The Love of Ethiopia Heals Us All

By Tecola W. Hagos

I. Introduction

It is impossible to describe the love of country. It is far more primordial than any human emotion I could think of, except maybe parental instinct. The definitions provided in learned texts may not be that helpful either. However, the best description is the one that I have heard Ethiopians refer to Ethiopia, especial under stressful situations where there seems to be an enormous threat to their whole existence: they refer to Ethiopia as the place where their umbilical cord (after-birth) was buried�a place of great emotional significance. It seems to me the types of expressions and the words we use to talk about the love we have for our homeland is an index of our humanity, courage, love, and aspirations.

In the last few weeks, I have learned both disturbing and uplifting stories about Ethiopians at home and in the Diaspora. I have discovered also some great future Ethiopian leaders, in places I least expected. Actually, they were there all along, it just took  a new look. I acknowledge some merit even in my detractors. [The chat sites I visited are disastrous. They are clogged with people who write under assumed names. Even those of the major online news and commentary services suffer similar problems. The guttural language, badly written English, lack of cognition of the most elementary ideas et cetera indicate, at least those Ethiopians who write in chat sites here in the Diaspora are an ignorant bunch with embarrassingly little education or intelligence.]

We cannot afford to wait for a Messiah type leader, for our wait will stretch into the thousands of years. We have to deal with leaders we can create and support.  For example, the news about Seye Abraha having talks with Kinijit leaders is encouraging. In the Ethiopian Diaspora Communities in the United States and Europe, where things seem always foreboding with some pending doom round the corner, I have learned some encouraging development as well. For example, the manner Moges Gebremariam (Dr.) handed over his care-taker responsibilities back to the leadership of Kinijit/CUD shows great discipline and maturity of leadership, which was uplifting to me to learn that at least there is one �gentleman� politician in the middle of a vulgar political squabble. On the other hand, there was also some disappointing news about some leaders of Kinjit international support group who had wasted on lavish meals and drinks large amount of money raised from the public.

The more pressing problems facing Ethiopia are poverty (due to population explosion), moral corruption (especially due to prostitution), dysfunctional families and child upbringing (child abuse is rampant), and dysfunctional government leaders (due to Meles Zenawi and his Party). Ethiopia is in great danger. If things continue the way they are, we will soon reach critical mass and reversing the disaster would be impossible. We will not have a country by the time Meles Zenawi is done with us. It is time to find a way that will help us overcome the apathy, the cynicism. and the cowardice we suffer, and forge a new spirit of Ethiopiawinet to win against Meles Zenawi and his Party in the next election.

On the international arena, our best friend, the United States is planning to supply our historic enemies Egypt and Saudi Arabia with about forty three billion dollars of sophisticated weapon and weapon systems (13 billion dollars for Egypt, and 30 billion for Saudi Arabia). We, Ethiopians, are the ones who took the challenge in Somalia against terrorists financed by Saudi Arabian funds and Egyptian technical support channeled through Eritrea, who had hurt the United States in 2001 terrorist attacks and after. Instead, the nations whose nationals devastated the World Trade Center, with almost three thousand lives lost, are now being rewarded because their nationals bombed the World  Trade Center in the United States?

This is truly a bizarre political game that is being played out by American politicians. If it is �oil� that the United States is after, I say just drive down into Saudi Arabia and take what you need, after all Saudi Arabia is not a nation, but a family holding of one extended family. At any rate, most of that oil revenue is ploughed back into the United States Treasury or invested back in banks and corporations of America, that you need not be afraid of capital flight. Where else would these corrupt leaders go any ways with their ill begotten wealth?

I believe the United States Government owes us an apology for not taking into account seriously our presence in that vital region of the world and for overlooking our vital national security interest and arming and planning to arm our historic enemies. What is the United States getting from Egypt?  We know what the United States gets from Saudi Arabia, no need to repeat that here. Our loyalty as a friend of the United States of a hundred years, except for a decade of disruption by a mad man, should count for something. The United States ought to rearm and supply Ethiopia with first rate weapon and weapon systems, at least to the tune of worth fifteen billion US dollars. This is not some idle talk, but an assessment based on fair reading of the existing geopolitics and the history of the region and the interest of the United States. The only nation that has stable future and a democratic future life in that region is Ethiopia.

Of course, we are not making much headway in the diplomatic arena here in the United States because of our deficient leaders, with a Foreign Minister who is barley literate, and painfully lacking in the necessary sophisticated knowledge to launch any program to enhance the image of Ethiopia in the international arena. One must be acquainted at least with the rudiments of international relations to do anything worthwhile for Ethiopia. However, with a core staff interested more in gleaming duty free bottles of Scotch and Courvoisier from resident diplomats in Addis Ababa, than the duty to serve Ethiopia, and with wet-behind-the-ear ambassadors in the major capitals of the World, does it surprise us the fact that Ethiopia is overlooked by the major powers of the West and the East and has no political clout? Even Belize, a tiny nation of less than seven hundred people, a former vast plantation of the British Crown, has political clout in international organizations than Ethiopia.  

II. Good Men in Conflict: Ephraim Isaac and Alemayehu Gebremariam

Once again Meles Zenawi had inserted a monkey-wrench into our tortured wheels of life of our tragic Ethiopian saga, wherein we have again been further fractured into two warring factions. The conflict between Professors Ephraim Isaac and Alemayehu Gebremariam in public is a direct consequence of the type of satanic manipulation that we have suffered in the hands of many of our political leaders for generations. It does not benefit anyone to cry over spilt milk. What is most important is the fact that the CUD leaders are free, and even more empowered by their ordeal of two years.

In the last two weeks much had happened surrounding the Shimglena and the pardon of the CUD leaders, including revisionist new history/narration. I have read also the articles by Alemayehu, the recent one being a rather well written and long article �Lies, promised joy, shimagles, pardons and bananas,� (Ethiomedia, August 6, 2007) . I have read also transcripted several interviews by Ephraim Isaac, the latest being by Orly Halpern,  �In Ethiopia, elders dissolve a crises the traditional way,� (The Christian Science Monitor, August 9, 2007). It is interesting the types of twist international reports and newspapers weave around such a simple event is quite interesting. The particulars of the conflict between these two men and the accusations of the parties are not of much interest to me. Alemayehu is relaying on Aristotelian �laws of contradictions� to show the irreconcilable logical flaw in trying to use arbitration or Shimgelina in an environment of complete absence of rule of law and a judicial system. Ephraim Isaac is shoring up his side of the conflict with the authority of Ethiopian culture of the traditional role of Shimagles, and the maintenance of Ethiopia as friend of the United States.  

I am very appreciative of Ephraim Isaac, I admire and respect him more than anyone of my seniors. Every time I see him dressed in the Ethiopian national dress (with a Yemeni Jewish head-gear that he added much later), I feel this deep indescribable connection to a great historical saga of a great people that I am a part of too. In my eyes, Ephraim Isaac is a good and loyal Ethiopian. He is a great symbol of the human spirit�s greatness of overcoming great adversities. Anyone who believes Ephraim Isaac is somehow Meles Zenawi�s agent or enabler, such a person has missed the most important significance of Ephraim�s activities. Ephraim is fighting for Ethiopia, for his people, for his history, for all of us. It seems to me the love affair between this eternally grateful and appreciative son of Ethiopia is touching, for it stabs at my heart just looking at a man with unadulterated love for his country and his fellow Ethiopians. Even when I see Ephraim�s image on TV or on newspapers dressed in his Ethiopian attire, proudly proclaiming without words �Do not ever forget it, you are in the presence of the oldest civilization continuously alive and vibrant against all odds�Ethiopia,� I am always moved to my core.

In order to understand Ephraim Isaac one must take into account his background. His father, a Jew from Yemen, a member of a Jewish community persecuted for centuries by Arabs, found at last a home in Southern Ethiopia where he settled among people who took him in without question, and he was comfortable enough to start a family marrying an Ethiopian lady. Ephraim Isaac grew up in a household of the meeting of two great ancient people. Ephraim Isaac sees Ethiopian leaders benign essentially; even at their worst, Ethiopian leaders, even Mengistu, were genuinely much more humane compared to the kings and czars of Europe and Russia, where poor people and millions of Jews were mercilessly brutalized, murdered, tortured, burned alive and repeatedly stripped of their wealth and thrown out from their homes on the command of such European leaders. The worst persecution happened in the Twentieth Century where no less than six million Jews were murdered by Nazis by firing squads, starvation in concentration camps, and gas chambers.    

Alemayehu Gebremariam is also fighting for his country, for his land, for his people, and for all of us. It is not the first time that individuals having the same goal, but violently disagreed on how to achieve that goal. At a time when we are proudly awaiting our third millennium as a civilization and a country (a record unmatched by any nation on earth for continuity) in few weeks, it is ironic that we are so deeply divided. I know of no people who hate and despise their Government as much as we do. The fact is all around us about the brutality and treasonous activities of Meles Zenawi. We are reminded each day that we are under a dictatorship that betrayed us all giving away our heritage: land, costal territorial waters, islands et cetera. Thus, it is truly understandable why Alemayehu feels so strongly about the political situation in Ethiopia.

I am not supportive of sanctions or resolutions by international organizations or foreign countries against the Government of Ethiopia, a government that is brutalizing its own people. I was also opposed to sanctions against the Government of Mengistu even when I was a political refugee since 1976 not because I supported such a government but rather because such sanctions and resolutions end up hurting the very people we are trying to support. Despite the nobleness of the goal, looking at the provisions of the particular Bill in Congress, H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007), I do not believe it is helpful to Ethiopia, in the long run, to have such a record in the Congress of the United States. This also holds true for European nations and the EU as well. Particular leaders in Ethiopia come and go, what remains is the national interest of Ethiopia, and that national interest should not be compromised in any manner or censored by any other outside power. 

Thus, the conflict between these two thoroughly Ethiopian, highly patriotic, and intelligent individuals is unfortunate, but inevitable to some extent. It is one of those situations where both contending parties are right. The best that can be hoped for is that people would avoid screaming and shouting at each other and start talking with each other. I am not happy particularly with the tone of Alemayehu�s recent article in his accusative position against Ephraim. There is much to be said about acknowledging the efforts of individuals like Ephraim Isaac and others. The circumstance of the CUD leaders in the jaws of a monstrous government is not a situation that leaves room for manipulation. It was a very tight either/or type situation, it was not doing anything positive but in fact causing division and squabble within the Ethiopian support communities around the world and within Ethiopia. .

There is no need to cast the difference in approach to solve such political problem as some kind of a feud, and even more so as a conflict between the young and the old. The Aristotelian �laws of contradictions� will not work either in our circumstances. We have to deal with so many twists and turns that we hardly could see any clear picture of our political situation. It is very difficult under such current Ethiopian political processes to deal with categorical syllogisms. We need a more powerful and advanced form of reasoning. If there is such a need, maybe what we need is more like modal or deontic logic with our focus on moral duties, the �dos� and �don�ts� of ethical principles.

Professor Messay Kebede, in superbly written articles, �Jailers and Jailed: How to move on to a win-win outcome,� (Ethiomedia, July 20, 2007) and in the follow up article �Mediation and the mazes of a dictator,� (Ethiomedia, August 3, 2007) seems to suggest what has been done is done, and let the CUD leaders move on/forward and make something positive out of their release�a kind of making some �lemonade out of lemons� solution. Messay also finds the process that led to the pardon and release of the CUD leaders defective not for its legal shortcomings, but for shifting the moral high-ground the CUD leaders commanded due to their imprisonments to a lowered platform that Meles was able to climb to place himself on morally equal footing with CUD leaders because of the price the CUD leaders paid for their �pardon� by having admitted criminal wrong doing and letting the manipulative Meles Zenawi off the hook. To wit, Messay stated the following succinctly, verbalizing his evaluation of the whole experience.

�We should refrain from hailing its outcome while underlining that Ethiopian history testifies that the intervention of mediators has convinced more than one king to even give up the throne for the sake of the common good. What this shows is that the tradition is invoked for normative purpose even as its actual implementation is distorted. So, for the future, let us make sure that usage of the traditional way of conflict resolution is firmly harnessed to the cause of democracy, freedom, and collective interest.� [August 3, 2007]   

However, I do not see the current situation of the CUD leaders in precisely the form of matrix drawn for us by Messay, for everyone knows that the apology or petition of the CUD leaders was a forced one, that the imprisonment was illegal in the first place, that the political and economic situation of Ethiopia is in shambles in the hands of the present leaders, and that Meles Zenawi is still perceived as a brutal dictator by an increasing number of Ethiopians and around the world.  

III. Finding our way back to our glory

I worry about Ethiopia all of my waking hours, in fact, it seems that has become my second nature. A few years back, I heard a former official of Mengistu�s government, who had fallen on bad times, portraying the political process in Ethiopia as a kind of marriage by a powerful woman of successive husbands who are raised high from humble beginnings and dashed back to earth if they fail the expectation of that terrible grand woman. In that conception, Ethiopia is the grand woman. I did not like that symbolism at all. I rather want to think of Ethiopia as a willing mother, but one who has no clue how to raise such a large family of greedy materialistic siblings, too many cantankerous children fighting with each other in an endless cycle of vengeance and retribution, whose general disposition is lacking in civil virtues, with vanishing morality, and who are cowardly in facing brutal leaders.

People of my generation, let alone those of the generation of my seniors, ought to shelf any political ambition we might have. And we ought to look at our current political and economic situation with clear eyes. We need new blood infusion of new leaders. Is there some magic formula that we can use to alleviate the suffering of our people? There is no single ideology that will solve all of our problems, but there is starting foundational bedrock that we can all stand on to start the reconstruction of our country. It is truly tragic that we allowed the types of individuals like Meles Zenawi and Sebhat Nega to be our leaders. But that is more a reflection of our failure as virtuous citizens more than the exceptional abilities of such individuals rising to such position of prominence, for the fact is that in any society the scum of society will rise to the top in circumstances where such society as a whole is experiencing deep decline. Ethiopia experienced extreme decline in its social values for over one hundred years due to its cockeyed modernization effort, and we are the result of such mistake, which we must correct that now at all cost.

One need not lose one�s dignity and self respect and pimp one�s daughters in order to acquire few miserable pseudo-modern gadgets. What has modernization brought to us at this time? Look at the number of prostitution in all urban areas in Ethiopia. When a society exports its daughters into foreign countries, especially to the Middle East, such society is in great peril of self destruction. The source of all civilization and dignity of a people is founded on the dignity of its female population. That is why you find in all Western societies tremendous social pressure for discriminatory mating where they protect their female population against foreign intruders of every sort. This is true also both in Jewish and Arab societies where there is in place for generations tremendous restrictions on access to sex with Jewish or Arab females by outsiders completely, and for members of the community only through legitimate marriages.

Sexual promiscuity is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia and a few other Moslem countries, but their decadent rich men would not find it objectionable to seduce or entice women from Ethiopia and other poor nations for their illicit sexual gratifications. There were reported rapes and all kinds of abuses against migrant women workers from Ethiopia in such barbaric societies like that of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Saudi Arabia is an abomination that should not exist at all and ought to be kicked out of the United Nations for its barbarism and violation of fundamental rights of its citizens and guest workers. Recently the rotten Saudi Government beheaded Ethiopian men and a female and stuck their heads on gate posts, after a mock trial of sort convicted under its corrupt legal system where torture-confessions are taken into evidence routinely without regard to the rights of the accused of serious crimes. And the Ethiopian Government and the Ethiopian people did nothing. Shame on all of us for letting such things happen to our brothers and sisters without violent protest against the barbaric Saudi Government and against Arabs where ever we find them.  

All social and economic indicators tell us the situation of Ethiopia is at the very edge of a catastrophe. Look at Addis Ababa, the quintessential example of what is terribly wrong about Ethiopia. For example, the utility service, which was designed over thirty years ago could barely meet the demands of a couple of hundred thousand people at that time, is being stretched now to serve over two million people. As a result Addis Ababa is turned into one huge cesspool with open latrines and open drainage clogged and overflowing with human waste and all other kinds of waste imaginable. In every sphere of economic and social indicators, what we have in Ethiopia is overwhelming problems: over sixty percent unemployment, less than one hundred dollars average income a year, one doctor for every one hundred fifty thousand Ethiopians, less than twenty percent of the total population drinking uncontaminated tab water, the lowest intake of minimal calories per day, et cetera. On the other hand there are few extremely rich individuals who could afford to spend on a single drink of imported Scotch or French wine at the Sheraton that amounts to a yearly income for most Ethiopians.

All the development programs and projects, which are claimed by all kinds of Ethiopian Government publications and by those parroting Websites in the Diaspora, are simply cosmetic and do not address the real problems of poverty, ignorance, disease, and starvation of millions of Ethiopians. For examples, the ridicules claims of building �Universities� all over Ethiopia is a hollow program without much substance�there are no books, professors, laboratories, research facilities worthy of higher learning in most of those new institutions. Building fa�ade does not make a university or an institution of higher learning. This sector of development is where you see a clear example of propaganda overwhelming reality. Before venturing out in that direction of opening universities after universities, one must lay down sold foundations by strengthening and expanding primary and secondary education with great concentration on vocational and technical institutions. However, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, under one of the least capable Ministers, for years suffered mismanagement and deterioration because of a defective education policy.

The birth rate and infant mortality in Ethiopia is the highest in the world. The population is expanding at an alarming rate (fertility rate of six to eight children), and the government is doing almost nothing except the half hearted distribution of condoms and literature on family planning, a meaningless gesture in a country where the literacy percentage rate is in the twenties, with limited tradition of reading. What ever patchwork some governmental agencies are doing in such serious areas of concern is meant to create an image for �donor� nations that some activity is going on. Who is going to teach, inform, and force people, if need be, to change their ways of life of irresponsible propagation unless the government makes such concerns its priority. There is absolutely no evidence to support any claim of attempt to control the population explosion, in a poor country like Ethiopia, from any quarter.

And yet more Ethiopians from the rest of the country are flooding into this Hell hole. We must ask why people would come to such congested, unsanitary, and decadent city. The answer is simple. It is because life in rural Ethiopia is even worse, if it is possible for any one to imagine something worse. Bad planning and uneven development programs are the main problems facing this particular urban center. The problem of unemployment, and the dilemma of young Ethiopians growing up under circumstances of dysfunctional family relationships is destructive to all. With no where to go except continue to share living quarters and the meager food under extremely stressful conditions with their poor families, young Ethiopians develop extreme resentment and ill feelings even feelings of hate and violent ideation towards parents, family members, and the society at large. Where there is some social upheaval taking place in society for political reasons, such individuals are the most destructive factions of society.    

In order to bring about fundamental change of direction in both our political and economic future, first and foremost, we have to get rid of the current cancerous Government of Meles Zenawi and his mafia like organization. We must hold our own destiny in our own hands. And we can shape our future to meet our needs and aspirations. If we build an expensive hotel, it is because we can afford to go there; if we import luxury goods, it is because we have expendable income to do so. In other words, we build, and live foremost for ourselves and not for any body else, not for Americans, Europeans, or Arabs. The future is going to depend on us completely. This is the time when we need the input of all Ethiopians, the Seyes, Mogeses, Ephraims and Alemayehus of Ethiopia, I mean all Ethiopians.Ω

Tecola W. Hagos

Washington DC

August 11, 2007