My prediction is more of this is going to come if the regime does not change direction. Many people who stood for peaceful politics in the country are now disillusioned, particularly after what the regime did to Kinijit-CUD and its leaders, which include life long advocates of peace. I have many young people emailing me from Ethiopia, who think all civilized options are closed by Meles Zenawi and think it better to pick up arms and try the route that brought Meles Zenawi to power. I have heard from many that the Shabia-Shabia, mantra is not going to stop people from going to Eritrea if they can get some help to help them fight back a regime that believes in force.
While no justification can make the Ogaden killing right, I am sure the ONLF can point to the same crimes the TPLF committed against the people in the Ogaden or innocent people elsewhere in the country to shrug off our selective outrage. Obviously this is another wrong that cannot right the regime’s wrongs but expecting that such carnages will remain the monopoly of Meles Zenawi and his certified violent regime is foolish. We should be able to see all sorts of political violence including that of the regime as one single whole if we sincerely hope for peace and prosperity in this country. Violence is a self-feeding animal. It begets itself. It is that simple.
That is why the rush of a herd of regime benefit peddlers and opportunists who compete among themselves on being louder on the condemnation and calling everybody to condemn it is becoming nauseating. Many of these “outraged” idiots think it is okay to condemn one liberation front (ONLF) and look the other way when another LF, the TPLF, runs a monopoly of the killing of far more innocent people simply because it runs and rations their fodder. Many of these pretentious “patriots” and “humanitarians” were having their mouths shut when more horrific genocidal massacres were committed by the regime elsewhere in the country repeatedly. Some were even trying to make tenuous cases to absolve the regime of its crimes including by blaming the victims of the regime’s violence themselves. This includes these hypocrite donor groups, the lords of our poverty. There is a long list of crimes in virtually every part of the country where the regime has engaged in mass killings including the horror against the Anuak in Gambella, Awassa etc and, of course, the murder of at least 193 unarmed protestors in Addis Ababa that is still fresh in our minds.
The current problem in the Ogaden has its source in the failure of what Meles Zenawi told us was his signature political agenda – the respect of the rights of nations and nationalities to self determination, and the continuing zero-sum game politics he keeps playing. What happened to all that promise about imposing peace on Ethiopia by respecting the rights of nations and nationalities? The fact of the matter which now has become clear is that Meles Zenawi is actually interested in the form and not in the substance of what he has been preaching all along. He has marginalized the more independent ethnic political organizations that could become the backbones for peace building and reconciliation and replaced them with selected scumbags from every ethnic group believing that showing their picture would do the trick for him.
For all his clever talks and appearance of sophistication Meles tries to sells us, he has never produced a single serious politically mature deal with any opposition or interest group contending his regime. None. We all know by now what he did with the OLF, the ONLF and many others. Instead of producing a win-win deal, expected of a mature politician, he replaced them with some morally degenerate and incompetent individuals who can be manipulated to even kill their own children. To virtually every challenge Meles’s solution has been military and the use of force. And all these idiots who admire him as a politically savvy person cannot point to a single act of statesmanship and tolerance he has shown. Even the most peaceful of all peace advocating political groups in Ethiopia – Kinijit CUD – is not spared of his violent reactions. I cannot think any group of statesmen and reasonable people more than the leaders of CUD now languishing in prison on trumped up charges who could be negotiated into resolving conflicting ideas. I will never believe for a second that Mesfin Woldemariam, Berhanu Nega, Yakob Hailemariam and Befekadu Degife, only to mention a few of the widely known, ever contemplated violence as a means to power. These were the antiviolence geniuses, people who saw the future, and tried to find a permanent solution to abolish the cycle of violence in Ethiopia. Meles Zenawi threw them into jail simply because he could and resorted to torturing their nonviolent followers.
Only a few weeks ago in parliament, the place meant to be the people’s house, Meles was speaking about cutting off limbs and fingers of his opponents. We even have seen how he tried to belittle the suggestion of the elderly parliamentarian, Ato Bulcha Demeksa, who suggested to him to find ways to negotiate with the Ethiopians whose limbs and fingers he plans to cut off. The old man to his credit, must have seen that the people Meles was trying to bash are also capable of cutting fingers and limbs.
And these days I hear another “smart talk” from Meles and his supporters. There is an undeclared push for people to give up their rights and desires for freedom and justice for a supposedly fast growing economy. People who are not absolutely silly and dumb know that the so called economic growth is mere delusion and I think every Ethiopian who lives the reality can attest to that. The structure of Ethiopia’s sad economy is still there. Development is not aid and foreign dependent construction and grossly concocted statistics or increasing agricultural yield with the help of God’s rains and through heavy use of chemical fertilizers. Any African country even Idi Amin, Bokassa or Mengistu could have achieved the same thing if they were the largest recipients of Western Aid in sub-Sahara Africa.
For all his pretending to be an economics professor, Mr. Zenawi has forgotten to learn some basics. This man has traversed advocating all nation building models known to human history. From an almost lunatic anti imperialist Marxist through Albania to East Asia and an advocate of what he called white capitalism, he has now come back full circle to becoming Mr. Bush’s poodle in the Horn of Africa dragging Ethiopia to a senseless and shameful war.
The following quote from a 17th century British satirist, Jonathan Swift, on an article on the American Debate blog is quite pertinent to Meles and his blind supporters.
Even the idea of the so called “developmentalist state” Meles Zenawi is mulling now (did I hear that he has already made it a cadre training manual?) presumes the resolution of conflicts using the head rather than the gun. Meles Zenawi can do us and himself a lot of favor if he stops pretending to look like a professor who has spent all his life in research institutes and libraries. Please. We know he spent it either in human killing fields or places of manipulating power. I only wish he only understands the basics of civilized governance and engage all his opponents in a negotiation.
Civilized negotiations to resolve conflicts around a table don’t kill people. Not doing this does. At the end of the day all of us, even dictators, will lose from the use of violence.
