For the record, a portion of this blog post is a reaction of satisfaction to Helen Epstein's latest article on sub-Saharan Africa or Black Africa: "Obama: Failing the African Spring?" The article appeared in The New York Review of Books.She is known for authoring another well-written piece titled "Cruel Ethiopia" before. This version is the expanded version based on some additional basic research.
In the current article she looks at cases of Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya in light of the failed Obama Administration's foreign policy that keeps repeating the same mistake made by several generations of American presidents about supporting narrow-based elites that lead Ethiopia and the Horn who make best fortune out of the broad peoples' miseries.
I recommend your read both articles. I personally got inspired to see a very rare writers who stands for the "Truth" in Helen Epstein. I personally don't know Helen Epstein, but I know her excellent work is tingling to the intellect, at least to mine. Below is an excerpt of an off-the-cuff remark I posted on The New York Review of Books after reading the current article. A Waaqeffataa by faith, where the Waqeffannaa religion faces persecution as much as Islam does in Ethiopia , I sympathize with the peaceful cause of Ethiopian Muslims whose questions for religious freedom are yet to be answered. Below is the raw comment:
HelenEpsteinizing EPRDF/TPLF Politics
A balanced piece of work. I read your earlier work "Cruel Ethiopia"! Your articles are well-researched, written and honest. Many other special-interest writers and talking heads on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa have done a great disservice to broad-based quest for human rights, democracy and equal opportunity in "Cruel Ethiopia". This is so to the extent that the words, "democracy" and "development" have become dirty words or empty signifiers in popular understanding.
Supporting reform is overdue! Secular or religious, social movements are suppressed in Ethiopia. Movements (e.g. OLF, ONLF, Ginbot7) start out peacefully and are often forced to take violent turns by government provocation itself. The Ethiopian government is obviously dominated by ethnic Tigire minority elites. These elites are unwilling to share power or resources with nations such as Oromo, Oromia, Ogaden and all other marginalized regions in the country.
It is a tragedy of power politics as you pointed out that the Obama administration, much like Bush, follows a militarized policy towards purely brutal dictatorships in the Horn of Africa. I completely agree with your assessment:
This preoccupation on misplaced counter-terrorism efforts by bolstering up the military capacities of unpopular regimes, like Tigrean-led Ethiopia, is fundamentally destroying the fabric of Oromia, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. The stories of development propaganda we hear on the state television every day for years are all what they are--propaganda.
The "Our Great Leader" narrative interwoven with "development" mantras relating to Hidase Gidib (an ambitious dam project on the Blue Nile) and Gilgal Gibe II (hydro-electric project) is just a proof for a general worship for tyranny within the EPRDF/TPLF even after Meles Zenawi was long gone. Human rights organizations testify to the fact that these projects are "devastating the lives of remote indigenous groups" in southern Ethiopia and Oromia.
Zenawi died, but his one-party-one-man-one-ethnic-group system remained in place without alteration. The change in personality as head of state to Hailemariam Desalegn itself did not save the Omo Valley, located in the SNNP region where the man hails from a minority Walayita group. Since security structures, the military and the money are controlled by Tigreans behind the scene, this replacement is rightly "a change without improvement," where human rights abuses are spiralling out of control in Oromia and other regions prone to cheap land-grab deals.
For rare species of Oromo elites in the empire, including young students from universities, their fate is one of being hunted in several hundreds--jailed, killed, tortured and fired from universities. As commented on this blog before, Tigirean leadership can be more vicious under Hailemariam Desalegn than under Zenawi because this man does not have his own stance and because he does whatever invisible powers behind the scene tell him to do. Some have not hidden their excitement that Hailemariam Desalegn is "more moderate" than his predecessor, but this claim is largely nullified by the bleakest human rights conditions that we see in Oromia in years. Not an insult, but the new strongman is a "jellyfish", without his own spine/backbone to make decisions or not to make decisions that are devastating.
In the current article she looks at cases of Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya in light of the failed Obama Administration's foreign policy that keeps repeating the same mistake made by several generations of American presidents about supporting narrow-based elites that lead Ethiopia and the Horn who make best fortune out of the broad peoples' miseries.
I recommend your read both articles. I personally got inspired to see a very rare writers who stands for the "Truth" in Helen Epstein. I personally don't know Helen Epstein, but I know her excellent work is tingling to the intellect, at least to mine. Below is an excerpt of an off-the-cuff remark I posted on The New York Review of Books after reading the current article. A Waaqeffataa by faith, where the Waqeffannaa religion faces persecution as much as Islam does in Ethiopia , I sympathize with the peaceful cause of Ethiopian Muslims whose questions for religious freedom are yet to be answered. Below is the raw comment:
HelenEpsteinizing EPRDF/TPLF Politics
A balanced piece of work. I read your earlier work "Cruel Ethiopia"! Your articles are well-researched, written and honest. Many other special-interest writers and talking heads on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa have done a great disservice to broad-based quest for human rights, democracy and equal opportunity in "Cruel Ethiopia". This is so to the extent that the words, "democracy" and "development" have become dirty words or empty signifiers in popular understanding.
Supporting reform is overdue! Secular or religious, social movements are suppressed in Ethiopia. Movements (e.g. OLF, ONLF, Ginbot7) start out peacefully and are often forced to take violent turns by government provocation itself. The Ethiopian government is obviously dominated by ethnic Tigire minority elites. These elites are unwilling to share power or resources with nations such as Oromo, Oromia, Ogaden and all other marginalized regions in the country.
It is a tragedy of power politics as you pointed out that the Obama administration, much like Bush, follows a militarized policy towards purely brutal dictatorships in the Horn of Africa. I completely agree with your assessment:
" More than half a century of post-independence African history has shown that focusing on stability, security and development while ignoring democracy and human rights is self-defeating, because it undermines those very goals."--very, very articulate, indeed! Your material is worthy of quotes and respect.
This preoccupation on misplaced counter-terrorism efforts by bolstering up the military capacities of unpopular regimes, like Tigrean-led Ethiopia, is fundamentally destroying the fabric of Oromia, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. The stories of development propaganda we hear on the state television every day for years are all what they are--propaganda.
The "Our Great Leader" narrative interwoven with "development" mantras relating to Hidase Gidib (an ambitious dam project on the Blue Nile) and Gilgal Gibe II (hydro-electric project) is just a proof for a general worship for tyranny within the EPRDF/TPLF even after Meles Zenawi was long gone. Human rights organizations testify to the fact that these projects are "devastating the lives of remote indigenous groups" in southern Ethiopia and Oromia.
Zenawi died, but his one-party-one-man-one-ethnic-group system remained in place without alteration. The change in personality as head of state to Hailemariam Desalegn itself did not save the Omo Valley, located in the SNNP region where the man hails from a minority Walayita group. Since security structures, the military and the money are controlled by Tigreans behind the scene, this replacement is rightly "a change without improvement," where human rights abuses are spiralling out of control in Oromia and other regions prone to cheap land-grab deals.
For rare species of Oromo elites in the empire, including young students from universities, their fate is one of being hunted in several hundreds--jailed, killed, tortured and fired from universities. As commented on this blog before, Tigirean leadership can be more vicious under Hailemariam Desalegn than under Zenawi because this man does not have his own stance and because he does whatever invisible powers behind the scene tell him to do. Some have not hidden their excitement that Hailemariam Desalegn is "more moderate" than his predecessor, but this claim is largely nullified by the bleakest human rights conditions that we see in Oromia in years. Not an insult, but the new strongman is a "jellyfish", without his own spine/backbone to make decisions or not to make decisions that are devastating.
Today, no official employment/unemployment figures are available for the Ethiopian empire or its oppressed and underdeveloped regions. The misery can be deeper than we know. The only statistic we know about employment is for those 4 to 5 million who were forcefully recruited into EPRDF membership since 2005 with a party-enlarging strategy developed by Hailemariam Deslagn known as the "1-to-5 model" (one member recruits five new people) .
The country is behind on every indicator, be it life expectancy, satisfaction of basic needs and human development index, despite the occasional face-lifts it gets from some misguided foreign humanitarian foundations on things like "reduced child mortality", calculated solely based on the factoid stats furnished by the regime. Statistics supplied by unelected Ethiopian authorities are not trustworthy whether on economic growth, child mortality or population sizes. So, I view them carefully, with deep suspicion.
The increasingly militarized U.S.-policy towards Ethiopia and the Horn,which has a long history, is specially destroying the fabric of members of dissident and unrepresented nationalities such as the Oromo (over 50 million) who are readily accused of "terrorism" because of dissenting, wanting self-governance or for imputed views they hold or simply for membership in the Oromo nationality. The Ethiopian Muslims' case is another key area, where the regime has played a destructive role, instead of resolving it, as Helen Epstein's article treats it in detail.
Thanks for reading,
Visit our Blogzine at:
http://oromopress.blogspot.com/
The country is behind on every indicator, be it life expectancy, satisfaction of basic needs and human development index, despite the occasional face-lifts it gets from some misguided foreign humanitarian foundations on things like "reduced child mortality", calculated solely based on the factoid stats furnished by the regime. Statistics supplied by unelected Ethiopian authorities are not trustworthy whether on economic growth, child mortality or population sizes. So, I view them carefully, with deep suspicion.
The increasingly militarized U.S.-policy towards Ethiopia and the Horn,which has a long history, is specially destroying the fabric of members of dissident and unrepresented nationalities such as the Oromo (over 50 million) who are readily accused of "terrorism" because of dissenting, wanting self-governance or for imputed views they hold or simply for membership in the Oromo nationality. The Ethiopian Muslims' case is another key area, where the regime has played a destructive role, instead of resolving it, as Helen Epstein's article treats it in detail.
Thanks for reading,
Visit our Blogzine at:
http://oromopress.blogspot.com/