Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES)- Scandinavian Chapter
Promoting Millennium Hopes to Learn How to Innovate a Democratic System in Ethiopia: Continue to generate more and more activities until September 2008 at least!
1. Inspiring Quotes
I could see that my countrymen would face certain humiliation unless they modernized. – Hakim Workeneh quoted from his Diary from Bahru’s Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia
Can we really say that we Ethiopians are independent? Independence does not consist in merely having one’s own government. It presupposes self- sufficiency. And the people of Ethiopia have yet to be self-sufficient. – Gebra Yiwot Baykedagn, ‘Mengist ena ye hizb Astadader’, 1953 EC
A beautiful country and an object of admiration for foreigners, has now become a citadel of — bloodshed injustice, evil and shame because her unity has been destroyed through discord. – Aleqa Taye
A people without intelligence have no constitutional government or lawful government, and hence no secure power. The source of of all power is ‘serat’, not the size of the army. A small town that is governed by law is to be preferred to a large nation that has no ‘serat’. – Gebre Hiwot Baykedagn quoted from Bahru’s book Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia…
2. Introduction
Modernisation and unification of Ethiopia took place at the same time as the European scramble for Africa was raging. Besides the kings who were engaged in these double projects based on an understanding that fed a particular practice and the vice versa, there were also intellectuals (some of whom have been quoted above) that started to ring the alarm bell that unless reform and changes are brought with discipline, hard work and determination, Ethiopia would remain the twin victims of disunity and hunger. That warning that bellowed out from the writings of the intellectuals in the reign of Menelik and later Lij Iyassu, Queen Zewditu and Ras Teferri, sadly, remains to this day true. Ethiopia has not come out of the woods of disunity and hunger however difficult to concede this situation that continues to limit human possibility in this beautiful land.
What is remarkable is that when one reads what the intellectuals in 1900, 1920s and early 30s and in the immediate post war period diagnosed as Ethiopia’s problems are still sadly with us today. If we are not careful they will remain to haunt us in the future too! Those of us who write so much about Ethiopia should look back and hear how exacerbated and impatient such intellectuals like Hakim Workeneh Eshete, Kentiba Gebru Desta, Onesimos Nasib, Negadras Gebrehiot Baykedagn, Negadras Afwework Gebre Yesus, Bejerond TekeleHawariat Tekel Mariam, Aleka Taye Gebere Mariam, Belatta Heruy Walde Selassie and others have been to see Ethiopia modernise and develop. Some even went to the extent of contemplating the unthinkable, to wit, if the feudal leadership of the times could not live up to the task of modernising the country, perhaps the British and Italians should be invited! These are thoughts Ethiopians consider treasonous then and today.
What it shows in reality is not that these intellectuals did not love their country, but they were desperate to see change. And unfortunately to this day a structural modernisation that has altered radically the foundation of the social- economic system in Ethiopia has not taken place in the sense of seeing a wholesale transformation of the agrarian condition and the lived experience of the 80 % peasant population. The problem they grappled with is still with us. Not much has changed after a more than hundred years of talking to bring such changes that make a difference to the lives of the people!
3. Modernisation is still yet to come!
A century has passed since these intellectuals sounded the clarion call of modernisation. We are still yet to see a thorough going transformative modernisation. Many political events and episodes have taken place since the last century. Different ideologies and intellectuals of all hues and colours have appeared. Political movements have arisen and declined. Armed warfare’s have raged. Ethnic politics has been constitutionally emboldened. The country has gone through many ups and downs. With all these changes, the key matter that must be transformed has not been transformed. And that is organising and re-organising the state- society relations to produce citizenship rights where the Ethiopians emerge as citizens with full rights where the state is made accountable through laws and institutions to protecting and expanding these rights. It is only when the state is rooted in society and valorises citizenship rights honestly and legitimately that it can become truly a developmental state or a transformative agency to change the condition and well being of the peasantry irrespective of the ethnic affiliation the peasantry happen to belong to.
Today we have the fencing off of citizens into collective units and ethnic enclaves and we are treated to the discourse of decentralisation along ethnic lines where instead of the citizen the representative of the ethnic unit is entrusted to speak for citizens divided along ethnic contour lines and geographies. Under the feudal times it was land that was parcelled under different lords and dominions. Under the ethnic enclosure it is the citizen that is sacrificed in the name of the ethnic entitlement of the ethnic and vernacular identity of the group. Political commerce and speculation on identity has supplanted the production of citizenship rights by reframing and democratising the state-society interaction, communication and transaction. This has destroyed both the prospect of democracy and development based on the production of citizenship rights, the formation and building of a society-state nexus that roots state legitimacy on society and citizen on the one hand, and conversely accountability of the state to the citizen and society on the other.
4. Millennium Activities Must Continue
If there is anything new this generation of thinking Ethiopians can add it is not by repeating ad nauseam what the earlier generation of intellectuals have diagnosed so well. It is by creating a new social practice and scrambling to unite in order to rooting a new democratic civilisation in Ethiopia. It is this task that is waiting to be done. It is this task, if done well, that is bound and will likely put Ethiopia on a sure foundation of structural transformation and modernisation. Those who have been striving to create a democratic civilisation in Ethiopia cannot afford to be distracted by so many issues that inevitably and naturally arise in the process of the journey of discovery of change. They must not be deflected from the goals of uniting the many to defeat the few that obstruct the birth of a democratic system to create a new society. Everything hinges on the birth of a sustainable democratic system in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s standing in the region from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, Africa and the world depends on it. The long delayed realisation of the dream of modernity and democracy must be fulfilled. Those who obstruct this great call by allowing themselves to be distracted are indeed committing historic errors.
NES calls them to think hard, think big, and think with principle, think with commitment, think with mission before other concerns, and above all call them to learn to ignore pettiness, insults and other cantankerous behaviours to advance the united pan-Ethiopian democratic national movement to reach all Ethiopians both inside and outside the country. It must not be de ja vu time. This must be a different time never to repeat the expensive cost Ethiopia has endured for a century by its delayed modernisation due to various divisions and mishaps! This is time to prioritise country, people and nation over self. It is time for all to come forward and step in to support the people and the country to create the most sustainable democratic system and civilisation that can be the envy of all in the world. Only when the generations that currently dabble in politics succeed to unite and advance the pan-Ethiopian national democratic renewal and civilisation can we say they have made a difference. Otherwise nothing new has been added. It is old wine in new bottle as they say. NES hopes the effort and sacrifice this time would bear new results and not repeat past mistakes.
5. Round Table Discussion in Aalborg University
On October 1, 2007, a roundtable on the topic:” Abating and Growing: Poverty and Conflict in the Ethiopian Millennium in the World Today” took place where post graduate students from the University and others participated. Students from every corner of the world engaged in a lively discussion after introductory remarks from the convenor (Mammo Muchie), Dr Opoku-Mensah from Ghana, and Dr. Li Xing from China who together introduced the roundtable after a lecture from the convenor.
The purpose of the Roundtable is to introduce and let people know that Ethiopia has its own millennium nearly eight years after those who subscribe to the Gregorian system celebrated their millennium, and show them the way Ethiopians count makes enormous sense. Whilst this information in itself is interesting, the larger goal is to continue and encourage all Ethiopians to continue to use the whole year until September 11, 2008 at the very least to spreading millennium hopes by focusing on all the issues that are blocking progress and understanding to move Ethiopia forward. We hope the round table will provide a small example to continue education using millennium hopes. As one writer put it words, symbols, beliefs and moments provide us food for thought. We use them to advance our favourite experiments. For Ethiopians the most favourite experiment is to see rooted in Ethiopia’s state-society relation a democratic civilisation working for the citizens of Ethiopia. This is the most timely and urgent obligation of all thinking Ethiopians today.
“Humans respond to symbols, such as words, ideas, concepts, opinions, emotions, projections, and beliefs. We join social movements because of abstract beliefs, certain words can galvanize us to group action or involve us in mass hysteria, emotions motivate us to join mobs, we join discussion groups and academic classes to share ideas, we marry because of love, we create armies because of fear of invasion, and we socialise because of friendship. We assign meaning to things that have no physical substance. These mental constructs interact with reality in such complex ways that some philosophers question whether our worlds are physical reality or cognitive illusions. Reality or not, they catalyze us to create complex webs of alliances that we call social structure” ( Russ Marion, The Edge of Organisation: Chaos and Complexity Theories of Formal Social Systems; Sage Pub. 199.p.51)
Let us all respond to the millennium in a constructive and positive spirit to create a modernising and democratic social structure in Ethiopia.
5.1. Imitation of East Asian Developmental State not acceptable
Dr. Opoku- Mensah made the point that we cannot imitate the East Asian developmental state in Africa. He said in Africa and indeed in Ethiopia, the key space or nexus is the state-society relation from which citizenship social, political and economic rights reside. Development comes through citizenship rights and not by suppressing those rights. Development and democracy cannot be separated. They must be integrated. The East Asian model has its own national features that cannot be replicated to the Ethiopian context. This argues strongly against the thesis of replicating development with authoritarianism from East Asia that has been flouted by some of the leaders of the EPDRF today.
Dr. Li Xing spoke why China was able to reduce or abate poverty. He mentioned a number of factors such as China’s political and ideological stability, institutional innovation, united national direction, capability to mobilising domestic energy and resources for economic development, learning by trial and by making mistakes, China always maintains policy independence and not succumbing to international pressure and the huge role played by the China’s Diaspora in funnelling resources, knowledge and skills.
Dr. Xing also discussed the Chinese engagement with Ethiopia/Africa by saying there are two views. The first point is that China offers opportunities and alternatives to the International Financial Institutions. The second is that China might become an ‘imperialist’ power. At present the Chinese approach to Africa is business orientated and infrastructure building orientated. This intervention stimulated the audience that came from many countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, New Zealand and Europe. Most of the questions concentrated on the primacy of commerce vs. human rights, where the audience questioned whether it is fine for China not to take into account human rights violations in its dealings with African regimes.
An interesting question that came from the floor related to the problem of whether breaking or uniting existing states is to be preferred. It was argued when Norway seceded from Sweden in 1905, there was no war that followed. But when Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia, a war followed and there is still no clarity how the matter might come to a closure. A Tanzanian and few Nigerian students argued that a lot of the reason why such problems persist by drawing examples from their own respective countries is because legitimacy and institution building fall far short than would be necessary to sustain a unity project.
The round table generated excitement and the Ethiopian millennium was celebrated by people from all over the world with a wish by all to see Ethiopia pick up democratisation and modernisation this time with an irreversible energy and dynamism. This activity shows that more and more activities can be generated that can inform and generate educational opportunities to bring understanding and people together.
6. If elites are divided sooner or later the people will be divided too!
One of the biggest problems in Ethiopia is the elite. Inter-elite contradictions exist everywhere. This has time and time again exposed the country and even the best laid plans to come to no fruition. We see elites within the rulers slugging off each other. We see elites within the opposition doing the same.
Often one wonders whether the very larger goal for standing for principle, people and country failing to inhibit them from engaging in such ugly slanders and mutual victimisations. Those who stand for country and people and respect the cause would be circumspect, exercise caution, and would be very slow to condemn anyone by showing humility in the face of the cause they pursue. But we see often no such grander purpose.
We see everyone degrading to a petty gossiper and soiling the very cause they say they stand for. It is a shame. It is sad. It is ugly. Time and time again, our country has suffered and even lost its brightest children for apparently no good reason. This has to change. The cause has to come first. Democratising Ethiopia brooks no delay.
One hundred years has gone by when we fret and fight over trifles. Let all of us stand tall and tower high by reaching the higher purpose of thought thinking itself to clarify our purposes and directions. We call for democracy now. A democratic system must be implanted.
A democratic civilisation and renaissance comes first. Rise up and live up to this expectation and realising this goal. Talk less and do more. Harming or distracting the broadest possible democratic mobilisation that this country has witnessed in recent times is inexcusable. Promote a united democratic movement that can create stability, demolish the ideology of ethic hatred and restore Ethiopia to join the community of democratic nations with total clarity. Then all can see what difference this democratic-modernity realisation brings to the people and nation, the region, Africa and the world.
7. Concluding Remark
The millennium hopes must continue. The movement to build the strongest, deepest and broadest movement to democratise and modernise Ethiopia must not tire to climb new heights and mountain tops. There is a whole year where activities to learn to come together to foster inter elite understanding and fellowship must continue. It will be gracious and even wonderful if the regime in Ethiopia could reach out to all who criticise it and use the millennium year to lead and bring about the most possible conversation and debate or learning by fighting in a cordial atmosphere. If this climate can be created inside Ethiopia, the millennium hopes would indeed be said to have borne fruit.
But even the opposition both inside and outside should learn the fact that what it is saying has been said before as we pointed out at the outset here; what is needed is to create a democratic civilisation and system by uniting and not splitting, by coming together with principle and by not spreading vile propaganda against one another. We would like to see people who seek power first and foremost-uppermost-to put the country and the people first before all else. Making a democratic system by uniting all those who can be unite-able comes first. Let us do it.
Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES
Professor, Director of Development, Innovation and International Political Economy (DIIPE)
Aalborg University
Fibigertraede 2, 9220-Aalborg East
Aalborg, Denmark: Tel.no. 00-45 9635 9813
fax. no. 00 45-9815329
Somalia’s President Yusuf Loses His Grip on Power
By Dr Michael A. Weinstein, PINR
As PINR forecast on September 19, the failures of the two national conferences aimed at devising a political
formula for Somalia — the National Reconciliation Conference (N.R.C.) sponsored by the country’s
internationally-recognized Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), and the Somali Congress for
Liberation and Reconstitution (S.C.L.R.) organized by the political opposition based in Eritrea — have led
to a continuation of Somalia’s spiral into political fragmentation and conflict. As an armed insurgency
against the T.F.G. ratcheted up significantly in Somalia’s official capital Mogadishu, rifts opened up in the transitional institutions, with conflict surfacing between the T.F.G.’s president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, and its prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi; parliament demanding accountability from Gedi’s government; and the arrest of Somalia’s chief supreme court justice, Yusuf Ali Harun, followed by the sacking of the public prosecutor who initiated the case by Gedi and the prosecutor’s refusal to leave his post.
As the drama of the T.F.G. played out, forces loyal to the self-declared independent republic of Somaliland
and the semi-autonomous regional state of Puntland in the north of post-independence Somalia engaged in
military conflict in the disputed Sool region. For the first time, Puntland — President Yusuf’s power base
— seemed threatened with losing its integrity, and a war between Somaliland and Puntland became a genuine
possibility.
Implosion of the T.F.G.
Determining the present moment of Somalia’s political history is the fate of the T.F.G. Unpopular, weak and
dependent on an Ethiopian occupation force for survival, the T.F.G. is nonetheless backed by the Western donor powers that sustain it, and the international and regional organizations that follow their lead, as the sole means of achieving stability in Somalia.
In PINR’s judgment, the T.F.G. has now become too divided to be the vehicle of a coherent transition to
permanent institutions scheduled to be in place for elections in 2009. There are signs that the international community has also reached that judgment, but that it cannot act on it because it has given itself no other option than support of the T.F.G. If the T.F.G. implodes, the external actors will be left without a policy.
With a clan-based structure dominated by clan warlords, the T.F.G. has been weak and divided from
its inception in 2004. If there is a central figure in the transitional institutions, it is Yusuf, who is backed by Ethiopia, was the president of Puntland and retains a power base there, has militias from his Majerteen sub-clan at his disposal, and is a crafty political tactician. It is difficult to imagine a T.F.G. with any coherence without Yusuf; the fate of the T.F.G. is synonymous with Yusuf’s fate, and he has succeeded thus far in trapping and finessing the external actors.
Yusuf’s current embattlement, which has a high probability of breaking his grip on the tenuous power
that he exerts, can be understood by putting his position in the context of the political systems of
the three other states in the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti — all of which share
the common formula of a political machine run by a strongman or boss under the cover of a constitution.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and President Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti were all able to lead sectoral movements into control of the state and then to build machines based on their core support and to extend them outside that base to include just enough other political forces to maintain their rule. Successful bosses take care of their bases and avoid marginalizing outside groups sufficiently to provoke effective resistance from them.
At the root of Somalia’s condition as a failed state was the absence of a movement that could take over
power after the overthrow of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, rendering the emergence of a machine impossible.
The successful resistance against Barre was popular, but it was also regional and clan based, and none of
its components were strong enough — as was Zenawi’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front, for example — to
form the nucleus of a machine. From then on, Somalia devolved into statelessness and power drained to local
and regional warlords, despite 14 attempts by external actors to broker power-sharing agreements.
In 2006, after a successful insurrection against Washington-backed warlords in Mogadishu, the Islamic Courts movement quickly gained control of most of Somalia south of Puntland in an effort to create an Islamic state based on Shari’a law. Ethiopia, which is satisfied with a devolved Somalia — after having fought two wars with irredentist Somali regimes over its ethnic-Somali Ogaden region — and Washington, which seeks to prevent the emergence of Islamic states, moved to defeat the Courts militarily through an Ethiopian intervention in December 2006, leaving the T.F.G. formally in political control, but in fact powerless to prevent the devolutionary cycle from taking hold once again. Yusuf was in a better position than ever before, but he had no movement — he had been placed in power by foreign occupiers and donors, and presided over a fragmented clan-based government, not a machine of his own making. Yusuf aspires to be a boss, but he does not have the resources to become one.
Through the period of the rise of the Islamic Courts and the immediate aftermath of the Ethiopian intervention, the T.F.G. executive spoke with one voice, as both Yusuf, representing the Darod clan family, and Gedi, representing the Hawiye clan family, but lacking strong support within it, made common cause first in resisting the Courts and then in attempting to gain a foothold for the transitional institutions and sponsoring the N.R.C., which had been imposed upon them by donor pressure.
In late July, with the N.R.C. still in session, open rifts began to surface in the T.F.G., when 100 members of the transitional parliament sought to hold Gedi’s administration accountable for management of finances and a deteriorating security situation. Apparently an assertion of constitutional checks and balances by the legislature, the demand for accountability has proven to be the opening shot in a campaign by Yusuf to
undermine Gedi.
At the heart of the struggle at the upper echelons of the T.F.G. is control over Somalia’s unproven oil reserves. Yusuf had reportedly signed an exploration deal with China National Offshore Oil Corporation and then Gedi floated a national oil law that would void all previous agreements and give exploration rights to an Indonesian-Kuwaiti partnership. With the conflict out in the open, the power plays within the T.F.G.
began in earnest. [See: “China Invests in Somalia Despite Instability”]
On September 20, Somalia’s chief supreme court justice, Yusuf Ali Harun, and another judge, Mohamed
Nur, were arrested at their homes under the orders of the T.F.G.’s attorney general, Abdullahi Dahir Barre,
on charges of corruption. Harun was accused of embezzling US$800,000 of United Nations Development
Fund aid allocated to building the judiciary, among other counts of self-dealing. The arrests split parliament, with pro-Yusuf deputies backing the prosecutor and pro-Gedi deputies asserting that the attorney general’s action was illegal.
On September 23, the T.F.G.’s Council of Ministers removed Barre from office, but he refused to resign. The transitional parliament’s deputy speaker, Mohamed Omar Dalha, reported “hopeless disagreement between
the top government officials,” with Gedi backing Harun and Yusuf supporting Barre.
With the stalemate unbroken, local observers reported that the Harun affair was only a symptom of a deeper
conflict between the president and prime minister, in which Yusuf was seeking to use a provision of the
agreement issuing from the N.R.C. — that would allow non-members of parliament to be appointed to ministerial positions in the T.F.G. — to replace Gedi. That provision had been urged upon the N.R.C. by donor powers in order to bring technocrats into the T.F.G., but Yusuf has become a past master at finessing his patrons.
On September 25, Gedi, who had been attempting to mobilize support among the Hawiye, and Yusuf
reportedly met and failed to reconcile, setting off reports that Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer were preparing to go to Somalia’s provisional capital Baidoa to attempt to mediate the dispute. Parliamentary speaker, Adan Madobe Mohamed, who is allied with Yusuf, announced that Gedi and Yusuf would be summoned to appear before parliament.
As the crisis in the T.F.G. deepened, the insurgency in Mogadishu led by the jihadist Youth Mujahideen
Movement (Y.M.M.) spiked, with groups of several dozen fighters attacking police stations and T.F.G. and
Ethiopian military bases with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and fighting pitched battles with government and occupation forces. The attacks peaked on September 29 when three police stations and two Ethiopian bases came under fire, resulting, according to some reports, in the deaths of 100 insurgents and 45 government forces, and the arrests of 700 people supporting the insurgency.
In response to conditions on the ground, Yusuf met with the T.F.G.’s Council of Ministers, with national police commander and former warlord Abdi Qeybdid, and Mogadishu’s mayor and former warlord, Mohamed Dheere, in attendance, and Gedi chairing the session. Reuters reported that Yusuf expressed displeasure at the performance of government forces and demanded a census of troops and an accounting of their pay.
The meeting reportedly broke down in acrimony when the issue of appointing non-members of parliament to
ministerial positions was raised and no consensus could be reached.
As reconciliation eluded the T.F.G.’s leading figures, the transitional parliament revived the accountability issue, demanding that Gedi, who had been accused of embezzling aid funds from Saudi Arabia, present a budget for parliamentary review, on pain of “legal consequences” — no budget had been submitted to the transitional parliament since the T.F.G.’s inception. Local media reported that the budget issue was serving as a “path” to a vote of confidence on Gedi.
With Yusuf’s and Gedi’s marriage of convenience at an end and the warlords whom Yusuf co-opted into the
T.F.G. asserting their independence, his power play appears to be likely to fail and the T.F.G. — rather
than healing or even papering over clan divisions — is poised to be riven by clan conflict fueled by the
desire of its officials for personal gain.
Puntland Begins to Fragment
As Yusuf loses his grip on the T.F.G., his power base in Puntland has begun to be threatened by weakness of
the sub-state’s machine coupled with pressure from Somaliland. Puntland, on which Yusuf has relied for
military forces to back his position in the T.F.G., now faces severe security threats of its own.
With Puntland having already suffered the secession of the disputed Sanaag region in late summer with the
formation of the self-declared autonomous Makhir state, the disputed Sool region has now also come into
play. On September 17, forces loyal to Puntland’s government clashed with local pro-Somaliland militias near the Sool region’s capital Los Anod. The insurgents were reportedly linked to the former Puntland security minister, Ahmed Abdi Habsade, who had been fired in July by the sub-state’s president, Mohamud Adde Muse, in an effort to consolidate his machine. Habsade distanced himself from the conflict, but admitted that forces from his sub-clan were involved in the fighting. In the aftermath of the incident, both Puntland and Somaliland were reported to be reinforcing their positions in Sool.
On September 20, new fighting was reported, between Puntland forces and regular Somaliland troops, with
each side blaming the other for initiating hostilities, and each accusing the other of working with the anti-Ethiopian opposition to the T.F.G. Responding to the tensions and to the possibility that Somaliland would retake control of Sool, which Puntland occupied in 2003, the T.F.G., through its information minister, Madobe Nunow, took its hardest line toward Somaliland since the inception of the transitional institutions, stating that Somaliland has no right to create regional borders and that its independence “is not something possible.”
Heavier fighting broke out on September 24, and by September 28 the situation had become so fraught that
the Coordination of International Support for Somalia, which is composed of representatives of the World Bank
and United Nations, called for a pullback of forces and for dialogue between the antagonists.
On September 29, force build-ups were reported on both sides and clan elders had reportedly appealed to Yusuf
to ask Muse to reinstate Habsade in a bid to defuse the local conflict and to deprive Somaliland of a local support base. On September 30, families were reported to be fleeing from Los Anod, as militias loyal to Habsade entered the city to confront Puntland forces already stationed there. On October 1, fighting broke out in Los Anod with up to 15 people reported killed.
With many of its forces tied up supporting Yusuf in Somalia’s south and soldiers having mutinied over pay
in Puntland’s capital Garowe in mid-September, the sub-state has become militarily vulnerable and appears
to be shedding the regions claimed by Somaliland.
Although it is too early to forecast whether or not the clashes in Sool will escalate into full-scale war,
it is clear that Puntland has come fully into play and that Yusuf’s power base there is rapidly eroding. His
alliance with Muse, a former adversary, is tenuous at best, and Muse, in any case, has been weakened by
conflicts with Puntland’s parliament that resemble those in the transitional institutions. Should Puntland plunge into a cycle of devolution, Somalia will be further destabilized and chances of a regional war in the Horn of Africa will increase.
Conclusion
With the T.F.G. currently in shambles and Puntland and Somaliland moving toward war, external actors, led by
Washington, have continued calling for the T.F.G. to engage in outreach to the political opposition, which
has already committed itself to militant resistance to the Ethiopian occupation and has organized a
counter-government under the rubric of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (A.R.S.). Washington
is also urging the T.F.G. to get to work on writing a constitution for Somalia in preparation for 2009 elections. At the same time, Washington donated $97 million to Ethiopia in development aid — in excess of its five-year plan — in explicit recognition of the country’s “strategic importance.”
As PINR stated in its September 19 report, the distance between the position of the external actors, with the exception of Eritrea, and events on the ground has widened to a gulf. There are signs, however, that the external actors are losing patience with the T.F.G.; Washington’s envoy to Somalia, John Yates, said in a Newsweek interview that confidence among Somalis in the competence of the T.F.G. is not on a “deep up-slope,” and the new U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdullah, announced that having spoken with the T.F.G., he would have “no problem seeing any other Somali officials, whether they are in Somalia, in Asmara, or in Jeddah.”
The new twist in Somalia’s devolutionary cycle is the erosion of the scant power that Yusuf had. Without
him, the external actors have no one with whom to turn to anchor their policy. The inherent weakness of
Yusuf’s position as a boss in search of a machine who survives only by virtue of foreign military and financial support has now become obvious, as determined opposition to him mounts inside and outside the transitional institutions. He is a wasting asset for the external actors, but he has maneuvered himself into a corner and drawn them into it, and they have nowhere to go. Meanwhile, Somalia’s devolutionary cycle accelerates.
____________
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source
intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of [email protected]. PINR reprints do not qualify under Fair-Use Statute Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All comments should be directed to [email protected].
Millionaire businessman Solomon Bekele seems to have ran out of patience with Ato Hailu Shawel and the crooks he has surrounded himself with. He is now ready to go on the air waves to inform the public what the Shaleqa group is about.
Ato Solomon is a close friend of Kinijit chairman Hailu Shawel. When Ato Hailu started to disregard Kinijit leadership’s decisions in order to protect the corrupt Shaleqa group, Ato Solomon became worried that Hailu Shawel’s name will be tarnished. So as a friend he tried to convince him to distance himself from the Shaleqa group (Yoseph Yazew, Moges Brook and their crooked friends).
Solomon Bekele has also worked hard to persuade Ato Hailu to join the Kinijit delegation that is currently visiting the U.S. But things got too complicated when Shaleqa Yoseph invited (hired) the former chairman of Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA), Dr Taye Woldesemayat, to join him. Dr Taye has recently been fired by the ETA for misappropriating the association’s funds, among other misconducts.
The unemployed Taye has enthusiastically jumped into the Kinijit internal dispute on the side of the Shaleqa group backed by the Iyasu Alemayehu wing of the EPRP leadership and its media. Iyasu Alemayehu is a top leader of EPRP and son-in-law of the Woyanne-installed President Girma Woldegiorgis.
The rest, as you all know, is history.
This week, after several elders and long-time friends of Ato Hailu have failed to persuade him to sit down and talk with the Kinijit delegation, Solomon Bekele has decided to end his effort and take the matter to the public. On Saturday, Ato Solomon will be interviewed by Addis Dimts Radio.
What individuals like Ato Solomon, who had tried to persuade Ato Hailu to reconcile his differences with the executive committee, have failed to see is that Ato Hailu is being blackmailed by the Shaleqa group. Shaleqa Yoseph has let it be known that if he goes down, Hailu Shawel will also go down over the corruption issue. If a thorough investigation is conducted, Ato Hailu himself MAY BE implicated in Kinijit’s missing funds, according to ER sources.
Regarding the EPRP, the ER Intelligence Unit (EIU) has discovered that not every one in the EPRP leadership approves of what some of the leaders are doing to exacerbate the problem inside Kinijit through their agent Taye. A heated debate is currently underway on this matter within the EPRP hierarchy. The person who is spearheading the attack on Kinijit is Ato Iyasu Alemayehu (nom de guerre Hama Tuma) over the objection of other EPRP leaders. It is also Iyasu Alemayehu who is feeding insidious misinformation about Kinijit to the Indian Ocean Newsletter.
UPDATE
After this article is posted, Ato Solomon Bekele spoke with Ethiopian Review. He said that he did not quit. When asked to elaborate, Ato Solomon said the only thing he wants said for now is that he did not quit. He also said that he will give interviews on this matter when he feels that the time is right.
ER believes that not only Ato Solomon, but every one who is involved in trying to persuade Ato Hailu to sit down and talk with the Kinijit leadership have the obligation to inform the public about their effort and the conclusion they reached.
