By Seman Fereja

A few weeks have now passed since Bemnetu and Andargachew posted their article supporting violent forms of struggle to advance the causes of democracy in Ethiopia. Since then both sides of the debate have put forward impassioned views supporting their respective cases. I believe it is time now to take stock of what transpired in these discussions so far and look for a way forward. The aim of this article is primarily thus.

Although I am a supporter of inclusion of violence in our struggles for democracy in Ethiopia, I would like to congratulate the proponents of ‘peaceful forms of struggle only’ for their impassioned love of peace and concern for the well being of the country. For those of us who can recall the moods and emotions of the mid and late 1970s, such a transformation of attitude towards violence is remarkable and deserves applause.

Even more, I believe that this passion for peace can be one of the seeds for the building blocks of the institutional safeguards against violence going wild and defeat its professed purposes. But, the condition of constructive engagement between the two sides, under the sole objective of advancing the cause of democracy in Ethiopia, will be a minimal requirement for the attainment of this objective. I will come to this issue in the later part of this article, after saying a few words regarding the issues that in my view may be obstacles for progress in these directions.

The proponents of peaceful form of struggle have raised several issues why violent forms of struggle shouldn’t be chosen, and they can broadly be summarised along the following lines:

1. peaceful struggle was seen to bear much fruit during the past two years than the armed struggles achieved during the past 30 years;
2. a civilised form of struggle should be peaceful;
3. it would be immoral to support armed struggles from comfortable living rooms in Europe and America;
4. the dynamics of war and conflict is so complex and likely to land us to where we started from, if not worse, as the experiences of previous armed movements can attest for;
5. armed struggle will devastate the country and cause more sufferings;
6. it will be next to impossible to beat woyane on the battle fields, given the current international situations;
7. The feasibility of launching armed struggles is remote, considering the inter-state relations in the neighbourhood of Ethiopia, unless we compromise our national interest for mere sake of seeing the back of woyane.

The last four points in the above enumeration are valid arguments that every one of us should give our best considerations to. In fact, I will be surprised if the proponents of violent forms of struggle hadn’t considered them in details well before publicising their stance on violence and peace. So, I hope that the original authors (or any group entertaining the idea of starting or conducting a movement incorporating violence as one of its means) will give us their views on these matters in time and engage us in another round of constructive debates.

This would leave us with the first three points, about which I have some concerns. I am concerned most about them, particularly because they look to me divisive and unhelpful in keeping the ‘democratic family’ united together even while engaged in constructive discussions. The main weakness these three arguments share in common, in my view, is that each one of them is based on premises or beliefs whose respective proponents uphold with self-righteousness, but are not shared by the opposite side. If these assertions were to be helpful for constructive debates, they should be shown to derive from the common sets of beliefs or understandings of the ‘democratic family’; or, efforts should be made to convince the opposite side to these beliefs prior to asserting them as truisms. Short of either of these, I am afraid such assertions are recipes to provoke polemics and cause the degradation of the debate to a circus from which only Woyane extracts laughter.

I will try to show why the premises for these three points may not be shared by the ‘democratic family’ at large, by challenging each one of them briefly.

1. About the peaceful struggle having born more fruit than armed struggles

It is stated that the struggle EPRP, OLF etc… have been waging for so long hasn’t led them to anywhere while the struggle waged by the diasporas in Europe and America has arguably ‘resulted’ in the release of the incarcerated Kinijit leaders in two years time.

My main problem with this line of argument is the incomparability of the scopes of the two sets of struggles. OLF and EPRP are struggling to oust Woyane from power, while Kinijit support groups were only pleading with western governments for Woyane’s courts of justice to observe Woyane’s own laws. Clearly, success in the safe streets of Washington, London & Brussels cannot in any way be indicative for the possibility of success on the streets of Addis Ababa, Awassa or Mekele.

In my view, the above observation by the proponents of ‘peaceful forms only’ should be a starting point for serious analysis by provoking questions like “why the struggles of EPRP, OLF, EPPF etc… haven’t succeeded so far? How was it possible that the diasporas’ struggle resulted in the release of the prisoners? Can this form of struggle be replicated in the streets and villages of Ethiopia for the purpose of democratising the country? If so, what would be required in order to do that?”

I will not attempt to dwell on these questions here, except a few comments on the scope of the diasporas’ peaceful struggles during the past two years. Needless to say, the release of the prisoners was made possible because of the influence USA had over Woyane, whose conduct had become despicably embarrassing to the super power whose incumbent leader started by evangelising freedom and liberty to the oppressed peoples of the world. The role of the diasporas’ struggle was to keep this embarrassment persistently in the limelight until a cost-benefit analysis would convince both Woyane and USA to choose the option of releasing the prisoners as beneficiary to both of them. Frankly speaking, the prisoners were released on terms most suitable for Woyane, and I don’t see reasons to be overjoyed about our achievements.1

This experience should by no means convince us to believe about a similar form of struggle to bear fruits when the objective may be shifted to the higher ideal of democratisation of the country. This is mainly because: 1) USA’s foreign policy is based on the preservation of global interests rather than adherence to humanist principles or international laws and a stance against Woyane on the part of USA would require the development of a situation which will be seen as affecting these vital interests adversely; 2) Woyane is likely to stand fast despite pressures from or possibilities of confrontations against USA, if the stakes become so high as to require the relinquishing of political power.

Of course, we should draw lessons from the failures of EPRP, OLF etc… But, that lesson definitely is not the virtue of peaceful struggle to lead to desired outcomes. If the right lessons are to be extracted from this experience, in my belief, we should start by asking “why is it that these movements haven’t delivered their goals despite such length of time having been spent in the struggles? “

If our analysis of the above question may lead us to the answer “because they chose armed struggles”, then proponents of armed struggles should mince their words. But, I very much doubt whether that answer can be an outcome a serious analysis.

2. About peaceful struggle being the only civilised form

The forms of struggle we choose are not merely determined by our tastes only, but predominantly by a multitude of circumstances constituting the situation we find ourselves in at a particular historical juncture. We may be of the highest refined tastes; but that cannot be a sufficient condition for us to practice our values, if our adversaries with whom we are fatefully entangled in a societal inter-relation may have different standards that make the practice of our values impossible. Under such circumstances, we need to compromise some of our sets of values in order to advance the values we believe to be of paramount significance; because the alternative will be to live according to our values individually only (i.e.; abandoning the situation that inter-locked us with our adversaries in a societal relationship).

The ‘civilised’ argument can be given any credence only if a given situation may be such that peaceful forms of struggle can be feasible, and there may be groups who wilfully want to ignore that option in favour of the armed form of struggle. But what is being said here by the advocates for inclusion of violence as a means of struggle is that the current situation in Ethiopia doesn’t allow any meaningful peaceful struggle to be conducted; and if that may be desired to come, Woyane should be pushed to it by use or threat of violence. In my view, for those who disagree with this analysis, the right argument, under these circumstances, should develop by showing how peaceful forms of struggle may be possible in Ethiopia at this moment. If that may be too much to ask for some unknown reasons, questions of the following type should be appreciated and answered in earnest:

“How it was possible for countries of Eastern Europe to achieve their goals through peaceful struggle in a very short time where Burma & Tibet failed for twenty and fifty years respectively?”

As we know, the level of civilisation humanity achieved so far hasn’t extricated the world from use of force to advance various interests. As we speak, American and British defence forces are using superior military force to advance their interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. Different peoples may have different views about these wars, but they remain to be wars started and being conducted by civilised countries. The best we can speak about in our present world is about just and unjust wars, codes and norms of executing wars etc…

3. About the immorality of support for armed struggles from afar

If I understood correctly what the morale proponents are saying in this regard is that, “advocacy for actions that may put others in harm’s way is bad so long as the advocate himself is not partaking in the said actions”.

I think this is invalid argument on two counts. Firstly, what we are doing at the moment is exchange of ideas and actions cannot be started without preparations. By the same token, persons living in Ethiopia but supporting armed form of struggle can ask the proponents of peaceful struggle in the diasporas why they don’t return back to Ethiopia and live under Woyane peacefully. Secondly, the proponents of armed struggle were not heard saying that they would not be part of the struggle they are advocating for. I don’t think they should be expected to say what they will be doing in public.

In the interest of the debate, I would go further and declare that support for something you believe in to be ‘good’ is morale, even when you do not put yourself in harm’s way while others sharing your views did. For example, multitudes of US and European citizens supported ANC fighters during the apartheid era from the comforts of their country houses, not even social housing flats. Are we to declare these ANC supporters as immoral, because the peoples they were supporting were dying fighting against apartheid and them not?

I can see the morale point to be holding some water only under two circumstances: 1) if you decry the non-action on the part of the populace and move on to do damaging things against it on the basis of that judgement; 2) if you become the ultimate beneficiary of the outcome that followed from the suffering of the people while you always stayed away from harm’s way.

But, neither of these charges can stick to proponents of violent form of struggle. These proponents, rather than blaming the populace for not rising up against Woyane as ‘civilised people’ would do under similar circumstances, are suggesting violence as the right form of struggle because they appreciated the impracticability of conducting peaceful struggle in Woyane’s Ethiopia. Also, as far as I can understand, they haven’t yet made a call for the Ethiopian people to revolt against Woyane now; or stated their plan to stay in USA or Europe when such calls may be made in the future.

I don’t think these personalities in the diasporas can be so crazy as to think that they will called from their comfortable residences in USA and Western Europe to assume political power after the struggle against Woyane comes to fruition through the violence of the ordinary Ethiopians. If anyone entertains such possibilities even theoretically, let alone as probable realities, I suspect this may be a health issue or a case of ignorance of the highest order about the capabilities of the Ethiopians in the homeland.

Let us be clear about one thing: the role of the diasporas in the struggle for democracy can only be supportive, not central. The diasporas cannot be the main actor in the struggle, save those elements which join the movements on professional level. In this situation, one of the things the diasporas can do best is development and exchange of ideas. Even this, not because diasporas know better; but because Woyane’s repression doesn’t allow the free flow and exchange of ideas.

In my view, the moral preaching, whether pronounced by diasporas or domestic elements, springs from feudalistic arrogance. If I am to tell a ten year old girl or mentally deranged person to take actions that puts her in harm’s way, I can be charged as morally irresponsible. But airing my views to my equals about what will be the right thing to do, cannot be put under this category by any stretch of imagination. If someone comes to charge me as morally irresponsible for having done so, he must clearly have presumed my superiority. And if he belongs to the same social category as mine, his allegation against me would impliedly be a clear revelation of his arrogance.

Let me conclude this section by posing the following moral question to the moralists: “will it be morale of me if I withhold a view which I truly believe will deliver the peoples of Ethiopia from their sufferings from those very peoples? ”

In arguing as above, I have no doubt about the well meaning and concern on the part of most of the commentators of the above views. My interest here is to try to put the discussions in what I believe to be the right tracks so that the movement will benefit ultimately. When this debate calms down, each one of us may leave with our original stances intact or some of us may be swayed to the opposite view point. Whichever, all of us can be gainers by having clarity about the view points of our respective opposite sides. The challenge to address the concerns of our opposites will also benefit us by sharpening of our own respective standpoints and hence advance the cause of the struggle.

I think all of us would deplore what we witnessed during the past two years about Kinijit’s movement cannibalising itself. I believe that two of the lessons we can draw from this unpleasant experience should be: 1) elevation of our discourse style to a higher level; 2) mutual respect between members of the ‘democratic family’ even while disagreeing on political matters and ideologies.

In this series of debate, we have seen Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi cited by the different sides in order to justify their respective stand points. True, Ethiopia is not yet so fortunate to have a person of such great stature. But, this should not be a pretext for self-absolution from responsibility for not doing enough within the bounds of our limitations. I believe that each one of us should attempt to the best of our abilities to learn from great personalities, at least by imitations, if not on more profound levels.

Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King & Mahatma Ghandi were great, thoughtful and serious personalities. Because they were thoughtful, they were able to understand the difficulties of their oppressors let alone the situations of the various bodies fighting for the same goal but with secondary level differences. Because they were serious, they were always focused on their goals and never swayed by threats of death or personal sufferings let alone second level differences on matters of tactics for the struggles. Because they were great, they didn’t need to indulge in moralising or emotive rhetoric against members of the broad church of their respective movements in order to attract political followers. Rather, they led by example and multitudes flocked and remained stuck to them till the end.

This brings me to the point I mentioned towards the beginning of this article and deferred to later—constructive engagement. I think we all in the democratic family agree that our main goal is the institutionalisation of democracy in Ethiopia. As our country has always been under autocratic or totalitarian rule, this goal requires am immense task and can effectively be a complete overhaul of our socio-political system. By the same measure we may also have differences on how to achieve these goals.

But, so long as we remain serious about our main goal, we can’t lack the understanding for the others’ positions in their respective situations. By focussing on the main goal and doing our preferred roles or parts only, we remain united and make healthy and constructive engagement with the other members of the ‘democratic family’ possible. It is only if we stay united as such that our movement can develop the strength which may make it very difficult for those countries who professedly support freedom and democracy to ignore.

In my view, these are basics the leaderships of the Ethiopian democratic movements can afford to lose sight of at the minimum. In fact, with some modest vision, these basics can de-facto be transformed to be some of the starters of institutionalising democracy in Ethiopia. For example, if ways may be devised and effected whereby the peaceful political and mass organisations may serve as checking organs for the armed movements, that would be a great achievement in the direction of transforming our society.

To conclude, let us not forget: ‘United’ we have a better chance for success, but ‘divided’ we certainly will fail. The best way of staying united under the present Ethiopian circumstances is by: 1) focussing on the main goal of achieving democratic system in Ethiopia; 2) seriously executing the respective lines of activities we sincerely believe to be leading to our common goal; 3) staying engaged in constructive exchange of ideas between the various trends of the democratic movement; 4) supporting and checking on each other within the family of the democratic movement as and when the needs arise.
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The author can be reached at the following email address: [email protected]