Gambella opposition condemns Ethiopia’s double standard over South Sudan

GPDAM Press Release

The Gambella People’s Democratic Alliance Moment (GPDAM) strongly condemned the double standard of Ethiopian government in negotiating peace deal between the government of Republic of South Sudan and SPLM-IO. The Addis Ababa regime is no longer neutral in mediating between the warring parties to South Sudan conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousand innocent civilians into Gambela region. GPDAM is deeply concerned for Ethiopian military training, logistics and military support to SPLM-IO and the impact to regional stability and security.

UNHCR staff in western Ethiopia help move a wounded South Sudanese refugee, who fled across the Baro River to escape the violence. Photo: UNHCR/L. Godinho

The senseless political upheaval that broke out in December 2013 displace hundreds of thousands civilians across international border into Gambela region for international protection and safety. The conflict has drawn some regional powers to play key destabilising factors in already troubled and instable horn of Africa region. In particular, the arrival of mainly Nuer ethnic, a major source of military and political support to former South Sudan vice president-Riek Machar rebellion, into impoverished and troubled region has increased tension and security concerns among local communities.

The conflict has brought huge impacts on the regional security structure and economy of the remote Ethiopian border region due to the government in Addis Ababa failure to control arms trafficking and its direct link and open support to SPLM-IO. The Ethiopian government support to rebellion further fuel the conflict in an independent state in the horn of Africa. As a result, the Gambela region is now awash with small arms and Ethiopian government backed militant freely moving within the region and crossing into South Sudan exposing civilians to unnecessary suffering.

GPDAM is further greatly concerned for Addis Ababa regime ineffective, lack of international border control and mushrooming of refugee camps in the Gambela region to accommodate hundreds of thousands refugees to areas predominately inhabited by local population. GPDAM continues to be troubled by uncontrolled and unmanaged refugee influx both within the Ethiopian troubled region and across the international border.

As the government continues to pursue the implementation of its unpopular land deal policy, villagization programme, and the influx of refugees plays great role into local politics. South Sudan civil war always has negative consequences that could engulfed the Gambela region into serious political unrest and regional instability.

Despite the newly African nation that drifted into political instability efforts to engage into rounds of diplomatic shuttles to find amicable political solutions and restore peace and security to thousands internally displaced persons trapped and entirely dependent on humanitarian food aid, the Ethiopian government military and logistics support to Riek Machar rebellion continue to undermine IGAD brokered peace deal effort.

This is contrary to the IGAD peace and conflict resolution mission that made Ethiopian government to appoint the former Ethiopian Foreign Minister, Ambassador Seyoum Mesfin to mediate a political settlement through roundtable discussion between the conflicting parties, The Ethiopian government interference in political affairs of a sovereign nation is counter-productive and has a regional destabilising factors in a already troubled region of the Ethiopia. Ethiopia double standard should be condemned in strong terms.

Though the root causes of political instability and social unrest remain a stumbling block for the parties to each diplomatic settlement, GPDAM urges all those involved to narrow their differences and accept peace proposals in the interest of internally displaced persons and refugees across the eastern Africa and in Gambela region in particular.

GPDAM, in the interest of regional political stability and peaceful dispute settlement, calls upon the international community, organisations and individuals to put arms embargo on Ethiopian government and other parties that continues to fuel political turmoil so that the parties could negotiate in good faith to reach to compromise and the return of normality and continue reconstruction efforts.

Ironically, SPLM-IO alleged that the Republic of South is helping rebel groups from Gambella region. This is baseless allegations and based on hypocritical nature of SPLM-IO politics. SPLM-IO is the one receiving both logistics and military assistance from Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime. According to our reliable sources, Ethiopia has set up numerous military training camps around Gambella’s region.

The Impact of Sudan Civil Wars on the Anyuaks’ Society

The Anyuak communities in both Ethiopia and Sudan (now South Sudan) are bordering to the most hostile communities in Africa. Since 1955 until 2005, Sudan, like most African countries, has experienced three consecutive civil wars. The first civil war (Anyanya/Anya-Nya) erupted in 1955 and ended in 1972. The peace agreement which was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1972 did last long. The discontented former Anyanya I leaders took up arm again in 1975 and formed Anyanya II.

However, after seven years, the Anyanya I was hijacked and was converted to South Sudan Liberation Army/Moment (SPLA/M) in 1983. The liberation moment waged civil war against North Sudan government until comprehensive agreement was signed in Kenya in 2005. All these civil wars were furnished by the Anyauks and they were carried out in the Anyuaks’ lands. Regrettably, the Anyuaks in both Ethiopia and South Sudan have not benefited from these two civil wars. Instead, they lost their livelihood, lives, lands, culture, and etc. Even though the author of this article did not witness the suffering of the Anyuaks in the hand of Anyanya I, it is rational to assert that the Anyuaks must have suffered in the hand of Anyanya I as well. During the 39 years of the civil wars, the Anyuaks’ land and natural resources had been used up. Their wives were gang raped, their children were kidnaped, killed, their foods were robbed, and their cattle were raid.

When South Sudan Liberation Army/Moment (SPLA/M) was waging civil war against the Northern government in the 1980s, the Anyuaks were very hospitable to the South Sudanese refugees who came to their land. The Anyuaks would share whatever they have with the refugees; the Anyuaks would give the freedom fighters benign passages to wherever they were going; and some of the refugees were even integrated into the Anyuaks’ communities.

On the other hand, the SPLA/M and South Sudanese refugees alike were very hostile to the Anyuak communities. Both SPLA/M and the refugees had hatred toward the Anyuaks. When Sudanese refugees were residing in Itang, one of the cities in Gambella, Ethiopia, the refugees would go outside the city and hideout to wait for women to gang raped them or waited for someone who had something of value to rob. During 39 years of Sudan civil war both SPLA/M and refugees had done vices things to the Anyuaks and the Anyuaks will never forget. The SPLA/M hostility even went further when they opened fire on the unarmed civilians in Pnyodo, one of the cities in Gambella, Ethiopia and killed a numbers of people.

When the SPLA/M was evicted in 1991, they dismantled all the houses or any building in Itang and other areas they were residing. The rationale behind the destruction of the properties was that they do not want the inhabitants to use the buildings or houses that were built for SPLA/M or refugees. This is just to mention few of the immoralities things the SPLA/M and South Sudanese refugees have done to the Anyuaks.

After 22 years of civil war, the SPLA/M and Khartoum government signed comprehensive peace agreement in Kenya in 2005 that led to South Sudan’s independent in 2011. In December 2013, South Sudan was engulfed with civil war again and the Southern Sudanese refugees are pouring into Gambella, Ethiopia.

These refugees are not mere refugees but they are from the Ethnic Nuers who were briefly trained in South Sudan border with Gambella and sent to South Sudan major cities to fight the incumbent President Salva Kirr’s government. When the Nuers were badly defeated, they came back to Gambella and seek refuge in the region. These refugees are also heavily armed. Gambella region is facing anarchism again because these refugees are the Nuers ethnic groups who claimed to have dual citizens. They claimed they are Ethiopians but at the same time they believe they are Southern Sudanese.

The Anyuaks border with some of the wildest people in the world, and the governments in both Ethiopia and South Sudan do not provide them with the needed protections. During Col. Mingestu Hallemaraim’s government, farmer association used to have militias and those militias somehow protected the Anyuaks’ lives. However, the current government not only disarmed the Anyuaks but it also criminalized gun ownership. Therefore, if the federal and regional governments do not take major steps to protect the Anyuaks’ land and lives, we will lose one of the best lands in Ethiopia to the aliens.

The GPDAM Executive Committee
Believe in tolerance, unity equality and democratic governance.

posted by Daneile aleyu zeleke

A Special Tribute to Prof. Donald Levine (Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam)

Prof. Donald Levine: The scholars’ scholar

Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam

This past January, Prof. Levine emailed to tell me about his long-planned visit to Ethiopia that had been thwarted by his illness. He had set three objectives for that trip. He wanted to be present for the launching of his book Interpreting Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. He wanted to witness the opening of a new youth facility in Hawassa, some 270 km south of the capital. Several years ago, he had co-founded the Awassa Youth Campus with the aim of providing a variety of sports and artistic opportunities for local youth. (Click here to see the wonderful video.)  He had obtained substantial funding to expand the physical facility of the campus. He was most eager to see the very first group of young Ethiopian men and women test out for promotion to black belt in aikido (a unique martial arts philosophy in which “practitioners use their skills to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury.”  Neither was to be. The expansion to the youth facility could not be built because of “delays”.

With greater urgency, Prof. Levine planned to visit my personal hero Eskinder Nega and she-ro Reeyot Alemu, Ethiopia’s courageous and famed journalists, languishing in prison. When Eskinder and Serkalem (both internationally acclaimed Ethiopian journalists) were victimized by long incarceration and abuse that rose to the gravity of crimes against humanity in 2007 before being acquitted of all charges, he had personally pleaded with the late Meles Zenawi asking him to show compassion and allow medical care to be given to Serkalem who had given birth in prison. Meles relented.

I believe the fact that his declining health would not make it possible for him to visit Ethiopia one last time weighed heavily on his heart. As I read his email, I felt he had a greater purpose to accomplish in his planned visit.  I sensed he was acutely aware that he was in the sunset of his life and wanted to bask for just a moment or two in the Land of Thirteen Months of Sunshine for the last time. He yearned to go home. I felt he wanted to go back one more time, for the last time, and breathe the fresh Ethiopian air, visit his old stomping grounds in Menz, laugh with his Ethiopian friends and engage the young men and women of the Awassa Youth Club and advise them to strive for excellence by building not only their bodies and mental skills but most importantly by building their character with integrity, self-discipline, self-dignity and hard work. I felt he wanted to say “Farewell Ethiopia” for the last time as his plane left the Ethiopian airspace headed back for America. That was what I read, heard and saw between the lines of his email to me.

Prof. Levine was a man of great learning and appreciated art and literature. I wonder if he thought of Khalil Gibran’s verse as he planned his final trip home to Ethiopia:

…
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky….

The longing to go back became a dream for Donald Levine; but that dream, hopeful and cheerful,  in my view, describes the essence Donald Levine, the man who had a love affair with Ethiopia for over one-half century.

Prof. Levine passed away on April 4, 2015. His son, Bill Levine, announced, “Gash Liben, Ethiopian scholar, lover of Ethiopia, founder of the Aikido Ethiopia Project has passed away today at 1 pm.”

Donald Levine, the scholar, is unarguably the “Dean” of the “Ethiopianists” (non-Ethiopian scholars who have made it their labor of love to study Ethiopia and develop scholarly knowledge accessible to the world). I became aware of Prof. Levine’s scholarship through his seminal work Wax and Gold as an undergraduate in the 1970s. That book is full of extraordinary insights about Ethiopian society and culture. His penetrating understanding of the complexities and subtleties of Ethiopian cultural forms was not merely extraordinary; it was stunning. Few scholars of any nationality understood Ethiopia as did Prof. Levine.

There is little that I can add by way of review of Wax and Gold or of his broader scholarship. The New York Times described Wax and Gold as “a classic work of area studies.”  The Times Literary Supplement noted, “Ethiopia’s abiding problem is the symbiosis of her autochthonous civilization with the demands of an uncompromising modern world. . . . Nobody has yet described the dilemma, its origin, its magnitude and possible ways of resolving it with greater ability and understanding.” The American Journal of Sociology commented, “An important, insightful, and excellent book. . . . With remarkable freedom, virtuosity, and success [Levine] forays from his own base as a sociologist into the domains of anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and linguists.” The American Sociological Review commented, “Levine perform[ed]  the most ancient scholarly task well, that of the sage, who leads us to see the eternal wisdom hidden behind the veil of everyday concerns.”

Prof. Levine’s scholarship, of course, covered a much wider scope of sociological theory and asnalysis. He was highly regarded for his critical interpretations of the “founding fathers” of modern sociology including Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, among others. He was a foremost authority on Georg Simmel who theorized that society consists of a web of patterned interactions and the purpose of sociological inquiry should be to examine the forms of sociological interactions as they occur and reoccur in diverse historical periods and cultural settings. Simmel’s work stood in contrast to the other great sociologists  including Weber who argued that the methods of the natural sciences could be rigorously applied to examine human cultural norms, values, symbols and social processes. I believe Simmel’s work informed his research and analysis on Ethiopia considerably.

I began communicating with Prof. Levine following the 2005 election in Ethiopia. Prior to that time, I had little interest in Ethiopian politics and human rights. I was propelled into action following the Meles Massacres that year in which 193 unarmed protesters were killed by sharpshooters and nearly 800 wounded.

I do not recall my first communication with Prof. Levine, but by 2006 we were exchanging emails on various Ethiopian human rights issues including Congressman Chris Smith’s H.R. 5680, “Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act of 2006”.  We communicated by email regularly over the years. I am honored to say he was a long time and regular reader of my weekly commentaries. He appreciated them. Of course, we did not always agree on things; but he was always gracious enough to tell me why he did or did not agree with me. He understood the method in my provocative pamphleteering (blogging). He reminded me from time to time how I reminded him a little bit of Thomas Paine, the American patriot who railed furiously against tyranny, defended liberty passionately and preached that the people will ultimately fulfill their destiny by overthrowing the tyrants who abuse them.  Though I believed Paine was a far more radical and iconoclastic pamphleteer than myself, I took the comparison as a great compliment.

I was also not the type to hold back. I told him that he rightly deserved the nobility title of “Fitawrari” (“leader of the vanguard warriors) for his long service to Ethiopia as he had led the scholarly march to promote and preserve important values of Ethiopian society, people and culture. I addressed him as Fitawrari Leben Gebre Ityopia in all my communications until my very last email. Or simply, “Fit”.

After years of email and telephone communications, I finally met Prof. Levine in person in late November 2012 at the African Studies Association (ASA) meeting in Philadelphia. The ASA had organized a special full day symposium in his honor under the rubric, “Revisiting Wax and Gold”. He bestowed upon me the great honor of chairing one of the panels and becoming a presenter on another.  It was an extraordinary privilege for me because I believe “Wax and Gold” is a classic and incomparable sociological study of Ethiopian society. It is a work of such depth and insight that it demonstrates the extraordinary scholarship and brilliance of Donald Levine. He could have asked so many other more accomplished scholars on Ethiopia than myself, but somehow, despite my different academic and professional background, he thought I would be best suited for the job.  I was humbled and honored by his request, and took to my duties with gusto. Many of his former students presented excellent papers at that symposium and the panels were very well attended. He was very pleased.

Many have seen the multi-part interview Prof. Levine gave on ESAT with Abebe Gelaw, the young and relentless exiled Ethiopian journalist. Prof. Levine’s command of the Amharic language is stunning. (See video here.)  But Prof. Levine was not merely a dispassionate and passionate social scientist studying Ethiopia. He brought a large measure of patriotism in defense of Ethiopian sovereignty and freedom. Last year he offered a moving defense of Ethiopia’s victory over Italy at the Battle of Adwa and what that victory meant for Ethiopians and the rest of Africa.  (See video here.)

As an academic myself, I appreciated Prof. Levine’s passionate defense of expressive and academic freedoms. In 2012, when an illegally scanned copy of a book written by the former Ethiopian junta leader Mengistu Hailemariam was posted online, he was furious and unreserved in his condemnation. He wrote those who did the online posting “committed an act that [is] illegal, unethical, and imprudent. To my mind, that marks it as ‘un-Ethiopian.’”

He was very concerned about the politicization of contemporary Ethiopian higher education. He lamented, 

With the overthrow of the Derg, Ethiopians inside and outside the university enjoyed a marked increase of freedom of speech and publication. Even so, the pattern of unwarranted governmental intrusion into the university was matched by such destructive actions as the abrupt dismissal of some forty of the most experienced and accomplished members of the University faculty. It has remained difficult to uphold standards of admissions and to hold faculty performance to international academic standards. The government has failed to realize how delicate and vulnerable a university of high quality is.

Prof. Levine was an implacable and longtime defender of academic freedom in Ethiopia. When he served as assistant to the acting vice president of Haile Selassie University, Harold Bentley in 1958, he observed:

Before the project [Haile Selassie University] had a chance to break ground, however, Addis Ababa was   racked by an attempted coup d’etat against the late Emperor. As a friend of one of the coup leaders, Girmame Neway, I was one of the last persons to talk with him before he was captured and killed. Girmame’s parting words riveted me: ‘Don, please tell our story to the world. Even if we are defeated and killed, at least a word of truth will have been spoken in this land of deception.’  A few months later, I published an article in accord with Girmame’s testament, an article which the Emperor found so offensive that he wanted the U.S. Government to put me in prison. But then, Acting Vice-President Bentley dissuaded him with this memorable argument. ‘Your Majesty,’ he pleaded, ‘think of yourself for a moment not as head of the Ethiopian State, but as Chancellor of this new University. You want it to be internationally respected. For that, it must be able to guarantee academic freedom. What better proof of your intent could you demonstrate than to invite Dr. Levine to return to help build it?’”

The rhetoric worked. Despite the fact that I had written an article that was terribly critical and threatening to him, the Emperor understood that for this university to be a first-class, internationally respected university, it had to guarantee freedom of inquiry, speech, and publication; and so, with grace and generosity, His Majesty approved the idea of inviting me to return…

He warned:

The truth is that those in Power need, today more than ever, an independent and open quest for truth. Although the conclusions or the process of such inquiry may at times bring discomfort to the powers that be, surrounded as we are by unprecedented changes of enormous complexity, it stands to the advantage of these powers to support free inquiry and to be open to its honest conclusions. Failure to do so can result in calamities, based simply on ignorance and uninformed judgment….

I must say that I have some regrets as I write this special tribute. I believe Prof. Levine deserved to receive our accolades and appreciation while he was alive. He should have been recognized by all Ethiopians for his prodigious scholarship on Ethiopian society and culture. He should have been especially recognized by Ethiopian scholars who are familiar with his scholarly impact of his works. He should have been recognized for his work in establishing an extraordinary youth civic society organization.  Most of all, he should have been recognized in official capacity at the national level for his one-half century of service to Ethiopia and its people.

It is sound moral principle to give than to receive. Prof. Levine has given a lot to Ethiopia. Like him, many other “Ethiopianists” have given freely to Ethiopia. It is painful to see them pass away one by one; and I am left despondent as I survey the intellectual landscape and scan the scholarly horizon and see not even a mirage of images that resemble their scholarly caliber, dedication and commitment. Though they pass away by nature’s command, I comfort myself with the forlorn thought that their contributions will live forever. I can imagine young Ethiopian scholars in a future generation picking up their works and marveling at their dedication and scholarly excellence.

A scholar’s ultimate legacy: Dialogue

What may be said of Prof. Levine’s legacy? He was the quintessential scholar, and his legacy, I believe, is succinctly stated on the homepage of his website donlevine.com

I invite you to join one or more of these conversations: to engage the perennial questions of how to help each generation become strong, accomplished, and wise human beings and citizens; to grapple with searching ideas of the finest theorists about human nature and the social order; to engage the complexities of a two-millennial civilization and its tortuous encounters with modernity;  to absorb the teachings of an Asian master who discovered in the flow of water a key to promoting harmony in human action.

And along the way, to share ideas for more effective ways to sustain these and other conversations….

I say great teachers and scholars never die; they just fade away in the minds of the youth of coming generations to silently, relentless and endlessly agitate dialogue.

Dialogue. That is exactly how I intend to honor the memory of Fitawrari Leben Gebre Ityopia. Or simply, “Fit”

Posted By Daneil Aleyu zeleke

Comment on Melbaa Gadaa’s book on Oromia

Comment on “Melbaa Gada”, Author of “Oromia:An Introduction to the History of the Oromo People”.

by Tefera Dinberu

This comment is in regards to Melbaa Gadaa’s book on Oromia that was published in Minnesota in 1988 on the history of the Oromoo people. The objective of my comment is to help Melbaa and other thinkers like him see history with all its vices and virtues and intellectually project the destiny of Oromoo people in the future in relation to the rest of Ethiopians and what we can contribute for justice to prevail for the well-being of all peoples in that part of Africa.

The book is his second edition. The author has gathered information from many different sources – oral, his own experience or observation, professional/historical sources, and non-history sources. Melbaa relied more on some foreign sources and seems to have refrained from referring to domestic sources that he must have been familiar with. Any ways, I will try to dwell on the general scheme of his book as a whole by specifying some major points entertained in the book as follows:-

Regarding the source of Oromoo people, Huntingford says, “It is clear that the first African homeland of the Galla was what is now British Somaliland and northwestern Somalia, to which their own traditions bring them … It was the Somali settlement that drove the Galla to the west and south west” (Huntingford 19). Melbaa used this book as a reference; however, he did not mention this point. He holds that Ethiopian governments used to believe that Oromoo people were foreigners who migrated to this country. And he also says, “… Oromoo have a long history of presence as a community of people, in this part of Africa” (Gadaa 11-13). He cites Wainwright and Greenfield archaeological traces (phallic stone remains),

Decorations of stone bowls from Zimbabwe include pictures of cattle with long “lyre-shaped “horns such as raised by Oromoo. According to these scholars, this and the phallic stones found in Zimbabwe are traced directly to Oromoo land linked to their early settlements there and the Zimbabwe civilization. (Gadaa 22)

It is not clear if Melbaa is justifying that Oromoo came from another part of Africa and whether or not that agrees with his other statement that Oromoo was colonized by “Abyssinia”? Ethiopian history writers did not say that Oromoo people came from a foreign country. The only puzzle was how they could migrate or raid and occupy a very large area of the country in a relatively short period of time (16th to the early 19th centuries). I have enumerated my answer to this question down below; however, Melbaa probably rather unintentionally told us that the Oromoo people had their early settlements in Zimbabwe and lived in Ethiopia “as a community of people”. Read more…

posted By Daneil zeleke

Ethiopia: The Dam Dammed by Cash Flow? By Prof. Al Mariamp

In my March 2013 commentary, “Rumors of Water War on the Nile?”, I argued:

… Whether there will be an actual “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” [GERD] is the $5bn dollar question of the century. Because Egypt has been successful in pressuring multilateral development and investment banks not to fund the project, the regime in Ethiopia has defiantly forged ahead to fund the project itself. But is self-funding of the mother of all African dams a realistic possibility?…

In that commentary, I asked a number of commonsensical questions about the economic feasibility of the touted “8th largest dam in the world”:

Is it possible to raise USD$5bn by 2015 from the people of the second poorest country in the world, the vast majority of whom live on less than USD$1?

Is the largest recipient of international aid in Africa capable of raising multiple billions of dollars from its citizens for the Dam?

Can a country which “lost US$11.7 billion to illicit financial outflows between 2000 and 2009” be able to undertake construction of a USD$5bn dam (unadjusted for cost overruns) on its own?

Can a country which the IMF describes as having “foreign reserves [that] have declined to under two months of import coverage” as of June 2012 really be able to build the largest dam in African history?

Can a country whose external debt in 2012 exceeded USD$12bn be able to build a $5bn dollar project?

At the time, a self-described  “researcher on the Nile”, intent on demonstrating the“nudity of some extremist Diaspora” and “challenging” me on my “flawed arguments”, suggested that the “single reflective concern of Al Mariam`s piece would be his concern on how to finance the dam but because he is absorbed by personalizing the dam he missed his target.” (Emphasis added.)

In my April 2014 commentary, “Dam! White Elephants in Ethiopia?”,  I argued  that the “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” is the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about openly and earnestly. Meles, like all of his predecessor African dictators suffered from delusions of grandeur. Like his brethren African dictators, Meles wanted to have a big project that could immortalize him as the little “Big Man” of Africa… The so-called GERD is a vanity make-believe project principally intended to glorify Meles posthumously…”

At the time, another commentator,  apparently outraged by my “flawed arguments” was not content to merely disagree with me; he charged me both with the “unthinkable” political crime of high “treason” as well as the low moral crime of “vulgarity”. That commentator groused over my “temerity” in undertaking a “demonization of the Ethiopian Government”:

…Writing as members of a group is not something unusual, and in no way should excuse any writer to , as can unleash an avalanche of vulgarity as can be observed in Alemayehu’s article quoted above. And ultimately Alemayehu did the unthinkable: he committed treason against Ethiopia by siding with Egypt. He had thetemerity to call the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam a “White Elephant” and a “wasteful vanity” project… Alemayehu should have been a lot more careful before writing an article that applauds IRN anddemonize the Ethiopian Government and devalue Ethiopia’s sovereignty on its own rivers. (Emphasis added.)

Last week, FRANCE 24 TV released a video report announcing, “Ethiopia’s Nile dam project delayed due to shortage of funds.” The report stated:

Ethiopia is building a huge dam in the Nile Valley… Why aren’t international donors funding it? … The construction project is several years behind schedule. The biggest obstacle is that Ethiopia has to finance the dam on its own. No international institution wanted to help the country since the project is controversial…. Egyptian concern about the dam was put on dramatic and unintended display in 2013 at a ministerial meeting chaired by [President] Mohammed Morsi. [Video insert shows one Egyptian minister at the meeting stating] ‘I say loud and clear thatall options are available to us. If diplomacy fails to change the situation, we shall resort to international law; and if this is unsuccessful, we shall resort to anyone can imagine in order to protect our water security, because for us water security is a matter of life and death…. [Video insert of another Egyptian minister at the meeting stating] ‘If all these attempts fail, we may resort to our intelligence agencies in order to destroy any dam that undermines Egypt’s security… That building this dam is tantamount to a declaration of war against Egypt…” (Emphasis added.)

Last week, the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (T-TPLF), through its public relations jockeys, planted a story in the international media announcing  yet another big white elephant: “Ethiopian oil marketer sees $5 billion refinery within 10 years.”  According to that report (I did not say fairy tale):

Ethiopia’s leading private oil marketer plans to build a $5 billion refinery within ten years to meet the growing demand for refined products in a region experiencing fast economic growth… Tadesse Tilahun, the chief executive of National Oil Ethiopia, said the final decision to build a refinery producing between 200,000 to 300,000 barrels per day was yet to be taken. ‘It is a firm plan because oil demand is growing in Ethiopia… about 10 percent each year from the annual consumption of 3 million cubic metres and in the next 10 years we expect that to double… I would assume in the next 10 years we should have the refinery on the ground… National Oil’s shareholders include Saudi billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, whose investment portfolio in construction, gold, hotels and energy has helped amass an estimated fortune of over $10 billion…

In March 2011, the T-TPLF announced its $5 billion Nile Dam.

In March 2015, the T-TPLF announces a $10 billion oil refinery.

What a coincidence! Or is it just that the T-TPLF likes to bring out and parade its big white elephants in the month of March?

To read the rest of the commentary, CLICK HERE

Or copy and paste this url into your browser:

http://www.almariam.com/al-mariams-commentaries/archives/03-2015

 posted By Daneil zeleke

Misplaced Opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Update

March 24, 2015

Minga Negash, Seid Hassan, Mammo Muchie, Abu Girma, Aklog Birara and Getachew Begashaw

A picture taken on 28 May 2013 shows the Blue Nile River in Guba, Ethiopia, during its diversion (AFP/File, William Lloyd-George)

In our April 30 2014 commentary http://ecadforum.com/2014/04/30/misplaced-opposition-to-the-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam/ which appeared on several media outlets, we outlined the fallacies of the Egyptian policy towards GERD. It appears that the last few months have witnessed breath-taking diplomatic developments. For one, Egypt has returned to the African Union. It also has been reported that there were several rounds of side and formal meetings between Ministers and the Heads of States and Governments of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. Egypt has also shown a renewed interest on Africa. A number of African leaders attended the recently held economic summit in Egypt which unveiled a new project that aims to build a new city near Cairo. Parallel to these on March 23, 2015 Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed a deal that “ends the Nile dispute.”

In its March 23, 2015 edition Ahramonline published the English translation of the deal.http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/125941/Egypt/Politics-/Full-text-of-Declaration-of-Principles-signed-by-E.aspx. If the document is authentic and translation is accurate, we observe that (i) the document contains several complex statements that are hard to translate into practice, and (ii) many of the clauses favor Egypt much more than Ethiopia. In fact, it is not clear what Ethiopia is getting out of this agreement other than allaying Egypt’s official opposition to the dam. Indeed, Egypt appears to have succeeded in forcing Ethiopia to perform near impossible tasks as any perceived negligence or underperformance can serve as a ground for declaration of dispute. No free nation should be submitted into such a contract voluntarily.

Furthermore, a day after the signing of the “deal”, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt is travelling to Addis Ababa reportedly to address the joint session of the Ethiopian Parliament. Evidently, his mission cannot be anything less than selling the “deal” in Ethiopia. In short, the event appears to be a prelude for the ratification of a document that favors Egypt more than Ethiopia.

While welcoming the tripartite cooperation, we request that the “declaration” be translated into Ethiopian languages. We also ask that an open debate be held in all three countries and the riparian states before the matter is presented to the Ethiopian Parliament. In order to do so, the document should remain an MOU, be revised to address the concerns of citizens and be ratified and take the form of treaty agreement only after proper deliberations are made. Furthermore, as Ethiopia is on the eve of an election, ratification should be deferred until the new parliament is constituted.

posted By Daneil zeleke

The Poison of Ethnic Federalism in Ethiopia's Body Politic

The Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation (T-TPLF) adopted its fabricated constitution for Ethiopia on December 8, 1994.

The Preamble to that constitution declares, “We the Nations, Nationalities and People of Ethiopia…” have written the constitution to 1) “secure the right to self-determination” for “people of the nations and nationalities”, 2) ensure the territorial insularity (separateness) of the “people of the nations and nationalities” so that they can “live with our rich and proud cultural legacies” 3) “rectify historically unjust relationships”, and  4) facilitate “liv[ing] as one economic community”.

In contrast, the American Constitution in its Preamble declares, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The T-TPLF constitution is designed to create a perpetual disunion, among the Ethiopian people by dividing and corralling them like cattle into insular “nations and nationalities”. By segregating the people of Ethiopia into communal, linguistic, cultural and regional groups, the T-TPLF put a constitutional scheme in place that would permanently and irreversibly destroy the social glue of tolerance, harmony and understanding that has kept them united as a people for millennia.

The T-TPLF constitution is designed to destroy the very idea of one Ethiopian nation, one Ethiopian people. It is founded on the quintessential doctrine that there is no “Ethiopian Nation”. There is no “Ethiopian People.” There is no “Ethiopian culture”. There is no “Ethiopian history.” There is no “Ethiopian national identity.” There is no "Ethiopian flag” as a symbol of national identity. There is no “Ethiopian Dream”. There is no Ethiopia! There is only a collection of “nations and nationalities”,  trapped in an arbitrary geographic territory known to international law as “Ethiopia”, just waiting, yearning and itching to breakup into tribal chieftaincies and principalities.  There is only a make believe confederation of “nations and nationalities” in a mythical land called “Ethiopia”.

The American Constitution aspired to forge the people of the 13 colonies-cum-states into one “people of the United States” and make them one people, one nation.  The American Constitution was designed to bring together in a single national political entity the “People” of the 13 states and provide them a road map to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to [them]selves and [their] posterity.” The “united states” of America” started out very disunited following their war of independence from British colonial rule. They had major historical grievances against their former British colonial masters. Their historical grievances became the glue that held them together and compelled them to draft their very first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. They ended up creating a toothless national government believing that their newly-created national government would perpetuate the historical grievances of their colonial masters. In 1787, they resolved to form the “United States of America” so that they could address their historical grievances once and for all.

The T-TPLF constitution self-proclaims to be a weapon for “rectifying historical injustices”. It arms the  “nations and nationalities” with the nuclear option of “self-determination” for the “rectification” of  perceived historical injustices. The “nations and nationalities” are each given the switch box for their own nuclear weapon of mass destruction and literally blow up themselves and the entire country into smithereens.

The T-TPLF constitution aims to create “one economic community”, NOT one political community. The diesel engine of that “economic community” is the T-TPLF-owned “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray” (EFFORT) which “accounts for roughly half of the country’s modern economy.” According to EFFORT’s former chairman, “EFFORT companies receive preferential access to limited credit and/or foreign exchange stocks, or treatment on government bids and contracts, customs clearance import/export license.”

The American Constitution aims to create a “more perfect” political union, NOT an economic union. The political union in the American Constitution is designed to “secure the blessings of liberty”.  Economic union and the attainment of the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (property) are inevitable if there is a “more perfect” political union.   

The T-TPLF constitution is the ultimate blueprint for the eventual breakup and disintegration of Ethiopia. It is a constitution that sows the seeds of national destruction, uses ethnic hate to water it, germinates it in dark underground vaults of oppression and aims to harvest it in ethnic civil war and communal strife. The T-TPLF constitution is a backward looking apocalyptic document which guarantees the disintegration and implosion of the country by ensuring a final MAD (mutually assured destruction) Armageddon to resolve artificially-inflamed historically unjust relationships.

The U.S. Constitution was designed not only for those who drafted and ratified it, but also for “posterity”, the generations to come. It is true that imperfect Constitution turned a blind eye to slavery. It denied the right to vote based on race, skin color and gender. Yet 228 years after it was drafted, it remains the rock-solid political foundation for the UNITED States of America. William Gladstone who served as British Prime Minister on four separate occasions in the 19th Century observed, “As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

“Ethiopia, A Failed State Documentary”

Recently, a 54-minute video “Ethiopia, A Failed State Documentary” was released on Youtube. The documentary presents evidence and analysis few Ethiopians would dare discuss openly because of the sheer nightmarish nature of the issues raised.  The extraordinary documentary grabs by the tusk the biggest elephant in the room: The disintegration of Ethiopia from festering ethnic hatred, corruption and political repression of the T-TPLF.

The documentary aims to answer the question of what will happen when (not if, if present trends continue) Ethiopia is swallowed into the black hole of failed African states. The answer it provides is  spine-chilling.  Ethiopia will disintegrate and descend into an Armageddon of civil war and strife ultimately emerging as a “hub of terrorism” just like its neighbor Somalia.

The evidence presented and reviewed in the documentary are compelling and multifaceted. The documentary shows Ethiopia is doomed to be a classic African failed state because of the repression, corruption and bad governance of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF). The documentary presents compelling and shocking evidence on the “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and other crimes against humanity committed against the “Amhara, Gambella and Oromo people” by the T-TPLF. It shows how billions of Western aid dollars have been laundered through the TPLF’s “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray, the biggest corporation in Ethiopia in terms of revenue and assets” and deposited “in offshore bank accounts in the names of children of TPLF politicians.”  

The documentary shows how the TPLF has used its “bogus terrorism act” to justify its imprisonment, harassment and jailing of opposition leaders, journalists, bloggers and dissidents. It shows how the TPLF has meddled in religion by politicizing the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and flagrantly violating canon law and other practices of that Church and persecuting clergy opposing political interference. It shows how the TPLF has sought to incite strife between Christians and Muslims and interfered in the religious affairs of Muslims in Ethiopia. It shows how the TPLF has sold the country’s best land to fly-by-night land-grabbers for pennies displacing hundreds of thousands of poor villagers with money obtained from the World Bank, the British Government and others.  Last week, the World Bank announced that it has failed to follow its own rules for protecting the poor people in Ethiopia swept aside by dams, roads and other big projects it bankrolls. The week before the British Government announced it “will no longer back $4.9bn project that critics claim has funded a brutal resettlement programme” in Ethiopia. 

The documentary shows how the TPLF has subverted the legal system and made it a kangaroo (monkey) court system selling justice to the highest bidder and the most politically connected. It shows how TPLF persecution has resulted in the creation of large refugee populations and a source of cheap slave labor in the Middle East. It shows  how the TPLF has managed to dominate the military and intelligence sectors by controlling 95 percent of top leadership positions.

The documentary issues a massive indictment of U.S. policy in Ethiopia and argues that if the U.S., as the principal bankroller of the TPLF regime, does not take action to reverse the situation forthwith, it will have the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on its hands. The documentary concludes:

Ethiopia is at a crossroad and the future of the country is ever looking bleak. We are heading to a fully-fledged failed state resembling that of Somalia, Syria and Iraq. This is because the tension and conflict within Ethiopia have reached a boiling point where a simple spark could instigate chaos. Conflict and tension revolving around ethnicity, religion and politics are very high. This is because the TPLF since its inception has made sure to destroy the very fabric of Ethiopian society which was based on religious and ethnic tolerance and understanding… This has eroded to the point where it is now non-existent. The present Ethiopia is rife with hate, rhetoric and ideology… The TPLF’s ethnocracy is reminiscent of Rwanda and Yugoslavia which ended in genocide and civil war…

Suffice it to say that if the time ever came for a prosecution of the T-TPLF leaders in an international or domestic tribunal, this powerful documentary will be the centerpiece of the prosecution’s opening argument.

Ethiopia the powder keg? 

President John Kennedy warned, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” There is no question the T-TPLF leaders know the truth of Kennedy’s observation.

I believe the T-TPLF leaders know with absolute certainty that they are sitting on a powder keg.  As I have written previously, the T-TPLF has built its castles in the sand. The only question is whether those castles will be swept up by a tidal wave of  deep public discontent or blown away by the tornadic wind of the people’s fury. In either case, the T-TPLF will be vacuumed and deposited in the dust bin of history.

There is an immutable iron law of history the T-TPLF should know if they don’t know it already.  Mahatma Gandhi articulated that law.  “There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.”

The rogue’s gallery of fallen tyrants in our lifetime includes Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Blaise Compaoré, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Mengistu Hailemariam, Meles Zenawi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sekou Toure, Kamuzu Banda, Siad Barre, Agosto Pinochet, Nicolae Ceausescu, Slobodan Milosevic, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Ferdinand Marcos, Fulgencio Batista, Anastasio Somoza, Antonio Salazar, Alfredo Stroessner  and so many more. Is the T-TPLF an exception to the iron law of history?

My greatest concern is what will happen to Ethiopia (or should I say “nation and nationalities”) when the T-TPLF is consigned to the dustbin of history. 

Reading the tea leaves

“Making predictions is hard. Especially about the future”, said the famous American baseball player, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra facetiously. Likewise, making predictions about Ethiopia is hard. Especially about the future. Looking in the rear view mirror does not make one a soothsayer nor a doomsayer. Perhaps it makes one a tea leaf reader. I have read the “leaves” in the leaves of many reports, studies, public statements, analyses, commentaries and other sources to make some logical inferences about the T-TPLF’s ENDGAME.

I believe the T-TPLF is in its endgame after a quarter of a century in power. The evidence for my conclusion is as follows.

The passing of Meles Zenawi dealt a devastating psychological blow to the T-TPLF leadership and its network of cronies, clients and supporters. Meles was the brains and the brawns of the T-TPLF operation. He was their thinker and their enforcer. He was the supreme captain of the T-TPLF Ship of State. That ship today is rudderless and compass-less and captained by a bunch of faceless and nameless deck hands who pine for their lost leader possibly reciting lines from Walt Whitman’s verse:  “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, /The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,/”.

The question is how long the T-TPLF can keep the prize it won and cherished for nearly a quarter of a century and its ship afloat on a turbulent sea of popular anger, resentment, outrage and hatred.

I see the tale-tale signs of  confusion among the T-TPLF leadership, decay in its organizational and support structures and systems and rapid decline in its ability and capacity to withstand even the minimum amount of external pressure.

It is manifest to me that the top T-TPLF leadership today is tired, dog tired, of being in power and living in constant fear and loathing of the vast majority of the population. They are all aging and have squirreled away nice nest eggs in foreign banks. They want the chance to ride into the sunset and simply enjoy the millions they have stolen in peace. There is only one problem. As I have previously explained in detail, the T-TPLF has been riding the Ethiopian tiger for nearly a quarter of a century and will dare not dismount. When it does, the T-TPLF will be looking at the ravenous eyes, sharpened teeth, sinewy  claws and pointy nails of one big angry hungry tiger!

The T-TPLF puts on a strong public face to cover up its decay and decline. They stage events to project stability, strength and dominance. They do their anniversary celebrations and proclaim their elections. They hire public relations firms to peddle stories to rebuild their tattered global image as gross human rights violators. Just in the past week, they have managed to put stories with the Voice of America English program for “positive imaging”. The Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the White House showed up last week at the “Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia”.  They have teamed up with the “Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa”  which describes itself as “the premiere entity that engages and educates Americans about the countries comprising the continent of Africa” to, I guess, educate Americans about their impeccable human rights record?! They even managed to sneak in a piece in the N.Y. Times which claimed “ Ethiopia, long mired in poverty, rides an economic boom.” They have put out a story claiming they have “reached a full agreement” on the “Nile Dam” with Sudan and Egypt. They managed to get CNN to write up a story about “Ethiopia’s $5bn project that could turn it into Africa's water powerhouse.”  

Nothing gets my goat and insults my intelligence more than the T-TPLF’s totally bogus claim that  it has managed to achieve an “average 10.7% economic growth rate over the last 10 years, more than double the annual average of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which was around 5.2%.” They even got the odious World Bank to trumpet the bogus claim on their behalf. I take great pride in demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that the T-TPLF economic figures are completely fabricated, concocted and dreamt up in the statistics office of the T-TPLF. I just cannot imagine how they have convinced themselves into believing that any reasonably well-informed person could believe such stratospheric economic growth when the economy is in the chokehold of one oligarchic “corporation”, the “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray”.

It’s all good; but it is also all political theatre calculated to conceal, cloak and obscure the manifest decay and decline of the T-TPLF. I can understand why they would want to reinvent themselves as a kinder and gentler version of their previous selves. But I don’t believe they are fooling anyone except themselves if they think they can gloss over and cover up their hideous human rights record by a public relations campaign. Henry L. Mencken, the “Sage of Baltimore”, once observed, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” The T-TPLF leaders probably think the same way about the Ethiopian people.

In spite of the global public relations efforts to clean up its image, the T-TPLF is a spent organization. No one knows this better than the decrepit leadership of the T-TPLF. It has been unraveling since the death of Meles. They tried to shore up their organization and maintain a public image of collective leadership and internal unity byappointing a bumbling sanitary engineer as prime minster. Hailemariam Desalegn has done nothing to clean up the trash of corruption piled up in the T-TPLF. Of course, he can’t. He was put there to serve as a seat warmer until the T-TPLF bosses straightened out their house and installed their new capo di tutti capi  (boss of all bosses).

The T-PLF leaders know they are playing their end game. They know their game can end at any moment. They go sleepless trying to figure out whether their end game will end in a single massive popular explosion or a slow and gradual internal implosion within their own organization.

The tell-tale evidence of the endgame is plain to see.

Over the past couple of years, the T-TPLF has intensified its political repression. It has completely crushed the media. Independent newspapers have been shuttered and scores of journalists jailed and exiled. Opposition leaders are harassed, detained and persecuted. Dissidents and youthful bloggers have been jailed and charged with treason for expressing their views on social media. Would a regime that is confident in its legitimacy and self-assured in its popular acceptance and support undertake such extreme measures to deal with its opponents and critics?

The T-TPLF leaders, their cronies, clients and supporters are getting their money out and depositing it in foreign banks, buying businesses and property in the United States and elsewhere. Some even openly talk about their plans to hop and split town on the first signs of trouble. They have stashed enough money to last them for the rest of their lives, their children’s lives and their grandchildren's as well. How did this happen? Global Financial Integrity reports, “The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry. No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage.” The T-TPLF shows absolutely no confidence in its political future in Ethiopia. Period! Would a regime that is that is confident in its legitimacy and self-assured in its popular acceptance and support move out billions of dollars out of the country for use and investment in the U.S., Europe and China?

The internal structure of the T-TPLF is weak and the leadership’s control over party, military and bureaucratic institutions is at best extremely shaky. Nearly every bureaucratic institution is controlled by T-TPLF members, cronies or supporters. They have tried to make apparatchiks out of the legions of bureaucratic functionaries, but those functionaries are there to earn a living not to serve the T-TPLF.  The economy is totally dominated by family members and friends of the T-TPLF leadership. As the T-TPLF aristocracy swagger in town with fistfuls of cash and roll in town in their expensive SUVs and other luxury cars, they know the people have their tiger-eyes fixed on them. “Ride on! We’re watching,” think they. The top and middle leadership of the military consists of T-TPLF members and supporters. The rank and file are not T-TPLF members; they are in the military to earn a living. The fact of the matter is that whatever support the T-TPLF has convinced itself it has in the broader society, at best such support is skin deep. Would a regime that is that is confident in its legitimacy and self-assured in its popular acceptance and support so totally dominate the bureaucracy, military and economy?

The vitality of the T-TPLF, if it ever had one, has been sapped by a massive system of corruption it had erected, and which now has penetrated into every nook and cranny of Ethiopian (should I say “nation and nationalities”) society, culture, political, religious, bureaucratic and military institutions. They have used their single party system to build a vast empire of corruption that thrives on patron-client networks without any public accountability and transparency and in complete disregard of the rule of law. The T-TPLF knows that it cannot continue to operate its corrupt empire for much longer. Recent history shows that the social upheavals and political uprisings were driven by outrage over corruption and abuse of power. Few regimes in modern African history have been more corrupted by power than the T-TPLF.  For almost a quarter of a century, the T-TPLF has held absolute power and it has been corrupted absolutely by its exercise of absolute power. Would a regime that is that is confident in its legitimacy and self-assured in its popular acceptance and support be corrupt with such reckless abandon?

 The T-TPLF has set May 24 as its election day.  In 2010, Meles bulldozed, bribed, bullied and terrorized his way to a 99.6 percent election “victory” . He (mis)used foreign humanitarian and economic aid to buy and extort votes from the rural population. He provided make-work jobs to buy the loyalty of the youth. He (mis)used state resources to mobilize support for his party. He organized a massive surveillance programs and used a network of spies and informants to identify and neutralize his opposition. Meles and the T-TPLF “won”. Is there any question whatsoever that the T-TPLF will “win” the May 2015 election by at least 99.6 percent? Would a regime that is going to win an election by at least 99.6 percent lack so much confidence in itself that it has to harass and jail its opponents, crush the press and imprison teenagers and twenty-somethings on “terrorism” charges just because they blogged on social media? 

The TPLF knows it is sitting on a powder keg. Its leaders, inebriated by hubris and arrogance, are blinded to the fact that the ethnic fires they stoked for nearly a quarter of a century will one day consume them if they do not change their ways. The hate, fear and loathing they have nurtured and unleashed for so long will one day turn against them. If they believe they can go on forever clinging to power by pitting one ethnic group against another, one religion against another, they are badly mistaken. They may be able to fool all of the ethnic groups some of the time and some of the ethnic groups all of the time, but they can’t fool all of the ethnic groups all of the time. They may be able to fool all of the Christians… Muslims… some of the time, but they can’t fool all Christians and Muslims all of the time. 

Selma, Alabama and Ethiopia

Yesterday, March 7, 2015, President Barack Obama joined nearly 100 members of Congress in Selma, Alabama for the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”. Fifty years ago, hundreds of African Americans yearning to vote were clubbed, trampled, tear-gassed and manhandled by state police and hand selected vigilantes. President Barack Obama stood on that bridge and told the nation,  “What [the men and women who stood their ground in a violent confrontation with police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge] did here will reverberate through the ages, not because the change they won was preordained, not because their victory was complete, but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.”

There are many Ethiopians who are asking if the T-TPLF is in its endgame and how much longer will it take for the T-TPLF endgame to end?

Fifty years ago, on March 7, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King rhetorically asked and answered a similar question:

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody's asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?”  Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?” Somebody's asking, “When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?”

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long,  because “no lie can live forever.” How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’

I hope the T-TPLF will learn from the Selma experience. It is really true that “nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.” The alternative is too frightening, too horrifying, too terrifying and too petrifying for me to contemplate: “YOU SHALL REAP WHAT YOU SOW!”

To be continued…

posted By Daneil  Zeleke