TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL
(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma
"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)
"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994
"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)
"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).
The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.
An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.
That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.
The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.
The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!
The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.
The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.
The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE
Africans may be miserable and subjected to poverty but they are on the whole nice people forever thinking of the welfare of others even in crazy times when they may be forced to indulge in a genocide or cut arms and legs with machetes. It is a dour and grim world we live in and so the Africans' untiring attempt to make us laugh now and then should be appreciated.
From the land of the Sudan, where once idle chiefs ordered a man to marry a female goat and warmed the heart of may a racist, came the indecent trousers show. A Sudanese woman, Loubna Hussein, working as a journalist wit the UN was arrested because she was wearing a trouser in public and it was deemed indecent. The world which did not know that the stiff necked fundamentalist regime has been flogging women on the basis of their clothes was surprised at first and then amused. What makes a trouser indecent? Tightness? Colour? What? We all know the Sudan has grave problems in its hands. The regime has to make sure its killing spree continues in Darfur and that does require effort (not every lazy regime can handle a genocide!), that the impending secession of the South does not materialize, that the starving millions get enough food--huge tasks, big priorities. But, the generals took time out to give us the trousers show, dragging a brave woman to court and sentencing her to prison or fine (flogging left out this time--too much world attention). The dynasty or succession show presented to the world by Syria and North Korea was justifiably taken away by Africa for the enjoyment of all. Eyadema of Togo left power to his son, Kabila senior to Kabila junior in what was Zaire and now Ali Bongo of Gabon is succeeding his corrupt father. "Monarchy-- republics" are in vogue and up North Mubarek is coordinating his own similar show and Gadafi may very well leave his place to Seif Al Islam, his son. Funny shows.
Talk of Gadafi and the showman in Tripoli held a big bash to which African "kings and chiefs" in their colourful dresses were invited over to declare once again Brother Moamar Gadafi the King of Kings of Africa. He was given a throne as a gift (among other offerings) and he wore huge gold rings and a necklace. After a heavy meal quite a few of the tribal chiefs and so called kings napped as Gadafi spoke, but no the show still went on and tried to surpass Bokassa's coronation as a central African Napoleon some decades back. The funny show aside, Gadafi is no fool. He has used his oil to buy the old British Empire and to make it bend to his wills, to release the alleged Lockerbie bomber and then to ridicule itself by claiming it did that on humanitarian grounds only. From Somalia, we got the funny event of terrorists of Al Shabab buying arms from the alleged enemy, the Transitional government led by Sheikh Ahmed. The arms come from Uganda bought and paid for by America. Once again our wily neighbours are being supplied with arms by their own enemy, Washington, and the naivety of the often arrogant American officials makes us laugh. In Ethiopia, the often unfunny despotic regime of Meles Zenawi came up with its own Orwellian joke banning the word cholera and baptizing it instead (very many thousands even in the capital are afflicted and hundreds are dying even in the capital Addis Abeba) as "Atet" or dangerous or fast watery diarrhoea. No doctor can use the C word or would face jail and the routine beating. This has given ideas to other tyrants to re baptize killer diseases and make them appear benign or innocuous. Ugandans used to call AIDS "slim" but some are now considering calling it "severe diet syndrome (SDS), giving the idea that the loss of weight is linked to fanatical dieting "like the ones engaged in by some models. Malaria can be renamed Saturday Night Fever and so on.
Cameroon's Biya spent 400,000 US dollars per night for hotel rooms and services fee
(the average Cameroonian earns a dollar a day) but his spokesmen retaliated with a
"he has been allocated the money and he can spend it as he pleases" thereby making everyone--including Cameroonians--laugh. Don't be jealous! Who gave him all this money to spend? Bad question, just laugh and enjoy the noble gesture of our tyrants who spend so much money to maintain our prestige in foreign lands (where God knows why they still think we are poor and begging for help!) and give us the chance to enjoy by proxy. The latest joke on the streets of Addis Abeba is that the tyrant Meles will win the 2010 general election hands down ( he lost the last one but stayed in power killing and jailing those who cried foul) because of millions of hens and chicken will vote for him as he raised the price of a hen to 80 Birr (they used to cost less than ten Birr in the past) and millions were not able to afford them for the kill come the Ethiopian new year (September 11) and the chicken and hen folk are elated. A South African boy, who did not know of Idi Amin who had at least 33 children, answered the question "where do babies come from?" with: "they come from Jacob Zuma" (who has 18 children by the latest count). The problem with Africans, if you want to call it that, is that they are an open book, not hiding details of their personal lives. Many a European and American have concubines and very may children out of wedlock but silence is the edict on the fact. Not Africans who flaunt their peccadilloes. Idi Amin paraded his wives and very many children, the old Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya dragged his wife, Mama Ngina, to a public forum so that she can testify he may be old but was as active as cock It was all before the blue pill). In all cases, we supplied the fun; we let those who think we are savages and bizarre have the laugh at our expense. We told the world we married goats, believed in traditional witch doctors (who consulted bones instead of the computer), declared an arrogant Arab colonel king of kings, denied diseases their existence by giving them benign names, ignored the existence of famine, elected again and again pour own tormentors, like to slaughter one another for nothing, and that our riches are there for the taking. The world laughed at us. We were useful, we are useful.
An acquaintance of mine I shall call Professor Mendal (a combination of the names of there educated Ethiopian fools) suggests that Africans can get back at their tyrants by laughing at them. The run of the mill African dictator takes himself very seriously and has very many laws dealing severely with any lese majeste. You cannot laugh at he tyrants who can only laugh at the Nation at will. The practice of laughing at the tyrants, of not taking them seriously at all, of ignoring their edicts, of roaring with laughter at their endless antics will surely drive them crazy. Idi Amin stole the people's laughter and enjoyed his own fun and aggravated the misery of the people. Take our constipated looking tyrants ranging from Kagame and Meles to Ngueso and Dos Santos and imagine what being laughed at or being ridiculed will do them. We can also laugh at the opposition and give them a taste of reality. Back in the early and mid seventies Algeria's Boumedienne (he hardly ever smiled out of choice and not because he had crooked teeth) played at being revolutionary and invited dozens of self declared liberation fronts to Algiers. One of these was a self declared Ashanti prince who brought over a political program which had an introduction, his photo, other books written by the author and a long article on the personality of the "prince revolutionary" with a final call foe the then president of Ghana, Busia, to resign (because "you are a sophist") and concludes by stating if Busia does not resign the Ghanaian army should overthrow him via a coup d'etat. A curious political program in which the self declared prince states that he met Busia and the [president suspected he was a roving agent of Nkrumah ("which I was not") or a "big personality disguised as a common man"("which I was"). Such funny "rebels "and "Marxist- Leninist- Lumumbist " con men from the Congo are no longer around. Politics has become boring and the politicians humourless. That is why the African should laugh at those oppressing them and at those who declare themselves their liberators but are caricatures of those in power. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.
Africans may be miserable and subjected to poverty but they are on the whole nice people forever thinking of the welfare of others even in crazy times when they may be forced to indulge in a genocide or cut arms and legs with machetes. It is a dour and grim world we live in and so the Africans' untiring attempt to make us laugh now and then should be appreciated.
From the land of the Sudan, where once idle chiefs ordered a man to marry a female goat and warmed the heart of may a racist, came the indecent trousers show. A Sudanese woman, Loubna Hussein, working as a journalist wit the UN was arrested because she was wearing a trouser in public and it was deemed indecent. The world which did not know that the stiff necked fundamentalist regime has been flogging women on the basis of their clothes was surprised at first and then amused. What makes a trouser indecent? Tightness? Colour? What? We all know the Sudan has grave problems in its hands. The regime has to make sure its killing spree continues in Darfur and that does require effort (not every lazy regime can handle a genocide!), that the impending secession of the South does not materialize, that the starving millions get enough food--huge tasks, big priorities. But, the generals took time out to give us the trousers show, dragging a brave woman to court and sentencing her to prison or fine (flogging left out this time--too much world attention). The dynasty or succession show presented to the world by Syria and North Korea was justifiably taken away by Africa for the enjoyment of all. Eyadema of Togo left power to his son, Kabila senior to Kabila junior in what was Zaire and now Ali Bongo of Gabon is succeeding his corrupt father. "Monarchy-- republics" are in vogue and up North Mubarek is coordinating his own similar show and Gadafi may very well leave his place to Seif Al Islam, his son. Funny shows.
Talk of Gadafi and the showman in Tripoli held a big bash to which African "kings and chiefs" in their colourful dresses were invited over to declare once again Brother Moamar Gadafi the King of Kings of Africa. He was given a throne as a gift (among other offerings) and he wore huge gold rings and a necklace. After a heavy meal quite a few of the tribal chiefs and so called kings napped as Gadafi spoke, but no the show still went on and tried to surpass Bokassa's coronation as a central African Napoleon some decades back. The funny show aside, Gadafi is no fool. He has used his oil to buy the old British Empire and to make it bend to his wills, to release the alleged Lockerbie bomber and then to ridicule itself by claiming it did that on humanitarian grounds only. From Somalia, we got the funny event of terrorists of Al Shabab buying arms from the alleged enemy, the Transitional government led by Sheikh Ahmed. The arms come from Uganda bought and paid for by America. Once again our wily neighbours are being supplied with arms by their own enemy, Washington, and the naivety of the often arrogant American officials makes us laugh. In Ethiopia, the often unfunny despotic regime of Meles Zenawi came up with its own Orwellian joke banning the word cholera and baptizing it instead (very many thousands even in the capital are afflicted and hundreds are dying even in the capital Addis Abeba) as "Atet" or dangerous or fast watery diarrhoea. No doctor can use the C word or would face jail and the routine beating. This has given ideas to other tyrants to re baptize killer diseases and make them appear benign or innocuous. Ugandans used to call AIDS "slim" but some are now considering calling it "severe diet syndrome (SDS), giving the idea that the loss of weight is linked to fanatical dieting "like the ones engaged in by some models. Malaria can be renamed Saturday Night Fever and so on.
Cameroon's Biya spent 400,000 US dollars per night for hotel rooms and services fee
(the average Cameroonian earns a dollar a day) but his spokesmen retaliated with a
"he has been allocated the money and he can spend it as he pleases" thereby making everyone--including Cameroonians--laugh. Don't be jealous! Who gave him all this money to spend? Bad question, just laugh and enjoy the noble gesture of our tyrants who spend so much money to maintain our prestige in foreign lands (where God knows why they still think we are poor and begging for help!) and give us the chance to enjoy by proxy. The latest joke on the streets of Addis Abeba is that the tyrant Meles will win the 2010 general election hands down ( he lost the last one but stayed in power killing and jailing those who cried foul) because of millions of hens and chicken will vote for him as he raised the price of a hen to 80 Birr (they used to cost less than ten Birr in the past) and millions were not able to afford them for the kill come the Ethiopian new year (September 11) and the chicken and hen folk are elated. A South African boy, who did not know of Idi Amin who had at least 33 children, answered the question "where do babies come from?" with: "they come from Jacob Zuma" (who has 18 children by the latest count). The problem with Africans, if you want to call it that, is that they are an open book, not hiding details of their personal lives. Many a European and American have concubines and very may children out of wedlock but silence is the edict on the fact. Not Africans who flaunt their peccadilloes. Idi Amin paraded his wives and very many children, the old Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya dragged his wife, Mama Ngina, to a public forum so that she can testify he may be old but was as active as cock It was all before the blue pill). In all cases, we supplied the fun; we let those who think we are savages and bizarre have the laugh at our expense. We told the world we married goats, believed in traditional witch doctors (who consulted bones instead of the computer), declared an arrogant Arab colonel king of kings, denied diseases their existence by giving them benign names, ignored the existence of famine, elected again and again pour own tormentors, like to slaughter one another for nothing, and that our riches are there for the taking. The world laughed at us. We were useful, we are useful.
An acquaintance of mine I shall call Professor Mendal (a combination of the names of there educated Ethiopian fools) suggests that Africans can get back at their tyrants by laughing at them. The run of the mill African dictator takes himself very seriously and has very many laws dealing severely with any lese majeste. You cannot laugh at he tyrants who can only laugh at the Nation at will. The practice of laughing at the tyrants, of not taking them seriously at all, of ignoring their edicts, of roaring with laughter at their endless antics will surely drive them crazy. Idi Amin stole the people's laughter and enjoyed his own fun and aggravated the misery of the people. Take our constipated looking tyrants ranging from Kagame and Meles to Ngueso and Dos Santos and imagine what being laughed at or being ridiculed will do them. We can also laugh at the opposition and give them a taste of reality. Back in the early and mid seventies Algeria's Boumedienne (he hardly ever smiled out of choice and not because he had crooked teeth) played at being revolutionary and invited dozens of self declared liberation fronts to Algiers. One of these was a self declared Ashanti prince who brought over a political program which had an introduction, his photo, other books written by the author and a long article on the personality of the "prince revolutionary" with a final call foe the then president of Ghana, Busia, to resign (because "you are a sophist") and concludes by stating if Busia does not resign the Ghanaian army should overthrow him via a coup d'etat. A curious political program in which the self declared prince states that he met Busia and the [president suspected he was a roving agent of Nkrumah ("which I was not") or a "big personality disguised as a common man"("which I was"). Such funny "rebels "and "Marxist- Leninist- Lumumbist " con men from the Congo are no longer around. Politics has become boring and the politicians humourless. That is why the African should laugh at those oppressing them and at those who declare themselves their liberators but are caricatures of those in power. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL
(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma
"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)
"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994
"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)
"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).
The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.
An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.
That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.
The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.
The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!
The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.
The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.
The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.
(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma
"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)
"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994
"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)
"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).
The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.
An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.
That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.
The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.
The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!
The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.
The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.
The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)