Illegitimate advocates and illegitimate regimes
(In response to Dr. Solomon Terfa�s �solution� of handing over Badme to Eritrea)
By Laeke Gebresadik
June 29, 2007.

Introduction

I came across Professor Solomon Terfa�s article posted on Ethiomedia.com website and read it with amazement how he went into great lengths to come to a conclusion on the disposal of Badme. While his disclaimer against any misunderstanding and misconstruing of his thoughts is to be respected, there is no ambiguity about his believes that ceding Ethiopian sovereign territory is the best solution. On the other hand, he believes that the fate of Badme should be decided between the �illegitimate regime� of Meles zienawi and the people of Tigray. 

Solomon in his argument strives for the ideal world of waging just wars with legitimate authority. In that ideal world may be there will be no wars. The problem with his analysis is how to get to a point where we fight just wars with just governments. Will giving up Badme transform the nature of the EPRDF and the country into a new set of political reality where we don�t have to be mindful of our national sovereignty and fight another war? Would it make any difference to him if the Sudan claimed Metema? What does he have to say on the claims of the ONLF and OLF and their separatist wars? Should we wait and see until the CUD, as a legitimate authority, comes to power to resolve it through the Alliance for Democracy and freedom (ADF), or let them go their way? 

Ethnic extremism and Diaspora politics

Before I venture into Professor Solomon�s essay, let me touch upon how ethnic politics plays into the daily life of Ethiopians especially in the Diaspora since ethnic extremists hijacked the democratic political movement in Ethiopia after the 2005 election. 

Past, present and imminent wars in Ethiopia created a war fatigued nation. People weary of the constant state of war remain suspicious of the regime�s motives behind its anti-Ethiopian policies on the border war with Eritrea. Many genuinely concerned citizens, as Professor Solomon himself expressed these concerns, argue how the regime�s treasonous crimes have caused unnecessary loss of lives, constantly undermining the just causes of Ethiopians who fought for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of their nation. As a result, the political situation is worsening and Ethiopia remains on the verge of total collapse. Among other things, it is rated 13th of the most vulnerable states on the failed states index for this year (see BBC June 19/07 report). 

People can continue to blame this on the regime in power, but the situation had not been any better in the past regimes, neither will it change after the EPRDF unless Ethiopians come together to make tyranny a history once and for all. The other option is to follow Solomon Terfa�s suggestion and give the EPRDF our blessings to give away territories, balkanize the country and relegate national sovereignty to ethnic enclaves to fight their own wars until we see our nation evaporate before our eyes. 

The situation on the ground seems to favour the second extremist view obviously for two ethnic political reasons: first, the ethnic extremists see the regime in power as a Tigrean origin, which is true; and second, it is opportunistic for the extremists that the region of Tigray happens to be the victim of the border war. 

One has to keep in mind that many of the ethnic extremists belong to the defunct organizations bankrupted by their encounters with the TPLF during the armed struggle. It should be remembered also that, though the TPLF harboured its own extremist group with an allegiance to the cause of Eritrea, the people of Tigray literally fought the wars and defeated the Dergue and other extremist groups. The aspiration of the ethnic elements for political power was thwarted as a result. Hence, associating the TPLF with the people and region of Tigray as their enemies, help them to carry out their ethnic political agenda.

Throwing in your lot with any of the political organizations which keep mixing ethnic politics with democracy has become a very risky exercise in Ethiopian politics today. The CUD influenced by the extremist elements since its inception has become a confluence of these extremist forces. They took hold of Kinijit, supposedly the most viable political force, and merged it with the enemy camps, further endangering the internal and external security of Ethiopia in no less term than the crimes of the EPRDF. 

The ethnic extremists created an alliance with the enemy state of Eritrea following the old adage �my enemy�s enemy is my friend�. It turned out to be a serious strategic move against the Tigray ethnic group when they formed the ADF under the tutelage of Isayas Afewerki. This move tremendously shifted the political resolve of Ethiopians speaking against Eritrean regime and its claims over Ethiopian territories. The extremist elements spearheading the ethnic political movement are ready to give Isayas anything in exchange for power like he escorted the Meles-Sibhat clique to the helm of political power. 

Ethnists, as it becomes apparent in Solomon�s article, argue that the sacrifice paid by the other Ethiopian ethnic groups to defend the province of Tigray from Eritrean invasions is no longer justifiable. I am by no means accusing or associating Professor Solomon with any of the groups. It doesn�t even matter if he is. What is important is that what he advocates in his article resonates well with the ethnic extremist agenda. He made the distinction between �us and them� very clear. Their ethnic followers look for political guidance from people with intellectual credence like Solomon and become very susceptible to this kind propaganda. Their propaganda is specially powerful when the regime that continues to commit treasons over the border fiasco comes from the very ethnic region that has left the entire nation bogged down in the border war. As I indicated earlier, even if it contravenes Ethiopia�s sovereignty, they are willing to award Eritrea the land that belongs to �Tigray� as a gratitude to Isayas and also as a means of debilitating the region. We see history repeating itself since the Meles-Sibhat group negotiated the lands in question with Isayas Afewerki around 1976 in exchange for his support to help them take control of the TPLF�s political arm through assassinations and other means.

There are some tenets held by the ethnic extremists as the foundation for their hate politics against the Tigray ethnic group. These tenets largely explain the profanity of their ethnic politics. They portray the TPLF and the people of Tigray as one and the same for political expediency, hence an ethnic minority group ruling over the rest of Ethiopia. They incriminate the people of Tigray for the crimes of the TPLF by association. They use the term �Weyane� to implicate the Tigray people in the crimes of the TPLF/EPRDF. They never admit to the destructive role their own ethnic organizational groups play in running the regime�s state machinery and its political system. 

They call some important political players of their own ethnic group traitors with the connotation of collaborators of a foreign enemy. In this case, the TPLF is the foreign enemy and the ethnic extremists treated it as an occupation force since it overran the Dergue army on its march to Addis Ababa. 

The extremists believe that the Tigray ethnic group is a monolithic socio-political entity of some sort distinct from the rest of Ethiopia. If this was true, it would be a great disadvantage in deed. 

In their view, the TPLF for all its crimes is a small representation of the Tigray people. Bogale Asefa in his compiled works of an Amharic �Talaku Siera� of the TPLF business Empire (page 63) tells us how Tigreans have criminal tendencies. He attributes this to the large number of criminal offenders in Tigray shown on his tabulation of criminal offenders across ethnic groups. 

Ethnic extremists think all Ethiopian institutions benefit the Weyane and do everything to deny it the benefits. They make these institutions their main targets, including social and economic infrastructures to further their ethnic political agendas. They affix the term �Weyane� to the name of any of these institutions. They call the Ethiopian army the �Weyane army�, giving the wrong impression that it is composed of mainly Tigreans. This has been widely observed in the recent engagements of the Ethiopian army in Somalia, and in the intermittent clashes with the EPPF, the separatist groups of the ONLF and OLF. It is the diatribe used these days by the internet blogs and radio talk of these extremist groups to describe the TPLF and the Tigray ethnic group. Some of these harmful tactics come from CUDs initial attempt to ostracize individuals, institutions and communities that are believed to be of Tigrean origin.

Their hatred runs so deep that anything that falls under the Weyane, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Millennium Celebration, are abominable to these groups. The rift they have created in Ethiopian communities, not just among ethnic groups may take generations to mend.

Ethnic extremists are especially enraged about Tigray�s Economic �development� in a very malicious way. I have seen pictures of the Mekele University individual buildings and big hotels owned by private citizens circulated on the internet by blogers telling how the Weyane has transformed Mekele town. (These photos are taken by tourists freely available on the internet and little do they know that what these photos represent). What this tells us is there is no credible effort by any of these groups to provide sufficient data to prove that Tigray has in deed benefited over the rest of Ethiopia. Many of the newspapers that existed never visited Tigray to check their facts for their hateful publications. If Tigray is developing, we have to see to believe it and development will have the ripple effect to manifest itself any where in the country. 

A few basic facts about Tigray to ponder

1.Many pay a lip service to the 3000 years of Ethiopian history and swear by it. And yet they fail to remember that Tigray and its historic Axum are at the center of this history. Even Isayas Afewerki cannot extricate Eritrea from this truth. The past, present and future of Ethiopia is therefore inconceivable without Tigray.

2. My observation is that the average person from Tigray displays a strong sense of Ethiopian identity and consciousness more than anywhere else I have been in Ethiopia. This may have to do with the constant struggle of the region of Tigray against foreign aggressions, besides Tigray being the historical foundation of the Ethiopian polity. 

3. The Ethiopian flag is traditionally displayed by the common people in funerary processions, on weddings, on religious and other social celebrations. The average Tigrean has true allegiance to the Ethiopian flag, unlike the fashion statement by a degenerate form of Ras Teferian culture we witness in Addis Ababa and by some Ethiopians in the Diaspora.

4. Amarigna is traditionally accepted as an official language in Tigray in recognition of its historical roots as one of the Geez linguistic family. It has been in use in the church to a limited extent despite the unsuccessful attempt by Abune Paulos to pluck it out in the early days. He was met with stiff resistance from the clergy in Axum. It was used as the official language in the court of Emperor Yohanes IV in recognition of its literary advancement as well as its historical roots in Axum. However, some ethnic extremist Tigreans as their counterparts fail to recognize the historical importance of this. It is deplorably that the extremists in control of the TPLF leadership destroyed the foot hold of Geez as a common literary language among the other ethnic groups and connived with foreign expansionists to introduce to them to the Latin alphabet. 

5. Ethnic Tigreans along their fellow Ethiopians helped in shaping up the country as we know it today. This will be a topic for another time, but Tigreans lead military campaigns to many corners of Ethiopia to reclaim its ancient glory. 

6. The people of Tigray have been at the forefront of battling external and internal aggressors keeping Ethiopia safe. No other community in the country�s history carries the brunt of continuous wars as the people of Tigray. 

7. The people of Tigray fought against TPLF�s sinister agenda of breaking up the country from the very beginning of the armed struggle. Many Tigreans have lost their lives on the break up of Eritrea.

Professor Solomon�s proposal of relegating national sovereignty to ethnic enclaves

Citing Mr. Haward Zinn�s article, Solomon chooses �just war� from �just cause� and asserts that �just wars should only be waged by a legitimate authority�. It is safe to conclude from his argument that wars are unavoidable as a necessary human condition. Contrary to Zinn�s principle of �just causes, not just wars� condemning wars in general, Professor Solomon departs with his own choice of just wars with out their just causes. Wars are not fought for their own sake, unless they help save lives in the long run, for instance, as a sacred responsibility of protecting the integrity of the whole by standing up together for the smallest integral part. The war over Badme has the just cause of maintaining the territorial integrity of the nation as a whole. Badme at the moment also serves as a symbol of unity for Ethiopians to fight back their enemies regardless of its ethnic boundary. 

Professor Solomon abandoned what ever inkling of principle there was in his definition of just war for the simple reason that it is waged by an illegitimate regime. Does the illegitimacy of the regime waging the war taint the legitimacy or justness of the war making it unworthy to fight for national sovereignty? From a theoretical stand point, since there is no historical correlation between just wars and legitimate authorities who fight them, Ethiopia has no hopes under Solomon�s wait to fight just war with a legitimate regime.

Let us for a moment assume that his argument of fighting just wars with legitimate authority is enshrined in our constitution for ethnic groups to decide on a fight depending on the kind of regime in power. One of the possibilities is the precarious items what we call national sovereignty and territorial integrity have to be shelves away until a later date that a new elected body takes over. The other possibility is to relegate sovereignty right to the ethnic group that will be most impacted by the aggression. The OLF either has to be fought back by its own people or by the Amhara if it encroaches into Addis Ababa, otherwise it has to break away Oromya. The same goes for the ONLF, Somalia, Eritrea and so on. 

In simplifying the Badme issue, he takes a head count of the people that need to be moved from the town in order to clear the way for Eritrea�s take over. He used the very same argument the TPLF ruling clique, Eritrea and the Western powers connived. They once tried to deceive the Ethiopian public into believing that Badme can be replicated by reestablishing a new one and relocating the inhabitants. He deliberately ignores the fact that Badme is only a very minute portion of the entire territory to be given to Eritrea. It serves as a symbol of resistance since it is the flashing point of the war. He should know that the land awarded to Eritrea extends for a thousand mile along the border. Let me give an example of Zalanbesa, another symbolic town in the North East, which Shaebia claimed it at the last moment of its war of aggression and bulldozed it to the ground making it look impossible to rebuild. TPLF cadres started their intimidation of the people to move and relocate the town to another location. Three sites were chosen miles away from it. The people stood their ground and fought back and saved the town. The TPLF and EPLF took their lessons from Badme and curved out the surrounding lands to be given to Eritrea, leaving the town of Zalanbesa behind.

It is interesting that Solomon thinks the TPLF leadership complicated the border crisis out of incompetence. How incompetent can it be to get into the Algiers Agreement after the Ethiopian Army wrapped up the war deep inside Eritrean territory? The TPLF leaders argued against reinstating uncontested Ethiopian lands like Tserona and gave it to Eritrea. They pulled out invalid colonial maps to make sure our sovereignty is infringed upon. They have a deliberate long-term policy of breaking up the country, slowly but surely. TPLF closely knitted group successfully eluded the Ethiopian public of its true history and what it stands for. They are masters of intrigue. They have effectively managed to manipulate the media by churning out contradictory news and rumors. People have to start to look beyond ethnic politics to see the true nature of these people. I don�t also agree that the TPLF and EPLF leaders have fundamental disagreements. The only problem between Isayas and Meles-Sibhat is a personality conflict that always gets in the way of getting things done. Sibhat spoke about this clearly in his May interview. Meles finds it difficult to work with Isayas in the implementation of the Algiers Agreement. While Meles comes up with many tricks to get us slowly into the mindset of accepting the possibility of loosing our land to Eritrea, Isayas is a very stiff man. He maintains a very strong stand on implementing the Agreement by the book out of concern of a risk of faltering the Agreement for any technical miscalculations. The problem for Meles is the people of Tigray are standing on the way and he has to do it very carefully and systematically without shaking the beehive.

Solomon could have been more objective and evaluate Ethiopia�s position by taking notice of the paralyzing effect of the border war on the Eritrean side. Even the staunchest supporters of the Eritrea�s invasion of Ethiopian territories have now started to withdraw their support for the Isayas regime amidst the looming border war, unless it is going to gain territory by a lesser costly means. He failed to see the war from the Eritrean perspective before making such an outrageous claim to justify his argument for selling out Ethiopian territory. 

Moreover, he makes an exaggerated claim on the loss of life as the main reason for abandoning Badme. He calls the border war with Eritrea �the most destructive war ever fought in Africa.� The war was brilliantly fought by the Ethiopian armed forces minimizing civilian casualties.� Even though wars should be avoided up and until a threat to our national sovereignty and territorial integrity becomes imminent, I would like to remind him the madness of the Dergue and the scale of war it fought with the TPLF and EPLF as the most disastrous. In terms of civilian causalities, one has to look into the civilian deaths of close to one million Tigreans during that war. The number of soldiers that have fallen on all sides must be in excess of a million. The civil war in the Congo has claimed over 4 million civilians and in Darfur about 300,000 deaths. 

The ethnic extremist Dergue created all the condition to ostracize and punish the entire population of Tigray and Eritrea and the whole country suffered for it. The same mistake is being repeated by the ethnic extremists on both sides to alienate the people of Tigray from the rest of the country and the nation still continues to suffer. 

In comparing past and the current regimes, he attempted to legitimize all the other regimes but the EPRDF. He tries to put a human face on the Dergue�s brutal regime on technical merits of its willingness to include the population in writing a worthless constitution. And yet the Dergue became the scourge to many innocent Ethiopians and the Ethiopian army, killing more than any of the other regimes combined. 

He ignored the valuable opportunities lost for democratic change that the TPLF made possible until Meles fully consolidated power from the splinter group in 2001. At that time Amhara Ethnist groups saw this as a God sent opportunity to weaken the TPLF and took sides with the Meles group. Neither did he explain the lack of political maturity needed to negotiate and take democratic rights and not expect it as a hand out from the Dergue or the TPLF. Even the CUD failed to lead a genuinely democratic movement and left the nation in a much worse situation. They still keep blaming it on the TPLF and Tigray.

As a student of international politics Professor Solomon had to take Ethiopia�s position into consideration. Signing internationally arbitrated agreement with Eritrea has a serious repercussion by putting the lid on a number of claims that Ethiopia has over Eritrea. 

Comparing notes with the ethnic extremist agenda, Professor Solomon�s article sends no other message than fostering ethnic politics. As he indicated on the footnote, it is not by coincidence that he received public request to repost his article after 18 months. Even though I haven�t read his original article, he has come up with an enhanced updated version as these views are widely held among the ethnic extremists.