Freedom House

In response to Ethiopian prosecutors appealing the dismissal of terrorism charges against five members of the Zone 9 bloggers and authorities issuing them a court summons, Freedom House issued the following statement:

“The Federal Supreme Court should reject the prosecution’s appeal and reaffirm the bloggers’ innocence as the High Court did in October,” said Vukasin Petrovic, director of Africa programs. “The terrorism charges against the bloggers were unfounded from the beginning and are part of the government’s relentless onslaught against freedom of expression.”

Background
In October, the Federal High Court acquitted four members of the Zone 9 bloggers: Abel Wabella, Natnael Feleke, Atnaf Berhane, Soleyana Shimeles (in absentia) of terrorism charges and lowered charges against Befekadu Hailu to “incitement of violence through writing.” Two other members of the blogging collective and three journalists arrested in April 2014 and charged in the same file with the five bloggers had their charges dropped and released days before US president Barrack Obama’s trip to Ethiopia in July. The appeal hearing date for the five has been set for December 30.

Mr. Neamin Zeleke announced today that he would no more work as managing director of the Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio (ESAT) effective from January 1, 2016, due to what he said was burdens from other commitments and to make room for other responsibilities. The Board of Directors of ESAT is in the meantime looking for a full-time managing director who would oversee the day-to-day activities of ESAT. Mr. Neamin has been instrumental in establishing ESAT studio located in Washington DC five years ago and served as its manager till 2013. Since 2013, Mr. Neamin has served as the managing director of ESAT’S three studios: London, Amsterdam and Washington DC. Mr. Neamin however promised he would continue to help ESAT in other capacities.

Bringing down a dictator – OTPOR [Resistance]

In December 1960, while the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, was out of the country, his Imperial Bodyguard took over the capital Addis Ababa and proclaimed his son the new emperor. We speak to Dr Asfa-Wossen Asserate, the grand nephew of Haile Selassie, about the coup attempt.
Photo: Emperor Haile Selassie in the Royal Palace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, circa 1960.

The protest began in November 11.

The protest started in Ginchi.

The protest was held in 153 different places ofthe  Oromia region.

65 people killed in one week.

The people took the power of the government administration in two towns.

The first ever peaceful demonstration in Ethiopian history (boycott of meals and silent protest.

Students protest started in Haromaya University.

The Federal government took power over the administration of the Oromia region.

The security of Oromia region is handled by the special force of the military.

Farmers and women took part in the protest.

By Dawit Endeshaw And Misganaw Getachews

Residents were going about their businesses; trucks were speeding by in a hurry to get their loads in or out of Addis Abeba. The only thing appeared to have been out of place in the city of Burayu on that sunny Wednesday morning of December 9, 2015, was a dozen or so uniformed police escorting two young men under custody. There were three police vehicles on the road from Addis to Burayu; residents confirmed that there was unrest the previous day.

Some schools were closed as students were boycotting their midterm tests.

“The students are protesting because they think the lands of their families will be taken and given to investors,” said a resident, citing the urban plan as the cause of conflict around the country, since it had surfaced in 2008. “If that happens, the students fear they will have nothing to inherit.”

It is not unprecedented for students, mostly in high schools and universities across the Oromia Regional State, to protest against what they believe is a coercive way of implementing the Master Plan of the capital. Many of the inhabitants of Oromia Region, the most populous region with over 27 million people, according to the 2007 national census, are defiantly waging protests because of an urban design scheme proposed for Addis Abeba, which is designed to incorporate farmlands in the surrounding towns. Unlike the first round of protests two years ago, however, the protests over the past three weeks have been recurring and cover wider areas.

The protests have not been without casualities. Although not confirmed by officials of either the regional administration or the federal government, no less than 20 people have been killed and more wounded as a result of standoffs between the region’s law enforcement and protestors. With varying intensity, the standoffs continued in different parts of Oromia Region at this paper’s press time on Saturday night.

Unanimously, protestors are demanding that the government call off its intention to implement a Master Plan for Addis Abeba, to be revised for the 10th round, but perceived to let the capital encroach on to the five zones surrounding it.

Addis Abeba’s Master Plan is revised every decade. Ever since the first proposed plan under the Italian occupation in 1936, the capital’s expansion has been made at the expense of its inhabitants who are often evicted. Close to 4,000 residents have been dispossessed of their properties in the four years after 1936, and Italian landmarks such as Merkato, Piazza, and Kazanchis remain alive today.

In the decade following the end of the Italian occupation, Emperor Haile Sellasie’s government had commissioned the design of a Master Plan to Patrick Abercombie in 1956. Abercombie unsuccessfully attempted to emulate the Master Plan of the city of London. However, it was three years later that the first Master Plan designed by Botton Hennessy, was delivered with a plan to form satellite towns surrounding it. It was left to serve the capital for three decades.

The most recent Master Plan expired two years ago, and studies were commissioned to design what is now the most controversial and contentious blueprint for urban planning and development. Aspiring to get help from the French city of Lyon, Addis Abeba’s sister city, urban planners at the Project Office thought it would be useful to consider the surrounding region when upgrading the Master Plan.

“Design must always consider its context,” said a professional designer who worked on the Draft Master Plan. “But the matter was politicized before the team had the time to explain the design. It was just a proposal, both Parliament and the people were going to be consulted before any form of implementation.”

The Integrated Regional Development Plan is a programme launched by the federal government in the middle of April 2014. It is an area structure plan designed to integrate economic and social activities in Addis Abeba with those of the surrounding Oromia Special Zones, in a 40Km to 100Km radius. It is designed to integrate infrastructure, environment, law enforcement, as well as special rights of the Oromia Regional State over the capital as espoused in the Constitution, according to a senior official at the federal government.

Thus, the plan incorporates 36 kebeles in 17 weredas covering 1.1 million hectares of land.

The site of resistance to the plan, Sululta, which has a population of 129,000, was included under a special zone earmarked for the development of hotel and tourism in 2008. Other towns included were Burayu, earmarked for mixed development of agrobased industry; Galan, manufacturing and storage; Legetafo, manufacturing, storage and real estate; Holeta, diary farming and tourism; and Sebeta, for manufacturing and agroprocessing.

Perceptions of the programme by many of their residents, however, differ from the intentions designers and authorities claim to have.

One such resident is Lemma Megersa, 56, a priest working in his field with his sons and two labourers, in Betti village, 300 metres from Gelan which is 25Km south of Addis Abeba. He lost 25 kerets, and was compensated nine Birr per square metre. He claimed the government later leased it for 5,000 Br to 6,000 Br per square metre to prospective homeowners; a row of single storey private villas align on a border of his farm.

This is a new phenomenon dominating the outskirts of Addis Abeba. A rising middle class, pushed from the centre of Addis Abeba due to prohibitive land lease prices, is finding it affordable to locate plots in these areas to build residential houses. This development is also encouraged by the road links of these areas with the capital. A survey taken by the Central Statistics Agency in 2008 and 2009 showed that the population size in the Special Zone had increased by 51,373 residents, and 428 million square metre plots were incorporated into the Zone.

These plots were once the productive assets of farmers such as Lemma. He recalled harvesting between 300-400ql of teff and wheat prior to his dispossession. Now he cannot even get a 100ql from a plot he is left with. Although he had bought a motorized mill from the money he was paid as compensation, it does little in a way of returning the value of the land.

“The only thing we’re left with is our residence,” he told Fortune last week, munching shimbera (chickpeas) during his break.

He is convinced that the government is back with more appetite for land, in the guise of a master plan.

“We don’t want it because it takes our land and makes our destination unknown,” said Lemma. “We fear losing our land. We’re ready to show our disappointment with the programme; we’re ready to die in this rather than die of hunger.”

Lemma is not alone in his sense of disenfranchisement. Actually, long before he gets to experience loss of land, farmers in todays Gerji, Lebu, Bole Bulbula, Meri and Ayat were part of the 23 peasant associations in farming communities, whose members were affected by the expansion of Addis Abeba in the 1990s. Farmers in Yeka Tafo, with a population of 1,149, were part of the 6,000 households affected when the Ayat Real Estate project gave way to what is now an affluent middle and upper middle class residential complex.

Of the 231 households then, 98 were left with homes while losing their farmlands in return for modest compensation, while 27 were reported to have lost both their farmlands and homes. They were victims of the land lease policy of the government, which does not consider the interests of rural households and poor farmers surrounding the capital, said Feleke Tadele, who studied the impact of urban development on poor farmers, for his post graduate dissertation.

“Private investors are being invited to expropriate rural land occupied by peasants such as those in Yeka Tafo at the expense of dispossessed households without appropriate policy frameworks,” Feleke had warned as early as 1999. “The insecurity of land use rights has been the main causes of conflict in the area.”

Given this trend in the name of development, Feleke is only one among subsequent numbers of scholars who developed interest in studying the impact of Addis Abeba’s horizontal expansion, threatening the separate existence of its neighbouring areas. They all warned of inevitable widespread conflict as a result of farmers’ disenfranchisement.

For a resident of Burayu in his late 20s, whose name was withheld given the sensitivity of the issue, the Master Plan is nothing but an instrument for land grabbing and a threat to the preservation of his identity as an Oromo. He also questions integration aspect, perceiving it as only about integrating the surrounding towns in terms of economy.

“Why do we need the Master Plan in first place?” he asked. “It must be about integrating the surroundings of the administrative aspect, which will put us under the federal structure. If this is the case, our language will vanish because education will be given in Amharic, the federal working language.”

The professional designer with his hand in the development of the Draft Master Plan, thought it was not about administrative inclusion, but simply development. Addis has developed much further than other cities, noted the designer. Other areas should not be bystanders to that growth when they could benefit from it instead.

“Growth is happening regardless,” he told Fortune. “We’re only going to legalize what was already happening via the Integrated Regional Development Plan.”

Landholders do not agree.

For a farmer and a father of eight who lived his entire life in Legdadi, in the north-eastern outskirts of Addis, having the Master Plan implemented will pose a threat on his and his family’s very survival. He is no exception in requesting that his name be withheld, as a result of a pervasive suspicion and insecurity felt by many farmers in these areas.

He is, however, a well-to-do farmer, with a house guarded with stone fences, a warehouse and the other shelter for his cattle. He owns 18 cattle and two donkeys, a scrap of land preserved for vegetables.

“If this Master Plan was implemented, we are going to lose our land,” he said.

His views are informed by earlier evictions carried out on 135 households, with a staggering 108 of them objecting to their evictions but forced to move nonetheless. A survey conducted between July and September 2012 revealed that more than 90pc of 405 households evicted in Galan, Legetafo-Legedadi and Burayu areas “felt sad and disappointed . . . and worried much about future livelihoods.” Close to 82pc of these households had resisted evictions, according to the study.

“Responses of the households reveal that in one way or another [they] made resistance to land expropriation practices of the government,” said the study. “The remaining 18pc have either not resisted or are not interested to reflect their actions.”

Farming is the only skill these farmers have, and land the only thing they have got from their forefathers. The farmer in Legetafo believes he would have nowhere to go if evicted, and no other way to sustain or leave an inheritance for his family. The promised development, in his perception, will not help him or his neighbours – a notion reflected by Abera and his two friends, who all have tilled the land for years.

Although there are factories nearby, including a Turkish textile company, MNS, the elderly man claims that the factories do not hire permanent staff from the surrounding areas. A recent study conducted revealed that a 9.9 million square metre plot was allotted to 837 investment projects in three of the six zones of Galan-Legetafo-Legedadi and Burayu – of which 46pc is for manufacturing and industries.

In fact, of the 405 dispossessed farmers in these three areas and surveyed in 2012, 84pc said they were not able to get a job with these industries and businesses, which moved into their areas, despite their interest. And nearly 47pc identified lack of skill and poor education as major barriers to their employment. The same survey found out that 52pc of the respondents is illiterate, while only five per cent have college education.

In Sebeta only, close to 710ha of land was taken away from nearly 550 farmers in the four years beginning in 2006. Half this number were evicted in 2008/09 according to an undergraduate study in 2011. A total of close to 40 million Br was paid to these farmers as a form of compensation averaging close to 73,00 Br per household. This displaced farmers in Sebeta, another zone with large numbers of manufacturing plants present, are also unable to find employment in them.

“Although high numbers of industries located and operated in the area, they did not absorb local communities by creating employment opportunities,” another survey by Dejene Negussie reported.

In 2011, Dejene completed his postgraduate dissertation on “Rapid Urban Expansion and its Implications on Livelihood of Farming Communities in Peri-Urban Areaa,” for the Addis Abeba University’s College of Development Studies.

“Local people lack the skill and education required by these industries,” Dejene discovered. “Most industries operated in the area [Sebeta] employed human resource from other areas and most of them come from Addis Abeba.”

But not everyone in these areas is against the Master Plan and its desire to integrate them. Although many in this category are landless and mainly engaged in trading, one of Lemma’s sons, Tefera, who has completed Grade 12, wants to see the programme implemented. Unemployed, he is hopeful that the Plan comes with better infrastructural development and an improved administrative system.

Others residents who do not depend on farming expressed similar views. A trader in the town of Legetafo, who requested anonymity, believes the Master Plan has its own merit. He sees a solution for what he said is the highly developed corruption and maladministration.

“To get any service, we have to pay [bribes],” he told Fortune.

The dissatisfaction equally shared both by those who support and oppose the Master Plan is occurring in a context where frustrations due to unemployment, maladministration, corruption, as well as inadequate infrastructure are being experienced.

“Compared to other regional states such as Amhara and Tigray, maladministration is the worst in Oromia,” claimed an Ethics & Civics Education Teacher working at a high school. But he sees pressing anxiety due to fear of loss of land.

Others expressed similar views.

“I’ have customers who are mostly young unemployed university graduates,” an owner of a pool parlor told Fortune. “Finding themselves in such a life cycle is a frustration for them. In the midst of all this, the Master Plan came and threatened their only hope of inheriting land from their parents.”

For a man who owns a small and micro enterprise near Gefersa, “it is these students who are reflecting the concerns, so far.”

“We’ve not yet raised ours,” he told Fortune.

He has recently acquired a 100sqm plot, nearby Lake Gefersa, from a farmer for 100,000 Br. It has become a common practice for people to migrate from the capital in search of lower prices for plots, to build their residences and business outlets. The push from the capital and the demand for plots has created an army of brokers who go around the farming communities with sales pitches that it is a matter of time before the farmers are evicted forcefully in the process of the integration programme, for compensation which averages 15 Br a square metre. Farmers would rather transfer land on their free will to an individual for higher prices, brokers say.

Way before the words Master Plan surfaced in these communities, 200sqm of farmland with no physical assets on it would have gone for a price of 70,000 Br; this has now plummeted to 40,000 Br, according to a broker who has been in the business of deals with plots in Burayu, with his three partners.

The brokers saw some of the farmers spend the money they get from transfers of land user rights in buying tricycle motors a.k.a. Bajajes, while others paid for the construction of houses for their children. There are also those who spend a significant portion of the proceeds on consumption goods and end up working as security personnel in factories around Tatek, an area in Burayu, 15Km west of Addis Abeba, with 150,000 residents.

An army training ground during the military regime, Tatek is a lush field now, dedicated to the Burayu Special Industry Zone, a.k.a. Desta Sefer. It is mainly occupied by solar panel factories and transformer assembly plants owned by Metal Engineering Corporation (MetEC), and some private ones.

Many of his and partners’ customers come from Merkato, such as one who had paid 135,000 Br for a 160sqm plot located in Kela, a small rural kebele in Gefersa area. The broker and his partners have each earned 4,000 Br from this deal.

“It’s enough to meet our basic needs,” he told Fortune. “But, it’s those who work in the land administration offices or bureaus who get more.”

Getachew Shiferaw, editor-in-chief of Negere Ethiopia is arrested this morning. Negere Ethiopia is Blue party’s newspaper suspended from printing house last year but continued online.

The reason for the arrest of Getachew is not known yet.

Ethiopian government once again running after journalists. The Federal court also called Zone Nine bloggers to appear on December 30, 2015.

Ethiopian police have arrested two senior opposition members on suspicion of inciting weeks of protests against government plans to set up a new economic zone near the capital that would displace farmers, their party leader said on Friday.

The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) says 87 protesters have been killed by police since demonstrations broke out this month in Oromiya region, in the country’s worst civil unrest for a decade.

On Dec. 15, a government spokesman said police had a list of five people who had died during the protests, but casualties could be higher. Officials have yet to announce an updated number.

OFC chairman Merara Gudina said police rounded up his deputy Bekele Gerba and the party’s assistant secretary Dejene Tafa on Thursday, and both remained in custody.

“They suspect that our party and some of our members are part of the protest movement, that we have been inciting the demonstrations,” he told Reuters, denying that the OFC had incited violence. “We do not know when Bekele and Dejene will be released or be charged for anything.”

Government officials were not immediately available for comment, but Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn told parliament on Friday that “anti-peace forces” had incited violence by spreading false information about the so-called “Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan” to create an investment and industrial zone near the capital.

He said members of “terrorist groups” had infiltrated protesters and that the government would take “unflinching measures” against them.

Addis Ababa has accused the secessionist Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and opposition group Ginbot 7 of involvement in the protests. It labels both groups as terrorist organizations.

Oromiya is Ethiopia’s largest region by size and population. Dissident groups such as the OLF, which is waging a low-key rebellion, accuse the ruling EPRDF coalition of marginalizing ethnic Oromos.

The second most populous nation in Africa with 90 million people, Ethiopia has long been one of the poorest countries in the world per capita, but has made startling strides toward industrialization, recording some of the continent’s strongest economic growth rates for a decade.

But reallocating land for new uses is a thorny issue in a country where the vast majority of the population still survives on smallholder farm plots. The opposition says farmers have often been forced off land and poorly compensated.

The international community needs to pressure the Ethiopian government to halt land grabs and respect human rights, an opposition party leader has said after two prominent opposition members were arrested for inciting protests in Oromiya earlier this week.

Oromiya is the largest region in Ethiopia. Groups such as the OLF, accuse the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition of marginalising ethnic Oromos.

Bekele Nega, secretary of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), said security forces have killed at least 86 people since protests began earlier this month over government plans to create an investment and industrial zone near the capital, Addis Ababa.

“They have killed 86 and wounded thousands [and are] imprisoning people and political leaders including our vice-chairman Bekele Gerba,” Nega told Al Jazeera.

Merara Gudina, OFC chairman, said police detained Gerba on Friday and the party’s assistant secretary, Dejene Tafa, a day earlier.

“They suspect that our party and some of our members are part of the protest movement, that we have been inciting the demonstrations,” he told Reuters news agency, denying that the OFC had incited violence.

“We do not know when Bekele and Dejene will be released or be charged for anything.”

Opposition leaders and activists said the “Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan” designed to merge certain rural areas into Addis Ababa will result in land grabs and the displacement of farmers.

Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s prime minister, told parliament on Friday that people had a legitimate right to oppose Addis Ababa’s plan, but that the government would take “unflinching measures” against those who incite violence.

Hailemariam said “anti-peace forces” had incited violence by spreading false information about the plan.

The government has accused the secessionist Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and opposition group Ginbot 7 of involvement in the protests. Both organisations are regarded by the state as terrorist entities.

Amnesty International, the human rights monitor, said earlier in December that protesters have been labelled “terrorists” by Ethiopian authorities “in an attempt to violently suppress protests against potential land seizures”.

The Ethiopian government has neither released an official death toll nor confirmed how many people were arrested since the protests started.

‘Impartial investigation’ 

Betsate Deneke, the head of the the Human Rights Council (HRCO), said his organisation was currently collecting information on how many were killed and would announce their findings next week.

He told Al Jazeera that HRCO demanded an “impartial investigation into the killings of people” takes place.

Earlier this week, the opposition said the government had rejected, for the second time, an application to hold a public demonstration on December 27 to protest against the Addis Ababa Master Plan.

Four out of five Ethiopians still live in rural areas even though the country has witnessed tremendous growth over the past 10 years.

Ethiopia has also faced significant criticism for forcibly removing tens of thousands of people from their homes to make way for large scale commercial ventures, often to the benefit of foreign investors.

 Court grants the police twenty eight days in the case against journalist Getachew Shiferaw and four Blue party members ,

Detainees to be charged with Ethiopia’s infamous Anti-Terrorism proclamation.

A court in Addis Abeba has today granted the police investigating the case of Getachew and three members of Blue party 28 more days to further investigate detainees.

According to the party’s online publication Negere Ethiopia, police suspects the detainees inciting violence through the social media and recruiting for Genbot 7, an opposition party in arm struggle.

TPLF removed its sheep clothing

Many from the opposition camp figured early on the true nature of TPLF. They were skeptic about its willingness to democratize the country. In effect, they refrained from playing in a game whose rules are set by TPLF. On the contrary, thousands of Ethiopians joined opposition parties with high hope, and participated in elections from 1992 up until the infamous 2005 election.

Unfortunately, when TPLF lost the 2005 election, it felt embarrassed. Reverted to rigging votes to stay in power. Refused to admit defeat. Killed hundreds of peaceful unarmed protesters, and jailed thousands including Kinjit leaders some of whom were my colleagues.

What is more? Since 2005 election, TPLF has taken so many drastic measures to completely close all political spaces. Incapacitated opposition parties, arrested journalists and politicians, and forced numerous critics out of the country into exile. Put in place consecutive obstructive legislations through its rubber stamp parliament to restrain the participation of NGOs and community organizations in the democratization process. Ridiculously, it has charged young bloggers, professional journalists, and human rights activists as terrorists.

While implementing these restrictive measures, TPLF disguised itself, at least to the outsiders, as democratically elected party in a multiparty system. Used a fake double-digit economic growth as its excuse to repress dissents. In short, the party had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing until recently.

After utilizing all trickeries from its playbook, the Albanian style party ultimately became sick and tired of counterfeiting and lying to citizens and the international community. Lastly, TPLF did man up and dared to ‘officially’ close all opportunities for Ethiopians to express their voice peacefully. It said goodbye to a multiparty system. Without any shame, Woyane risked it all and declared 100 % win in the May 2015 election signaling that the country has ‘formally’ fall into North Korean one party rule. Rather than getting angry, many political analysts finally felt relief to witness TPLF got the courage to remove its sheep clothing to face the world with its true nature- a socialistic, apartheid style, one party dictatorial regime.

Let’s not twist the hands of those who still believe in peaceful struggle

The aforementioned key milestones in the past more than two decades clearly show how the political space in Ethiopia tightened through time, leaving no room to express dissenting views. Especially since 2005 election, many left the country and determined to pick arms in order to force TPLF negotiate with alternative democratic forces. They argued the end of peaceful and non-violent struggle in Ethiopia.

Even if the writing was on the wall long time ago and it was in plain sight for everyone to see the end of peaceful struggle through ballot boxes, many opposition party leaders at home still think that there is, whatever remote the chances are and protracted the journey becomes, a chance to bring democracy, justice, and the rule of law in Ethiopia peacefully and through ballot boxes.

We may not concur with those who still think that peaceful change is viable in today’s Ethiopia. Notwithstanding, my fellow countrymen and women, if we claim we fight for democracy, then, let’s respect their choice, and refrain from twisting their hands to believe otherwise. Nonetheless, I’m not implying that there shouldn’t be civil debate. The debate to convince them, however, should be in a civilized manner without throwing at them sarcastic comments and belittling their position. Who knows, days or weeks or months or some years from now, they too may reach the same conclusion many of us have already reached. Please let’s be patient.

Armed struggle is justified, thanks to TPLF

That being said about peaceful struggle, throughout the last ten years, I’ve been debating with some of my colleagues here in the Diaspora, who have been insisting that the only option left to bring positive change in Ethiopia before things are out of control is armed struggle. Unfortunately, as the year progresses, I keep losing strong arguments to convince my friends to give non-violent struggle one more chance.

Ultimately, the evidences did stack against me and thus began to waver from my position. Accordingly, in recent years, I reached a decision that TPLF had closed all doors for civil and peaceful political engagements that those who picked arms are justified. Woyane proofed to its supporters and foes alike that it’s not interested any more to redirect our country toward reconciliation, national consensus, mutual respect, win-win partnership, and peaceful co-existence. It appears to me, the party has become suicidal. There is an old saying in Ethiopia that explains the state of mind of the dictatorial regime: “Ene Kemotku Serdo Aybkel”.

I’ve to be honest here. Armed struggle is a high-risk high-reward venture that would cost the lives and infrastructure of this poor country, and that is why many of us have been debating that we should stick with non-violent struggle alone. Of course, who said non-violent struggle doesn’t cost lives and infrastructure? It does require sacrifices and temporary disruptions for a greater good. Around the world including in the US, some East European and Asian countries, thousands of people scarified so much while they were waging non-violent struggle. But when we compare the prices, armed struggle costs much more. It’s no brainer.

Don’t get me wrong. Admitting that the cause of those who picked guns are justified doesn’t mean that the road to liberate Ethiopia using armed struggle is a piece of cake, and walking on a red carpet. Armed struggle is a protracted, bitter and, destructive journey. Besides, this route also faces some critical hurdles. The international political atmosphere doesn’t favor armed struggle as it used to during the cold war. The regime in Ethiopia could be able to win almost all of the neighboring countries to its side depriving armed groups waging battles at multiple fronts.

Above all, how the journey ends is unpredictable. The simple question we all ask is “What happens when an armed group get ride of TPLF and takes power?” We can only assume, contemplate, and guess various scenarios. The million-dollar question is: Will the public have any meaningful say and role to determine the future of the country against a well-armed victorious group? It’s not a rocket science. We won’t have control, of course, unless all stakeholders deliberate ahead of the curve, and devise mechanisms to determine the outcome and make sure the transition is smooth leading to a democratic system where the people of Ethiopia have the final say who should lead them.

I’m sure that many of you reading this article may remain skeptic about the above proposal. I don’t blame you. Our past paints an ugly picture. The majority of TPLF fighters sacrificed their lives believing that, at the end of the conflict, democracy, justice, equality, and the rule of law will reign in Ethiopia. Thousands of them paid the ultimate price hoping that the next generation would inherit a bright future.

Look what has happened. A few selfish, shrewd, and arrogant took control of the political, economic, and military power, and pushed the rest including the very people they claim represent to further poverty, despair, and lack of freedom. Thousands are now leaving their beloved country even to war torn countries like Syria, and places like Libya where ISIS slaughtered 30 innocent Ethiopian immigrants.

What I’m saying is that I’ve changed my positions. Yes, peaceful struggle and bringing change through elections are dead, thanks to the arrogance of TPLF. Not only that, given the current circumstances back home, people who opted to face off TPLF with the language it understands are vindicated to wage violent struggle. More than ever, more Ethiopians are convinced that the only way to humble TPLF is through armed struggle, and it’s understandable.

A recent evidence why peaceful struggle is over in today’s Ethiopia

Here is one recent case that further consolidated my belief that peaceful struggle is over. It was learned that TPLF refused peaceful demonstration requests from opposition political parties. The ruling junta rejected their demands to stage demonstration in the capital city on December 20 and again on the 27^th, this coming Sunday.

So far, the leaders of the parties haven’t pressed their requests and resolute to stage the peaceful demonstration regardless of the government’s refusal. Time will tell what is going to happen soon. Will the parties, understandably, call off the demonstration planned on December 27 2015, and by doing so put the last nail in the coffin of peaceful struggle? Or go ahead and defile TPLF’s order that violates both its own constitution, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

It is too early to tell how this stalemate ends but many of us have been around the block for a very long time that we kind of predict the outcome considering the predictable leadership style of TPLF, and its pride. On the other hand, some of us may sympathize the leaders of the opposition parties if they back down, which otherwise, if pursued without permission would turn into blood bath. Many of us may still wonder and sarcastically ask, “What is the very purpose of requesting permission from a regime that doesn’t allow peaceful protest?”  Why don’t they just go out and do it? Peaceful struggle doesn’t have to seek permission, we may insist. Some of us may not stop there. We may seriously question whether peaceful struggle is relevant any longer to bring democracy, justice, and freedom in current Ethiopia. These are fairly reasonable questions anybody who cares about its dear country asks.

If you ask my position, the people of Ethiopia should have been allowed demonstrating peacefully without any permission, except notifying authorities ahead to plan for traffic and other security and logistic purposes. But the reality on the ground portrays a different truth where TPLF is not ready any time soon to let the people enjoy their inalienable rights such as expressing their grievances and disagreements of its policies peacefully. This leads me to conclude that peaceful struggle is dead.

Is non-violent struggle futile and irrelevant in current Ethiopia?

TPLF closed all doors, not just peaceful assembly and demonstrations, toward civil and peaceful political engagements, and forced many peace loving people to turn into upraising, protests, and still others to pick arms. There is no one who is responsible for the destruction of infrastructure of our poor country, and loss of precious lives except TPLF’s leadership. History will surely deal with the culprits.

The question many democratic forces, who are desperate to see a real and sustainable change in the country, are asking now is whether the non-violent struggle is dead, and whether the focus should be solely on armed struggle? Yes, many activists decided that they don’t want to catch bullet in the head for simply expressing their disagreement against TPLF’s policies peacefully. They insist that they prefer to die while fighting, and therefore, decided to join the armed struggle.

Recently, Reeyot Alemu, a heroin journalist popular among Ethiopians, gave an interview and surprised many of us when she declared that she joined the armed struggle. She revealed that she gave a serious thought about what she would do inside Ethiopia once she is released. The prognosis was dime, she acknowledged. She realized that if she writes, she would be thrown to jail. She believes that she should contribute more than just being ended up in prison for expressing her thoughts using her pens. She concluded that the remote chance that existed for journalists like her to do their job while she was in jail doesn’t exist any longer, and therefore, it leaves her no choice but to join the armed struggle.

Who is responsible for driving decent people like Reeyot to take desperate measures? Do not look further. TPLF and its unwillingness to create a labeled field that permits peaceful citizens exercise their inalienable rights without fear of retaliation.

It’s saddening to witness talented individuals like Reeyot are stifled and left no choice but to leave their country, robbing the nation enormous amount of untapped potentials. It’s depressive when one thinks of this kind of government that refuses to open some room for its citizens. It’s insane to watch a government of a developing nation that supposes to tap into every talent available driving the latter into rebellion putting their lives on the line. It breaks my heart when we Ethiopians for decades unable to deal our differences without turning to guns and killing each other. The government in power had a chance to change this trend. It could have allowed citizens lead a decent, peaceful, and civilized life, and in the end could have earned their trust, following, and respect. Regrettably, greed, power, revenge, arrogance, and shortsightedness blinded the TPLF’s leaders’ eyes.

That is why I completely understand the frustration of many who have concluded that there is no chance for peaceful struggle though I’m not yet taking that trip with them. Because of my personal principle and also passion (you’re free to call me coward though :-), I made my mind long time ago to serve my country using my talent and gifting. What so ever brutal a regime becomes, I earnestly believe that it’s not for the best interest of the country, its people, and its future if all citizens become freedom fighters.

All of us have unique talent, gift, experience, and passion that we should use to help the fight against dictatorship. For that matter, not all of us should come out public to oppose the regime. Wherever we are, even if it looks small, we should refuse to cooperate with evil. We should not give our mind and heart to its divisive schemes and faulty propagandas to create rift among ourselves.

In short, we can still bring difference non-violently. I remain optimistic; time will tell if I change my mind in the future, that non-violent struggle should be added to the mix in the fight against repression. However, I’m respectful of the decision of those who lost hope against non-violent struggle, made their mind, and decided to join the armed struggle to liberate Ethiopia.

My humble proposition, there is still a chance for the people back home to weaken or at least keep the regime at bay from inflicting further damages if they keep on engaging in non-violent struggle like they did in the past couple of weeks. Doing something is better than nothing. Just because peaceful struggle like staging peaceful demonstrations to express grievances and elections don’t work any longer under the current brutal government shouldn’t lead to a definitive conclusion of dormancy. Folding their hands and slip into hibernation is a shortsighted and fatal solution to a temporary setback.

Disclaimer

No question. Non-violent struggle is very powerful and it brought great results around the world. There are hundreds of alternative potent non-violent methods. Unfortunately, the leaders of the non-violent struggle either they are unaware of the full potential and possibilities for change using this method or constrained by the regime and/or lack resources to implement it full scale. Therefore, when I argue that non-violent struggle is still viable if and only if its leaders in Ethiopia employ multiple forms of non-violent struggle. The Diaspora has also a solemn responsibility to empower these leaders, and provide financial and material supports.

By the way, I thought sharing with some of you who may be interested the four episodes that I produced on civil disobedience in 2014 at ESAT. Episode 1 covered the various methods available to fight repression and why non-violent civil disobedience is one of those effective methods: http://ethsat.com/video/2014/05/14/esat-the-show-civil-disobedience-episode-1/  Episode 2 shared stories of successful non-violent struggles worldwide: http://ethsat.com/video/2014/05/21/esat-the-show-civil-disobedience-episode-2/ Episode 3 addressed requirements to wage successful non-violent struggles and the roles of citizens: http://ethsat.com/video/2014/05/28/esat-the-show-civil-disobedience-episode-3/ Episode 4 brought four panelists to discuss the merits and demerits of non-violent struggle. In the panel were the following esteemed individuals: a) Dr. George Ayittey, President of the Free Africa Foundation, b) Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Editor of Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles, c) Mr. Ephrem Madebo, Ginbot 7 Executive Committee Member and in charge of Public Relations Department, and d) Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco. Episode 4 Part I: http://ethsat.com/video/2014/06/04/esat-the-show-civil-disobedience-episode-4-part-1/ and Episode 4 Part II: http://ethsat.com/video/2014/06/11/esat-the-show-civil-disobedience-episode-4-part-2/

Why do many people still optimistic about non-violent struggle?

The recent students/farmers protest is part of the non-violent struggle. Protesters didn’t employ arms or targeted human lives. But for the first time, TPLF swallowed its pride and scrapped its plan to implement the Master Plan. This is a huge milestone that happened during the more than two decades egotistical and arrogant tenure of the ethnocentric regime. In the past, they never publicly withdrawn from their decisions and responded positively for the demands of protestors, even if in some cases they back off later silently.

This movement humbled TPFL, to say the least. It also gave a marvelous lesson for Ethiopians that it is possible to shake the dictatorial regime by just blocking roads. This lesson will sure inspire many activists around the country to be creative and come up with other innovative ways to force the regime come to its senses, and listen the genuine demands of the great people of Ethiopia.

This experience should force TPLF to reverse its self-destructive unilateral development plans, not just the Mater Plan, and other one party endorsed projects it has been implementing that don’t take into account the best interests of the majority and the next generation. If TPLF is wise, it got a last wake up call, and this window of opportunity may not present itself again. TPLF experienced a short-lived nightmare that showed it the glimpse of what would happen if it continues to pursue its destructive path that disregard the voices and counsel of Ethiopians.

Somehow, not because TPLF was smarter or stronger, the protest calmed down and gave TPLF some breathing room. Of course, it may be in a dormant state and could explode again at any time. The indelible mark it had left was that this protest could have taken another turn and disposed the regime like that. This moment should bring TPLF to the table and discuss with key stakeholders to come up with holistic development plans, establish independent democratic institutions, and so on. It’s not too late. Admitting failures and taking corrective measures is not a sign of stupidity. Only competent and humble leaders take responsibilities for their failure and change course.

Will TPLF use the recent protests as teachable moments or pursue revenge?

I’m not naive, by the way. Rather than using this occasion as a teachable moment, TPLF may take this juncture in our history as embarrassing, and take overt and secretive revenge acts to punish those who resisted its dictatorial rule. We saw it in the past. TPLF held grudge against the whole Amhara ethnic group while they were guerrilla fighters. They were bitter then, remained the same even if they came to the helm of power in 1991.

If they were true leaders, they would have let go of whatever grudge they had, and brought the country together and led us to our Canaan, the promise land. Rather than pursuing ethnic politics and emphasizing on what makes us different, they would have brought us together based on what makes us united. Sadly, they committed gross genocide and destroyed the lives and destiny of innocent ordinary Amharas indiscriminately.

After the 2005 national election defeat, TPLF did it again. They came up with different devious plans to avenge those who casted their votes for opposition parties. My suspicion is that for TPLF leaders, forgiveness, tolerance, reconciliation, and the likes are signs of weaknesses. Please stop and self examine. Study history. Only wise and confident leaders forgive, and accommodate the demands and needs of others. Only the weak harbor in bitterness, the strong forgives.

What I am saying is that it’s possible that TPLF may not have the ball to turn this setback into opportunity and reconcile with the people it claims leading. It may fail the true test of wise leadership. This is a possibility, and at this stage, we don’t have any knowing ability except to wait and see how it turns out.

Taking responsibilities and drawing lessons

Enough blaming TPLF’s leadership; let’s also take some responsibilities. I must admit that if there wasn’t a leadership gap, and if there were coordination of efforts among oppositions, and other alternative democratic forces, the recent protest would have been taken to the next level, and could have led to regime change. Or it would have caused TPLF unable to govern and force it to allow the formation of a transitional government. Or at least, it could have brought major political changes such as TPLF sharing power. In this regard, a while ago, I wrote an opinion piece posted on some Diaspora forums and opinion pages on how we could have turned the recent protest into a lasting victory by taping into multiple options and creating more than one front.

Unfortunately, it was a missed opportunity, not because TPLF was invincible but we were unprepared, and lack of alternative strategic plans and contingencies in response to TPLF’s counter actions that easily silenced the protest. It hasn’t been due to TPLF’s sophistication that it has been defeating any major attempt that resisted its Apartheid style rule for more than two decades. It just employs a few same old same old offensives. This time too TPLF did it again.

Have we learned some lessons from this episode in our history? Are we ready to regroup and perform better next time when an opportunity presents itself? Even better, are we proactive enough to create our own wave as we move forward and bring TPLF to its knees or, at least, to the negotiation table?

It’s up to us who claim we are progressive alternative democratic forces both within and out side of the country. We have control over this unless we, mostly unconsciously, return back to complacency once the buzz dies. Unless we are willing to repeat the same mistake again and again and expect a better result.

Creating some room for those who opted a different tactic than ours to salvage Ethiopia

I kindly ask all parties regardless of the methods of their choice to create some room for those who may have different approaches and contributions to bring lasting change in Ethiopia that benefits its entire population regardless of their ethnic, religious, and political affiliations. We don’t have a choice. We all Ethiopians irrespective of our difference should continue demand justice, democracy, and the rule of law in Ethiopia.

Nonetheless, we should employ holistic approaches to bring this change. One thing we should avoid is reaching conclusion that one form of struggle doesn’t work any longer and condemn those who employs that method. If we claim that TPLF is undemocratic and we are better and working toward the reign of democracy, we should practice what we preach. We should allow people to make their own choice on how to bring change in their country.

That is to say, peaceful struggle may be over but non-violent struggle is still viable to create positive changes in Ethiopia. We should not reach a decision and dismiss the potential of this method. Like every other method, it has pros and cons.

By the same token, people who are adamant believers of the non-violent struggle should refrain from criticizing those Ethiopians who reached conclusion that in today’s Ethiopia there is no chance to bring enduring change through non-violent struggle. Both sides should respect the decision of the other camp. Let’s stop concluding that what the other camp does is false hope. It’s self-defeating, and only benefits TPLF.

Both armed and non-violent struggles aren’t mutually exclusive

What I am arguing is that non-violent struggle isn’t yet futile. Even if regular elections served the ruling junta, and the regime is denying permission for peaceful demonstrations, non-violent struggle (in its full scope) has a part to play, as we have noticed from the recent upraising. If the leadership gap is bridged and key stakeholders take proactive steps in the future to come up with creative strategies, alternatives, and contingencies to outsmart TPLF, similar protests in the future could bear better and durable results that fasten the demise of the evil and divisive rule of TPLF.

I would have proposed that the two camps collaborate and work together. Unfortunately, those oppositions back home who are waging non-violent struggle would be victimized as collaborators of terrorism if they overtly work with those who are pursuing armed struggle. Still, however, they should reach unwritten silent understanding to pursue their own way of struggle without discrediting what others are doing from outside. The two camps are not mutually exclusive.

We don’t need to put all of our eggs in one basket. A regime like TPLF should be confronted at many fronts, and protests like the recent ones are vital to fasten the change we all aspire to see in Ethiopia. What is important is that all parties, regardless of the methods they employ, should create synergy and if possible establish partnership to achieve the common goal- to see a democratic, free, and just Ethiopia.

by Asfa-Wossen Asserate – review

25 December 2015

Journalist Fekadu Mirkana

In the last five days Ethiopia arrests two journalists in relation with the ongoing mass protest in Oromia region. Journalist Fekadu Mirkana, who works for the state-run broadcaster radio and tv, was arrested at his Addis Ababa home on 19 December 2015.[1] According to CPJ and AHRE’s sources, Fikadu’s arrest linked with his reports on Oromia Radio and TV that covered protests against the controversial master plan to expand the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. AHRE received reports that 85 protesters have been killed, hundreds injured and thousands arrested during the protest in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.

On its report that has been released on 18 December 2015, Human Rights Watch reported that police and military forces have fired on demonstrations, killing at least 75 protestors and wounding many others.[2]

Getachew Shiferaw

AHRE also received a report today about the arrest of another journalist and human rights activist, Getachew Shiferaw. Shiferaw was arrested today, 25 December 2015 from his home by security forces while he was preparing to go to his work. A political science graduate, Shiferaw was working as a journalist for different newspapers and magazines published in Ethiopia. Currently, he is a columnist at Ethio-Mihidar newspaper and two other magazines known as ‘Life’ and ‘Enku’. Since December 2013 he is also a Chief-editor of Negere Ethiopia newspaper. Shiferaw was also known as a human rights activist, who was regularly reporting about human rights violations in the country, political trials and he was also criticizing the Ethiopian authority on various issues mainly on the political landscape of the county which is narrowing from time to time.

Since the protest against the controversial Master Plan of Addis Ababa has started, which is now more than three weeks, thousands were arrested. The mass arrest is still continuing and it becomes targeting also prominent political figures, opposition party leaders and their members. Bekele Gerba, former prisoner of conscious[3] and the leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) was also arrested on 24 December 2015 by Security forces from his house in Adama city, 90 km far from Ethiopian capital. In 2011, Gerba has been arrested after meeting an Amnesty International delegation and charged under ATP (Ant-terrorism Proclamation). He was released from jail on 31 March 2015 after serving three years.

Another three active members of Blue Party also arrested today, 25 December 2015. Tewodros Asfaw, Daniel Tesfaye and Ermias Tsegaye were arrested today in the morning from their houses by security and police forces. All the three activists had been arrested in April 2015 before the General Election in relation to the clash at Mesqel square between police and protestors at the government call morns to condemn 26 victims of ISIS in Libya, and released few months before after they served their sentence. Amnesty International was considered them as prisoners of conscious during their previous arrest.[4]

AHRE strongly condemned the killing of protestors in Ethiopia’s Oromia region on its last press statement that has been issued on 9 December 2015.[5] We also condemned the ongoing arbitrary mass arrest of protestors and activists by the Ethiopian authority that aims to silence and crackdown political dissents, and to restrict harshly individual from enjoy their fundamental civil and political rights that have recognized under the constitution of the country. This unlawful and systematic attack of the Ethiopian authority against its political opponents and protestors has also a major impact on a narrowed space in the country to exercise freedom of expression and assembly. Therefore, AHRE call the international community to make a pressure against the Ethiopian government for the immediate release of all political prisoners and to bring those perpetrators who have a role on the killing of 85 protestors in Oromia region before the court of law.

[1] https://cpj.org/2015/12/ethiopia-arrests-journalist-after-channel-reports-.php

[2] https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/18/ethiopia-lethal-force-against-protesters

[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2011/08/ethiopian-opposition-leaders-detained-after-meeting-amnesty-international-2/

[4] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/07/ethiopia-respect-court-rulings-and-release-opposition-members/

[5] http://ahrethio.org/2015/12/09/stop-killing-civilians-in-ethiopia/

The obituary and epitaph for the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Liberation Front (T-TPLF) was written last year by Bereket Simon, the former “communication minister” and longtime sidekick of the late criminal mastermind of the T-TPLF, Meles Zenawi and Addisu Legesse, “deputy prime minister” to Meles and “deputy chairman” of the T-TPLF front organization called the “Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)”.

In a secretly recorded conversation, Bereket and Addisu talked plainly about the end of times — the final days, the last days — of the T-TPLF in Ethiopia to a group of their supporters.

According to Addisu:

Looking at it from our situation, it is already getting out of our hands. There is no question about that.   We can see that plainly from the way the teachers’ organizations are doing things. When 2/3 of educators are our members (of our party), and they are going out and demonstrating against us, that is the end of the story. I don’t think it is only Arena [party]. Ginbot 7 is also there. In Bahr Dar, I think, [anti-T-TPLF] flyers are being distributed. Haven’t you received any? Papers? [Others present at the meeting chime in response.] It is also [distributed] in Bahr Dar. But we do not know that, if you know what I mean. Flyers are being distributed and they are seen. So, I think they have gone down to the cell level everywhere. It seems like there is something that has organized itself. So I think it is coming from the Ginbot 7 area. (Emphasis added.)

Bereket responded with an example of what he believed is the sign of the end of times for the T-TPLF:

There was a meeting. I went to the meeting. I was eating breakfast. Two individuals came and started talking to me. When they talked to me, they imposed themselves on me. Their appearance did not make me happy (comfortable). When I started to investigate, these individuals are primary beneficiaries of city land acquisition. Primary! These are individuals who will scam left and right and get land beyond what is appropriate. But they had the audacity to accuse our comrades. They were ready to make accusations that so and so did this so and so did that. So when you look at it, what are they talking about? For me, so to speak, I tried to answer them as best as I thought about it. It is not something that one could accept [the accusation]. But the incredible thing is that anyone to have the audacity to say something like this to me, one can see the potential of such individuals to create chaos in the city. So, all those who spread propaganda and people like that must be singled out and we must isolate them.Even those people who have been telling us for a long time that they are our friends in the past are telling us sarcastically (mockingly) , ‘Oh! Don’t worry. We will see each other when it is the election season and stuff like that.’ Such talk does not make you happy… (Emphasis added.)

What exactly is eating Bereket, Addisu and T-TPLF Inc.?

First, it is clear the two T-TPLF head honchos fear the end of the T-TPLF is near. They said so in plain terms. “That is the end of the story” of the T-TPLF.

Bereket, Addisu and T-TPLF Inc. know it is the end of the story because they have used up all of the tricks in their bags to cling to power

For 24 years, the T-TPLF played their game of divide and rule and nurtured ethnic and sectarian hate. Someone once said hate is like a boomerang that misses its target and comes back and hits you in the head. Well, the hate the T-TPLF spread in Ethiopia for the last 24 years missed its target of making Ethiopia a nation of haters. The hate the T-TPLF hate produced is now hammering the T-TPLF on the head.

For 24 years, the T-TPLF played their ethnic federalism game and declared all land belongs to the state.

But to whom does the state belong?

The T-TPLF and the international land scammers, swindlers and poverty pimps bought and sold, pawned and auctioned, peddled and hustled the peoples’ land.

In December 2015, the T-TPLF land scammers and swindlers were served final notice: We are not going to let you steal our land any more. “Enough is enough!”

The larger message to the T-TPLF in December 2015 is resolute:

You stole our dignity for 24 years, and we did nothing but lived in shame. Now, “Enough is enough!”

You stole our human rights for 24 years, and we quietly accepted second-class citizenship. Now,  “Enough is enough!”

You stole our voice for 24 years, and we remained silent. Now, “Enough is enough!”

You stole our children’s future for 24 years, and we watched in quiet desperation. Now, “Enough is enough!”

You stole one election after another for 24 years, and this year you added insult to injury by claiming you won the “election” by one hundred percent. Now, “Enough is enough!”

You stole our humanity for 24 years, and today we question our sanity for allowing you to steal our humanity. Now, “Enough is enough!”

After 24 years, we will be damned if we are going to let you continue to steal our land, the land our forefathers died and shed their blood, so you can sell it for pennies to your swindling and crooked international land grabbers and poverty pimps. “Enough is enough!”

We will stand our ground or we will be underground defending our land.

We will not back down even if you clampdown, crackdown, knock us down, push us down, run us down or break us down!

This time we will not back down until you go down!

Second, Bereket and Addisu know it is the end of the story for the T-TPLF because poverty, famine and pestilence are consuming the society as they trumpet their bogus “double-digit growth over the past decade game”. The T-TPLF paid the lily-livered international poverty pimps (excuse me “consultants”) to pimp their economy for them.

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, USAID and the whole cackle of international poverty pimps published lies, damned lies and statislies to legitimize the T-TPLF as an economic miracle-maker and powerhouse.

They thought we were too dumb, too stupid and too ignorant to figure out their lies, damned lies and statislies.

Well, they found out we ain’t as dumb as we look.

For the past 24 years, the T-TPLF made themselves the only players in town. They made a playground of Ethiopia. They made Ethiopia their plaything. They had fun. They played to win, but in the end they outplayed themselves.

Now it is GAME OVER for the T-TPLF!

Or in the memorable words of Addisu, “it is the end of the story” for the T-TPLF.

Third, Bereket and Addisu know it is the end of the story for the T-TPLF because the T-TPLF has no friends in Ethiopia.

Bereket and Addisu are genuinely surprised that even their lackeys and bootlickers who became rich under their watch and their “comrades” whose crimes they covered up for so long are actually not their friends. Their “friends” are actually shapeshifter “villains with smiling faces”, to borrow from Shakespeare.

Bereket, Addisu and the T-TPLF now realize that they have only fair weather friends.

They should have known that “there are no true friends in politics. Only sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.”

The “friends” of the T-TPLF — the “friends” they let steal the land and rob the people blind and the criminals they coddle today — are just sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water before they join everyone else in the feeding frenzy.

What Bereket, Addisu and the T-TPLF find hard to believe is the fact that there is after all honor among thieves and villains. Certainly, no honor among thugs.

Bereket, Addisu and their comrades in the T-TPLF just don’t understand how their own crop of corrupt businessmen and bottom feeder friends have managed to keep enough traces of virtue to stand up to them and risk going to jail and lose their stolen loot by speaking truth to their faces.

A shocked Bereket said, “It is not something that one could accept [the accusation of corruption and abuse of power of the T-TPLF comrades]. But the incredible thing is that anyone should have the audacity to say something like this to me.”

Bereket and Addisu could not believe that the people they have trained as their lap dogs and let feed unattended at the troughs of corruption and abuse of power for so long would now transform into pit bulls biting the hand that feeds them.

But Bereket “doth protest too much, methinks”, to borrow a line from Shakespeare.

Well, why else would corrupt businessmen and criminal local bosses created by the T-TPLF talk to the top T-TPLF capos with such audacity, with such contempt and fearlessness, unless they felt the T-TPLF is the dregs of society with no future?

The fact Bereket and Addisu find hard to swallow is that they are surrounded by “friends” and “supporters” who will be the first to stick a dagger in their backs and float them down the river in a leaky boat without a paddle at the first opportunity. How can our best friends, “the educators [who] are our members [of our party], go out demonstrating against us… that is the end of the story,” lamented Addisu.

It seems Bereket and Addisu had a late epiphany.

They finally figured out the meaning of Bob Marley song, “Who the Cap Fit”:

Ya don’t know who to trust.
Your worst enemy could be your best friend,
And your best friend your worst enemy.
Some will eat and drink with you,
Then behind them su-su ‘pon [gossip] you, yeah!
Some will hate you,
pretend they love you now,
Then behind they try to eliminate you.

The T-TPLF has no friends in Ethiopia. The T-TPLF has 100 million enemies in Ethiopia.

It is much easier to make friends with a prickle of porcupines than the T-TPLF.

If the T-TPLF leaders feel betrayed now by the “educators demonstrating against them”, they should wait until they get a load of the soldiers, the civil servants, the business owners and merchants and the religious leaders turning their backs on them (or sticking it to them in the back).

The T-TPLF leaders KNOW their “friends” today will be their worst enemies tomorrow.

The T-TPLF minnows KNOW they are swimming in an ocean of 100 million sharks.

The T-TPLF leaders KNOW they are all alone.

Soon enough, the T-TPLF leaders, cronies and supporters will recall Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

When the end of the T-TPLF story is told, the T-TPLF friends will be as silent as the grave.

Fourth, Bereket and Addisu know it is the end of the story for the T-TPLF because they have lost their mojo (voodoo) to strike fear and stir fear and loathing in the population.

A distraught Bereket said, “But the incredible thing is that for anyone to have the audacity to say something like this to me.”

A dispirited Addisu said, “I think they have gone down to the cell level everywhere. It seems like there is something that has organized itself.”

The greatest weapon dictators have is the mind of the people they tyrannize.

Fear and loathing are the ultimate psychological weapons of mass control on a population under dictatorial rule.

All dictators have sought to consolidate and maintain their power over their population by fear, loathing and deprivation.

By using fear, dictators present themselves as the invincible and saviors of the people. They hope to convince the people that without them there will be chaos and destruction.

By using loathing, they seek to divide and conquer.

By using deprivation, they seek to impose subservience on an impoverished population.

Despite the T-TPLF’s massive surveillance program in the so-called “ 5:1 system” in which the T-TPLF “monitors the day-to-day activities of other Ethiopians, including friends, family members, colleagues, and neighbors”,  the T-TPLF is still paranoid that a well-coordinated grassroots level mobilization to overthrow it is underway. Addisu said, “I think they have gone down to the cell level everywhere. It seems like there is something that has organized itself.”

What Bereket, Addisu and the T-TPLF are in willful denial about is the fact that for 24 years there have been massive quiet riots going on in the hearts and minds of Ethiopians.

Today, the T-TPLF is witnessing the quiet riots shaping into open insurrection. That is just a fact plain for all to see.

When Reeyot Alemu, the heroine of press freedom in Ethiopia declares she is abandoning peaceful struggle for armed struggle, last week declared her commitment to armed struggle to remove the T-TPLF, “that is the end of the story”!

Reeyot is no ordinary person expressing an opinion. Reeyot is the rarest of all Ethiopian she-roes who stood her ground against the TPLF thugs. She never backed down! Never!

Reeyot is much more than a woman of extraordinary courage, conviction and intelligence.

Reeyot is the voice and messenger of her generation.

Reeyot is telling us that her generation has opted for armed struggle and left the path of nonviolent struggle because the T-TPLF has closed down all political space.

When the youth opt for armed struggle, that is the end of the story.

Reeyot did not choose the way of violence and armed struggle. The T-TPLF forced Reeyot to choose the way of violence and armed struggle.

The T-TPLF will soon begin its vilification campaign against Reeyot.

They will say Reeyot is a “terrorist”. She joined a “terrorist” group. They jailed her in the first place because she was engaged in “terrorism”. Blah… blah… blah…

They will soon begin a campaign to demonize Reeyot and scandalize her name. They will put out lies and damned lies about her.

What the T-TPLF should know is nobody gives a damn, a rat’s behind, about what the T-TPLF thinks of Reeyot.

What the T-TPLF should know is that Reeyot is the true personification of the hopes, dreams and yearnings of the young people who constitute 70 percent of the Ethiopian population.

What the T-TPLF should know is that there are millions of Reeyots just waiting to blossom like the Ethiopian rose (Rosa abyssinica/ tinjute) and take over the country.

That is the future I see for Ethiopia. I see an Ethiopia covered from top to bottom with Ethiopian roses.

Fifth, the T-TPLF leaders KNOW it is the end of the story because they have become the “evil” they sought to eradicate.

In the Tigray Manifesto, the T-TPLF declared (p.18), “The goal and aim of the people of Tigray is to launch a national anti-Amhara oppression struggle” and “establish a “Tigrean Democratic Republic.”

One need only listen to Gebremedhin Araya, a former top member of the T-TPLF, who exposed the sleazy and abominable ideology of T-TPLF hate towards all Ethiopians and particularly the “Amhara”. I have the highest respect for Gebremedhin’s patriotism and love for Ethiopia and the truth.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF demonized, monsterized, vilified and waged a campaign of fear and smear against the “Amhara”.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF set out to create a strawman “evil Amhara”.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF has claimed the “evil Amhara” forced their rule by killing, massacring and victimizing their Ethiopian brothers and sisters.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF said the “evil Amhara” stole the land and “enslaved” their Ethiopian brothers and sisters.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF claimed the “evil Amhara” abused their power and denied “non-Amhara” people their rights.

For much longer than 24 years, the T-TPLF tried to play the fear and loathing game of the “evil Amhara” bogeyman.

For the last 24 years, the T-TPLF has been saying if we go, “evil Amharas will be back in the saddle”. The “evil Amhara” will forbid people from speaking in their language. They will punish people if they practice their culture. They will prevent them from administering their affairs.

For the last 24 years, the T-TPLF tried to scare the people into believing that the “evil Amhara” will return and “take away their land.”

For the last 24 years, the T-TPLF has driven the people off their land and sold it to the Chinese, the Indians, the Saudis and the Turks.

After 24 years, the T-TPLF has morphed into the “new and improved evil Amhara.”

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in “Beyond Good and Evil” that “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

The T-TPLF set out to fight the “evil Amhara” monster and in the “end of the story” the T-TPLF became the “new and improved evil Amhara”.

Sixth, the T-TPLF know it is  the end of the story because they know their existential threat comes not so much from any particular opposition group but through a leaderless youth movement and youth resistance.

In the secretly recorded conversation Addisu said, “It seems like there is something that has organized itself… Flyers are being distributed and they are seen. So, I think they have gone down to the cell level everywhere.”

Addisu’s and the T-TPLF’s fear is that a leaderless, party-less, organization-less movement is and has been spreading, penetrating and infiltrating society.

I agree with Addisu that “there is something that has organized itself” against them. That “something” has no central command, no hierarchy and no particular ideology. That “something” has “gone down to the cell level everywhere.”

That “something” I believe is a multiethnic and multi-religious youth movement.

The youth may organize at the “cell level” and react independently to local situations or in defense of narrow interests.

What the T-TPLF fears the most is a united leaderless youth movement that emerges organically and is sustained by a shared belief in human and democratic rights and total repudiation of the T-TPLF and its oppressive rule. At the cell level, the youth agitate one-on-one and mobilize against the T-TPLF.

It is impossible to stamp out a leaderless youth movement.

It is impossible to destroy such movements as there is nothing to destroy.

The simple truth is: ETHIOPIA’S YOUTH UNITED CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED!!!

My advice to Ethiopia’s youth is: Dissect and study the tragic fate of Egyptian youth in the Arab Spring; and make sure not to repeat those mistakes.

Seventh, the T-TPLF leaders think they can delay the end of the story because America and the European Union will turn a blind eye as they continue to unleash their campaign of massacres, torture and mass incarceration of their opponents.

I will not say their assumption is entirely unfounded.

America and the European Union, the chief bankrollers of the T-TPLF, turned a blind eye and remained silent when the T-TPLF massacred and maimed nearly a thousand people after the 2005 election.

In fact, within two years of the massacres, the U.S. increased its aid to the TPLF from nearly $1.8 billion in 2005 to nearly $3.5 billion in 2008.

America and the European Union remained silent and turned a blind eye when the T-TPLF massacred hundreds of innocent people in the Gambella region in December 2004.

America and the European Union remained silent and turned a blind eye when the T-TPLF massacred thousands of innocent villagers in the Ogaden region in 2007-08.

America and the European Union remained silent and turned a blind eye (and gave millions of dollars of military aid) and when the T-TPLF massacred and displaced hundreds of thousands of Somalis between 2006-09.

Will America and the European Union remain silent and turn a blind eye when the T-TPLF begins another round of massacres of protesting children and citizens in December 2015 and intensifies its murderous campaign in 2016?

I don’t know.

What I know is what I learned from Henry “Methuselah” Kissinger who said, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.

I broadly interpret that to mean when push comes to shove, America for sure – and possibly the European Union and even China — will discard those who do not serve its interests like a bagful of garbage festering in the backyard.

When the people of Egypt rose up against Hosni Mubarak in February 2012, America dumped him in a New York minute. Barack Obama said:

The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same. By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change.  But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition.  It’s a beginning.  I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered.  But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks.  For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

In March 2011, when the Libyan people rose up against Muammar Gadhaffi, Obama threw him into the dustbin of history before the Libyan people did.

I don’t think anybody disputes that Gaddafi has more firepower than the opposition. I believe that Gaddafi is on the wrong side of history. I believe that the Libyan people are anxious for freedom and the removal of somebody who has suppressed them for decades now. We are going to be in contact with the opposition, as well as in consultation with the international community, to try to achieve the goal of Mr. Gaddafi being removed from power.

Whenever the people of Ethiopia rise up against the T-TPLF, I will bet my bottom dollar Obama will say the same thing:

The people of Ethiopia have spoken. Their voices have been heard, and Ethiopia will never be the same. By giving up power, the T-TPLF responded to the Ethiopian people’s hunger for change.  But this is not the end of Ethiopia’s transition.  It’s a beginning.  I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered.  But I am confident that the people of Ethiopia can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks.  For Ethiopians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

I believe that the Ethiopian people are anxious for freedom and the removal of somebody who has suppressed them for decades now. We are going to be in contact with the opposition, as well as in consultation with the international community, to try to achieve the goal of removing the T-TPLF from power.

The T-TPLF ignoramuses believe America, Europe and China will stand with them to the bitter end.

Did I mention the Chinese bankrollers of the T-TPLF?  They follow the ancient principle of “see no evil, hear, no evil and speak no evil.”

When the people rise up and the s**t hits the fan, Obama and his crew, the European Union, China and the rest of them will abandon the T-TPLF like rats on a sinking ship.

“Sayonara, T-TPLF! Nice knowing ya! We’re outta here!”

That is exactly what is going to happen, when the time comes, when the people of Ethiopia rise. Rise, they shall.

In the words of Maya Angelou,

Just like the moons and like suns
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still [they] will rise.

Just like the moons and like suns, Ethiopians shall rise. But “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”

America is not going to save the T-TPLF when the Ethiopian people rise up like the moons and like suns.

When the people of Ethiopia rise up, America will abandon the T-TPLF like a toxic dump site.

That’s what America did to Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1959.

I remember reading John Kennedy’s speech in his presidential campaign in 1960 when he condemned Batista as a murderous monster.

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years … and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state — destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.

I can imagine the same statement being made by Obama or his successor when the Ethiopian people rise up and show the exit to the T-TPLF:

The T-TPLF murdered hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians in over two decades. Our aid to the T-TPLF, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled the T-TPLF to invoke the name of the United States in support of its reign of terror.

That’s how America dealt with dictator Anastasio Somoza García in Nicaragua in 1979.

That’s how America dealt with dictator Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran in 1979.

That’s how America dealt with dictator Omar Torrijos in Panama in 1981.

That’s how America dealt with dictator El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011 and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012.

No fuss. No mess. Used ‘em, now lose ‘em. That’s how they roll in Washington, D.C.

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.  That’s just the way it is!

Eight, the  T-TPLF leaders believe the end of their story will be delayed because the current uprising will blow over like a breeze and things will go back to normal, business as usual will continue.

After all, the T-TPLF cracked down on peaceful Muslim protesters and “silenced” them. (Did they really?)

They cracked down on opposition political parties. Nothing happened.

They clamped down on the press. Nothing happened.

They massacred protesting university students. Nothing happened.

They committed genocide in Gambella, the Ogaden and Somalia. Nothing happened.

They are allowing 15 million Ethiopians be consumed by famine. Nothing happened.

Why should it be different this time?

The T-TPLF leaders believe they can play a game of “kick the can” with the people’s demands, hopes and dreams. Their view is that they can go on and on by deferring and delaying the people’s demand for another week, month, another year.

The T-TPLF leaders take it one day at a time. As long as they stay in power one more day, it’s all good for the T-TPLF guys.

What the T-TPLF guys are willfully ignorant about is the fact that behind every wind of protest that blows over, there is a tornado of pent up by anger, rage, resentment, hatred, bitterness and the irrepressible desire for revenge building up.

Maybe the current protests will blow over. But I don’t think so.

It would be wise for the T-TPLF to know the difference between a wind storm that passes through and a tornado that ploughs through as they strategize how far they will go in massacring their opponents and peaceful protesters.

Ninth, the T-TPLF leaders KNOW the end is near and they must garb their money and run.

I am led to believe by those who know (not those who think they know) that the T-TPLF head honchos would just as soon have the end of the story so they can go to wherever they have stashed their millions and live out their last days in peace. They are dog-tired of running a sinking ship. They desperately want to abandon ship before the ship sinks and takes them and everyone down.

The T-TPLF leaders, their cronies and supporters KNOW their only choice is to run.

Get your money and run to America, the land that welcomes all types of criminals against humanity.

Run to your money in America that turns its back on the victims of criminals against humanity.

The “end of the story” is that is time for the T-TPLF to run. It is better for the T-TPLF to run than to be run down.

Tenth, the T-TPLF know it is the end of the story, but they have no idea how their story will end. I know they are betting their story will have a very bad ending.

People ask me how and when the T-TPLF dictatorship will end.

I have no idea how or when the end of the T-TPLF story will be written.

The last chapter of the story of the T-TPLF could be written days, weeks, months or years. I cannot predict. I don’t have the power of prophesy, but I know the power of prophesy.

I know as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow that the T-TPLF’s tyrannical rule will come to an end.

But don’t take that from me.

Take it from Bereket Simon and Addisu Legesese. They are telling you it is the end of the story for the T-TPLF.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall.  Always.”

What is the difference between saying, “in the end, tyrants always fall” and “it is the end of the story” for tyrants?

So, the question as far as I am concerned is whether the T-TPLF story in Ethiopia will end with a bang or a whimper.

I hearken to T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” as I think of the end of the T-TPLF.

Does the fate of “hollow men” and “stuffed men” like those of the T-TPLF end in a “bang or a whimper”?

Eliot said the world of “hollow men” and “stuffed men” ends “not with a bang but a whimper”.

I am not sure that will be the case with the T-TPLF.

I feel Robert Frost’s verse, “Fire and Ice” is closer to the truth.

I believe the end of the story of “hollow men” and “stuffed men” is neither fire nor ice. Their end is hate.

In the words of Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I am a student of dictatorships with a specialty in thugtatorships.

I despise all dictatorships. I despise thugtatorships even more.

I wholeheartedly agree with Winston S. Churchill’s description of dictators:

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police … yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

I believe I am the first person to propose a proto-theory of “thugtatorships”. (See my “Thugtatorship, the Higesht Stage of African Dictatorship”.)

I have studied “the end of the story” for many dictatorships.

The “end of the story” for most dictatorships is replacement by another dictatorship in a coup followed by the emergence of a clone of the overthrown dictatorship.  Occasionally, post-dictatorship regimes emerge as benign dictatorships that present themselves as “mutant democracies” , to invent a phrase, legitimize their rule through anointment by America specifically and and the West generally.

African dictatorships almost always end in African dictatorships, the musical chairs soldiers have played on the continent for over six decades.

Between 1946 and 2004, there have been nearly 400 coups of all types in Africa. During this time, there have been only a handful of genuine democratic transfers of power in Africa.

Most so-called democratic elections held under African dictatorships are rigged to legitimize iron-fisted dictators in velvet gloves.

Some African “elections” are so ridiculously rigged that one wonders if the regimes claiming victory have any sense at all.

In May 2015, the T-TPLF  claimed to have won 100 percent of the seats in the “parliament”.

To add insult to the injury of the Ethiopian people, the T-TPLF imported Barack Obama to their den of corruption and election rigging and had him make a public confession that their 100 percent rigged election victory was one hundred percent “democratic.”

I still wonder if the T-TPLF also rigged the coffee Obama had just before he gave a press conference and said, “We are opposed to any group that is promoting the violent overthrow of a government, including the government of Ethiopia, that has been democratically elected.”

I have never been more ashamed of Barack Obama than the day he stood should to shoulder with the most ruthless African thugs and declare to the world “the government of Ethiopia, that has been democratically elected.”

I learned long ago that when a defining moment comes along, I either define the moment or the moment will define me.

In July 2009, Obama told Africans in Accra, Ghana, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.” On that day Barack Obama defined the moment.

In July 2015, Barack Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with thieving thugs and called the 100 percent electoral victory of the T-TPLF “democratic.” On that day Barack Obama let the moment define him.

That’s how Obama’s  fell from grace to disgrace!

The evidence on the end of thugtatorships is sparse, but I believe “thugtatorships” end in a qualitatively different way than the garden variety dictatorships.

The “end of the story” for thugtatorships I believe is likely to be cataclysmic  and result in the most extreme social cost to society.

I don’t know how or when the end of the story of the T-TPLF will be told.

My commitment, as proudly displayed on my website, is to “Speak truth to power”. That also includes misusers and abuser of power and power mongers.

I tell the truth. I don’t tell stories.

This time, I don’t have to tell the story of the end of the T-TPLF.

This time, I don’t have to speak truth to the T-TPLF.

This time, I will let the truth talk to the T-TPLF.

This time, I will let the truth talk to the T-TPLF as told by two  T-TPLF “truth tellers”.

This time, I would like Ethiopians to hear the truth from the horses’ mouths (I did not say hyenas’):

Looking at it from our situation, it is already getting out of our hands. There is no question about that.   We can see that plainly from the way the teachers’ organizations are doing things. When 2/3 of educators are our members (of our party), and they are going out and demonstrating against us, that is the end of the story.”

Amen!

Personally, I don’t think it is the end of the story of the T-TPLF in Ethiopia.

I think it is the beginning of the end of the story of the T-TPLF in Ethiopia.

I think it is the end of the beginning of the story of the T-TPLF in Ethiopia.

Story of the end to be continued….

Interview with Neamin Zeleke , the outgoing Managing Director of ESAT Dec 28 2015

EGYPTIAN STREETS

Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have signed an agreement aimed at curbing Egypt’salarm at the speed of which the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (‘the dam’) is being constructed. The agreement is based on a preliminary agreement that had been reached in March 2015 between the leaders of the three countries in Khartoum, Sudan.

According to Egyptian state media, it was agreed that a French consulting firm would conduct research for a period between eight months and a year.

Ethiopia has also agreed to not fill the dam with any water from the Nile River until some sort of consensus has been reached between the three countries. The agreement also states that regular meetings will be held to solve other disagreements between the three countries and to respond to all Egyptian concerns regarding the filling of the dam with water.

The agreement, which was signed after talks between foreign ministers of the three countries in Khartoum, is obligatory and shows that the three countries hope to solve the issue diplomatically in a way that results in stronger bilateral ties, said an Egyptian Foreign Ministry source to Egyptian Streets.

HISTORY OF THE ETHIOPIAN DAM CRISIS

During the ninth meeting of the three countries in Cairo on 8 and 9 November, Egypt denounced the speed of the construction of the dam and the delay of studies into the impacts of the dam.

Egypt’s main concern since the start of construction of the dam in 2011 is its high storage capacity, which reaches 74 billion cubic meters, over fears of affecting its national water security.

As per agreements signed in 1929 and 1959, downstream countries Egypt and Sudan together receive the majority of Nile Water. Egypt annually receives 55.5 billion cubic metres of the estimated total 84 billion cubic meters of Nile water produced each year, while Sudan receives 18.5 billion cubic meters.

Egypt initially condemned the dam’s construction, stating that Ethiopia decided to build the dam without informing other countries that may be impacted.

Currently, approximately 55 percent of the dam has been constructed despite no studies into the dam’s impact. Egypt is not only concerned that the dam will impact Egypt’s water supply, but would also have impacts on the environment and security (for example, in the case of an earthquake or a terror attack). Moreover, Egypt has also expressed worry that the dam would impact the generation of electricity by the Aswan High Dam.

How far Egypt would go to protect its rights in the Nile River remains unclear. However, analysts say international arbitration is far more likely than a military incursion in the case where all diplomatic paths have failed.