achieve food self-sufficiency within five years. Never mind that most observers believed that the target date was movable, but nearly all believed that the objective of working towards food self-sufficiency was real.

Fourteen and half years later, there are more Ethiopians who rely on food aid than when Mr. Zenawi came to power. Indeed more people rely on food aid now than at the height of the 1984 great Ethiopian famine. Every year Mr. Zenawi has been in office, millions of those who live in Mr. Zenaw’s beloved countryside, millions of the very farmers who were to feed everyone else have had to rely on food aid. As to reducing poverty, the World Bank reports that per capita income in Ethiopia has declined from about $120 when Mr. Zenawi came to office to just under $100 now. Yes, $120 is not something you can brag about. But when that paltry sum declines by one-sixth after 15 years of “growth” and after being nurtured under “one of Africa's more effective strategies for reducing poverty”, I’d say it is time to revisit Mr. Zenawi’s strategy.

Without citing when your poll was conducted or when and by whom it was conducted, you reported that “many, perhaps most, Ethiopians and many foreign observers argue that, despite the government's recent bloody brutality, Mr. Zenawi is still the best man to keep Ethiopia on a path to development.” I know in economics, you are supposed to have empirical bases for statements such as that. I suspect, that journalism schools too instruct their pupils that summative statements which claim to point to the preferences of others be based on direct measurement, or at least on second had data -- be it sample data or census data. I cannot say whether your statement about foreign observes has some factual bases. However, I very much doubt that there are a million much less tens of millions of Ethiopians who hold the opinions you ascribe to them. Look at the election results. Except if you were to suggest that the May vote was simply a protest vote and not a reflection of the true sentiments of the population (a point Mr. Zenawi once sought to make to the BBC’s Hard Talk reporter while challenging the opposition for a rerun of the election) or that the people’s vote does not reflect their economic calculus, then the majority of the voting public emphatically declared Mr. Zenawi to be the worst man not the best man for Ethiopian development. Of course, his actions ever since have exonerated the voters’ contempt for the man.

I take issue not only with your characterization of Mr. Zenawi’s record but also with your assessment of the readiness of the opposition to assume state power. While assessing that readiness, you wrote “nor is there a clear alternative to him” as though what is called for is another strongman to replace Mr. Zenawi. It might come as news to you, but the opposition has dozens of experienced, intelligent and patriotic leaders who are ready to take significant leadership within a democratic government structure. Yes, there is no strongman among them who would insist on assuming all of the roles Mr. Zenawi had amassed for himself. In the eyes of Ethiopians, that, believe it or not, is viewed to be good thing. There is room for many strongmen and strongwomen in Ethiopian public life. We have had thirty years where one man (first Colonel Mengistu and then guerilla fighter Meles) had thought of everything on our behalf. For thirty years one of these two men had designed the nation’s economic plan, thought of educational reform, came up with foreign policy, health policy, farm policy, designed the highway network and did everything else. And look where that has taken us. Ethiopians reject the need for another strongman with and a one man show.

I understand that you and many others in the west would prefer the simple nation state where you don’t have to deal with too many (potentially crazed, semi-retarded, corrupt and greedy) leaders. You want to know who is in charge and who makes the call in specific countries. You like the simplicity of thinking of the Shah or the Ayatolla Khomeni when you think of Iran or of Mobutu in Zaire. It is much easier to deal even with crazy places such as North Korea, because you know who is in charge. An Ethiopia run by a consultative democratic government would be too ambiguous for you to feel comfortable with.

You would not be bothered by the absence of a clear alternative to Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair. You would not even care who would lead Israel if Mr. Sharon steps aside, but you would most certainly loose sleep over the possible replacement of Mr. Mahmoud Abas. That perhaps reflects one of the more egregious strains of western prejudice towards third world politics. You would not count on the democratic process to produce capable leadership in these countries. The opposition in Ethiopia worries you because you don’t know who the next big man or big woman to sit in the big chair is. Sadly, that is reflected not just in your journalistic preference. It is the common denominator of western foreign policy toward third world countries.

You seem to also be uncomfortable with the possibility that many of the opposition leaders do not come from among Mr. Zenawi’s Tigrayan clansmen. I am perplexed that a paper which for so long has been both a benefactor and a contributor to the distinguished British democratic heritage, would find the disproportionate accumulation of political in the hands of a small minority comforting. You seem rather concerned with the possibility that the division of political power among Ethiopia’s diverse population might actually be changed to reflect that diversity.

According to Mr. Zenawi’s 1994 census, Ethiopia’s population is Oromo, 32%; Amhara, 30%; Tigray, 6%; Somali, 6%; Guragie, 4%; Sidama, 3%; Wolaita, 2%; Afar, 2%; Hadiya, 2%; and Gamo, 1% http://www.ethiopianembassy.org/population.shtml. Yet Mr. Zenawi and his Tigrayan inner circle control nearly everything. What is different about the opposition is that both its leadership and its membership come from all walks of life and from all corners of the country. That is one of the things that Ethiopians find refreshing and enjoyable. For 15 years, Mr. Zenawi told Ethiopians that there are no such people as Ethiopians, only captive nations called Amar, Oromo, Tigrey, Somali, Gorage, each belonging in its own place and belonging to its own political organization. The opposition parties created forums where Ethiopians can work together across ethnic lines to build their common future for a common destiny without shame or fear.

The Economist in particular and western media in general would best serve their readers and the people of whom they report if they spend just a bit more time to speak with truly ordinary people; not just with the “guide and driver” the ministry of “information” assigns to you, not just with the women who hangout in the international hotel lobby nor with the NGO fellows who have to carefully manage careers. To detect the heartbeat of Ethiopia, go to Nekempte, to Dangila, to Assosa, to Dilla, Dire Dawa, to Debre Birhan and/or to any number of small and medium sized towns. You will find that Mr. Zenawi’s loyal rural population which has reaped the benefits of those great development works you so frequently write about does not exist. What you will find instead is a people which have been held hostage for 14 years by a cynical Marxist power monger, heart broken with the disappointment of their failed attempt to liberate themselves by selecting an alternative.

Of the many critical comments you make about the opposition, perhaps your comment about the oppositions attitude towards Eritrea come close to being true. Even then, at least in the eyes of Ethiopians, the disposition of the opposition towards Eritrea is far more consistent with Ethiopia’s national interest than that of Mr. Zenawi’s. Mr. Zenawi did not consult the Ethiopian people when he endorsed the secession of Eritrea. Furthermore, intoxicated with his new found power, he agreed to Eritrea’s secession without clear demarcation of the boundary between what were to be two sovereign states. Some estimate that that mistake cost Ethiopia up to 100,000 of her children in the war of 1998-2000. In an even more egregious move, Mr. Zenawi surrendered the ground gained at the expense of those 100,000 lives without arriving at a final agreement over the issues that lead to the conflagrations. Hence, Ethiopia will fight at least one more war with Eritrea to settle the issues which, as the victor, it should have been able to settle to its satisfaction at the end of the last war. Here too, Mr. Zenawi has undermined the country’s interest and in the eyes of many if not most Ethiopians (to borrow your phraseology) he has engaged in what amounts to treasonous activity not just for lack of foresight, but perhaps because he is half-Eritrean surrounded by Eritreans in his inner circles.

Of Murders, Kidnapings, etc...

2005-11-10T18:36:00.000-05:00

Last week, we observed yet another surreal drama in the life of the people of Ethiopia play out. Incredible events unfolded across the country as ordinary people came face to face with their government and the government greeted them with gun shots, beatings, imprisonment and, in a new twist, kidnappings. The ugliness of the Ethiopian landscape which we saw last week was only surpassed by the reaction of Meles and the United State Government -- his primary sponsor.

The body of a week’s worth of work of the man Tony Blair calls “a new kind of African leader” consisted of: (1) killing a dozen or so boys and girls but also numerous innocent men and women first in Addis and then across the country, (2) detaining nearly the entire leadership of the largest opposition party, the editors and publishers of the private papers and the leaders of civil society organizations, (3) beating the detained leaders, holding them incommunicado and denying them access to medical care, even to their prescriptions, and finally (4) kidnapping family members of those political and civic leaders who have eluded capture and are in hiding and offering to exchange them for the wanted leaders.

Thanks to the information revolution, all of this is going on in full view of the entire world—not behind closed doors or behind an iron curtain of the sort they have in North Korea. So what did the world say? How did the citizens and governments of this global village react? Ethiopia is, after all, part of the global village. Or is it?

This is a particularly important question for two reasons. First, from day one (1991), Meles had always sought to be in good standing with the west in general but specially with the United States. Now that he has attained such a hallowed position in western power circles as a new kind of African democrat, keeping that standing and maintaining the appearance is important to his ego and to his goal of staying in power indefinitely. Second, the strategists of the opposition long ago concluded that dismantling Meles’ fake democratic mask and striping him of the unwarranted support he receives from western democracies can be a usefull tactical manuver. Consequently, the reaction of the world, but specially that of the United States, was important for Meles and for the opposition.

The first official reaction from the United States came from Sean McCormack, spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State. In his briefings on November 2nd, a day after Meles’s murderous spree began, speaking for the government of the United States, McCormack told the assembled reporters that:

“We deplore the use of violence and the deliberate and synical attempt to invoke violence in a misguided attempt to resolve political differences. We call on the opposition to refrain from inciting civil disobedience during this time of heightened tension.”

The statement was stunning in its unusual undiplomatic clarity and brevity. It was devastating in its attack of the people of Ethiopia for aspiring to the innocent ideal of democracy. It was a complete and an unconditional endorsement of what Meles had done. Never mind that he had also had a similar episode of street killings some four months earlier over this same election. Never mind that the confrontation between the people and their government was still unfolding. The Ethiopian people were told that to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right of assembly in a peaceful manner was to provoke the other side into violence. The opposition was told that a call for a stay at home strike was a cynical and deplorable attempt to incite the other side into violence. Meles was told to go for broke. And for the rest of the week he did.

The continued killings in Addis did not rate any mention at the November 3rd press briefings McCormack gave at the State Department. When the issue resurfaced in the November 4th briefings, McCormack stated that the U.S. continues to urge both the government and the opposition “to resolve whatever differences they may have through peaceful means”. But he continued to insinuate that the guilty party was the opposition. He reported that “it furthers no one's cause to try to manipulate situations in order to provoke a violent reaction. We think that peaceful dialogue is the way to resolve what is in fact a political issue.” I rate this as less abrasive and less dismissing of the opposition but still pointing the finger of guilt in their direction. He also said that “anybody who might have been arrested in these demonstrations for a political reason should be released immediately (and those) accused of acts of violence in the demonstrations (should be) granted the full rights under the judicial system that they have a speedy hearing of their cases and that those cases proceed in a transparent manner.” While this is a further lowering of the rhetoric against the opposition, what followed was an even more interesting interjection. McCormack reported that “Under Secretary Burns reiterated our call to establish an independent commission and investigate the demonstrations, including those on June 8th, in which dozens of people were killed.”

Of course by then the carnage had spread to the rest of the country. Perhaps that is what gave Washington pause. Perhaps Washington had bought into Meles’s lies that the opposition’s support is limited just to Addis Ababa. The foreign press was actually calling Addis the opposition strong hold. It is likely that the spread of the resistance to Awassa in the South and Bahir Dar, Gonder and Dessie in the North and Dire Dawa in the East changed Washington’s mind. Whatever the cause, that last one – call for an independent commission to investigate these killings as well as the killings of June 8th -- was a definite change.

As though trying to set some sort of record, the killings continued. After the 3rd, the killings took place primarily outside of Addis. If words mean anything, the international community was finally beginning to pay attention to Ethiopia’s travails. First it was Europe alone that had it right. But soon, the U.S. joined the EU in a declaring "We urgently call upon all political parties to desist from further violence and to abide by the rule of law,” Never mind that one side engages in violence with heavily armed storm troopers, armored personnel carriers and snipers and the other side engages in violence by refusing to accept the authority of a tyrant. At the worst, you might have kids throwing stones. But, the joint statement was still progress in that it is tacitly asking the murderers to stop murdering.

Yet I must admit that I felt a small knot in my belly when I read that last part about abiding by the rule of law. Those who authored that declaration knew that one side makes the law on the fly and flaunts the law when it does not like it. The other side fears nothing more than the law. So, I was not sure if that statement was not meant to provide another cover for their favorite African leader.

The joint declaration also backs McCormack’s call for “An independent investigation of the deaths and injuries arising from recent events and the events in June” but left it to Meles (I assume) to establish the independent commission. That of course is pure cynicism. Of course the difficult process issues were left unsaid. Who is to appoint this independent body and who is to take part in it? What and who is to be investigated when the answer is already known. On May 16, one person assumed command of all security forces, mapped out the deployment of these forces and decided on the rules of engagement. The rules of engagement on June 8 and during the first week of November amounted to shoot for maximum impact. Shoot to kill. Shoot live ammo. Forget the soft stuff such as crowd control. The objective was to intimidate and cow-down the population. So what is there to investigate? Perhaps it is to find an escape goat. On the aftermath of the June killings, the Federal Police Commissioner had meant to provide a helpful explanation when he reported that the Agazi army was not trained in crowed control and hence the death. But, alas, that implied that Meles should not have had the army play police and so he was told to be quiet. So I must ask what poor soul is going to be dirtied by this fake exercise that Meles will set up which has a predetermined outcome?

Then came word from Meles himself. He was caught in the glare of European media and forced to answer questions about these killings. His response was vintage Meles. "It was not a normal demonstration," Meles said while attending a conference convened by German President Horst Koehler. "And I don't want to justify it when policemen get in a panic, but I can understand it when there are people throwing hand grenades and using guns."

Never mind that the last part about throwing grenades and using guns is entirely made up, but what kind of police force do we have here? So according to Meles the police panicked on June 8th. They panicked in the Merkato and Piassa on the 2nd of November. They panicked all across Addis on the 3rd. They panicked in Addis and Bahir Dar on the 4th. They panicked in Debre Markos, Gonder, and Dessie, and Dire Dawa, and Awassa and Arba Minich on the 5th. They Panicked in Debre Birhan on the 6th. They are panicking in Dangila and Northern Gonder today. They may panic yet again all over Ethiopia tomorrow and the day after.

What kind of a police force do we have here, any way? Well of course we don’t have a police force trained in crowd control. We did not have a police force deployed at all. What we have instead is an army trained to dispense maximum punishment on the enemy. This army has been set on its own people. What we have is what the ever so clever Meles set to motion. The army was told that the enemy is no longer at the border but among us. The enemy is not an alien people but their veryown brothers who have turned treasonous. The army was then ordered to do what they were trained for…engage the enemy for maximum effect…shoot live bullets into crowds because the crowd is the enemy.

Of course it was not a normal demonstration. There was never a demonstration at all but ordinary people going about their ordinary daily chores provoked into confrontation so that the ever so clever Meles could use maximum force to intimidate the people not to take part in a demonstration which was scheduled for sometime in the future.

And what is this thing about "We regret the death but it was not a normal demonstration"? Does he regret the loss life? Heck, no! To him all life is expendable in the pursuit of absolute power. One only need to go back and view that horrendous interview he gave the BBC’s Hard Talk program. The reporter tried really hard to get this ever so clever man to express remorse at the loss of life. Only on the very last prodding did he notice how incredulous the reporter was at his refusal to express remorse at the loss of life. Well he has learned his lessons. They say he is a quick study. So he said “we regret the death”. Note that he did not say I regret but we regret as in we the people or we the party or we the government. Furthermore, note that he did not just say “we regret”. No, no, no. “We regret…but it was not a normal demonstration”. In his mind this killing spree that has been going on for 6 days and counting is justifiable because this was not a “normal demonstration”.

What saddens me is that the masses of people, farmers from Gore to Gode merchants of Mekelle to Moyale had actually finally bought into the alien notion that democracy is both a desirable and attainable arrangement for organizing public life in Ethiopia. The other casualty of Meles’s killing spree is the slow death of hope and of faith in the possibilities of a democratic order.