Friday, February 26, 2016

“ባልተማሩ የህውሓት ታጋዮች አንመራም... ” የፌደራል ፖሊስ አመራሮቹ

February 26,2016
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ)
አዲስ አበባ ላይ ያልተሳካላቸው የህወሓት አገዛዝ ፌደራል ፖሊስ አዛዦች ባህር ዳር ላይ በድጋሚ ስብሰባ አካሂደው የባሰውን ተበጣበጡ፡፡

የፌደራል ፖሊስ አመራሮቹ ከእሁድ የካቲት 13 እስከ 16 2008 ዓ.ም ድረስ ነው በባህር ዳር ከተማ ምንም አይነት አዎንታዊ ውጤት ያላመጣ ውይይት ለማድረግ የሞከሩት፡፡ በስብሰባው ላይ “ባልተማሩ የህውሓት ታጋዮች አንመራም... ” የሚል ተቃውሞ ተነስቷል፡፡
በልዩ ልዩ የአገሪቱ ክፍሎች የተነሳውን የህዝብ ተቃውሞ የጠብመንጃ ጉልበት ተጠቅሞ ፀጥ የማስኘትን የአገዛዙን የፀና አቋም በሚመለከት ደግሞ በአዛዦች መካከል እስከ አምባጓሮ የዘለቀ አለመግባባት ተከስቶ ነበር፡፡ “ወደ ህዝባችን እንዲተኮስ ትእዛዝ አንሰጥም...“ በማለት በግልፅ ተቃውሟቸውን ያሰሙ በርካታ የፈዴራል ፖሊስ አመራሮች ነበሩ፡፡
በመጨረሻም ስብሰባው እንደተለመደው ያለምንም ውጤት ተበትኗል፡፡ ከስብሰባው በኋላ 4 የፌደራል ፖሊስ አመራሮች ስርአቱን ከድተዋል፡፡ ከአራቱ መካከል አንዱ ኢንስፔክተር ፀጉ ይሰኛል፡፡ አራቱም መኮንኖች እስካሁን የት እንደደረሱ የታወቀ ነገር የለም፡፡
Image result for federal police ethiopia

BREAKING: Warmonger minority despots in Ethiopia amass army, heavy artillery near the border with Eritrea

February 26, 2016
ESAT News
ethiopia-army2
(Photo: File)
The Ethiopian government has been building up its army and weaponry near the country’s border with Eritrea in the last two days, according to information ESAT received from reliable sources. The fortification of the border with troops and armaments has been mainly on the Humera and Badme frontlines, close to the border with Eritrea.
Political analysts saw the move by the Ethiopian government as an attempt to externalize the political turmoil inside the country which has been exacerbated by the relentless and ongoing protest in the country’s largest Oromia region.
The Ethiopian government has been accusing Eritrea and armed Ethiopian opposition groups based in that country of orchestrating the ongoing protest by the Oromo people, the country’s largest ethnic groups, for political and economic rights. Oromo political and civic organizations however stress the protests were self-organized and the protests, mainly by students in the Oromia region, were peaceful; and that they were a reaction to years of economic and political marginalization against the Oromos by the minority government. The protesters were met with deadly response by the regime’s Agazi forces, killing at least 200, while hundreds of others sustained gunshot wounds and thousands were put behind bars.
Ethiopian armed opposition groups have recently made several surprise attacks against the regime’s army along the border and deep inside Ethiopian territory. There have been reports of attacks by the Patriotic Ginbot 7 forces against the Ethiopian army; and there were incidents where hundreds of people, especially traditional gold miners in Tigray, have been captured by forces of the Tigray Peoples’ Democratic Movement and taken to Eritrea. TPDM is one of the armed groups based in Eritrea and has formed an alliance with Patriotic Ginbot 7, a popular armed group which is also based in that country.
“The regime is moving its armaments to the border and one possible reason could be to show off its might, as it does not want to be seen as weak by the people, especially by the people of Tigray, the region where opposition armed groups have recently launched several surprise attacks against the Ethiopian army,” said Sisay Agena, a news analyst and producer with EAST.
“But we cannot rule out the possibility that officials of the regime, considering their past behavior, could just decide to venture into another war, which would hasten their demise,” Sisay said.
The Ethiopian regime has over the years made several attempts to recruit people to join its army, but was to no avail. Having seen that no one showed up to register and join the army, the regime resorted to forceful conscription, especially in the rural areas, reportedly telling the unsuspecting youth that they would be sent abroad for a contractual job.
Thousands of Ethiopian youth, frustrated by the political and economic alienation by the minority regime, have been crossing the country’s north border to join the armed opposition groups, recent reports revealed.
The 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean war, sparked by a dispute over the territory called Badme, claimed the lives of at least 100,000 people on both sides, according to estimates by the International Crisis Group, ICG.
The UN Boundary Commission in its ruling awarded Badme, the flashpoint for the two year war, to Eritrea. Refusing to heed to the binding rule, Ethiopia has not handed over Badme to Eritrea yet

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

ጎጃሜው ጎንደሬው retarded (ኋላ ቀር) ነው ትላለች የፓልቶክ ታዳሚዋ ሚሚ ስብሃቱ

February 24,2016

ነጻው ፕሬስ በታፈነበት፣ እስክንደር ነጋ፣ ተመስገን ደሳለኝ፣ ዉብሸት ታዬ፣ ጌታቸው ሽፈራው የመሳሰሉ አንጋፋ ጋዜጠኖች ብእር በማንሳታቸው ብቻ ሲታሰሩ፣ ቁጥራቸው እጅግ በጣም ብዙ የሆኑ ጋዜጦች ሲዘጉ፣ እንደ ኢሳት፣ አሜሪካን ድምጽ፡ራድዮ ያሉ ጃም ሲደረጉ፣ የተለያዩ ድህረ ገጾች ብሎክ ሲደረጉ፣ የተወሰኑ የሜዲያ ሰዎች ነን የሚሉ፣ የሕወሃትን የዉሸት ፕሮፖጋንዳ በማሰራጨት ሌትና ቀን የሚሰሩ ጋዜጣኛ ተብዬ ካድሬዎች ግን ራዲዮ፣ ቴሌቭዝን ማሰራጨት ፣ ጋዜጣዎች ያለ ምንም ችግር ማተም ተፈቅዶላቸው ሕዝቡን እያደነቆርይ እንደሆነ ይታወቃል።
ከነዚህ የሜዲያ ሰዎች ነን ባዮች መካከል የቀድሞ የአሜሪካ ድምጽ ራዲዮ ባልደረባ የነበረቸውና የሕወሃት አገልጋይ የሆነችው ሚሚ ስብሃቱ ትገኝበታለች። ሚሚስ ስብሃቱ ለሕወሃት ባለስልጣናት ቀጥታች ግንኙነት ያላት ሲሆን፣ በተለያዩ ጊዘያታ በዛሚ ራዲዮ ባለስልጣናትን ታቀርባለች። በሕወሃት ጓዳ የሚነገረውን በማንጸባረቅ የምትታወቀዋ ሚሚ ስብሃቱ አስደንጋጭና የሕወሃት ዉስጣዊ አስተሳሰብ የሚያመላከት ጸያፍ ንግግር ተናግራለች።
አማራው በተለያየ መልኩ አንድ የሆነ አይነት ግጭት ፈጥረን ትግሬውን  ለመከፋፈል ለመበጣጠስ ነው የሚፈለጉት። ከተነቃባቸው ቆይተዋል” ስትል “አማራ” ብላ የጠራችው ማህበረሰብ “ትግሬ” ብላ በጠራችው ማህበረሰብ ላይ ችግር እንዳለው ትናገራለች። የትግራይ ህዝብ በወሎ፣ በጎንደር ከሚኖረው ኢትዮጵያዊ ወንድሙ ጋር ለዘመናት በሰላም በፍቅር የኖረ፣ የተዋለደ፣ የተዛመደ እንደሆነ ይታወቃል። ሆኖም ይሄን ለዘመናት አብሮ የኖረን ህዝብ በማለያየት ስልጣኑን ለማቆየት የሚፈለገው የሕወሃት መርዛማን ፖሊሲ ነው ሚሚ ስብሃቱ ለማንጸባረቅ የሞከረቸው።
“Yes   ጎጃሜው retarded ነው። ጎንደሬው ጠላት ነው። ሊሸለሙ አይገባቸዉም። retarded ናቸው። በአስተሳሰብ በጭንቅላት በጣም ዝቅ ያሉ ናቸው “  ስትል የበላይ ዘለቀን  ልጆች ጎጃሜዎችን፣ የመይሳው ካሳን ልጆች ጎንደሬዎችን ሰድባለች። “ ኢትዮጵያዊነት ያልተላበሰ አካሄድን የሚከተሉ ስለሆኑ እነዚህ ዝቅተኞች እያልን refer እናደርጋቸዋለን። ዝቅተኛ ፣ retarded ፣ idiot  ብለን ልንጠራቸው እንችላለን”  ስትል ለህዝቡ ያላትን ንቀት ገልጻለች።
ሚሚ ስብሃቱ በገሃድ ተናገርችው እንጂ ፣ ይህ አይነቱ በጎንደር፣ በጎጃም፣ በወሎ፣ በሰሜን ሸዋ የሚኖረው፣ “አማራ” ብለው የሚጠሩትን ግን ግን የብዙ ብሄረሰቦች ድብልቅ የሆነውን አማርኛ ተናገሪ ህዝብን፣ ላለፉት 25 አመታት ህወሃት እንደ ጠላት ሲያይ እንደነበረ የተለያዩ መረጃዎች ያሳያሉ።
“ወደድክም ጠላህም ዋጋ ተከፍሎ መጥተናል። End of the story ፡፡ለሚቀጥለው ደግሞ እንጸልይላቸዋleን። አይ ጎንደር የትኛው ፈንዲሻ እንደሚመጣ” ስትል በድጋሚ እየሳቀች በጎንደሬዎች ላይ አሹፋለች። የሚሚ ስብሃትን ንግግር ያዳምጡ::


The Making of TPLF’s Paramilitary Death Squad: Agazi Murder Inc. & A Mother’s Tears

February 24,2016

agazi

The Pentagon trained Ethiopian forces- including the notorious Agazi Special Forces unit.

Jeremy Scahill, founding editor of the Intercept, and National Security Correspondent testifying before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on December 9, 2010.

She looks much older than her actual age. One could guess she is sixty or even older. The truth is that she is only forty-four. “I was born two years before the military took power” she says referencing history. Her wrinkled face, discolored skin, and greying hair tells a story of a women who endured unimaginable tragedy. Living has been hard for her over the last decade or so. “I lost my first born 10 years ago, when we the opposition won the election and they refused to relinquish power” she says her sight disappearing into the horizon as if she is expecting someone to emerge from behind the hills.

agazi

“How did he die?” I asked following her into the house from the cool evening breeze outside where we spent the last fifteen minutes. “They killed him in a broad day light along with his best friend. They were killed at the same spot the same day in Addis Ababa.” She said, tears streaming over her wrinkling face. The depth of her anguish is too strong for words. I got up and sat close to her holding her hands. “who killed them?” I asked. She took a long pause, walked a few steps to close the door and whispered “Agazi, Agazi killed them” and handed me the pictures of her dead boys after kissing them couple of times. They were school graduation pictures. Smiling, aspirational and full of hope. The pictures were wet with her tears. Each drop spreading on the smiling faces of her children as if they were sharing a grief, crying together so to speak. I felt their presence in the room. May be the connection between a mother and child transcendence mortality, I don’t know, but their spirits were palpable in the house where they grew up in before their lives were cut short. I took a sheet of tissue paper out of my pocket and wiped both pictures gently. As I looked at them, with an imploring look, I thought they would have been my brothers, nephews, cousins even children. They looked so familiar to me; even if I have never met them. Perhaps, they reminded me of my own youth.

Fearless, committed to and in love with the concept of democracy, freedom and justice. It is unfulfilled dream of my generation, the generation before me, and the current generation. “What a curse.” I murmured to myself.

As I stood up to leave, the mourning mother gave me a warm hug and gently asked me to come and visit her again. I promised to return and left fighting my tears. On my way out I couldn’t help but to think of her loneliness, the eerie quite in the house once full of playful energy with two handsome boys. I tried to understand and even feel a mother’s sorrow. I can only pretend.

I have heard the name Agazi before, many times in fact. People in Ethiopia talk about Agazi with an understanding of some kind of foreign occupying army. The actions of the group according to those who encountered or witnessed say Agazi’s “are a killing machine. Indiscriminate killers who do not distinguish between children and adults, the elderly and the youth, men and women, armed and unarmed. They just kill, and it is fair to say that they appear to be enjoying killing.”

I spoke with one elderly man who was in the resistance against the occupying forces of Benito Mussolini during World War II and he equates Agazi with the Carabinieri of the fascist forces. “They don’t speak our languages, they don’t care for our culture and values. They come anytime they wish, they sometimes snatch our men and boys; at other times they kill them on the spot. They occupy our villages, towns and cities. You see, that is exactly what the Carabinieri and Italian forces did.” His long white beard, wrinkled forehead and twinkly little eyes appear to be corroborating his story. “We never had a government in our history with this level of cruelty against its own people. “You know what we did with Carabinieri? He says with a sense of pride and honor tangible in his voice. “With the help of God and our resistance fighters, we kicked them out.” He said. I can clearly hear his fierce patriotic fire. “We will do the same against these Agazi’s. The new generation have our spirit of resistance. It is a matter of time. Our country will be free.” He said holding firm into his walking stick. It is a tragic irony of historical comparison but this is not the first time I have heard such a comparison. It attests to the unparalleled nature of the regimes violent behaviour.

Where ever there is popular discontent or revolt against the regime in any part of the country Agazi appears from nowhere to crush it. I have heard numerous general stories in the past, about the group’s brutality and its utter disregard to human life. Having the opportunity to speak with a grieving mother who lost two of her beloved sons to Agazi sniper gave me a different perspective. A sorrowful curiosity. A desire driven by a tragedy to know and expose more about this notorious paramilitary group.

The name Agazi strikes fear and terror in Ethiopia the same way Caravana de la muerte (Caravan of Death) a Chilean Army Death Squad terrorized the country following the 1973 coup lead by Augosto Pinochet. Or General Jose Alberto Medrano’s Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (ORDEN)-the first paramilitary death squad in El Salvador involved in kidnaping, assassination, and torture of dissidents. Agazi as it is called, is a shadowy semi- autonomous paramilitary group accountable only to a select few senior echelon members of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The group is named after one of the founding members of TPLF called Zeru Gessesse nick named Agazi. The group in real conventional military standard could be categorized as a private army resembling a mercenary group that is hired by war lords to protect their interest. It’s operational command and control is outside of even the Tigray ethnic group dominated national defence structure. It’s main purpose of existence is to ensure the regimes hold on power remains unchallenged even if it means burning a village, massacring civilians and terrorizing entire communities. The group established in the early days of TPLF have a mask of “fighting terrorism” to appease western donors for resources, training and armament. In reality, most of Agazi’s work has been crushing domestic opposition against the regime.

A few investigative journalists have attempted to inquire about Agazi and the role of foreign countries in the training and arming of this notorious group. Among these investigative reporters Jeremy Scahill is the most prominent and inquisitive in his search to find US’s role of training similar groups in Afghanistan, Mali, Somalia and Yemen. On December, 9, 2010 he testified before Congress and outlined his findings. His testimony covered wide range of issues including drone operations, US engagement with war lords in Somalia among many other related subjects.

He questioned the US role in helping and enabling military units in these countries to terrorize their own civilian population under the guise of “fighting terrorism” According to Mr. Scahill “US Special Operations teams had long been in Ethiopia training its notorious Agazi Commandos.” His investigative work shades light on the dangers of collaborating with regimes such as TPLF and its long term consequences both for the US and the people under the iron rule of authoritarian regimes.

Keeping my promise, I returned to visit the mother of two murdered young boys. It was a misty cool evening. She was puttering around her back yard. “I have to stay busy to keep my mind off from my children. I miss them.” She says wiping the dirt from her hands. Her hug has a motherly embrace and warmth. I followed her to the house. “God bless you for coming to visit me.” She says walking into the kitchen. “I am going to make you tea” she said. “Thank you!” I replied. In a few minutes she returned with a cup of tea and a few biscuits on a small handmade basket. Our conversation waded into various subjects. She told me that many mothers these days wear black for their murdered children. She mentioned some by name. “My friends, members of our community, and people in the cities have someone killed in their families, these are dark days.” She said.

I returned to know more about her murdered children and also to see how she is holding up. She looked tired as if she hasn’t slept for days. I asked her if she is getting enough sleep. “Every time I close my eyes I see my boys. Coming back from school, helping me with some chores, or doing their homework.” I can’t sleep. I don’t remember the last time I had a good night sleep” she says. The depth of her pain, layers of the trauma resulting from the cruelty of state violence has taken a toll on her.

“Where were they buried?” I inquired. “Oh not far from here it is a short walk. I go there every Sunday to talk to my boys.” “Would you take me today?” I asked “Yes, I’ll take you.” She quickly put her black shawl over her black dress and asked me to follow her “this way” she said, I followed her. We walked for about 15 minutes through a dry grass land with a narrow country side road. From a distance I see a few animals grazing. After a short walk we reached the church compound. There were a few worshippers praying outside the church and others are just arriving. She kneeled before the main gate and said a few words of prayer. I followed suite. After a few steps she lead me to the graveyard where her two boys lie. As we get closer I can hear a soft voice followed by weeping. “Here” she said.

“They are sleeping here the same way they slept together at home when they were little boys, next to each other, my beautiful boys” said, wiping tears from her face. I tried to comfort her. Fighting my own tears. She told me the youngest only sixteen was shot and killed when he was taking part in a peaceful protest. “There are many mothers like me in this country, thousands, who lost their children to Agazi bullet.

“I heard they were trained by the American’s. Is it true?” She asks me. There is some sense of forcefulness, even anger in her voice. “Yes, I have heard the same story” I replied. “Why would they train and arm a group who will kills our children? I thought American’s were good people. Caring people.” “It is not the American people; it is the politicians who make these kind of decisions. I said trying to give her rational explanation. It meant a little comfort to her. “May be educated people like you should take our message to the American politicians and ask them to stop helping the Agazi kill our children.” I promised her I will make sure her message gets to the US policy makers, the US public and the wider world.

As I got up to leave she looked into my eyes with a plea that says “please let the world know our suffering. Please let those who train and arm Agazi know that they are training indiscriminate killers. Let them know the sorrow of a mother who lost not just one but two of her children.” “What do you call a childless mother? I am childless because my children were murdered by the Agazi.” she said. I have no answer to all of her questions. I am not even sure she was expecting any answers from me or she was simply expressing her sorrow out loud. May be both, but the truth is these are questions that I grapple with every day. I know also, that these are questions thousands of mothers across this country are asking.

As we drove away, my eyes wondered through the country side, there are no children playing, no farmers on the field, no travellers on the roads. There is an eerie feeling of life under siege. From a distance I can hear a gun fire. Another young man, young women, an elder, who would be the victim this time? Who would be Agazi’s prey? I wondered.

Lying in bed that night, I struggled to make sense of this brutality, the savagery of industrialized and institutionalized violence against innocent and un armed civilians. My mind roamed from place to place, from a mother’s tears to a father’s anguish. I tried to close my eyes with a hope of getting some sleep, but I couldn’t turn my mind off. I kept hearing “every time I close my eyes I see my boys.” I wondered if my visit made things even much worse for her emotionally. After numerous toss and turns, I gave up on falling asleep and I pulled a folded paper which I keep in my note book. It was a poem by the Roman lyric poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (C. 84 – 54BC) which he wrote for his dead brother.

“By strangers’ coasts and waters,
Many days at sea,
I came here for the rites of your unworlding,
Bringing for you, the dead,
These last gifts of the living
And my words — vain sounds for the man of dust.
Alas, my brother, you have been taken from me.
You have been taken from me
And by cold hands turned to shadow and my pain.
Here are the foods of the old ceremony appointed Long ago for the starvelings under the earth.
Take them.
Your brother’s tears have made them wet.
And take into eternity my hail and my farewell. ”

I read the poem a few more times in memory of men and women young and old who are murdered by Agazi forces since TPLF came to power. The more I read it, I wanted to travel across this land, and talk to every single mother whose child was murdered by Agazi forces. I wanted to somehow feel their pain or at least listen to it. Beyond my emotional upheaval and ambition, the practicality of my desire I realized, is almost impossible. Given the sheer number of murders carried out by Agazi, I may have to travel for the next few years to reach only a small portion of mothers who wake up every morning with an empty chair at the table. Their children absent from their class rooms, young men and women who will not plan their weeding’s and give them grandchildren.

In the end, my mind settled on a rational reasoning while my heart wanted to travel across the country and listen to all the mothers. Perhaps, it has a selfish ulterior motive of my own desire to reconnect with this beautiful land of my ancestors. The time and the place, the date and the season, or the person who fired the gun certainly might be different. The truth is that the story of mothers who lost their children, the degree of their pain, the trauma and the anguish they experience is the same whether they live in and around the northern mountains or near the western tropical forest, the central plains or the southern grassland, the east, the country side or the cities. It is all the same. Profound sorrow and unending pain.

For now, I have decided to tell the story of a mother that I know about. A mother, to whom I have the privilege and a great honor of meeting. A mother who I cannot name for now. Her two boys, their names and images permanently etched in my mind. With every rising sun they besiege and challenge me to continue to be on the side of justice and truth not power and privilege. It is the least I can do.


Tuesday, February 23, 2016

ገራፊዬን አየኹት ፡ (አቤል ዋበላ)

February 23,2016
ገራፊዬን አየኹት ፡ (አቤል ዋበላ)
ጦማሪ አቤል ዋበላ
ጦማሪ አቤል ዋበላ
ቀልድ ያለፈበት ጨዋታ ሆኗል፡፡ አሁን ዘውጉ ተቀይሯል፡፡ ፍጥጥ ግጥጥ ያለ ዕውናዊ ድርሰትን መመልከት ይዘናል፡፡አይን አያየው የለም፡፡ አሁን ደግሞ ገራፊዬን አሳየኝ፡፡ በኮምፒዩተር የኤሌክትሪክ ገመድ ጀርባዬ እስኪቀደድ የገረፈኝን፣ በመጥረጊያ እንጨት ውስጥ እግሬን ያነደደኝን፣ እጄ በካቴና ታስሮ ወለል ላይ ያንከባለለኝን፣ ጨለማ ቤት ውስጥ አስገብቶ ከየት እንደመጣ በማላውቀው ጅራፍ አሳሬን ያበላኝን፣ እናቴን ከመቃብር ጠርቼ “አንቺ እናቴ ለምን ጥሩ ሁን ብለሽ አሳደግሽኝ? ብዙ ክፉ ሰዎች እንዳሉ ለምን አልመከርሽኝም?” ብዬ እንድወቅሳት ያደረገኝን፣ ወንድ፣ የወንዶች ቁና በካቴና የታሰረን ሰው በዕኩለ ሌሊት ጠርቶ አፉ ውስጥ ጨርቅ ወትፎ የሚደበድብ በአይኔ በብረቱ አየኹት፡፡
ዮናታን ተስፋዬ ለጊዜያዊ ቀነ ቀጠሮ አራዳ ፍርድ ቤት እንደሚቀርብ ሰምቼ ነው ወደዚያ የሄድኩት፡፡ ይህችን የተለመደች ሰርከስ ሁሉም የፖለቲካ እስረኛ ይወዛወዛታል፡፡በማዕከላዊ ይጀመራል ከዚያ አራዳ ፍርድ ቤት ይቀጥላል፡፡ የማዕከላዊ ደብዳቢዎች በጨለማ የሚያሰቃዩትን እስረኛ በቀን ሰው መስለው (ወገኞች ናቸው አንዳንዴማ ዩኒፎርምም ያጠልቃሉ) ፍርድ ቤት ያቀርቡታል፡፡ ውሸት ውሸቱን ይቀባጥራሉ፡፡ “ግበረ አበሮቹን በኢንተርፖል እያሳደድን ነው፣ ክቡር ዳኛ በዋስ ከተለለቀቁ ልማታችንን ያደናቅፋሉ፡፡ ወህኒ ሰብረው እስረኛ ያስፈታሉ” የመሳሰሉትን በጠራራ ጸሐይ ይቀባጥራሉ፡፡ እየቀለድኩኝ አይደልም የምሬን ነው እንዲህ አይነት በሬ ወለደ ምክንያት በጆሮዬ ሰምቻለው፡፡ ዳኛውም አብሮ ይተውናል፡፡ የፈለጉትን ቀን ያህል ያራዝማል፡፡
ገራፊዬንም ያየሁት እኔንና ጓደኞቼን እንደነዳው እንዲሁ ተረኛውን ገፈት ቀማሽ ሲያመጣ ነው፡፡ ላንዳፍታ አይኖቻችን ተጋጩ፡፡ አስተውሎኝ ይሁን አይሁን አላውቅም በፍርድ ቤቱ ቢሮዎች መሐል ገብቶ ተሰወረ፡፡ እኔ ግን በእርግጠኝነት ለይቸዋለው፡፡ ውስጤ ዳግም ተቆጣ፡፡ እስር ቤት ብቻዬን ደጋግሜ ባሰብኩት ቁጥር እንደአዲስ የልቤ ቁስል ያመረቅዝ ነበር፡፡ ቂም ስቋጥር እና ስፈታ ከአመት በላይ ቆይቻለው፡፡ ቂም ይዣለው በውድም ሆነ በግድ ኢትዮጵያዊ በሆነ ሁሉ ላይ ቂም ይዣለው፡፡ እንዴት ሰው በሀገሩ ይህንን ጉድ ተሸክሞ ይኖራል? እንዴት እንደዚህ አይነት ተቋም በመዲናይቱ እምብርት ላይ አስቀምጦ ዝም ይላል? ይህን ባርቤሪዝም ጌጡ ካደረገ ማኀበረሰብ ጋር በቀላሉ የማይበርድ ግጭት ውስጥ ነኝ፡፡ ስለዚህ በመንገድ ስታገኙኝ ፊቴ ጥቁር ብሎ ብታገኙኝ “ምን ሆነህ ነው?” አትበሉኝ፡፡ ቂም ይዤ ነው፡፡ ተራ ማኩረፍ አድርጋችኹ አትውሰዱት ስር የሰደደ ከነፍስ የሚቀዳ ጸብ ነው፡፡
በግርፋት የተሰነጠቀውን ጀርባዬ በቅባት ላሹኝ ዕድሜ ለእነ ኤባ ቁስሉ እዛው ማዕከላዊ ነው የዳነው፡፡ የልቤ ስንጥቅ ግን አልዳነም ፡፡ ያ ዘላለም ክብረት “ምድር ብዙ ክፋት የሚፈጸምባት ቦታ ናት በእኛ ላይ የደረሰውም አዲስ ነገር አይደለም” እያለ ብዙ እንዳላዝን ቢመክረኝም ያቄመው ልቤን ሊያሸንፈው አልቻለም ነበር፡፡ የተገኘሁበት፣ ያሳደገኝ ማኀበረሰብ ላይ እንዳቄምኩኝ ከእስር ወጣኹኝ፡፡ ባለፉት አራት ወራት በአንጻራዊ ነጻነት ማሳለፌ ግን ትንሽ እንዳዘናጋኝ የገባኝ ግን በቀደም ገራፊዬን ያየኹት ቀን ነው፡፡ወይ ጊዜ ስንቱን ያስረሳል አልኩኝ፡፡ አሁን ከእስር መፈታት ብርቅ የሆነበት ጊዜ አልፏል፡፡ ቁስሌ ዳግም አመርቅዟል፡፡ ገራፊዬን እና አለቆቹን የያዘው ህንጻ ካልፈረሰ አልያም ሙዚየም ካልሆነ ዕርቅ የማይታሰብ ነው፡፡ ድሮ እስር ቤት ሳለኹኝ በእስረኛ ማጓጓዣ መኪና ወደ ፍርድ ቤት ስንመላለስ በመስኮት ስመለከተው የዕለት ጉርሱን ለማብሰል የሚራኮተው አዳሜ አሁንም ውስጡ ሁኜ ስመለከተው ከሆዱ በቀር የኔ ቁስል ግድ የሰጠው አይመስልም፡፡ ስለዚህ ምን አዲስ ነገር ተፈጠረ ብዬ ይቅር እላለው? ውስጤ የበለጠ ስለሻከረ እምቢኝ ብያለው፡፡ ይህ የአንዲት ነጠላ ነፍስ መብት ነው፡፡ በገዛ ነፍሴ ጥላቻን ማርገዝ መብቴ ነው፡፡ ከፈለጋችኹ ለዐቃቤ ሕግ ንገሩትና በፊት ‘የማኀበረሰቡን ጤና እና ደህንነት ለአደጋ በማጋለጥ’ እንደ ከሰሰኝ አሁን ደግም ‘በማኀበረሰቡ ላይ ስር የሰደደ ጥላቻና ቂም በመቋጠር’ ይክሰሰኝ፡፡
እነ ኤቢሳ አካላዊ ቁስሌን እንደሳምራዊው ሰው በቅባት እንዳሹልኝ አሁን ደግሞ ዘመዶቻቸው የተሰበረ መንፈሴን የቆሰለ እኔነቴን ሊጥገኑ ተነስተዋል፡፡ የእነኤቢሳ፣ የእነቶፊቅ እና የእነ ቶላ ዘመዶች እኔን ከህመሜ ሊያድኑኝ ደማቸውን እየከፈሉ መሆናቸውን ድፍን ፌስቡክ እየተመለከተው ነው፡፡ አዲስ አበቤ “አገር ሊያፈርሱ ነው ኢትዮጵያ የምትባል ሀገር አትኖርም” ቅብርጥሴ ቅብርጥሴ ቢልም እኔ ግን ከሚፈርሰው አገር ከፒያሳ ከፍ ብሎ ያለው ማዕከላዊ ጎልቶ ይታየኛል፡፡ ስለዚህ በመሬት ላይ ዋጋ እየከፈሉ ያሉትን ወገኖቼን ይቅር ብያለው፡፡ ከነዚህ በቀር ሌላው ማኀበረሰብ “እርሱ” አይደለም “እኔ” ራሱ ይቅርታን አያገኛትም፡፡ አራዳ ፍርድ ቤት መሄዴ አይቀርም፡፡ በማዕከላዊ በርም አልፋለው፡፡ በየጊዜው እየሄደኩኝ ከገራፊዎቼ አንዱን እያየው ጥላቻዬን እያደስኩኝ እመጣለው፡፡ ቁስሉ ይበልጥ እንዲቆጠቁጠኝ ወደገራፊዬ ተጠግቼ አይኖቹን በአይኖቼ አድናለው፡፡ አይገርምም ግን ………….…ገራፊዬ እስካሁን እዚያው ነው፡፡

Sunday, February 21, 2016

የፌደራል ፖሊስ ከፍተኛ አዛዦች በአዲስ አበባ ስብሰባ አካሄዱ፡፡ ስብሰባው ያለምንም ውጤት በግጭት ተቋጭቷል

February 21,2016
የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ

የፌደራል ፖሊስ ከፍተኛ አዛዦች በአዲስ አበባ ከየካቲት 9 እስከ 12 2008 ዓ.ም የተሰበሰቡ ሲሆን የመልካም አስተዳደር ችግር፣ የፀጥታ ሁኔታ እና የአባላት መክዳት እያነሱ ከተወያዩባቸው አጀንዳዎች መካከል ዋነኞቹ ናቸው፡፡ በስብሰባው ላይ የአማራና የኦሮሞ ተወላጅ አዛዦች "እኛ ከእናንተ የተሻለ የትምህርት ደረጃና ልምድ እያለን ሁሉንም ቦታ ጠቅልላችሁ ይዛችሁት ተገቢው ቦታ አልተሰጠንም..." በማለት ህወሓቶችን ልካቸውን ነግረዋቸዋል፡፡
ህወሓቶች በፌደራል ፖሊስ ተቋም ውስጥ ባሰፈኑት ዘረኝነት ምክንያት ሰራዊቱ በመፍረስ ላይ እንደሚገኝ ስብሰባው ላይ በተደጋጋሚ ተወስቷል፡፡ በውይይቱ ላይ ተቃውሟቸውን ያሰሙ የኦሮሞና አማራ ተወላጅ አመራሮች ከህወሓቶች "የእናስራችኋል" ማስፈራሪያ ደርሷቸዋል፡፡
በመጨረሻም ስብሰባው ወደ ለየለት ንትርክና አምባጓሮ በማምራቱ አብዛኞቹ አዛዦች እንዲበተኑ ተደርገው ውይይቱ በጥቂት ዋና፣ ዋና አመራሮች ለተጨማሪ ጊዜ ተካሂዷል፡፡ የፌደራል ፖሊስ አደረጃጀት ሊፈርስ እንደሚችልም ጭምር ጭምጭምታ ተሰምቷል፡፡
በተያያዘ ዜና የሚከዱ የፌደራል ፖሊስ አባላት ቁጥር አሁንም ከቀን ወደ ቀን እየናረ መምጣቱ እየተነገረ ነው፡፡ በጎንደር ብቻ ቢያንስ በቀን 3 የፌደራል ፖሊስ አባላት እንደሚከዱ የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ ዜና ምንጮች ገልፀዋል፡፡

የ24ኛ ክፍለ ጦር አባላት በገፍ እየገዱ መሆናቸው ታወቀ፡፡

February 21,2016
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ)
በሰሜን ምዕራብ የኢትዮጵያ ክፍል በሚንቀሳቀሱ የታጠቁ የነፃነት ድርጅቶች ለረጅም ዓመታት የዘለቀ የሽምቅ ውጊያ ጥቃት ሲደርስበት፣ እስከ ሬጅመንት ድረስ እየተደመሰሰ ሲፈርስና እንደገና በሰው ኃይልና በጦር መሳሪያ በተደጋጋሚ ሲገነባ የኖረው 24ኛ ክፍለ ጦር አባላት በውጊያ በእጅጉ ተሰላችተውና በስርዓቱ ተስፋ ቆርጠው በከፍተኛ ሁኔታ በመክዳት ላይ ናቸው፡፡
በተለይም ደግሞ የሽምቅ ውጊያ ጥቃቶች የመጀመሪያ ገፈት ቀማሽ የሆኑ በሁመራና አካባቢው ሰፍረው የቆዩ ሬጅመንቶች ውልቃቸውን በመቅረታቸው ከአዘዞ እና ጭልጋ ሌሎች ሬጅመንቶችን አንስቶ የመተካት እንቅስቃሴ እየተደረገ ይገኛል፡፡
የትጥቅ ትግል የሚያካሂዱ የነፃነት ድርጅቶች ክንድ እየፈረጠመ መምጣት እና ዕለት ከዕለት በሚያደርጓቸው የሽምቅ ውጊያ ጥቃቶች የሚያሳርፉት ዱላ እየበረታ መሄድ በዋነኝነት አርበኝነት በሚፋፋምበት አካባቢ የሚገኘውን 24ኛ ክፍለ ጦር አፍረክርኮታል፡፡

Saturday, February 20, 2016

የህወሓት‬ አገዛዝ የሱዳኑን ድንበር ጉዳይ ሙሉ በሙሉ በጦር ኃይሉ ቁጥጥር ስር እንዲሆን አደረገ፡፡

February 22,2016
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ
የወሓት አገዛዝ የሱዳን መንግስት በሽፍትነት ዘመኑ ለዋለለት ውለታ ምላሽና ብረት ያነሱ የነፃነት ድርጅቶች ጠረፍ ለጠረፍ የሚያደርጉትን እንቅስቃሴ በመግታቱ ረገድ የሚደረግለትን ትብብር ለማፅናት ከሁመራ እስከ ቤንሻንጉል ጉሙዝ 1600 ኪሎ ሜትር ርዘማኔ ያለው፣ 30 ኪሎ ሜትር ደግሞ ወደ ውስጥ የሚገባ ሰፊና ለም መሬት ቆርሶ ሰጥቷል፡፡
መሬታቸው ተነጥቆ ለሱዳን በመሰጠቱ በ2002 ዓ.ም ብቻ 37 ባለሀብቶች ውልቃቸውን በመቅረት ተፈናቅለዋል፡፡
1. ነጋ ደስታ 21. ማማይ ሽፈራ
2. አስረሱ ደስታ 22. አጥናው አማረ
3. ተፈሪ 23. ኃይሌ ተክሌ /ቢራ/
4. ጌታቸው 24. ሀጎስ
5. ሰረበ 25. ካሳ እንዳለው
6. ቻሌ ፈንቴ 26. ቻሉ ኑራይኔ
7. አዳነ ባብል 27. ደምለው ኑራይኔ
8. ብርሃኔ ጌታቸው 28. ብዙነህ ፀጋ
9. መለስ አስማማው 29. ግርማው ተዘራ
10. ታፍሮ 30. ገ/መድህን መንግስቴ
11. ጌታቸው ግደይ 31. ጌታቸው ሐጎስ
12. አብርሃም 32. አርአያ
13. ንጉሴ ገ/ሊባኖስ 33. አሰማራው መኮንን
14. ሲሳይ ሽሬ 34. ጌጡ ማለደ
15. አበባው 35. ግደይ አቡሃይ
16. ጌታሁን ሽባባው 36. አለልኝ አጣናው
17. ንጉሴ 37. ፈጠነ አዳነ
18. በያን
19. ደለለኝ መንግስቱ
20. ስመኘው ብርሃኔ
ስለሆነም በአካባቢው ከፍተኛ ተቃውሞ በመነሳቱ ለረጅም ጊዜ የዘለቀ ግጭት፣ አለመረጋጋትና ውጥረት ሰፍኗል፡፡
የህወሓት አገዛዝ ይህን የህዝብ ተቃውሞ ለመደፍጠጥ በአካባቢው ከፍተኛ ቁጥር ያለው ሰራዊት ከማስፈሩ ባሻገር የመሬቱን ጉዳይ ሙሉ በሙሉ በጦር ኃይሉ ቁጥጥር ስር እንዲውል አድርጎታል፡፡
የኢትዮጵያና የሱዳን የጋራ ድንበር ክትትልና ቁጥጥር ዋና አዛዥ በሚል ብርጋዴር ጀነራል ሰለሞን ኢተፋ ህዝብ የመጨፍጨፍ ሙሉ ስልጣን ከአገዛዙ ተሰጥቶታል፡፡ ኮሎኔል ተስፋዬ ዘውዴ የተሰኘው ህወሓታዊ ደግሞ የድንበር ጥበቃ ሻለቃ በሚል ሽፋን የተደራጀውን ገዳይ ቡድን እንዲያዝ ተመርጦ ማንኛውንም እርምጃ በህዝቡ ላይ እንዲወስድ መመሪያ ተሰጥቶታል፡፡
በተጨማሪም 24ኛ ክፍለ ጦር መሬቱ በተሰጠበት አካባቢ በቅርብ ርቀት ላይ የሚገኝ ሲሆን በኮሎኔል ተስፋዬ ዘውዴ የሚመራው ረሻኙ ሻለቃ ጦር ድጋፍ ሲያስፈልገው እንዲሰጥ ከላይ ከአገዛዙ ጥብቅ ትዕዛዝ እንደተላለፈለት ታውቋል፡፡

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Ethiopia: 3,000 victims of human trafficking intercepted

February 18,2016
Ethiopia’s National Council on Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking said it has intercepted 3,800 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally. According to the Council’s report presented on Wednesday, the authorities have since sent the migrants back to their respective countries of origin.

The number of victims of human trafficking in the reported period increased compared to the same period last fiscal year, according to the council’s report.
breaking-news-3

86 human traffickers were arrested and charged in the reported period, the report said, further revealing that more than 20 smugglers had bene given verdicts.

Introducing laws to curb illegal immigration and approving overseas employment proclamation were among the activities carried out to prevent human trafficking during the past six months, it indicated.

Lack of coordination between task forces established at federal and regional levels as well as the involvement of security forces, government bodies, embassies and diplomats in the trafficking process were mentioned as problems faced in the reported period.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

የህወሓትን‬ አገዛዝ በመቃወም ኤም.አይ-35 ሄሊኮፕተር ይዘው ከሀገር የወጡት እነ ሳሙኤል ግደይ የሞትና የእድሜ ልክ እስራት ተበየነባቸው፡፡

February 17,2017
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬዲዮ)
ሳሙኤል ግደይ፣ ፀጋ ዘአብ ግደይ እና ቢልልኝ መኮንን የህወሓትን አገዛዝ በመቃወም ኤም.አይ-35 ተዋጊ ሄሊኮፕተር በማብረር ከምስራቅ አየር ምድብ ድሬዳዋ በውሎ የጠፉት በ2007 ዓ.ም ሲሆን የህወሓት አገዛዝ የጦር ፍርድ ቤት የካቲት 4 2008 ዓ.ም በሌሉበት በሞትና እድሜ ልክ እስራት ቀጥቷቸዋል፡፡
የሄሊኮፕተሯ ዋና አብራሪ ሳሙኤል ግደይ በሞት ሲቀጣ ፀጋ ዘአብ ግደይ እና ቢልልኝ መኮንን የእድሜ ልክ እስራት ተበይኖባቸዋል፡፡
ከእነ ሳሙኤል ግደይ በፊትም በ1993 ዓ.ም ካፒቴን ተሾመ ተንኮሉ ኤል-39 ተዋጊ ጀት እያበረረ ከመቀሌ ተነስቶ ኤርትራ መግባቱ፤ መቶ አለቃ በኃይሉ ገብሬ እና መቶ አለቃ አብዮት ማንጉዳይ ኤም.አይ-35 ተዋጊ ሄሊኮፕተር እያበረሩ ጅቡቲ ማረፋቸው የሚታወስ ነው፡፡ መቶ አለቃ በኃይሉ ገብሬና አብዮት ማንጉዳይ በጅቡቲ መንግስት ለህወሓት ተላልፈው ተሰጥተው የእድሜ ልክ እስራት እና የ15 አመት እስር ተፈርዶባቸው መቶ አለቃ አብዮት የእስር ጊዜውን ጨርሶ በመፈታቱ በአሁኑ ጊዜ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7ን ተቀላቅሎ ኤርትራ በረሃ እንደሚገኝ መዘገባችን አይዘነጋም፡፡
የኤም.አይ-35 ተዋጊ ሄሊኮፕተር አዛዥ እና የበረራ አሰተማሪ የነበረው ሻለቃ አክሊሉ መዘነም ከአመታት በፊት ስርዓቱን በመቃወም ወደ ኤርትራ መጥቶ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7ን በመቀላቀል ትግል ላይ ይገኛል፡
ginbot 7

Saturday, February 13, 2016

የህወሓት ከፍተኛ ባለስልጣናትና የአማራ ክልል ሹሞች ያደረጉት ድብቅ ስብሰባ ያለምንም ውጤት በፀብ ብቻ ተቋጨ፡

February 13,2016
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ)
የህወሓት ከፍተኛ ባለስልጣናትና የአማራ ክልል ሹሞች በጎንደር ጎሃ ሄቴል ለሦስት ተከታታይ ቀናት ያደረጉት ድብቅ ስብሰባ ያለምንም ውጤት በፀብ ብቻ ተቋጨ፡፡ በህወሓቶችና በብአዴኖች መካከል የተካረረ ፍጥጫና ንትርክ ተከስቶ የነበረ መሆኑም ተደርሶበታል፡፡

በጎንደር ከተማ ጎሃ ሆቴል ውስጥ ከጥር 28 እስከ የካቲት 1 2008 ዓ.ም በድብቅ በተካሄደው ስብሰባ ላይ የተገኙት የህወሓት ከፍተኛ ባለስልጣናት አባይ ፀሐዬ፣ ስብሃት ነጋ፣ ደብረ ፂዮን ገ/ሚካኤል፣ አባይ ወልዱ እና የትግራይ ክልል አስተዳደርና ፀጥታ ሹም ናቸው፡፡

ገዱ አንዳርጋቸው፣ አለምነው መኮንን እና መኳንንት /የአማራ ክልል ፀጥታ ሹም/ ደግሞ ከብአዴን ወገን የተገኙ የአማራ ክልል ሹማምንቶች ነበሩ፡፡
የህወሓት ከፍተኛ ባለስልጣናትና የህወሓት ዲቃላ የሆነው ብአዴን ባለስልጣናት በጎንደር ጎሃ ሆቴል ተሰብስበው የተነታረኩባቸው አጀንዳዎች ሁለት ሲሆኑ የወልቃይትን የአማራ ማንነት ጥያቄ እና ብረት ያነሱ የነፃነት ድርጅቶችን /በተለይም አርበኞች ግንቦት 7ን/ በሚመለከት ነው፡፡
የትጥቅ ትግል እያደረጉ የሚገኙ የነፃነት ድርጅቶችን በሚመለከት ህወሓቶች "ሰተት ብለው ከበረሃ ወደ ህዝቡ እንዲገቡ እያደረጋችኋቸው ነው..." በማለት ብአዴኖችን ወቅሰዋቸዋል፡፡

ከወልቃይት ህዝብ የአማራ ማንነት ጥያቄ ጋር በተያያዘ ደግሞ የትግራይ ክልል አስተዳዳሪና የህወሓት ሊቀ መንበር የሆነው አባይ ወልዱ እንዲህ ብሏል፡፡"ወልቃይት የትግራይ ነው! የአማራነት ጥያቄው በዚህ የማያቆምና ተጠናክሮ የሚቀጥል ከሆነ የማያዳግም እርምጃ እንወስዳለን...!"
ቀጥሎም አባይ ወልዱ የአማራ ክልልን አስተዳዳሪ ገዱ አንዳርጋቸውን  "አንተ የአማራን ህዝብ የጦር መሳሪያ ያስታጠከው ሆነ ብለህ በትግራይ ላይ ጦርነት ለማወጅ ነው..." በማለት ተናግሮታል፡፡ገዱ አንዳርጋቸውም በበኩሉ  "እኔ ህዝቡ በሀብቱ ገዝቶ ከጥንት ጀምሮ ታጥቆት የቆየውን ጦር መሳሪያ ህጋዊ ፈቃድ በመስጠት አፀናሁለት እንጂ ልክ እንዳንተ ከመንግስት ግምጃ ቤት አውጥቼ በገፍ አላስታጠቁትም፡፡ በትግራይ ህዝብ ላይ ጦርነት አወጅክ ላልከኝም የትግራይን ህዝብ ሰብስበህ በወልቃይት ህዝብ ላይ እርምጃ እንወስዳለን ብለህ በይፋ ጦርነት ያወጅከው አንተ ነህ፡፡" በማለት ለአባይ ወልዱ መልስ ሰጥቶታል፡፡ 

የጦር መሳሪያን በሚመለከት ደብረ ፂዮን ገ/ሚካኤል ገዱ አንዳርጋቸው የአማራን ህዝብ እንዳስታጠቀ ወቀሳ ሰንዝሯል፡፡ ደብረ ፂዮን ስለ ወልቃይት ህዝብ የአማራ ማንነት ጥያቄ የሚከተለውን በማለት ቁልጭ ያለ አቋሙን አስቀምጧል፡፡
"የወልቃይት ጉዳይ ክልል አንድን እንጂ ማንንም አይመለከተውም፤ ውሳኔውም ሊሆን የሚችለው የክልል አንድ ብቻና ብቻ ነው፡፡"
ለዚህ የደብረ ፂዮን ንግግር ገዱ አንዳርጋቸው ሲመልስ  እኛ ሄደን ኑ አንላቸውም፤ ከመጡ ግን የማንቀበልበት ምንም ምክንያት የለም፤ ደግሞም ውሳኔ ማስቀመጥ ያለበት ራሱ የወልቃይት ህዝብ ነው፡፡"

በመሆኑም በሁለቱ ክልሎች /በትግራይና አማራ/ አስተዳዳሪዎች ማለትም በአባይ ወልዱና ገዱ አንዳርጋቸው መካከል ስብሰባው ውስጥ የተካረረ ፍጥጫ ተከስቶ ነበር፡፡  ህወሓቶች ለገዱ አንዳርጋቸው ከባድ ማስጠንቀቂያ ሰጥተውታል፡፡ በአጠቃላይ በጎንደር ጎሃ ሆቴል ከጥር 28 እስከ የካቲት 1 2008 ዓ.ም በድብቅ የተካሄደው የህወሓቶችና የብአዴኖች ውይይት ያለምንም መግባባት በፀብ ብቻ ተጠናቋል፡፡

ህዝቡ ወያኔን በቃኝ ብሏል እኛም የወያኔ እድሜ የሚያጥርበትን ከፍተኛ ስራዎች እየሰራን ነው ያለነው (አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ)

February 13,2016
(የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ)
አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ለአንድነትና ዴሞክራሲ ንቅናቄ ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ ኃላፊ የኢትዮጵያን ወቅታዊ የፖለቲካ ሁኔታና ወደ ኤርትራ በረሃ የሚጎርፉ ወጣቶች ቁጥር እየናረ መምጣትን በሚመለከት ከአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ድምፅ ሬድዮ ጋር ያደረጉት አጭር ቃለ ምልልስ በፅሁፍ፡፡


ጥያቄ
"አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ እርስዎ የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ለአንድነትና ዴሞክራሲ ንቅናቄ ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ ሀላፊ ነዎት፤ በሀገሪቱ ላይ በተለይ አሁን በየቦታው ውጥረት አለ፤ በኦሮምያ የአዲስ አበባን ማስተር ፕላን ምክንያት አድርጎ የመንግስት ለውጥ መምጣት አለበት በሚል ህዝባዊ ትግል እየተካሄደ ነው የሚገኘው፡፡ ብዙ ወጣቶች እየተገደሉ ነው፡፡ ጋምቤላ ውስጥ አሁንም ከፍተኛ ግጭት ተፈጥሯል፡፡ ጎንደር ላይ እንደዚሁ ህወሓት ለሱዳን መሬት ቆርሶ ለመስጠት ተስማምቷል፡፡ በዚህ ምክንያት አሁን ከፍተኛ የሆነ አመፅ አለ፤ ከመከላከያ ሰራዊቱ ጋር ህዝቡ ፍልሚያ ላይ ነው ያለው፡፡ እና ይህንን ወደ ዘር ግጭት እንዲያመራ ህወሓት ደግሞ እየስራ ይገኛል፡፡ ህዝቡ ትግል እያደረገ ነው፡፡ ይህን ትግል ከማደራጀትና ከመምራት ጋር በተያያዘ ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት ያለው ሚና ምንድን ነው?"
አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ
"አመሰግናለሁ! እንግዲህ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7 የቀድሞው ግንቦት 7 እና አርበኞች ግንባር ከተዋሀደ በኋላ መዋቅሩን አስፍቶ በብዙ መልኩ ትግሉን በሀገር ውስጥ እያደረገ መሆኑን እንግዲህ በእናንተም በተለያየ መገናኛ ብዙሃን እየተገለፀ ይገኛል፡፡ ድርጅታችን በህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ በኩል ሃገር ውስጥ ሰፊ የሆነ መዋቅር አለው፡፡ ህዝቡን ማደራጀት እና የተቀበረ ፈንጅ የማስቀመጥ ያክል በብዙ የሃገሪቱ ክፍል ላይ ከፍተኛ መዋቅር ዘርግተን እያደራጀን ነው ያለነው፡፡ በዚህ ሂደት ምን፣ ምን እንቅሰቃሴዎች ያደርጋሉ በህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት ውሰጥ ያሉት...? ዘርፈ ብዙ ነውና ህዝቡ በሚያደርጋቸው አመፆች በሙሉ የህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ አባላት እጃቸው እንዳለ መግለፅ እወዳለሁ፡፡
"ሌላው እንደገና ደግሞ ህዝቡም እምቢ ማለቱ ትልቁ ምልክት አሁን በቅርቡ በኦሮምያ የአዲስ አበባ ማስተር ፕላንን መሰረት አድርጎ የተደረገው እንቅስቃሴ በአዲስ አበባና አካባቢዋ ብቻ አይደለም በሙሉ ኦሮምያ ክልል ብቻ ሳይሆን ሃዋሳ፣ ጎንደር፣ ጋምቤላ ሁሉ ያለው ተቃውሞ የስርአቱን ብልሹነት ወይም ስርአቱን በቃኝ ባይነት ምልክት መሆኑን ነው እኛ ምናየው፡፡ ስለዚህ ይሄ አሁን ተቀጣጥሎ ያለው የአዲሰ አበባን ማስተር ፕላን ምክንያት አድርጎ የተነሳው የኦሮሞ ወገናችንን ብቻ የሚመለከት ሳይሆን የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ጥያቄ ሆኖ የተነሳበትና ከፍተኛ እንቅስቃሴ የተደረገ ያለበት ነው፡፡ ሌላው ምንድን ነው? በጎንደር አካባቢ ያለውን የኢትዮጵያን መሬት ለሱዳን አሳልፎ የሚሰጥበት ሁኔታ የጎንደርን ወይም በአማራ አካባቢ ያለውን ተወላጅ ብቻ ጥያቄ ብቻ ሳይሆን የኢትዮጵያዊያን ሙሉ ጥያቄ ሆኖ ከፍተኛ እንቅስቃሴ እየተደረገ ነው፡፡ እንግዲህ በነዚህ ሁሉ መሃል ውስጥ የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ የሚሰራቸው አሉ፤ እነዚህ ሂደቶች በሙሉ እንቅስቃሴው እየተጋጋለ እዲሄድና ህዝቡ በሙሉ እንቢ ብሎ በወያኔ ላይ ሊያምፅ ሚችልበትን አይነት ስራዎች እየተሰሩ ነው ያሉት፡፡ እነዚህ ፖፕሌቶችን መበተን ለሊቱን ሙሉ... ሲነጋ ግድግዳዎች በሙሉ፣ ግንቡ በሙሉ ወያኔን የሚቃወሙ ፁሁፎች ማውጣት፤ እደገና ህዝቡ በሚንቀሳቀስበት አይነት ነገሮች ላይ ያ ገላጭ የሆነ የወያኔን ተቃውሞ ሊገልፅ ሚችል አይነት እንቅስቃሴዎችን በማድረግ እረገድ የኛ መምሪያ አባሎች እየሰሩ ነው፡፡
"በዚህ በትግሉ እንቅስቃሴ ውስጥ ወደ ህዝባዊ አመፅ መቀላቀል የሚፈልጉ አካሎች ወደ ኤርትራ እየመጡ የሄዱበት ነው፡፡ ወደ ህዝባዊ አመፅ ሊቀላቀሉ እና ወያኔን በብረት እንፋለማለን ብለው የወሰኑ ወጣቶች ያለፈውን ጊዜ እንተወውና በዚህ ወር ብቻ ከ60 በላይ ተከዜን ተሻግረው ኤርትራ ገብተዋል፡፡ እነዚህም በስልጠና ሂደት ውስጥ ይገኛሉ፡፡ ይሄ ብቻ አገር ውስጥ ያለው ሰራዊታችንን በውጊያ ላይ ያለውን የሚቀላቀሉትን ቁጥር ሳይጨምር ማለት ነው ወደ ኤርትራ በረሃ በዚህ ወር ብቻ የመጡትን ይህንን የምገልፅልህ፡፡ ይህንን እና በዚህ መሰል ሁኔታዎች ከፍተኛ እንቅስቃሴ እያደረገ ነው የህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ፡፡"
ጥያቄ
"አመሰግናለሁ አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ! አሁን አገር ቤት ከፍተኛ የሆነ ግድያ አለ፤ ጭቆና አለ፤ ህወሓት ምንም የማይሰራው ነገር የለውም፤ የማይፈፅመው ነገር የለውም፤ በህዝቡ ላይ ያለውን... የህዝቡን እንቅስቃሴ ለማክሸፍና በነበረው ለማስኬድ ደግሞ ልምድ አለው፤ ከ1997 ዓ.ም ጀምሮ ሲሰራበት የቆየው ነው፡፡ አሁን እንደ በፊቱ በቀላሉ የህዝቡን የነፃነት ትግል፣ የነፃነት እንቅስቃሴ እና አመፅ የሚያከፍሽፍበት ደረጃ ላይ አይደለም ያለው፡፡ ከቁጥጥሩ ውጭ ሆኗል ማለት ይቻላል፡፡ በዚህም ምክንያት ይመስላል ድንበር አካባቢ ከፍተኛ የሆነ ሰራዊት አስፍሮ የኤርትራንና የኢዮጵያን ድንበር በከፍተኛ ሁኔታ አጥሮት ነው የሚገኘው፡፡ ነገር ግን ሰዎች ይመጣሉ፤ ሰዎች ይጎርፋሉ፡፡ በየቀኑ በጣም በርካታ ሰዎች እንዲያውም ከትግራይ፤ ምንም የህወሓት ተቃዋሚ የለም የትግራይ ህዝብ ወያኔ ነው ካለበት ከትግራይ ብዙ ወጣቶች እየመጡ ነው፡፡ ተከዜን እየተሻገሩ አሁን የአርኞች ግንቦት 7 ኤርትራ በርሃ ውስጥ ሚገኙ የተለያዩ ማሰልጠኛዎች በኢትዮጵያ ወጣቶች እየተጥለቀለቁ ነው የሚኙት፡፡ በህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ ስር ተደራጅተው ሀገር ቤት ለሚሰሩ ወጣቶች ሆነ ትግሉን መቀላቀል ለሚፈልጉ ሌሎች የአገሪቱ ወጣቶች ምን መልዕክት ነው ሚያስተላልፉላቸው?
አርበኛ ታጋይ መንግስቱ ወ/ስላሴ
"መልካም! መጀመሪያ ወያኔ በአልሞትባይ ተጋዳይነት እርምጃ እየወሰደ ነው ያለው፡፡ ሰሞኑን የምናየው አለ፡፡ አዋሳ ላይ በአደባባይ ነው፣ በጠራራ ፀሐይ ሰው እየተገደለ ያለበት ሁኔታ ነው ያለው፡፡ በጎንደር እንደገና ደግሞ ጥያቄ ያነሱ የወልቃይት ተወላጆችን ሰብስቦ አዲስ አበባ ለጥያቄ የሄዱትን ያሰረበት ሁኔታና በአጠቃላይ ወያኔ በአሁኑ ሰዓት እንዳልከው የህዝቡን አመፅ ሊያፍን የሚችልበት አይነት ሁኔታ ላይ አይደለም ያለው፡፡ ረግጦ ሊገዛ የሚችልበት አይነት ሁኔታ ላይ አይደለም ያለው፡፡ ለምን በሁሉም የአገሪቱ ክፍል ወያኔ ላይ እምቢ ብሏል ህዝቡ፡፡ እምቢ ማለቱ ምልክቶች የምታየው ነው፡፡ ወያኔም በእንደዚህ አይነት ሁኔታዎች በተለያየ መልኩ ትግሉን ሊያፍን የሚችልበት አይነት አርምጃዎች ይወስዳል፡፡ ሆኖም ግን አልተሳካለትም፡፡ አሁን አንተ ራሱ የጠቀስከው እንደምሳሌ የማነሳልህ በሰሜኑ የአገራችን ክፍል የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ሰራዊትን ለመቀላቀል የሚመጡ የማህበረሰብ አካላትን ለማፈን ሲል ሰራዊቱን አፍስሶታል፡፡ ሆኖም ግን ይመጣል፡፡ በነገራችን ላይ በወያኔ መከላከያ ሰራዊት ውስጥ ያለው ወጣት ኢትዮጵያዊ ነው፡፡ ከ10ኛ ክፍል በላይ መቀጠል ሳይችል ቀርቶ ሰርቶ የሚበላው ያጣ፡፡ ለሆዱና ለኑሮው ራሱን ለማሸነፍ ሲል የገባ ሰራዊት እንጂ የወያኔ ደጋፊ እንደላሆነ አይደለም በሰራዊቱ ውስጥ በሌላው የወያኔ መዋቅር ውስጥ ያሉ ከታች እስከ አመራር ድረስ ማሳያ ብዙ መልኮች አሉ፡፡ ይህም በመሆኑ ነው ወያኔ የመጨረሻ ደረጃ ላይ ደርሷል የምልህ፡፡

"ሌላው በህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት መምሪያ ተደራጅተው ወደ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ሰራዊት እየተቀላቀሉ ያሉት በአብዛኛው በዚህ አሁን ከስልሳ በላይ ካልኩህ ቁጥር በዚህ ወር እንኳን ከገቡት አብዛኛውን ቁጥር የሚይዘው የትግራይ ተወላጅ ነው፡፡ የትግራይ ተወላጅ ትግሬ ስለሆነ የወያኔ ደጋፊ ነው፤ ወያኔን ተቃውሞ ሊወጣ የሚችል ሃይል የለም፤ ይሄ የወያኔ ፕሮፓጋንዳ ነው፡፡ እንደገና የትግራይን ህዝብ ከሌላው ብሄረሰብ ጋር ለማጋጨት የሚያደርገው፤ ወያኔ የትግራይን ህዝብ ነጥሎ ምናልባት በኋላ መጠጊያ መሸሻየ ይሆነኛል ብሎ ስለሚያስብ የሚያደርገው ነገር ነው እንጂ የትግራይ ህዝብ ኢትዮጵያዊ ነው፡፡ ከጥንትም ጀምሮ ለኢትዮጵያ ትልቅ ታሪክ ሲሰራ የመጣ ንፁህ ኢትዮጵያዊ ዜጋ ነው፡፡ ወያኔን በመቃወም ደግሞ ቅድሚያ ተሰልፎ ከእኛ ጋር እየተዋደቀ መሆኑን ይሄው ምናይበት ደረጃ ነው፡፡

"ሌላው በአገራችን ክፍል ያለው ሁሉም እዛ ቦታ ላይ መንቀሳቀስ በሚገባው መልኩ ይንቀሳቀሳል፡፡ እዚህ ጋ በገንዘብ፣ በጉልበት፣ በእውቀት በማደራጀት ረገድ በእድሜ ገደብ ሳይኖረው ጠቅላላ እምቢ ብሎ ያለበት ሁኔታ ነው፡፡ ይህ ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት ደግሞ ምን ያክል ሰርቷል? እንዴት ነው ያለው? አሁን ካለው እንቅሰቃሴ በተጨማሪ ወደፊት ያ ጊዜውን ጠብቆ ሊፈነዳ የሚችለው ፈንጅ ረጅም እንደማይሆን የሚያሳዩ አይነት ሁኔታዎች ያሉበትና ወያኔም ያንን ተከትሎ በያካባቢው እያፈሰ እያጎረ ያለ ነው፡፡ እንግዲህ በተለያየ ሚዲያ ይገለፃል በይበልጥ በዚህ በሰሜን ምዕራብ የአገራችን ክፍል በአብዛኛው የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ሰራዊት የሚንቀሳቀስበት ላይ ወያኔ እንዳለ ሙሉ ኃይሉን አፍስሶ እዛ ቦታ ላይ ነው ያለው፡፡ ሆኖም ሊቋቋመው ያልቻለበትና የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ደግሞ የሽምቅ ተዋጊዎች ከፍተኛ እንቅቃሴ እያደረጉ አገር ውስጥ እንደገና ገብተው ህዝባዊ የሆነ አመፅ ባንዴ ሊቀጣጠል የሚችልበትን አይነት ሁኔታ የአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 እየሰራ ነው ያለው፡፡ የሚሰራውም ይህን ነው፡፡ ደም ጠማኝ ብሎ የወጣም ድርጅት ስላልሆነ ህዝባዊ ዴሞክራሲያዊ የሆነች አንድነቷን የጠበቀች ሉዓላዊት ኢትዮጵያን ለመመስረት የሚታገልና በኢትዮጵያ ላይ እንደገና ደግሞ የህዝብ ድምፅ ሊከበር የሚችልለት ህዝቡ ራሱ የመረጠው ስርዓት ሊኖር የሚችልበትን በማመቻቸት ረገድ ህዝቡ የፈቀደው ሊወጣ ህዝብ የተቃወመው ሊወርድ የሚችልበት አይነት ስርዓት ለመዘርጋት የአርበኝነት ትግል ስለሆነ ይህ ድርጅት ወደፊትም እንደገና ደግሞ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ጥቅም አንግቦ የተነሳ ባለመሆኑ ያን ዓላማ የያዘ ኃይል ደግሞ አገርና ህዝብ ማንኛውም ዜጋ ማይደግፍበት ምክንያት የለም ሁሉም ዜጋ ከእኛ ጋር ነው፡፡ ኢትዮጵያ የሚያስፈልጋት የአርበኝነት ትግል ነው፡፡ ብረት ይዞ በብረት የሚገዛበት አይነት ዘመን ማብቃት አለበት ብለን የተነሳን ኃይሎች ነን፡፡ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ኢትዮጵያ ከብረት አገዛዝ ነፃ የሆነች ኢትዮጵያ መኖር አለባት ብለን በአርበኝነት በነፃ ለነፃነታችን ህይወጣችንን ልንሰጥ የተነሳንበት ስለሆነ ይህንን ዓላማ፣ ይህን የተቀደሰ ዓላማ የማይደግፍ ህዝብ የለም፡፡ ሁሉም ከጎናችን ነው፡፡ ለምን እኛ ምሳሌ ሆነን ወጥተናል፤ ህዝቡም በስራችን እንዲደራጅ ጠይቀነዋል፤ ዓላማችንን ተረድቷል፤ ወያኔን በቃኝ ብሏል፤ ከፍተኛ እንቅስቃሴ እያደረገ ይገኛል፡፡ የወያኔ እድሜ የሚያጥርበትን ከፍተኛ ስራዎች እየሰራን ነው ያለነው፡፡

"ሌላው በአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 ህዘባዊ እምቢተኝነት ያልደረሰበት የማህበረሰብ አካል የለም ማለት እችላለሁ፡፡ በዛ ደረጃ ላይ ባለው አደረጃጀት በእርግጥ በህቡዕ የተደራጀ አካል ስለሆነ ሁሉም በዛ በህቡዕ ሊገባ የሚችልበት በአርበኞች ግንቦት 7 የትግል መስመርና ህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት ያሰራር ሂደት መሰረት በዛ ውስጥ ተካቶ ሁሉም የራሱን አስተዋፆ ሊያደርግ እንዲችል መልዕክቴን አስተላልፋለሁ፡፡ በአሁኑ ሰአት በህዝባዊ እምቢተኝነት በዚህ ቦታ ይህን ያህል ሰው እንደዚህ ተደራጅቷል፤ ይሄን ሊያደርግ ተዘጋጅቷል፤ ብለን መግለፅ ባንችልም ባጠቃላይ ግን ሰአቱ በደረሰበት ጊዜ ላይ ሊፈነዳ የሚችለውና የወያኔን ግብአተ መሬት ሊያፋጥን የሚችልበት አይነት ሁኔታዎች ሰርተናል፡፡ ለዚህም አሁንም ጠንክረን እየሰራን ነው፡፡ በተረፈ ከዚህ ሂደት ባለው ሁሉም ወጣቱ በይበልጥ የወያኔን እድሜ በማሳጠር ረገድ የተፋጠነ ስራ ልንሰራ እንድንችል ወደ አመፅ ትግሉ ሊቀላቀል እንዲችል ወደ አርበኞች ግንቦት 7 የስልጠና ማዕከል ሊገባ የሚችልበትን ከአሁን በፊት መጥተው ወደ ኤርትራ በኛ ስልጠና ማዕከል የተገኙትን ምን ያክል እንደሆኑ በዚህ ወር ብቻ ገልፀናል፡፡ እስከ አሁን ድርስ ከፍተኛ ቁጥር አለው፡፡ በዚህ ቦታ ላይ ሰልጥነን የድርጀቱን የትግል መስመር እና አላማና ፕሮግራም ተከትለን በድርጅታችን መዋቅር እና መተዳደሪያ ደንብ መሰረት ህጉን የተከተለ ብቃት ያለው ሰራዊት ሆነን ወደ ሃገር ውስጥ ተመልሰን ገብተን ለሃገራችን እና ለህዝባችን እንድንደርስ ልታደርጉ ይገባል የሚል ጥሪየን አሰተላልፋለሁ፡፡ አመሰግናለሁ!"

Friday, February 12, 2016

Unity: Give Thought and Strategy a Chance

February 12,2016
By Tesfaye Demmellash


We never tire of groping after unity, often generating political heat within a culture of contentious sectarian and ethnic opposition to Woyane tyranny, a political culture that is also perennially preoccupied with aggregating dissident parties, factions, and tribal groups. But can we let ourselves cast the light of thought and strategic reason on our project ofandinnet in resistance?

Ethiopian Oromo

Unity – virtually every Ethiopian patriot, politician, intellectual, journalist, activist, and citizen talks about it, often with a sense of urgency and “practical” concern bordering on naïve realism. But no one, it seems, thinks and acts strategically toward its realization. Hardly anyone pauses to reflect broadly and deeply on the possibilities and challenges of Ethiopian national solidarity today other than in terms of “adding together” all manner of partisan and organizational entities.

Nothing in the recent history of our resistance to the hostile tribal take-over and dismemberment of the Ethiopian nation-state by the TPLF has been talked about and sorely wished for more than unity. Yet, ironically, no subject has received less critical and systematic attention in thought, either conceptually or in strategic terms, than unity. All the talk about the matter, even among “learned” strata among us, essentially boils down to highlighting the necessity of andinnet and exhorting political parties and ethnic organizations to struggle together against TPLF dictatorship. The unreflective, strategically innocent, exhortation comes from all quarters and it is non-stop.

A most recent symptom of this overall oppositional-intellectual malaise is what Professor Messay Kebede has written seeking to show how “unity overrides everything” and addressing in a rejoinder the apparently questioning responses of his “unhappy readers”. What he says is worth dwelling on for a moment, if only to draw some negative lessons, namely, how not to approach or frame the central issue of Ethiopian andinnet in the struggle against tribally divisive Woyane dictatorship.  As part of a broader discussion of the theme of unity, I here offer probing comments focused on Messay’s claims. I do so not by way of partisan or personal polemic but to call into question the substance of his views as I have done in the past with some of his writings.

Andinnet: Challenges Unmatched by Mindfulness

Every Ethiopian who is concerned about the state of his or her country is entitled to discuss the nation’s vital issues without necessarily being expected to approach the issues using learned conceptual thought or analytical methods, though the average citizen, if asked to break down a complex national matter, would be modest enough to beg off. It is unremarkable that ordinary Ethiopian citizens, ill served by the nation’s learned stratum and political class and ever preoccupied with meeting their basic needs for food, shelter, health and security, live under adverse conditions that do not afford them the luxury of high-mindedness. They can be excused if they do not traffic in represented ideas when expressing their views and sentiments on national unity and other related matters.

But can we say the same thing about our mihuran? I don’t believe so. Intellectuals do traffic in represented ideas and values more or less skillfully. So we can ask: do they produce thoughts or analyses that match the complexity of problems of Ethiopian unity today under conditions of domination by both ruling and oppositional tribal politics? Do they have clarity of ideas and firmness of patriotic conviction? For example, what does Messay think about Ethiopian andinnet beyond simply stressing, following popular opinion, the imperative of unity in the struggle against Woyane divide-and-dominate ethnic politics? Do Ethiopian literati engage in fruitful intellectual commerce among themselves, in sustained exchange of ideas and views on vital Ethiopian affairs? At minimum, do they offer reasoned arguments beyond making mere assertions, or do their views even have coherence at all?

I raise the last question with Messay’s most recent writing fresh on my mind. Consider some of the claims Professor Messay made in a rejoinder, responding to “critics” who had, in emails sent to him, apparently taken issue with what he had said about unity in an earlier writing, urging “the Amhara to join Oromo protesters.” Take, first, his statement that he found his critics’ “demand that Oromo protesters turn their issues to a national or Ethiopian cause…startling… a retreat…to past experience [of] marginaliz[ing]” Oromos.

Is it so inconceivable to the good professor that localized issues of land rights which triggered the Oromo protests could be better framed and more effectively and sustainably fought for, locally as well as nationally, in a united, trans-ethnic Ethiopian struggle? Does he take into account that such class struggle has the potential to resonate, under present conditions, the broad progressive demand of “land to the tiller” that marked the revolutionary era, and that in pressing this demand intellectuals and political activists in the country did so generally as Ethiopians, not as members of particular tribes or speakers of particular languages or residents of particular localities?

According to what political logic, then, is urging Oromo protesters to affirm their rights to land as Ethiopian citizens, as human beings, and as social groups in solidarity with non-Oromo citizens and communities of Ethiopia equated with “marginalizing” their identity and interests? Or, is what we have here a case of Messay simply maximizing his political correctness with an eye toward those who favor a “new and improved” regime of identity in Ethiopia, an oppositional, mainly OLF, ethnonationalism which is as old and tired as the ruling Woyane variant of political tribalism? If so, the professor is behind the political curve, for leaders of spin-off factions of the OLF have moved on to a less insular, arguably more moderate identity politics than what he is defending, even if they generally remain recessive or hesitant about affirming their Ethiopiawinnet.

Second, note Messay’s outrageous assertion that the “request to append the label ‘Ethiopia’ to the [Oromo] protests is an invitation to commit historical robbery…” Who exactly would be “robbing” whom and of what? And how is the implied criminal act whose commission is allegedly invited by the request “historical,” since Professor Messay is referring to current events? The professor’s assertion is flawed in several respects.

(1) The “request” he attributes to his critics does not concern simply “appending” a national “label” on the protests; it concerns seeking to help make an uprising localized by ethnicity and geography substantially an integral part of a broader nation-wide Ethiopian struggle. It is deeply mistaken to construe the asking as being about turning the country nominally into an appendage of local protests within it.

(2) Ethiopia, of which the Oromo community makes up an integral part, far from being a mere label to be affixed from the outside on this or that uprising, constitutes definite socio-economic, cultural and political relations of a shared nationality that underlies citizen and community protests, that imparts from within dynamic content and context to popular uprisings.

(3) Assignable communities in Ethiopia do have autonomy and a right to raise issues and to express grievances specific to their particular conditions and certainly deserve our support in doing so. But no Ethiopian locality or community can be said to have exclusive proprietary rights over issues and their framing that also affect other regions of the country or the nation as a whole. To argue otherwise is to contravene national solidarity both as a matter of principle and a strategic imperative in the resistance. Yet Professor Messay’s claim that making a plea for the enlargement of the recent Oromo protests into a broader Ethiopian struggle invites the commission of an act of “historical robbery” departs from such an assumption of sole or primary Oromo ownership of the land issue.

According to this logic, to “request” the broadening of Oromo resistance across the bounds of ethnic kilils is to “rob” Oromos of “their” protest, along with the land issue that sparked the protest, which is also apparently “theirs” alone, not anyone else’s. Both the land issue itself and the uprising around it are thus seen to be tied up nearly exclusively with Oromo subjectivity or “identity;” and the request for widening them nationally is regarded as an encouragement to take someone else’s property, to commit larceny. This view is absurd, a melodramatic representation of insular identity politics bereft of credible reason or even common sense! Does Messay seriously believe what he is saying? Did he really put any thought into his view here, either as a mihur or a concerned Ethiopian?

His view is problematic not merely as a discursive construct but also in terms of the construct’s social referent, namely, protesting Oromos. For it is a perspective that, in effect though not in intent, belittles a great people, whose centrality to Ethiopia and potential contribution not only to the unity of the Ethiopian resistance against Woyane tyranny but also to the political leadership of the resistance are undeniable. This is so because Messay’s reasoning, if one can call it that, suggests that Oromo identity is so precarious, so in need of protection in and for itself, that even the courageous initiative Oromos took recently in rising up against the TPLF regime has to be shielded in its ethnic identity from overtures or reservations by unity-seeking other Ethiopian communities. I wonder if Professor Messay would be as defensive on behalf of Amharas in the Welkait region of Gondar who also rose up recently against being force-fed Tigre identity by the Woyane dictatorship, not that Amharas need the kind of unity-retarding defense of identity politics the professor offers any more than Oromos do.

(4) To round out this series of observations on Professor Messay’s rejoinder to his critics, let me note a basic problem of incoherence in his claims.  On the one hand, he remarks that the “fragmentation” of Ethiopia is an “inescapable reality,” an outcome of “two decades of unrestricted ethnicization.” So much so that “most…young Oromo protesters…see Ethiopia as a collection of different nations,” not in the Stalinist sense of “nations” and “nationalities,” but in the sense Nigeria and Uganda are nations. He then leaps to the odd inference that “[j]ust as Kenyans are not expected to fight for Ethiopians, so too it is not surprising if the Oromos present their demands in terms of Oromo concerns.” On the other hand, Messay wonders why the Oromos, having risen “for their own cause,” are urged “to transfer their heroic deeds to the larger Ethiopian entity,” which he accuses of “remain[ing] aloof” from their cause.

Here, the professor appears to be in a fog about what Ethiopian oneness means or about what its existential status is today. To help clarify matters, we can put some basic questions to him: first of all, is Ethiopia so fragmented that it is now, as you claim, a collection of different independent nations, or is it, as you also say, one large national “entity” which has “remained aloof” from Oromo concerns and protests? It can be one or the other, but not both at once.  If it has been so broken up into disparate tribal fragments, it cannot have remained aloof as a larger national entity from the recent Oromo uprisings. Also, why, as you claim, does the “transfer” of Oromo “heroic deeds to the larger Ethiopian entity” even arise as an issue at all since Oromos are already objectively constitutive of the Ethiopian national whole? Aren’t their heroic protests by definition Ethiopian protests even if their localized uprisings are not immediately or directly those of other Ethiopian communities?

Second, what, pray tell, has Kenyans “not [being] expected to fight for Ethiopians” got to do with Oromos present[ing] their demands in terms of Oromo concerns”? Does the fact of Oromos presenting their issues and expressing their grievances “in Oromo terms” necessarily mean that they are foreign to us, their fellow Ethiopians, like Kenyans are foreign to us? Do you really think that Oromos are citizens of a different country? If you don’t, then what is the point of the Kenya analogy in your reference to Oromos pressing their demands “in Oromo terms”? Again, have you given what you are saying adequate thought?

Putting the mixed up analogy aside and looking at the Ethiopian struggle for freedom from Woyane tribal tyranny, do you see the fundamental challenge we face having to do with one insular ethnic community “fighting for” another or others as your analogy seems to suggest, or do you see it in terms of developing a dynamic unity of diverse communities by building on our rich national experience as Ethiopians? You say “the Oromo struggle gives us the unique opportunity both to defeat the TPLF and forge a new unity,” but how is the opportunity “unique,” and how do we take the opportunity and turn it into reality? Also, in what sense would our national unity be “new”?

More fundamentally, given Ethiopiawinnet as a long-lived integral national experience on the one hand, and the centrality of the values of diversity and equality in our contemporary democratic vision of national solidarity, on the other, what does Ethiopian oneness mean today? Does it signify either solely historic identity and tradition orcontemporary ideas and values alone? Or, is such simple, reductive either/or proposition a non-starter, incapable of reflecting the actual depth, richness and complexity of the Ethiopian experience as a whole even in the context of the present difficult struggle for freedom from tribally divisive TPLF dictatorship?

The challenge of forging Ethiopian andinnet today goes beyond getting over partisan quarrels or reconciling naked tribal differences. It also involves overcoming two needlessly antagonistic modes of national concern. As aspiring moderns, we understand national solidarity as a correspondence of progressive ideas, values, and institutions with representations of social interests. As inheritors of an evolving ancient tradition, we experience trans-ethnic nationality as an order of historical events, deeds and shared accomplishments, our victory over an invading European power in the Battle of Adwa being an exemplary national achievement.

In renewing Ethiopian solidarity today, then, we should do so recognizing that the two modes of national concern are neither mutually exclusive nor simply reducible to each other. Dynamically integrated together, they constitute a better, more inclusive and democratic Ethiopia than either of them separately. But such integration demands a broader and deeper level of political mindfulness in diagnosing and reckoning with the challenges of national unity than our mihuran have reached so far.

As a teacher and student of philosophy, Professor Messay would have been expected to try and tackle problems of Ethiopian solidarity with thoughtfulness instead of limiting his observations to recycling overly familiar assertions about the necessity of unity. He would have noted that the realization of the value of national andinnet is not as simple and straightforward as one ethnic group, particularly Amharas as he points out, “joining” Oromos in their current uprising. What does “joining” signify in long-term conceptual or practical terms? Is this saying anything meaningful in any political or strategic sense?

What is crucial with respect to forging unity is how issues that animate local grievances and rebellions are articulated and strategically framed; this is where battles for Ethiopian solidarity are won or lost, and where intellectual engagement can make a significant difference. Yet Messay would have us believe that there is a simple and ready answer to our disunity in the struggle against the TPLF regime. The remedy is “for the peoples of Ethiopia to grasp each other’s hands and the rest will follow.” Really? Is it all that simple? Apparently, no questions about framing or reframing issues and ideas in broad Ethiopian context need be raised, and no strategic challenges of building unity need be faced and overcome after “two decades of unrestricted ethnicization” under TPLF tyranny!

Dr. Messay here hardly says anything by way of offering thought for Ethiopian solidarity other than reproducing the TPLF notion of national unity as the simple additive aggregation of disparate ethnic groups – “nationalities” and “peoples” of Ethiopia joining “hands” in a spirit of kumbaya! The good “doctor” is breathtakingly overconfident in his prescription for our political and national ills. He thinks he knows more than he actually does. And this explains the lack of probing questions and the shortage of conceptual and strategic analysis in his discourse on unity.

The truth is that the problems of Ethiopian solidarity today are not as easily tractable or soluble as Messay makes them out to be. We face fairly complex issues and conditions. Modes of political concern about unity and the way in which it is valued or sought differ with varying interests, parties, and regimes arrayed in and around Ethiopia today, notably, the TPLF, the OLF (or what is left of it), Shabiya, and Patriotic-Ginbot Sebat. A particular form of state, say, an authoritarian one-party regime, shapes national anidinnet differently from an actually democratic state. For example, the possibilities for meaningful unity in Eritrea are severely constrained by partisan-cum-personal dictatorship which has insinuated itself into Eritrean “national” consciousness. Single party domination is simply and exclusively equated with national unity. Under these conditions, legitimate Eritrean dissent from the Shabiya regime can easily be construed as disloyalty to the “nation,” so immediate and total is the conflation of ruling party and country.

The situation in our own country is not a whole lot different though the historic Ethiopian nation, inclusive of Kebessa Eritreans, has deep-rooted national being and culture that are not merely products of contemporary partisan-tribal nationalism. Our political situation is not much different from Eritrea even if the TPLF regime, unlike the dictatorship of Isaias Afwerki, has gone to some lengths to project a democratic self-image, a bold-faced pretense really, that has absolutely no basis in fact. The Woyanes have their own self-serving exclusively partisan sense and understanding of Ethiopian “unity”, as do some of their opponents, like the OLF and Ginbot Sebat, whose backer Professor Messay is.

G-7 may have a declared position favorable toward our national interest but its struggle against the Woyane regimein effect represents, at least in part, the dubious regional agenda of its “ally,” the Shabiya regime, an agenda which has ever been unfriendly toward Ethiopian interests. This supposed alliance is all the more worrisome given that G-7 has declined to take positions on vital Ethiopian issues, even in principle, including on the matter of Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea, basically asserting that all national matters will be decided democratically after the Woyanes are removed from power.

Let us put aside for the moment the fancy of Shabiya dictators helping G-7 preside over democratic change in Ethiopia after the overthrow of the TPLF regime. What prevents Ginbotoch from being forthcoming with alternative policy ideas and positions now as any political party or movement attempting to lead a national struggle would? After all, they are not being asked to “decide” major national issues presently, only to take considered positions on them by way of appealing to, and gaining the support of, the Ethiopian people in their (armed) struggle against TPLF tyranny. Unless, of course, they don’t see broad popular support or even actual, protracted, armed struggle as essential to their success in capturing power.  So G-7’s entire political project remains puzzling.

Even if we grant that the party has honest intention to be a force for Ethiopian unity and democracy, what matters is not the organization’s intention so much as its present and projected capability as it operates under Shabiya’s wing. The choice of armed struggle Shabiya’s support has lent G-7 is more apparent than real, at least so far, because the option remains in a weird state of suspended animation, not having been exercised for years in actually engaging the enemy on the battlefield. With little or no military force of their own, Dr. Birhanu Nega and company formally “preside” over a collection of ethnic armies, the largest of which is Tigrean, supported by and ultimately answerable to the Isaias regime. Whatever the future holds for this strange configuration of anti-Woyane forces, the arrangement as such is hardly reassuring concerning what post-Woyane Ethiopian national order might look like in the event of the overthrow TPLF dictatorship, never mind regarding prospects for democratic transformation of Ethiopian politics and government.

But, here is the main point: in making the option of armed struggle, such as it is, available to G-7 against the TPLF, its erstwhile protégé and collaborator, Shabiya does so using essentially the same ethnic political calculus as does the TPLF, intending to neutralize Ethiopian national power from within. More generally, as purveyors of political ethnicism in Ethiopia in one form or another, these various parties and regimes may have tactical differences and even major rivalries, but competitively or cooperatively, they often reproduce the logic of identity politics within their discourses of Ethiopian affairs, including their talk of the nation’s unity. Insofar, that is, they have all acknowledged, if only pragmatically, the realities of the Ethiopian nation. For Shabiya, the TPLF, and the OLF in particular, it has ever been thus.

So out of both renewed, more thoughtful, progressive commitment to ideas-based politics and patriotic concern, Ethiopian literati today should, I believe, exert concerted intellectual effort to make these inauthentic discursive and political gestures of “unity” clear to themselves and to the Ethiopian people. I stress two essential points here: First, it remains a major interest of political ethnicism in all its variants that Ethiopian solidarity beyond a coalition of insular tribal “selves” must ever be weakened and deferred.  Real Ethiopian unity that is more than the sum of disparate “nationalities” and “peoples” is essentially impracticable through the ethnonationalisms of the TPLF and the OLF because it would threaten the very logic of identity politics constitutive of these ethnic parties. Second, truly integral Ethiopian national experience needs to be defended not only from interests and forces that are clearly hostile toward it, but also from parties, groups and regimes that appear to befriend it while actually pursuing interests, goals, and proxy identity battles that undermine our shared national life.

Thought for Unity

Can we ask, pausing for a moment from our unending but demonstrably unproductive attempts at “uniting” everything in sight – every political party, ethnic outfit, coalition, and civic organization – why the landscape of Ethiopian opposition to Woyane dictatorship at home and abroad is so overflowing with disparate entities in the first place? How may we understand the multiplicity of dissident parties, fronts, groups, and forums among Ethiopians, many of which are knowingly or unwittingly geared toward expanding the currency of identity politics?

It may appear that the valorization of partisan and tribal collectives over the last quarter century of Woyane dictatorship means that distinct ethnic, cultural, and political entities in the country have fundamental differences with (or about) Ethiopian andinnet, and that they take their national differences seriously and face them squarely. But the truth is that partisan and ethnic divisions, self-identifications, and groupings have proliferated among us mainly because we have often avoided facing the challenges of difference and diversity in our shared national life. For all our talk about unity, we have too often distanced ourselves from dynamic national wholeness hospitable to complexity and productive of truly progressive movement and change.

In this avoidance, which is also evident in our intellectual engagement or lack thereof, the insular tribal attitude can at times be commensurate with a naïve, artless ideal of unity: the former, like the latter, often originates in impatience with, or intolerance of the complexities of dissimilarity and pluralism within our national oneness. Obsessing about over-politicized, narrow, ethnic identity (often construed in vacuous formulaic terms as “national self-determination”) can be the other side of the coin of insisting defensively on unity pure simple. We need to leave these fixations behind and fully embrace our shared nationality in all its historical depth, diversity and development potential. I believe we can do this.

In order to develop fundamental Ethiopian solidarity in the resistance against TPLF dictatorship and to project a post-Woyane vision of democratic-national order, it is essential that we establish a broadly inclusive yet definite framework of thought and action. We need an alternative, actually functioning, structure of terms, concepts, and norms through which national unity may be commonly understood and embraced by the Ethiopian people today regardless of their ethnicity. The new system of ideas and values should be capable of integrally handling political pluralism and dissent.

I contend in this connection that harping on about “national reconciliation” ahead of developing such a frame of reference is really not facing our fundamental challenge, namely, firming up and revitalizing the very national ground we stand on as we seek not only to “reconcile” but also bring about systemic political change. If national reconciliation is to be meaningful and effective in bringing diverse constituents and parties together, it has first to take place in the domains of feeling and thinking; primarily, it has to be a reconciliation of sense contents, like belief, attitude, hope and passion, and of intellectualized political notions, like individual rights, nationality, democracy and federalism.

We cannot expect reconciliation to be simply and straightaway mutual accommodation among existing, incorrigibly exclusive, partisan and tribal groups, say, the TPLF and some faction or spinoff of the OLF, or between the Woyane regime and its patriotic and democratic opponents. While such an outcome may not be ruled out absolutely, anticipating it is not being reasonably hopeful; it is being merely wishful. What is worse, the anticipation does not even acknowledge foundational issues and problems in Ethiopian unity today, most importantly the lack of consensus on organizing and operative ideas and principles of national and political life, like individual rights, democracy, local self-government and federalism.

Setting out from this initial understanding and from the questions raised above, I propose the following theses on the fundamentals of Ethiopian unity. The theses constitute a thought experiment as it were intended for further discussion among Ethiopian patriots, political groups, concerned intellectuals, journalists, activists and professional strata of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

(1) In post-revolutionary Ethiopia, the constituent elements of national unity (localities, communities) that make up the Ethiopian whole, have been imposed upon in their very subjectivity or agency by politically self-serving authoritarian groups and regimes, thereby being forced to carry  exclusively partisan forms of “identity” and “difference”. Such an imposition is a fundamental flaw, a non-starter in terms of building true national unity; it should not be allowed to pass itself off as constitutive of “facts on the ground,” an absolute necessity.

Instead, it should be seen as what it really is, a limited, contestable and changeable partisan and bureaucratic construct. Consequently, a critical first step to be taken by trans-ethnic forces of national unity today is to recognize (a) that exclusive identity partisanship in Ethiopia is largely a legacy of Leninist-Stalinist revolutionary politics whose origins go back to the Student Movement, and (b) the need to develop an alternative, more democratic, approach to the shared as well as distinct, interests, concerns, and self-identifications of diverse Ethiopian communities in a new spirit of openness, receptivity, and solidarity.

How may we do this? We do it, I believe, by deconstructing the ideological “superstructure” of the regime of identity in all its variants and political fabrications, by wresting the issues that actually matter to the Ethiopian people from the grip of exclusive partisan-tribal construction in both its ruling and oppositional forms. We do it by taking objective account of the felt needs and lived experiences of local communities in the country as they have never been taken account of before the Revolution or since. We may also be able to do it by restraining sectarian and dogmatic habits of thought, instead employing ideas as cognitive instruments, as analytical and critical tools of Ethiopian enlightenment in the broad sense. And this means overcoming a major limitation of our troubled revolutionary legacy, namely, the use of progressive thought, or what passes for such thought, exclusively as a means of over-politicizing and “nationalizing” ethnicity, as a narrow, restricted mechanism of “self-determination” or self-definition and self-assertion.

(2) As parts of the Ethiopian national whole, assignable communities, say, Tigres, Amahars or Oromos, do not bring entirely pre-given, exclusive ethnic “selves” to social, economic, cultural, and political relations of Ethiopian unity; for their collective and individual subjectivities have already taken shape through such relations. This has not been simply an outcome of deliberate state policy of national assimilation, but a reflection of the historical fact that the identities of Ethiopia’s diverse communities are in part products of trans-regional movements, contacts, and inter-ethnic relations of populations, not simply outcomes of tribal localities or “self-determinations.”

So in advancing the cause of Ethiopian unity today, we jettison the traditional “radical” assumption that ethnic selves in Ethiopia are clearly bounded and self-enclosed wholes in a geographic, economic, social or cultural sense, and that particular regions or localities in the country are, or will remain, coterminous with linguistically homogeneous populations. And this means that there is no question of an ethnic organization such as the TPLF or the OLF coming to a negotiation with other tribal groups about andinnet or reconciliation from “outside” Ethiopiawinnet. For any tribal group to attempt such self “externalization” would be like an individual trying to “jump out of his or her skin”. It constitutes failure to acknowledge the undeniable fact that, whatever local or regional issues we pursue, we do so as an integral part of Ethiopia, a national whole already constituted by Tigres and Oromos no less than by other ethnic and cultural communities in the country.

This is not to deny or underestimate injustices state authorities and their local agents have inflicted on Ethiopian ethnic and cultural minorities in the past and continue to inflict in the present regardless of the minority or majority status of communities. The wrongs are real and need fundamental righting. But we should also note that the deeply flawed yet persistent convention of “progressive” discourse in Ethiopia, which took shape as a supposedly radical response to the injustices, needs major overhaul or correction of its own. Decades old, the convention has cumulatively become a fundamental obstacle to Ethiopian solidarity, assuming acute crisis proportions today under Woyane “revolutionary democracy.”

What I have in mind here is the leftist tradition of referring to distinct Ethiopian communities simply as victors and vanquished, oppressors and oppressed, thereby reducing the totality of the “identities” and “differences” of the populations involved simply to aggregates of their problems, not much more. Entire populations are marked or characterized nearly exclusively by the injustices they are said to have suffered or caused others to suffer. Within the leftist tradition of discourse in Ethiopia, it is as if a social group in the country can only acquire identity or subjectivity as a victim or victimizer of another community.

For example, the Oromo people, who for centuries have constituted an integral part of Ethiopia, have traditionally been spoken of by partisans of the OLF mainly in terms of their victimization by expanding and conquering Amharas, to the exclusion of Oromos’ own historical agency of conquest and expansion, their autonomous entry into the Ethiopian national scene. Essentially the same thing can be said about how Tigres have been spoken of by the TPLF, largely following an overbearing convention of “revolutionary” thought and discourse whose origins go back to the Student movement.

This tradition of abnegative self-labeling has taken a major psychological and political toll on some members of Oromo and Tigre intellectual and political elites who are ever smarting from wounded cultural pride. Many among these elites continue to cling to identity politics even as they moderate their separatist demands and acknowledge shared Ethiopian nationality. They have difficulty affirming their Ethiopiawinnet and committing to one national struggle against Woyane tyranny. This was evident even in the face of recent Oromo popular uprisings triggered by the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan, which made the case for such struggle all the more convincing, indeed, obvious. Apparently, the psychology and politics of identity die hard.

(3) It is to be admitted that Ethiopiawinnet, which signifies our unity or shared nationality, is not only what we feel, value, and experience but also something we reflect back on in active and transformative consciousness. Conceptual thought enters into our national experience, particularly in times of crisis and change, to enable us perform tasks of evaluation and critique. But here too we remain Ethiopians and act as such. In questioning and seeking to transform our shared nationality, we do not (and need not) alienate ourselves, as the Woyanes have done, from our ancestral heritage by adopting an external, tribally resentful and vindictive political attitude toward it. Nor do we need to caricature our common national heritage as nothing but the sum of its limitations or problems, mischaracterizing it in a fit of self-alienating abstract radicalism as nothing but Amhara/Shoa domination or Abyssinian colonialism.

We now know that such radical conceit is actually anything but radical because it is itself nationally rootless to begin with. We may, of course, adopt a critical attitude toward the Ethiopian tradition. But in doing so we need not deny or suppress our very national being; instead, we could engage and question what has lain within us as the unique stuff of shared Ethiopian experience. In seeking national change and development, we seek Ethiopia’s integraltransformation and betterment; we aim, that is, at the perfection of our union, not its division and undoing.

(4) While unity can be built or strengthened effectively on the basis of recognition of the diversity and equality of communities, by embracing  and valuing differences, the recognition at the same time calls for a commensurate intensification in the values, institutions and practices of national integration. We need to acknowledge a dynamic reciprocity between diversity, on one side, and integral Ethiopian experience, on the other. Minority cultures and local communities have gotten added national value in being part of our common historic national tradition, while, in supplying their distinct values, customs, forms of life and self-identifications, they have in turn enriched Ethiopian national culture. They have enriched it not simply through their multiplicity but also through trans-regional movements, contacts, intersections, and cultural exchanges that have created the foundation for Ethiopian national unity.

So to represent or portray Ethiopian unity would not be to depict a “consociation” of disparate cultural and social groups that are externally aggregated and coordinated, but an integrally ordered national society in which the human and citizenship rights of individuals are safeguarded and strengthened even as cultural autonomy and diversity are maintained. This vision of Ethiopian andinnet stands in sharp contrast to TPLF, OLF, and Shabiya constructs of the nation’s unity as a collection of self-contained, bureaucratically bounded and manipulated tribal communities, labeled according to Stalinist convention as “nations, nationalities, and peoples.”  The vision contains a new conception of “locality” or local community whose definition transcends ethnicity.

(5) In rebuilding national solidarity today by overcoming the ravages of TPLF tribal dictatorship, we disabuse ourselves from the rationalist illusion of the revolutionary era that the Ethiopian people can maintain unity through abstract progressive ideas alone, without relying on a common national culture. Ethiopia and Ethiopiawinnet have undeniable historical depth; Ethiopiawinnet cannot be adequately represented and maintained solely in terms of modern political reason, for it makes itself felt in primary sense-forming patriotic sentiments, values, attitudes, and lived experience, in the immediacy of images, symbols, narratives or myths, and in the power of collective memory passed on from generation to generation.

It is understandable that for many Ethiopian progressive purists past and present who regard nationality mainly as contemporary political achievement based on representations of ideas like “democracy” and “equality” or social (class and ethnic) interests, Ethiopia’s long-established tradition of nationhood may not be as significant as its present value or justification. Much less agreeable is an extreme strain of thought, or alleged thought, within the Ethiopian leftist tradition which dismisses historic Ethiopian nationality as “fake,” a mere myth. This view is predicated on a shallow “scientific” misunderstanding of myth by the philistine as falsehood, a story lacking in factual content; the misunderstanding can be likened to seeing or approaching poetry as conventional journalistic prose.

Let me conclude here by suggesting a corrective to this lingering strain of “radical” thought, as it is out of gear with our national experience. As is the case with the founding stories of nations, religions, and civilizations elsewhere in the world, the Ethiopian narrative is not entirely a literal or “objective” description of national acts and events; it is in part “creative” of the Ethiopian experience. That is what national myths do. But the main point here is that our national narrative reflects and has as its condition of possibility actual past events and developments. So the structure of recorded historical events, deeds, and accomplishments that underlie the Ethiopian national story has objective intelligibility which Ethiopians of all ethnic backgrounds can value, or at least acknowledge, as constitutive of our shared national heritage.

In a following piece (Part II), I intend to focus on challenges of strategic thought and action in creating anidinnet in the Ethiopian struggle for survival and freedom. An alternative to thinking about unity as the mere sum of parties and groups needs to be further developed within the resistance, and I think it can be developed most effectively around the theme of strategy, where vision, thought, and action converge.

The writer can be reached at tdemmellash@comcast.net