Can Kenya succeed where others failed?
From time to time I do visit awate.com to follow developments within the Eritrean opposition based in Addis Ababa. An
article posted by Saleh AA Younis (November 10, 2011) attracted my attention. After a long catalogue of failures and weaknesses of the Eritrean regime, which are by the way by no means much different from those of the Woyane regime, the writer ends the first part of his article by making the following very interesting statement: “But nations do not get in trouble with the UN for failing to provide social justice to their citizens. Further, as painful as it is for Eritreans to hear, national governments do not get in trouble with UN based on how inhumanely they treat their citizens- national sovereignty and all that- unless it meets some Rwandan threshold. National governments draw the attention of the UN when they become a menace to regional peace and security and on that sole criteria, the government of Esaias Afwerki, just like the government of Muammer Khaddafi, has been found guilty enough to be sanctioned. And no glossy campaign paper (by the Eritrean regime) will do much to impress the UN.”
I do not know if the parallel drawn between Eritrea and Libya can stand close examination. The first part of Saleh’s statement is certainly to the point. But his statement on who is threatening regional peace and security stinks to high heaven. It reminds me of a saying attributed to Adlai Stevenson: “a journalist is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.” It reminds me also of what Lord Northcliffe said: “Journalism: a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.” Well, Saleh presents to the reader some grains of wheat in order to give credibility to his categorical statement on regional peace.
As a matter of fact, the power struggle between the two Tigray dominated regimes in Ethiopia and Eritrea masks the underlying fundamental issues of democracy and justice in both countries, one being a huge empire , another a mini empire with similar problems. Instead of squarely addressing this issue, Saleh adopts the Anglo-American definition and concern about regional peace and security. The most fundamental question, who is threatening regional peace and security concretely and before all those who have eyes to see, must be addressed in this context. Eritrea, under dictatorship, with its own immense internal problems, including the problem of grabbing Moslem lands, and Somalia, devoured by the warlords in Mogadishu and the separatist cliques in Somaliland and Puntland, alongside Shabab, do not pose any real serious threat to regional peace and security. This is a simple fact that does not need proving.
The real problem is that the major global players are engaged in patching up and rescuing the huge empire-state of Ethiopia in their own interests, not in the interests of its peoples, an empire where half of its Moslem population is treated like nonentity, and more than half its population, made up of oppressed nationalities, treated like second class citizens. This empire cannot be maintained if the Eritreans in Eritrea and the Somalis in Somalia are given the chance to opt for genuine democracy without interference from outside. Saleh’s worries apart, the big powers are not interested in addressing the real issues of gross injustices and repressions in the region even though they pay lip service to democratic values and are pretending to be champions of the so called Arab Spring. This is the truth whether we like it or not, part of the sad realities of our region.
In the meantime the Woyane establishment has been able with the help of its international backers to manufacture large numbers of opportunist and fake intellectuals quickly also from among Muslims and the oppressed nationalities, in the service of its huge state apparatus, hoping thereby to neutralise the time bomb.
The USA seems to have realized its blunder of using Ethiopia in the first place to control the situation in Somalia. This realization has led to the new scenario of the Kenyan involvement which will end most probably in yet another humiliating debacle because, as usual, it does not take the attitudes and wishes of the ordinary peoples into consideration. Moreover, unlike the Abyssinian population, the Amhara in the first place, most of the Kenyan people do not see any real threat coming from Somalia at present.
Finally the question is how many of us from the oppressed nations and nationalities of Ethiopia in the Diaspora , especially among the Oromos, including the writer of this article, realize that countless Somalis and even Eritreans are suffering partly on our account, while we look on passively from our private niches and gutters in exile, at a time when our peoples are dispossessed, inside the prison that is Ethiopia, losing their soil and livelihood, and while the repression is mounting under the Woyane hegemony with every passing day? Is raising only a hue and cry against the Woyane or huddling together in mosques and churches, learning only old texts by heart, enough to change our realities?