By now I think we have heard and read enough a litany of explanations about the so-called peaceful transition of power after the Abyssinian dictator died. The new prime minister has proved himself so far a complete puppet of the dominant TPLF faction by repeatedly vowing to follow in his master’s footsteps, dashing the hopes of many opposition cliques including the veteran politicians in OLF who hoped and even now, as I write this article, keep hoping for a dialogue with the regime. I wonder how it could be otherwise, as long as there is the same fascist TPLF as before.
I call the opposition groups cliques because none of them are elected or controlled by their own members. All of them are, perhaps with a few exceptions, self-appointed groups who do promise democracy- what they do not have themselves structurally- to the oppressed peoples of the Ethiopian empire. Not only do they not really care about democracy, but they do not, I am afraid, understand what it is. That is why they always need a short cut to power through foreign intervention. That is why some of their stars are doing their postgraduate studies waiting to be mobilized at the ‘right’ time.
The Abyssinian opposition cliques are especially waiting for the Brits and Americans to help them to power in any way even though it is obvious that the Woyane has been and still is in power in the first place through their massive support. The Amhara groups are not happy with the secondary position in the power hierarchy. Surprisingly, they are claiming that Tigrayans under TPLF are sabotaging Ethiopian unity. It sounds as if they were more loyal to the unity of the empire than the Tigrayans. In such a calculation where are our Oromo pundits of the democratization of Ethiopia to find their role?
In the meantime some Amhara cliques will not hesitate to seize power through military putsch if they can. It is equally obvious that they can rule Ethiopia and maintain their supremacy only by military means with foreign support as they have always done, no less than Woyane. That is why working with the Abyssinian groups under one umbrella in opposition to the Woyane is extremely silly and dangerous. This is especially so in the light of their unanimity in opposing the rights of nations and nationalities to self-determination.
OLF, on the other side, has divided itself intentionally into factions in order to explain away, especially to the Americans, its involvement with the dictator of Eritrea. Having entrenched itself in the sensibilities of the passive and the naïve among us for so long, it needs also to justify and explain thereby its hopeless failures by trying to erase its own records.
All these opposition cliques without exception, including OLF with all its factions, can be characterized by top-down methods of controlling their own members and sympathizers, far from accountability and respect for civic participation in issues that affect the interests of ordinary people.
TPLF is of course more Machiavellian in its machination than all of them put together. More so in its brutality at home and in it assessment of its foreign policies. It has understood quickly better than any of the opposition groups, the new shift in the balance of power in the world. If the West, under public pressure at home, is forced one day to challenge Abyssinian militarism and fascism, the TPLF is well prepared to shift its allegiance to China, come what may, in order to save the old empire by all means possible. On this issue there is no left or right in the Abyssinian camp. It has learned many valuable lessons from, and inherited many aspects of the legacy of the DERG regime under Mengistu Haile Mariame. Its militarism and politics of land grabbing are the continuation of an old policy.
It is also obvious that it is not possible to conceal the fact of Tigray political supremacy by appointing a non Tigrayan puppet figure as a prime minister. It is business as usual as long as powerful international circles deliberately turn a blind eye to the brutalities of the Ethiopian regime.
Though I do support the peaceful Moslem protest, I do not think that it can achieve much in the absence of genuine opposition political organizations that coordinate the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations and nationalities of the Ethiopian empire. To think otherwise is, in my opinion, ignoring the obvious. Here we are dealing with a fascist regime armed to the teeth, a regime that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in the empire and in Somalia. Especially as long as it enjoys the total Anglo-American backing, the regime will never make any substantial concessions to the civilian population.
This being the situation, I do not understand how a promising young activist such as Jawar Mohammed tries to ignore certain important aspects of the political reality in Ethiopia. He says, for example, in one of his articles that OPDO is no more a puppet organization that it was in the past. It is, according to him, today a junior partner of the TPLF, giving the impression that it can challenge TPLF in some way. Do we need to create such wrong expectation and hope in this way? My own understanding is that not only can OPDO not challenge the TPLF, but it has even no intention of doing so. It is still a puppet organization as ever, even more than ever. Practically, I honestly question the integrity of those Oromos who compromise in any way the right of our people to self-determination. Two days ago I heard some one, known for his nationalist rhetoric, shouting in an otherwise nationalist Paltalk room (now with another name) saying that even the OPDO army is potentially our army! How good most of us are in self-deception!
Anyone who knows the nature of the TPLF from inside and even from outside must know there is nothing called compromise in its vocabulary and practice. TPLF will not accept any real substantive partnership, junior or not. While Jawar Mohammed is doing good job in exposing aspects of the dictatorial nature of the regime, does he need to contradict himself by making exception when it comes to OPDO? Why do the internal squabbles over power in the TPLF capture so much of our attention? Besides, do we need to catalogue TPLF achievements in economic fields, the infrastructure and education. These so-called achievements are underwritten and exaggerated intentionally by international institutions eager to justify their policies in supporting a brutal regime because it serves their interests and strategies. Who do most of these achievements serve? Certainly the top men of the regime itself, and their huge military and civilian bureaucracy.
All this cannot conceal the fact that the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth live in Ethiopia. Let us concentrate on and expose the indiscriminate violence. Let us speak of the looting of resources, broken communities, malnutrition, hopelessness and wasted lives in jails. Lot of the indirect coverage of the regime’s achievements (as can be seen from many articles posted on Ethiomedia) goes under the name of objectivity in a world where human beings are treated like objects.
There is only one thing the Amhara and Tigray rulers so far have been good at: wars. Wars against the oppressed peoples in their empire. Wars against neighbours: Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. Part of the objective of the Nile dam is to mobilize the support mainly of the Abyssinian masses for the TPLF against the old ‘enemy’ Egypt. The economic advantages of the dam are secondary for the TPLF, if at all. Let us not forget that TPLF is has made up its mind to remain in power no matter what happens. If the West does not accept that China will. No problem. That is the equation TPLF is counting on.
The new prime minister makes no difference. For TPLF, as a brutal military machine, human beings as individuals do not count at all, including Meles Zenawi, despite the propaganda to the contrary. TPLF treats humans like rats in the laboratory. Its motto: use and discard. Its dismal records show this. We are dealing with the most ugly combination of feudalism, fascism, Stalinism and corporate capitalism. It is tolerated, even made respectable globally. Such a strange and nauseating combination in this form exists to my knowledge today only in Ethiopia.
Recently I found by chance an article by Tecola Worq Hagos in which he reviews the Writings of Teodros Kiros. At some point in the review he says: “I do not think of us Ethiopians as uniquely African, for we are foremost Ethiopians, an identity forged by thousands of years of pounding by the hammer and anvil of history shaped into a tempered distinct people (singular)”. Well, the hammer I know of is not a metaphor. It is real, then as now. In the process of forming their empire and keeping it under their hegemony the Tigrayan and the Amhara rulers -warlords, kings and emperors, generals- have, between them, destroyed the lives of millions of Oromos, Afars, Somalis, Sidamas, Gurages, Hararis etc. They are still doing what they can in this way, partly thanks to the international media blackout, even in this information age.
Here is a triangle, the triangle of victimizer, victim and standers-by. It is a very old one in Ethiopia- systematically kept hidden from the world. The victims and the standers-by are sometimes the same people and exchange their position quite often, without being able to stand together in solidarity with one another. Till now the history of Ethiopia is a one sided monologue of the winners. Tecola Worq’s reminiscence seems to be part of it. He seems eager to deny facts of history: modern Ethiopia developed out of events in the late nineteenth century when a succession of brutal emperors reunited the Abyssinian kingdom and went on conquering vast regions belonging to non Abyssinian peoples with the help of European colonialists.
Most of the vanquished, especially among us the Oromos in Ethiopia, are still even today enigmatically silent. How this terrible silence is going to explode I have no idea. But explode it will. Countless people in this empire are permanently traumatized and prefer complete silence. They do not seriously talk about their political reality, not only because they live in fear, but because they are also hopeless and ignorant of many obvious ways and methods of resistance in solidarity. Instead, they try constantly to forget it all by getting lost in their daily drudgery. Absolute silence is of course very difficult or impossible in the face of daily brutalities. Many such ordinary people advise me, with the best intentions, to shut up and worry about myself. Many are turning exclusively to religion for consolation.
The question of the absence of solidarity among the victims reminds me of two important articles I recently read in awate.com. The first is by Saleh AA Younis, the second by by Saleh “Gadi” Both writers seem to be in agreement. They bring out interesting basic similarities between the fate of victims of the Abyssinian domination in Ethiopia and Eritrea today. Both lament in different degrees the fact that the oppressed peoples in both countries do not know one another even though they are in the same boat as victims and in the same region. This is a big point.
It is high time that we address the problem urgently. For that, all we need is to wake up and develop aptitudes of relative freedom from certain prejudices that bedevil solidarity between different ethnic groups. In both countries the luggage of the Abyssinian identity, the identity of empire builders and land grabbers, is at the heart of our dilemma. We have countless reasons to act in solidarity. If we are determined, we can even now initiate underground parliamentary democracy in some way in our region of the Horn. I mean it. We cannot wait for decades until the Abyssinian political elites overcome their inveterate chauvinism to reorientate their people against the culture of the conquistados and teach them how to live in peace and equality with the peoples they conquered long ago and not so long ago, peoples they continue to despise and hate.
Once we bear this in mind, we have multiple choice. In my last article, I did say that the Oromo people have no choice but struggle for independence from Abyssinia. But when it comes to the other oppressed peoples of the empire of Ethiopia and Eritrea with whom we have no problems, our choice of future arrangements on how to live together is multiple. All we need is, as the two Eritrean writers agree, for the choice to be democratic, not forced from above through Abyssinian intrigues, terror and violence.
Perhaps violent Abyssinia will learn something from us that way in the long run. Those Amharas and Tigrayans who believe in freedom of choice (I hardly come across them these days- they seem to be rare birds hiding in darkness from the sunlight if they exist at all) have nothing to fear. We are not against their people. All we want is to be free from oppression. We have no ambition to take their dear old Abyssinia or Ethiopia. Their visceral fear of Islam is understandable but it is mostly an anachronism, highly misleading and misused by their ruling classes.
But choice means democracy. If our understanding of democracy is shoddy, we will get nowhere. For me this is actually the most vital question now. The kind of democracy most African intellectuals believe in exists only in mythology and modern fairy tales for children. It is a sacred cow for the masses of ignorant people, the untouchables of our continent. That is why in reality we end up mostly with politicians and academics who serve foreign interests.
I think there are two forms of democracy. One is democracy from above, the other democracy from below. Can we see that many of the present democracies in Europe, Unites States and Japan, for example, do not match the democratic mythology and the rhetoric of the ideologues of globalism? Most of Africa’s intelligentsia and academics, in their rat race to please the West, fail to register this completely. Dishonesty has become their daily food. The Brits and the Americans were obliged for historical and strategic reasons to initiate and impose their democracy from above in several industrialized countries under direct military occupation at the end of World War II. So they have today more or less equal partners now. Is this difficult to realize?
In Third World counties, especially in Africa, they initiated and still do initiate puppets who serve their interests, not the interests of their peoples. The man made disasters that face Africa today seem to be preprogrammed and are incomparably greater than elsewhere. No wonder that Africans enslave Africans today as never before with more hideous means. That is why higher political awareness from below is most needed now. But where are we?
The second form of democracy from below is based on the democratic popular will and choice and requires raising social issues, human rights issues and the issues of protecting dear nature, our true mother. It must be democracy based on accommodating diversity and not in suppressing it as the Amhara and Tigrayan elites do. It is absolutely shameful that the so-called African Union has its headquarters still in Addis Ababa, giving legitimacy to the most brutal regime in the continent.
To state such general principles is one thing; to translate them into action is another. Yet this does not need to cast a deep gloom over us. In this age of information, of the Web and the Internet, groups and individuals can articulate new ideas in every field and coordinate actions where the process of teaching and learning become united, where voluntary and free contributions and unity in diversity can foster more peaceful forms of revolutions in many fields simultaneously.
The Wikipedia, for example, provides a fascinating glimpse into this aspect of our time. True, the democratic space is under constant threat especially under the pretext of war on terror. Yet democracy is certainly still vibrating in the hearts and actions of many individuals and groups everywhere. I believe it can never be totally silenced except in countries such as Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia.
Listening to discussions on some Somali TV channels, I have the impression that Somalia may be heading for some kind of democracy unless Ethiopia and its local Somali puppet warlords and self-serving intellectuals (not only in Mogadishu but also in Somali land and Punt land) are allowed by Anglo-American circles to sabotage it.
Finally, why is the Oromo project or bid for liberation in a state of limbo? It is easy for us to blame everything on disunity while we are doing nothing by way of real, committed struggle. It is easy for us to blame our history for our failures. It is easy to blame everything on Abyssinian brutality. It is easy to blame OLF factions as I myself often do. But I know one thing: one sided view is very dangerous. We need a clear overall picture of our situation. Many of our political elites are pleased to be in the limelight while some of us shun it completely to avoid responsibility. Most of us confuse flitting pleasure with happiness.
It is true that learning and understanding our history properly is very helpful. We must be prepared to make mistakes if we want to learn in our condition. Courage to peacefully express ourselves in anyway we like without fear even when we may be wrong and lonely is very important. Personality cult, received information and wisdom must be questioned. We can re-examine things for ourselves. It is often said that during the Gada era, despite its egalitarian aspects, the Oromos, unlike the highland Christians and the lowland Moslems, were not concerned with establishing a central state based on their political outlook or even dogma. This can be interpreted as a positive statement. But it can be interpreted also to mean that generally the Oromos of the time had perhaps no serious message with deeply ethical and moral justification for themselves as for other peoples, a message that transcended immediate needs of pure survival. Their quest might have been mainly for new land, especially pastures for their growing cattle. Be that as it may, the disunity of different Gada groups cannot be denied and must have been a factor of great significance. We cannot blame them now for that.
My point is: this tendency or inclination to give complete priority to our bellies rather than to the basic principles of human dignity, to our cherished political outlook or conviction or philosophy is very much with us today, no matter what the historical explanations ma be. This reality cuts across our social and religious denominations. Again, this cannot be denied. We cannot blame it exclusively on the Amhara and Tigrayan fascism alone. We have to confront this painful fact. Once more, ignoring the obvious will not work, neither for us nor for old Abyssinia.
Do not misunderstand me. My aim here is not to moralize or to lecture you on history. I know why most of us ignore the obvious: reality can be really painful. But if we deny it, we sabotage thereby our human dignity, our essential, natural love, our creativity and development. There are many ways in which we knowingly and unknowingly are engaged most of the time in self-betrayal in small and big ways.. But we can wake up if we really desire and welcome small and big changes. We have more reasons to rejoice in positive changes than keep clutching at the branches of our traditional illusory small private security.