Ethiopian Politics Beyond Ethnicity: Ethiopian Dialogue for Peace and common ground
Date: January 24, 2010, at Unification Church in Washington DC.
Dr. Aregawi Berhe, co-founder and former chairman of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), will make a presentation on this hot, vital and timely topic. The forum will be chaired by Dr. Berhanu Mengistu, who, as many of those who attended our last forum would recall, had made one of the best sessions on Conflict Resolution and had stimulated the most constructive discussion thus far.
The forum will be held on January 24, 2010, from 2:00 to 6:00 pm, at the Unification Church, 1610 Columbia Road, NW, Washington DC.
Browse through any Ethiopian websites, and you will discover that almost every article or commentary says something about the Tigrean domination of the country. The cyber world is crammed with statistics, testimonies, conspiracy theories and condemnations. Some of the fervent cases brought forth include;
* How Tigray disproportionally benefits under this regime,
* How 95% of all important military and security posts have been occupied by ethnic Tigreans,
* Reports over the TPLF-owned giant conglomerate known by its acronym, EFFORT
* Accounts of how the Tigrean-only Agazi commando force has been used to commit heinous crimes,
* The meteoric rise of Tigrean elites into the club of world millionaires, and
* Denunciations of the unacceptable monopolization of the church and mosque leadership by rebels-turned-men-of-God.
Most of these allegations are true, while some are perhaps exaggerated. However, there is no doubt that they are indicative of the growing rift between Tigrean elites, who deny or defend their hegemonic and exclusive economic advantage, and their adversaries, who offer evidence after evidence to back up their complaints. I have been a keen observer of how the system actually functions under the shadow of the current regime. As I read arguments and analyses provided by different individuals and groups, I find a lack of revealing analysis of the true purpose behind the blatantly pro-Tigrean policies of the current regime. Therefore, in this article I will analyze the strategies, tactics and politics behind the transformation of the TPLF from a peasant revolutionary force into Africa’s richest oligarchy.
First encounter with a Tigrean Nationalist
My initial encounter with a Tigrean nationalist took place sometime in the mid-„90s, at a time when the fight between TPLF and Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was at its peak. A discussion between an older neighbor and a TPLF soldier called Manjus caught my attention. Manjus was passionately talking about how he joined TPLF. His story begins about ten years earlier, when the young Tigrean and his sister were attending high school in a town far away from their village. One day, they returned home for a mid-semester vacation and found their village virtually burned to the ground. The two students came home to discover a completely demolished house, dead parents and whatever property the peasant family owned gone. In a tragic incident, the two siblings lost everything. They had no hope, no family or means of support that could help them go back to school. To make matters worse, they were told that the Derg cadres were hunting for them. As they tried to cope with the sudden shock, anger, and despair, they were met by TPLF recruiters who came with a promise of a means for revenge towards those who slaughtered their parents and also bring peace, justice and democracy to their oppressed Tigrean people. The helpless mourners and enraged youngsters could not resist the offer, so they joined the freedom fighters. A few years later, Manjus lost his sister to the war shortly before TPLF controlled Finfinne. Soon things turned upside down. When Meles replaced Mengistu, Manjus‟ turn came to chase another rebel group and burn down many other villages, including mine.
I was a young boy back then. But it still baffles me why someone who picked up arms against an oppressive regime because his village was burned would come to destroy mine or someone who joined freedom fighters to free his people would suppress my people. It remains a question for which I still seek an answer. During my high school years, I read the history of TPLF in newspapers and magazines, listened to the radio and watched television during the Yekatit 11th and Ginbot 20th celebrations, when TPLF leaders would talk for days about the cause for which they had waged a fierce struggle, the hardships they went through and the glory of defeating the “murderous” enemy. As a young Oromo nationalist with grievances against the dominant culture, I understood why they rebelled against oppressive system. But none of their explanations ever answered my question as to why those freedom fighters turned into ruthless oppressors within such a short period of time.
As I grew older, the list of my questions has also grown. The Tigrean people suffered economic alienation under Haile Selassie and were subjected to ruthless suppression and persecution under the Derg regime. It was their grievances that gave birth to TPLF, and Tigreans supported and sustained the front through years of bloody struggle for their freedom. Then, how could such freedom-loving people remain loyal to a party that oppresses, kills, loots and destroys the lives of other ethnic groups? There is no easy answer to this question but one might begin to understand it by assessing the historic and contemporary relationships between the people of Tigray and the TPLF. … Continue reading. Click here.
After 10 years of obscurity, the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) is now emerging as a leading political force to be reckoned with in Ethiopia. To find out how much impact EPPF is making, one needs only watch the Woyanne-controlled ETV. In October, ETV, Bereket Simone’s mouthpiece, declared that EPPF has been destroyed after a recent military operation named “yager chata.” It showed EPPF fighters surrendering en mass. Now, just two months after making such a declaration, ETV is reporting about EPPF military campaign to attack electrical power lines and assassinate regime officials.
It’s not only Woyanne that is currently targeting EPPF. There is a concerted effort by a number of groups with different motives to sabotage and keep the organization weak.
Despite all the obstacles thrown in front of it, EPPF will continue to march forward in all fronts — military, political, and diplomatic, in collaboration with other Ethiopian organizations that are fighting for change in Ethiopia. In the diplomatic field, EPPF is making an effort to establish good working relationships with other countries through its chapters around the world. EPPF-Washington DC is working to make the U.S. Government aware of the organization’s aims and objectives by establishing contacts with Obama Administration officials and members of the U.S. Congress.
While the gallant EPPF fighters are making Woyanne sleepless in the home front, there are two important upcoming EPPF events this month in the Diaspora:
The Washington DC meeting will be held on Saturday, January 30, 2010.
Place: Unification Church
Address: 1610 Columbia Road, Washington DC
Time: 3:00 PM
The EPPF Washington Metro Chapter will release more details about the January 30 meetings shortly.
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” said Sir Walter Scott, the novelist and poet. Is there “famine” in Ethiopia, or not? Are large numbers of people “starving” there, or not? Is convulsive hunger a daily reality for the majority of Ethiopians, or not?
Ethiopian famine map
No one wants to use the “F” word to describe the millions of starving Ethiopians. In August 2008, the head of the dictatorship in Ethiopia flatly denied the existence of famine in a Time Magazine interview. Meles Zenawi explained, “Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long, it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch – emergencies, but no famines.” Last week, the dictatorship’s “Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development”, Mitiku Kassa, reacting defensively to the latest Famine Early Warning System (FEWSNET) projections, was equally adamant: “In the Ethiopian context, there is no hunger, no famine… It is baseless [to claim famine], it is contrary to the situation on the ground. It is not evidence-based. The government is taking action to mitigate the problems.” This past October, Kassa claimed everything was under control because his government has launched a food security program to “enable chronic food insecure households attain sufficient assets and income level to get out of food insecurity and improve their resilience to shocks… and halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.”
But there is manifestly a “silent” famine and a “quiet” hunger haunting the land under Zenawi’s “watch.” In April, 2009, Zenawi gave an interview to David Frost of Al Jazeera in which he openly admitted that famine is rearing its ugly head once again in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa. Frost asked: “Is there any danger that as a result of this [current] crises there could be famine like there was famine in 1984?” Zenawi responded:
Well, the famine of 1984 was precipitated by drought in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in general. The famine that could emerge as a result of this [current] crises is likely to be silent across the continent in terms of not swaths of territory that are drought affected but people suffering hunger quietly across the continent. That is the most likely scenario as I see it.
So, if the famine Horseman of the Apocalypse is haunting Ethiopia and the continent, “silently” and “quietly”, why are we not sounding the alarm, ringing the bells and hollering for bloody help? Why are we quiet about the “quiet” hunger and silent about the “silent” famine enveloping Ethiopia today? Why?
It is mind-boggling that no one is making a big deal about the fact that famine and hunger are back in the saddle once more in Ethiopia. Ethiopians need help, and they need a lot of it fast and now. Of course, nothing more depressing than the sight, smell and experience of famine and hunger. For the second part of the 20th Century, much of the world believed the words “Ethiopia” and “famine” were synonymous. But it is unconscionable and criminal for officials to avoid using the “F” word to describe the forebodingly bleak food situation in Ethiopia today because they are concerned it would cast a “negative image” on them. Even the international experts have joined the local officials in boycotting the use of the “F” word. Just last week, the U.S.-funded FEWSNET declared that the majority of Ethiopians will be facing “food insecurity” (not hunger, not starvation, not famine) in the next six months. According to FEWSNET, because of poor harvests from the summer rains in 2009
as well as poor water availability and pasture regeneration in northern pastoral zones” [and coupled]with two consecutive poor belg cropping seasons… high staple food prices, poor livestock production, and reduced agricultural wages, [there will be an] elevated food insecurity over the coming six months [particularly in the] eastern marginal cropping areas in Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia, pastoral areas of Afar and northern and southeastern Somali region, Gambella region, and most low-lying areas of southern and central SNNPR…. In most areas of the country, food insecurity during the first half of 2010 is projected to be significantly worse than during the same period in 2009… Food security in eastern marginal cropping areas will likely deteriorate even further between July and September 2010. Overall, humanitarian assistance needs are expected to be very high.
Is it not a low-down dirty shame for international organizations, political leaders, officials and bureaucrats to use euphemisms to hide the ugly truth about famines and mass-scale hunger? These heartless crooks have invented a lexicography, a complete dictionary of mumbo-jumbo words and phrases to conceal the public fact that large numbers of people in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa are dying simply because they have nothing or very little food to eat. They talk about “food insecurity ”, “food scarcity”, “food insufficiency”, “food deprivation”, “severe food shortages”, “chronic dietary deficiency”, “endemic malnutrition” and so on just to avoid using the “F” word. FEWSNET has invented a ridiculous system of neologism (new words) to describe hungry people. Accordingly, there are people who are generally food secure, moderately food insecure, highly food insecure, extremely food insecure and those facing famine (see map above). Translated into ordinary language, these nonsensical categories seem to equate those who eat once a day as generally food secure, followed by the moderately secure who eat one meal every other day, the highly insecure who eat once every three days, the extremely insecure who eat once a week, and those in famine who never eat and therefore die from lack of food.
For crying out loud, what is wrong with calling a spade a spade!? Why do officials and experts beat around the bush when it comes to talking about hunger as hunger, starvation as starvation and famine as famine? Do they think they can sugarcoat the piercing pangs of hunger, the relentless pain of starvation and the total devastation of famine with sweet bureaucratic words and phrases?
As officials and bureaucrats quibble over which fancy words and phrases best describe the dismal food situation, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians are dying from plain, old fashioned hunger, starvation and famine. The point is there is famine in Ethiopia. One could disagree whether there are pockets of famine or large swaths of famine-stricken areas. One could argue whether 4.9, 6, 16 or 26 million people are affected by it. But there is no argument that there is famine; and this is not a matter for speculation, conjecture or exaggeration. It can be verified instantly. Let the international press go freely into the “drought affected” and “food insecure” areas and report what they find. For at least the past two years, they have been banned from entering these areas. Is there any doubt that they would reveal irrefutable evidence of famine on the scale of 1984-85 if they were allowed free access to these areas?
Obviously, it is embarrassing for a regime wafting on the euphoria of an “11 percent economic growth over the past 6 years” to admit famine. It is bad publicity for those claiming runaway economic growth to admit millions of their citizens are in the iron grip of a runaway famine. If the “F” word is used, then the donors would start asking questions, relief agencies would be scurrying to set up feeding stations, the international press would be demanding accountability and all hell could break loose. That is why the dictatorship in Ethiopia reacts reflexively and defensively whenever the “F” word is mentioned. They froth at the mouth condemning the international press for making “baseless” claims of famine, and castigate them for perpetuating “negative images” of the country merely because the international press insists on finding out verifiable facts about the food situation in the country. The fact of the matter is that unless action is not taken soon to openly and fully admit that large swaths of the Ethiopian countryside are in a state of famine, we should soon expect to see splattered across the globe’s newspapers pictures of Ethiopian infants with distended bellies, the skeletal figures of their nursing mothers and the sun-baked remains of the aged and the feeble on the parched land.
Denial of famine by totalitarian and dictatorial regimes is nothing new. During 1959-61, nearly 30 million Chinese starved to death in Mao’s Great Leap Forward program which uprooted millions of Chinese from the countryside for industrial production. Mao never acknowledged the existence of famine, nor did he make a serious effort to secure foreign food aid. Ironically, the Chinese Revolution had promised the peasants an end to famine. The Soviet Famines of 1921 and 1932-3 are classic case studies in official failure to prevent famine.
Why is it so difficult for dictatorships and other non-democratic systems to admit famine, make it part of the public discussion and debate and unabashedly seek help? Part of it has to do with image maintenance. Official admission of famine is the ultimate proof of governmental ineptitude and depraved indifference to the suffering of the people. But there is a more compelling explanation for dictators not to admit famine conditions in their countries. It has to do with a fundamental disconnect between the dictators and their subjects. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argued,
The direct penalties of a famine are borne by one group of people and political decisions are taken by another. The rulers never starve. But when a government is accountable to the local populace it too has good reasons to do its best to eradicate famines. Democracy, via electoral politics, passes on the price of famines to the rulers as well.
An examination of the history of famine in Ethiopia lends support to Sen’s theory. Emperor Haile Selassie lost his crown and life over famine in the early 1970s. He said he was just not aware of it. The military junta’s (Derg) denied there was famine in 1984/85 while it waged war and experimented with the long-discredited practice of collectivized agriculture. That famine accelerated the downfall of the Derg. The current dictators have opted to remain willfully blind, deaf and mute to the “silent” famine and “quiet” hunger that are destroying the people.
The official response to famines in Ethiopia over the past four decades has followed a predictable pattern: Step 1: Never plan to prevent famine. Step 2: Deny there is famine when there is famine. Step 3: Condemn and vilify anyone who sounds the early alarm warning on famine. Step 4: Admit “severe food shortages” (not famine) and blame the weather, and God for not sending rain. Step 5: Make frantic international emergency calls and announce that hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians are dying from famine. Step 6: Guilt-trip Western donors into providing food aid. Step 7: Accuse and vilify Western donors for not providing sufficient food aid and blame them for a runaway famine. Step 8: Tell the world they knew nothing about a creeping famine until it suddenly hit them like a thunderbolt. Step 9: Put on an elaborate dog-and-pony show about their famine relief efforts. Step 10: Go back to step 1. This has been the recurrent pattern of famine response in Ethiopia: Always too little, too late.
The fact of the matter is that famines are entirely avoidable as Sen has argued with substantial empirical evidence.
Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and … a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.
There is another question that needs to be answered in connection with the “severe food shortages” in Ethiopia. Why are millions of fertile hectares of land under “lease” or sold outright to foreigners to feed millions continents away when millions of Ethiopians are starving? To paraphrase Sen, such a thing would be unthinkable in a functioning multiparty democracy!
With no pun intended, the “breadcrumbs” of famine (or as they euphemistically call it the “early warning signs”) are plain to see. There have been successive crop failures and poor rainfall; water availability is limited and staple food prices are soaring; livestock production is poor as is pasture regeneration. Deforestation, land degradation, overpopulation, pestilence and disease are widespread in the land. If it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and walks like a duck, it is famine!
If those whose duty is to sound the alarm and get help are not willing to do their part, it is the moral responsibility and duty of every Ethiopian and compassionate human being anywhere to create public awareness of Ethiopia’s creeping famine and call for HELP! HELP! HELP!
“There has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy.” Amartya Sen
(Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.)
