” Oh, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
No certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. “
‘Dover Beach’
Matthew Arnold
I am convinced that the time is already over and must be of necessity over when religions are left to the clerics and gurus, politics to the politicians, science to the scientists, journalism to the journalists, and economics to the banks and multinationals. This is by no means to imply the individuals in question are all untrustworthy. The system is luring many of them to harm others and nature. That is why all of us need to be concerned and heard. Otherwise we may end up as soulless robots, serving forces that are engaged in unprecedented new forms of global conflicts and disasters in this nuclear age.
It is clear that most of us ordinary human beings are not in the slightest degree interested in world politics. The system of ruthless competition and the mindset of the struggle for personal survival is consuming most of human energy. So, I am not blaming ordinary people. I am sure all sentient human beings, including the super rich, feel in some ways, the current malaise in human societies. But I am equally almost certain that the sense of responsibility cannot be achieved merely through preaching and propaganda. It must come from within, from unmistakeably experiencing our own reality, feeling our own feelings, looking into our own perceptions, from direct and unmitigated awareness and inner conviction that the well being of mankind is indivisible today and our beautiful planet is affected by the behavior of each of us.
There is no people who are unimportant on earth and whose fate should be left to genocidal military dictators as is the case today especially in the Horn of Africa. Human aspiration for a bright new era had been hijacked by the neoconservatives in America with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretext of fighting Al-qaida. Since then dictators everywhere have jumped on the bandwagon of war on terror to advance their own old repressive agendas. The hegemonic Abyssinian political elites, those in power as well as those in opposition, are pinning their ambition on the present world situation to hold their empire together mainly through repression and violence, despite the hymns they sing and the lyrics they constantly recite on the virtue of democracy. The recent Lampedusa boat disaster is not an isolated accident or tragedy. It is the latest in a series of tragedies exasperated by the global war led by the USA. Let us ask: how many people have perished on Yemeni coasts while trying to flee Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea alone, countries directly or indirectly embroiled in the ugliest global war whose victims are mostly innocents?
I do take some comfort from the British parliament voting against military intervention in Syria. It was clear the intervention was not meant to overthrow the genocidal Asad regime. Of course I am also at loss how the Saudi and Qatar backed opposition groups can initiate a democratic change in that country. Are Saudi Arabia and Qatar models to be followed by the Syrian and Egyptian people? My own reading of the situation is that the recent uproar about Syria is meant to divert the attention from the Egyptian scene in the wake of the horrendous military brutalities there.
The Muslin brotherhood leaders, on their part, have always locked themselves in impossible situations throughout the history of their movement. These are, as far as I know, halfhearted reformists, not prepared to take any serious risks, being mostly from traditional middle class background. Many of them suffer from apocalyptic visions and are in the old habit of quoting and misusing shariah as a final remedy for all emergent problems in a constantly evolving, changing and unpredictable world- all out for easy popularity. All this has nothing to do with the eternal truths contained in Islam. From the beginning they have been afraid of mobilizing and working with all social forces interested in genuine changes irrespective of religious denominations. Hence their naive and wavering attitudes towards the old repressive security and military machines. Now it is easy for them to blame everyone except themselves. This is not to ignore the unavoidable foreign intervention in this strategic part of the world any way. But there is no denying that the brotherhood leaders have missed a historical opportunity to intelligently mobilize the broad masses of the Egyptian people by creating a broad popular coalition for democracy. If they are capable of reassessing the situation dynamically by putting aside their cherished dogmatic rigidity, they can still play positive role in the movement for democracy.
That would have been a positive experiment in genuine religiousness that transcends one particular religion without self-contradiction. This requires higher degree of integrity and courage which is not easy to acquire suddenly or in haste. A new understanding of the essence of religions, which is not the monopoly of clerics, is urgently needed everywhere, if we are seriously interested in world peace beyond paying lip-service.
Compared to Ethiopia, Egypt’s problems are manageable without dismembering it. Unlike Egypt, Ethiopia is an empire where the civilian and military elites of two minority ethnic groups dominate alternately for more than a century the vast majority of oppressed nations and nationalities who are treated as subhuman.
The myth of Ethiopia as a Christian country surrounded by pagan and Muslim enemies has become in the course of time part of colonialist and imperialist concepts and ideas to divide and rule. This holds true up to now, no matter how the fallacy of this myth stinks to heaven. Yet it could happen that Egypt, Somalia and other poor countries become dismembered before Ethiopia. That is unless the old myth explodes due to a new human awareness that cannot be manipulated or controlled. Who knows?
I expect such an awareness to arise sooner or later in the first place among the elites of the oppressed nations and nationalities themselves, leading to a substantial breakthrough in the form of solidarity and new appropriate forms of legitimate struggle capable, in the long run, of galvanizing world public opinion to our ordeals.
Oromos are the largest single group here. No doubt, their political and organizational awareness is the most crucial factor in the equation. But the truth is most of us, Oromos, live constantly in chronic fear. For very long time now, this fear is systematically blocking our thinking, our transparency, our deep self awareness, our self confidence and our creativity. The Tigray and Amhara reactionary and brutal political forces have always counted on three major factors simultaneously to keep Oromos in this condition: their fire power, imperialist politics, and fomenting religious fears and disorientation. In this reality it is extremely difficult for most of us to act effectively. Again, the truth is here is a situation where it is hard to hear the victims under the noise and drama of their aggressors and those international circles supporting them. This is also why even the Oromo Diaspora is divided, unable to reflect effectively the reality of a people whose dreams and aspirations are constantly dashed and deferred.
Both Tigray dominated regimes in Ethiopia and Eritrea are undergoing currently acute internal crisis as power struggle is raging within them. Anyone who followed the last interview of Esaias on the Eritrean TV cannot fail to see that he was signalling some sort of rapprochement with the TPLF or part of its factions.
But if the worst comes to the worst both sides are organizing puppet opposition forces militarily to swiftly fill any power vacuum resulting from devastating, violent and crippling power struggle in both capitals.
This must be increasingly worrying for the only superpower trying to force the course of history mainly through military muscle. The latest confrontation in Kenya with Al-Shabab may force the US to push hard for the over mentioned rapprochement between Tigray dictators so they will be obliged to combine their military machines in the service of war on the so-called Islamic terror. The end of this dirty global game is not in sight.
For dictators and corrupt regimes in Africa this is the ideal situation in which they can prosper undeterred. The so-called digital economic growth miracle in Ethiopia is in fact an indicator of affluence in which the Tigray elites live, far from reflecting the economic reality in Ethiopia. In the meantime, Somalia must remain in a limbo until its people bow down to the will of the only super power and its surrogates in Ethiopia and Kenya. The initial euphoria with which many well meaning Somalis greeted the new government in Mogadishu is evaporating with every passing day.
The Oromo question and the Somali dilemma are organically interconnected. But most of us do not see this clearly for many reasons. Most Somalis are blinded to this fact because they are wallowing in their clan politics and clan pride. Or they are making of religion an issue, which is wrong as most Somalis are Muslims and there is no religious discrimination within them, as is the case in Ethiopia. Oromos live in a large military prison that is called Ethiopia, mostly paralyzed, as said earlier, by the fear of the Abyssinian fire power and, not to forget, the fear of fear. It is not incorrect to say of the Abyssinian dominated Empire of Ethiopia that it is periodically ‘Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.’ Matthew Arnold has it. A wonderful expression of human condition. I do not think that there is a people who live in constant fear of death like the Oromos of the Ethiopian Empire. Most of us have assimilated this fear so much that we even do not think about it, or feel it consciously though it circulates in our blood. We are numbed as a matter of fact. Our impractical constant discussions about our struggle are boring. Whatever unease we feel is drowned in consumerism, the race for daily survival and careerism even to the point of serving our enemies diligently. Our oppressors want us to live in this condition for ever.
We have little choice but too feel our pains consciously and decide on appropriate forms of struggle in solidarity with other struggling peoples in this world, especially with the Somali people.
Speaking of careerism, it is perhaps interesting to mention, in passing, that all supremacist Tigray and Amhara cliques and groups use Oromo figures as dummies to display to further deceive the Oromo people and the international community. Andinet is using Nagasu Gidada, to say nothing of other Oromos in Medrek, while the TPLF has installed recently yet another Oromo puppet as a ceremonial head of state. Eritrea is using Kamal Galchu and Dawud Ibsa as mere ciphers. This is the brave new world of modern Abyssinian political mentality, the best we can have now! Oromia is so important. The Abyssinian elites are furious. They will not hesitate to do anything, no matter how phony, ugly and wicked to erode Oromo self-awareness and patriotism.
Of course, the course of history cannot be easily reversed that way in our time. Oromos may be living in constant fear, but they will not completely resign to their despair and oppression for ever as our oppressors want us to do.. We will never give up our aspiration for liberty in an independent Oromia free from the Abyssinian domination and influence of nauseating negations. The world is changing constantly.