Re: Fw: Annan blames Ethiopia...

The "stand" I take is for the working classes of Africa to rid themselves of
the neo-colonialists as well as the local capitalists -- in other words, to
confront and dismantle all forms of capitalism. Specifically, that means
that all oppressed people should work to end these wars by opposing their
own government. I don't recognize the "right" of a capitalist Eritrea (which
is oppressing many Eritreans) to exist, just as I don't recognize the
"right" of capitalist Ethiopia (or capitalist Britain or U.S., for that
matter) to exist. So I don't support the "right" of the Oromo leadership
(some in close alliance with Geman imperialists, by the way) to establish an
independent, capitalist state to enhance their oppression of the Oromo
people, and I don't support the "right" of the Eritrean leadership to
establish an independent capitalist state to enhance their oppression of the
Eritrean people although of course all imperialist intervention must be
opposed. "Self-determination" from Algeria to the Congo has not eliminated
the horrors of capitalism.

I realize that this might sound like "traditional dogmatic marxism" but my
opinions are not based on reading of the sacred texts of St. Marx and St.
Lenin. It is based on looking at the long, murderous record of capitalism,
where its record of devastation and death is especially apparent in Africa.
So I do applaud your efforts to condemn the Ethiopian regime for carrying
out this war. By the way, the issue of political prisoners in Ethiopia is
especially important; tens of thousands of opponents, most NOT connected
with Mengistu's "Dergue" regime, languish in prison while teenagers are paid
to tote guns around terrorizing anyone who disagrees with the current
TPLF-led government, and famine again threatens millions.

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-----Original Message-----
From: alexy2k gerard <alexandragerard@hotmail.com>
To: spectors@netnitco.net <spectors@netnitco.net>; wsn@csf.colorado.edu
<wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 09, 2000 9:56 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Annan blames Ethiopia...


>
>>
>>Ethiopia is undoubtedly run by gangsters. So is Eritrea.  In fact these
>>gangsters were in a very, very close alliance. Both regimes have many
>>political prisoners. Both have resorted to assassination against critics.
>
>
>hello Alan:
>
>I do not dispute the  point that you made above.  However, you cannot use
it
>for avoiding to take a stand on issue in question which is the devastating
>war and the impending famine.  I have followed it closely and I assure you
>that the gangsters in Ethiopia are the intransigent ones as their ambition
>is to reverse Eritrean independence and dominate the region.  This same
>gangsters are also perpetrating untold crimes against the long suffering
>Oromo people.  For a little background, please read the following peice.
>
>Alexy
>
>=====================================================
>
>Why Ethiopia Doesn’t Want Peace
>
>Okbazghi Yohannes April 6, 2000
>
>I must admit that, after thinking long and hard, I have reached the
unsavory
>conclusion that the conflict and the consequent war between Eritrea and
>Ethiopia over Badame is a superficial representation of something larger
>that has to do with the mind-set of the Ethiopians in general and the
>Tigrayan-controlled regime in particular. Before elaborating on this point,
>I would like to bring two cardinal questions to the attention of the
>reader.
>
>First, the fact that the Eritrean Government has unequivocally accepted the
>Algiers peace plan must be acknowledged in contrast to the intransigence of
>the Ethiopian regime on the matter. The ball is now in Ethiopia’s court.
>Therefore, the international community has an obligation to bring sustained
>pressure to bear on the Ethiopian regime to quit dragging its feet and come
>to the peace table.
>
>The second question involves the gross international misperception
>surrounding the nature and genesis of the conflict. Precisely because they
>ask the wrong questions, many journalists and even scholars have difficulty
>understanding how two former stalwart allies could fight over a desolate
>piece of land. Without a proper diagnosis of the problem, no one can
>squarely face the challenge of peace in the area.
>
>I sincerely believe that the Ethio-Eritrean confrontation over Badame is a
>sheer pretext on Ethiopia’s side for a larger ambition. In 1992, long
>before the eruption of hostility between the two countries, the British
>human rights activist and keen watcher of African politics, Alex Dewal, had
>actually foreseen a serious problem looming in what he termed “Abyssinian
>fundamentalism”. The Amhara and Tigrayans of Ethiopia traditionally
>referred to as Abyssinians to distinguish them from the rest of Ethiopians,
>have the antiquated notion of land and sovereignty. Their geographic
>definition of Ethiopia runs counter to the modern conception of territorial
>delimitations and the principle of self-determination.
>
> It was this fundamentalist orientation that fueled Ethiopia’s thirty years
>war on Eritrea, claiming that Eritrea was historically part of Ethiopia.
>Still imbued with the same delusional perspective, the Amhara and Tigrayans
>had been having difficulty accepting Eritrea’s independence. Given this
>mind-set, it was only a matter of time before the Ethiopian regime embarked
>on a belligerent policy against Eritrea.
>
>The Adwa syndrome is the logical frame of reference for Abyssinian
>fundamentalists as the Amhara and Tigrayans have been socialized into
>internalizing the doctrine of Ethiopia’s almost boundless territorial reach
>and self-invincibility. The unavoidable consequence of this syndrome is the
>belief that only a military solution is the viable option. It is no
>coincidence that the Ethiopian regime today draws a bogus parallel between
>Ethiopia’s victory at Adwa in 1896 against the Italians and its seizure of
a
>very tiny piece of land around Badame a year ago. Under the battlecry:
>“Adwa victory repeated at Badame,” the regime temporarily succeeded in
>calling Ethiopians to the streets of Addis Ababa in its attempt to create
an
>unbridgeable gulf between the peoples of the two countries.
>
>Although the Amhara and the Tigrayans share the belief in “greater Ethiopia
>ideology,” watered by Abyssinian fundamentalism and the Adwa syndrome,
there
>is an additional complicating factor, having to do with the emergence of a
>bellicose Tigrayan nationalism, one that seeks to establish Tigrayan
>dominance in Ethiopian politics. We need to recall that until the
>mid-eighties the Tigray People’s Liberation Front was wholly committed to
>creating an independent Tigrayan state.
>
>However, it soon dawned on the TPLF leadership that Tigray, poorly endowed
>with natural resources and surrounded by Eritrea on the north and southeast
>on the one hand, and by the Amhara of Ethiopia on the south and west on the
>other, could not and would not exist as a viable state. So the TPLF
>leadership reversed gears and embraced the “greater Ethiopia ideology” as a
>means of realizing their “greater” Tigray ambition. In order to achieve
>this desiratum, the TPLF judiciously sought the simultaneous cooptation of
>Eritrean partnership and containment of the Oromo Liberation Front, the
>object being effective displacement of the Amhara and establishment of
>Tigrayan dominance. This strategy was responsible for the TPLF coming to
>power in Addis Ababa in May 1991.
>
>Knowing full well that the TPLF, representing just 6% of Ethiopia’s 60
>million people, could not rule Ethiopia without enforcing horizontal ethnic
>fragmentation, the leadership devised ethnic federalism as a stratagem to
>anchor “greater” Tigray within the political framework of “greater
>Ethiopia.” The stratagem allowed the Tigrayans to snatch territories
>originally belonging to the Amhara provinces of Wello and Gondar under the
>pretext of ethnic identity. However, the territorial reorganization of
>“greater” Tigray placed the TPLF leadership in a quandary regarding the
>question of how to incorporate territories that are within the confines of
>independent Eritrea.
>
>In addition, the notion of “ethnic federalism” and the TPLF’s involuntary
>acquiescence in Eritrean independence in exchange for EPLF support soon
>created a legitimacy crisis for the Tigrayan leadership since the now
>alienated Amhara conveniently accused the Tigrayans of betraying one of the
>fundamentals of Abyssinian nationalism, namely the territorial
>indivisibility of Ethiopia, by allowing Eritrean independence to take
>place.
>
>As part of the effort to deal with the legitimacy crisis confronting the
>regime in Addis Ababa, the Tigrayan leadership promptly crafted two
>complimentary strategies. The first is a minimalist strategy designed to
>strengthen the position of “greater” Tigray within “greater” Ethiopia by
>securing an access to the sea through the annexation of Assab, in the
>southeastern region of Eritrea. The second is the maximalist strategy, bent
>on enlarging the territorial reach of “greater” Tigray through the
>reabsorption of the whole of Eritrea while at the same time regaining the
>entire Red Sea regions of Eritrea for Ethiopia. In effect, the maximalist
>strategy would undo Eritrea’s independence. Apart from denying their Amhara
>rivals reason for opposing the Ethiopian regime, the strategy, if realized,
>would allow the Tigrayan leadership to solidify their grip on power. Herein
>lies the origin of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
>
>Badame is simply a small outlet for the realization of the larger Tigrayan
>ambition. The Tigrayan leadership could have invented any other incident to
>begin a provocation or confrontation with Eritrea. Thus, in truth, the
>fundamental obstacles on the road to peace today are the general Ethiopian
>mind-set and the virulent nationalism of the Tigrayans. This is something
>most analysts, scholars and statesmen have failed to understand.
>
>There are also two additional factors that are reinforcing Ethiopia’s
>intransigence. First in the past one hundred years, Ethiopia has benefited
>from the services of a galaxy of expatriates, who overtime developed
special
>bonds with Ethiopia and the charming elite of the country. Most of these
>expatriates have today become the unofficial mouthpiece, propagandists and
>defenders of the Ethiopian cause. Some of them are in academia, others are
>in government, and still others are in private policy-making organizations.
>
>These international propagandists in the Ethiopian cause are the
Pankhursts,
>the Levines, the Erlichs, the Marcuses, the Gilkes, the Claphams, the
>Heinzes, and Smiths of this world. Because of their expatriate identity and
>their connection to the world of knowledge and politics, and the media,
>these individuals have been able to effectively orchestrate and legitimize
>the Ethiopian regime’s dangerously misleading diplomatic maneuvers, thereby
>obscuring the real cause of the Ethio-Eritrean conflict.
>
>They have thus far succeeded in effectively scuttling from the
international
>radar screen the humanitarian dimensions of the conflict, particularly the
>plight of the over 70,000 Eritreans and Ethiopian nationals of Eritrean
>origin, deported by the TPLF-led regime after confiscating their hundreds
of
>millions of dollars worth of property.
>
>Even as recently as February 17th, 2000, neither President Clinton nor
>Secretary Albright made a reference to the humanitarian tragedy besetting
>these deportees in their speeches before the National Summit on Africa.
>Even the more starkly bizarre thing was the fact that Gail Smith, the
>Clinton Administration’s Senior Director for Africa and Ethiopia’s
>mouthpiece within the Administration, never said a word on the ethnic
>cleansing taking place in Ethiopia despite the fact that the topic of her
>speech before the National Summit was “Democracy and Human Rights in
>Africa.” It is such callous indifference to the human tragedy that has
>given the Ethiopian regime a false sense of confidence that it can prevail
>over the Eritreans in international diplomacy. This has certainly
>reinforced the belligerently intransigent position of the Tigrayan
>leadership, making them blind to the larger picture regarding the
horrendous
>consequences of the war.
>
>The second factor reinforcing Ethiopia’s intransigence is the myopic belief
>of the Tigrayans that they could militarily prevail over Eritrea because of
>Ethiopia’s superior endowment in terms of both population and natural
>resources. The belief is, however, delusional. The truth is that the ratio
>in the demographic and resource distributions has not changed for in the
>past thirty years, the ratio in the demographic and economic distributions
>between Eritrea and Ethiopia was one-to-eighteen, and the same ratio holds
>today. The previous Ethiopian regime had collected $11 billion worth of
>military gadgets, and yet it could not prevail over the Eritrean struggle.
>
>After all, nations are judged not by how many resources they have but by
how
>they manage their resources in the furtherance of the common good, the
>welfare of their citizens, and of human understanding and cooperation. We
>Eritreans may be poor in material resources and small in number; but we are
>richly endowed with the valor, ingenuity, imagination, and resourcefulness
>of our people. That made all the difference in the past, and will surely
>continue to make the difference in the future.
>______________________________________________________
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>