ADDIS ABABA (VOA) – Ethiopia’s [tribal junta] says its economic growth rate has topped 10 percent for the sixth year in a row, and could do it again in the current year, despite the global economic turndown. But international economists and Ethiopia’s political opposition are questioning the figures.
President Girma Woldegiorgis says Ethiopia’s economy grew at a 10.1-percent rate during the past year, even though poor rains crippled the dominant agriculture sector and curtailed power generation, forcing a partial shutdown of factories. [Ato Girma is not a real president. He is Meles Zenawi’s puppet.]
Speaking to the opening session of Ethiopia’s [rubber-stamp] parliament, Mr. Girma called the growth “a remarkable achievement.”
“The fact that our economy has been able continuously to register growth rates of more than 10 percent annually for the last six consecutive years in such difficult global and domestic circumstances is an attestation of the success of our policies and strategies designed to speed up our development,” he said.
The Ethiopian president chided economists who had warned that Ethiopia could not achieve double-digit growth without fueling inflation. He suggested, but stopped short of predicting, that government policies would succeed in achieving the same economic feat this year.
“Our objective will be to continue the pace of rapid economic growth by registering a growth rate of 10-percent for the 7th consecutive year, and while controlling inflation at less than 10 percent,” he added.
Mr. Girma’s announcement came just weeks after Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pegged the growth rate for the past year as low as 9.2 percent. As recently as April, the government had forecast 11.2 percent growth.
Ethiopia’s political opposition immediately rejected Mr. Girma’s figures. Prominent opposition leader Merera Gudina accused the government of ‘cooking’ (changing) the data. He said average Ethiopians would know the figures were false because their standard of living has failed to improve.
International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials were not immediately available for comment, but the IMF earlier estimated an increase of 6.5 percent or less for Ethiopia during the fiscal year that ended in July.
Ethiopia is among the world’s poorest countries. Its agriculture sector, which supports more than 80 percent of the population, has been hit by a third consecutive year of drought.
The government’s latest figures suggest one out of six Ethiopians, or nearly 14 million people, are in need of food aid.
I would like to thank Jawar Siraj Mohammed for the civility with which he engaged my article, “The OLF: Ideological or Leadership Bankruptcy?” Some Oromos responded to the article with emotional outcries and personal attacks, thereby displaying not only their alarming deficiency in sound arguments, but also their refusal to even discuss the issue. Some even went to the extent of saying that the Oromo issue is none of my business, as though Oromia had already become a foreign country. The happy contrast is that Jawar argues and wants to show that what failed the Oromo is not the ideology but the leadership. Since his sober and argued reply denotes an opening to dialogue, I reciprocate with an even higher longing for a rapprochement.
Jawar’s arguments are as follows: (1) there is no ideological bankruptcy since the large majority of the Oromo people supports the nationalist agenda of the OLF. (2) It is not true to say that the OLF operates in geographical conditions that are inimical to armed insurgency. (3) The success of the TPLF and EPLF highlights the importance of leadership. (4) The failure of the EPRP was due less to ideology than to strategic mistakes of its leadership.
What we get from these factual arguments is that “ideology does not play much role in determining the failure and success of an insurgency.” Jawar adds that, so long as an insurgency is not strong enough, it cannot consider reformist options, for it is suicidal for an organization to give up its mobilizing ideology. In other words, the Oromo nationalist or secessionist agenda should be preserved until the movement is strong enough to reform itself. Let me examine one by one these arguments.
Who Wants Secession?
Is it true to say that the Oromo people supports the secessionist agenda of the OLF? For that matter, let us extend the issue and ask whether the Eritrean people has supported the secessionist goal of the EPLF and whether the Tigrean people has agreed to the secession of Eritrea and the fragmentation of Ethiopia along ethnic lines. If both movements led to dictatorial regimes, is it not because the so-called popular support was actually imposed on the people they claim to represent? True, both Eritreans and Tigreans wanted self-rule, but it is one thing to fight against centralization and quite another to advocate secession. The latter is none other than a resurgence of the elitism of the 60s when Western-educated Ethiopians usurped the right to speak in the name of the people.
The only way by which Jawar can convince himself and other Ethiopians about the popular support for secession is through the implementation of a free and fair democratic process that begins by making serious reforms. If, after a time of power-sharing and democratic relationships, the Oromo people still expresses the desire to secede, only then can we speak of popular support. But all theoreticians, including ethnonationalists, know that in a truly democratic setup secession is unlikely. Put otherwise, what Jawar presents as a fact is not yet a fact; it is an elitist manipulation that uses past mistreatments to justify partition.
I add that if the Oromo had really wanted to separate from the rest of the country, no force on earth could have stopped them. Then, what is Jawar’s hurry? Let democracy sets in and you will have what you want if the grievances are still real. Incidentally, Jawar accepts that the OLF does not own the monopoly of representing the Oromo people, since he accuses me of “categorizing all Oromos under one ideology and under one organization.” Another mishap is when he calls my position “centrist,” even though all the books and articles I have written on Ethiopia unravel centralization as the main reason for Ethiopia’s failure to modernize.
Comparing Apples with Oranges
I leave out Jawar’s assumption that the OLF operates in conditions conducive for insurgency because it cannot be decided by people who write from America. However, there remains the issue of finding a neighboring country that provides political and military assistances, especially, that can serve as a shelter. In his reply, Jawar completely overlooked a detrimental outcome that he had vigorously and correctly denounced in his first article, to wit, the growing subordination of the OLF to the Eritrean regime. Yet the ideology of secession which, of course, leads to the choice of armed struggle, is responsible for the subordination.
Once it is said that the OLF has appropriate geographical conditions, the question is why it is still failing. Jawar’s answer is unequivocal: the severe shortcomings of the leadership. He uses a comparative approach to prove his point, namely, the military success of the TPLF and EPLF against the Derg. Unfortunately, the comparison is defective from various angels. One cannot compare the secession of Eritrea with that of Oromia. Not only different historical and geographical reasons intervene, but also minority groups, as was the case with Eritrea, have often no other option that the threat of secession.
When it comes to Oromia, we are presented with the unheard case of a group that wants to secede, even though it claims to be the largest ethnic group of the country. It is the unfeasibility of the case that derives me to speak of ideological bankruptcy. In the records of history, majority groups have defended the nation so that secession has always been the ideology of overpowered peoples. That is why I spoke of “self-mutilation” in that a group is degraded into thinking and acting like a desperate minority group. The Oromo need an ideology that is commensurate with their potential. Only then can they emerge victorious.
Who is the Winner?
As to the TPLF, its success should be taken with a grain of salt in light of the fact that Tigray is historically and culturally one of the cornerstones of Ethiopia. As such, any ideology that supports the breakup of Ethiopia is contrary to the historical role and identity of Tigrean people. That is why every time I hear about the victory of the TPLF’s insurgency, I cannot contain my perplexity. If the success of the TPLF depended on the secession of Eritrea, then I do not see where the victory is. Mengistu Haile Mariam could have also stayed in power by letting Eritrea go. Such an outcome would have been considered, not as a victory, but as a defeat. Moreover, how is the fragmentation of Ethiopia along ethnic lines an expression of victory? When Ethiopia is diminished and put in a condition close to disintegration––which is the only way by which an anti-Ethiopian Tigrean clique can dominate the country––I do not shout victory for the Tigrean people.
In place of victory, I see defeat, as no amount of military prowess will remove the bare fact of Ethiopia as a landlocked country. What was the main source of Ethiopia’s weakness and isolation in the past, that is, since the control of the Red Sea by Muslim forces, is back again thanks to the TPLF. Some years ago I posted an article in which I asked Ethiopians to let Assab go because it would only mean continuous war against Eritrea. I argued that the best option is to work toward the return of Eritrea through some form of federal arrangement. The TPLF government is now fully experiencing the huge impediment of being landlocked. The ethnic paradigm and victory at all costs, even by sacrificing Eritrea, combined to bring disaster and despair on Ethiopia. In light of these monstrous costs, is “victory” really a proper term?
Ideology and the Choice of Means
I am confused by Jawar’s statement that “ideology does not determine the failure and success of an insurgency.” How can it be so when we know that strategic choices are dependent on ideological inspirations? The OLF and EPLF opted for guerrilla warfare because of their secessionist ideology. Consequently, they allied with forces opposed to Ethiopia and refused to work with Ethiopia’s progressive forces. Likewise, to associate with the EPLF, the TPLF had to invent the ideology of Tigray as a nation and adopt ethnic references as the highest norms of political struggle. This ideological orientation explains why it could not ally with the EPRP and other progressive forces. Instead, it went in the direction of helping Eritrea to become independent in exchange for military and political support. You cannot explain the TPLF’s “victory” without its alliance with, nay, its subordination to the EPLF. In short, vision commands strategy as well as the degree of commitment.
To explain the defeat of the EPRP by the failure of its leadership is correct, provided it is added that the leadership failed because of ideological extremism. The choice of urban guerrilla struggle, which is believed to be the main blunder of the organization, is not separable from the slogans demanding a people’s government and socialism. If the EPRP had focused on democratic struggles for freedom of association and expression and for the establishment of a national government of reconciliation, etc., it would not have embarked on the wrong path of urban guerrilla. Contrary to Jawar’s statement, at that time, people, including the bureaucratic elites, the peasantry, the workers, and the Amhara population, expressed democratic demands as opposed to the socialist ideology of students and intellectuals. The EPRP and other leftist movements fought for the control of the state in order to impose their vision on the society. The Derg foiled the project and adopted socialism, not because it was forced to do so by the civilian left, as some authors claim, but because socialism exactly fitted its dictatorial interests.
The debate over the primacy of the national question over class interest in the Ethiopian student movement is the typical ideological battle that led to the formation of the TPLF and the OLF. According to the Stalinist vision, the liberation of the ethnic group has precedence over the consideration of unity with other groups. The detrimental consequence of this reasoning fully transpires in today’s Ethiopia, since the vibrant student movement in Ethiopia is now practically dead, undermined as it is by the dividing impact of ethnic ideology. This death is a palpable proof of how deeply ideology can be paralyzing. My message to Jawar is thus clear: what keeps you in chains is the diatribe against Amhara, Abyssinians and the correlated discourse on the Ethiopian colonization of the Oromo, which discourse undermines the gestation of common goals and actions.
Here and there Jawar’s reply seems to suggest that self-determination and secession are used for their mobilizing power rather than their intrinsic merit. He writes: “just because an ideology makes it simple to mobilize support, it does not mean it should be adapted without careful and rational evaluation of its short term and long term impact after liberation.” A merely tactical purpose diminishes the mobilizing power: not only does the secessionist ideology divide people, but also a tactical usage means that the leaders do not really believe in the ideology they are preaching. If that is the case, weigh the for and against, and it becomes clear that the best option is to simply drop the ideology.
But neither Jawar nor the leaders of the OLF are willing to drop the ideology. Why? Because it would allow extremist groups to rise and marginalize the present leadership. This is the inevitable price for cultivating and spreading for such a long time a divisive ideology. At one point a situation is created where it becomes impossible to reverse course. All the more reason for allying now with Ethiopia’s moderate and progressive forces, for only the engagement of the country in the path of resolute democratization can block the rise of extremist groups.
Shunned by most of the world for his crimes against humanity, isolated as a despot because of his brutal treatment of peaceful protesters following the May 2005 elections, and reviled as a leader of one of the most corrupt and racist regimes in the world today, Zenawi has incessantly been lobbying unscrupulous African diplomats in Addis and other groups in the West for a sympathy invitation to every summit held by the G8 and G20 economies over the last several years.
Through systematic control of almost all aspects of the economic activities in the land, including the aid intended to alleviate poverty and famine, and brutally suppressing basic freedoms, Zenawi has essentially classed Ethiopia at the bottom of the list of developing countries with respect to every conceivable index of development and human rights.
In total disregard of common morality and decency, he exploits the poverty he inflicted on the people as a justification for an invitation of compassion to G8, G20 and related summits. This is a hypocrisy that in comparison makes sagacious even the proverbial man “who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”
As outlined below, a closer examination of how the tyrant and his repressive regime operate, however, reveals sinister motives that transcend sheer obsession to be present among world leaders.
1. Zenawi’s Insatiable Appetite for Aid Money
Since the dictator Mengistu Haile-Mariam handed power to Zenawi in 1991, the TPLF regime has received over 30 billion dollars in aid and billions more in loans from donor nations and financial institutions. According to one estimate, Zenawi has been receiving well over $2 billion in foreign assistance alone every year. Apart from the superficial construction projects in the capital and other selected areas — projects that are mostly awarded to TPLF shadow organizations and intended to impress the naïve visitor — the dictator has nothing tangible to show for all the money received.
With no clear accountability, the money has mainly been used, through dubious endowment rules and regulations, to prop up the repressive regime and to enrich the foreign bank accounts of leaders of the minority government as well as their illegal business conglomerates, like EFFORT.
Ensuring the flow of aid money has thus been a major obsession of the tyrannical regime. One obvious platform for accomplishing this is, of course, by securing a backseat, however unglamorous, at G8/20 summits using the famine and poverty of one of the most populous countries in Africa as a sufficient credential for attendance eligibility.
Regrettably, donor nations have repeatedly failed the people of Ethiopia by feeding the dictator with money that he has looted and blatantly used for repressive purposes. As L. Leicht, the EU director for Human Rights Watch, noted earlier this year:
“On 30 January, European Union policymakers sent a clear signal …. no matter how repressive the government becomes, vast sums of aid will continue to flow. This is emerging as a case study in bad donor policy.”
Leicht further declared:
“In January Ethiopia’s government passed a law that is an attempt to muzzle local activists and prevent them from scrutinizing the government’s human-rights record. Among other things, the new law ….. makes it illegal for … Ethiopians to scrutinize the government’s record on human rights, policing, conflict resolution and a range of other issues… It also provides the government with bureaucratic tools to shut down groups the government dislikes.”
Despite the reluctance of certain EU nations, a general awareness of the need to change the “bad donor policy” is noticeable in most parts of the world.
In a well-researched report, B. Bruton, an International Affairs Fellow in Residence of the prestigious foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote:
“… cooperation with an authoritarian Ethiopia presents looming challenges to U.S. policy objectives. … the Ethiopian government’s attempts to minimize political competition in the run-up to the 2010 elections are likely to fan ethnic tensions in the country. The government’s ruling party, the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), is perceived by many Ethiopians to be dominated by a single minority ethnic faction, the Tigre, and its consolidation of political power may be read as an assault on the majority ethnic Amharic and Oromo populations. Public dissatisfaction with the government is high in the wake of the 2005 elections and a violent explosion is not out of the question.”
These are important developments that suggest the West has finally recognized the true nature of the dictator, and that the despot is running out of options. Thanks to the vigilance of the Diaspora and the illuminating reports of investigative journalists and human rights activists, the tyrant is now in no position to continue to swindle the donor community, begging for alms, hat in hand, at major summits.
2. Summits: A Last Resort to Gain Recognition and Legitimacy
Following the 2005 elections, Zenawi has been desperate to gain a semblance of legitimacy, having been deserted even by his once ardent supporters like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A group picture at the G 8/20 summits, however awkward and embarrassing, was Zenawi’s only avenue to get the attention of leaders of the developed world and the international media.
Paradoxically, every summit that Zenawi attended since the May 2005 debacle has instead further exposed his atrocities and laid bare the apartheid system of government he has instituted.
A case in point is the humiliation Zenawi experienced following the April 2009 G20 meeting in London, as reported by H. Gombya of The Black Star News:
“Although Meles Zenawi the Ethiopian Prime Minister and also current NEPAD chair was here, he abruptly canceled a press conference he was about to give. His people gave no reasons for this. But insiders in the press center said Zenawi was worried about the kind of questions that were going to be put to him concerning human rights violations within Ethiopia and his dealing with his opponents and Ethiopia’s neighbours.”
As “Prime Minister Zenawi cowered in the shadows,” the report indicated, “[t]he African continent really wasn’t heard.” Affirming the lack of legitimacy of Zenawi’s government, the paper expressed alarm: “…, it was rather absurd that no representative of the African continent was at hand to put their case to the world media at such a major global setting.”
Summits as a Magnet for the Gallant Diaspora
Ironically, as an unintended consequence, Zenawi’s obsession with sympathy invitation to the summits, instead of earning him legitimacy, has provided an effective medium to the ever-vigilant Diaspora to expose his crimes and corruption to world leaders and the international media.
From the summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005, to the recent gathering in Pittsburgh, Ethiopians in the Diaspora braved the elements and trekked the terrains to further expose the despot through penetrating slogans and placards.
As Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported, organizers of the recent protest in Pittsburgh declared to the world [11]:
“The U.S. taxpayers are paying money to a regime that is used to terrorize its own citizens …. The people in the G-20 … should not deal with an Ethiopian regime that was not legally elected.”
The damage to the dictator caused by the relentless protests of the Diaspora has been quite significant, both in terms of humiliating the despot and raising awareness globally about the egregious crimes he has committed against his people.
A Call to Action
With the growing realization of the moral, ethical, economic and political difficulties of supporting dictators against the will of the people they brutally suppress, world leaders are seeking alternative means of channeling their material and political support away from the despots.
The Obama administration has at least in principle declared its disassociation with dictators. In his speech in Ghana, Obama sent an unmistakable signal to dictators like Zenaw when he said:
“This is about more than holding elections — it’s also about what happens between them. Repression takes many forms, and too many nations are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves,…. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.”
Opposition groups and the Diaspora should seize this opportune moment and fight vigorously to deny the despot another fake victory in the 2010 elections. A concerted effort should be made to demand free and fair elections, with systematic and effective measures that include:
i) Mobilization of all resources to stage demonstrations inside and outside the country effective immediately;
ii) Steadfast lobbying of policy-makers in the US and EU to use aid as a leverage for the prompt and unconditional release of all political prisoners;
iii) Persistent campaigns to boycott all Woyanne-controlled business enterprises, including use of the EAL; and
iv) Unswerving support to initiatives that attempt to bring disparate opposition groups under one umbrella.
Having learned a painful lesson from the 2005 elections, Zenawi would undoubtedly take brutal measures to shut out any and all credible opposition. However, history has shown without fail that no force can withstand for long the wrath of a people so viciously impoverished, humiliated, oppressed and looted as the people of Ethiopia have been at the hands of the despot.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopia is stockpiling medicine to counter an expected surge in malaria cases due to hotter weather, its health ministry said on Saturday.
In a statement, Kesetebirhan Admasu, head of the disease prevention directorate, said the El Nino effect would raise temperatures, reduce rain and generally aggravate conditions for the spread of malaria.
In response to the threat, he said, “there is sufficient medicine in store that could treat 12 million people,” for which 12.6 million birr (685,000 euros, one million dollars) has been spent.
The government has already purchased malaria diagnosis kits and medicines, insecticides and spraying equipment, and plans to distribute 13 million mosquito nets, he added.
A new Book by Derege Demissie “Abate Yachin Se’at”: Major General Demissie Bulto and the coup d’état of May 1989
In “Abate Yachin Se’at,” author Derege Demissie narrates the story of his late father, Major General Demissie Bulto. Derege’s story is about the private and public life of his father as well as a number of other high-ranking officers whose life run in tandem with the rise and fall of the post-WWII Ethiopian military history.
Derege’s book follows the arc of his father’s life and career from this period of Ethiopian history until his fateful death in 1989, by which time General Demissie had reached the pinnacle of his career as a Major general in command of the largest single military unit in Ethiopia. But Derege’s book is more than a son’s narrative of a beloved father’s public life. Throughout the book an intimate portrait of the private life of a father and a husband is threaded expertly on the large canvass of great historical moments that have shaped the attempt to establish and maintain a modern African nation-state. The promising ascent and catastrophic demise of the Ethiopian military under the otherwise inept leadership of the revolutionary Derg regime closely trace the triumphs and failures of the many campaigns of the country’s military, in all of which General Demissie participated.
General Demissie’s career began more or less with the very first attempt by the late Emperor Haileselassie to transform the Ethiopian military into a modern, thoroughly westernized fighting force. Demissie joined the emperor’s own Kibur Zebegna (honor guards) as an officer candidate of the third intake. It was a novel experiment in Ethiopia’s storied martial history, and Demissie’s time as a cadet was perhaps the most formative years of his life.
After a giddy, joy-filled three years as an officer candidate, Demissie and his fellow cadets were hastily shipped to the USS Radford, a United States Navy destroyer, and were unceremoniously commissioned as first lieutenants en route to the Korean peninsula. It was the Korean War, and the Ethiopian emperor, eager to impress western powers, had volunteered four successive reconnaissance battalions to be attached to the U.S. 7th Infantry Division as part of United Nations forces. The Korean War was to be the first of innumerable campaigns in which Demissie participated in his military service of more than three decades.
The story Derege narrates, is at once a story of personal courage and conviction as well as the moral dilemma inherent in war. Fade up with the dictatorial ruler that continually ignored their informed and professional counsel to institute crucial policy changes to end the war in the North and the government’s refusal to seek political solution to the internal problems the country faces, three high-ranking officers decided to design a daring plot to overthrow the government. These officers were: Maj. Gen. Merid Negussie, the Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Fanta Belay, the Minister of Industry and former Commander of the Air force, and Maj. Gen. Demissie Bulto, the Commander of the more than 200, 000 strong Second Revolutionary Army (SRA). They convinced many others to join them and attempted the May 1989 coup d’état against Mengistu Halemariam.
When the attempt organized at the capital city failed in the first day of the coup, Gen. Demissie continued the effort in Asmara, then Ethiopia’s second largest city. For three days, Gen. Demissie continued his call for the end of dictatorship and for the formation of a representative government. The EPLF agreed to a 15-day cease-fire and preparations were underway to send troops to the Capital to crush the Palace Guard that was protecting the dictator. It was a daring plan, but one with increasingly diminishing chance of success. Yet, Gen. Demissie chose to fight to the end instead of boarding one the many planes under his control at the Asmara Air force base and saving his life. At that critical hour, Derege intimately examines the intense challenges his father faced and the personal courage he displayed.
The bloody massacre of the ablest generals and imprisonment of hundreds of officers, during the coup and its after math, became one of the major factors that contributed to the demise of the Ethiopian armed forces. Decapitated off its highly professional and brave leaders and officers, the Ethiopian army was now unable to withstand the continued push of the rebel forces. Engulfed with multifaceted contradictions, and ever alieniated from deeply dissatisfied populace, it took mere two years after the May 1989 aborted coup for Col Mengistu Hailemariam’s regime to finally succumb to the coordinated assault of the EPLF and TPLF. The collapse of the regime was to be followed by another era of tyranny under the dictatorial and ethnocentric TPLF/EPRDF that continues to date.
Other writers have written about General Demissie Bulto in most flattering words extolling his farsighted and brilliant military mind and the decisive leadership he provided. In “The Ethiopian Revolution,” a newly published work of scholarship in English and focused on the modern military history of Ethiopia, Dr. Gebru Tareke, characterized General Demissie’s leadership during the war against Somalia as follows:
“…The operation was directed by Brig General Demissie Bulto, Commander of the First Revolutionary Army and an officer with a well merited reputation for strategic vision, integrity, discipline, and decisiveness. These qualities had earned him the admiration and dedication of his staff and troops, who in turn fought with high motivation and determination. Demisse allowed his field commanders sufficient freedom of action while demanding full accountability. This calibrated responses to a complicated situation proved to be extremely effective.”
General MacArthur, the American general who led the defeat of the Japanese in the pacific front during WW II and under whose command General Demissie served in Korea while still a Lieutenant of the then Royal Guard of Ethiopia, once said “old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” In his book, Derege has brought back to life the legacy of General Demissie and the heroic officers who served Ethiopia with him in vivid detail. It is a testimonial about Ethiopian patriotism, heroism, and professionalism of a generation from whose life the current generation and posterity should draw strength and inspiration.
Like all good works of literature, the book has a quality of keeping one in suspense. It narrates the intricacies of the plot from many angles based on eyewitness accounts, interviews with key individuals who were involved in the coup attempt, and seventeen years of research from various published and unpublished sources, including information obtained from the United States Department of State through the Freedom of Information Act.
The book also contains a daily diary of Gen. Demissie Bulto taken during two of the most successful campaigns waged against the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) in then Northern Ethiopia. Zemecha Bahire Negash and Key Bahir Zemecha were often singled out for the sophistication of their planning and operation. Gen. Demissie, who was temporarily transferred from his position as head of the First Army in Harar, was assigned as a head of The Armed Forces Coordinating Committee that planned and executed the two campaigns. The daily notes the General took provide rich details of the coordination, planning, and execution of the campaign against EPLF forces that were entrenched in the town of Barentu and the mountains of Nakfa. Gen. Demissie’s notes give rare insight into how the ground forces, the Airborne, the Navy, and the Air Force collaborated in these campaigns as well as the many logistical and structural challenges they faced.
Derege Demissie, the author, is an attorney at law and a partner at the law firm of Demissie & Church. He graduated from George Mason University in Political Science in 1994 earned his Juris Doctor Degree from Suffolk University Law School in Boston. He is the fourth child of the late General Demissie Bulto. Married and with a son and daughter, Derege currently lives in Boston, MA.
(Publisher: Neamin Zeleke. “ABATE YACHIN SE’AT” IS AVAILABLE ON-LINE and Washington DC Ethiopian stores. To purchase a copy on-line, go to: www.demissiebulto.com)
