Nations and Nation Builders
By Msmaku Asrat
The following is a rather elaborate response to the objection raised by the good Sadiq Abdulrahman regarding my views about a future federation of Ethiopia with both South Sudan and self proclaimed independent Republic of Somaliland (formerly British Somaliland). Sadiq and I have more in common than he realizes. We both have the courage of our convictions and invoke our names to speak truth to power.
The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 defined the principles of sovereignty and equality of nations and this became the blueprint for the formation of nation states of what is normally referred as ‘modern times” i.e. the period after the Treaty. The great nation builders of Europe, Ethiopia and Latin America were contemporaries – Bismarck of Germany (1844-1913); Garibaldi of Italy (1807-1882); Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia (1844-1913). Simon Bolivar of Latin America (1783-1830) could also be included in that category. Even the famous British Imperialist of the “Cape to Cairo” fame, Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), is in the same category, although on the other side. His plan was to expand the British Empire believing that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. He also believed that Britain, US and Germany would dominate the world of the future.
But all nation builders did not ethnically belong to the country they built but were nonetheless dedicated to their “adopted” nation. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian(there is currently a dispute between Macedonia and Greece largely about his legacy); Catherine the Great of Russia was a German; Emperor Napoleon of France was an Italian; Hitler was an Austrian; Mahatma Gandhi was a South African; Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was an American; Isayiyas Afewerki (and Welde ab Wolde Mariam) were Ethiopians. It is hard to place the half-Eritrean Meles because he is perennially subservient to Isayiyas and also a narrow Tigrean tribalist.
Bismarck said that nations are formed by “blood and iron” when he brought together the various principalities of Germany and formed the German Nation. Menelik said that he would not be “an indifferent spectator” when nations come from faraway places and encroach his land. What makes him a great statesman besides being a military genius was his ability to have preserved what he can do and cannot do when far more powerful European powers were snatching his land. However, he has to make a last stand to defend the survival of his country and win decisively. Menelik is considered the greatest African general since Hannibal, who had vanquished the Romans, the ancestors of the Italians whom Menelik has conquered. That happened, two thousand years earlier!
We may recall that Menelik was the only modern Ethiopian leader who has vanquished a foreign enemy. Yohannes was defeated by Sudan and was beheaded; Theodros was defeated by the British and killed himself; Haile Selassie was defeated by the Italians and went into exile in Britain and to Geneva to appeal to the League of Nations. Menelik with his multi ethnic army shot like an arrow from the middle of his Empire and confronted the Italians at Adwa. He was riding segar beklo, fast paced mules 30 of whom were saddled and ready by his side and him transferring from one tired mule to another without breaking a stride. His military genius is recounted by George Berkeley : The Campaign of Adwa and the Rise of Menilik. The British deservedly called him Menelik the Great for several years afterwards, but the title was discontinued after repeated and fervent appeals by the humiliated Italians.
It was Menelik that put Adwa on the map. Nobody would have ever remembered that tiny dusty village of Adwa, in Tigray, if it were not for him. Austerlitz and Waterloo represent the rise and fall of Napoleon and are always associated with his name, Likewise, the glory of Adwa is associated with Menelik and is the legacy of the Ethiopian people and even beyond that the legacy of the subjugated people of the Third World. No one could snatch Adwa away from him and from the Ethiopian people and from the people of the Third World. Adwa will forever be associated with Menilik till Kingdom Come. And the Ethiopian people will continue to be proud of Adwa no matter what. This is a historical fact.
What I would like to point out to Sadiq Abdurahman is that no nation in history was formed by a single ethnic group. The nearest that came to this was Somalia. But even that was a fiction. Somalia did not include the almost one million Somali Bantu or Gosha living along the banks of Juba and Shebelle rivers. I have seen some of them when I visited Afgoi near Mogadishu. The other fiction of the now defunct Somalia was that it pretended that in due course, the new Somalia will achieve an ingathering of the Somali people scattered in neighboring countries. It was a pipe dream. The population of Djibouti is equally divided between Afars and Issas and in fact that was its official name before independence. Ogaden in Ethiopia has been settled also by many ethnic groups from all over Ethiopia for hundreds of years. So his objection is a non squinter. British Somaliland was an independent state and agreed to unite with Italian Somaliland five days later when the latter gained its independence from Italy. It was largely the work of the Somali Youth League which was active in the anti-colonial struggle. If one goes to the Somali Paltalk rooms we find almost a hundred of them every day, each promoting its specific clan. One is reminded of the old Somali saying “my nation against the world; my clan against my nation; my family against my clan; and me against my family” Unfortunately; It seems that the Somali has been broken to pieces like shattered glass. It would be wise and prudent to look for alternatives.
Another people who wanted to forge a country from one ethnic people are the Kurds. As time passes this is becoming increasingly impossible since the Kurds have a stake in whatever country they belong in and are turning their back to such esoteric dreams. Nations are continuously forming and breaking apart like Somalia. No other country was as visible as Yugoslavia after the Second World War, especially among the countries of the Third World. It was brought together by the powerful personality of the anti-Fascist patriot Marshall Broz Tito(a close friend of Emperor Haile Selassie.) However, after his death Yugoslavia is no more, it has been broken into seven separate states and the break up is continuing. The same happened to Czarist Russian Empire which was inherited by the Soviet Union. When it collapsed, 17 new states were created and more might be created. Belgium which has committed unspeakable crime against its colony of Belgian Congo is held by the skin of a teeth and is about to break up along linguistic lines any day now. Wherever we look it is the will of the people to live together that is the hallmark of a viable nation.
If Meles has his way Ethiopia would have broken up into six or seven countries. It did not happen because they are artificial and arbitrary entities. Take the case of Oromia. The people of Oromia have migrated north in the 17th Century occupying the place of the former inhabitants vanquished by Ahmed Gragn and his Turkish supported army. In the aftermath, the country had been weakened and made vulnerable to the aggressive conquest of the Oromo. What they could not destroy they absorbed in the age old tradition of the MOGASSA. An eye witness account of this very period was written by Aleka Bahri (who was from Gamu and not an Amhara as others allege) in his book Zenahu ze Galla (History of the Gallas.) Ato Yilma Deressa, a ”Galla” from Wellega, and the most prominent Minister in the Haile Selassie Government has also written a book about this 17th Century called The South to North migration of the Galla. He emphatically declares that he is proud to be called a Galla.
The humongous area designated as Oromia by the Weyane is a total fiction as half of the inhabitants of the area are multi ethnic. It is as ridiculous as calling Addis Ababa “Finfine” since Finfine (or Filwoha) occupies only about five percent of Addis Ababa. The same is true about trying to give Harar to the Adere who number a few thousand and their greater number lives in Addis Ababa and thus outside Harar. What is the opinion of Sadiq about the ¾ of a million Somalis living in Addis Ababa. They are not going anywhere soon. They are part of the city fabric.
The greatness of Ethiopia is that it has existed as an entity for thousands of years and has perfected the craft of living in peace and harmony. Even the two great religions Christians and Moslems have lived together in peace for over a thousand years which no other nation on earth could match. This harmony has been created not by governments but by people. Wise leaders like Emperor Haile Selassie have said that “a country is shared by all; but religion is an individual affair” promoting unity in diversity. The 15 years study conducted by the Derg about the “history of the peoples of Ethiopia” produced in several volumes confirmed just that. Since it did not serve the agenda of the Derg it was shelved. The Weyane would never allow the study to see the light of day. I hope those who participated in the study would muster courage and publish their findings.
Meles Zenawi in one of his frequent moments of monumental stupidity (which his Tigrean admirers regard as wisdom), had asked rhetorically “what is Axum for the Welayita or Lalibela for the Oromo.” It is a historical fact that the Agazi, the predecessors of the Tigre, were nowhere there when the Axum obelisks were erected. In fact the Welayita may have more to do with Axum than the Tigre. It is similar to the Arab claims to the Pyramids. They only came there in the 7th Century. The Fedayeen; the Nubians the Ethiopians, the Punt have more claim to the Pyramids than the Arabs. There is even a story circulating by non-Adwa Tigreans about their fellow ethnic Adwans. They say that the Adwans became the most evil among the Tigreans because they are a product of bastardization. When Menelik’s army came to Adwa these multi ethnic soldiers slept with thousands of Adwa women and these are the products of the union – half Tigre and half every other ethnic group! That is a way of absolving themselves and showing their particular hatred to other Ethiopians. There is even a treacherous curve along the road from Addis Ababa to Asmara, passing through Adwa that is popularly known as libe Adwa (the heart of Adwa) Those who say this must also be aware that there is another curve nearby along the same road which is called libe Tigrai (the heart of Tigrai). These are local folklores of no historical significance, but show the psychological makeup of the people in the area.
Here we might cast our attention in the direction of Eritrea. The perennial boss of Meles, Isayias Afewerki is the father of Eritrean nationalism. Unlike his vassal Meles he wants Eritrea to be a multi ethnic Nation. During the long drown out war Isayiyas encouraged Eritrean women to “sleep with the enemy”,-the Ethiopian army – as a sort of low-cost, low- maintenance espionage spread (no pun intended). The result was what Isayiyas has not anticipated but should have. Many unions resulted in love and marriage, but hundreds of thousands of these unions caused hundreds of thousands of children to be born. These children were half-Eritrean and half-every other ethnic group of Ethiopia. Such was the result of 30 years of union. However much Isayias tries to deny their existence, the future of Eritrea is more theirs than his. They are the ones who would shape the future of Eritrea.
Another historical fact is that about a third of the Hamassen of Eritrea have Gojame grandparents. The reason is this. Gojames are the traditional merchant class of Ethiopia (the Gurage are very recent arrivals in the field). For centuries they have been travelling beyond Ethiopia. Even Addis Ababa has Gojam Berenda since its infancy and no Gurage berenda (there is a Gojam Berenda in Khartoum as well). The merchants of Gojam are known as sirara Negade, with their long caravan of huge and sturdy mules who travel up to North Africa as far as Tripoli, Libya. One of their stops is Geza Aba Shawel of Asmara. Aba Shawel is the name of a prominent Gojame merchant. This place was where the caravan of the famed Gojame, Aba Shawel, stayed for R&R and the place was named after him. As is well known, no Eritrean was allowed to spend a night in Asmara during Italian colonialism. They were permitted to do their domestic work in Asmara during the day but have to go out of town at dusk. They stayed at Geza Aba Shawel, the other side of Asmara. – a practice the Fascists never dared to impose during their short occupation of Ethiopia. There is also folklore of another Gojame in Eritrea. He was called Aboy Mengesha. He occupies a similar reverence in Eritrea like the famous folkloric wisdom attributed to Aleka Gebre Hana of Menelik’s time in Ethiopia. Mengesha’s witticism is still told and retold to this day especially among the old folk. An old Eritrean gentleman who was my cellmate at Makelawi prison used to delight us by telling Aboy Mengesha’s witticisms.
Something is quite different to the Weyanes which is not exhibited in any other ethnic group – not to that extent. Maybe the Tigreans are the most parochial and xenophobic tribe in Ethiopia. They seem to find refuge in their ethnicity, similar to those ethnic entrepreneurs who promote the idea of OLF. However, those who propagate for OLF are a miniscule minority blinded by hatred and fired with ambition to rough-ride their ethnic unit. Fortunately they are constantly confronted and rejected by the masses of Ethiopian Oromos who are infinitely wiser. Twenty years have shown us that the Weyane are only interested in theft and pillage for the benefit of themselves and their ethic group. The entire Tigrean elite fully backs the Weyane pillage, to their etrnal shame. Their former Prime Minister, the Amhara-hating Tamrat Layne, stole millions in short order and deposited it in Swiss Banks. Only the powerful Alamudin was able to recover his loss. The rest was given to Tamrat by his fellow gang of thieves as a parting gift. It did not matter because the money is not theirs but the property of the Ethiopian people. Conveniently, Tamrat, the smart-alec thief, now says that he received a revelation when God talked to him in prison. He become a Pentecostal convert and he is now living in the US, endlessly recounting at church sermons his daily conversations with God and the gullible stand up and applaud. No mention about his loot or his crimes.
All told the crimes of the Weyane could not amount to ¼ of the crimes committed by the heinous Derg. The Khamer Rouge of Kampuchea and the Derg were the two most brutal murderers of the last quarter of the 20th Century. Pol Pot of Cambodia escaped justice by dying. Mengistu is thumbing his nose at the world from his comfortable exile in Zimbabwe He needs to face the International Court of Justice at the Hague. His associates who have committed genocide and crimes against humanity should be given the death sentence and hanged if justice was to prevail.
The recent development in Tunesia should serve as a warning shot for the Weyane. 20 years of dictatorship is more than enough.
(Msmaku Asrat, Ph.D., can be reached at [email protected])