For a long time the question for me has been to go or not to go. But I couldn’t make up my mind. I was afraid and confused. Even worse, I have been completely immobilized by the unknown. Time and fate have conspired against me. Everyday, I lose a little bit of my memory. I feel I must go but…
I have lived in America for longer than I care to admit. I came during the “good old days.” There must have been at least eighty people who came to Bole Airport to bid me farewell. I now remember only a few.
My father was there. Just before boarding he advised me: “Now listen, son. When you go to America (ferenj ager), you will be on your own. I am not going to be there for you. You must be strong. You must always remember why you are there. Work hard and learn. Get your degree and come back to serve your country.” My eyes welled up in tears. I couldn’t cry. “A boy doesn’t cry,” my father always said. Crying was a sign of weakness. I didn’t want him to remember me as a crying weakling.
My mother was also there. She was in tears. She must have felt like I was going to war or something. In desperation she said to me: “I don’t know why you have to go. Please, stay. You have everything you need here. Why must you go to a strange land? You won’t even have anyone there to give you water if you are thirsty. America… you are going to be a stranger in a strangeland!” I told her I’ll be back soon. Not to worry.
My little sister? She just reviewed the list of things I was to send her after I arrived in America. “Don’t forget the dress. It must be red with laces, and the shoes, the handbag… You better not forget. I will write and remind you.”
There stood my high school buddies. Tough guys. They were all at my farewell party. They’d joke: “See you in Washington! Don’t forget to send the I-20. You better write regularly or we’ll get you.”
I sat by the window in the plane. For the very first time in my life I felt I was totally alone. I cried. The stewardess looked at me. She seemed to understand. May be she had seen hundreds like me before. I was gripped by fear. What if I never see my parents again? My relatives… friends? What if I never come back? What if…
As the plane thundered towards the blue Ethiopian sky, I silently bade my last farewell. I felt a sense of emptiness. I was enveloped by self-doubt. I felt nauseous. Then I noticed I was in a jet plane for the first time in my life. I marveled at the magnificent flying machine. A little over an hour later I had left the soil of my birth. I was a stranger.
Twenty years later I think about home. But I am afraid and confused. My father had died from “stress” during the Derg era. My younger brothers and sister were jailed and tortured by the Derg. Luckily, they made it to the U.S. as refugees. I lost many relatives and friends to the government’s indiscriminate violence. My mother also passed away. I think from a broken heart. She was a mother of five. None of us were there to bury her. Ethiopia also died, a slow and painful death. Her children killed her.
Now, I often think of going back. I don’t know why. Nobody knows me there. I have no family or friends there. Few relatives would even remember who I am — better yet whose son I was. I don’t even know anyone there to write a letter.
I am impelled by an irrepressible homesickness. Then I sober myself with a bitter dose of reality. I read of the blind ethnic hatred and fratricidal warfare. I listen to the poisoned words of leaders who seem determined to send this poor nation into the grave of oblivion. I see the silver-tongued intellectuals spin theories of ethnic chauvinism and disunity.
I see my countrymen scheming to rupture the chain of their collective destiny. I hope my father will forgive me. I have to cry!
I think of my father’s advice. I have learned some of the wisdom of the West. I fear not all the wisdom in the West could help Ethiopians discriminate between good and evil. I doubt my little knowledge could begin to mend the broken pieces of Ethiopia.
I also remember the words of my mother. I have everything I need here. I don’t even know anyone there. Nobody will give me water if I am thirsty. Nobody knows my name. Will I be a stranger in a strangeland?
It was easy to predict how cadres and supporters of the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) would react to Ethiopian Review’s choice of President Issayas Afeworki as “Person of the Year.” Woyannes have committed and continue to commit unspeakable atrocities against Ethiopians. Because they have no fear of and respect for the leaderless people of Ethiopia, they carry out their crimes with impunity. On the other hand, Meles and gang know what they did to Eritreans. The ethnic cleansing these Woyanne hyenas committed against 500,000 Eritreans is a crime against humanity and Meles, Seye and all those who participated in it will be brought to justice sooner or later by the lions of Eritrea. This is what keeps Woyannes sleepless at night. It is therefore expected that they would react extremely violently to the choice of Issayas Afeworki by the most popular Ethiopian online journal as “Person of the Year.” The messages I am receiving on my phone tells it all.
I have saved some of the death threats. Here are two of them (click below or here)
[podcast]http://www.ethiopianreview.com/audio/death-threats-against-elias-kifle-jan2009.mp3[/podcast]
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As you can hear, their voice is dripping with murderous hate and rage.
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So far, Meles and his tribal gang have succeeded in identifying and eliminating genuine leaders of Ethiopia such as Prof. Asrat Woldeyes. A people without powerful leaders are easily subjugated by criminal elements like Woyanne. People who have determined, pragmatic, smart leaders can fend off against any force. We have seen it in Somalia. A group of determined leaders with a clear vision of what they want (removal of the Woyanne invading forces from their country) did not need more than 3,000 fighters to crush the 300,000 strong Woyanne army.
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What Ethiopians at the moment lack is such leaders. Fortunately, there are some who are emerging now, such as the EPPF and Ginbot 7 leaders whose movements are gaining momentum, thanks, in part, to the assistance provided by the government of Eritrea. As Somali freedom fighters succeeded in defeating the Woyanne army with the assistance of Eritrea’s government and Somalis in the Diaspora, so will Ethiopian freedom fighters. That is the path to victory against Woyanne.
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Regarding the death threats I am receiving, they will hear it back when they sit in a court room to defend themselves against charges of war crimes soon. Please do continue to leave me your messages. Here is my number: 202 369 9543.
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Kinjit Switzerland Paltalk Room is hosting a special discussion program with Ginbot 7 official Ato Andargachew Tsege on Monday, January 5, 2009, at 2:00 PM Washington DC time.
The discussion will focus on the decision by Meles Zenawi’s regime to withdraw its troops from Somalia after suffering a disastrous defeat at the hands of 3,000 insurgents.
Also will be discussed the incarceration of UDJ chairperson Wzr. Birtukan Mideksa, Teddy Afro and other political prisoners in Ethiopia.
After 2 years of wreaking havoc in Somalia and suffering a humiliating defeat, the Meles regime in Ethiopia this week is forced to withdraw its invading army.
Ginbot 7 believes that the invasion of Somalia was unnecessary, and the result has been devastating for both the people of Somalia and Ethiopia in terms of losses of lives and scarce resources.
Humanitarian agencies estimate that over 10,000 Somali civilians have been killed and 2 million were made homeless as a direct result of the invasion of Somalia by Meles Zenawi’s regime. Thousands of young Ethiopians who were sent to fight the senseless war in Somalia have been wounded and killed in vain. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the war that could have been used to feed starving children. In short, the decision by the Meles dictatorship to invade Somalia had been extremely harmful to Ethiopia and the whole Horn of Africa region.
Meles Zenawi and all the government officials in Ethiopia who had planned and executed the Somalia invasion must be held accountable for not only harming the short and long term interests of Ethiopia in the region, but equally importantly for committing war crimes, including torture, rape and mass murder against Somali civilians.
Ginbot 7 is thus demanding the immediate resignation of Meles Zenawi and his regime. We urge all Ethiopian civic and political groups to come together and work to bring an end to the TPLF devastating rule that is the root cause of most of the suffering in Ethiopia today.
Ginbot 7 Movement for Justice Freedom and Democracy
I read with great interest Dessalegn Asfaw’s article titled “Lessons from Birtukan Mideksa’s Arrest,” posted on Ethiomedia. His starting observation is that the EPRDF’s decision to arrest Birtukan emanates from a calculated risk confirming that the advantages of the detention will outweigh all possible negative fallouts. He accordingly unravels three interrelated objectives: (1) the arrest will totally cripple the momentum of the UDJ; (2) it will undermine Birtukan’s own rising popularity; (3) it will deepen the submission of the people by clearly showing that the EPRDF is the absolute master.
I fully subscribe to this analysis. But what is most interesting to me is Dessalegn’s conclusion: for him, the arrest obviously reinforces the view that “the struggle for democracy is an inward struggle. It is not about the EPRDF.” In other words, our own failure to organize and respond effectively allows the EPRDF to act with such impunity. Indeed, in light of the indignation and surprise expressed here and there at the arrest and the revocation of the pardon, it is good to remind people that the direction of the struggle is not to expect but to impose change on the EPRDF.
Where I am less inclined to follow Dessalegn is when he implies that Birtukan could have retracted the remarks she made about the pardon without damaging herself. He writes: “on the face of it, there would be nothing wrong with a calculated retraction,” all the more so as her continuous activism is necessary to accomplish urgent and more important tasks. What ruled out this option, so Dessalegn seems to say, is that such a retraction would have been viewed by the Ethiopian diaspora and most people in Ethiopia as another betrayal.
My view is that a retraction would have been harmful, not because the Ethiopian opinion would have failed to understand its merits, but because the EPRDF would have accomplished the three mentioned objectives with flying colors. When the now defunct Kinijit leaders were released from prison following the so-called presidential pardon, I wrote that the purpose of the whole drama of pardoning them after the court’s guilty verdict was to humiliate them. The intent to humiliate is not only a personal vendetta; it has a clear political goal as well. It creates a pernicious fissure between the people and its would-be leaders on the ground that leaders, who are not ready to sacrifice their comfort and even their life, if necessary, do not deserve to be leaders. The purpose of humiliation is to demean would-be leaders in front of the people they claim to defend.
The elementary reality is that a people without leadership is a people unable to organize and resist, and so doomed to submission. We all wonder why Ethiopians remain so passive when the consequences of the Woyanne policy have such disastrous impacts on their daily life. We all expect the people to rise up and oppose continuous resistance. And we know from recent experience how well the Woyanne regime understands the language of resistance, as illustrated by its precipitated pullout in the face of a growing Somali insurgency. Look closer: the Somali resistance is fueled by the committed and stubborn leadership of Islamic fighters.
Since the rise of Ethiopia’s modern state, the various groups that controlled the central government have all worked toward one major goal, namely, the dismantling of all autonomous societal organizations so as to create a completely fragmented and flattened society. To undermine resistance, dictatorial regimes pursue the dissolution of autonomous centers of leadership through a systematic policy of atomization. This systematic decapitation went so well in Ethiopia that all forms of autonomous organizations have disappeared with the exception of the apolitical organizations known as edire. One catastrophic consequence of the atomization of social life was the promotion of ethnicity as the sole principle of organization with some potential for autonomy and anti-central state activities.
The decision to arrest Birtukan clearly belongs to the general arsenal of dictatorial regimes, which is to never allow the emergence of an autonomous leadership. But this policy backfires every time that dictators arrest or kill those who rise to leadership. The very act of silencing or eliminating them is how they earn that leadership. Hence the policy of humiliation designed to show that the so-called leaders back down whenever they are confronted with the prospect of losing their comfort.
It seems to me that Birtukan’s arrest as a result of her refusal to retract her statement does not prove that the EPRDF “has all the power and that Ms. Birtukan has none.” On the contrary, her sacrifices shows the only way out, that is, the path of resistance. She is no longer talking about resistance or elections; she is demonstrating the refusal to submit by her own example. She is thus pointing to the means that destroys dictatorships more than any violent uprising, to wit, the refusal to comply, the withdrawal of cooperation.
With her in prison, we can still continue our old way of life, but we can no longer pretend that we don’t hear her exemplary exhortation. Birtukan is now inside all of us; she has become our conscience, and as such our inspiring and admonishing leader. Her sufferings under inhuman conditions of detention are haunting voices inside us. The question is: Are we ready to respond to the appeal?
I hope that the shimagle will intervene, but this time with a determined and genuine goal of achieving a compromise, which alone opens the democratic path. But no conciliatory effort is likely to succeed if the Woyanne government is not pressured to compromise by means of sustained and wide protest. In particular, the Tigrean community can play a decisive role by openly showing its disagreement over the imprisonment of a leader whose commitment to democracy and peaceful struggle can hardly be doubted.
The appearance of two articles pleading for the release of Birtukan on Aiga Forum is an encouraging sign even if the writers justify their stand with phony reasons. The obvious truth is that, with the release of Birtukan, everybody wins, including ethnonationalists, the jailers, and their supporters. Otherwise, I don’t see how one can prevail over those who increasingly urge for violent confrontation, the outcome of which is unpredictable and probably not good for Ethiopia and Ethiopians. So let us all rally around the common cause of obtaining Birtukan’s freedom.
MOGADISHU – Somali insurgents appeared to be scrambling for power Saturday, taking over several police stations in the capital as Ethiopian defeated Woyanne troops who have been propping up the puppet government scramble out of the country, witnesses said.
“We have to show commitment to do our part in security, we want to help people feel secure,” Abdirahim Issa Adow, a spokesman for one wing of the insurgency, told The Associated Press after deploying troops to three of Mogadishu’s 14 police stations.
His Union of Islamic Courts is not allied to the most powerful insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has taken over most of Somalia.
The [Somali puppet] government controls only Baidoa, the seat of Parliament, and pockets of the capital, Mogadishu. There is no effective military or police force; some police bases are occupied by government forces and others are vacant. The three taken over Saturday were vacated months ago.
After 2 years of wreaking havoc in Somalia and suffering a humiliating defeat, the Meles regime in Ethiopia this week is forced to withdraw its invading army.