BEGGING 101
I am sure there are a lot of people who think that begging needs no training, all you have to do is look miserly (which you will look if reduced to that state of starvation and stress or anxiety anyway), roll your eyes, and beg. How wrong they are! Begging is an art like all other such callings, it needs training and expertise and the recent report that in one Indian village such a beggars' school exists has highlighted the necessity of stopping the amateur beggars in Africa, a continent known for its ultra professional beggars.
In the good old days you could just beg (have pity on me oh passer by, I am starving!) and tug at he hearts of otherwise disinterested citizens. Modern times have hardened the ordinary human being; pity is a scarce commodity, giving help turned into a business unto itself. Consider the number of charity organizations and NGOs around the world (more than seventy in Addis Ababa dealing with the thriving business of child adoption) and the point becomes clear. Begging has become a competitive business, cut throat all the way, very capitalist. You can't have the millionaire without the beggar. One begs the other, the contrast is all. Beggars have to be professional, modern, savvy-- the times require this. In Egypt, India, Ethiopia and other places professionalism has reached the level where a beggar can rent a child for a day; organize an open bleeding wound to expose to appear pitiable and very wretched. The hard hearts need shocks, in the Indian school of begging children are taught how to sound and appear miserable while in places like Ethiopia there is really no need of training for this--we are very miserable.
Professional begging has now become as African as cassava, foufou. matoke, ugali and Injera. Any African tyrant worthy of this name is first of all a beggar par excellence, the only difference he has with the beggar on the street is that he lives in the palace or State House. Those who refused to beg from the Mau Mau, to the "NO" man Sekou Toure, the Amilcar Cabrals, Netos and Machels--where are they now? Those who opted beg had a better end---some ruled for long like Houphet or Bongo senior, Mobutu or Kamuzu. They had the art of begging down to a capital B. One of the main tenets of professional begging is for the beggar not to exhibit inferiority. The assertive beggar is the successful one. The begging tyrant hoards millions, drives posh cars, lives in palaces and yet treks to the West to beg. But, before such pilgrimages and hajjes are made there is a dangerous animal to kill and it is called humiliation. The beggar should never feel this thing called humiliation. The people may be starving, the capital city may be stinking to the seven plus heavens, the oil millions may have disappeared down into the tyrant's secret bank accounts abroad and hundreds of thousands of starving children may be sleeping on the streets but, as we say in Ethiopia, he must wash his eye with salt and beg. The beggar artist called Meles Zenawi for example begged the West for food aid for the famine stricken millions by boldly accusing the West of not delivering food aid in time. If the young African girl called Dambisa Mayo riles against foreign aid, the fruit of begging, it is because she knew not poverty and the need to beg as she came from a well to do family. The artist beggar must be adept at spinning captivating stories--extending the palm and wailing for help is of no use. Have a story line, drama and suspense, falling down the ladder, endurance and suffering and spin it with good presentation skills. Make the donor part of the operation--give and you shall receive. That is why donors give our tyrants money after money and take back quite a big part of it back while the tyrant gets a considerable sum to add to his coffers. Why should the World Bank give Meles Zenawi and other dictator millions? Surely, it is not because they tell the Bank grim tales of human rights violations, broad daylight massacres, concentration camps and war mongering. The World Bank and the IMF, or the donors in general, do like cruel dictators but they do not like to be told of this in public. They want lying beggars. I once saw in one American city a homeless person with a begging bowl in front of him and a written sign which stated "No need to lie: it's for the drinks". Many a kind elderly person passed him by, angry. Few donors want the truth. Likewise, the tyrant beggar cannot openly claim I am begging for money to steal or to buy arms with. He must spin a convincing story of worth, combining arrogance (make them feel guilty with neo colonial and imperialism references if need be) with a we are going to perish like flies if you do not fork some millions over and he must convince the donors who instinctively wonder "what is in it for us." The beggar must learn to share.
No country is FOB (Free of Beggars) and one of the countries teeming with beggars, India, is trying to use repressive measures to clean Delhi from its thousands of beggars before the October 2010 Commonwealth games. This country touted as a democracy and still practicing the caste system that has rendered millions untouchable and without rights is using courts in vans and trucks to send beggars to detention centers and prisons. Such a round up was also tried by Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Arap Moi in Kenya and their attempt to monopolize begging by eliminating the street beggars has failed miserably. If the top man begs the white man the ordinary folk can beg from the black man or woman. It is a desperate situation and in downtown Nairobi enterprising street kids cover themselves with human excrement and threaten office going women to throw some at them unless they give them a few shillings. This aggressive begging has proved effective. Meles Zenawi at the G20 meetings tried to look as one of the donors or the big countries giving us a good example of the professional beggar without any notion of humility. Profitable as it is, begging has branched out and become a nation wide profession. Some expose their wounds and deformities as in the past while others perform, sing or stand as stone statues to beg. The latter do get more money but begging 101 also comes along with teaching stealing expertise as our tyrants have taught us over the years. Beg and steal go together--show me an African tyrant who begs for help from the West but does not steal from it or the people. The tyrants are so in it that they steal elections and innocent lives too.
The beggar is a pauper who has no money and begs for it. And the beggar is also the one who takes the money that is not his and in this definition we can bring in the tyrants and the corrupt ministers like the British MPs who were actors of the recent scandal of appropriating public money fraudulently and illegally. They really do not need money but they cannot kick the begging monkey off their back. Mobutu, Bongo, Meles, Moi, the list is long of those who have become rich by begging and stealing but still continue to beg. They have so crowded the field that the paupers and poor people in need of help are edged out, rounded up, harassed and jailed. It is a tough world out there. The beggar's school in India teaches how to overcome this and survive in the face of big and voracious beggars called ministers and leaders. The millions of beggars in Africa do need such a school. Can India help instead of taking over our lands and riches just like China and the West?
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 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.
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.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Time to Brand them All
TIME TO BRAND THEM ALL
Hama Tuma
There is a time to die and a time to live (in Africa there is always more time to die) but there is also a time to brand. Cattle owners and slave drivers did it. The Nazis did it on Jews. Meles Zenawi's guerrillas used the scythe to singe and brand their innocent victims. Branding was in for long and may be due for a comeback if we are to heed the advice of a Swazi member of parliament. He demanded that people with AIDS be branded so that their potential victims get a forewarning as they are being prepared for a dangerous foreplay. An interesting idea, to say the least.
But the Swazi MP could not withstand the hue and cry by Swazi men and had to withdraw the suggestion. Swazi Member of Parliament and gospel singer, Pastor Timothy Myeni, has now blamed the devil for suggesting at an MPs' workshop, that there should be a law making it "compulsory to test for HIV" and that people testing positive should be "branded on the buttocks". Here is a news report on his retraction:
"The devil has trapped me so that he celebrates that, from a Christian, such an uncalled for statement has come out. I am very sincere. I am very sorry. I understand very well that this was a blunder", said Pastor Myeni at a media conference, in Johannesburg.
"There are infants who get infected in the womb or during birth. Does he want HIV-positive infants to be branded also? What does he say about rape survivors?", asked one angry official without explaining if he was talking of women or men rape victims and why the branding should not involve babies with Aids. Myeni has retracted but his was an interesting suggestion if anything. Swaziland is a country where a young king marries young maidens and carelessly spends the country's meagre resources over cars and palaces for himself and his women. His 13 wives shop in Dubai most of the time and his birthday parties cost millions while the Aids afflicted people suffer for lack of drugs. He ordered the Swazi girls and women not to have sex for five years, not to wear miniskirts and long pants and then goes on to hold the so called Reed Dance ceremony during which more than 50,000 bare breasted and scantily clothed young girls vie to be the absolute monarch's next wife--for the money and prestige of course. The king, Mswati III, uses this ceremony to acquire young maidens as his wives. Shouldn't such a person be branded on both his buttocks as a profligate, polygamist and tyrant? MP Myeni's branding idea could very well have been an idea whose time has come but he was cowardly and threw it on and to the Devil.
To begin with, there is no reason why the branding should be for Aids carriers alone and why it should only be done on the behinds. If branding as a warning and as ID catches on, it can be used for tyrants, embezzlers, official thieves, decadent politicians, "genociders", mass killers and more. Imagine the corrupt tyrants with a big THIEF brand on their foreheads. They will never show their ugly faces in public. The brutal military regime in Ethiopia did try its own sort of branding when it unleashed the Red Terror against its opponents (mainly the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party) and nailed an "I am a counterrevolutionary" placard on the foreheads of the murdered EPRP followers. It did not catch on because the brander was the one that had to be branded and exposed while, on the other hand, popular branding by people on the tyrants can catch on. There is branding and there is branding and the Nazi numbers branding is out of date unless we insist on branding Sassou Ngueso and his likes No 1 Thief. African tyrants who like to be called No 1 Patriot and No 1 Genius could deserve to be called number one Despots and Robbers. Branding the forehead may not also be very effective given that fact that with fundamentalism spreading not only women but also bearded fanatical men cover their foreheads. The hands can also be covered with Michael Jackson gloves. Thus, where to brand becomes a problem.
Lest some ill intentioned people think that the Swazi pastor is one more African savage advocating a cruel act let me say that branding people is an old practice of the Western civilizations. Romans branded even thieves with the letter F and burning people with iron was also considered punishment. The Greeks did burn and brand. Res servus est, the slave was a thing, a biological entity somewhere there with any ordinary livestock who had to be dehumanized to make it know its place. Following the Romans and Greeks, Americans and Europeans branded their slaves/in most cases black/ just as they branded their cattle. The practice of branding did spread to affect deserters, adulterers, blasphemers and prisoners. Branding was legal in ancient laws of England. "The British Mutiny Act of 1858 provided that the court martial may, in addition to any other penalty, order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 inch below the armpit, with the letter "D", such letter to be not less than an inch long. In 1879 this was abolished". The
Dutch, the Spaniards and the Peruvians were cruel slave holders often joining branding to neutering of the slaves. Yet, there are those who argued that branding gave the slave a sense of pride, it was proof he belonged to someone, had an identity and was not a "nobody" Nowadays, the border police take our photos and finger prints so that no rejected modern slave flees to another country and becomes an accepted immigrant (or slave). It must be said that not all branding, or facial marking, was done involuntarily. Many Africans cut their faces with knives to carve "railways lines" or designs to show their ethnic identity and/ or even social status. You brand yourself and you differ and, as one Nigerian put it, based on that difference you slaughter or get slaughtered.
The problematic of where to brand lingers. Below the armpits is a hidden place where many eyes do not get the chance or the will to go. The Swazi pastor suggested the buttocks but that is only visible if one takes of trousers and pants-- and even poorly clad Africans manage to cover that part somehow. In other parts, the Burka--type covers frustrate any branding on any part of the face. The shame is thus hidden, the ID not seen. The Swazi pastor also made the mistake of assuming the males in his place will be nude when they spread the virus with diligence and cruelty. Given the fact that people tattoo themselves anywhere and everywhere with meaningless designs and indecipherable characters the place for the ideal place for the revealing and exposing branding may not be found that easily. Can the Devil help? Maybe, hopefully. But branding is an idea whose time has come. Imagine our joy if we could see the despots that have made our life miserable carved up with a big DD on their foreheads: Decadent Despots. Time to carve them up, time to brand them all. R for racists, B for those disciples of Bush and his butcheries, T for tyrants, MM for mass murderers, G for those who commit genocide, E for embezzlers, S for stooges, C for the corrupts, and a big MO for monsters, scoundrels, Talibans, ruffians, marauding militias, sick fanatics, mad mullahs, the Joseph Konys and other such disasters who have made the world a terrible place to live in.
Hama Tuma
There is a time to die and a time to live (in Africa there is always more time to die) but there is also a time to brand. Cattle owners and slave drivers did it. The Nazis did it on Jews. Meles Zenawi's guerrillas used the scythe to singe and brand their innocent victims. Branding was in for long and may be due for a comeback if we are to heed the advice of a Swazi member of parliament. He demanded that people with AIDS be branded so that their potential victims get a forewarning as they are being prepared for a dangerous foreplay. An interesting idea, to say the least.
But the Swazi MP could not withstand the hue and cry by Swazi men and had to withdraw the suggestion. Swazi Member of Parliament and gospel singer, Pastor Timothy Myeni, has now blamed the devil for suggesting at an MPs' workshop, that there should be a law making it "compulsory to test for HIV" and that people testing positive should be "branded on the buttocks". Here is a news report on his retraction:
"The devil has trapped me so that he celebrates that, from a Christian, such an uncalled for statement has come out. I am very sincere. I am very sorry. I understand very well that this was a blunder", said Pastor Myeni at a media conference, in Johannesburg.
"There are infants who get infected in the womb or during birth. Does he want HIV-positive infants to be branded also? What does he say about rape survivors?", asked one angry official without explaining if he was talking of women or men rape victims and why the branding should not involve babies with Aids. Myeni has retracted but his was an interesting suggestion if anything. Swaziland is a country where a young king marries young maidens and carelessly spends the country's meagre resources over cars and palaces for himself and his women. His 13 wives shop in Dubai most of the time and his birthday parties cost millions while the Aids afflicted people suffer for lack of drugs. He ordered the Swazi girls and women not to have sex for five years, not to wear miniskirts and long pants and then goes on to hold the so called Reed Dance ceremony during which more than 50,000 bare breasted and scantily clothed young girls vie to be the absolute monarch's next wife--for the money and prestige of course. The king, Mswati III, uses this ceremony to acquire young maidens as his wives. Shouldn't such a person be branded on both his buttocks as a profligate, polygamist and tyrant? MP Myeni's branding idea could very well have been an idea whose time has come but he was cowardly and threw it on and to the Devil.
To begin with, there is no reason why the branding should be for Aids carriers alone and why it should only be done on the behinds. If branding as a warning and as ID catches on, it can be used for tyrants, embezzlers, official thieves, decadent politicians, "genociders", mass killers and more. Imagine the corrupt tyrants with a big THIEF brand on their foreheads. They will never show their ugly faces in public. The brutal military regime in Ethiopia did try its own sort of branding when it unleashed the Red Terror against its opponents (mainly the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party) and nailed an "I am a counterrevolutionary" placard on the foreheads of the murdered EPRP followers. It did not catch on because the brander was the one that had to be branded and exposed while, on the other hand, popular branding by people on the tyrants can catch on. There is branding and there is branding and the Nazi numbers branding is out of date unless we insist on branding Sassou Ngueso and his likes No 1 Thief. African tyrants who like to be called No 1 Patriot and No 1 Genius could deserve to be called number one Despots and Robbers. Branding the forehead may not also be very effective given that fact that with fundamentalism spreading not only women but also bearded fanatical men cover their foreheads. The hands can also be covered with Michael Jackson gloves. Thus, where to brand becomes a problem.
Lest some ill intentioned people think that the Swazi pastor is one more African savage advocating a cruel act let me say that branding people is an old practice of the Western civilizations. Romans branded even thieves with the letter F and burning people with iron was also considered punishment. The Greeks did burn and brand. Res servus est, the slave was a thing, a biological entity somewhere there with any ordinary livestock who had to be dehumanized to make it know its place. Following the Romans and Greeks, Americans and Europeans branded their slaves/in most cases black/ just as they branded their cattle. The practice of branding did spread to affect deserters, adulterers, blasphemers and prisoners. Branding was legal in ancient laws of England. "The British Mutiny Act of 1858 provided that the court martial may, in addition to any other penalty, order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 inch below the armpit, with the letter "D", such letter to be not less than an inch long. In 1879 this was abolished". The
Dutch, the Spaniards and the Peruvians were cruel slave holders often joining branding to neutering of the slaves. Yet, there are those who argued that branding gave the slave a sense of pride, it was proof he belonged to someone, had an identity and was not a "nobody" Nowadays, the border police take our photos and finger prints so that no rejected modern slave flees to another country and becomes an accepted immigrant (or slave). It must be said that not all branding, or facial marking, was done involuntarily. Many Africans cut their faces with knives to carve "railways lines" or designs to show their ethnic identity and/ or even social status. You brand yourself and you differ and, as one Nigerian put it, based on that difference you slaughter or get slaughtered.
The problematic of where to brand lingers. Below the armpits is a hidden place where many eyes do not get the chance or the will to go. The Swazi pastor suggested the buttocks but that is only visible if one takes of trousers and pants-- and even poorly clad Africans manage to cover that part somehow. In other parts, the Burka--type covers frustrate any branding on any part of the face. The shame is thus hidden, the ID not seen. The Swazi pastor also made the mistake of assuming the males in his place will be nude when they spread the virus with diligence and cruelty. Given the fact that people tattoo themselves anywhere and everywhere with meaningless designs and indecipherable characters the place for the ideal place for the revealing and exposing branding may not be found that easily. Can the Devil help? Maybe, hopefully. But branding is an idea whose time has come. Imagine our joy if we could see the despots that have made our life miserable carved up with a big DD on their foreheads: Decadent Despots. Time to carve them up, time to brand them all. R for racists, B for those disciples of Bush and his butcheries, T for tyrants, MM for mass murderers, G for those who commit genocide, E for embezzlers, S for stooges, C for the corrupts, and a big MO for monsters, scoundrels, Talibans, ruffians, marauding militias, sick fanatics, mad mullahs, the Joseph Konys and other such disasters who have made the world a terrible place to live in.
Obama and Africa:More of the Same
OBAMA AND AFRICA: MORE OF THE SAME
"An obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy" says a Russian proverb. In Amharic we say "kemogn dejaf mofer yikoretal" or "mogn indenegerut, beklo indasegerut". Those Ethiopians who hailed the Obama speech in Accra and rejoiced at the possibility of a new deal for Ethiopia and Africa thanks to Obama remind us of such obliging and dangerous fools.
Ours is a continent that had endured so many speeches of eloquence and style. African leaders have been mostly demagogic, we have heard it all. Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nyrere, Banda, Sekou Toure and more were moving speakers and yet we found out, much to our dismay, that words and realities are two different things. Well crafted words and flowery phrases do not a good policy make. Hence, it is inexcusable for Africans to be swayed by public speakers who shroud the real issues with self evident truths ("the future of Africa is up to Africans"--isn't it precisely to affirm this that Africans have been struggling?) and cover their dearth of knowledge with paternalist "you must do this" advice and veiled threats. At the end of the day, the Obama speech was a rehash of the old American policy towards Africa, all bones and no meat, and an expression of the continuing incapability of Washington to come to grips with the real problems of Africa. One wonders why some Africans beat the festive drums over the Obama Accra speech even though such drummers as Raila Odinga of Kenya do prove the point that "it is business as usual" for Africa's corrupt leaders. Obama did say once that his knowledge of African realities is equal to the knowledge of those who had occupied the White House seat before him--just imagine Reagan and Bush and even the Clinton fellow who hailed Meles, Kagame, Museveni,etc.. as democrats. Not very encouraging at all. Doing the ritual visit to the slave prisons is just a photo op that even Bush had done in Senegal and it is by now an empty symbolism from a country that has refused to pay due reparation for the slave trade.
Is Obama ending the misguided policies of Bush or extending them wrapped in demagogy? As Americans are wont to say: where is the beef? Is he showing us the money? That Obama's father was a Kenyan is neither here nor there as Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Johnnie Carson are African Americans/blacks/ and they did not hear the heartbeat of Africa at all. Colour and birth considerations aside, Obama is an American, elected to safeguard the interest of America in Africa and the whole world. Obama's vision of Africa is American and that of the ruling power holders of the big country. His refusal to acknowledge that Africa's woes are mostly the results of neo colonial plunder and machination is at the center of his failure to understand the woes of Africa. He said accusingly that the West did not cause the economic problems of Zimbabwe and the West has little to do with wars in which children become soldiers. What? Zimbabwe's economy was wrecked by embargoes, sanctions and sabotage by the West ever since Britain raged against Mugabe for taking action against white landowners. No one n the west cried foul when Mugabe was torching Matabele land to crush an insurgency. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone for one were involved in a diamond war in which Britain and even South Africa played a major part. Who were the allies of Charles Taylor? Who financed Renamo? UNITA? And the ongoing war in the Congo? Western mining companies like the AngloGold Ashanti corporation finance the militias wreaking havoc, recruiting children as soldiers and raping women in thousands. Obama harped on corruption and good governance in his attempt to attribute the blame on Africa itself but the reality shows us different. "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top," said Obama. Is this true? Absolutely not. The foreign companies actually want those scoundrels who can be bribed. From Lumumba to Nkrumah and more, nationalist African leaders have been victims of coups mostly engineered by the CIA and the West. Leaders that rig elections and repress voters enjoy American aid and backing. The butcher in Equatorial Guinea is sustained in power by American oil companies. President Nguema's stolen millions were stashed in Washington's Riggs Bank and Condoleezza Rice feted the tyrant. Western oil companies who ran after Africa's oil have been allies of the despots be it in the Congo, Gabon, Nigeria or Angola (for a good exposure of how these giant companies practically manipulate the tyrants and the governments do read Nicholas Shaxson's: Poisoned Wells--The Dirty Politics of African Oil ). And this affirmation by Obama that "we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments" or "no good governance no aid" is an old song crooned by Western leaders from Mitterrand to Blair to Clinton. Actually, American and Western aid had actually gone to despots, to apartheid South Africa, to Egypt's Mubarek, to Meles Zenawi, to corrupt Dos Santos in Angola, etc. Britain and France have also backed despots in their particular enclaves and as the competition from China (ruthlessly nationalist and arrogantly racist too) heats up the West is grovelling before the dictators in countries with oil and minerals. Foreign investment has thus been mainly in countries where scoundrel and thieves are in power. The issue of corruption is not also just an African internal affair as Obama wanted to imply but something that has been fanned and extended all over Africa by Western embassies and companies working intimately with African officials. Governments cannot skim 20% off the top if the Western companies were not in accord with them. Western investors hate honest and nationalist leaders (who overthrew and had Lumumba murdered? Allende? Mossadegh? Arbenz?) and are comfortable with corrupt rogues.
That is why Meles Zenawi is one of the usual guests of the G8 meetings and the very person picked by Tony Blair to head an African committee. Nigerian dictator's Abacha's stolen billions are still in British and other western banks. Meles Zenawi and his corrupt wife have hidden millions in Citibank. The eight African leaders recently invited to the G8 meeting are all corrupt and seven of the eight are leading countries considered not free by Freedom House itself. Ghana may fare better now than others but it is also rife with corruption. In the UN Development Index report, Ghana is not that glorious (among the 20 poorest--142nd while Kenya is 144th). Corruption flourishes in Africa with Western collaboration. Africa is wrecked by wars in most cases financed and fanned by the West as it chases its greed for oil and minerals to the detriment of Africans ( more than 4 million have died in the mineral war of the Congo). Obama talked of the need for a strong parliament, honest police force, independent judges, independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a civil society. Fine requirements. However, if development depends on good governance and if America will not help those who have not instituted good governance then one is at odds to explain the actual and real policies of America in support of despots all over the continent. This is why Obama's glossing over the damages of colonialism and neo colonialism grates and sprinkles salt on our wounds. Diseases and conflicts have ravaged the African continent but who is to really blame for that? Poverty is linked to the system; Ethiopia is suffering from famine not because its land is infertile. But who supports these regimes that impoverish the African people while opening up the country to the greedy western oil and mineral companies? Who is impoverishing African farmers by subsidizing its own farmers and making the African products cheap in the world market? Questions that Obama, like Bush, did not want to address at all.
There is the possibility that some hardened fools may still argue that all this was in the past and that things have changed now with Obama. Where and when? Besides repeating the usual (and mistaken) official diatribe against "genocide" in Darfur and terrorists in Somalia, has Obama really broken with the past? Let us take the Horn of Africa, a region we know much better than the American president. Somalia's intractable clan war was complicated by Washington when it decided to arm the hated warlords against those it called terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Like the WMD, it was said there were three or four top Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Somalia (they were never found) and the support to the venal warlords made the fanatics of the ICU appear better in the eyes of most Somalis. And then, Washington prompted Meles Zenawi to send in soldiers and actively supported the disastrous invasion which any Ethiopian would have told them was doomed to failure. The troops of Meles helped the Al Shabab gain more support, were forced to withdraw and Somalia is now in the pits with the fanatics in ascendance. And what is new American policy as concerns Somalia? Arming the so called moderates of the Transitional Government, paying Uganda and Djibouti (!!) for arms and training, fuming against terrorists, accusing Eritrea of arming the "terrorists". More of the same. The misguided notion of considering the Somali mess as part and parcel of the so called war against terror is very flawed. Let us take Ethiopia where a ruthless dictatorship is in place. Taking Obama's measures, it fails miserably to qualify as good governance: the parliament is rubber stamp and even the rubber is threadbare, the police force is brutal, corrupt and repressive, the judiciary is controlled by the State, civic society has been denied independent and vibrant existence, the free press is muzzled (Meles is named one of the worst predators of the free press), the private sector is stifled by the monopolistic economic firms of the ruling Tigrean front (TPLF). In 2005, the ruling front lost the general election but used violence to massacre more than 200 protestors, to jail thousands and to stay in power with the help of America and Britain. This repressive regime and its cold blooded head called Meles have remained to be the West's darlings and Mr Obama was sitting together with this murderer in the last G8 meeting. W cannot talk of change because the new Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, who recently visited Ethiopia, praised the anti people regime as an ally and as the one that has brought democracy to Ethiopia. There is no new policy, no new deal, no firm American stand against dictators and tyrants.
So, if we judge the Obama speech in Accra from the real and bitter realities of poverty, war, AIDS, corruption and sovereignty. that is if we ask did he say something new or has he heralded any change, the answer is no. The "future of Africa is up to Africans" is an refrain we have heard before so many times from Western leaders that do not waste time to forcefully take our sovereignty away. It is empty talk. To rile against poverty, corruption, the lack of good governance without mentioning the lion's share of the guilt and responsibility of the West is to bray at the moon and to hoodwink the victims. Talk of neo-colonial plunder, talk of oil companies robbing countries blind and backing tyrants and murderous militias, talk of subsidies that impoverish and debilitate African farmers, talk of taking real and concrete actions against tyrants and then we can listen. The West needs corrupt and repressive regimes in Africa for it to rob best the continent. President Obama should say no to this addiction, to this greed and craving of a junkie. Up to now, he has not done so. He is continuing the Bush policy incensing it with confusing speeches. Those Africans who imagine that "the end of tyranny is now" and that "with Obama in charge our sufferings will end" only prove the truth in the saying that a fool will laugh when he is drowning.
"An obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy" says a Russian proverb. In Amharic we say "kemogn dejaf mofer yikoretal" or "mogn indenegerut, beklo indasegerut". Those Ethiopians who hailed the Obama speech in Accra and rejoiced at the possibility of a new deal for Ethiopia and Africa thanks to Obama remind us of such obliging and dangerous fools.
Ours is a continent that had endured so many speeches of eloquence and style. African leaders have been mostly demagogic, we have heard it all. Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nyrere, Banda, Sekou Toure and more were moving speakers and yet we found out, much to our dismay, that words and realities are two different things. Well crafted words and flowery phrases do not a good policy make. Hence, it is inexcusable for Africans to be swayed by public speakers who shroud the real issues with self evident truths ("the future of Africa is up to Africans"--isn't it precisely to affirm this that Africans have been struggling?) and cover their dearth of knowledge with paternalist "you must do this" advice and veiled threats. At the end of the day, the Obama speech was a rehash of the old American policy towards Africa, all bones and no meat, and an expression of the continuing incapability of Washington to come to grips with the real problems of Africa. One wonders why some Africans beat the festive drums over the Obama Accra speech even though such drummers as Raila Odinga of Kenya do prove the point that "it is business as usual" for Africa's corrupt leaders. Obama did say once that his knowledge of African realities is equal to the knowledge of those who had occupied the White House seat before him--just imagine Reagan and Bush and even the Clinton fellow who hailed Meles, Kagame, Museveni,etc.. as democrats. Not very encouraging at all. Doing the ritual visit to the slave prisons is just a photo op that even Bush had done in Senegal and it is by now an empty symbolism from a country that has refused to pay due reparation for the slave trade.
Is Obama ending the misguided policies of Bush or extending them wrapped in demagogy? As Americans are wont to say: where is the beef? Is he showing us the money? That Obama's father was a Kenyan is neither here nor there as Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Johnnie Carson are African Americans/blacks/ and they did not hear the heartbeat of Africa at all. Colour and birth considerations aside, Obama is an American, elected to safeguard the interest of America in Africa and the whole world. Obama's vision of Africa is American and that of the ruling power holders of the big country. His refusal to acknowledge that Africa's woes are mostly the results of neo colonial plunder and machination is at the center of his failure to understand the woes of Africa. He said accusingly that the West did not cause the economic problems of Zimbabwe and the West has little to do with wars in which children become soldiers. What? Zimbabwe's economy was wrecked by embargoes, sanctions and sabotage by the West ever since Britain raged against Mugabe for taking action against white landowners. No one n the west cried foul when Mugabe was torching Matabele land to crush an insurgency. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone for one were involved in a diamond war in which Britain and even South Africa played a major part. Who were the allies of Charles Taylor? Who financed Renamo? UNITA? And the ongoing war in the Congo? Western mining companies like the AngloGold Ashanti corporation finance the militias wreaking havoc, recruiting children as soldiers and raping women in thousands. Obama harped on corruption and good governance in his attempt to attribute the blame on Africa itself but the reality shows us different. "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top," said Obama. Is this true? Absolutely not. The foreign companies actually want those scoundrels who can be bribed. From Lumumba to Nkrumah and more, nationalist African leaders have been victims of coups mostly engineered by the CIA and the West. Leaders that rig elections and repress voters enjoy American aid and backing. The butcher in Equatorial Guinea is sustained in power by American oil companies. President Nguema's stolen millions were stashed in Washington's Riggs Bank and Condoleezza Rice feted the tyrant. Western oil companies who ran after Africa's oil have been allies of the despots be it in the Congo, Gabon, Nigeria or Angola (for a good exposure of how these giant companies practically manipulate the tyrants and the governments do read Nicholas Shaxson's: Poisoned Wells--The Dirty Politics of African Oil ). And this affirmation by Obama that "we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments" or "no good governance no aid" is an old song crooned by Western leaders from Mitterrand to Blair to Clinton. Actually, American and Western aid had actually gone to despots, to apartheid South Africa, to Egypt's Mubarek, to Meles Zenawi, to corrupt Dos Santos in Angola, etc. Britain and France have also backed despots in their particular enclaves and as the competition from China (ruthlessly nationalist and arrogantly racist too) heats up the West is grovelling before the dictators in countries with oil and minerals. Foreign investment has thus been mainly in countries where scoundrel and thieves are in power. The issue of corruption is not also just an African internal affair as Obama wanted to imply but something that has been fanned and extended all over Africa by Western embassies and companies working intimately with African officials. Governments cannot skim 20% off the top if the Western companies were not in accord with them. Western investors hate honest and nationalist leaders (who overthrew and had Lumumba murdered? Allende? Mossadegh? Arbenz?) and are comfortable with corrupt rogues.
That is why Meles Zenawi is one of the usual guests of the G8 meetings and the very person picked by Tony Blair to head an African committee. Nigerian dictator's Abacha's stolen billions are still in British and other western banks. Meles Zenawi and his corrupt wife have hidden millions in Citibank. The eight African leaders recently invited to the G8 meeting are all corrupt and seven of the eight are leading countries considered not free by Freedom House itself. Ghana may fare better now than others but it is also rife with corruption. In the UN Development Index report, Ghana is not that glorious (among the 20 poorest--142nd while Kenya is 144th). Corruption flourishes in Africa with Western collaboration. Africa is wrecked by wars in most cases financed and fanned by the West as it chases its greed for oil and minerals to the detriment of Africans ( more than 4 million have died in the mineral war of the Congo). Obama talked of the need for a strong parliament, honest police force, independent judges, independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a civil society. Fine requirements. However, if development depends on good governance and if America will not help those who have not instituted good governance then one is at odds to explain the actual and real policies of America in support of despots all over the continent. This is why Obama's glossing over the damages of colonialism and neo colonialism grates and sprinkles salt on our wounds. Diseases and conflicts have ravaged the African continent but who is to really blame for that? Poverty is linked to the system; Ethiopia is suffering from famine not because its land is infertile. But who supports these regimes that impoverish the African people while opening up the country to the greedy western oil and mineral companies? Who is impoverishing African farmers by subsidizing its own farmers and making the African products cheap in the world market? Questions that Obama, like Bush, did not want to address at all.
There is the possibility that some hardened fools may still argue that all this was in the past and that things have changed now with Obama. Where and when? Besides repeating the usual (and mistaken) official diatribe against "genocide" in Darfur and terrorists in Somalia, has Obama really broken with the past? Let us take the Horn of Africa, a region we know much better than the American president. Somalia's intractable clan war was complicated by Washington when it decided to arm the hated warlords against those it called terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Like the WMD, it was said there were three or four top Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Somalia (they were never found) and the support to the venal warlords made the fanatics of the ICU appear better in the eyes of most Somalis. And then, Washington prompted Meles Zenawi to send in soldiers and actively supported the disastrous invasion which any Ethiopian would have told them was doomed to failure. The troops of Meles helped the Al Shabab gain more support, were forced to withdraw and Somalia is now in the pits with the fanatics in ascendance. And what is new American policy as concerns Somalia? Arming the so called moderates of the Transitional Government, paying Uganda and Djibouti (!!) for arms and training, fuming against terrorists, accusing Eritrea of arming the "terrorists". More of the same. The misguided notion of considering the Somali mess as part and parcel of the so called war against terror is very flawed. Let us take Ethiopia where a ruthless dictatorship is in place. Taking Obama's measures, it fails miserably to qualify as good governance: the parliament is rubber stamp and even the rubber is threadbare, the police force is brutal, corrupt and repressive, the judiciary is controlled by the State, civic society has been denied independent and vibrant existence, the free press is muzzled (Meles is named one of the worst predators of the free press), the private sector is stifled by the monopolistic economic firms of the ruling Tigrean front (TPLF). In 2005, the ruling front lost the general election but used violence to massacre more than 200 protestors, to jail thousands and to stay in power with the help of America and Britain. This repressive regime and its cold blooded head called Meles have remained to be the West's darlings and Mr Obama was sitting together with this murderer in the last G8 meeting. W cannot talk of change because the new Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, who recently visited Ethiopia, praised the anti people regime as an ally and as the one that has brought democracy to Ethiopia. There is no new policy, no new deal, no firm American stand against dictators and tyrants.
So, if we judge the Obama speech in Accra from the real and bitter realities of poverty, war, AIDS, corruption and sovereignty. that is if we ask did he say something new or has he heralded any change, the answer is no. The "future of Africa is up to Africans" is an refrain we have heard before so many times from Western leaders that do not waste time to forcefully take our sovereignty away. It is empty talk. To rile against poverty, corruption, the lack of good governance without mentioning the lion's share of the guilt and responsibility of the West is to bray at the moon and to hoodwink the victims. Talk of neo-colonial plunder, talk of oil companies robbing countries blind and backing tyrants and murderous militias, talk of subsidies that impoverish and debilitate African farmers, talk of taking real and concrete actions against tyrants and then we can listen. The West needs corrupt and repressive regimes in Africa for it to rob best the continent. President Obama should say no to this addiction, to this greed and craving of a junkie. Up to now, he has not done so. He is continuing the Bush policy incensing it with confusing speeches. Those Africans who imagine that "the end of tyranny is now" and that "with Obama in charge our sufferings will end" only prove the truth in the saying that a fool will laugh when he is drowning.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves
Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves
We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.
Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.
We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.
Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.
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