With the UN Security Council approving a U.S drafted resolution authorising the deployment of Ethiopian troops to create a demilitarized zone between North and South Sudan, the policy makers in Washington and London are determined as ever to make the regime in Ethiopia appear respectable. What a stroke of luck for Woyane to be transformed once again into a regional police, keeping peace in Sudan’s disputed Abyei region!
Is this not a clear message to the oppressed peoples in the empire-state of Ethiopia not to try to initiate against Melles Zenawi’s regime the kind of popular upheavals that engulfed the Arab area? Actually the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, confronted with the upheavals, had no worse human rights violation records than the regime in Ethiopia. Nothing comparable to the ethnic cleansing by Woyane against the peoples of Beni Shangul, of Ogaden or Somalia or Afar did take place in these countries, not to mention the ongoing systematic repressions especially against the Oromo people. The West seems supportive of the so-called Arab spring in several Arab countries to the point of involving NATO, an aggressive American dominated military alliance, ( it should have been dissolved long ago alongside Warsaw Pact) in bombing Libyan cities to liberate their people from their dictator! Will NATO start bombing in Syria as well where there is no oil? Is this double game a pure chance? What are the substantive achievements of the protest movements in the Arab countries anyway so far, with the West interfering constantly? What do we especially Oromos learn from all this? Are there many creatures among us Oromos who dream that NATO will one day come to protect the Oromo people too against brutal Abyssinian dictators? I have already met some such creatures as a matter of fact. Islam is their biggest problem, not the western backed Abyssinian supremacy.
Those Oromos who, like the ones in the OPDO, lick Woyane’s boots, or the ones in the OLF, who lick Sha’abia’s boots , in short, those who are never in the habit of questioning any absolute power, including of course Anglo-American power, do not need to answer my questions. They are fully engaged in the service of their masters and their own bellies. Besides, the conviction that might is right runs deep in their blood, thanks to the Abyssinian political culture. This is pragmatism in their world! But those of us who keep hoping idly against hope need to ask such questions in order to wake up from our slumber and self-deception and to realistically follow the developments on the horizon; otherwise our illogical assumptions and fantasies will keep recoiling on us as always.
Many ordinary Oromos whom I confront with certain basic questions listen to me silently with bewilderment as if I were from another planet or as if I were in a hurry to put them on the line. Others say to me openly they have children to feed and families to take care of. The implication is that I should do likewise or stop bothering them. To put it mildly, they are apologetic and want to take credit for bringing up children, accepting humiliation and indignity generation after generation. I considered this point once again as I lay in hospital recently for one week for medical check and this is the first article since I left. In principle I think it is good to raise children and take care of the family. But for heavens sake let us do it without loosing our essential human dignity. God or, if you like, nature, meant us to be free and happy. The problem is children brought up by yes men and women are most likely to be almost the same even when they seem to rebel – yes men and slaves -and are rarely a blessing to anyone after all. The present ruling elite itself is made up of seemingly grown-ups- aggressive children of yes men of feudal Abyssinia, even though they are paraded by some western scholars as being part of a new African elite. No wonder that right now they are rearming themselves with weapons of new types with the intention of prolonging the days of their empire and remaining in power indefinitely by serving Anglo-American imperialist interests while hundreds of thousands of people in the lowlands of the empire are exposed to famine.