By Ted Debirhan

I read Dr. Akolg Birara’s five-part series entitled “Why Ethiopians must unite?” with profound interest. The most monotonously used {www:cliché} in the Ethiopian opposition discourse, unity, has been hard to establish in the past 20 years. Some of the majorly pointed causes for the absence of a political u-turn in Ethiopia are lack of unity between pro-democracy forces, lack of capable and committed leadership, fear, and selfishness of the population. Unity stands aloud among them. This was what one of Ethiopia’s best sons, scholar, and a veteran of World Bank, Dr. Akolg dwelt on in the past few weeks. Highly investigated and written, the article also had many repeated sentences and ideas in each of the parts. Here I write my short {www:rejoinder} to his article in the company of my tiny knowledge. The article appeared on most of Ethiopian pro-democracy online media, may you want to read refer most Ethiopian sites like Ethiopian Review. Although the last part that is part five of the series is not yet published, I wanted to write this rejoinder with the hope that it may poke the writer to include few strategic and analytical points that have been missing in the previous parts. Dr. Aklog states that the last part of the series will be focusing on the implications of land grab. As I would argue in my critique section later, he should include some strategic and analytical recommendations and advice on how, with whom unity can come about.

In his first piece, Akolog attested the history of Ethiopia and the role that unity played in the preservation of our history and heritage. He then discusses about the formation of nations throughout the world saying that none were formed via olive branches but through bloody wars, which shall not be a source of fracture but unity.

He then goes to make a comparative analysis of the use natural resources and developing one’s nation fast using Korea and Ethiopia as cases. Then he goes to explain the social, unemployment, agricultural, education, and similar problems that have been dragging Ethiopia’s development and extremely neglected by the current regime. Agriculture and the land give away is one that could keep the country in desperate conditions. “Ethiopia deserves a smallholder farming revolution.” Dr. Aklog says.

In his second part, he discussed on the reasons why people revolt, the present socioeconomic situation of the country and similar problems. He also sternly speaks of the negligence of Ethiopian smallholders and other domestic entrepreneurs by the Ethiopian government and concludes that the governing party’s strategy will not improve the poor farmers and self-sufficiency attempts. “Rather, it was to control the ‘peasantry’ and to make the rural population dependent and an appendage. A pro poor economic and social policy would have resulted in a smallholder Green Revolution in Ethiopia.” He says.

Part three of his series highlighted the dangers that emanate from massive transfers of water basins and farmlands and other pillars of the economy to foreign governments and businesses. In his articles he tried to embolden that unity of purpose and action is critical, urgent and everyone’s business. In this part, he made a comparison of China and Ethiopia in terms of population, and sees the beneficial aspects of population growth. Quoting his new book also, Akolog says giving land away is giving water away, natural resources that he equates to minerals and fuel.

“Poor and repressive political and socioeconomic governance censures or restricts freedom and empowerment regardless of geographical location, ethnicity, religion or demography.” He says.

In part four (a) of five of his series, Aklog presented global measurements and annual reports that describe the severity of poverty and bad governance within Ethiopia. To him one of the major reasons why the civil and political forces of Ethiopia do not unite is because they cannot focus on the needs of Ethiopia and the population. However, in his Part four article he said “More than any single factor, it is their quarrelsome behaviors and actions and their divisions that prolong the agony of the Ethiopian people”.

In this same part, he advises political elites and the populous that the moral way of dismantling the ruling parties “divide and rule” strategy is unity. Down the page he adds this argumentative sentence “Only empowered Ethiopians can improve their lives and the status of the country.”

He states some of the factors that make Ethiopia still poor in the world. Citing cases from India mainly, he argues, “Smallholder farms are more productive than large-scale commercial farm”. He often uses “hungriest and unhealthiest countries in the world” to describe today’s Ethiopia. To say ‘The hungriest’ is in fact correct in the economics sense of it but politically incorrect way of describing a nation and people – as far as I remember it was first out in writing in the Economist magazine two years ago.

Part four (b) – in this part he also referred to the impact of endowment companies such as EFFORT and party owned companies in national economies. He stressed that he advocates for an “unconditional unity”. He then dwells of the difference between growth and development taking the cases of the Ethiopian Diaspora who are bewildered by the ‘growth’ they see and the agricultural sector which as wrongly claimed by the government has been growing faster than the Ethiopian population. Finally, he lists some seven hurdles that the Ethiopian economy suffers from : hyperinflation, hunger, {www:malnourishment} and ill-health in urban and rural areas, high unemployment among youth, glaring income inequality, pervasive corruption, {www:illicit} outflow of foreign exchange, and the single party, endowment and foreign dominance of the pillars of the economy.

A tiny critique

As the title of his write ups suggested, Dr. Akolg hugely focused on the ‘why’ of Unity. With some repetitive points, he focused deeply on the hardships, destitutions and anticipated obliterations that Ethiopia will face unless we unite. Dr. Akolg however failed to clearly point out some strategic and analytical recommendations on the methods, how, and with whom aspects of bringing about unity. Regardless of the scope and objective of the thesis, answering these extremely relevant and important issues is unexceptionable. This writer anticipates that Dr. Akolg would take this comment on board and conclude his series by providing answers and solutions to these critical issues instead of solely focusing on the implications of the land grab, which is a very important issue too.

Causes

Part four (b) of his article he said “It is also their (opposition forces) lack of genuine commitment in siding with the people who struggle within the country to unseat a repressive regime peacefully, systematically and in sustainable ways” which perpetuates the division or is the cause. More than this, I as a reader would have loved to read the theoretical causes of division, disunity, and fragmentation within political parties and opposition forces. In addition to this, plausibly explaining the causes of the disunity among the Ethiopian opposition forces becomes essential. What divides these people and groups that we are telling ought to be united? Is it as they rhetorically say an external influence as they say, an uninvestigated internal cause, or independent one? These should all be answered from both an analytical and strategic insights.

Methods of forming the Unity of purpose and action

To answer Dr. Aklog’s “Why” question in a more {www:succinct} manner, finding few strategic and practical methods of executing the envisaged unity is also another question that should be answered in the next part of his article. He already stated that he wants to see an “unconditional unity” among the forces. Nevertheless, how can this unconditional unity be achieved? What has been highly used in most countries and so far in Ethiopia is dialogue/ deliberation between the liberal faction/units of the different forces at play. Dialogue and deliberation to form unity are time consuming, expensive and arduous. However, they remain to be one of the least contestable choices of forming unity of purpose and action among groups and people at large. What other methods and models of forming unity of purpose and action do we have in the plate? In addition, which one do you think works best in Ethiopia and for Ethiopia? How this unity should be formed: temporary or permanent? If as you premised, the propelling factors for unity were our moral obligation of defeating the ruling party’s divisive policy and listening to the call of the Ethiopian mass; how would we go about this fundamental question.

Who should unite?

You also have briefly covered this issue in your thesis. As far as what I registered from the thesis, you have no distinction of who should be part of the unity, as some Parties would foolishly exclude parties and rebels that have been formed along ethnic lines. Should this unity be regional? Meaning should we bring neighbouring countries and powers at play in the Horn of Africa as the main players and contributors of our unity?

Dr. Akolg did not give sufficient answer or skipped the above points I reviewed him for. There is one majorly important question that you have answered and that is the when. That is now. All Ethiopians and politico-military forces have no time to spare. They should unite now and now. Change is needed now and now. The thesis did answer some of the questions indirectly although, they emerge to be the most timely questions to be answered. There is no Ethiopian, I dare to say, who doesn’t know “Why Ethiopians must unite?” What most of us don’t know and want the scholarly insights of academics like you is on the how we go about it part? The walking aspect, I would say. I am reading various books and case studies to offer my own answer to these questions I posited.

The case of Sudan

Sudan is a case no different from today’s Ethiopia. It has an inflationary rate that is over 30%. Food prices as well have sky rocketed that urban dwellers have found it barely possible to buy their necessities. The opposition parties and rebels have been highly fragmented alike. However, last week a news emerged that divergent opposition groupings have come together and formed a united force.

The news has it as follows:

Rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region and southern Border States said on Saturday(12 Nov. 2011) they had formed an alliance to topple the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, The alliance called “Sudanese Revolutionary Front” is focused on “toppling the regime of the (Sudan’s ruling) National Congress Party with all possible means” and replace it with a democratic system, the groups said in a joint statement sent to Reuters on Saturday. Darfur’s main rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) — and the SPLM-N, which fights the army in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, said they had formed a political and military alliance. Analysts said the new alliance showed closer coordination among various rebel groups left in Sudan after the South seceded under the terms of a 2005 peace agreement.

On the other hand, just today, while I was surfing on Facebook for the daily updates, I have come to read a new proposal for a united army by an individual/group named Green Ethiopia. The suggestion was endorsed by one of the strongest Ethiopian youth groups in Facebook and internationally, the Ethiopian Youth Movement. This is how it reads,

Free All Ethiopia Army(FAEA ). The future main opposition army group in Ethiopia. The nature of TPLF doesn’t allow for peaceful demonstration. So the chance of peaceful demonstrations to be turned to violent uprising is most likely high. Free All Ethiopia Army (FAEA ) is the ultimate solution . It will be a composed of defected Ethiopian Armed Forces personnel and volunteers from all regional states and ethnics, who can be active enough during the upcoming Ethiopian uprising. The formation of the opposition army group will be announced in websites and media by a group of uniformed defectors from the regime military, who will call upon members of the army to defect and join them. The Freedom fighter army will announce that the FAEA will work with demonstrators to bring down the repressive system and declare that all security forces attacking civilians will be justified targets. Free All Ethiopia Army will not have any political goals or power ambition except the liberation of Ethiopia and her people from Meles oppressive regime and his henchmen, his allies and protecting the country from domestic and foreign scavengers. The Group continues and outlines its Military tactics, leadership structure.

As the case of the Sudan above, shows unless all forces both the political and military oppositions form an alliance with a common denominator, their effectiveness, and existence will not be of any use. Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) that have worked independently for long have come to understand the need for unity of cause and action. The new Free All Ethiopia Army (FAEA ) suggestion from Ethiopian youth and democratic opposition seems to be a bit unhappy about the inconsolable attempts of Diaspora based political movements to bring together divided armed groups together. These guys are suggesting the creation of a new United force that is a product of the amalgamation of the already existing liberation forces who seem very bashful to listen to the advises given by the likes of Dr. Aklog. As a result, these young men came up with the idea of the formation of a new liberation army that is

Composed of defected Ethiopian Armed Forces personnel and volunteers from all regional states and ethnics, who can be active enough during the upcoming Ethiopian uprising.

This suggestion informs us how desperate the society both inside and outside is for a solution. The attempts of bringing fragmented political and military forces into one by movements and elders have been so lengthy and definitively inconclusive. As the case of the Sudanese opposition and rebel forces show, all parties political, religious, historical, and economic differences had put aside their differences in order to form this grand Unity force. This is has not happened among Ethiopian forces so far.

Conclusion

Last month when I was in a week holiday in Amsterdam, I had a good chat with this compatriot of mine about the bogeymen of Ethiopia. I said to him, both the political and military forces within and without Ethiopia are not doing anything but serving as bogeymen for the ruling party in order to imprison peaceful opposition activists at home. I explained this case well giving a historical flashback since the times of Professor Asrat Woledeyes. The ruling party in Ethiopia in order to arrest the Professor created its illegal own armed group as a bogeyman. I can cite a dozen of cases. The latest is the arrest of members of the civil home based parties such as Unity for Democracy and Justice, Oromo National Congress and journalists. The regime to arrest these non-violent critics had to link them to armed or pro-violence groups that are mostly based in the Diaspora such as Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and Ginbot 7. These groups have caused no tangible threat in the regime so far but continue to be used by the incumbent as bogeymen in order to arrest unarmed, helpless strugglers at home.

In my opinion, if this does not call for the formation of an immediate unity of purpose and action, what will?

By Messay Kebede

I am surprised that the Woyanne regime does not see how unfailingly the shameful propaganda machine unleashed to discredit Yenesew Gebre’s political message is bound to fall flat. The attempt to describe his {www:self-immolation} as the act of a mentally deranged person and the recourse to testimonies of alleged close relatives of him to back up the accusation, while exposing the vicious methods of the regime, do absolutely nothing to tarnish the political message of Yenesew’s heroic self-sacrifice.

Doubtless, both mental sickness and despair can induce suicidal behaviors. But the real issue here is that such behaviors are associated with personal disorder, distress, or misfortune. More importantly, as personal setbacks, they inspire forms of death that are quick and covert, such as hanging, jumping from height, wrist cutting, drug overdosing, or drowning. The motivation behind such acts is to end a life out of control or judged intolerable. What is missing is the social dimension, that is, the sacrifice of life for the purpose of expressing political protests. Indeed, even when despair is caused by political adversities, the person who chooses to commit suicide by hanging or drowning himself/ herself is acting more as a quitter than a protester.

Not so with self-immolation for the defining reason that burning oneself to death is a public and dramatic act and a form of death that is most painful. The choice of a public stage is clearly associated with the intention to protest or send a message related to a common concern. Unlike the desperate person, the purpose is not to escape distress by ending one’s life, but to use the sacrifice of life to make a political statement. Death is not here an exit, but an instrument to advance a common cause. That is why, unlike other forms of suicide, self-immolation is very rare: let alone despair, even insanity would not be crazy enough to opt for this particularly excruciating type of death. Self-immolation contains a selflessness that can only take us to the higher realm of human devotion.

A contrast with suicide attack further brings out the specific nature of self-immolation. What they have in common is the sacrifice of life for the common cause; where they differ is in their attitude to the use of violence. Suicidal attackers want to cause harm to their enemies, while death by self-immolation causes extreme pain and demise only to the person committing suicide. This absence of harm to others likens self-immolation to hunger strikes, the huge difference being, of course, that hunger strikes rarely end in death and are motivated by the prospect of obtaining some concessions, whereas self-immolation is inspired by the resolution to die and does not expect concessions.

If self-immolation is not driven by the prospect of extracting concessions, what is, then, its purpose? Since death is not used as an exit, both the fact that it is a public act and an excruciating form of death should deliver the purpose. While the choice of a public place attests to the involvement of a common cause, the selection of a very painful death is obviously designed to arouse an emotional response. The public scene of an individual burning himself/herself to death can only arouse outrage. Equally noticeable is the fact that the outrage soon changes into shame: those who watch it or hear about it feels the guilt of their own resignation and cowardice. All face this simple but terrible question: how do we let this happen? At the same time, however, they feel the galvanizing effect of self-sacrifice for the common cause. In other words, by choosing a terrible death, the hero exhorts his countrymen to overcome their fears, thereby reigniting the symbolic meanings of fire as purification, passion, and renewal.

Given the above characteristics of self-immolation, the Woyanne attempt to discredit Yenesew as mentally unstable can hardly produce the intended effect. For, even if (and this is a huge if) we assume that Yenesew was a mentally deranged person, the fact that he chose self-immolation refutes the attempt to empty his death of its political meaning. That he set himself on fire outside a public meeting hall is by definition a political act and a protest, regardless of his mental state.

To be sure, Yenesew would have preferred hunger strike or any other method of public protest to self-immolation. But the truth is that he had no other choice than suicide, given his certainty that the Woyanne regime would not have allowed him to engage in any form of peaceful protest. His endeavor would have landed him in jail, and so made him unable to protest. That the regime has reached the point of not offering any other form of protest than suicide tells a lot about the uphill battle that the nonviolent opposition faces in Ethiopia.

Perhaps Yenesaw may have contemplated the other option of becoming a suicidal attacker. However, though the option was indeed available to him, it would have required an organization and a planning that he may not afford. Most of all, in light of his self-immolation, he would have missed his main intention, which is to cleanse Ethiopians of their fear by provoking their outrage.

What is one to say of a regime that offers no other form of protests than self-immolation? I read in the attempt to demean Yenesew the overriding goal of the regime, that is, the resolution to stay in power by all means. I also read the fear of a popular insurrection. What is more, the attempt reveals the deep contradiction of the regime: though it stays in power by repressing its people, yet it wants this same people and the world to believe that protests in present-day Ethiopia emanate from insanity or terrorist groups. In short, such protests are so bizarre and uncommon that they must come from insane persons or marginal and sectarian groups.

The strategy of presenting opposition as the position of negligible groups, as opposed to the 99 percent of the people that are happy with the regime, is indeed the abyss of contradiction. So presented, political dissent becomes abnormality, the work of sociopaths or deranged people opposing a popular government. This belief that the regime represents and defends popular interests, in addition to betraying the prevalence of Stalinist thinking, shifts insanity from Yenesew to the regime. As I have reiterated in previous writings, the reasonable road to a lasting and win-win alternative for all is the agreement to a grand coalition, not the path of criminalizing or pathologizing political opposition.

(Prof. Messay Kebede can be reached at [email protected])