By Barry Malone
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – An Ethiopian rebel group on Wednesday warned international oil companies against exploring in a region of the Horn of Africa nation where the rebels attacked a Chinese-run field in 2007 killing 74 people.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) — whose hundreds of fighters seek autonomy for the ethnically Somali Ogaden region — said oil firms had cleared some 1,600 square kilometers, displacing locals and destroying vegetation.
“Certain multinational oil corporations are intent on exploiting Ogaden fossil fuel resources in alliance with the current Ethiopian regime that is committing genocide and war crimes in Ogaden,” it said in an emailed statement.
“Besides destroying the livelihood of the rural population in the affected areas, these companies are filling the coffers of this regime and financing its criminal activities in occupied Ogaden.”
The group has in the past directly threatened Petronas, the Malaysian state-owned company, which is one of more than a dozen international explorers hunting for oil and gas in Ethiopia.
Cash-strapped Ethiopia is keen to attract foreign investors and denies the rebels are still a threat.
Ethiopian forces launched an assault against the rebels — who have been fighting for more than twenty years — after the 2007 attack on an exploration field owned by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s biggest refiner and petrochemicals producer.
Addis Ababa now says the ONLF has been defeated.
The rebel statement said any firm working in the region would be considered complicit in crimes by Ethiopia’s military.
“In order to accommodate these immoral and gluttonous rushes for oil in Ogaden, Ethiopia killed, raped and illegally detained thousands of Ogaden civilian and imposed economic and aid blockade at a time of when there was a full-blown drought in the Ogaden,” it said.
“ONLF has persistently warned these unscrupulous multinational companies and their governments … the ONLF has been left no alternative but to take all measures necessary to protect the inalienable rights of the Ogaden people.”
Ethiopian officials deny rights abuses in the Ogaden region, saying the rebels are the ones perpetrating crimes there on locals.
(Editing by Matthew Jones)
The Economist
The Chinese and Arabs are buying poor countries’ farms on a colossal scale. Be wary of the results.
OVER the past two years, as much as 20m hectares of farmland—an area as big as France’s sprawling farmland and worth $20 billion-30 billion—has been quietly handed over to capital-exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and China. They buy or lease millions of acres, grow staple crops or biofuels on it, and ship them home. The countries doing the selling are some of the world’s poorest and least stable ones: Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Pakistan. Usually, when foreigners show up in these places, it is with aid, pity and lectures (or, in one instance, arrest warrants for war crimes). It must make a nice change to find their farms, so often sources of failure and famine, objects of commercial interest instead.
Yet while governments celebrate these investments, the rest of the world might reasonably ask why, if the deals are so good, one of the biggest of them helped cause the overthrow of the government that signed it—the one in Madagascar. Will this new scramble for Africa and Asia really reduce malnutrition, as its supporters say? Or are critics right that these are “land grabs”, “neocolonialist” rip-offs, different from 19th-century colonialism only because they involve different land-grabbers and enrich different local elites?
Protectionism or efficiency?
It would be graceless to write off in advance foreign investment in some of the most miserable places on earth. The potential benefits of new seeds, drip-feed irrigation and farm credit are vast. Most other things seem to have failed African agriculture—domestic investment, foreign aid, international loans—so it is worth trying something new. Bear in mind, too, that worldwide economic efficiency will rise if (as is happening) Saudi Arabia abandons mind-bogglingly expensive wheat farms in the desert and buys up land in east Africa.
Yet these advantages cannot quell a nagging unease. For a start, most deals are shrouded in mystery—rarely a good sign, especially in countries riddled with corruption. One politician in Cambodia complains that a contract to lease thousands of acres of rice contains fewer details than you would find in a house-rental agreement. Secrecy makes it impossible to know whether farms are really getting more efficient or whether the deals are done mainly to line politicians’ pockets.
Next, most of these deals are government-to-government. This raises awkward questions. Foreign investment helps countries not only by applying new technology but also by reorganising the way people work and by keeping an eye on costs. Few governments do this well, corrupt ones least of all. One of the biggest problems of large-scale commercial farming in poor countries is that well-connected farmers find it more profitable to seek special favours than to farm. These deals may exacerbate that problem. Worse, the impetus for many of them has not been profit-seeking by those who want to turn around failing farms. Rather, it has been alarm at rising food prices and export bans. Protectionism, not efficiency, has been the driving force. It would be better to liberalise food markets and boost trade than encourage further land grabs.
Third, there are serious doubts about whether countries acquiring land are paying the true cost of it. Host governments usually claim the farmland they offer is vacant, state-owned property. That is often untrue. It may well support smallholders who have farmed it for generations. They have no title, only customary rights. Deals that push them off their land or override customary rights cannot be justified. International bodies, such as the African Union, are drawing up codes of conduct to limit such abuses. They are sorely needed.
Even then, land deals will never help the poor as much as freer trade and stronger property rights. But if the deals eventually raised yields, spread technology and created jobs, that would at least be some cause for celebration. At the moment too many seem designed to benefit local elites more than local farmers; they use foreign labour and export most of their production, harming local food markets. Until they show otherwise, a dose of scepticism should be mixed with the premature hopes the land deals have engendered.
Buying farmland abroad
EARLY this year, the king of Saudi Arabia held a ceremony to receive a batch of rice, part of the first crop to be produced under something called the King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad. It had been grown in Ethiopia, where a group of Saudi investors is spending $100m to raise wheat, barley and rice on land leased to them by the government. The investors are exempt from tax in the first few years and may export the entire crop back home. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is spending almost the same amount as the investors ($116m) providing 230,000 tonnes of food aid between 2007 and 2011 to the 4.6m Ethiopians it thinks are threatened by hunger and malnutrition.
The Saudi programme is an example of a powerful but contentious trend sweeping the poor world: countries that export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare. Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, grow the crops there and ship them back.
Supporters of such deals argue they provide new seeds, techniques and money for agriculture, the basis of poor countries’ economies, which has suffered from disastrous underinvestment for decades. Opponents call the projects “land grabs”, claim the farms will be insulated from host countries and argue that poor farmers will be pushed off land they have farmed for generations. What is unquestionable is that the projects are large, risky and controversial. In Madagascar they contributed to the overthrow of a government.
Investment in foreign farms is not new. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 foreign investors rushed to snap up former state-owned and collective farms. Before that there were famous—indeed notorious—examples of European attempts to set up flagship farms in ex-colonies, such as Britain’s ill-fated attempt in the 1940s to turn tracts of southern Tanzania into a limitless peanut prairie (the southern Tanganyika groundnut scheme). The phrase “banana republics” originally referred to servile dictatorships running countries whose economies were dominated by foreign-owned fruit plantations.
But several things about the current fashion are new. One is its scale. A big land deal used to be around 100,000 hectares (240,000 acres). Now the largest ones are many times that. In Sudan alone, South Korea has signed deals for 690,000 hectares, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for 400,000 hectares and Egypt has secured a similar deal to grow wheat. An official in Sudan says his country will set aside for Arab governments roughly a fifth of the cultivated land in Africa’s largest country (traditionally known as the breadbasket of the Arab world).
It is not just Gulf states that are buying up farms. China secured the right to grow palm oil for biofuel on 2.8m hectares of Congo, which would be the world’s largest palm-oil plantation. It is negotiating to grow biofuels on 2m hectares in Zambia, a country where Chinese farms are said to produce a quarter of the eggs sold in the capital, Lusaka. According to one estimate, 1m Chinese farm labourers will be working in Africa this year, a number one African leader called “catastrophic”.
In total, says the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think-tank in Washington, DC, between 15m and 20m hectares of farmland in poor countries have been subject to transactions or talks involving foreigners since 2006. That is the size of France’s agricultural land and a fifth of all the farmland of the European Union. Putting a conservative figure on the land’s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth $20 billion-30 billion—at least ten times as much as an emergency package for agriculture recently announced by the World Bank and 15 times more than the American administration’s new fund for food security.
If you assume that the land, when developed, will yield roughly two tonnes of grain per hectare (which would be twice the African average but less than that of Europe, America and rich Asia), it would produce 30m-40m tonnes of cereals a year. That is a significant share of the world’s cereals trade of roughly 220m tonnes a year and would be more than enough to meet the appetite for grain imports in the Middle East. What is happening, argues Richard Ferguson, an analyst for Nomura Securities, is outsourcing’s third great wave, following that of manufacturing in the 1980s and information technology in the 1990s.
Several other features of the process are also new. Unlike older projects, the current ones mostly focus on staples or biofuels—wheat, maize, rice, jatropha. The Egyptian and South Korean projects in Sudan are both for wheat. Libya has leased 100,000 hectares of Mali for rice. By contrast, farming ventures used to be about cash crops (coffee, tea, sugar or bananas).
In the past, foreign farming investment was usually private: private investors bought land from private owners. That process has continued, particularly the snapping up of privatised land in the former Soviet Union. Last year a Swedish company called Alpcot Agro bought 128,000 hectares of Russia; South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries paid $6.5m for a majority stake in Khorol Zerno, a company that owns 10,000 hectares of eastern Siberia; Morgan Stanley, an American bank, bought 40,000 hectares of Ukraine in March. And Pava, the first Russian grain processor to be floated, plans to sell 40% of its landowning division to investors in the Gulf, giving them access to 500,000 hectares. Thanks to rising land values and (until recently) rising commodity prices, farming has been one of the few sectors to remain attractive during the credit crunch.
The great government grab
But the majority of the new deals have been government-to-government. The acquirers are foreign regimes or companies closely tied to them, such as sovereign-wealth funds. The sellers are host governments dispensing land they nominally own. Cambodia leased land to Kuwaiti investors last August after mutual prime-ministerial visits. Last year the Sudanese and Qatari governments set up a joint venture to invest in Sudan; the Kuwaiti and Sudanese ministers of finance signed what they called a “giant” strategic partnership for the same purpose. Saudi officials have visited Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, South Africa, Sudan, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam to talk about land acquisitions. The balance between the state and private sectors is heavily skewed in favour of the state.
That makes the current round of land acquisitions different in kind, as well as scale. When private investors put money into cash crops, they tended to boost world trade and international economic activity. At least in theory, they encourage farmers to switch from growing subsistence rice to harvesting rubber for cash; from growing rubber to working in a tyre factory; and from making tyres to making cars. But now, governments are investing in staple crops in a protectionist impulse to circumvent world markets. Why are they doing this and what are the effects?
“Food security is not just an issue for Abu Dhabi or the United Arab Emirates,” says Eissa Mohamed Al Suwaidi of the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. “Recently, it has become a hot issue everywhere.” He is confirming what everyone knows: the land deals are responses to food-market turmoil.
Between the start of 2007 and the middle of 2008, The Economist index of food prices rose 78%; soyabeans and rice both soared more than 130%. Meanwhile, food stocks slumped. In the five largest grain exporters, the ratio of stocks to consumption-plus-exports fell to 11% in 2009, below its ten-year average of over 15%.
It was not just the price rises that rattled food importers. Some of them, especially Arab ones, are oil exporters and their revenues were booming. They could afford higher prices. What they could not afford, though, was the spate of trade bans that grain exporters large and small imposed to keep food prices from rising at home. Ukraine and India banned wheat exports for a while; Argentina increased export taxes sharply. Actions like these raised fears in the Gulf that one day importers might not be able to secure enough supplies at any price. They persuaded many food-importing countries that they could no longer rely on world food markets for basic supplies.
Panic buying
What to do instead? The obvious answer was: invest in domestic farming and build up your own stocks. Countries that could, did so. Spending on rural infrastructure is the third largest item in China’s 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) economic-stimulus plan. European leaders said high prices showed the protectionist common agricultural policy needed to be preserved.
But the richest oil exporters did not have that option. Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by lavishing untold quantities of money to create grain fields in the desert. In 2008, however, it abandoned its self-sufficiency programme when it discovered that farmers were burning their way through water—which comes from a non-replenishable aquifer below the Arabian sands—at a catastrophic rate. But if Saudi Arabia was growing more food than it should, and if it did not trust world markets, the only solution was to find farmland abroad. Other Gulf states followed suit. So did China and South Korea, countries not usually associated with water shortages but where agricultural expansion has been draining dry breadbasket areas like the North China Plain.
Water shortages have provided the hidden impulse behind many land deals. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, claims: “The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal.” He calls it “the great water grab”.
For the countries seeking land (or water), the attractions are clear. But what of those selling or leasing their resources? They are keen enough, even sending road shows to the Gulf. Sudan is letting investors export 70% of the crop, even though it is the recipient of the largest food-aid operation in the world. Pakistan is offering half a million hectares of land and promising Gulf investors that if they sign up, it will hire a security force of 100,000 to protect the assets. For poor countries land deals offer a chance to reverse decades of underinvestment in agriculture.
In developing countries as a whole, the average growth in cereal yields has fallen from 3-6% a year in the 1960s to 1-2% a year now, says the World Bank. This reflects, among other things, a decline in public investment. In the 14 countries that depend most on farming, public spending on agriculture almost halved as a share of total public spending between 1980 and 2004. Foreign aid to farming also halved in real terms over the same period. Farming has done worst of all in Africa, where most of the largest land deals are taking place. There, agricultural output per farmworker was the lowest in the world during 1980-2004, growing by less than 1% a year, compared with over 3% a year in East Asia and the Middle East.
The investors promise a lot: new seeds, new marketing, better jobs, schools, clinics and roads. An official at Sudan’s agriculture ministry said investment in farming in his country by Arab states would rise almost tenfold from $700m in 2007 to a forecast $7.5 billion in 2010. That would be half of all investment in the country, he said. In 2007, agricultural investment had been a mere 3% of the total.
China has set up 11 research stations in Africa to boost yields of staple crops. That is needed: sub-Saharan Africa spends much less than India on agricultural R&D. Even without new seed varieties or fancy drip-feed irrigation, investment should help farmers. One of the biggest constraints on African farming is the inability to borrow money for fertilisers. If new landlords just helped farmers get credit, it would make a big difference.
Yet a certain wariness ought to be maintained. Farming in Africa is hard. It breaks backs and the naive ambitions of outsiders. To judge by the scale of projects so far, the new investors seem to be pinning their hopes on creating technologically sophisticated large farms. These have worked well in Europe and the Americas. Paul Collier of Oxford University says Africa needs them too: “African peasant farming has fallen further and further behind the advancing commercial productivity frontier.”
But alas, the record of large farms in Africa has been poor. Those that have done best are now moving away from staple crops to higher-value things such as flowers and fruit. Mechanised farming schemes that grow staples have often ended with abandoned machinery rusting in the returning bush. Moreover, large farmers are often well-connected and spend more time lobbying for special favours than doing the hard work.
Politics of a different sort poses more immediate problems. In Madagascar this year popular hostility to a deal that would have leased 1.3m hectares—half the island’s arable land—to Daewoo Logistics, a South Korean company, fanned the flames of opposition and contributed to the president’s overthrow. In Zambia, the main opposition leader has come out against China’s proposed 2m-hectare biofuels project—and China has threatened to pull out of Zambia if he ever came to power. The chairman of Cambodia’s parliamentary foreign-affairs committee complains that no one has any idea what terms are being offered to Kuwait to lease rice paddies.
The head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, dubs some projects “neocolonialist”. Bowing before the wind, a Chinese agriculture-ministry official insists his country is not seeking to buy land abroad, though he adds that “if there are requests, we would like to assist.” (On one estimate, China has signed 30 agricultural co-operation deals covering over 2m hectares since 2007.)
Objections to the projects are not simply Luddite. The deals produce losers as well as winners. Host governments usually claim that the land they are offering for sale or lease is vacant or owned by the state. That is not always true. “Empty” land often supports herders who graze animals on it. Land may be formally owned by the state but contain people who have farmed it for generations. Their customary rights are recognised locally, but often not accepted in law, or in the terms of a foreign-investment deal.
So the deals frequently set one group against another in host countries and the question is how those conflicts get resolved. “If you want people to invest in your country, you have to make concessions,” says the spokesman for Kenya’s president. (He was referring to a deal in which Qatar offered to build a new port in exchange for growing crops in the Tana river delta, something opposed by local farmers and conservationists.) The trouble is that the concessions are frequently one-sided. Customary owners are thrown off land they think of as theirs. Smallholders have their arms twisted to sign away their rights for a pittance.
This is worrying in itself. And it leads to so much local opposition that some deals cannot be implemented. The Saudi Binladin Group put on hold a $4.3 billion project to grow rice on 500,000 hectares of Indonesia. China postponed a 1.2m hectare deal in the Philippines.
Farms control
Joachim von Braun, the head of IFPRI, argues that the best way to resolve the conflicts and create “a win-win” is for foreign investors to sign a code of conduct to improve the terms of the deals for locals. Various international bodies have been working on their versions of such a code, including the African Union, which is due to ratify one at a summit in July.
Good practice would mean respecting customary rights; sharing benefits among locals (ie, not just bringing in your own workers), increasing transparency (current deals are shrouded in secrecy) and abiding by national trade policies (which means not exporting if the host country is suffering a famine). These sound well and good. But Sudan and Ethiopia have famines now: should they be declining to sign land deals altogether? Many of the worst abuses are committed by the foreign investors’ local partners: will they be restrained by some international code?
There are plenty of reasons for scepticism about these deals. If they manage to reverse the long decline of farming in poor countries, they will have justified themselves. But like any big farming venture, they will take years to reveal their full impact. For the moment, the right response is to defer judgment and keep a watchful, hopeful but wary eye on their progress.
The following is an insightful analysis [in Amharic] about how the Ethiopian opposition has started to set its own agenda, instead of always reacting and responding to the Woyanne tribal junta that is currently ruling Ethiopia. The author, Abakiya, analyzes President Isaias Afwerki’s interview with Ethiopian Review and eppfonline.org, and points out the paradigm shift among the opposition. [If you are unable to read the Amharic text below, click her for PDF]
የኤርትራ ስጦታ፡ የታሪክ እስር ቤት፡ የህወሀት ጥፋት
የራስን እድል በራስ መወሰን እስከመገንጠል የሚለው አንቀጽ በሕገ መንግስቱ ውስጥ መጨመር ሰህተት ነው።
— ፕሬዚደንት ኢሳይያስ አፈወርቂ-2009
የራስን እድል በራስ መወሰን እስከመገንጠል መብት እንቀበላለን።
— መለስ ዜናዊ፡ ገብሩ አስራት፡ ስዬ አብርሀ፡ አረና ትግራይ-2009
አጀንዳን ስለመቅረጽ፡ የኛን አጀንዳ በኛው
ልቤ እንደተንጠለጠለ፡ የላፕቶፔ ሰሌዳ ላይ እንዳፈጠጥኩ ነው ልብ የሚሰቅል ቦታ ላይ ቃለ ምልልሱ የተቆረጠው። የሚቀጥለው ክፍል ምንም ይሁን ምን እስካሁን ያየሁት ክፍል አንድና ሁለት ብቻ አርክቶኛል። ከዚህ በኋላ አጀንዳችን የኛ ነው። እስካሁን አጀንዳችንን የሚደረድርልን ሕወሀት ነበር። አሁን እኛው ነን። “ማንም የታሪክ እስረኛ ሆኖ መኖር የለበትም። እኔም ራሴ የታሪክ እስረኛ መሆን አልፈልግም።” አልጨመርኩም፡ አልቀነስኩም። እንዳሉት እንደወረደ ሳልፈነክት ሳልተለትል ነው ያቀረብኩት። አቶ ኢሳይያስ አፈወርቂ ናቸው ይሄንን ያሉት። እኛ ትናንት አቶ ኢሳይያስ ምን አደረጉ አይደለም እንዲሾፍረን የምንፈልገው። ዛሬ አይተ ኢሳይያስ ምን አሉ እንጂ። እነሆ ኤርትራ በተገነጠለች በአስራ ስምንተ ዓመቷ፡ ኢህአዴግም ምኒሊክ ቤተመንግስት ገብቶ እኛንና አትዮጵያን እንደ ከብት መንዳት በጀመረበት ባስራ ስምንት ዓመቱ ኤልያስና ስለሺ የኤርትራውን ፕሬዚዳንት ቃለምልልስ በገጸ በረከትነት አበረከቱልን። ዛሬ አጀንዳችንን እኛው ቀረጽነው። እስከዛሬ ኢህአዴግ ነበር የሚቀርጽልን። ከግንቦት 7 መፈንቅለ መንገስት እስከ ታምራት ገለቴ ጥንቆላ፡ ከብርቱከን መታሰር እስከ ቅንጅት መፍረስ፡ ከምርጫ ዘጠና ሰባት እስከ ቴዲ አፍሮ መታሰር ድረስ፡ ኢህአዴግ በተናገረ ማግስት ነው ያንን ኢህአዴግ ያበጀልንን አጀንዳ እየተከተልን እንነጉድ የነበረው። ዛሬ የራሳችንን አጀንዳ ራሳችን ቀረጽን።
ኤልያስ ክፍሌ እና ስለሺ ባህር ተሻግረው፡ አገር አቆራርጠው ከኤርትራ ወርደው፡ የአቶ ኢሳይያስን ቃለምልልስና፡ ፈንጂ፡ እውነተኛ፡ የሚያሳዝኑም የሚያስደስቱም፡ አንዳንድ ግዜ ትንሽ ትንሽም ቢሆን የሚያበሳጩ፡ ነገር ግን ጠላትን ደም የሚያስቀምጡ፡ ሰላም የሚነሱና የሚያሸብሩ፡ ያለተበረዙ፡ ፍልሚያ ለዋጭ፡ ያለተሰረዙ ያልተደለዙ ሀሳቦቻቸውን አቀረቡልን። አሁን ኳስ በኛ እጅ ናት። አጀንዳው የኛ ነው። ሕወሀትን አንድ ርምጃ ቀድመነዋል። እነሆ የአቶ ኢሳኢያስ ቃለ ምልልስ አዝማች፡ “ኑ እና እንወያይ። እንነጋገር። መነጋገርና ነገሮችና ማጽዳት አለብን። ኢትዮጵያን ማዳከም ፍላጎታችን አይደለም። የታሪክ እስረኞች መሆን የለብንም። የታሪክ ባሮች አንሁን።” የሚል ነው።
ቃለምልልሱ፡ ልብ አድርሱ፡ እንባ አብሱ፡ ያለፈውን እርሱ …
ከዚህ በፊትም ጽፈናል። ከፈራረሰች ኢትዮጵያ ይልቅ፡ ለኤርትራ፡ የማታሰጋት ግን አስተማማኝ ጎረቤት ያስፈልጋታል ብለናል። አቶ ኢሳይያስም ይሄንኑ ነው ያሉት። “We need a safe neighbourhood::” ኤርትራ በባዶ አየር ላይ አትኖርም። በምድር ላይ እንጂ። “Eritrea will not survive in a vacuum።” በቅርቡ በአሜሪካና በአውሮፓ ስለተደረጉ የሁለቱ አገር ህዝቦችና ምሁራን ውይይትና ንግግር ሲጠየቁ፡ በሁለቱ ህዝቦች መካከል የሚደረጉ ውይይቶች መበረታታትና መጨመር አለባቸው። በሁለቱ ህዝቦች መካከል የሚፈጠርና የሚጠናከር ኢኮኖሚአዊና ፖለቲካዊ ትስስር እንቅልፍ የሚነሳቸው ስልጣናችንን ያሳጣናል ብለው የሚሰጉትንና የሚሸበሩትን የወያኔ ቡድኖች ነው። እነዚያ ጥቂት እና አናሳ ሀይሎች በኢትዮጵያ ውስጥ የሚኖራቸውን ስልጣን ይሸረሽራል ብለው ሰግተው ነበር። ስለዚህም ነው የኤርትራ ጉዳይ አሁን የደረሰበት ደረጃ ላይ እንዲደርስ ያደረጉት። ስሙን ምንም እንበለው ምንም፡ ኮንፌደሬሽንም ይሁን ፌደሬሽን፡ በኢትዮጵያና በኤርትራ መካከል እንዲኖር ይፈለግ የነበረው የኢኮኖሚ፡ የደህንነትና የንግድ የባህልና የህልውና ውህደት ይመጣል። ይሄ ውህደት አደገኛ ነው ብለው በመስጋት ነው ወያኔዎች ወደዚህ አሁን እብደት ነው ወደምለው የድንበር ግጭት የገቡት። የድንበር ግጭቱ ግን የሀሰት ምክንያት ነው። ዋና ስጋት ስልጣናቸውን የማጣት ነው። ስለዚህም የሆነ ሆኗል። ማንም የታሪክ ታጋች፡ እስረኛ አይሁን። መጪ ዘመናችንን ግን እናበጀው አሉ። እነሆ የአቶ ኢሳኢያስ ቃለ ምልልስ አዝማች፡ “ኑ እና እንወያይ። እንነጋገር። መነጋገርና ነገሮችና ማጽዳት አለብን። ኢትዮጵያን ማዳከም ፍላጎታችን አይደለም። የታሪክ እስረኞች መሆን የለብንም። የታሪክ ባሮች፤ የታሪክ ታጋቾች አንሁን።”
ስለሕወሀት፡ ስለብሄረ ድርጅቶች፡ ስለኢትዮጵያ
በዚህ ውይይት ላይ ከምንም በላይ የማረከኝ መልሱ ብቻ አይደለም። ጥያቄዎቹ። የዛሬ ሁለት ሶስት ወር አቶ ኤልያስ ክፍሌ ለአቶ ኢሳይያስ አፈወርቂ የሚሆኑ ጥያቄዎች አምጡ አለን። አፌዝንበት። ተዘባበትንበትም። ጥያቄ ቀረበ። ፈጣጣው ኤልያስም ይሆን ቆፍጣናው ስለሺ ጥያቄውን አይናቸውን ሳያሹ አቀረቡት። “እንደው ከዚህ ከመለስ ጋረ እስካሁን ማታ ማታ ትገናኛላችሁ፡ ለተቃዋሚውም ታሰጋላችሁ የሚል? አቶ ኢሳይያስ ፈገግ ይላሉ። አንዳንዴ ብዙ የማይቆይ ሳቅም ይስቃሉ። ፊት ማንበብ ለሚችል ሰው፡ የፊታቸው ወዝ፡ የአይናቸው እንቅስቃሴዎች፡ የሰውነታቸው ምላ እውነት ወይንም ወደ እውነት የቀረበ ነገር እየተናገሩ እንደሆነ ያናገራል። “የታሪክ እስረኞች/ታገቾች መሆን የለብንም” አሉ ደግመው ደጋግመው። ይሄ ሰውዬ፤ አቶ ኢሳያስ እነዚህ ሰዎችን ያውቃቸዋል። በተለይ “እነዚህን ሰዎች የሰራቸው የፈጠራቸው እሱ ነው” የምንል ከሆነም፡ ይሄ ሰው የሰራቸውን ፍጥረቶች ባህርይ ያውቃል ማለት ነው። ስለዚህ እነዚህን ሰዎች ለመጣል ከዚህ ከምንጩ መስማማት የግድ ነው ጎበዝ። ቀጠሉ አቶ ኢሳይያስ። “ይሄ የኤርትራና የኢትዮጵያ አጋርነት ቃልኪዳን ነው። ለኛ ትግሬ ከኦሮሞ ወይንም ከአማራው የቀረበ ነውና አሳልፋችሁ ትሰጡናላችሁ የሚለው የማይታሰብ ነው። ያ ወያኔ የፈጠረው የጥርጣሬና ያለመተማመን በሽታ ነው።” ህወሀትን ከኢሳይያስ የተሻለ የሚያውቀው የለም። እንዲህ ሲሉ ስለወያኔ መሰከሩ። “የህወሀት ስተራቴጂክ ምርጫ፡ ለአማራውም ለኦሮሞውም ለደቡቡም እነሱ እንዳሻቸው የሚጠፈጥፉት ድርጅት መፍጠር ነበር።” ይሄን የሚጠራጠር አለ? ከመጀመሪያውም ወያኔዎች ከሌሎች ብዙሀን ድርጅቶች ጋር በመተማመን መስራት ከፍተኛ ስጋታቸው ነበር። በፍጹም አይፈልጉትም። ስለዚህ የወያኔ ቡድን እንጂ፡ ኤርትራ ከኢትዮጵያ መከፋፈል በምንም መልኩ አታተርፍም። ኤርትራ ለትግራይ የቀረበ ለሌሎቹ ደግሞ የራቀች አይደለችም። ሀሰት ነው። ሕወሀቶች ያንን መቀራረባችንን አይፈልጉትም።
ስለብሄር ድርጅቶች ተጠየቁ። በተለይ በኤርትራ በኩል መግፋተ ያስፈልጋል ስንል ከዚህ በፊትም የመከርን ሰዎች አንዳንዱ ጥያቄ ባይጠየቅ ሁሉ እንመርጥ ነበር። ምክንያቱም ሰውዬው እንዲፋጠጡብን ወይም እንዲቆጡብንና መንገዳችን እንዲደናቀፍ አልፈለግንም ነበራ። እነ ኤልያስ ግን ፍንክች የለም። ፈታጦች። ጠየቁ። “ግን ታዲያ ለምን በብሄር የተደራጁ ድርጅቶችን ትደግፋላችሁ?” ለሽግግር። አጭርም ረጅምም መልስ ነው። አቶ ኢሳያስ፡ ከቶውንም ቋሚ በሆነ መልኩ በብሄር መደራጀትን አይፈቅዱትም። ለነገሩ ትክክል ናቸው። የኤርትራ እንጂ የኩናማ ወይ የሳሆ ወይ የዚህ ብሄ ድርጅት ብለው አልተዋጉም። “በብሄር መደራጀት ለጊዜው የምንፈልገውን እስክናገኝ አስፈላጊ ነው። ነገር ግን ቋሚ አይደለም፡ ከዛሬ ሀያ ሰላሳ አመታት በኋላ ኢትዮጵያ በብሄር ብሄረሰቦች ተከፋፍላ ማየት አንፈልግም። ያ በኤርትራ እንዲሆን አንሻም። ያ በሱዳን እንዲሆን አንሻም። ያ በኢትዮጵያ እንዲሆን አንሻም። ያ በየትኛውም አፍሪካ እንዲሆን አንሻም። ስለዚህ የኢትዮጵያ ተቃዋሚዎችን አሳልፎ መስጠት የማይታሰብ ነው። የማይሞከር። ቀድሞውን ነገር ያ ትልቅ ስህተት ነው። የኢትዮጵያ በብሄሮች ተከፋፍላ መኖር። ያ ጊዜያዊ ነገር ነው። ዋናው ነገር ኢትዮጵያ እንደሀገር መኖሯ፡ነው። በራስህ እንዲሆን የማትፈልገውን በባልንጀራህ አታድርግ የሚለው ቃል በአቶ ኢሳይያስ ተፈጸመ። ጭፍን ልመስል እችላለሁ። ግን አውቃለሁ፡ አቶ ኢሳይያስ ቀድሞ ጸረ-ኢትዮጵያ ድርጊቶችን ፈጽመው ይሆናል። ግን ያ ድሮ ነው። አሁን ግን ዘንድሮ ላይ ነን። ሌላ ዘመን ሌላ ስርአት መጣ። ከዘያ የሳቸው አዝማች አለ። እነሆ የአቶ ኢሳይያስ ቃለ ምልልስ አዝማች፡ “ኑ እና እንወያይ። እንነጋገር። መነጋገርና ነገሮችና ማጽዳት አለብን። ኢትዮጵያን ማዳከም ፍላጎታችን አይደለም። የታሪክ እስረኞች መሆን የለብንም። የታሪክ ባሮች አንሁን። የታሪክ ታጋቾች።”
ተጨማሪ፡ ስለበሄሮች: የታሪከ እስረኛ ስለመሆን
የኢትዮጵያን አንድነት አይፈልጉም? በዚህም ምክንያት የብሄር ብሄረሰበችን ድርጅቶች ይደግፋሉ? የአርበኞች ግንባርንም አያንቀሳቅሱትም? ተብለው ተጠየቁ። በነገራችን ላይ አሁንም እነ ኤልያስ ጥያቄዎቹን እንደወረዱ ነው ያቀረቡዋቸው። እነመለስ እንኩዋን፡ የበላው ይመለስና፡ የኢትዮጵያ መሪ ተብለው ከኢትዮጵያዊያን የማይቀበሏቸውን ጥያቄዎች ነው ያስተናገዱት። ጠያቂዎቹንም ተጠያቂውንም አደንቃለሁ። ያለምንም መጎላደፍና መኮላተፍ፡ ግን በልበ ሙሉነትና በትህትና ነው ያቀረቡት ጥያቄዎቹን። ይሄ የማይጨበጥ ግምት ነው። ይሄ የመነጨው ኤርትራ ራሷን ችላ ልትኖር የምትችለው ወይንም የኤርትራ ህልውና የተመረኮዘው በኢትዮጵያ መጥፋት ላይ ነው ከሚል የተሳሳተ ግምት ነው። “We can live side by side with a strong and powerful Ethiopia.” ከዚህ በላይ ይሄ ሰው ምን ቃል ይስጠን? ቃሉን ብቻ እንመን አይደለም። ግን፡ መጀመሪያ ቃል ነበረ ነው የሚለው መጽሀፍ ቅዱስ። ከዚያ ቃልም ስጋ ሆነ። የምንም ነገር መነሻው ቃል ነው። የመጀመሪያ መገለጫው ቃል ነው። ባንናገረውም ሀሳብ ራሱ ቃል ነው። ለራሳችን የሚወጣ ቃል። “የተባበረችና የተዋሀደች ጠንካራ ኢትዮጵያ ለኤርትራም ጥንካሬ ነች።” ትክክል ነው። ስጋት ከነበረ ያለፈ ነው። ታሪክ። It is Nostalgic. ትናንት የነበረ። በድሮ በሬ ያረሰ ደግሞ የለም። ይሄ የኛ ዘመን ነው። በዚህ በኛ ዘመን የምንኖረው። የኛን ዘመን ደግሞ በኛ አዲስ መንገድ እንጂ በአባቶቻችን ቂም ልንቃኝ አይገባም ብዬ ጽፌያለሁ ከዚህ ቀደም።
ኑ እና ታሪክ እንስራ
በዚህ ቃለ ምልለሰ ላይ፡ አቶ ኢሳይያስ ለኛ ኢህአዴግን እንዋጋለን ለምንለውና ለኢትዮጵያ ተቃዋሚ ህዝቦች በሙሉ ግልጽ ጥሪም አቅርበዋል። ኑና እንወያይ። ኑ እና የእግዚአብሄርን ቤት እንስራ አይነት ነገር። ኑና የተበላሸውን የኢትዮጵያና የአካባቢአችንን ሁኔታ እንገንባ። ለመስማትና ለመነጋገር ዝግጁ ነኝ ብለዋል። አድምጥ ብርሀኑ። አድምጥ አንዳርጋቸው። አድምጥ ኢህአፓ። አድምጥ ኢህአዴግም። ከኤርትራዊያንና ኢትዮጵያውያን ስብሰባዎችና ውይይቶች ባሻገር መሄድ አለብን። ከዚያም ልቀን ሄደን፡ አብረን መስራት አለብን። እንደጎረቤት መኖር ካስፈለገን፡ መነጋገር ምንም ምርጫ የለውም። አንዳንድ ሰዎች ኤርትራን አሁን ኢትዮጵያ ለደረሰችበት ጥፋት ተጠያቂ ከማድረገቸው የተነሳ፡ ቀድሞውንም ነገር፡ አይደለም ከኤርትራ መስራት፡ ጭራሹንም ስሟም እንዲነሳ አይፈልጉም። ለነገሩ የኤርትራ ጉዳይ ባለመነጋገርና በመሸሽ የምናመልጠው ጉዳይ አይደለም። እኛ ባንፈልግም ኤርትራ ጎረቤት እንደሆነች ትቀጥላለች። ኤርትራ የወረቀት አገር አይደለችም። መሬት ላይ፡ያለች፡ የመሬት የቆነጠጠች፡ ብዙዎቻችን ባይዋጥልንም አገር ነች። ሆናለች። ብድግ አድርገው አጥፍተው የሚገላገሏት ዝንብ አይደለችም። ተነስተው ሌላ ቦታ መሄድ አይችሉም። እስራኤሎች ከፍልስጤም ጋር አለመነጋገር አይችሉም። በሰላምም ይሀን በጠብመንጃ መነጋገራችን አይቀርም። ከሆነ ግን ሰላም ይበልጣል።
አሁንም ስለብሄሮች፡ አዲሲቱ ኢትዮጵያና አዲሲቱ ኤርትራ
የተለያዩ ድርጅቶችን የምንረዳው፡ ነጻይቱ ኤርትራ ከአዲሲቷ ኢትዮጵያ ጋር አዲስ አጋርነት እንድትመሰረት ስለምንፈልግ ነው። ሽግግርም ነው። እንጂ መጨረሻ ግብም አይደለም። የተዋሀደችና የተባበረች ኢትዮጵያ ኤርትራን ታሰጋለች ብየ አንድም ቀን አስቤ ሰግቼ አላውቅም። አቶ ኢሳያስ ቀጠሉ። ራሳቸው ኢህአዴጎች ለምን ከኤርትራ ጋር መንግስቱን ለማውረድ ሰሩና ነው አሁን ከኤርትራ ጋር መስራትን እንደ ወንጀል የሚሰብኩት? እነሱ ቀድሞውንም ነገር የሞራል ብቃት የላቸውም። በርግጥ ቃለ ምልልሱንም አቶ ኢሳይያስንም ምሉእ አድርጌ አላቀርብም። ያንን የሚመኝ ካለ ምኞት አይከለከልም። እዚህ ጋር ችግሩ፡ አቶ ኢሳይያስ ጥያቄው የሚነሳው በይበልጥ ከኢህአዴግ በኩል ሳይሆን ከኛው ከተቃዋሚዎች በኩል መሆኑን ስተዋል። የተቃዋሚው ወገን ነው በተለይ ይሄንን ነገር አጥብቆ የሚያነሳው። ይሄንን ስጋት የሚገልጸው። የወያኔ ክስ አንድም ቀን አሳስቦን አያውቅም። የሆነ ሆኖ እሳቸው ግን ቀጠሉ። “እኛ ኢትዮጵያን በብሄርና በጎሳ መከፋፈል ብንፈልግ፡ ይሄንን ኢትዮጵያን በብሄር የመከፋፈሉንና የማዳከሙን ስራ ሕወሀተ/ኢህአዴግ ኦልሬዲ በነጻ እየሰራው ስለሆነ፡ ለምን በዚያ ስራ ላይ ጊዜስ ገንዘብስ እናጠፋለን? ቆይ ትንሽ ያብራሩት። “ያንን ቀድሞውንም አንፈልገውም። ይልቅስ ራሱ ኢህአዴግ ያንን የጥፋት ስራ እዚያው ኢትዮጵያ አናት ላይ ቁጭ ብሎ እየሰራ ስለሆነ ኤርትራ እንዲህ አረገች ብሎ ሊከስ አይችልም። ያ ሆን ተብሎ የሚሰነዘር ውዥንብር ነው።” ይሄ ሀሰት ነው ሚል አለ?
በመሰረቱ፡ “በመከፋፈል የሚያምኑ ደካሞችና በራሳቸው እምነት የሌላቸው በራሳቸው የማይተማመኑ ናቸው።” ያ ደግሞ ወያኔ ነው። “there is no animosity, there is no hidden agendas there is no conspiracy” ማንም መጥቶ ማየት ይችላል። ሰውዬም በስሜትና በእልህ ነው እዚህ ጋር የተናገሩት። ያንን ብቻ ነጥለን ካየነው፡ እውነተኛነታቸው ምንም ቅንጣት ታህል አያጠራጥርም። ምንም ጠላትነት፡ ምንም የተደበቀ አጀንዳ፡ ምንም አይነት ሴራ የለም። ከዚያ የቃለ ምልልሱ አዝማች ይቀጥላል። እንወያይ። እንነጋገር። መነጋገርና ነገሮችና ማጽዳት አለብን። ኢትዮጵያን ማዳከም ፍላጎታችን አይደለም። የታሪክ እስረኞች መሆን የለብንም። የታሪክ ባሮች።
ያልተመቸኝ ነገር፡ ትንሽ ያልተቀበልኩት
ይሄ በትግራይ ያለው ወያኔን የመቃወም እንቅስቃሴ ወይንም መንፈስ በሌላ የኢትዮጵያ ክፍል ካለው የከፋና የባሰ ነው ያሉትን ነገር አልወደድኩላቸውም። ሁለት ነጥቦችን አነሳለሁ። አንደኛ የትግራይ ህዝብ ሕወሀትን አጥብቆ ይቃወማል የሚለው መሰረተ ቢስና ማስረጃ የለሽ ሀሳብ ነው። ቢሆንም ግን፡ ሁሌም እንደምንለው የትግራይ ህዝብ ህወሀትን የሚቃወምበት አጀንዳና እኛ ህወሀትን የምንቃወምበት አጀንዳ የተለያየ ነው። አንዱ እናቱ የሞተችበት አንዱ እናቱ ገበያ የሄደችበት ብለን ገልጸነዋል ከዚህ ቀደም። ለምሳሌ የዛሬ ሁለት ሶስት ወር ሪፖርተረ እንደዘገበው፡ በብሄራዊ ቲያትር የተሰበሰቡ የትግራይ ተወላጆች ስብሰባውን ለመራው የሕወሀት ሰው ያቀረቡተ አቤቱታ፡ እኛ መስዋእትነት ከፍለን ሳለ ከሌላው ክልል ያነሰ ጥቅሟ፡ትቅም ነው የምናጘነው የሚል ነው። ሁለተኛ የተቀረው ህዝብ ተቃውሞ ሁሉ በተለያየ መንገድ ሲገለጽ፡ ባለፉት 18 ዓመታት የትግራይ ህዝብ ተቃውሞ ባንድ ሰልፍ እንኩዋን ሲገለጽ አላየነውም። በመሰረቱ ለትግራይ ህዝብም ከዚህ የተሻለ መንግስት ይመጣል ብለን አናምንም። አቶ ኢሳይያስ ወያኔ የትግራይን ህዝብ ከተቀረው የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ስለነጠለው በህዝቡ ዘንድ በወያኔ ላይ ከፍተኛ ቅሬታ አለ የሚሉት ነገር አልተዋጠልኝም። ችግሩ ከኔ እይታ ከሆነ፡ የጭንቅላቴን ጉሮሮ አስፍቼ ለማየት እሞክራለሁ።
የአቶ ኢሳያስ ቃለምልልስ አስደስቶኛል። የዚያን አካባቢ ውጥንቅጥ፡ ሚዛነዊ በሆነ መልኩ የሌሎች ድርጅቶችንም ስጋት ከግምት አስገብተው ጥያቄዎቹን መልሰዋል። ከአንዳንድ ድርጅቶች፡ ለምሳሌ ከኦነግ በኩል ምላሽ ሊኖር ይችላል። ለምሳሌ እነዚህ የብሄር ድርጅቶች ዘላለማዊና ቋሚ አይደሉም ለጊዜው እንጂ ለሚለው። ስለራስን እድል በራሰ መወሰን እስከመገንጠልመ ተናግረዋል። ከዚያ በተረፈ የቃለምልልሱ አዝማች ይመቻል። እንወያይ። እንነጋገር። መነጋገርና ነገሮችና ማጽዳት አለብን። ኢትዮጵያን ማዳከም ፍላጎታችን አይደለም። የታሪክ እስረኞች መሆን የለብንም። የታሪክ ባሮች አንሁን። ስለአሰብና ምጽዋ ያው The sky would be the limit for co-operation. ሉአላዊነት ሌላ ጉዳይ ነው። ትክክል ናቸው። ከዚህ በኋላ ለአሰብና ለምጽዋ አንሄድም። ኤርትራ ራሷ የኛ ትሆናለች መልሳ። የሁላችንም። እስከዚያው ግን ከታሪክ እስር ቤት ሰብረን ወጥተን፡ ከኤርትራ አይደለም ከሶማሌም ተባብረን እነዚህን ሰዎች ማስወገድ አለብን። እንደነግንቦት ሰባት ያሉ ድርጅቶች ይሄንን ወርቃማ እድል ሲሆነ ሲሆን መጠቀም፡ ቢያንስ ግን ከግምት ማስገባት አለባቸው። ያው እኔው ነኝ። እኔ አባኪያ።
By Netsanet Habtu
As I was reading the list recently released by Ginbot 7 regarding the ethnic composition of the Ethiopian army, I started thinking that our opposition to the regime for the last eighteen years has for the most part missed the point. Yes, I have known all about the speculation regarding Tigrayan domination in every aspect of Ethiopian political and economic life. What I have not seen is concrete evidence like we have started to see.
The reason I say our opposition was off the mark is because I have come to believe that what we were doing all these years was not based on a proper understanding of what the TPLF was all about. We were organizing ourselves, registering as peaceful and legal parties and treating TPLF as a normal incumbent; when in reality it was a force organized to loot and destroy our country in order to achieve some insane agenda.
I think that it is well overdue that we all; I mean all of us; admit that our country has been under enemy rule for the last eighteen years. Meles Zenawi’s rule is not your standard dictatorship that you hear or read about happening in some parts of the world today. His ruthless ethnic apartheid rule can be fairly regarded as the worst of its kind. And it is with this in mind that I want to talk about the subject of my article – a coup.
Before my readers say anything, I know that Bereket has been busy hitting the backspace key on the original “coup plot” accusation his office put out. But they did put it out once, and the genie is out of the bottle.
On April 25, the regime of Meles Zenawi came out and said it has “foiled a coup plot” by Ginbot 7 and arrested dozens of people in connection with alleged plot. Thousands more innocent people have been arrested and are being arrested to this day. The regime obviously used an accusatory tone when breaking the news. Its hirelings were running up and down the cyber space acting like some sacred object had been handled by sinners. They were enraged. Obviously, from their point of view, it is their jobs and unearned social status that is being messed with. But what they failed to consider, as always, was the perspective of millions of Ethiopians.
I know that listening to citizens is not part of their job. They work for a dictatorship. That is also why their propaganda often misses its mark and forces them to change their stories over and over in an utterly embarrassing manner.
One of the reasons why the regime abandoned its initial press release is an apparent shock at the level of fanfare with which the “coup” news was received. The news galvanized support for the accused organization, and opened people’s eyes to cracks inside the military – the regime’s supposed power base. Many Ethiopians are now left with their fingers crossed fingers sensing that something is brewing deep inside.
These reactions, obviously, are reflections of a yearning among our population. In short, most Ethiopians would like to see the regime of Meles Zenawi ousted, no ifs, and, buts about it. If a coup d’etat takes place in Ethiopia and Woyanne is eliminated most of us will be very happy and proud unlike what the delusional TPLF leaders and their supporters thought.
Every Ethiopian I know, including myself are of the opinion that the regime of Meles Zenawi should be overthrown. In fact, we think that is well overdue. The reasons are very simple. In this article, I would like to build on what a fellow citizen who blogs on UTUBO has written about this topic in this article (click here).
First, let’s briefly summarize the record of the Meles regime:
- Stolen Election: The regime of Meles Zenawi is an illegitimate government. It is in power through force and stolen elections. On May 15, 2005, millions of Ethiopians went out in a stunning display of hunger for freedom and voted Zenawi’s ruling group out of office. Ballot counting was suspended, ballot bags were stolen in many cases, peaceful protesters were killed, and almost all leaders of the main opposition party were jailed. Thousands of opposition supporters were taken to gruesome detention camps and brutally abused.War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: Stealing elections was not good enough to assure the regime an absolute grip on power. Killings, arrests and torture of citizens have continued throughout the country to this date. In the Ogaden, the regime has committed what several human rights organizations allege is a war crime. Meles Zenawi and some of his top civil and military leaders are said to be under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
- Genocide: These kinds of crimes against Ethiopian citizens did not start in 2005. International human rights organizations say there is enough evidence to charge top officials of the Ethiopian regime with genocide, for the killings that took place in Gambella in 2003. In fact, the President of Genocide Watch has written an open letter to the UN Human Rights Commissioner to look into it.
- Other High Crimes: Investigations are reportedly undergoing on the street shootings of AAU students and others in 2001; the shootings of peaceful protesters in Awassa and so forth.
- Destabilizing the Horn of Africa: Meles Zenawi has also shown that he does not back down from engaging in a regional conflict if it means diverting attention from internal problems in order to buy himself a little more time. His invasion of Somalia and the subsequent occupation has left thousands of civilians dead and over a million displaced from their homes. We still do not have any official accounting of the number of Ethiopian soldiers who have been sacrificed. Here as well, international human rights organizations allege that there is sufficient evidence war crimes have been committed by the regime’s army.
- Disastrous Monetary Policy: As if these crimes are not enough to keep Meles and co. in power, the regime employs short-sighted economic policies that harm the nation gravely as long as it buys itself a little more time. In its unsuccessful attempt to gain supporters after its humiliating defeat in 2005, the regime has handed out money the country doesn’t have like Christmas presents. This has plunged Ethiopia into an upward spiraling inflation rate that is only second to Zimbabwe’s in Africa. The poor went from eating once a day to every other day. People have now resorted into rationing food for their own families.
- Rampant Corruption: For a bankrupt regime with no vision or societal values, it was important to adopt a rampant open door policy towards corruption and allow its officials to loot the country in exchange for their loyalty and blind sport. Looting has been stepped up to proportions never seen before. A report has shown that in 2006 alone money moving to British banks from Ethiopia increased by more than 100%. The last three reports by the Auditor General (two have been fired so far) show billions of Ethiopian Birr have been unaccounted for.
- Land Grabbing: What I find more frightening than the stealing of money is the level of land grabbing by high level officials, including the Prime Minister’s wife, Azeb Mesfin. In just one recent incident, for example, it has been reported that she has acquired 40K hectares of fertile land in Gondar area. It is believed that all this rush to grab large scale farming land when they know their seats are shaking hard is to lease it to Arab investors. When a new government arrives, Azeb will no doubt take with her the looted cash. But the investor will stay behind with all his paperwork showing that he made the lease “legally” and has made initial payments to the “owner” of the land. The top officials of the regime, including the Prime Minister’s wife, have thrown away any pretension of accountability. The country is being ruled by a mafia group. And this mafia group, obviously, does not care for the well being of Ethiopian citizens and the long-term interest of the country. In fact, it will destroy anything and everything that gets in its way of looting the country blind.
- Crashing Economy and More: The Ethiopian economy under the TPLF is crashing. After 18 years of misrule, millions of Ethiopians are dependent on food aid every year. The prospect for the future under this regime is bleak. The quality of education is beyond poor. A recent report by Capital newspaper states that 9 out of 10 vocational college students could not pass national competency exam. Any pretension by the regime of solving this problem all by itself through “reform” proclamations will not be the solution because, as long as its policies of exclusion and repression continue, so will the migration of educated Ethiopians abroad.
- High Level of Immigration: Because there is no economic and political security in Ethiopia, the number of Ethiopians leaving their country for “somewhere” is increasing by the day. We hear horrendous stories of a thousand illegal Ethiopian immigrants in prison in Tanzania; a hundred in Malawi; about eighty Ethiopian women in a Beirut prison; some Ethiopians looking for jobs in Iraq; and others following dangerous paths through Latin America to get to North America. These were news headlines in the last two months or so alone. For anyone observing the way Ethiopians are fleeing from their country in all directions, it is fair to conclude that the country is like a house on fire that its inhabitants are all forced to evacuate.
- Ethiopian Interests Endangered: Many Ethiopians consider that their country is ruled by some kind of foreign occupying force. Recently, for example, a large area of land was given to the Sudan with no explanation to the Ethiopian public. In addition, the regime’s use of war with neighboring countries as a way to divert attention from internal problems has made it a destabilizing and dangerous force in the Horn of Africa. This is earning us enmity that will probably last for generations.
Terrible policies and repression by the ruling regime are in large part responsible for the misery our people live in. Bad policies exist in any country. However, in democratic countries, the people have the right to change their leaders through elections. This is what happens when governments are of the people, by the people and for the people.
Ethiopia is being ruled by an unelected regime that has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people; and obviously does not feel the need to fulfill its obligations as a government. Our inalienable rights to the pursuit of happiness, liberty and prosperity and to live peacefully in our own country are being violated on a daily basis.. Moreover, due to the regime’s ethnocentric policies which continue to threaten the very existence of our nation, most Ethiopians have come to feel that what is at stake is more than citizen’s rights – to be blunt, it is nothing less than the survival of our old and proud nation.
When a government fails miserably to fulfill its obligations to its citizens, it is the right of citizens to rebel against it. Since the regime of Meles Zenawi has shown time and again that it is not willing to relinquish power through elections, most Ethiopians have come to agree that it needs to be ousted by any means necessary. One way is for the military to stage a coup d’etat and remove a government that is dangerous to the national interest of the nation, that it is sworn to protect.
Because no government wants to encourage actions that endanger its survival, external support for such drastic measure is very low. For example, the African Union does not give acknowledgment to governments formed through coup d’etats. We obviously understand why, especially since African dictators are the most exposed to such actions.
However, there are some contemporary arguments that are emerging in favor of coups. An example is Alexander Collier’s recently published, “Wars, Guns and Votes”. In this book, Mr. Collier proposes to the international community to stop using aid as leverage in their dealings with dictators, and instead, considers harnessing coup d’etat. He proposes a scheme in which certain standards are set. Those administrations that sign up to the program and meet those standards will be protected from coups; whereas in the case of those who fail to meet the standards, the international community will look into harnessing a military coup that may take place, instead of condemning it.
The West needs to act on what it already knows about the Meles regime. The Meles regime is bad for Ethiopia and Ethiopians. It is bad for the long-term stability of the Horn of Africa. It is bad for the interests of the West. Therefore, if the West still believes it can benefit from a secure and stable Ethiopia, it needs to figure out ways of harnessing a coup attempt, and not oppose it. Any party that wants to continue a healthy friendship with Ethiopia, in the long run, can benefit from aligning itself with the oppressed people of Ethiopia; with groups that are working to remove the illegal regime of Meles Zenawi and those who are challenging its ethnic apartheid policies as evidenced by the total Tiragna minority domination of the military as well as all economic and political spheres of the country.
As for Ethiopians, in addition to just supporting a coup, we also need to find ways to harness it. We cannot sit back and allow what has repeatedly happened over the last 40 years. We should not allow the possibility of our yearning for freedom and democracy to be hijacked again. The only way to stop that is to get involved and keep our political groups and us accountable to our commitment to democracy. We all need to take ownership of the struggle. Standing on the sidelines and only singing the praises of those in the “eye of the storm” has not been beneficial before; and it will not be in the future.
Each one of us must take charge of our respective journeys towards freedom since Ethiopia belongs to each and every one of us. Citizenship entails responsibilities. Let’s find the courage and the resolve to free our people from the jaws of the brutal TPLF regime and save our Motherland.
(The writter Netsanet Habtu can be reached at [email protected])
By Tedla Asfaw
My father, Asfaw Feleke Woldetekle, passed away late last month at the age of 94. He was a man who never speaks loud and never blamed someone for anything. Serving under the Imperial regime of HaileSelasse, he worked at various levels and was in the treasury department, had a chance to travel with King HaileSelasse to the Dallol potash mine in Afar region. He retired few years before the 1966 Yekatit Revolution. His father died tragically to separate feast fight when he was a child. As the eldest man of his family among three sisters and one brother, he learned responsibility at a young age and helped his late mother Emayohe Desta Ayele who died two decades ago at the age of one hundred years. Currently he is survived by his youngest ailing sister and large extended family members.
His trip to Tigray to collect taxes in the 1940 E.C. is my favorite story among many others he shared with us here in New York after the fall of Derg. As a simple clerk he was sent to Tigray to collect taxes. People not only refused to pay taxes, but also felt sorry for the poor tax collector traveling with empty hands in a rebellion area asking for money for the Imperial Treasury.
He had to convince people that without money there can not be school, road and other developmental activities and the choice is theirs whether to pay or not pay taxes. The people understood this “poor man” was sent by big shots from Addis Ababa and treated him very well as their own.
My father gives credit where it is due. He admired Atse HaileSelasse for educating poor children from all corners of Ethiopia and visiting them at schools, giving them encouraging words. The first family member picture receiving diploma from the king was proudly hang on our home in Addis Ababa as an inspiration for our family.
Education for him was the stepping stone to improve ones life and country’s future. No wonder on his stay here in New York he was asking himself, “what were we doing” when the Americans people built all these bridges and roads? He himself got an informal education in the five year resistance during the Italy invasion.
Working with British allied forces, he learned English and was a translator in the refugee camp in Kenya. Some former students used to call him “Gashe” Asfaw and I attended a school, Asfaw Wossen, in Ethiopia under the principal Fanose TekeleSelassie, who was one of my father’s students
As a fighter in the resistance army he lost one eye while trying to save a fallen soldier and capture guns and ammunition from the enemy. For that he received a medal. That story was published on the then British colony of Kenya’s newspaper. Over all, he received seven medals for his service to his country. His late wife, Ejigayehu Yalew, also received two medals for bravery.
My father was a man of justice. I saw it fist hand as an elementary school child when we traveled with him to Nazret to see his few hectares of land. We met the tenant family with two children and there was no Bekele to help us visit the harvest. Harvest was very bad and Bekele had nothing to give and he gives it only at the expense of his own family.
Not only my father refused any harvest that time, he asked Bekele’s family to adopt the two girls, Belaynesh and Zenebich, to raise them as part of his family. I and my brothers grew up with these girls — sisters, in all legal definition — and I am indebted to them for helping our family after the passing away of our mother two decades ago.
My father lived through war, feudalism, communism and dictatorship and also witnessed the historical election of 2005. He was a man who follows the news around the world. He loves radios and I still remember as a child the radio that we used to listen to the German Amharic program every afternoon, “Yehe Ke Igale Rwanda Yemetelalefew Ye German Dimtse Newe.”
The man who loves information, however, was getting older at the age of the Internet and when the Hubble Telescope received additional life thanks to the USA astronauts’ successful mission this week, my father left earth, maybe to “hear” from the Hubble Telescope closely. He is still alive in our mind as always listening.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (