Egyptologists Debate Book’s Claims of Amara and Akele-Gezai Founding Ancient Gebts
After the release of the new book, “Amarigna & Tigrigna Qal Hieroglyphs for Beginners,” Egyptologists at the HallofMaat.com Egyptology forum have begun debating the book’s revolutionary claims that ancient Amara and Akele-Gezai merchants founded ancient Gebts. The book, available on Amazon.com and at the publisher’s site (books.ancientgebts.org), is an introduction to Amarigna and Tigrigna written in hieroglyphs dating as far back as 5100 years ago. Its claims go against nearly everything that has been written about Amarigna, Tigrigna, as well as ancient Gebts.
“The ancient Gebts language is generally considered to be a ‘dead’ language by Egyptologists,” says Legesse Allyn, the book’s author, “so I can see how they couldn’t quite understand why I would claim it to be surviving in two living languages, Amarigna and Tigrigna, spoken by over 30 million people today. Even Ethiopians and Eritreans believe Amarigna and Tigrigna to be only several thousand years old,” he says. “It just must have been a real surprise for everybody to read that the founding languages of ancient Gebts came from ancient merchants traveling to Gebts from today’s regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
Legesse goes on to say how interesting the debate at the HallofMaat.com forum is. “The Egyptologists there, more than anything, sound outraged and even personally insulted that the ancient Gebts language could be attributed to ancestors of today’s Eritreans and Ethiopians,” he states. “They kept telling me I had to prove to them this or that, when by learning Amarigna and Tigrigna for themselves, they can prove to themselves the validity of my research findings.”
According to Legesse, the purpose of the book is not for everyone just to simply say, “Okay, he’s right.” The book is meant to lead Ethiopians and Eritreans to learning to read hieroglyphs and for Egyptologists to learn the Amarigna and Tigrigna languages — to help understand what happened
5100 years ago in ancient Gebts. And reading the postings in the forum, at least one of the forum’s Egyptologists posts that she is now, in fact, learning Amarigna for that very purpose.
“Not only are Egyptologists learning Amarigna and Tigrigna,” Legesse says, “but it seems that everyday I receive e-mails from enthusiastic Ethiopians and Eritreans who tell me they have bought the book and are now learning to read hieroglyphs. Nobody, it seems, wants to be left behind, especially Eritreans and Ethiopians who are snapping up the book in both its print and instant downloadable version.”
(For more information or to buy the book visit ancientgebts.com)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – An Ethiopian rebel group, Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), denied on Tuesday it is helping Islamist militants in neighbouring Somalia who are waging a violent rebellion against the country’s U.N.-backed government.
Al Shaabab, the main rebel group that Washington says is al Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, on Sunday seized control of Yeed town on the border with Ethiopia from Somali government forces in fighting that killed at least 14 people.
A local governor said militiamen from the Ethiopian Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) helped al Shaabab drive out government forces in the attack.
But the ONLF denied the reports of cooperation.
“The Ogaden National Liberation Front has no relationship whatsoever with al Shaabab, which on several occasions has assassinated ONLF members,” it said in a statement.
“ONLF does not interfere in the internal affairs of Somalia and in fact has so far supported the new transitional government, although aware of the deep involvement of Ethiopia with some warlords working with the current government.”
Ethiopia entered Somalia in late 2006 to topple an Islamist movement in the capital Mogadishu. The intervention sparked an insurgency that is still raging despite the fact Ethiopian troops pulled out in January. ONLF said the report linking it with al Shaabab was a plot by Addis Ababa to discredit it.
Regional analysts say the ONLF and al Shaabab gunmen have clashed on the border several times in recent years.
Ethiopia denounces the ONLF — which demands independence for the ethnic Somali eastern Ogaden region — as a terrorist group supported by long-time archrival Eritrea.
Ethiopia and Somalia have a long history of hostilities over Ogaden and fought a war over the region in the 1907s.
Foreign oil and gas companies have long eyed the Ogaden which they believe may be rich in mineral deposits.
The rebels warned companies last week against exploring the region. In 2007, the ONLF attacked an oil exploration field owned by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s biggest petrochemicals producer.
The separatist cause has been fuelled by the region’s low level of development. Until Chinese engineers arrived in the remote region in 2007, the entire area had only 30 km (20 miles) of tarmac road. (Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Jon Hemming)
Ethiopians in Columbus, Ohio, are preparing to join Ethiopian brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh to confront Ethiopia’s brutal tyrant Meles Zenawi during the G-20 Summit this week.
The G-20 Summit is scheduled to be held from September 24-25 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The organizers, March 4 Freedom, Democracy and Justice in Ethiopia, are calling on all Ethiopians to join them in a bus trip to Pittsburgh.
The organizers also call on all Ethiopians in the Washington DC area, Philadelphia and other nearby states and cities to join them in Pittsburgh.
For more info, call 614 432 2414 or 614 209 5228
THE climate change summit at the United Nations on Tuesday, September 22nd, is aimed to build momentum for the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December, where nations will continue negotiations on a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Later this week, the G20 finance ministers will meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where international climate policy will be high on the agenda.
In the midst of this, Professor Sheila Olmstead of Yale University and I wrote an opinion piece which appeared as an op-ed in The Boston Globe on Sunday, September 20th. (See the original here, with the artwork; and/or for a detailed description of our proposal, see our discussion paper for the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements.)
In the op-ed, we argued that to be successful, any feasible successor agreement must contain three essential elements: meaningful involvement by a broad set of key industrialized and developing nations; an emphasis on an extended time path of emissions targets; and inclusion of policy approaches that work through the market, rather than against it.
Consider the need for broad participation. Industrialized countries have emitted most of the stock of man-made carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, so shouldn’t they reduce emissions before developing countries are asked to contribute? While this seems to make sense, here are four reasons why the new climate agreement must engage all major emitting countries – both industrialized and developing.
First, emissions from developing countries are significant and growing rapidly. China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest CO2 emitter in 2006, and developing countries may account for more than half of global emissions within the next decade. Second, developing countries provide the best opportunities for low-cost emissions reduction; their participation could dramatically reduce total costs. Third, the United States and several other industrialized countries may not commit to significant emissions reductions without developing country participation. Fourth, if developing countries are excluded, up to one-third of carbon emissions reductions by participating countries may migrate to non-participating economies through international trade, reducing environmental gains and pushing developing nations onto more carbon-intensive growth paths (so-called “carbon leakage’’).
How can developing countries participate in an international effort to reduce emissions without incurring costs that derail their economic development? Their emissions targets could start at business-as-usual levels, becoming more stringent over time as countries become wealthier. If such “growth targets’’ were combined with an international emission trading program, developing countries could fully participate without incurring prohibitive costs (or even any costs in the short term). (For a very insightful analysis of such growth targets, please see Harvard Professor Jeffrey Frankel’s discussion paper for the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements.)
The second pillar of a successful post-2012 climate policy is an emphasis on the long run. Greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, and major technological change is needed to bring down the costs of reducing CO2 emissions. The economically efficient solution will involve firm but moderate short-term targets to avoid rendering large parts of the capital stock prematurely obsolete, and flexible but more stringent long-term targets.
Third, a post-2012 global climate policy must work through the market rather than against it. To keep costs down in the short term and bring them down even lower in the long term through technological change, market-based policy instruments must be embraced as the chief means of reducing emissions. One market-based approach, known as cap-and-trade, is emerging as the preferred approach for reducing carbon emissions among industrialized countries.
Under cap-and-trade, sources with low control costs may take on added reductions, allowing them to sell excess permits to sources with high control costs. The European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme, established under the Kyoto Protocol, is the world’s largest cap-and-trade system. In June, the US federal government took a significant step toward establishing a national cap-and-trade policy to reduce CO2 emissions, with the passage in the House of Representatives of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (about which I have written in many previous posts at this blog). Other industrialized countries are instituting or planning national CO2 cap-and-trade systems, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand.
Linking such cap-and-trade systems under a new international climate treaty would bring cost savings from increasing the market’s scope, greater liquidity, reduced price volatility, lessened market power, and reduced carbon leakage. Cap-and-trade systems can be linked directly, which requires harmonization, or indirectly by linking with a common emissions-reduction credit system; indeed, this is what appears to be emerging even before a new agreement is forged. Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism allows parties in wealthy countries to purchase emissions-reduction credits in developing countries by investing in emissions-reduction projects. These credits can be used to meet emissions commitments within the EU-ETS, and other systems are likely to accept them as well.
Countries meeting in New York and Pittsburgh this week, and in Copenhagen in December, should consider these three essential elements as they negotiate a new climate agreement. A new international climate agreement missing any of these three pillars may be too costly, and provide too little benefit, to represent a meaningful attempt to address the threat of global climate change.
By Omer Redi
ADDIS ABABA (IPS) – Criticised as system of dividing and ruling people according to their ethnic groups, Ethiopia’s federalism has become a bone of contention.
A recent international report warns if this system, and the resultant lack of governance, continues the entire Horn of Africa could be destabilised.
The report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that unless the ruling coalition, Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Tigrean People’s Liberation Front improved governance it would risk ethnic conflict from the over 70 different ethnic groups in the country during the 2010 federal and regional elections. The ICG also cautioned the entire Horn of Africa could be destabilised because of the expected conflict.
But Ethiopia’s Prime Minster ethnic warlord, who has been in power for 18 years and who is expected to stand for another five-year term of office, has dismissed the report. “The report is not worth the price of writing it up,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said.
But not everyone is in agreement. The opposition have denounced the system of ethnic federalism as a way for the EPRDF to stay in power, while academics have said that it is a system that remains impossible to implement.
The opposition has agreed with the report saying that there is a high probability for ethnic conflict in the upcoming elections.
“The system (of rule) has not satisfied neither those who supported federalism nor the ones who opposed it,” Dr. Merera Gudina told IPS. Merera is Co-Chair of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC). The Oromo ethnic group is the country’s largest. “This unfair and undemocratic system dominated by one (Tigrayan) ethnic group (the strong base of the ruling part) will lead to crisis. That is why I think ICG’s report is prepared with superior understanding of the realities in Ethiopia.”
Ethnic federalism is a system of administration where regional states – formed based on geographical settlement of ethnic groups – share part of their power with a central government to run their collective affairs on their behalf.
The EPRDF introduced the federal administrative system over 14 years ago when it established the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. This was three years after it ousted the Derg, the dictatorial communist government, concluding 17 years of civil war.
The report stated that despite the structure crafted for decentralised administration, because the EPRDF has power in all the regions, it controls all matters. In effect the regions do not have actual power and they don’t actually govern themselves, the report noted.
The ICG alleges the system has increased ethnic polarisation in Ethiopia. “Ethnic federalism has not dampened conflict, but rather increased competition among groups fighting for land, natural resources, administrative boundaries and government budgets”, says François Grignon, ICG’s Africa Program Director. “This concept has powerfully promoted ethnic self-awareness among all groups and failed to accommodate grievances,” he said.
The report stated that while ethnic federalism was initially greeted with enthusiasm by Ethiopia’s people, it has failed to resolve the country’s national issue – “a democratic country free of any dominance by any ethnic group”.
“Instead it generates greater conflict at local level, as ethnic groups fight over political influence. That policy has empowered some groups but has not been accompanied by dialogue and reconciliation on grievances over past misdeeds,” the report stated.
But government denies this and believes that Ethiopia is now a more united state than before. It boasts that previously marginalised communities now enjoy self governance and control their own resources and have better access to public services.
According to the new constitution the country is divided into 9 regions based on the geographical settlement of ethnic groups, and two chartered administrations (Addis Ababa city and Diredawa town) both with mixed-ethnic population.
The Federal Government is responsible for national defence, foreign relations, and general policies of common interests and benefits. Regional States are vested with legislative, executive and judicial powers for self-administration.
However, the regional governments have serious constraints from lack of adequate financial and human resources to effectively carry out the management of decentralised administration and development.
Some opposition politicians criticise the system as a “divide-and-rule” approach the EPRDF devised to ensure it will not be challenged.
“The only thing EPRDF’s federalism has achieved is that it helped the party hold tight grip on the people through divide-and-rule system,” said Merera, who is also a professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Addis Ababa University. Though Merera says OFC supports genuine federalism, he strongly opposes Ethiopia’s current system saying it is neither negotiated by the people nor does it have a democratic content.
“It is a system EPRDF redrew Ethiopia the way it wanted simply because it came to power,” he told IPS.
Political analysts including the current Dean and professor at the Addis Ababa University, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Dr. Yaekob Arsano, critically opposed the federal system when it was tabled for discussion almost 16 years ago.
“Ethnic federalism is neither politically correct nor technically possible to apply in Ethiopia’s context,” he had said.
A core argument against ethnic federalism is that considering the intermarriage among most ethnic groups in Ethiopia, “it is impossible to clearly define and demarcate regional boundaries”.
The ICG report concluded that economic growth and the expansion of public services are to the EPRDF’s credit, but they increasingly fail to translate into popular support from the people.
As opposition parties gear up to challenge the EPRDF in the June 2010 elections, many fear a violent crackdown by the government, similar to the intimidation, harassment and violence experienced by opposition parties during the 2005 elections, ICG alleges.
In the aftermath of the May 2005 elections, a wave of violence between opposition protestors and government forces erupted and more than 200 people were killed. Following that some opposition accused the government of harassing some people for belonging to a certain ethnic group.
But Degife Bula, Speaker of Ethiopia’s House of Federation has said the “report has not considered the actual context in Ethiopia at all”.
The House of Federation is the highest institution on matters of the federal system and was formed with at least one representative from each ethnic group.
But Degife blames the ICG for not seeking comments from the House of Federation while compiling a report on issue that is completely under its jurisdiction. “They [ICG] have prepared the report with information collected from researches of smaller scopes by such institutions like NGOs and media organisations here and there,” Degife told IPS.
The House of Federation is formally mandated to deal with nationality issues and federal-regional relations, but it meets only twice a year and lacks the authority to effectively mitigate ethnic conflicts; it has been reluctant to approve referendums to decide the status of disputed localities, according to ICG.
In conclusion ICG suggests that the current federal system may need to be modified, but it is unlikely Ethiopia can return to the old unitary state system.
“The international community has ignored or downplayed the problems. Some donors consider food security more important than democracy in Ethiopia. In view of the mounting ethnic awareness and political tensions created by the regionalisation policy, however, external actors would be well advised to take the governance problems more seriously and adopt a more principled position towards the Meles Zenawi government,” ICG says.
