Broad-based popular mobilization is difficult to achieve because it requires bridging the disparate interests of the urban and rural poor, the middle class, students, professionals, and different ethnic or religious groups… [read more]
By Amb. Kadafo Mohamed Hanfare
Sultan Ali Mirah Hanfare (1921 – 2011) was born in Awsa, Ethiopia in a village called Fursee. He was born to father, Hanfare Aydahis and mother Hawy Omar In the early 1920s. His grandfather Mohammed Hanfare Illalta was a famous king of Afar who participated in the Adwa {www:battle} with the Emperor Minilik against the Italians. He also defeated the invading Egyptian army led by Ismail Basha to conquer Ethiopian lands. Sultan Alimirah himself, as a young man in Awsa, joined the group of young Ethiopians who resisted the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. After the defeat of Italy by the Ethiopians, Sultan Alimirah together with his brother in law Yayo Hamadu were amongst the Afar people who welcomed the victorious return of the Emperor HaileSelassie in Addis Ababa.
At that time Mohamed Yayo, the uncle of Sultan Alimirah, was the Sultan of Awsa. The Afar elders, however, including Yayo Hamadu, suggested that the young Alimirah replace his uncle as Amoyta (Sultan). Emperor HaileSelassie accepted their {www:recommendation} and gave the title of Dajazmach to Sultan Alimirah and the title of Fitawrare to his brother-in-law Yayo Hamadu. He also gave them a well trained brigade from his bodyguard army, headed by a general in case Sultan Mohamed resisted to handover power to his nephew. After several days of journeying, they arrived in Aysaita in the dark of the night. They spent the night in Aysaita while Sultan Alimirah stayed behind. Fitawrari Yayo Hamadu and his followers together with the trained military officers who accompanied them, left for Hinale, where the palace of Sultan Mohamed was located. The next morning, however, the {www:resistance} they were faced with was not as expected. They found Sultan Mohamed sick on his bed. So the military officers who accompanied Sultan Alimirah took Sultan Mohammed to Addis Ababa while Hamadu stayed behind.
In 1945, Sultan Alimirah officially became the Amoyta (Sultan) of the Afar people. What happened to Sultan Mohamed Yayo, however, is a story that will be discussed some other time.
After becoming the Sultan, Alimirah was faced with several challenges. His aim was to create a peaceful and united environment for all Ethiopians everywhere, and for the Afar people, in particular. He worked to bring modern education, agricultural and economical development to the towns in Awsa. Towards the end of the 1960s Awsa became a {www:prosperous} area in Ethiopia. A lot of Afars became cotton farmers and settled in Aysaita, Dubti, Baadu and Daat Bahari. Many Ethiopians from the other regions also became farmers and settled in several areas of the Afar region. The sultan established The Awsa Farmers Association and borrowed money from the Addis Ababa bank, whose general manager, Ato Debebe Yohanes, was the his personal friend. Together they invested a lot of money in Awsa and the Baadu areas, also distributing money amongst farmers. At that time, Awsa was known as the “little Kuwait” because of its prosperity.
In 1974 when the Derg took power in Addis Ababa and invaded Awsa in June of that year, the sultan left behind over 60 tractors, 8 bulldozers and 3 Cessna planes. One of the three Cessna planes was piloted by the Sultan’s cousin, a trained Afar pilot by the name of Hanfare Ali Gaz.
Seventeen years later when Derg was defeated and the sultan returned to Ethiopia none of those things existed anymore, several people had been killed and many things destroyed. The sultan tried to start from scratch but things were very tough.
In 1972, Sultan Alimirah was invited to visit the USA by the USAID through the State Department visitors program. I was one of the 3 Afars who was {www:fortunate} to accompany his highness the Sultan. Myself, his personal assistant Ali Ibrahim Yusef, his personal advisor, Hashim Jamal Ashami, interpreter, the sultan himself and the state department {www:escort} all visited 15 states during our stay.
One of the 15 states we visited was Chicago, Illinois, were the sultan visited operation push, later called the Rainbow coalition which was led by Jesse Jackson, a well known African American activist at that time. When the Sultan arrived there, he was given a standing ovation as he talked about the Ethiopian history and his admiration of the leadership of Emperor HaileSelassie. The sultan was extremely impressed by this. The Sultan also visited, Elijah Mohamed, leader of “The Black Muslims” at that time and also met several state department officials. On our visit to Lubbock, Texas, we were given Honorary American citizenship by the mayor of the city.
The American government, and the American people we visited with the late sultan were very welcoming and greeted us with great hospitality. The sultan expressed his extreme {www:gratitude} to the government of America and its people to the United States Ambassador in Addis Ababa at that time. Very impressed with his visit, he called America the land of “milk and healthy young people.”
As we went to the different states, the sultan was constantly asking if any Ethiopians lived there. In those days, however, not many Ethiopian lived in the States, but we met many students at the several universities we visited. Forty-five days later the sultan left to visit London while I stayed behind to continue my education at the American University in Washington D.C. After His visit to London the Sultan returned back home.
In 1974, when the Derg came to power, Sultan Ali Mirah, being the reasonable man that he was, tried to reach some kind of understanding with the Derg leaders. Briefly he did succeed in reaching an understanding with the Derg when General Amman Andom was the leader. Unexpectedly, however, the Derg killed General Amman Andom and over 60 Ethiopian officials overnight. After that it became clear to him that it was impossible for him to work with them. The Sultan left Ethiopia through Djibouti to settle in Saudi Arabia, where King Khalid welcomed him and fifty of his followers.
During his stay in Saudi Arabia, he established The Afar Liberation Front (ALF) that was fighting the Derg regime for 17 years alongside TPLF, OLF, ELF, EPLF and several other Ethnic groups fighting against the Derg dictatorship.
In 1991, after the fall of the Derg dictatorship, the sultan returned to Ethiopia and attended the July 1991 Conference together with his two sons Hanfare and Ahmed Alimirah as representatives of ALF and the rest of the Afar people. I attended the conference as an Observer.
At the opening of the conference, the Sultan discovered that the Eritrean leaders did not wish to participate in the conference as representatives but as observers. This he later understood was because of their wish to create a separate nation. This was new to the sultan as he believed that after fighting Derg for so long, that they all had the same intention of creating a peaceful, democratic, united country with equality for all, but he was alarmed to see that this wasn’t the case. To argue the point with the rest of the conference members, he raised his hand to be recognized and to state his opinion. When the chairman refused to recognize his presence and allow him to speak, the sultan grabbed a microphone from beside him and said:
In my opinion this conference was not to dismember Ethiopia but to unite Ethiopia. A conference that discusses how to achieve, equality,justice,democracy and good governance for all Ethiopians. The Ethiopian people expect us to come out of this conference with a new government and democracy not two different nations.”
Isaias Afwerki, then leader of Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, stormed out of the room in anger.
The sultan then continued by saying that, “if Eritreans were allowed a referendum for their future that Ethiopians should also be allowed to decide, voices of the Afar people should have particular significance, as a part of Afar land was part of the Eritrean province. He also claimed that he never wished to see Ethiopia landlocked.”
The sultan lived everyday for Ethiopian unity and his loss was mourned by all of Ethiopia and neighboring countries.
I would like to take this opportunity as a dear family member and a dear friend of the sultan to thank all of those who have expressed their condolences through various means. I would like to personally assure all Ethiopians that we, the family of the Sultan – The Afar people, will follow in his footsteps and work for the peace and unity of the Ethiopian People!
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
By Mohamed Hassen
In 1991, as the result of military ruling collapsed, Ethiopia established a federal system creating largely ethnic-based territorial units, its framers claiming they have found a formula to achieve ethnic and regional autonomy, while maintaining the state as political unit. The initial process of {www:federalization} lasted four years, and was formalized in a new constitution in 1995. The Ethiopian ethnic federal system is significant in that it provides for {www:secession} of any ethnic unit.
The leading party EPRDF consisted of four parties; although, TPLF led the regime. TPLF working hand-and-gloves with Eritrea rebel at the time had deliberately designed a controversial article 39 so that EPLF should have created its own government and it succeeded to make Ethiopia a country without a port.
The secession clause is one of the most controversial issues in public discourse in Ethiopia and its Diasporas communities today. The TPLF and EPLF soldiers had disarmed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and put them in jail; even though, the honey moon of TPLF and EPLF did last for a short period and we all knew that they had bloody war that claimed the lives of 70 thousands innocent people in 2000.
Opponents of ethnic federalism fear that it invites ethnic conflict and risks state disintegration. The Ethiopian state, they worry, may face the same fate as the USSR and Yugoslavia. Others, of an ethno nationalist persuasion, doubt the government’s real commitment to self-determination; they support the ethnic federal constitution per se, but claim that it has not been put into practice. To many critics, the federal state is a de facto one-party state in which ethnic organizations are mere satellites of one ethnic organization, the Tigray Peoples Liberationits Front (hereafter referred to as TPLF), the leading unit in the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (hereafter referred to as EPRDF). Finally, those who consider Ethiopia to be a colonial empire sees the federal exercise as yet another colonial trick, and advocate “decolonization.” Supporters of ethnic federalism point out that it has maintained the unity of the Ethiopian peoples and the territorial integrity of the state, while providing full recognition to the principle of ethnic equality. It is important to examine objectively whether ethnic federalism is a viable way of resolving conflict between ethno nationalism and state nationalism. Now that the ethnic federal experiment is more than two decades old, it is possible to make a tentative evaluation of its performance. According to a reliable data, the ethnic conflicts have been exacerbated in the last two decades and more conflicts have been emerged in Ethiopia. The main ones are Somalis against Oromo, Oromo against Harari, Afar against Somalis and within Somalis, etc. ,
I posed a key question, not only about the conflict but about whether the current liberation fronts be it OLF, or ONLF should have the controversial secession sentiment is valid: “The question has hovered over Ethiopia Federal System from the moment the Deg regime collapsed whether TPLF, EPLF, ONLF or ONLF join their cousins fighting in its zone: Was the battle for Ethiopian power the clash of a brutal dictator against democratic opposition fronts, or was it fundamentally a tribal civil war?” The brute answer was a tribal civil war and all the fronts have shown their ugly heads once they got a power seat.
This is the essential question because there are two kinds of school of thoughts in Ethiopia: “real united country approach” with long histories in its territory and strong national identities (Amhara, Tigray, Oromo, Somali, Afar, Gurague etc); and those that might be called “tribes with bullets approach,” or more artificial regions with boundaries drawn in sharp straight lines by TPLF’s pen. Those have been trapped inside their regional borders myriad tribes and sects who have volunteered to live together for centuries and have fully melded into a unified family of citizens if they are not organized along the nation and nationalities line.
They are Somali Region, Afar Region, Amhara Region, Trigray Region, and Oromo Region to name a few. The nations and nationalities and sects that make up these more artificial regions have long been held together by the iron fist of EPRDF, kings or military dictators. They are no real “citizens” in the modern sense. They have been asked to forcefully endorsed the identity of their nation origin aka balkanization of apartheid South Africa.
The balkanization disease has not only gone through the people in homeland, but Ethiopians who live in Diaspora. On April 9, and 10, Ethiopian officials visited 14 cities in North America and discussed the so-called Growth Transformation Plan. According to a reliable information that I got from Minnesota, clash of clans had surfaced among the Somalis.
The President of Somali Region Abdi Mohamud Omar had welcomed his own sub clan Ali Ysuuf of Ogadeni and did not want to see any other Somali clans who inhabited in Somali Region. These had a created a tension among the six other Somali clans had formed an organization to fight under the banner of unity of Ethiopia and distanced themselves from the ethnicization. On one occasion, the President of Somali Abdi Mohamudd Omar had insulted the counselors in Washington DC Embassy because they did give a preference to his own sub-clan during the conference. It seems that the Meles regime is doing deliberately to foment tribal conflict so that he elongated his Power. For instance, Somali Region President has spent 90, thousands dollars during his visit to North America, but two millions Ethiopian Somalis are on the brink of starvation in Somali Region. The same thing is going in Somali Region. Many Somali clans had sent a letters of complain to the Federal Government. This attested how much the introduction of article 39 and zoning had destroyed the fabric of Ethiopian society. The people of Ethiopia had lived for centuries, intermarried and fought together to make Ethiopia a land that had never colonized. Currently, ONLF, OLF and G7 political Organizations are meeting in North America and we urged them to focus on the unity of Ethiopia to dismantle the dictatorial regime of Meles Zenawi and to echo the uprising of Arab World.
Finally, sadly, we can’t afford to divide Ethiopia along nations and nationalities line. We have got to get to work on our own country. If the Diaspora is ready to take some big, hard, urgent, decisions, shouldn’t they be first about fighting for freedom, justice and rule of law in Ethiopia? Shouldn’t he first be forging a real unity that will go beyond nations narrow outlook that weakens all the the unity and true Ethiopian identity and a budget policy that secures the Ethiopian dream for another generation? Once those are in place, I will follow the Meles and his gang to be routed out from the power seat as Mubarek and Ben Ali had been relegated to the history bin.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
ADIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s year-on-year {www:inflation} rate rose for a second straight month to 29.5 percent in April, from 25.0 percent a month earlier, driven by a sharp rise in food prices, the statistics agency said on Tuesday.
“The total price index of cereals in April 2011 has increased by 14.6 percent as compared to the same month last year, which significantly contributed to the rise in the {www:indices} of food and the general consumer price index,” the Central Statistical Agency said in a statement.
Ethiopia’s regime has imposed price ceilings on more than a dozen commodities including some essential foodstuffs. Food accounts for just over 57 percent of the basket used to measure the inflation rate.
Regime officials have accused traders of artificially inflating food prices on the back of higher global prices and a September {www:devaluation} of the birr currency ETB=.
Ethiopia is grappling with rising inflation like other countries in Africa, including Uganda where spiraling food and fuel prices have led to protests.
(Reporting by Aaron Masho; Editing by Richard Lough and Susan Fenton)
PRESS RELEASE
Reports coming out of Ethiopia indicate that the mass arrest of the Oromos has continued unabated. Meles is engaged in a {www:witch-hunt} strategy to destroy any form of opposition to his dictatorship. Like most desperate dictators in North Africa and the Middle East he unsuccessfully attempted to associate the emerging new pro democracy movement with foreign forces.
The naked truth is that the minority dictatorial regime that has been in power for 20 years through brute force and fraudulent elections is severely threatened by the uprising that is brewing all over Ethiopia. Civil resistance is slowly but surely spreading in almost every part of the country. Like the dictators in the Middle East and North Africa, Meles is trying to deflect public attention by preposterously linking the pro-democracy movement in side Ethiopia and in the Diaspora with foreign forces.
The Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopia (GCMCE) strongly condemns the latest {www:political machination} of the Zenawi regime, demands the immediate halt to the mass arrests, egregious human rights violations in the Ogaden, Oromia, and other regions, calls for the unconditional release of all political prisoners and the resignation of Meles Zenawi so that it paves the way for the formation of a Transitional Government.
We also call on the regime to allow the International Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to resume their operations in the Ogaden and other drought affected areas of Ethiopia.
Beka! Enough! Geye! Yeakel! Bass! Aloni! Ditteh! Wetandeem! Gides!
Freedom, justice, equality for the People of Ethiopia! Victory to the people of Ethiopia!
For more information contact: [email protected]
Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopia
PRESS RELEASE
Ethiopian Youth Movement
The Ethiopian youth is once again determined to make history. We have unanimously decided to conduct tactical campaign strategy and remove the despotic regime that has been in power for more than 20 years through brute force and fraudulent elections. In 1974 the popular revolution that overthrew the age old imperial regime was led by the youth. It was the result of the sustained struggle of the Ethiopian student movement that culminated in a popular revolution. After the 1974 revolution, the Ethiopian youth vehemently fought the military regime, and paid dearly. The sacrifice required retreat and change of strategy. In 1991, the youth managed to remove the military dictatorship. Unfortunately like the 1974 revolution, the 1991 revolution was hijacked by poor leaders and blood thirsty Marxist dictators that used ethnic differences as a card to impose an apartheid type minority rule. Today the Ethiopian youth faces severe hardship, has little sense of national cohesion, and is living with grim future. It is facing high unemployment, mass migration, bad education, eviction from its ancestral land to give way to land to foreigners and lost its God given liberty.
On the positive side, there is hope. We are fully aware that our destiny is in our hands. We are also inspired by our peers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. There is no reason why we cannot have the Arab uprising in Ethiopia. We can have an Ethiopian Spring that addresses the root causes of bad governance. Therefore, we have resolved to bring the torch to Ethiopia, and liberate the country from the minority dictatorship that has been in power for more than 20 years.
To this effect, the youth wings of major political organizations have agreed to work for peaceful change, with the main objective of creating a platform in bringing the Ethiopian youth together, to network and build solidarity, brainstorm ideas, strategize long term and short term plans to shape the political, social and economic future of Ethiopia. We want to contribute to peace and development not only in Ethiopia but in the Horn of Africa. We want to resolve the Nile River issue with a win win situation for all countries. Our aim is to promote democracy and end minority rule through peaceful resistance. It is to promote equality, justice, unity and mutual respect among all Ethiopians. The Ethiopian Youth Movement is an independent network with structures in most parts of Ethiopia, and in the Diaspora. It has been operating for sometime. It is an action oriented movement that does not aspire to hold a political office. Our movement rejects all forms of extremism.
In the short term, the struggle will focus on removing the dictatorship through peaceful resistance. The struggle period can be short or a protracted one. It aims to minimize the level of sacrifice. Our struggle is not against the ordinary TPLF members or the Ethiopian Defense Forces. It is against the TPLF cabal, the violators of human rights and corrupt officials. We have an excellent relationship with the global youth movement. Our short term aim is to help the formation of a Transitional Government that prepares the country for an unfettered free and fair election.
The Transitional Government, in addition to preparing the country for a free and fair election, shall maintain law and order, and defend the unity and territorial integrity of the country during the transition period. It shall have no hidden agenda. The Ethiopian Youth Movement therefore fully supports the recently issued press statement of the National Oromian Youth Movement, and calls upon the removal of Meles Zenawi from power. We support the suspension of the constitution and the abolition of the rubber stamp parliament of TPLF.
No amount of suppression and propaganda shall confuse the Ethiopian youth from its target. We are very happy to announce that the peaceful resistance for change will start on May 28, 2011. We call upon Ethiopian students, farmers, workers, civil servants, businessmen and women, professionals, political organizations, civic organizations, religious leaders, and men and women in the uniform to join the youth movement to remove the dictatorship. We also call upon all armed and clandestine opposition forces to declare cease fire and support the peaceful struggle.
The struggle for democracy and unity shall continue!
Ethiopian Youth Movement
E-mail: [email protected]
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107472902664461