Food supplies flowing to Ethiopia during the country’s growing hunger crisis are meeting a major challenge: they can’t get to people fast enough.
Ethiopia is doubling its wheat purchases after the harshest drought in half a century, causing bottlenecks of ships at the country’s main port in neighboring Djibouti. At least 10 vessels are waiting to unload about 450,000 metric tons of wheat, according to information on the port’s website and ship-tracking data on Bloomberg. One carrying 50,000 tons of wheat and sorghum is berthed.
“There’s a whole bunch of ships that are lined up,” John Graham, the Ethiopia director for Save the Children, said by phone from Dire Dawa on Tuesday. “The numbers of berths allocated is not adequate so far.”
Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat consumer, is grappling with a growing food problem as the lack of rain erodes harvests of everything from sorghum to wheat, forcing the country to launch international tenders. Droughts in the country have become more frequent and severe in the past decade, and the effects from El Nino weather patterns have wreaked havoc across many parts of Africa.
Congested Ports
It takes about 40 days to unload ships carrying grain, which is used to feed people in Ethiopia’s urban centers, according to Save the Children. In total, it can take around 120 days to purchase and transport food into the country through Djibouti, the British charity said in a February report.
In Ethiopia, among the world’s poorest countries, the number of people living with hunger has more than doubled since August to more than 10 million, according to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization. The number is higher when you add the 7.9 million supported by a government safety-net program. There are expected to be at least 450,000 severely malnourished Ethiopians this year, according to Save the Children.
The nation has historically struggled with hunger, including in the 1980s, when famine and civil war left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Wheat Imports
In October, Ethiopia sought 1 million tons of wheat, more than it bought last season, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Another tender for almost 500,000 tons will close on Friday.
“Of course it is congested,” Mitiku Kassa, who heads Ethiopia’s disaster relief agency, said by phone on Tuesday, adding that each berth at the port has the capacity to unload around 3,000 tons of grain a day. “However, fertilizer and wheat have been given due priority.”
The Carly Manx vessel, scheduled to arrive at the port on Feb. 22, is only now berthed. The Ince Beylerbeyi, initially set to reach the port onFeb. 19, is still waiting to unload 54,250 tons of wheat.
Further purchases in the tender may add to long waiting times at the port of Djibouti, which land-locked Ethiopia uses to bring in supplies. Imports will jump to 2.5 million tons in the season ending in September, up from 900,000 tons a year earlier, the USDA estimates.
The government is adding trucks, and building distribution points and temporary warehouses to meet monthly food delivery targets, Mitiku said. The operation is also being delayed by regular government assessments of who the most needy are, Save the Children’s Graham said.
“There has been a slow start to food deliveries this year,” Graham said. “We still need to prepare for a spike in severe malnutrition.”
The second-in-command of so-called Islamic State (IS) has been killed in a US operation in Syria, US media report.
Defence officials told NBC News that Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, an Iraqi who was also known as Hajji Iman, was killed during a raid this month.
The US authorities had offered a reward of $7m for Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli
The second-in-command of so-called Islamic State (IS) has been killed in a US operation in Syria, US media report.
Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, an Iraqi also known as Hajji Iman, died during a raid by US special forces on Thursday, officials told NBC News.
US Defence Secretary Ash Carter was expected to confirm the jihadist’s death and provide details of the raid in a statement at 14:30 GMT.
The US authorities had offered a reward of $7m (£5m) for Qaduli.
Defence officials told NBC correspondent Richard Engel that US special operations forces landed in helicopters in Syria early on Thursday morning.
They lay in wait as Qaduli drove past them in a car, and were able to stop it.
There was an attempt to capture Qaduli alive, but the situation escalated and the militant and three other people in the vehicle were killed, the officials said.
Qaduli, an ethnic Turkmen, was born in 1957 or 1959 in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which has been controlled by IS since 2014.
He joined al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) – a precursor of IS – in 2004 under the leadership of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, serving as his deputy and the local leader in Mosul, according to the US.
After his release from an Iraqi prison in early 2012, he joined IS forces in Syria.
Last year, some sources identified Qaduli as “Abu Alaa al-Afari”, who was said to have taken temporary charge of IS after its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was allegedly injured in an air strike.
Mr Carter will also confirm on Friday the death of the “minister of war” of IS earlier this month, according to the Daily Beast.
Tarkhan Batirashvili, a Georgian known as Omar Shishani, was the target of a US air strike in north-eastern Syria on 4 March, US officials say.
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Abu Anis only realised something unusual was happening when he heard the sound of explosions coming from the old city on the western bank of the Tigris as it runs through Mosul.
“I phoned some friends over there, and they said armed groups had taken over, some of them foreign, some Iraqis,” the computer technician said. “The gunmen told them, ‘We’ve come to get rid of the Iraqi army, and to help you.'”
The following day, the attackers crossed the river and took the other half of the city. The Iraqi army and police, who vastly outnumbered their assailants, broke and fled, officers first, many of the soldiers stripping off their uniforms as they joined a flood of panicked civilians.
It was 10 June 2014, and Iraq’s second biggest city, with a population of around two million, had just fallen to the militants of the group then calling itself Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (Isis or Isil).
Four days earlier, black banners streaming, a few hundred of the Sunni militants had crossed the desert border in a cavalcade from their bases in eastern Syria and met little resistance as they moved towards their biggest prize.
Rich dividends were immediate. The Iraqi army, rebuilt, trained and equipped by the Americans since the US-led invasion of 2003, abandoned large quantities of armoured vehicles and advanced weaponry, eagerly seized by the militants. They also reportedly grabbed something like $500m from the Central Bank’s Mosul branch.
How rich is IS?
Image copyrightGetty Images
Despite territorial losses, IS survives, thanks in no small part to its status as “the best-funded terrorist organisation” in history. While most people decry the validity inferred from the name of IS as a “state”, the group’s financing is certainly more reminiscent of a state than that of organisations such as al-Qaeda that relied heavily on donations to fund their operations.
Islamic State: The struggle to stay rich
“At the beginning, they behaved well,” said Abu Anis. “They took down all the barricades the army had put up between quarters. People liked that. On their checkpoints they were friendly and helpful – ‘Anything you need, we’re here for you.'”
The Mosul honeymoon was to last a few weeks. But just down the road, terrible things were already happening.
As the Iraqi army collapsed throughout the north, the militants moved swiftly down the Tigris river valley. Towns and villages fell like skittles. Within a day they had captured the town of Baiji and its huge oil refinery, and moved on swiftly to seize Saddam Hussein’s old hometown, Tikrit, a Sunni hotbed.
Just outside Tikrit is a big military base, taken over by the Americans in 2003 and renamed Camp Speicher after the first US casualty in the 1991 “Desert Storm” Gulf war against Iraq, a pilot called Scott Speicher, shot down over al-Anbar province in the west.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionBodies being exhumed at Camp Speicher, 2015
Camp Speicher, by now full of Iraqi military recruits, was surrounded by the Isis militants and surrendered. The thousands of captives were sorted, the Shia were weeded out, bound, and trucked away to be systematically shot dead in prepared trenches. Around 1,700 are believed to have been massacred in cold blood. The mass graves are still being exhumed.
Far from trying to cover up the atrocity, Isis revelled in it, posting on the internet videos and pictures showing the Shia prisoners being taken away and shot by the black-clad militants.
In terms of exultant cruelty and brutality, worse was not long in coming.
After a pause of just two months, Isis – now rebranded as “Islamic State” (IS) – erupted again, taking over large areas of northern Iraq controlled by the Kurds.
That included the town of Sinjar, mainly populated by the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority regarded by IS as heretics.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionYazidi women in Germany protest against IS attacks on their community in northern Iraq, 2014
Hundreds of Yazidi men who failed to escape were simply killed. Women and children were separated and taken away as war booty, to be sold and bartered as chattels, and used as sex slaves. Thousands are still missing, enduring that fate.
Deliberately shocking, bloodthirsty exhibitionism reached a climax towards the end of the same month, August 2014.
IS issued a video showing its notorious, London-accented and now late executioner Mohammed Emwazi (sardonically nicknamed “Jihadi John” by former captives) gruesomely beheading American journalist James Foley.
In the following weeks, more American and British journalists and aid workers – Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, and Peter Kassig (who had converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul Rahman) – appeared being slaughtered in similar, slickly produced videos, replete with propaganda statements and dire warnings.
Image captionMurdered Western hostages: (From top left clockwise) Steven Sotloff, David Haines, James Foley, Alan Henning, Abdul Rahman (Peter) Kassig
In the space of a few months, IS had blasted its way from obscurity on to the centre of the world stage. Almost overnight, it became a household word.
Seven-and-a-half thousand miles (12,000km) away, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott summed up the breathtaking novelty of the horror. It was, he said “medieval barbarism, perpetrated and spread with the most modern of technology”.
IS had arrived, and the world was taking notice. But the men in black did not appear out of the blue. They had been a long time coming.
The theology of murder
The ideological or religious roots of IS and like-minded groups go deep into history, almost to the beginning of Islam itself in the 7th Century AD.
Like Christianity six centuries before it, and Judaism some eight centuries before that, Islam was born into the harsh, tribal world of the Middle East.
“The original texts, the Old Testament and the Koran, reflected primitive tribal Jewish and Arab societies, and the codes they set forth were severe,” writes the historian and author William Polk.
“They aimed, in the Old Testament, at preserving and enhancing tribal cohesion and power and, in the Koran, at destroying the vestiges of pagan belief and practice. Neither early Judaism nor Islam allowed deviation. Both were authoritarian theocracies.”
As history moved on, Islam spread over a vast region, encountering and adjusting to numerous other societies, faiths and cultures. Inevitably in practice it mutated in different ways, often becoming more pragmatic and indulgent, often given second place to the demands of power and politics and temporal rulers.
For hardline Muslim traditionalists this amounted to deviationism, and from early on, there was a clash of ideas in which those arguing for a strict return to the “purity” of the early days of Islam often paid a price.
The eminent scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855), who founded one of the main schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, was jailed and once flogged unconscious in a dispute with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. Nearly five centuries later, another supreme theologian of the same strict orthodox school, Ibn Taymiyya, died in prison in Damascus.
These two men are seen as the spiritual forefathers of later thinkers and movements which became known as “salafist”, advocating a return to the ways of the first Muslim ancestors, the salaf al-salih (righteous ancestors).
They inspired a later figure whose thinking and writings were to have a huge and continuing impact on the region and on the salafist movement, one form of which, Wahhabism, took his name.
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was born in 1703 in a small village in the Nejd region in the middle of the Arabian peninsula.
A devout Islamic scholar, he espoused and developed the most puritanical and strict version of what he saw as the original faith, and sought to spread it by entering pacts with the holders of political and military power.
In an early foray in that direction, his first action was to destroy the tomb of Zayd ibn al-Khattab, one of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, on the grounds that by the austere doctrine of salafist theology, the veneration of tombs constitutes shirk, the revering of something or someone other than Allah.
But it was in 1744 that Abd al-Wahhab made his crucial alliance with the local ruler, Muhammad ibn Saud. It was a pact whereby Wahhabism provided the spiritual or ideological dimension for Saudi political and military expansion, to the benefit of both.
Passing through several mutations, that dual alliance took over most of the peninsula and has endured to this day, with the House of Saud ruling in sometimes uneasy concert with an ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment.
The entrenchment of Wahhabi salafism in Saudi Arabia – and the billions of petrodollars to which it gained access – provided one of the wellsprings for jihadist militancy in the region in modern times. Jihad means struggle on the path of Allah, which can mean many kinds of personal struggle, but more often is taken to mean waging holy war.
But the man most widely credited, or blamed, for bringing salafism into the 20th Century was the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb. He provided a direct bridge from the thought and heritage of Abd al-Wahhab and his predecessors to a new generation of jihadist militants, leading up to al-Qaeda and all that was to follow.
Image copyrightCreative Commons Image captionSayyid Qutb, “the source of all jihadist thought”
Born in a small village in Upper Egypt in 1906, Sayyid Qutb found himself at odds with the way Islam was being taught and managed around him. Far from converting him to the ways of the West, a two-year study period in the US in the late 1940s left him disgusted at what he judged unbridled godless materialism and debauchery, and his fundamentalist Islamic outlook was honed harder.
Back in Egypt, he developed the view that the West was imposing its control directly or indirectly over the region in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse after World War One, with the collaboration of local rulers who might claim to be Muslims, but who had in fact deviated so far from the right path that they should no longer be considered such.
For Qutb, offensive jihad against both the West and its local agents was the only way for the Muslim world to redeem itself. In essence, this was a kind of takfir – branding another Muslim an apostate or kafir (infidel), making it justified and even obligatory and meritorious to kill him.
Although he was a theorist and intellectual rather than an active jihadist, Qutb was judged dangerously subversive by the Egyptian authorities. He was hanged in 1966 on charges of involvement in a Muslim Brotherhood plot to assassinate the nationalist President, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Qutb was before his time, but his ideas lived on in the 24 books he wrote, which have been read by tens of millions, and in the personal contact he had with the circles of people like Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian who is the current al-Qaeda leader.
Another intimate of the al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden said: “Qutb was the one who most affected our generation.” He has also been described as “the source of all jihadist thought”, and “the philosopher of the Islamic revolution”.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image caption9/11: The attackers were influenced by Qutb’s writings
More than 35 years after he was hanged, the official commission of inquiry into al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 concluded: “Bin Laden shares Qutb’s stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalise even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defence of an embattled faith.”
And his influence lingers on today. Summing up the roots of IS and its predecessors, the Iraqi expert on Islamist movements Hisham al-Hashemi said: “They are founded on two things: a takfiri faith based on the writings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and as methodology, the way of Sayyid Qutb.”
The theology of militant jihadism was in place. But to flourish, it needed two things – a battlefield, and strategists to shape the battle.
Afghanistan was to provide the opportunity for both.
Rise of al-Qaeda
The Soviet invasion in 1979, and the 10 years of occupation that followed, provided a magnet for would-be jihadists from around the Arab world. Some 35,000 of them flocked to Afghanistan during that period, to join the jihad and help the mainly Islamist Afghan mujahedeen guerrillas turn the country into Russia’s Vietnam.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionSoviet forces in Afghanistan, 1980
There is little evidence that the “Afghan Arabs”, as they became known, played a pivotal combat role in driving the Soviets out. But they made a major contribution in setting up support networks in Pakistan, channelling funds from Saudi Arabia and other donors, and funding schools and militant training camps. It was a fantastic opportunity for networking and forging enduring relationships as well as tasting jihad first hand.
Ironically, they found themselves on the same team as the Americans. The CIA’s Operation Cyclone channelled hundreds of millions of dollars through Pakistan to militant Afghan mujahedeen leaders such as Golbuddin Hekmatyar, who associated closely with the Arab jihadists.
It was in Afghanistan that virtually all the major figures in the new jihadist world cut their teeth. They helped shape events there in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a period that saw the emergence of al-Qaeda as a vehicle for a wider global jihad, and Afghanistan provided a base for it.
By the time the Taliban took over in 1996, they were virtually in partnership with Osama Bin Laden and his men, and it was from there that al-Qaeda launched its fateful 9/11 attack in 2001.
The formative Afghan experience provided both the combat-hardened salafist jihadist leaders and the strategists who were to play an instrumental role in the emergence of the IS of today.
Most significant was the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who more than anybody else ended up being the direct parent of IS in almost every way.
A high-school dropout whose prison career began with a sentence for drug and sexual offences, Zarqawi found religion after being sent to classes at a mosque in the Jordanian capital, Amman. He arrived in Pakistan to join jihad in Afghanistan just in time to see the Soviets withdraw in 1989, but stayed on to work with jihadists.
After a stint back in Jordan where he received a 15-year jail sentence on terrorist charges but was later released in a general amnesty, Zarqawi finally met Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1999. By all accounts the two al-Qaeda leaders did not take to him. They found him brash and headstrong, and they did not like the many tattoos from his previous life that he had not been able to erase.
But he was charismatic and dynamic, and although he did not join al-Qaeda, they eventually put him in charge of a training camp in Herat, western Afghanistan. It was here that he worked with an ideologue whose radical writings became the scriptures governing subsequent salafist blood-letting: Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir.
“The brutality of beheading is intended, even delightful to God and His Prophet,” wrote Muhajir in his book The Theology of Jihad, more generally referred to as the Theology of Bloodshed. His writings provided religious cover for the most brutal excesses, and also for the killing of Shia as infidels, and their Sunni collaborators as apostates.
The other book that has been seen as the virtual manual – even the Mein Kampf – for IS and its forebears is The Management of Savagery, by Abu Bakr Naji, which appeared on the internet in 2004.
Image copyrightCreative commons Image captionThe Management of Savagery, a virtual manual for jihadists
“We need to massacre and to do just as has been done to Banu Qurayza, so we must adopt a ruthless policy in which hostages are brutally and graphically murdered unless our demands are met,” Naji wrote. He was referring to a Jewish tribe in seventh-century Arabia which reportedly met the same fate at the hands of early Muslims as the Yazidis of Sinjar did nearly 14 centuries later: the men were slaughtered, the women and children enslaved.
Naji’s sanctioning of exemplary brutality was part of a much wider strategy to prepare the way for an Islamic caliphate. Based partly on the lessons of Afghanistan, his book is a detailed blueprint for provoking the west into interventions which would further rally the Muslims to jihad, leading to the ultimate collapse of the enemy.
The scenario is not so fanciful if you consider that the Soviet Union went to pieces barely two years after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Naji is reported to have been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s Waziristan province in 2008.
Iraq fiasco
The fallout from the 9/11 attacks changed things radically for the jihadists in late 2001. The US and allies bombed and invaded Afghanistan, ousting the Taliban, and launching a wider “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden went underground, and Zarqawi and others fled. The dispersing militants, fired up, badly needed another battlefield on which to provoke and confront their Western enemies.
Luck was on their side. The Americans and their allies were not long in providing it.
Their invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 was, it turned out, entirely unjustified on its own chosen grounds – Saddam Hussein’s alleged production of weapons of mass destruction, and his supposed support for international terrorists, neither of which was true.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionBombardment of Baghdad before the US-led invasion in 2003
By breaking up every state and security structure and sending thousands of disgruntled Sunni soldiers and officials home, they created precisely the state of “savagery”, or violent chaos, that Abu Bakr Naji envisaged for the jihadists to thrive in.
Iraq was on the way to becoming what US officials are now calling the “parent tumour” of the IS presence in the region.
Under Saddam’s tightly-controlled Baath Party regime, the Sunnis enjoyed pride of place over the majority Shia, who have strong ties with their co-religionists across the border in Iran.
The US-led intervention disempowered the Sunnis, creating massive resentment and providing fertile ground for the outside salafist jihadists to take root in.
They were not long in spotting their constituency. Abu Musab Zarqawi moved in, and within a matter of months was organising deadly, brutal and provocative attacks aimed both at Western targets and at the majority Shia community.
Doctrinal differences between the two sects go back to disputes over the succession to the Prophet Muhammad in the early decades of Islam, but conflict between them is generally based on community, history and sectarian politics rather than religion as such.
Setting himself up with a new group called Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Tawhid means declaring the uniqueness of Allah), Zarqawi immediately forged a pragmatic operational alliance with underground cells of the remnants of Saddam’s regime, providing the two main intertwined strands of the Sunni-based insurgency: militant Jihadism, and Iraqi Sunni nationalism.
His group claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in August 2003 that set the pattern for much of what was to come: a suicide truck bomb explosion at the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed the envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 20 of his staff, and a suicide car bomb blast in Najaf which killed the influential Shia ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and 80 of his followers. The bombers were salafist jihadists, but logistics were reportedly provided by underground Baathists.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionZarqawi was behind the deadly 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad
The following year, Zarqawi himself was believed by the CIA to be the masked killer shown in a video beheading an American hostage, Nicholas Berg, in revenge for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses of Iraqi detainees by members of the US military.
As the battle with the Americans and the new Shia-dominated Iraqi government intensified, Zarqawi finally took the oath of loyalty to Bin Laden, and his group became the official al-Qaeda branch in Iraq.
But they were never really on the same page. Zarqawi’s provocative attacks on Shia mosques and markets, triggering sectarian carnage, and his penchant for publicising graphic brutality, were all in line with the radical teachings he had imbibed. But they drew rebukes from the al-Qaeda leadership, concerned at the impact on Muslim opinion.
Zarqawi paid little heed. His strain of harsh radicalism passed to his successors after he was killed by a US air strike in June 2006 on his hideout north of Baghdad. He was easily identified by the tattoos he had never managed to get rid of.
The direct predecessor of IS emerged just a few months later, with the announcement of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) as an umbrella bringing the al-Qaeda branch together with other insurgent factions.
But tough times lay ahead. In January 2007, the Americans began “surging” their own troops in Iraq from 132,000 to a peak of 168,000, adopting a much more hands-on approach in mentoring the rebuilt Iraqi army. At the same time, they enticed Sunni tribes in western al-Anbar province to stop supporting the jihadists and join the US-led Coalition-Iraqi government drive to quell the insurgency, which many did, on promises that they would be given jobs and control over their own security.
By the time both the new ISI and al-Qaeda leaders were killed in a US-Iraqi army raid on their hideout in April 2010, the insurgency was at its lowest ebb, pushed back into remote corners of Sunni Iraq.
They were both replaced by one man, about whom very little was publicly known at the time, and not much more since: Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Six eventful years later, he would be proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, Commander of the Faithful and leader of the newly declared “Islamic State”.
Territorial takeover
Baghdadi’s career is so shrouded in mist that there are very few elements of it that can be regarded as fact. By all accounts he was born near Samarra, north of Baghdad, so the epithet “Baghdadi” seems to have been adopted to give him a more national image, while “Abu Bakr” evokes the first successor to (and father-in-law of) Prophet Muhammad.
Like the original Abu Bakr, Baghdadi is also reputed to come from the Prophet’s Quraysh clan. That, and his youth – born in 1971 – may have been factors in his selection as leader.
All accounts of his early life agree that he was a quiet, scholarly and devout student of Islam, taking a doctorate at the Islamic University of Baghdad. Some even say he was shy, and a bit of a loner, living for 10 years in a room beside a small Sunni mosque in western Baghdad.
The word “charismatic” has never been attached to him.
Who is the leader of IS?
Image caption29 June 2014: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi makes a rare appearance in public
As a youth, Baghdadi had a passion for Koranic recitation and was meticulous in his observance of religious law. His family nicknamed him The Believer because he would chastise his relatives for failing to live up to his stringent standards.
Who is Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
But by the time of the US-led invasion in 2003, he appears to have become involved with a militant Sunni group, heading its sharia (Islamic law) committee. American troops detained him, and he was reportedly held in the detention centre at Camp Bucca in the south for most of 2004.
Camp Bucca (named after a fireman who died in the 9/11 attacks) housed up to 20,000 inmates and became a university from which many IS and other militant leaders graduated. It gave them an unrivalled opportunity to imbibe and spread radical ideologies and sabotage skills and develop important contacts and networks, all in complete safety, under the noses and protection of their enemies.
Baghdadi would also certainly have met in Camp Bucca many of the ex-Baathist military commanders with whom he was to form such a deadly partnership.
The low-profile, self-effacing Baghdadi rang no alarm bells with the Americans. They released him, having decided he was low-risk.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionCamp Bucca, 2008: A “university” for future IS leaders
But he went on to work his way steadily up through the insurgent hierarchy, virtually unknown to the Iraqi public.
By the time Baghdadi took over in 2010, the curtains seemed to be coming down for the jihadists in the Iraqi field of “savagery”.
But another one miraculously opened up for them across the border in neighbouring Syria at just the right moment. In the spring of 2011, the outbreak of civil war there offered a promising new arena of struggle and expansion. The majority Sunnis were in revolt against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad, dominated by his Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam.
Baghdadi sent his men in. By December 2011, deadly car bombs were exploding in Damascus which turned out to be the work of the then shadowy al-Nusra Front. It announced itself as an al-Qaeda affiliate the following month. It was headed by a Syrian jihadist, Abu Mohammed al-Julani. He had been sent by Baghdadi, but had his own ideas.
Jostling with a huge array of competing rebel groups in Syria, al-Nusra won considerable support on the ground because of its fearless and effective fighting skills, and the flow of funds and foreign fighters that support from al-Qaeda stimulated. It was relatively moderate in its salafist approach, and cultivated local relationships.
Al-Nusra was slipping out of Baghdadi’s control, and he didn’t like it. In April 2013, he tried to rein it back, announcing that al-Nusra was under his command in a new Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Syria or the Levant). Isis, or Isil, was born.
What’s in a name?
Image copyrightAlamy Image captionIS flag: Arabic text of the first part of “shahada”, the basic statement of the Islamic faith, and the seal of the Prophet below it
During the short and turbulent period over which it has imposed itself as a major news brand, so-called Islamic State has confused the world with a series of name changes reflecting its mutations and changing aspirations, leaving a situation where there is no universal agreement on how to refer to it.
After emerging in Iraq as the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), its spread to Syria prompted the addition of “and al-Sham”, a word that can mean Damascus, Syria, or the wider Levant
Many chose to use the easy acronym Isis, with the “S” standing either for Syria or al-Sham, though the US administration and others opted for Isil (the “l” standing for “Levant”). Both are still widely used though technically outdated
In Arabic the same acronym can come out as Daash, sometimes spelled Daesh in English; it has passed into common usage among many Arabs, but is disliked by the organisation itself, which sees it as disrespectful of the “state”; although Daash has no meaning in Arabic, it also has an unpleasant sound to it, which may be why American and Western officialdom often use it
After further expansion of territory and ambitions, the movement dropped geographical specificity and called itself simply “the Islamic State”; Much of the world was politically reluctant simply to call it that, for fear of implying legitimacy
The BBC and others have generally opted for calling it the “self-styled” or “so-called” Islamic State on first reference, and IS thereafter
But Julani rebelled, and renewed his oath of loyalty to al-Qaeda’s global leadership, now under Ayman al-Zawahiri following Bin Laden’s death in 2011. Zawahiri ordered Baghdadi to go back to being just the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) and leave al-Nusra as the al-Qaeda Syria franchise.
It was Baghdadi’s turn to ignore orders from head office.
Before 2013 was out, Isis and al-Nusra were at each other’s throats. Hundreds were killed in vicious internecine clashes which ended with Isis being driven out of most of north-west Syria by al-Nusra and allied Syrian rebel factions. But Isis took over Raqqa, a provincial capital in the north-east, and made it its capital. Many of the foreign jihadists who had joined al-Nusra also went over to Isis, seeing it as tougher and more radical. In early 2014, al-Qaeda formally disowned Isis.
Isis had shaken off the parental shackles. But it had lost a lot of ground, and was bottled up. One of its main slogans, Remaining and Expanding, risked becoming empty. So where next?
Fortune smiled once more. Back in Iraq, conditions had again become ripe for the jihadists. The Americans had gone, since the end of 2011. Sunni areas were again aflame and in revolt, enraged by the sectarian policies of the Shia Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki. Sunnis felt marginalised, oppressed and angry.
Image copyrightAlamy Image captionAn IS fighter waves a flag while standing on a captured government fighter jet in Raqqa, Syria, 2015
When Isis decided to move, it was pushing at an open door. In fact, it had never really left Iraq, just gone into the woodwork. As it swept through Sunni towns, cities and villages with bewildering speed in June 2014, sleeper cells of salafist jihadists and ex-Saddamist militants and other sympathisers broke cover and joined the takeover.
With the capture of Mosul, Isis morphed swiftly into a new mode of being, like a rocket jettisoning its carrier. No longer just a shadowy terrorist group, it was suddenly a jihadist army not only threatening the Iraqi state, but challenging the entire world.
The change was signalled on 29 June by the proclamation of the “Islamic State”, replacing all previous incarnations, and the establishment of the “caliphate”. A few days later, the newly anointed Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made a surprise appearance in Mosul in the pulpit of the historic Grand Mosque of Nour al-Din al-Zangi, heavily laden with anti-Crusader associations. He called on the world’s Muslims to rally behind him.
By declaring a caliphate and adopting the generic “Islamic State” title, the organisation was clearly setting its sights far beyond Syria and Iraq. It was going global.
Announcing a caliphate has huge significance and resonance within Islam. While it remains the ideal, Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders had always shied away from it, for fear of failure. Now Baghdadi was trumping the parent organisation, setting IS up in direct competition with it for the leadership of global jihadism.
A caliphate (khilafa) is the rule or rein of a caliph (khalifa), a word which simply means a successor – primarily of the Prophet Muhammad. Under the first four caliphs who followed after he died in 632, the Islamic Caliphate burst out of Arabia and extended through modern-day Iran to the east, into Libya to the west, and to the Caucasus in the north.
The Umayyad caliphate which followed, based in Damascus, took over almost all of the lands that IS would like to control, including Spain. The Baghdad-based Abbasid caliphate took over in 750 and saw a flowering of science and culture, but found it hard to hold it all together, and Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols in 1258.
Emerging from that, the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople (Istanbul), stretched almost to Vienna at its peak, and was also a caliphate, though the distinction with empire was often blurred. The caliphate was finally abolished by Ataturk in 1924.
So when Baghdadi was declared Caliph of the Islamic State, it was an act of extraordinary ambition. He was claiming no less than the mantle of the Prophet, and of his followers who carried Islam into vast new realms of conquest and expansion.
For most Islamic scholars and authorities, not to mention Arab and Muslim leaders, such claims from the chief of one violent extremist faction had no legitimacy at all, and there was no great rush to embrace the new caliphate. But the millennial echoes it evoked did strike a chord with some Islamic romantics – and with some like-minded radical groups abroad.
Four months after the proclamation, a group of militants in Libya became the first to join up by pledging allegiance to Baghdadi, followed a month later by the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis jihadist faction in Egypt’s Sinai. IS’s tentacles spread deeper into Africa in March 2015 when Boko Haram in Nigeria took the oath of loyalty. Within a year, IS had branches or affiliates in 11 countries, though it held territory in only five, including Iraq and Syria.
It was in those two core countries that Baghdadi and his followers started implementing their state project on the ground, applying their own harsh vision of Islamic rule.
To the outside world, deprived of direct access to the areas controlled by IS, one of the most obvious and shocking aspects of this was their systematic destruction of ancient cultural and archaeological heritage sites and artefacts.
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Some of the region’s best-known and most-visited sites were devastated, including themagnificent temples of Bel and Baalshamin at Palmyra in Syria, and the Assyrian cities of Hatra and Nimrud in Iraq.
It wasn’t just famous archaeological sites that came under attack. Christian churches and ancient monasteries, Shia mosques and shrines, and anything depicting figures of any sort were destroyed, and embellishments removed even from Sunni mosques. Barely a month after taking over Mosul, IS demolition squads levelled the 13th Century shrine of the Imam Awn al-Din, which had survived the Mongol invasion.
All of this was absolutely in line with IS’s puritanical vision of Islam, under which any pictorial representation or shrine is revering something other than Allah, and any non-Muslim structures are monuments of idolatry. Even Saudi kings and princes to this day are buried without coffins in unmarked graves.
Image copyrightAFP Image captionA video posted to YouTube in 2015 showed destruction of sculpted faces at Hatra
By posting videos of many of these acts which the rest of the world saw as criminal cultural vandalism, IS also undoubtedly intended to shock. In that sense, it was the cultural equivalent of beheading aid workers.
And there was a more practical and profitable side to the onslaught on cultural heritage. In highly organised manner, IS’s Treasury Department issues printed permits to loot archaeological sites, and takes a percentage of the proceeds.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of a complex structure of governance and control put in place as IS gradually settled in to its conquests, penetrating into every aspect of people’s lives in exactly the same way as Saddam Hussein’s intelligence apparatus had done.
Captured documents published by Der Spiegel last year give some idea of the role of ex-Baathist regime men in setting up and running IS in a highly structured and organised way, with much emphasis on intelligence and security.
Residents of Sunni strongholds like Mosul and Falluja in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria, found that IS operatives already knew almost everything about everybody when they moved in and took over in 2014.
At checkpoints, ID cards were checked against databases on laptops, obtained from government ration or employee registers. Former members of the security forces had to go to specific mosques to “repent”, hand over their weapons and receive a discharge paper.
“At first, all they did was change the preachers in the mosques to people with their own views,” said a Mosul resident who fled a year later.
“But then they began to crack down. Women who had been able to go bare-headed now had to cover up, first with the headscarf and then with the full face-veil. Men have to grow beards and wear short-legged trousers. Cigarettes, hubble-bubble, music and cafes were banned, then satellite TV and mobile phones. Morals police [hisba] vehicles would cruise round, looking for offenders.”
Media captionCitizen journalists from Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) describe life in the IS-controlled city
A Falluja resident recounted the story of a taxi-driver who had picked up a middle-aged woman not wearing a headscarf. They were stopped at an IS checkpoint, the woman given a veil and allowed to go, while the driver was sent to an Islamic court, and sentenced to two months’ detention and to memorise a portion of the Koran. If you fail to memorise, the sentence is repeated.
“They have courts with judges, officials, records and files, and there are fixed penalties for each crime, it’s not random,” said the Falluja resident. “Adulterers are stoned to death. Thieves have their hands cut off. Gays are executed by being thrown off high buildings. Informers are shot dead, Shia militia prisoners are beheaded.”
Severed heads on park fences: A diary of life under IS
An activist based in Raqqa from a group called Al-Sharqiya 24 has been keeping a diary of what life is like under Islamic State group rule.
There are IS departments that carry the organisation’s grip into every corner of life, including finance, agriculture, education, transport, health, welfare and utilities.
School curricula were overhauled in line with IS precepts, with history rewritten, all images being removed from schoolbooks and English taken off the menu.
“One thing you can say is this,” said the Mosul resident. “There is absolutely no corruption, no wasta (knowing the right people and pulling strings). They are totally convinced they are on the right track.”
Image captionMap, purportedly produced by IS, showing group’s aspirational takeover of all lands historically controlled by caliphates and Ottoman Empire
One recent story tells a lot about IS and its ways.
As Iraqi security forces were pressing forward in areas around Ramadi earlier this year, civilians were fleeing the battle – and IS fighters, losing the day, were trying to sneak out too.
Two women, running from the combat zone, approached a police checkpoint.
As they were being waved through to safety, one of the women suddenly turned to the police, pointed at the other, and said : “This is not a woman. He’s an IS emir [commander].”
The police investigated, and it was true. The other woman was a man, who had shaved, and put on makeup and women’s clothes. He turned out to be top of the list of wanted local IS commanders.
“When IS arrived, he killed my husband, who was a policeman, raped me, and then took me as his wife,” the woman told the police.
“I put up with him all this time, waiting to avenge my husband and my honour,” she said. “I tricked him into shaving and putting on makeup, then denounced him to the police.”
What is life like for women under IS?
Media captionNour is a woman from Raqqa, the so-called Islamic State’s capital inside Syria
“Nour” is a woman from Raqqa, the so-called Islamic State’s (IS) capital inside Syria. She managed to escape the city and is now a refugee in Europe, where she met up with the BBC.
This story is based on her experiences and those of her two sisters, who are still inside the IS-held city.
Taking on the world
Having taken over vast swathes of territory in Iraq with their lightning offensive in June 2014, the militants might have been expected to calm down and consolidate their gains.
But, like a shark that has to keep moving or else it will die, IS barely paused before initiating a new spiral of provocation and reprisals that was predictably to draw it into active conflict with almost all the major world powers.
Already, the June offensive had threatened the approaches to Baghdad, prompting the Americans to start bringing in hundreds of military advisers and trainers to see how to help the struggling Iraqi army.
Just two months later, the attack on Kurdish areas in the north triggered US air strikes in defence of the Kurdistan capital, Irbil, and then to help stave off the threat of genocide to the Yazidis. Fourteen other nations were to join the air campaign.
Image copyrightAFP Image captionIraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters head to the Mosul dam (August, 2014 )
Ten days later, IS beheaded James Foley and the others followed, in line with the doctrine of exemplary brutality as punishment, deterrent and provocation. The most shocking was to come some months later, with the burning alive of the downed Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Shock intended.
The US-led bombing campaign was extended to Syria in September 2014 after IS besieged the Kurdish-held town of Kobane on the Turkish border. Coalition air strikes turned the tide there. IS lost hundreds of fighters killed at Kobane and elsewhere. More revenge was called for. IS turned abroad.
From the declaration of the caliphate until early 2016, some 70 terrorist attacks were either carried out or inspired by IS in 20 countries around the globe, from California to Sydney,with an estimated 1,200 victims killed. The attacks carried the same message of punishment, deterrence and provocation as the hostage beheadings, while also demonstrating IS’s global reach.
At the same time, they carried through the militants’ doctrine of distracting the enemy by setting fires in different locations and making him squander resources on security. For IS, “the enemy” is everybody who does not embrace it. The world is divided into Dawlat al-Islam, the State of Islam, and Dawlat al-Kufr, the State of Unbelief.
The most consequential of these atrocities were the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai on 31 October and the Paris attacks on 13 November, provoking both Russia and France to intensify air strikes on IS targets in Syria.
Had IS gone mad? It seemed determined to take on the whole world. It was goading and confronting the Americans, the Russians, and a long list of others. By its own count, it had a mere 40,000 fighters at its command (other estimates go as low as half that).
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionA memorial to the victims of downed Airbus A321, at Pulkovo Airport in Russia, in November 2015
Could it really challenge the global powers and hope to survive? Or can President Barack Obama fulfil his pledge to “degrade and ultimately destroy” IS?
Final showdown
If there seems to be something apocalyptic about IS’s “bring it on” defiance, that’s because there is.
When the organisation first brought out its online magazine – a major showcase and recruitment tool – just a month after the “caliphate” was declared, it was not by chance that it was named Dabiq.
A small town north of Aleppo in Syria, Dabiq is mentioned in a hadith (a reported saying of the Prophet Muhammad) in connection with Armageddon. In IS mythology, it is the scene where a cataclysmic showdown will take place between the Muslims and the infidels, leading to the end of days. Each issue of Dabiq begins with a quote from Abu Musab Zarqawi: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission – until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.”
The prospect of taking part in that final glorious climax, achieving martyrdom on the path of Allah and an assured place in paradise, is one of the thoughts inspiring those heeding the IS call to jihad.
That could help explain why the organisation seems to enjoy an endless supply of recruits willing to blow themselves to pieces in suicide attacks, which it calls “martyrdom-seeking operations” (suicide is forbidden in Islam). Hundreds have died in this way, and they happen virtually daily.
It’s one of the elements that makes IS a formidable fighting force that will be hard to destroy even in strictly military terms.
The Baathist legacy at the core of IS
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionFormer Iraqi army officers have helped organise and direct IS
IS is in many respects a project of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party, but now with a different ideology. Former agents or officers of Saddam Hussein’s regime dominate its leadership… They represent a battle-hardened and state-educated core that would likely endure (as they have done through US occupation and a decade of war) even if the organisation’s middle and lower cadres are decimated.
Is Islamic State invincible?
The head of security and intelligence for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, Masrour Barzani, tells the story of a frustrated would-be suicide bomber who screamed at his captors: “I was just ten minutes away from being united with the Prophet Muhammad!”
“They think they’re winners regardless of whether they kill you or they get killed,” says Barzani. “If they kill you, they win a battle. If they get killed, they go to heaven. With people like this, it’s very difficult to deter them from coming at you. So really the only way to defeat them is to eliminate them.”
Probably for the first time in military history since the Japanese kamikaze squadrons of World War Two, suicide bombers are used by IS not only for occasional terrorist spectaculars, but as a standard and common battlefield tactic.
Virtually all IS attacks begin with one or several suicide bombers driving explosives-rigged cars or trucks at the target, softening it up for combat squads to go in. So much so that the “martyrdom-seekers” have been called the organisation’s “air force”, since they serve a similar purpose.
Formidable though that is, IS as a fighting force is much more than a bunch of wild-eyed fanatics eager to blow themselves up. For that, they have Saddam Hussein to thank.
“The core of IS are former Saddam-era army and intelligence officers, particularly from the Republican Guard,” said an international intelligence official. “They are very good at moving their people around, resupply and so on, they’re actually much more effective and efficient than the Iraqi army are. That’s the hand of former military staff officers who know their business.”
“They are very professional,” adds Masrour Barzani. “They use artillery, armoured vehicles, heavy machinery etc, and they are using it very well. They have officers who know conventional war and how to plan, how to attack, how to defend. They really are operating on the level of a very organised conventional force. Otherwise they’d be no more than a terrorist organisation.”
The partnership with the ex-Baathists, going back to Zarqawi’s early days in Iraq, is clearly a vital component in IS success.
But that does not mean its fighters are invincible on the battlefield. The Kurds in north-east Syria were fighting IS off with no outside help for a year before anybody noticed. And even now, IS makes what would conventionally be seen as costly mistakes.
In December 2015, they lost several hundred fighters in one abortive attack east of Mosul alone, and probably 2,500 altogether that month. In total some 15,000 are estimated to have been killed by Coalition air strikes since August 2014.
But they seem to have little difficulty making up the numbers. With a population of perhaps 10 million acquiescent Sunnis to draw on in Iraq and Syria, most recruiting is done locally. And if IS remains in place, there will soon be a new generation of young militants.
Media captionIS’ brainwashing of children
“I didn’t join out of conviction,” says Bakr Madloul, a 24-year-old bachelor who was arrested in December at his home in a Sunni quarter in southern Baghdad and accused of taking part in deadly IS car bomb attacks on mainly Shia areas, which he admits.
Bakr says he was working as a construction foreman in Kurdistan when IS took over Mosul. He was detained for questioning by Kurdish security, and met a militant in jail who persuaded him to go to Mosul, where he joined up with IS and manned a checkpoint until it was hit by a Coalition air strike.
He was then sent back to his Baghdad suburb to help organise car bombings. The explosives-packed vehicles were sent from outside Baghdad, and his job was to place them where he was told by his controller, usually in crowded streets or markets.
Image captionBakr Madloul (left) pictured during his time as an IS operative
“Only one of the five car bombs I handled was driven by a suicide bomber,” he says. “I spoke to him. He was 22 years old, an Iraqi. He believed he would go to paradise when he died. It’s the easiest and quickest way to Heaven. They strongly believe this. They would blow themselves up to get to Heaven. There were older ones in their 30s and 40s.”
“I asked my controllers more than once, ‘Is it OK to kill women and children?’ They would answer, ‘They’re all the same.’ But to me, killing women and children, I didn’t feel at all comfortable about that. But once you’re in, you’re stuck. If you try to leave, they call you a murtadd, an apostate, and they’ll kill you or your family.”
Bakr knows he will almost certainly hang. I asked him if he would do the same things over if he had his life again. He laughed.
“Absolutely not. I would get out of Iraq, away from IS, away from the security forces. I took this path without realising the consequences. There is no way back. I see that now.”
Image captionBakr Madloul knows he will probably be executed
But up in Kurdistan, another IS prisoner, Muhannad Ibrahim, has no such regrets.
A 32-year-old from a village near Mosul with a wife and three children, he was a construction worker for a Turkish company when IS took over the city. Two of his older brothers had died fighting the Americans there in 2004 and 2006. He joined IS without hesitation and was commanding a small detachment when he was captured in a battle with the Kurds.
“We were being oppressed by the Shia, they were always insulting and bothering us,” he says. “But that’s not the main motivation, religious conviction is more important. All my family is religious, praise be to Allah. I came to IS through my faith and religious principles.”
“If I had my time over again, I would take the same path, the same choices. Because I am convinced by this thing, I have to go to the end. Either I am killed, or Allah will decree some other fate for me.”
Image captionCaptured IS fighter Muhannad Ibrahim is unrepentant
Taming Mosul
Defeating IS militarily is less about its own strengths and vulnerabilities than it is about the deficiencies of the forces arrayed against it. IS is as strong as the weaknesses of the failed states whose collapse into “savagery” has left room for it to take root and grow.
Iraq and Syria have to be the primary focus, as the commander of Coalition forces, Lt Gen Sean MacFarland, spelled out in February 2016:
“The campaign has three objectives: one, to destroy the Isil parent tumour in Iraq and Syria by collapsing its power centres in Mosul and Raqqa; two, to combat the emerging metastasis of the Isil tumour worldwide; and three, to protect our nations from attack.”
It goes without saying that Coalition air strikes, deadly and effective as they are, have their limitations. Only in co-ordination with cohesive, motivated ground forces can the territory taken by IS be regained. And that’s the crippling problem, in both countries.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionA Kurdish fighter passes IS graffiti in the town of Sinjar
The Kurds in the north of both Iraq and Syria have made considerable progress in pushing IS back from areas they regard as theirs, with the help of air strikes. But they are neither capable of going all the way, nor should they – in both countries, they would stir up acute communal sensitivities in the Sunni Arab areas where IS is rooted.
Pro-government forces in Iraq have largely dislodged IS from Diyala province and the Tikrit area north of the capital, but that was mainly the work of Iranian-backed Shia militias who leapt to the defence of Baghdad and the south as IS advanced southwards in June 2014 after the army collapsed.
Using them in mainly Sunni areas is fraught with risk.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of al-Anbar to the west, was recaptured at the end of 2015 in an offensive spearheaded by the government’s US-built Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), with the Shia militias kept out of this Sunni stronghold. But the CTS has limited numbers and has been badly battered. And Ramadi was left in ruins, its entire population fled.
Image copyrightAFP Image captionFebruary 2016: Iraqi forces on the outskirts of Ramadi
All of which does not augur well for the sound retrieval of remaining Sunni hotbeds where IS is dug in in Iraq, such as Falluja – barely 30 miles from Baghdad – and above all, Mosul, 10 times the size of Ramadi.
Surprisingly, given the presence of literally hundreds of competing rebel factions, it’s in Syria that the chances of making serious progress against IS may be greater, though still not great.
The IS imperative has spurred all the outside parties involved there, including the Americans and the Russians and their regional and local allies, for the first time to put serious weight behind a truce and a negotiated settlement between rebels and regime.
The idea and driving motive is that all parties would then be free to turn on IS, and, to be consistent, also al-Nusra Front, because it belongs to al-Qaeda. It may seem like a long shot, but the US seems to be pushing very hard indeed, making things happen that have proven intractable for nearly five years.
If all the parties – the rebel groups, the Kurds, regime troops and militias, and their outside allies including the Coalition and the Russians – can somehow be reconciled and turned against IS, its chances of surviving for long in Syria would not be great.
Its only real conurbation there is Raqqa. It is much less deeply embedded in the Sunni population in Syria than in Iraq. Disgruntled Syrian Sunnis have many other vehicles for pressing their grievances against the regime.
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionThe Iraqi army is preparing for operations to re-take the city of Mosul
So it keeps coming back again to Iraq, and specifically, to Mosul. Ten times the size of Raqqa. And that’s not the only reason for its significance.
“Mosul is the beating heart of IS,” says a senior western official in northern Iraq. “IS is essentially an Iraqi creation. The tragic reality is that at the moment, it is the main Sunni political entity in Iraq. From the West, it’s looked at as a kind of crazed cult. It’s not. Here in Iraq it represents an important constituency. It represents a massive dissatisfaction, the alienation of a whole sector of the population.”
“That’s not to say that the people in Mosul are enthusiastic about IS, but for them, it’s better than anything that comes from Baghdad.”
The word in both Baghdad and northern Iraq is that the Americans are pushing seriously hard for a Mosul campaign by the end of 2016, with President Obama’s departure in mind. That may not be possible, given the difficulties involved in assembling credible ground forces, as well as severe financial crises affecting both Baghdad and Kurdistan.
Image copyrightEPA Image captionThe Al-Noori Al-Kabeer mosque in Mosul
But if it does go ahead, the fear is that wrongly-conceived short-term victory, if it is achieved, will turn into long-term disaster, given the total lack of national reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia in the wake of the sectarian carnage that followed Saddam’s overthrow in 2003.
Sunni grievances in Iraq are such that if IS did not exist, it would have to be invented. Without reconciliation and a sense of Sunni empowerment and partnership in a national project, IS in some shape or form will always be there, just as the Taliban are now resurgent in Afghanistan despite everything that was done to oust them.
But the Iraqi expert on radical movements, Hisham al-Hashemi, believes that IS could be badly damaged if the Coalition succeed in one of their top-priority tasks – to kill Abu Bakr Baghdadi.
Leaders have been killed before, and replaced with little obvious effect on the course of history. But Hashemi believes Baghdadi is different.
“IS’ future depends on Baghdadi,” he says. “If he is killed, it will split up. One part would stay on his track and announce a new caliphate. Another would split off and return to al-Qaeda. Others would turn into gangs following whoever is strongest.”
“The source of his strength is that he brought about an ideological transformation, blending jihadist ideas with Baathist intelligence security methods, enabling him to create this quasi-state organisation.”
Hashemi believes only Baghdadi can hold it together. There have been numerous false reports of him being hit, but he appears to be stubbornly and elusively still alive, not seen in public since that mosque appearance in early July 2014.
The Americans are unlikely to rest until they have killed Baghdadi, not least because of their belief that he personally repeatedly raped an American NGO worker, Kayla Mueller, and then had her killed in early 2015.
But even if they do get him, and even if IS does break up, the Sunni problem in Iraq will not go away.
Capitalising on chaos
IS is in any case spreading its bets and developing other territorial options. At present, Libya looks the most promising. It has just the kind of failed-state anarchy, the “savagery”, that leaves room for the jihadists to move in, forging alliances with local militants and disgruntled supporters of the overthrown regime. Just like Iraq.
IS signalled its arrival there in typical style, issuing a polished video in February 2015 showing a group of 21 bewildered Egyptian Christian workers in orange jumpsuits being beheaded on a Libyan beach, their blood mingling with the waters of the Mediterranean as a warning to the “crusader” European countries on the other side.
The man who voiced that warning was believed to be the IS leader in Libya, an Iraqi called Wissam al-Zubaydi, aka Abu Nabil. By coincidence, Zubaydi was killed in a US air strike on the same day IS struck terror in Paris, 13 November 2015.
The man sent by IS to replace him, Abu Omar al-Janabi, was another Iraqi and former Baathist with a tough reputation and a knack for generating revenue – clearly with one eye on Libya’s oil facilities, given the damage wrought by Coalition bombing on the organisation’s exploitation of fields in Iraq and Syria.
Image copyrightAP Image captionAn image from a video, posted online by Libyan IS supporters, showing “Islamic police” in the city of Sirte
The US and allies have been powerless to halt IS advances in Libya, taking over a big stretch of the coast around the central city of Sirte, which was to (overthrown) Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi what Tikrit was to Saddam Hussein. Another American air strike in February killed (among nearly 50 other people) Noureddine Chouchane, reputedly an IS figure responsible for the deadly attacks on Western tourists in his native Tunisia next door.
With little prospect of a national unity government to end Libya’s chaotic fragmentation and provide partners on the ground, such remote strikes – which sometimes act as powerful recruiters for the militants – are about all the frustrated Western powers can do as IS takes root and spreads.
There are other possibilities already beckoning – Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia… wherever there are dysfunctional states and angry Muslims, there are opportunities for IS, competing strongly with a diminished al-Qaeda as a dominant brand in the jihadist market. Adding the extra risk for the West, that that competition could be another spur for spectacular terrorist attacks which they know are being actively plotted.
Battle for minds
In the first 18 months after the declaration of the “Islamic State”, the number of foreign fighters making their way to join jihad in Syria and Iraq rose dramatically. The New York-based security consultancy Soufan Group estimated that 27,000 foreign jihadists had made the trip from 86 countries, more than half of them from the Middle East and North Africa.
Clearly, the caliphate had appeal, despite – perhaps in some cases because of – its graphically publicised brutality. A tribute to its extraordinary skill in using the internet and social media as a propaganda and grooming tool.
Ten months after vowing to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the organisation, President Obama ruefully acknowledged that IS “has been particularly effective at reaching out to and recruiting vulnerable people around the world including here in the United States, and they are targeting Muslim communities around the world”.
And he put his finger on the real challenge, monumentally greater than the comparatively simple task of defeating IS militarily:
“Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision,” he said.
The complex art of IS propaganda
Image copyrightIS image
On a relatively normal day… there was a total of 50 distinct pieces of propaganda. The photo reports and videos included depictions of an IS offensive in northern Syria and eulogies for the dead in Salahuddin… Overwhelmingly, though, the propagandists were preoccupied with a carefully refined view of ‘normal’ life.
Fishing and ultraviolence
The problem is that when disenchanted people in the region look around them – especially the young, the idealistic, or the hopeless unemployed who have no future – they see scant evidence of “better ideas” or attractive and compelling visions.
They see the ruins of an “Arab Spring” which raised hopes only to dash them cruelly.
The brutal, corrupt dictatorships which it shook have either fragmented into chaos and sectarian and tribal upheaval, like Syria itself, Libya, Yemen and (with Western intervention) Iraq, or the “deep states” of their former regimes came back, even more harshly in the case of Egypt, more gently in the case of Tunisia.
While many of the European jihadists may have heeded the call for other reasons, socio-economic factors play an important part in radicalising some of the Arab jihadists, and will continue to do so unless addressed.
Why IS still attracts recruits from Europe
Image copyrightWest Midlands Police Image captionTareena Shakil, who took her toddler son to Syria to join IS, was jailed after returning to the UK
The flow of recruits, both fighters and families, leaving their homes in Europe to live under so-called Islamic State rule in Raqqa in Syria has slowed dramatically.
“It reached its peak in 2013-14, when it was far easier for jihadists to cross the 822km-long (510-mile) Turkey-Syria border, when IS propaganda on social media went largely unchallenged, and when IS was on a roll militarily, seizing ever more territory across northern Syria and north-western Iraq.
“While all three of those factors have now changed to the detriment of IS, the underlying factors propelling young Britons and Europeans towards joining the group have not gone away. So what are they?
Islamic State: What is the attraction for young Europeans?
One of the biggest contingents is from Tunisia, where a detailed survey in the poorest suburbs of the capital showed clearly that the radicalisation of young people there had far less to do with extreme Islamic ideology as such than it did with unemployment, marginalisation and disillusion after a revolution into which they threw themselves, but which gave them nothing, and left them hopeless.
A rare insight into the types of people who volunteer to join IS came with the emergence in European media in March of batches of what are believed to be “secret” IS files withpersonal details of recruits.
The data from 2013-14 purported to identify members from at least 40 countries. It included names, addresses, phone numbers and skill sets – a potential treasure trove for intelligence agencies trying to track and prosecute nationals who have signed up with the group.
IS is also filling a desert left by the collapse of all the political ideologies that have stirred Arab idealists over the decades. Many used to travel to the Soviet Union for training and tertiary education, but communism is now seen as a busted flush. Arab socialism and Arab nationalism that caused such excitement in the 1950s and 1960s mutated into brutal, corrupt “republics” where sons were groomed to inherit power from their fathers.
In this vacuum, IS took up the cause of punishing the West and other outsiders for their actions in the region over the past century:
the carve-up by the colonial powers 100 years ago, drawing a border between Iraq and Syria which IS has now erased
the creation of Israel under the British mandate for Palestine, and its subsequent unswerving political and financial support by the US
Western (and indeed Russian) backing for corrupt and tyrannical Arab regimes
the Western invasion and destruction of Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts, with the death of uncounted thousands of Iraqis
the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisoner abuse scandals….
The roots of IS also lie in a crisis within Islam.
“Isil is not Islamic,” said President Obama, echoing statements by many western leaders that “IS has nothing to do with Islam”.
It has.
“It is based on Islamic texts that are reinterpreted according to how they see it,” says Ahmad Moussalli, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut. “I don’t say they are not coming out of Islamic tradition, that would be denying facts. But their interpretation is unusual, literal sometimes, very much like the Wahhabis.”
Hisham al-Hashemi, the Iraqi expert on radical groups, agrees.
“Violent extremism in IS and the salafist jihadist groups is justified, indeed blessed, in Islamic law texts relied on by IS and the extremist groups. It’s a crisis of religious discourse, not of a barbaric group. Breaking up the religious discourse and setting it on the right course is more important by far than suppressing the extremist groups militarily.”
Because ancient texts can be interpreted by extremists to cover their worst outrages does not implicate the entire religion, any more than Christianity is defined by the Inquisition, where burning at the stake was a stock penalty.
Extremist ideas remain in the dark, forgotten corners of history unless their time comes. And IS time came, with Afghanistan, Iraq, and everything that followed.
“Salafism is spreading in the world, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arab countries,” says Prof Moussalli.
He blames the Saudis for stifling the emergence of a moderate, democratic version of Islam, the “alternative Islamic discourse” to salafism that President Obama would like to see.
“A moderate Islamic narrative today is a Muslim Brotherhood narrative, which has been destroyed by the Gulf states supporting the military coup in Egypt,” says Prof Moussalli, referring to the Egyptian military’s ousting of the elected President Mohammed Morsi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure, in July 2013.
“We lost that opportunity with Egypt. Egypt could have paved the way for real change in the area. But Saudi Arabia stood against it, in a very malicious way, and destroyed the possibility of changing the Arab regimes into more democratic regimes that accept the transfer of power peacefully. They don’t want it.”
Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment and its constant propagation have raised ambiguity over its relations with radical groups abroad. Enemies and critics have accused it of producing the virulent strain of Wahhabism that inspires the extremists, and even of supporting IS and other ultra-salafist groups.
But Jamal Khashoggi, a leading Saudi journalist and writer who spent time in Afghanistan and knew Bin Laden, says that simply is not true
“We are at war with IS, which sees us as corrupt Wahhabis.” he says.
“IS is a form of Wahhabism that has been suppressed here since the 1930s. It resurfaced with the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and spread here and there. But Saudi Arabia didn’t back it at all, it saw it as a threat. So it’s true that salafism can turn radical, just as the US right-wing produces some crazy lunatics.”
Hundreds of people died in a two-week siege when extremist salafists took over the Grand Mosque, the holiest place in Islam, in protest at what they saw as the Kingdom’s deviation from the true path.
More recently, Saudi Arabia’s security forces and its Shia minority have in fact been the target of attacks by IS, and the kingdom has executed captured militants. It has an active deradicalisation programme.
Media captionSaudi Arabia’s ‘creative approach’ to deradicalisation
But Mr Khashoggi agrees that the Saudis made a huge mistake when they backed the overthrow of the elected Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt and the subsequent crackdown on the movement, which has pushed political Islam into the arms of the radicals.
“There were no pictures of Isis, Bin Laden or al-Qaeda in Tahrir Square,” he says. “It was an opportunity for democracy in the Middle East, but we made a historical blunder for which we are all paying now.”
But the Kingdom’s extreme conservatism, its distaste for democracy, and its custodianship of the shrines in Mecca and Medina to which millions of Muslims make pilgrimage every year, have made it one of the main targets for calls for an unlikely reformation within Islam as part of the battle to defeat IS and other extremist groups.
“We must accept the fact that Islam has a crisis,” says a senior Sunni politician in Iraq.
“IS is not a freak. Look at the roots, the people, the aims. If you don’t deal with the roots, the situation will be much more dangerous. The world has to get rid of IS, but needs a new deal: reformation, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, al-Azhar [the ancient seat of Sunni Islamic learning and authority in Cairo].”
“You can’t kill all the Muslims, you need an Islamic reformation. But Saudi and Qatari money is blotting out the voices so we can’t get anywhere. It’s the curse of the Arab world, too much oil, too much money.”
Regional rivalry
IS is at the heart of yet another of the region’s burning themes – the strategic geopolitical contest, the game of nations, that is taking place as Syria and Iraq disintegrate.
When the US-led coalition destroyed the Iraqi state in 2003, it was breaking down the wall that was containing Iran, the region’s Shia superpower, seen as a threat by the Saudis and most of their Sunni Gulf partners since its Islamic revolution in 1979.
Iran had for years been backing anti-Saddam Iraqi Shia factions in exile. Through those groups, the empowerment of the majority Shia community in Iraq after 2003 gave Iran unrivalled influence over Iraqi politics.
The arrival of the IS threat led to even more Iranian penetration, arming, training and directing the Shia militia who rose in defence of Baghdad and the South.
“If it weren’t for Iran, the democratic experiment in Iraq would have fallen,” says Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Iranian-backed Badr Organisation, one of the biggest Shia fighting groups.
“Obama was sleeping, and he didn’t wake up until IS was at the gates of Erbil. When they were at the gates of Baghdad, he did nothing. Were it not for Iran’s support, IS would have taken over the whole Gulf, not just Iraq.”
Image copyrightGetty Images Image captionHadi al-Ameri, leader of the Badr Organisation, one of the biggest Shia fighting groups
For Saudi Arabia and its allies, Iranian penetration in Iraq threatens to establish, indeed largely has, a Shia crescent, linking Iran, Iraq, Syria under its minority Alawite leadership, and Lebanon dominated by the Iranian-created Shia faction Hezbollah.
From the outset of the war in Syria, the Saudis and their Gulf partners, and Turkey, backed the Sunni rebels in the hope that the overthrow of Assad would establish Sunni majority rule.
So then a north-south Sunni axis running from Turkey through Syria to Jordan and Saudi Arabia would drive a stake through the heart of the Shia crescent and foil the Iranian project, as they saw it.
That is essentially what IS did in 2014 when it moved back into Iraq, took Mosul and virtually all the country’s Sunni areas, and established a Sunni entity which straddled the suddenly irrelevant border with Syria, blocking off Shia parts of Iraq from Syria.
If IS had just stayed put at that point and dug in, who would have shifted them? Had they not gone on to attack the Kurds, the Americans would not have intervened. Had they not shot down a Russian airliner and attacked Paris, the Russians and French would not have stepped up their involvement.
“Had they not become international terrorists and stayed local terrorists, they could have served the original agenda of dividing the Arab east so there would be no Shia crescent,” says Prof Moussalli.
We may never know why they did it. Perhaps their virulent strain of salafism just had to keep going: Remaining and Expanding.
Could they now just row back and settle in to their “state”, stop antagonising people, and eventually gain acceptance, just as Iran has after its own turbulent revolution and international isolation?
It seems unlikely, for the same driving reasons that they made that escalation in the first place. And even if IS wanted to, the Americans also seem set on their course, and they have proven implacable in their pursuit of revenge for terrorist outrages.
But what is the alternative? Given the problem of assembling capable ground forces, can the Americans be complicit in a takeover of Mosul by Iranian-backed Shia militias, and of Raqqa by Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian regime forces or other non-Sunni groups like the Kurds? Is their hostility to IS so strong that they would watch the Iranians connect up their Shia crescent? And would the Saudis and Turks go along with that?
There are no easy answers to any of the challenges posed by IS in all the strands of crisis that it brings together.
Following my presentation entitled “Bridging The Leadership Gap: For smooth transition and successful post conflict Ethiopia” on March 26, 2016 at Georgetown Marriott Hotel in Washington DC, some audience members chatted with me afterwards, and gave me some feedbacks. While many of them recognized the gap and glad that it was discussed at this conference, some of them challenged whether the elephant in the room is a leadership gap after all. Since the time allotted to each speech was 20 minutes max, it wasn’t possible to provide enough background information. Last year, PRO Leadership Global conducted its annual conference, which was held at Prince George’s Community College. The conference recognized the 3G (Geographic, Generational, & Gender) Leadership Gaps. No one disputes the existence of leadership gap in the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres than in the West. There’s a huge generational gap globally. Research shows that, in just the US alone, 33 million baby boomer leaders are going to retire by the year 2020. The same is true in our case. Who are leading both in Ethiopia and here in the Diaspora? The Ethiopian version baby boomer leaders J are in charge everywhere. Whether it’s within the ruling party or in the opposition camp; whether it’s in the NGOs or in the religious institutions, the dominant decision makers are members of the older generation. There’s nothing wrong with this as far as the contemporary leaders are conscious about the existence of the generational gap and proactively raising their successors. Unfortunately, that is not what has been happening. Likewise, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we’re plagued by gender leadership gap. Regardless of their number, which is more 50% and their lion share contributions at family, community, and national levels, enough women aren’t at the front and leading.
Once you have the context, please note that this past Saturday, I specifically talked about bridging the leadership gap that hasn’t allowed us to topple dictatorship. If you’re interested, you may consider reading my recent article entitled “Leadership Gap: The main reason why we keep failing to topple dictatorship” that briefly pointed out how our past and contemporary struggles to remove dictatorship and usher our country to a bright future- where there’ll be peace, stability, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law- have been sabotaged because of leadership gap. Some of the audience members who talked to me looked unconvinced. I don’t blame them because the familiar culprits many point their fingers at for our inability to carryout a smooth transition from dictatorship to democracy are TPLF, Derge, America and the Western Countries, even God (many think that we’re cursed), and still others believe that the devil has been messing us up J and the only way out is fasting and prayer. Sorry to spoil their pity parties. We’re the authors of our own failing. It’s not the strength of TPLF. Or the lack of diplomatic supports we haven’t got from TPLF’s allies. These may have some negative contributions toward our quest to make a smooth transition. If we have had competent leaders, we wouldn’t have kept failing. Of course, I’m not talking about leadership gap in numbers. The gap the presentation attempted to show was a quality gap- the lack of leadership competency, not just at the top, at all levels.
Some people think that the problem we’ve had is the lack of committed, patriotic, and active followers. These are mainly leaders who’re trying to escape responsibility. Whose responsibility is to attract followers, organize, inspire, & develop them? This is a job primarily of the leadership though it’d be great if the followers become proactive and take initiatives. When people have confidence in their leadership, they’re willing to commit their time, talent, resources, and even their lives. Still others argue that they have the leadership in place. Their problem is the lack of organizational capacity. Again, whose responsibility is to design the right organizational design, recruit the right people to fill the structure, and engage the public at grass root level? The leadership. There are also some who complain that their leadership is constrained by lack of resources; otherwise, they’d have succeeded in realizing their vision and meeting their goals. Whose responsibility is to be resourceful? The leadership. Of course, there’re also some who specifically point out that our trouble is none other than the constitution, the ethnic federalism, some other faulty policies, and therefore, they shy away from acknowledging the leadership gap as a serious issue. It’s true we need a relevant, timely, and comprehensive constitution that must gain the support of the majority of Ethiopians. We also need appropriate policies and programs, democratic institutions, well-trained human capital to implement these policies and run the institutions, respectively. With the right and competent leadership, these and many other specific, technical, and policy issues would have been resolved easily. However, without the former, having the latter is useless, to say the least.
Still others grumble about our culture. They say: It’s the culture that is stupid, not us the leaders. It’s true that status quo is the problem but whose responsibility is to reform the culture if it is a roadblock? Great leaders are those who challenge the status quo even if it means offending the public. China is now heading to be a superpower country. That journey began with a cultural revolution led by Mao Zedong. Though I don’t condone his method, which was violent in the majority of the cases, Cultural Revolution transformed the country, setting China up to enjoy her present state of success. Another example. Research shows that South Korea and Ghana were on the same footing in the 60’s; having almost the same GDP, receiving equal amount of aid, producing similar products and services, etc. Unlike Ghanaian, South Korean leaders employed Cultural Revolution by substituting some of their counter productive cultural values with some powerful values, which in turn enabled them to transform their country from one of the developing countries into one of the developed within a few decades. We have a hope to transform our country but that journey must begin with Cultural Revolution! We need to identify those cultural attributes that are golden, and those that are limiting. And, we need courageous and bold leaders to help us disown the latter, and substitute them with some important values that could empower us to become tolerant, inclusive, hard working, innovative, and so on.
Unfortunately, many of our leaders, like the general public, are blind loyal to our culture. Of course, as in the case of all other cultures, there are great cultural attributes and some cultural values we must eradicate if our desire is to make lasting and enduring change. That is why we need transformational leaders. Leaders who are bold enough to poke around our culture, and force us change for good. During the question and answer session, almost all of the participants who stood to comment and ask complained about some of our cultural shortcomings (of course, they didn’t mention the word culture). They criticized our failure to come together, questioned why we divide ourselves along ethnic, region, and religion lines? They wondered why we do this and that. Unlike the Chinese and South Koreans, who overcame insurmountable challenges in unison, we failed to do so because we’re unable to reform our culture courageously. Very few of our problems require advanced technologies, highly trained manpower, intensive resources, and so on. Ethiopia won’t be able to see unity, democracy, stability, prosperity, and freedom until we open our eyes and acknowledge that we are victims of our own culture. Unless we are brave enough to reconfigure our culture, we keep toiling in vain. Blaming one another, pointing our fingers somewhere, and barking at the wrong trees doesn’t cut it. Unfortunately, the task of reforming our culture too desperately needs courageous, selfless, visionary, far-sighted, and transformational leaders. This is the kind of leadership gap I was talking about, not a mere number gap.
I had the same challenge following my presentation on March 20 2016 at Resident Inn Marriott Hotel in DC. The theme of my presentation was “The Necessity of Women’s Role in Leadership Positions in Ethiopia”. Some contended that we don’t have a lack of women leaders. They reasoned that a few women leaders should be enough to lead us bridge the gender inequality. I stand with my position. Without having enough and, most importantly, competent women leaders at all levels, it’s impossible to bridge the gender inequality, and gender leadership gap.
When I say we have a leadership gap, I’m talking about in terms of their competence. Do they have both hard and soft skills? Are they articulate enough to clearly spell out the mission, motto, brand, goals, and objectives of their organizations? Are they visionary, and most importantly, do they know how to impart the vision to all stakeholders? Do they have the right values and character? Can they strategize and also put in place contingencies (or at least willing to get help)? Do they have detailed long and short term plans to execute the strategies and meet their goals? Can they set up an organizational design that fits the mission of their respective organization? There’s no one design fits all. We need different types of designs for different kinds of organizations- NGOs, parties, businesses, government agencies, religious institutions, and so on. By the way, I’m not saying that we need to have perfect and readily available leaders. As far as they are humble and willing to learn, we should be okay. These kinds of leaders go ahead of their flock, continue to feed themselves and grow. In his classic Habitudes, Tim Elmore used the starving baker as a metaphor to show how leaders must feed themselves before feeding others. Leaders should first change their inside through the things they take in before they try to change others, and the world outside of them.
Last but not least, we- the public- should also take some responsibilities for creating the leadership gap. The 19th C philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville said,“The people get the government they deserve.” Do we deserve the leaders we have had? If the answer is NO, then, let’s show it by playing a proactive role in selecting and developing leaders we deserve. Of course, that journey should begin with us. Each one of us should become leaders in the area of our passion. Leadership is the birthright of all. If we’ve great leaders everywhere, only the best of us take the top leadership at national, community, party, and organizational levels. Our country cannot become greater and better than its own people and leaders. We also need to learn from our past leaders (adopt and improve their strengths, avoid their mistakes), and the experiences of other leaders around the world. Let’s try our best to play our share in bridging the leadership gaps. In this regard and to play my little share, I’ll share with you a couple of articles in the coming weeks and months, and look forward to hear your feedbacks.
[1] Dr. Assegid Habtewold is a leadership expert at Success Pathways, LLC. Assegid can be reached at ahabtewold@yahoo.com
That Ethiopia is at the cross-road is becoming clearer and clearer by the day. We are witnessing mass uprisings by citizens all over the country including the Oromos, the Kimants in Gonder, the Knosso people in the south, the transportation workers in Addis Ababa and Mekele etc., the government in power no longer is able to sustain its dictatorial grip. The decades of its undemocratic ruling has resulted in the continuous public resistance. If this pattern continues, EPRDF’s unavoidable downfall is not a question of if but when. In other words, Ethiopians are telling this government in clear terms that it has no legitimacy to be their leader. That, its unjust cling to power has subjected the country to an unpresented tension which could bring chaos to the country.
In its twenty-five years’ history, the group in power has already shut the door to democracy and continues to weaken all democratic forces making the formation of an effective oppositions next to impossible.
That Ethiopian democratic forces could not master the wisdom and tenacity to overcome the repressive measures from the government and form a unified opposition that can channel their collective intellectual and logistical forces to become alternative political force for Ethiopia. As the result, our nation is facing a very grave danger. This is why Ethiopia is at a cross-road and with no clear direction.
The volatile condition in Ethiopia exposes the country to many possibilities some of which can have dangerous consequences. Given the current situations, we can anticipate the possibility of the following scenarios.
That the peoples’ resistance will continue and even intensifies and the government resorts to nation-wide military rule while at the same time trying to buy time to prolong the misery of the Ethiopian people by pretending to address the democratic demands. In fact, the government is already imposing military rule region by region as we recently witnessed in Oromia and before that in Gambella, Ogaden and Afar regions.
That the EPRDF comes to its sense and participate in initiatives to work with the Ethiopian people, civil and opposition organizations to address the political, economic and social issues to pave the way for a democratic Ethiopia.
That the civil obedience that was started in many parts of the country intensifies and spreads all over the country in unorganized manner making the government weaker and weaker to the point that it cannot rule while at the same time, there are no strong civil and political organization to replace it leaving the nation in total disarray.
That the civil disobedience that has started continues and spreads all over the nation and through the process of self-organization, the people manage to create a coordinated movement that will determine the future of the country.
That the Ethiopian political organizations realize the grave danger the country is facing and urgently minimize their differences to work together to build strong organization which can lead the country to a better future.
That the forces mentioned in scenario #4 and #5 form alliance to intensify the democratic struggle and bring the government to negotiation table to create a better future for all Ethiopians.
Scenario by nature can only draw a rough picture of what could happen if certain conditions exist. It is up to the stake holders (supporters) of a given scenario to convert it to a reality they want to see exist. I hope I am not mistaken if I say that the majority of Ethiopians are interested in realizing scenario #6. To realize scenario #6, we citizens have to make a renewed effort to save our country and make democracy a reality. We cannot sit and watch our people and country going into the unknown.
Below, I put my thoughts as to what we citizens should do to make scenario #6 a reality.
Objectives and Values
As a starter, Ethiopians engaged in the popular uprising, in organized oppositions as well as all democracy longing population, need to agree on common objectives and set of values. First objectives. At minimum our objectives should include the following.
Our first objective has to be to maintain the integrity of our country, Ethiopia, as we know it now. It is only when we keep Ethiopia together we keep a common place we call home. This is vital even for those individuals and groups who have the desire to form a separate nation (other than Ethiopia) latter as there is a way to do it peacefully when a democratic system is established.
Our second and equally important objective is the establishment of democracy (the right to organize, freely speak and write, vote, respect individual rights, religious and democratic freedom etc.). When this happens, all people have the right to participate in their country’s affairs and collectively and peacefully decide on their common future.
The third objective is to make national reconciliation and form a democratic and constitutional government.
The forth objective is to establish system that eradicates our main enemies, poverty ignorance and diseases and fair distribution of the national wealth.
The other important thing we need to do is to stablish the set of ethical values we all should abide by. Values are important because they are codes by which we operate to achieve our objectives. They are like common languages by which we can understand each other and build expectation from each other. The set of minimum values that the citizens and their organizations should carry include
Integrity (honesty and truthfulness)
Equality- respect for each other (tolerance to differing ideas, belief systems and approaches)
Transparency (openness and no hidden agenda)
Patriotism (love for people, country and the common good)
After formulating agreeable objectives, and values the next thing is to work on the formats of organizations we want to establish to achieve our goals.
Agile Networks
After formulating agreeable objectives and ethical codes, the next logical task is to get organized.
Organization is a tool by which we can achieve our objectives.
That the repressive reality in Ethiopia did not allow the formation and development of large opposition political organizations is a fact. It is also true that the undemocratic traditions and lack of tolerance among the opposition did not help the emergence of large organizations. What we have is fragmented and weakened oppositions which in some cases have irreconcilable objectives. What we also have is spontaneous popular uprisings in many part of the country, which are the results of prolonged political repression and economic inequality imposed by the ruling group. The big question is: how do we go about establishing a viable opposition force under this repressive government that can build a true democratic country?
I try to answer the above big question by asking: Are large organizations (classical organizations) necessity to achieve our objectives? In other words, do we need to organize ourselves under large organizations to be a strong challenger to this government or can we forge the existing smaller and fragmented organizations in to networked systems to enable them to work as one?
No question that Ethiopia would have been in a better place now, had we have strong opposition organizations. But our history of many decades testify that we could not manage to form such formidable organization. Given the urgency that our country is facing, we need to explore a different model for cooperation while still trying to form the needed strong opposition organization (s). In this paper, I dwell on discussing an alternative form of cooperation as opposed to the classical organization. Before I get to that, I want to say few words about the traditional (classical) organizational format.
The classical organizations that most of us are familiar today have their beginning in the agrarian societies. The agrarian societies that came after the hunter-gatherer societies formed the basis for large settlements which in turn created the condition for the emergence of organizations such as states, armies, churches etc. Fast forward, the societies of the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries also adopted those organizational formats and continued with them. Governments and entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution borrowed their organizational model from the states and armies started in the agrarian communities. Just like the states, armies and churches of earlier societies, the organizations including states of the industrial revolutions had centralized, hierarchical and command and control nature.
In addition to being centralized, hierarchical, command and control, another characteristic of the classical organization model is the acceptance of the separation of the mind (intellect) from the body (manual). This separation of the thinking from the doing became the foundation to separate the functions such as leaders, government officials, management, technical, administrative and labor which in turn reinforced the hierarchic and centralized organizations.
It is this organizational model that the majority of societies in this and the previous centuries apply in states, army, church, industry, commerce, education, politics, philanthropic and other functions that require large number of people. Another important point that needs mentioning here is that, for large organizations to exist and develop, they need a fertile and conducive conditions be it political, financial and cultural which the landlords of the agrarian societies, the states of industrial nations or the corrupt governments of EPRDF types have no shortages of. Otherwise it is impossible for such organizations to exist let alone to survive.
In repressive systems, the only big organizations that has the means to exist and grow are those which belong to the regimes. Opposition organizations, are suppressed and are not allowed to grow.
So in repressive regimes, like ours, we want to deemphasize pursuing the classical organization which promotes the formation of large, centralized, and rigid organizations. Instead, we should choose to pursue alternative form of organizations that do not require to be bulky, hierarchical and centralized. The alterative form is a decentralized, flat and networked cooperation. The cooperation of such organization is based on agreed up on common objectives and values. The common objectives should be implemented through agile and flexible networks. The emphasis should be on unity of purpose than on forming large organizational structure.The national goals can be achieved by the independent organizations which keep their own separate structure while they maintain unity of purpose. Forming and running large organization, if at all possible to form them, not only make them easy targets for the repressive state but also unaffordable (expensive for the small and fragmented opposition), bureaucratic and slow for the tasks ahead. Moreover, valuable time, money and resources can be wasted while pursuing them.
Working with networked structure does not mean that a unified large organizations are not necessary all together. Large organizations can be necessary when the right time comes. If anything, the networks, in addition to facilitating the peaceful democratic struggle, will become the foundations for the formation of larger organizations when the regime weakens, repression subsides and democracy emerges.
The Relevance of networked format
I mentioned that the ineffectiveness of the opposition politics also comes from their own lack of cooperation with each other and by their inability to be agile and flexible to rally the Ethiopian people.
This is not to say that there are no oppositions who have not tried to work together. There have been organizations and still are who are trying to form alliance. In fact, significant portion of their efforts and energy went doing just that. But it did not deliver the results they sought. The question is: why did they fail? Repression aside, part of the answer may be attributed to the organizational model the oppositions are seeking to achieve. In the majority of the cases, the opposition organizations intended to forge the type of classical organizational model described above.
The classical model, as ubiquitous as it is, cannot be applied in every situation. Particularly, it cannot be effective in authoritarian societies where there is no democratic governance and rules of the law are not followed. As mentioned above, the classical organizational structure is rigid, cumbersome, mechanistic, centralized and slow. The classical structure goes against the success factors that today’s Ethiopian repressive reality and the conditions of opposition organizations need which are speed, creativity and flexibility.
In repressive states like ours, the effort to form large organization that is big enough to challenge the ruling power will not be practical. As such, it is not the best form of organizational format. There are few obvious reasons for this. For starter, the repressive regime does not allow it, that is, the atmosphere is not conducive. Two, it is logistically and financially not feasible. Three, it is very hierarchical and slow. Four it is not flexible. Five, the organizations are not psychologically prepared.
So, what is the alternative? We know there are many genuine organizations who desire to bring democracy, rule of law and to eradicate poverty and disease in Ethiopia. Few of them want to do it alone. But most want to form some sort of alliance or even want to merge. This is good in that it is well intentioned. But even if feasible, to be big is not always effective. In fact, as mentioned earlier, in today’s repressive Ethiopian reality, big organization is ineffective. What is feasible and even necessary is unity of purpose and values (I mentioned above the objectives and values as I see them) but not merger to create large organization. If all or the majority of the oppositions agree on the purpose of what they want to achieve and core values they all operate by, establish solid network, and allow a smooth flow of information and coordination of actions among them, they can achieve what they want without being big ones.
In the next few paragraphs, I will say some more why the networked organizational format can be an effective tool. I will also briefly discuss the concepts of adaptation and self-similarity as operational guides as the networked oppositions forge ahead to achieve democracy for their country.
Why the Network approach?
In today’s connected world, we witness the cyber networks such as facebook, twitter, google etc. pointing that network thinking is a very important tool of our time. Network is defined as a collection of nodes connected with links. For our discussion, the nodes are the individual opposition organizations and the links are the connections or links they create among themselves. The network concept helps us to sort out the commonalities of connections and exchanges that can exist in a society. It is a good tool to understand and operate in organized manner without being “organized”. The network concept also helps to forge a resilient and efficient connections by bringing people together for a common cause such as to work for justice, democracy and others. It can also help identify the vulnerabilities of social connections and therefore to take preventive actions. Networks also are effective tools to exchange information quickly.
There are two categories of networks. They are known as small-world and scale-free networks. The two network models enable us to choose what fits our purpose the best. For example, if one is looking for a resilient organization, the model known as scale-free networks are resilient in that if a node or a set of nodes are deleted (in our case one or few organizations are attacked by repression) at random from a network, the property of the whole network will not be damaged severely. It still keeps functioning. On the other hand, if efficiency is what is desired the model known as small-world will work the best as it can avoid redundancy and reach far in short time. By combining the two models our democratic movement can survive the destructive attempt of repression. Functioning via network approach has a paramount significance for the effectiveness of our networked organizations when compared to the traditional form of organization.
Developing cooperative action based on unity of purpose and values and implementing them by way of strong network and smooth flow of information can take the place of large organizations. Each opposition can maintain its independence, identity and culture while at the same time playing its role as a carrier of the common purpose. Inundemocratic society, unity of purpose can have much stronger role than organizational merger. In political condition which our country is in, smaller organizations with strong link between them may be preferable as they can be agile, flexible, and fast. In undemocratic and repressive regime, large organizations can be easy targets to the repressive regime as they are bureaucratic, cumbersome, slow and expensive.
Organizations that are cooperating through networks can try to work on their difference and merge to form large organizations if that is what the situation calls for. Merging of organizations will be valuable especially when a democratic system emerges. Potentially, the networked systems can pave the way for genuine merger. Until that time comes, the opposition organizations should form strong networks and equip themselves with the concepts of adaption and self-similarity as they strive to bring democracy and economic development to their nation.
Adaptation as a tool for democracy
In order to survive the brutal suppression, they may encounter from the government, networked organizations and the popular democratic forces should follow the principles of adaption. Adaptation involves understanding the methods and the threats from the repressive government and changing their tactics to survive and continue the struggle. The networked organizations need to be truly learning systems that adapt and function in an environment that is dominated by the calculating, vicious, brutal and at times pretentious behaviors of the government.
At the individual organization level, the adaptive behavior of the opposition organizations should come from the members in organizations who have learned and developed the patterns of adaptation. This means that each member learns and adapts to fit and form a coherent pattern within the organization. Fitting of individual’s pattern with the collective pattern and the vice-versa so that a whole organizational pattern emerges is a crucial part of adaptation.
At networked level, the adaptation process involves one organization trying to fit with the other organizations that have different cultures and operational behaviors. We should assume that the environment can be hostile. For example, the environment can be hostile due to the repression therefore we need to adapt to survive. Also, misunderstanding and confrontations can emerge even among oppositions as confrontations can be unpredictable. The only effective way to address such occurrence is by quick learning and adapting. Environments change continuously requiring change of shared rules and patterns among organizations. In this situation, again learning and adaptation becomes a question of life or death. All the networked organizations have to be quick learners to fit and survive. Flexibility but not rigidity should be the mode of operation for all in the network.
In short, for networked but independent organizations with common objectives the key points to grasp include:
A democratic movement originates from the aggregate behavior of all individuals in the network. That is, everyone counts. Everyone has to adapt to everyone else.
The aggregate behaviors of the individuals come from the objectives they are seeking to achieve.
The interactions between individual members, networked organizations as well as the response from the repressive government can be challenge and become unpredictable, the best approach to achieve the goal is to learn, to adapt and to fit to the changing condition and continue to rally around the GOAL.
Self-Similarity of Actions
Another effective operational tool that the networked organizations and the popular uprising should apply is the self-similarity or (Technical name Fractal) concept. One good example of self-similarity is the sunflower. If you have observed a sunflower, its smallest petal has the same pattern as the whole flower. This phenomenon of having the same pattern at every dimension is known as self-similar. Self-similarity is the result of applying the same procedure to construct uniformity at every level. One striking properties of self-similarity is that similar patterns are found repeatedly at any scale (i.e. smaller or larger scales) throughout a system, so that even the smallest part has similar patterns to the whole.
What is the relevance of self-similarity to social systems, particularly to bring democracy? We know that democratic changes require networks of tens of millions who participate in tandem. The desired change cannot come if each and every one does different things or moves in different directions. The millions in the network and their organizations have to apply the same, actions, rules and procedures at all levels, so that the behavior of all functional groups from leadership committees to departments to teams down to individuals can be self-similar. It is only when this happens that a collective behavior of big significance can be achieved.
In other words, achieving democratic change require the emergence of similar pattern of behavior and actions at all levels of the networked organizations all the way at the national level.
We observe the self-similarity at work in the behaviors of the government in power when all of its organs from the national level to the smallest local Kebeles conduct repression, corruption, ethnic segregation etc. following the same procedures and recipes at every level. It is these repressive and backward behaviors that the network of the opposition and the popular uprisings have to counter with the popular and democratic opposing self-similar actions.
On the other hand, it is encouraging to see self-similarity in action in the current unrests that are taking place across Ethiopia. One real specific example of self-similarity in action is what we saw on the streets of both Ambo (Oromo students) and Kimant people (Gonder) where protesters blocked the roads with sticks and stones to prevent the intrusions of government armed forces.
If the networked opposition and the general population recognize the power of applying the concept of self-similarity to their democratic struggle, their political power grows exponentially in a short time. Here too, quick learning and adaptation are tremendous help.
In Summary
If the Ethiopian government truly stands for a better Ethiopia, it would adopt scenario #2, and urgently goes to work to effect it. But its history shows that it has no regards for Ethiopians and Ethiopia. There is no regard for a country without practicing democracy. As the result of its unpatriotic behaviors, Ethiopia is on the cross-road and is facing a grave danger. The true daughters and sons of Ethiopia are left alone to save our country and we do not have time to waste. We need to hurry to craft a common objectives and values and start networking to form a strong alliance to save our nation and to bring democratic rules by forcing the government to come to the negotiation table. We do not need to form a large organization to do our job. A strong network that learns quick and adopts and functions in self-similar manner will get us there. Nothing is more powerful than networked citizens who stand for just causes.
LET US COME TOGETHER IN A HURRY TO SAVE OUR COUNTRY. W
During the time of the dreadful Derg, outward migration surged to levels unheard of in Ethiopia’s recent history due to push factors of government brutality and repression, famine, internecine fighting between the government and a plethora of liberation fronts. With the demise of the Derg and the end of the war, many internally and externally displaced refugees returned home. But those lucky enough to have been resettled in the West stay put to see if the victorious rebels would follow through promises of democracy, rule of law, and an accountable government. Initially, there was indeed a slight ray of hope with the limited opening up of the economy and a degree of personal freedom unseen in the country’s prior history. Unfortunately, these positive developments didn’t last long. After a few years of consolidating power, the TPLF reared its true repressive and vengeful colors and chipped away those budding gains.
The TPLF pursued single-mindedly a plan to remake the country in its contorted image. It introduced, without broad consultation and against established governance conventions, ethnic federalism in a country that is home for over eighty different ethnic groups. Overnight, Ethiopians became outsiders in their own country if they find themselves outside of their designated artificial ethnic boundaries erected by the TPLF. Millions were displaced and lost whatever resources they accumulated over a lifetime and many were murdered. Addis Ababa, with its multi-ethnic composition and relative safety, became so crowded with internally displaced people from all over the country that it has never recovered from that pressure. One can surmise that the Addis Ababa expansion, the trigger point for the current uprising in Oromia, started its early phase because of that pressure. Individuals and organizations that resisted the ill-advised ethnic policies of the TPLF were silenced through threats, illegal sanctions, exile, arrests, and even murder.
Intensified repression, especially after the failed 2005 elections, closed even the slightest avenues for dissent. Today, no one knows how many ordinary political prisoners languish in horrendous jails. With time, the TPLF increasingly became associated with torture, gross human right violations, and corruption. On the economic front, the TPLF controlled key economic sectors through shoddy deals and outright thefts and embarked on a claim of achieving economic success for the country. Last year, it lavishly celebrated its 40th anniversary with millions of dollars, basking at the “success” of its economic achievements. The party that never failed to self-congratulate itself with claims of 10% year-over-year economic growth for the last 10 years and partied hard just last year for “registering” economic miracle, is now panhandling once again before the international community in the name of 20 million citizens facing starvation.
With popular uprisings in many parts and a plethora of economic challenges facing the country, the government’s carefully cultivated image of leading the country to new economic heights is crumbling quickly in front of the world’s eyes. The compound effect of all these failed policies is the continued resurgence and multiplication of push factors that had subsided in the immediate aftermath of the Derg. Today, sadly but not a surprisingly, the dreams of the vast majority of Ethiopian parents and their children is to leave the country. As a result, Ethiopia continues to bleed its most precious resource at an alarming rate. Thanks to the TPLF’s failed policies, Ethiopia remains one of the foremost sources of refugees and asylum seekers in the world.
Certainly, such an environment doesn’t encourage a large number of the established Diaspora to return home with its knowhow, experience, and funds to help rebuild and develop the country anytime soon. With deeming prospects of returning home anytime soon, migrant Ethiopian’s have been planting their roots in all corners of the world for the last several decades. Those fortunate to resettle in the West have done particularly well, thanks to the enabling environment in their newly adopted countries and their industrious and hardworking nature. Most remain strongly connected, despite their spatial and temporal separation, to their homeland due to their deep familial, cultural, and sentimental ties. Ethiopians of all persuasions have done an admirable job of recreating pillars of their culture, faith, and communities in a relatively short period of time. They have acquired notoriety for hard work, discipline, and good citizenship. They are raising their children with strong values and work ethics. They have livened the communities they call home through their vibrant cultures and traditions. They have attained admirable personal and professional achievements in their chosen occupations. The number of worship places, restaurants, small businesses, associations, and community centers that they have recreated in a relatively short period of time is a success story other immigrant communities highly envy and would like to emulate. However, because these nodal points of community power and individual achievement have not been effectively harnessed, the Diaspora’s immense potential for positive influence both abroad and at home remains unrealized.
The plight of Ethiopia and their people remain at the forefront of the Diaspora’s thoughts, dreams, and aspirations. It is their fervent desire to help Ethiopia extract itself out of deep poverty through equitable and sustainable development. They want to see a self-sufficient, industrialized, and democratic Ethiopia that is at peace with itself, its neighbors, and the world. According to a 2010 World Bank report, the Diaspora sends an eye-popping $3.5 billion dollars in remittance payment to Ethiopia ever year. This is about 20% of the country’s annual budget, a sum as much as the aggregate humanitarian and development assistance Ethiopia receives per year. The Diaspora is also a key conduit for the transfer of knowledge, skills, and technology.
The Diaspora certainly is a formidable force for good and should be proud of its contributions. But at the same time, should find a way to ensure that its contributions have systemic and lasting impact on the development, democratization and national integrity of Ethiopia. Most of the Diaspora’s aspirations for Ethiopia are shared by democratic Ethiopian forces and are potential points of cooperation with Ethiopia’s Western partners. However, these lofty goals are unachievable as long as the holder of state power in Ethiopia is unrepresentative and remains anathema to compromise and reform. The current arrangement whereby the government gleefully feeds off remittance in-flow without concomitant accountability has certainly not helped and a new approach is urgently needed. Likewise, support to the opposition should be conditioned on measurable performance that benefits all Ethiopians. It’s also in the Diaspora’s long term interest, as recent immigrants and minorities, to organize and advance its interests effectively at the local and national level in their newly-adopted countries.
TPLF’s Nefarious Interventions in Diaspora Affairs
Many believe that the Diaspora’s crucial financial, diplomatic, intellectual, and moral support helped the opposition win the fateful 2007 elections, which the TPLF violently reversed. Badly wounded by that experience, the TPLF has since pursued an aggressive policy to curtail the Diaspora’s influence on domestic politics. It has established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Security, Immigration and Refugee Affairs Authority well-funded divisions to clip the influence of the Diaspora and turn it into a powerless and unquestioning cash cow for the TPLF. The main mission of these departments is, if possible, to coral the Diaspora as a supporter of the government’s ill-advised political and economic agenda, and if that fails, to prevent it from coalescing around viable opposition forces. To this end, the TPLF works to keep the Diaspora fragmented and busy infighting with itself. It uses long-arm overt and covert interventions in immigrant Ethiopian communities throughout the world. It employs both incentives and threats to induce compliance from the Diaspora.
It purposely aggravates ethnic and sectarian fissures to prevent the Diaspora from bridging ethnic divisions, building strength, and exerting positive influence. It engages in extensive propaganda to distract, confuse, and discourage the Diaspora from speaking for the voiceless multitude back home. It presents the Diaspora as either a supporter of the government’s policies or as a “good for nothing” disgruntled bunch. Look around and you will notice plenty of TPLF-funded (directly or indirectly) radio stations that parrot the government’s propaganda and never question its blatant transgressions. Likewise, it has trained and deployed cyber warriors to poison social media discussions and disseminate venomous propaganda. It engages in jamming and blocking independent broadcasts to Ethiopia. The Diaspora should take lessons from the few Ethiopian organizations that have managed to remain independent and cleanse itself off outside influence. For instance, the Ethiopian Football Federation in North America, despite its own weaknesses, deserves our collective admiration for withstanding and outwitting repeated TPLF interventions and remaining independent. It is indeed a pride for all Ethiopians and an example for others to emulate. Others, such as, the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia and the relatively new Ethiopian Heritage Society in North America have also done admirable job in bringing Ethiopians together. These and other beacons of hope should be encouraged and supported.
Religious Institutions in the Diaspora
The TPLF perceives religious institutions as a significant threat, given Ethiopians’ deep connection to their faith and the influence religious institutions exert on their flock. For this reason, religious institutions are not immune from TPLF’s subversive attacks. The TPLF also realizes that religious institutions played a significant role in the past (and do play today) in positively influencing politics in many countries around the world. For example, the exiled Ethiopian Orthodox Church regularly condemns TPLF’s excesses and incorporates prayers and teachings on peace, liberty and freedom for all Ethiopians in its services. Ethiopian Muslim religious leaders have courageously stood up against the TPLF, demanding religious freedom, and for that reason, they are now languishing in TPLF’s jails. In U.S. politics, the evangelical Christian right is very active and one of the largest voting blocks. Pope Francis, the beloved leader of the Catholic faith, is not shy about using his bully pulpit to advance the economic and political interests of the downtrodden around the world. So far, the independent Ethiopian Orthodox Church in exile is the only church that I know of that has publicly and forcefully condemned the TPLF’s killings and arrests of innocent Oromo protesters and other Ethiopians. It will be interesting to see for how long the Ethiopian Evangelical Church will remain silent in the face of unprecedented brutal crackdown on the Oromia region, which by far is home to the largest number of evangelicals in the country.
A cursory look at the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa are instructive on this point. Religious institutions in both cases, played a central role in raising public awareness and financial support and in galvanizing pressure and civil disobedience everywhere. The resultant pressure forced the U.S. to outlaw racial discrimination and for the apartheid regime to eventually collapse in South Africa. Perhaps the best example of Diaspora political clout and influence can be found in the highly-organized and disciplined Jewish community throughout the world. For example, the Jewish community in the U.S. worked (and still does) with like-minded civil rights and religious organizations to combat racism, reverse discriminatory policies, and fight injustice. It uses its significant clout to advance the cause of Israeli and the Jewish people throughout the world. One thing all these entities had in common was their success to ward off subversive interference from dark forces.
Sadly, most Ethiopian religious leaders have abdicated their religious and moral duty and stayed silent in the face of widespread government abuses and the country’s precarious situation. They remain dogmatic and purposely avoid practicing what they preach. The TPLF certainly doesn’t want the Ethiopian Diaspora to learn from these models and pause a challenge to its repressive rule. To this end, it infiltrates religious institutions and uses various underhand tactics to censor religious leaders into silence in the face of repression. It is well known that the TPLF handpicks the home based Orthodox and Muslim leaders (the reasons for the ongoing conflict with the later). Unfortunately, it has succeeded in doing the same in several Diaspora churches. Some churches that have stood as pillars of their communities for many years are now divided and at each other’s throats, in part, because of suspected TPLF-instigated divisions.
A Clearer Diaspora Vision Needed
The Diaspora has so far failed to develop and execute proportionate clout in a manner that best services its own long term interests, that of the homeland, and that of their newly-adopted countries vis-à-vis Ethiopia. This in my view is due mainly to the lack of trust, deep suspicion within the various sectors of the community, and inability to learn from other successfully organized immigrant communities in the West. But also due to the failure of some in the Diaspora to truly internalize the lessons of the prevailing progressive and ideologically-based democratic political systems in the West. It is morally wrong and hypocritical to embrace and thrive under multiparty democracy in the West, while at the same time encourage regressive, divisive, and corrosive ethnic politics at home. We have to recognize that at the end of the day, Ethnic politics is discriminatory to “others” and has no place in the 21st century.
The TPLF-led government recognizes the immense potential of an organized, principled, and disciplined Diaspora, and as stated earlier, throws every trick possible to keep it divided and ineffectual. If the Diaspora is to realize its lofty and worthy objectives of serving its own interests abroad and advance the cause of Ethiopia, it has to first cleanse itself off outside influence and assert its independence. It is time for the Diaspora to contemplate some tough questions: How can the Diaspora breakout of its own ethnic divisions and come together and advance its collective interests both abroad and at home? How can it capitalize on its affinity to Ethiopia and unique position in the West to serve as a natural bridge between the West and the homeland? Why has the Diaspora failed to develop sufficient clout, despite its huge financial and other forms of support to Ethiopia, to positively influence the agenda of the Ethiopian government, the opposition parties and the West? Is remittance inflow helping embolden a belligerent government in Ethiopia to continue on its destructive and uncompromising path? What are the best ways for the Diaspora to channel its talents, skills, and resources to help Ethiopia overcome debilitating humanitarian, economic, and political challenges? I don’t pretend to have answers to these and similar questions. They should be researched by academics, graduate students, and Diaspora organizations to form the basis for a clearer Diaspora vision and policy positions moving forward.
The Diaspora should recognize that building an independent, visionary and strong organization that advances its day-to-day and long term interests abroad and that of Ethiopia’s is in its own long term interest. But let there be no mistake, the first order of things is for the Diaspora to assert its independence using legal means available at its disposal. The Diaspora, therefor, has lots of work to do. They should gather evidence and raise awareness about the TPLF’s nefarious interventions among the Diaspora. They should pursue and support legal means to identify and systematically weed out TPLF interventions and other political organization from their communities, religious, and civic organizations. They should build their organization at the local level on democratic governance principles with the mission of advancing the interests of current and future generations. They should push for an umbrella organization that can exert influence at the state (provincial) and national level and create alliances with like-minded external organizations that stand for minority rights and the pursuit of shared goals and objectives. They should extend or deny support to causes on the basis of universal values and principles of freedom, liberty, justices, and opportunity on equal basis for all.
They should capitalize on their growing numbers, expertise, and unique position in the West to push for a mutually beneficial pro-democracy, pro-human rights, and pro-development agendas that account for the national security interests of their native Ethiopia and that of their newly-adopted countries. From the position of such collective strength, they should elevate their lobbying efforts from the streets of Western capitals into the corridors of power. We should never forget that a peaceful, equitable, self-reliant, and democratic Ethiopia is in the best interest of all Ethiopians and an enduring pride for Diaspora Ethiopians and their offsprings wherever they may find themselves in this world.
In Part III, I will focus on resurrecting and strengthening civil society and the independent press and discuss possible points for engaging the West.
Before proceeding to suggesting solutions I find it important to clarify misunderstandings on the goals and functions of ethnic federalism and decentralization in Ethiopia. First, in the Ethiopian context ethnically based self-rule does not necessarily mean hate to other ethnic groups. In Ethiopia the idea of ethnic based self-rule came as a result of mistrust of central government. I think it is high time now to recognize the limits of the central government in economic development and changing the material conditions of the Ethiopian people. Whatever name given to itself, centralist, unionist, federalist, majority, etc. the historical records and economic theory show that the central government is not meant for fostering economic development in the country. The current protest in Oromo, and before that the Tigray popular movement, the session of Eritrea, the massive out migration of the Ethiopian youth, the suffering of our sisters in Arab countries, the nationwide hunger, extreme poverty in urban and rural areas, etc., shows the limited role of the central government in bringing development, peace and stability in Ethiopia. History and practice shows that the central government in Ethiopia cares for itself and its clients. Time and gain it has proved to be an extractive institutions despite changes in ideology and name. In 1991 the EPRDF government declared self-governing principle and conferred ethnic groups with power to be used as mechanism development and wellbeing. But using the ideology of developmental state and GTP (growth and transformation plan), EPRDF centralized power thus slipped back into the same tradition of unitarist or centralist. It seems that whatever mantle it wears, unitarist or federalist, the central Ethiopian state is true to its tradition: very much elitist and extractivist. Irrespective of time and place, in the eyes of the regional and local people, it always cared for itself. The bottom line is that ethnically organized groups do not trust the Ethiopian central government through no fault of their own and this does not mean hatred to other ethnic groups.
Second, the ethnic Federal Government and the ethnic regional states are not one and the same, and one is not the extension of the other. Even if there is a convergence between the Federal Government and the ethnic regional states, since both make up the strategic components of solving ethnic conflicts on a permanent basis, there are fundamental differences in the power, functions and purposes of ethnic federation and ethnic regions. The fundamental purpose of ethnic Federal Government is to achieve unity and understanding among the constituent ethnic groups (for details see my article The Model and Making of Ethnic Federalism: Problems for Consideration). On the other hand, the regional ethno-linguistically defined states are the focal points where one locates primarily the contradiction between competing political and economic interest groups belonging to the same ethnic group (see below).
Third, it is wrong to consider the ethnic based self-rule as if they do not have an economic objectives. Considering the essence of the political ideology of ethnicity, one can systematize and classify eight sets of objectives of ethnic based regional sates. These are i) Ethnic group empowerment, ii) Ethnic group protection, iii) Ethnic group cohesion, iv) Promoting ethnic group identity, v) Empowering civil society, vi) Promoting economic and social welfare of the ethnic group, vii) Capacity development, and viii) Conservation and management of natural resources. These objectives basically refer to the concept of autonomy, public service provisions and sustainable development. (For detailed case study see Tsegaye Tegenu (2006), Evaluation of the Operation and Performance of Ethnic Decentralization System in Ethiopia: A Case Study of the Gurage People, 1992-2000. Addis Ababa University Press).
Proposing Solutions
Consociationalism at Federal Level
There are practical problems in solving the above mentioned conflicts on a permanent basis. One can fix temporary solutions to the problems by devising mechanisms that may contain or arrest negative developments that threaten the unity of the groups. One way is the monopolization of power both at the federal and regional level through the formation of a coalition of parties or a front. Using the centralised structure of the party command, it might be possible to mitigate the conflicts between the actors. But this type of political solution is fragile and it may collapse if and when the coalition splits or as some members of it withdraw from it feeling marginalized. Another method can be the search for or use of a unifying ideological formula such as the Marxist-Leninist ideology which underlines the invariable significance of class struggle rather than cultural demands of ethnic groups. By definition, a worker or a peasant from one ethnic group cannot have a different interest from the other. However, this ideology has no future as it basically sweeps the ethnic issue under the carpet, for which purpose the regions were set up in the first instance. One may as well try to maintain internal unity of the regional states by emphasising some kind of an overarching assimilationist or integrationist supra nationalist identity named, for instance, after the name of the country. But this type of identity is only acceptable to those people particularly coming from mixed marriages, but not to proponents of the ethnic movements.
Ethnic federation is apparently dependent on democratic rules and it requires democracy for its successful accomplishment. It is advocated that consociationalism is the type of democracy (decision making process and mechanism) which fits the kind of constitutional structure of ethnic federation. The consociational approach places greater faith in the assurance of ethnic group rights and a belief in coalescent democracy (decision). According to Lijphart, consociationalism relies on four basic principles: a broad-based or grand coalition executive, minority veto, proportionality in the allocation of civil service positions and public funds, and group autonomy. The dominant feature of the consociational mode is the elite accommodation reached by a discussion going on “until a solution is found that is acceptable to all participants in the decision-making process, that is keep on talking until you agree.
At the federal level, the political relationship among the ethno-territorial regions can be organized according to consociational principles. In principle, federation implies the co-existence of a set of political groupings that interact as autonomous entities, united in a common order with autonomy of its own. It is a kind of contractual agreement (consent) which represents a balance between centralism and decentralization. The promotion of balance, contractualism, and compromise does not only lead to ideological notions. It involves some give and take, some reciprocity and consent. Federation has to protect the hard core interests and rights of the groups which agreed to the contract. Ethnic federation is thus meant as a respect for and management of political pluralism both within and among the territorial components of the multi-nationality state. Therefore, it does not accommodate authoritarian rule. If ethnic federation is not based on the culture of consociational democracy, it promotes republicanisation and secessionism, eventually leading to a collapse of the federation as happened in the former Yugoslavia. One of the major reasons for the breakdown of Yugoslavian federation was the absence of democratic governance at the center. Tito created the Yugoslavian federation after W.W.II and it remained for long under communist government. Tito and his followers in stead of adopting democracy they came up with an idea of what has come to be called a national communism not dependent on Soviet Union. This idea was used as legitimacy of communist rule. So long as the federation was under one communist party control committed to proletarian internationalism, there was no break down problem. But the absence of democracy made it difficult for the ethnic groups to genuinely understand each other’s perspectives, interests or aspirations. It rather fostered ethnic nationalism. When an incipient democracy began to emerge after the death of Tito, the problems were further exacerbated. The attempt even to circulate the state leadership democratically at the later stage among the constituent members did not save the system from collapse. By then the federal government was weak and nobody came to its aid. Everyone resorted to the ethnic groups and the regions. Yugoslavia is a best example of collapse of federalism not founded on democratic governance at the center. See Schöpflin, G. (1991), “The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia”, in McGrry, J. And O´Leary, B. (eds.), The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation. London. Pp. 172-203. It is the promotion of a consociational type of democracy that breeds and sustains ethnic federation.
Democratic Governance at Regional Level
Devolution of power does not by itself mean self-governance. In practice what has been changed is the locus of public decision making, from the centre to the sub-national levels (regions, districts and locals). Just because a governmental unit is smaller in scope does not necessarily mean that the people are going to be involved in governing their own affairs. Regional and local governors may be unresponsive to the needs and demands of the people. The decision making may not be transparent and predictable. If there is no local people participation, accountability may not be achieved as a powerful local elite may make it difficult despite a formal election system. Devolution can only be a real self-governing exercise if it is based on the principles of democratic governance.
Governance has been defined in different ways by looking at its different aspects. There are those who define governance by looking at its domain (the activities of the stakeholders). In this category there are those who define governance as the function and exercise of power of government. This definition restricts governance to mean as government and leadership. But this definition is being criticised as limited since it conceptualises only one type (class) of people. But governance concerns more than just interactions between systems of government and the governed. Governance includes the ways that peoples and civil society engage and overlap. There are, therefore, those who define governance in a broader way including the civil society. They hold that civil society defines the principles by which a people are governed — not the other way around– therefore, “governance” is the result of the members of society working in association with each other.
There is still another category that defines governance by looking at its function. It views governance as the autonomy of the state, as the management of conflicts, as the management of developments. There is also another group that defines governance by looking at the institutions and mechanisms working in the society. This includes those who identify governance with democratic processes and institutions. According to this group, the term describes the means by which citizens and groups in any society voice their interests, mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights and obligations. Governance discusses how parts of the system—the government, civic groups, private sector, etc—relate to each other.
UNDP defines governance by looking at the process. Accordingly, governance is “the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels it comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences”. In this study governance is defined and understood as a process of decision-making. What are the criteria for measuring a good political decision making process? UNDP has a list of characteristics that make for good governance. These include participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability, and strategic vision.
The characteristics of good governance outlined above are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Transparency requires that governments consult broadly to ascertain citizen interests, publicize plans and decisions, share information widely and in good time, and consistently act in an open manner. Accountability depends on governments taking full cognizance of responding to, and being monitored by, organized public opinions. Transparency and accountability encompass the concept of responsiveness, and are served by sharing decision making with local government entities.
What I tried to highlight in this paper and in my previous posting is the problems and solutions to ethnic federalism. Profound problems related to ethnic federation must be properly identified to find solutions. The problems at federal and regional levels are systematic in nature that they cannot be solved by ad hoc measures. What is required as solution is elite cooperation (consociationalism) at the federal level and democratic governance at regional level for the purpose of regional economic development.
For comments the author can be reached at tsegaye.tegenu@epmc.se
Author’s Note: This is the second installment in a series of ongoing commentaries that I expect to post regularly under the rubric, “Ethnic Apartheid in Ethiopia”.
Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino.
The twin aims of the series are: 1) to demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that the political system created and maintained by the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) is a slightly kinder and gentler form of the racial apartheid system practiced by the white minority regime in South Africa before the establishment of black majority rule, and 2) to engage Ethiopia’s Cheetah (younger) Generation in broad and wide ranging conversation, debate and discussion necessary for the creation of the New Ethiopia cleansed of ethnic apartheid.
In the “Ethnic Apartheid in Ethiopia ” series, I aim to go beyond mere critical political and legal analysis and intellectual and academic examination of the objective political, social and economic conditions in Ethiopia under T-TPLF rule. Indeed, I aim to make a clarion call to Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation: Ethiopia is in the palms of your hands. You have the choice of holding Ethiopia in the palms of your hands with your fingers together firm, tight and strong and handle her like a precious jewel. You have the choice of letting loose your fingers and dropping her and watch her shatter like glass. You have the choice of holding each other hand in hand, clasping palm to palm and walking alongside her. You have the choice of clenching your fingers and palms into a fist of fury and defend her honor and glory. My clarion call is, Ethiopia is in your hands; but “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”
My question to Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation
In my first commentary, I challenged Ethiopia’s youth to begin systematically and critically questioning the meaning of “ethnic federalism” imposed upon Ethiopia by the T-TPLF, currently classified as a terrorist group by the Global Terrorism Database. I sketched out the outlines of my preliminary arguments against “ethnic federalism” and exhorted Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation to reject it wholly and consign it to the dustbin of history.
In this commentary, I continue my challenge to Ethiopia’s youth by providing them legal evidence to aid in their ongoing scrutiny of the bantustanization or kililistanization of Ethiopia by the T-TPLF into nine ethnically-based “kilils” or regional “states”.
I believe the problem of the first two decades of 21st Century Ethiopia is the problem of the ethnic line. It is an ethnic line conceived and gestated in the womb of the T-TPLF and birthed to inflict destruction and ruin in the Ethiopian body politics.
The problems of ethnic division and tribalism are not new to Ethiopia or Africa. Walter Rodney argued that even though ethnic differences exist on the African continent, they were not necessarily political differences. They were politicized by certain African elites who have created ethnic lines to aggrandize power and amass wealth for themselves and their cronies.
The T-TPLF has created ethnic lines and kilils to aggrandize power and amass wealth for itself and its cronies. What is curiously strange is the T-TPLF’s use of ethnic lines in the same way the minority white apartheid regime used race and ethnicity to divide South African society and dominate the political system and subjugate the majority black African population by controlling and manipulating ownership, access and use of land.
Like the minority white apartheid regime in South Africa, the T-TPLF has built its political and economic power by literally owning all of the land in the country (Art. 40 of the T-TPLF constitution) and by totally controlling political power (the T-TPLF “won” the May 2015 election by 100 percent and reinforces its dictatorial rule by the barrel of the gun), monopolizing the private sector (T-TPLF controlled interlocking syndicates maintain complete monopoly over the economy) and parceling out employment, educational and other opportunities in exchange for political support and allegiance.
In 2016, the problem of Ethiopia is the problem of T-TPLF domination, subjugation and exploitation of the majority population by using ethnicity both as a political line that cannot be crossed and as a political fulcrum on which all things political, social, economic and cultural pivot.
The land and “legal” basis of South Africa’s racial apartheid system
At the foundation of South Africa’s racial/ethnic apartheid system was land. Ownership of land. Use of land. Occupation of land. Control of land. Unequal distribution of land. Monopoly of nearly 90 percent of the land by white minority farmers. Land grabs by whites and evictions and displacement of the black majority population. Under-compensation for illegally expropriated land. Dispossession of ancestral lands of Black South Africans. Thus, the keystone and pillar of minority white apartheid rule in South Africa was the unequal distribution of land and the consequent dispossession and economic disempowerment of the black majority by a variety of “legal” means.
The foundation for apartheid was laid down in the Natives’ Land Act, 1913 (Act No. 27 of 1913), decades before its official introduction in 1948. The Land Act became the principal legal tool for the systematic land dispossession of the Black majority by the white minority controlled State. The Act reinforced by subsequent legislation severely restricted the black African majority’s right to own land only in the “native reserves”, which constituted only 14 per cent of the total area of South Africa while the Whites owned 87 per cent.
The Group Areas Act Group Areas Act 1950 later consolidated by Group Areas Act 36 of 1966 formalized residential segregation by race in South Africa. This Act empowered the minority white regime to designate rural and urban land for exclusive ownership by whites, colored, and Indians, but made no legal provisions for land to be owned or occupied exclusively by the majority black population. But black South Africans who were specifically prohibited from occupying or owning land in areas designated for other groups.
The Population Registration Act of 1950 (PRA) of South Africa required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and recorded in the population register according to their race and ethnic group. That PRA became the foundation of the apartheid system which served to segregate and facilitate political and economic discrimination against the majority black population and other non-whites. (The Afrikaans word “apartheid” literally means “separateness”, from Dutch apart “separate” plus –heid, equivalent of -hood. Under the PRA, individuals were classified as “native”, “coloured”, “Asian” or “white”. Identity documents were the main tool used to implement the strict racial segregation and subjugation.
The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 (BAA) (Act No. 68 of 1951; subsequently renamed the Black Authorities Act, 1951) was enacted to grant authority to traditional tribal leaders in their homelands. The BAA defined “Black areas”, “chiefs”, “tribal authorities” and established their powers, functions, duties and jurisdictions. The BAA created the legal basis for self-determination of the various ethnic and linguistic tribes into traditional homeland reserve areas and established tribal, regional and territorial authorities. The Bantu Authorities Act, 1951(“Black Authorities Act, 1951”) created the legal basis for the deportation of blacks into designated homeland reserve areas and established tribal, regional and territorial authorities.
The Group Areas Act of 1950 (as re-enacted in the Group Areas Act of 1966), divided South Africa into separate areas for whites and blacks and gave the government the power to forcibly remove people from areas not designated for their particular tribal and racial group. Under this Act, anyone living in the “wrong” area was deported to his/her tribal group homeland. The law also denied Africans the right to own land anywhere in South Africa and stripped them of all political rights. The lives of over 3.5 million people were destroyed by this law as black South Africans were forcibly deported and corralled like cattle in their tribal group bantustans.
The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 (PBSA) (Act No 46) set up 8 (later expanded to 10) distinct “Bantu Homelands” out of the existing reserves, each with a degree of self-government based on a hierarchical system of headmen, chiefs, paramount chiefs, and territorial authorities in the black areas. The governments of the homelands were given limited powers of taxation, control public works,and issue licenses and adjudicate disputes. The central aim of the PBSA was to eventually grant independence to the homelands, expatriate them from South African citizenship and provide the white minority population virtual majority power. The Bantu Homelands Constitution Act, 1971 authorized the white minority regime to grant independence to any “Homeland” as determined by the South African apartheid government. The aim of the Act was clear: “It is the firm and irrevocable intention of the government to lead each nation to self-government and independence.” In other words, the “Homelands” act was designed to ultimately convert traditional tribal lands into “fully fledged independent states Bantustans” with the power of self-determination. In accordance with this Act, “independence” was eventually granted to Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei between 1976 and 1981.
The virulent white supremacist South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd in the early 1960s used the PRA to institutionalize a policy known as “separate development.” Apartheid was intended to be the policy road map by which the “Bantu Homelands” were to become a nation with their own homeland, or bantustan. The minority white regime had other political objectives in implementing its strategy of bantustanizing the majority black population. First, they calculated that by dividing the majority black Africans into smaller discrete populations they could divide and rule them. Second, they believed they could eliminate any practical possibility of black South African unity if they could succeed in creating a bantustanized ethnic identity in which black South Africans feel estranged against each other.
As a result of bantustanization, the minority white regime “reserved” some 14 percent of the land as homelands (bantustans) for black South Africans while keeping all of the fertile, mineral and urban areas for the whites. Nearly 90 percent of South Africa’s commercial farmland was in the hands of 50,000 white farmers or state. Politically, bantustanization would allow black South Africans homeland rights and freedoms, but outside their designated areas they were to be treated as outsiders. Black South Africans could be denied equality within South Africa proper if they were citizens of their own ethnically defined states rather than the Republic of South Africa.
South Africa’s racial/ethnic apartheid system was based on the white minority regime’s determination to control the land and through control of the land control the identity, citizenship, residence, political, social and economic rights of the majority black population. The identity of South Africans was determined principally by their relationship to the land. The minority whites owned all of the productive land and black South Africans virtually none.
The land and “legal” basis of T-TPLF’s ethnic apartheid system
The extraordinary act of genius by the T-TPLF is the creation of an ethnic apartheid system in its 1995 constitution by incorporating the essence of all of the apartheid laws and policies the white minority South African regime enacted over decades.
In the 1995 T-TPLF constitution, the drafters melded together land and ethnicity to create kililistans which replicate the essential political, social, economic and cultural dynamics of South Africa’s bantustans. In its Preamble, the T-TPLF constitution declares, “We, the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia: Strongly committed, in full and free exercise of our right to self-determination…” In Article 8 (1), the T-TPLF constitution provides, “All sovereign power resides in the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia.” In Article 39, the T-TPLF constitution guarantees, “Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.” Art. 47(2) “Nations, Nationalities and Peoples within the States enumerated in sub-Article 1 of this article have the right to establish, at any time, their own States.” Interestingly, the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act 110 of 1983 makes a similar declaration that it aims “To respect, to further and to protect the self-determination of population groups and peoples.”
Like South Africa’s Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 which created 8 (later expanded to 10) bantustans (black homelands), the T-TPLF’s constitution in Article 46 (2) creates kililistans (“kilils”) “delimited on the basis of the settlement patterns, language, identity, and consent of the peoples concerned.” Art. 47 created 9 “states” (kililistans) defined by “settlement patterns, language, identity”.
Like South Africa’s apartheid constitution and laws which gave to the apartheid state and minority white population total control over the land, the T-TPLF constitution in Article 40 (3) ensures that ownership of all land is in the T-TPLF state and T-TPLF cronies, supporters and compradors in the kililistans: “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange.” Yet, the T-TPLF has been handing over hundreds of thousands of hectares of the most fertile land in the kililistans to shady fly-by-night “investors”. The Indian investor Karuturi a couple of months ago dared the T-TPLF to touch his “land-grabbed” territory the size of Wales in Gambella in Western Ethiopia and threatened to bring down the power of India on the TPLF thugs. Talk about chutzpah!
The kililistanization of Ethiopia has enabled the T-TPLF regime and its cronies to become the political and economic masters of the majority Ethiopian population. The T-TPLF has been able to do in 25 years what the white minority apartheid regime took decades to accomplish. The T-TPLF has corralled the population of Ethiopia in to an open air prison with the T-TPLF jail keepers ruling and micromanaging the politics and economy of the country right down to the hamlets in the kililistans.
As I have often argued, the late Meles Zenawi, the chief architect of ethnic kililistans” like the virulent South African white supremacist Hendrik Verwoerd in the early 1960s, was driven by a “vision” of ethnic division in Ethiopia. For nearly two decades, Meles toiled ceaselessly to shred the very fabric of Ethiopian society, and sculpt a landscape balkanized into tribal, ethnic, linguistic and regional enclaves.” Meles crafted a constitution based entirely on ethnicity and tribal affiliation as the basis for political organization.
In much the same way the white minority apartheid regime physically moved black South Africans from one native area to another, the T-TPLF has taken from the same playbook and forcefully evicted members of the “Amhara” ethnic group from Benishangul-Gumuz (one of the nine kililistans) in a criminal act of de facto ethnic cleansing. The late Meles Zenawi justified the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Amharas from Southern Ethiopia stating, “… By coincidence of history, over the past ten years numerous people — some 30,000 sefaris (squatters) from North Gojam – have settled in Benji Maji (BM) zone [in Southern Ethiopia]. In Gura Ferda, there are some 24,000 sefaris.” Through “villagization” programs, indigenous populations have been forced of their ancestral lands in Gambella, Benishangul and the Oromo River Valley and their land auctioned off to voracious multinational agribusinesses.
The perils and untenability of T-TPLF’s kililistans have been documented in a landmark study by International Crises Group (ICG). In “Ethiopia: Ethnic Federalism and Its Discontents”, the ICG warned of the problems engendered by “ethnic federalism” (kililistans) in “redefine[ing] citizenship, politics and identity on ethnic grounds.” The study argues that “ethnic federalism” has resulted in “an asymmetrical federation that combines populous regional states like Oromiya and Amhara in the central highlands with sparsely populated and underdeveloped ones like Gambella and Somali.” Moreover, “ethnic federalism” has created “weak regional states”, “empowered some groups” and failed to resolve the “national question”. Aggravating the underlying situation has been the Meles dictatorship’s failure to promote “dialogue and reconciliation” among groups in Ethiopian society, further fueling “growing discontent with the EPRDF’s ethnically defined state and rigid grip on power and fears of continued inter-ethnic conflict.”
The ICG report makes it clear that in the long term “ethnic federalism” could trigger an implosion and disintegration of the Ethiopian nation. The late T-TPLF messiah Meles Zenawi once boasted that when he took power Ethiopia “was teetering on the edges, the country was on the brink of total disintegration.” He argued that “Every analyst worth his salt was suggesting that Ethiopia will go the way of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union. Since then, Ethiopia has not gone the way of Yugoslavia, Somalia, Congo or even the way of Eritrea.”
Meles, the little messiah, always overrated himself. He liked to trot out all sorts of boogeymen to scare the population into submission. The truth of the matter is that ethnic balkanization, fragmentation, segregation and polarization are the tools of trade used by the Meles regime to cling to power while lining their pockets. In a genuine federalism, the national government is the creature of the subnational governments. In Ethiopia, the “kilil” (regional) “governments” are creatures and handmaidens of the T-TPLF. In a genuine federalism, the national government is entrusted with limited and enumerated powers for the purpose of effectuating the common purposes of the subnational “governments”. In Ethiopia, the powers of the T-TPLF are vast and unlimited; and there are no barriers to its usurpatory powers in the kililistans which it exercises at will. In the T-TPLF kililistan system, there are no safeguards against encroachment on the rights and liberties of the people by the T-TPLF or T-TPLF comprador kililistan “governments”. Simply stated, the T-TPLF’s policy of kililistanization has become a recipe for T-TPLF tyranny (T-TPLF-T). Kililism has become the creed for secessionists in the name of self-determination.
The similarities between the minority white apartheid regime and the T-TPLF ethnic apartheid regime are too numerous to list. The T-TPLF exercises complete monopoly over political power, representation and decision-making in much the same way as the white minority apartheid National Party. The T-TPLF has sought to portray any critic of its kililistan policy as “Amhara” nationalists (so-called neftegna, soldier-settlers) from a bygone era whose aim is to reestablish Amhara hegemony over other ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The T-TPLF has sought to characterize other opponents as extremists and terrorists bent on creating civil war Rwanda-style interahamwe. The minority white apartheid regime called its opponents “communist terrorists”.
The T-TPLF functions in the same way as the apartheid minority white South African regime. The T-TPLF state within the state makes all of the critical decisions. When Meles was alive the state within the state included Meles’ trusted buddies from the bush and yes-men who fed at at the cash trough he built since taking power. Like the apartheid minority white South African regime, the T-TPLF allows independent decision-making in the kililsitans but in reality all decisions are centralized and predetermined in the T-TPLF state within the state. T-TPLF security and intelligence officers operate like a state within a state in the kililistans just like in South Africa’s bantustans.
Like the bantustans under the apartheid minority white South African regime, the T-TPLF uses patronage and public resources to control the kililistans who are so dependent on the T-TPLF for land and resources that they are incapable of challenging the T-TPLF. The T-TPLF security apparatus completely overwhelms local authorities in the kililistans. In fact, in areas considered politically unstable T-TPLF security and military operatives function independent of kililistan authorities just as was the case in the bantustans in apartheid South Africa. TPLF officers operate the security and military operations in the kililistans. Any official who does not tow the T-TPLF line in the kililistans is kicked out of power and often charged with corruption.
Like the the apartheid minority white South African regime in the bantustans, the T-TPLF in the kililistans uses a variety of strategies to maintain control. It uses the party structure in the make believe “EPRDF” party to manipulate, rubberstamp and implement its policies. Because the kililistans are dependent on the T-TPLF for budgetary and other support, the T-TPLF uses its “power of the purse” to keep them in line and tow the T-TPLF line.
Like their apartheid counterparts, the T-TPLF assumes the ethno-linguistic groups it created are monolithic and homogeneous. They were neither homogenous nor clearly “delimited on the basis of simplistic settlement patterns, language, identity.” The people of Ethiopia are of mixed parenthood, culture and identity. The whole fiction of “nations, nationalities and peoples” may be appealing to Stalinist T-TPLFers but it simply did not reflect the reality of historic ethnic heterogeneity and diversity. The T-TPLF’s conception of ethnicity is simply inconsistent with the historical reality.
A few weeks ago, Prince Mengesha Seyoum, Governor of Tigray until the monarchy was abolished in 1974, debunked the T-TPLF’s kililistan arrangement in the north of Ethiopia. Prince Mengesha rejected the T-TPLF’s kililistanization of Wolkait Tsegede in Tigray. In other words, in the Wolkait Tsegede kililistization the T-TPLF calculatedly created a bogus homeland which failed to meet its own constitutionally declared criteria of “settlement patterns, language, identity, and consent of the peoples concerned”.
The kililistanization of Ethiopia is a diabolical plan by the T-TPLF to divide Ethiopians along ethnic lines for the sole purpose of facilitating T-TPLF rule in Ethiopia and prolonging T-TPLF’s tenure in power. Prof. Ted Vestal, the distinguished Ethiopianist, in his article, “Human Rights Abuses in ‘Democratic’ Ethiopia: Government Sponsored Ethnic Hatred”, perfectly summarized T-TPLF’s kililistan strategy:
Another aspect of the EPRDF’s [the bogus organizational shell used by the TPLF to project an image of pluralism] strategy is to establish a governing system of ethnic federalism emphasizing rights of ‘nations, nationalities, and peoples.’ This high-sounding principle, cribbed from Lenin, is more Machiavellian than Wilsonian however. If the outnumbered Tigrayans who direct the EPRDF/FDRE can keep other ethnic groups divided and roiled against each other in ethno-xenophobias or content to manage affairs in their own limited bailiwicks, then larger matters can be subsumed by the one governing party. Thus, what the EPRDF views as the false ideology of nationalism for a ‘Greater Ethiopia’ can be kept in check and its proponents divided and conquered.
Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation: “Ethiopia is in your hands.”
Gerry Spence, one of America’s great trial lawyers once delivered a closing statement in a criminal case which captures my innermost feelings about what Ethiopia’s youth can and must do for themselves and their country. Spence argued:
Ladies and gentlemen I am about to leave you, but before I leave you I’d like to tell you a story about a wise old man and a smart-alec boy. The smart-alec boy had a plan, he wanted to show up the wise old man, to make a fool of him. The smartalec boy had caught a bird in the forest. He had him in his hands. The little bird’s tail was sticking out. The bird is alive in his hands. The plan was this: He would go up to the old man and he would say, “Old man, what do I have in my hands?” The old man would say, “You have a bird, my son.” Then the boy would say, “Old man, is the bird alive or is it dead?” If the old man said that the bird was dead, he would open up his hands and the bird would fly off free, off into the trees, alive, happy. But if the old man said the bird was alive, he would crush it and crush it in his hands and say, “See, old man, the bird is dead.” So, he walked up to the old man and said, “Old man, what do I have in my hands?” The old man said, “You have a bird, my son.” He said, “Old man, is the bird alive or is it dead?” And the old man said, “The bird is in your hands, my son.”
I say to Ethiopia’s youth, Ethiopia is in your hands. Only you know if she is alive or dead or if she will be alive or dead. Only you can ensure she lives forever!
The following text of the speech was presented at Vision Ethiopia Conference on March 27, 2016. Because of time limitations, some paragraphs may not have been presented. I attended the conference as an academic only representing myself, and not as a member of a political party or any other group. As a result, the views expressed are mine alone. No financial support was requested or received from any individual or group, and my assignment was to respond to the following questions:
Quo Vadis? Where Do We Go From Here? Who Should Do What to Guarantee Democracy, Transition, and Unity in Post Conflict Ethiopia?
1. Background
Where We Have Been
By Teshome Abebe (PhD)
There is no need to dwell too long on this part of my presentations, as all of you know so well where we have been over the past many decades. Suffice it to state that part of the failures in our past have to do with the excessive need to maintain and exercise power by the Atse Haile Selassie regime as well as by the Derg. In both cases, we have witnessed that they stayed in power too long; refused to listen to the citizenry; and never prepared the country for a peaceful transition of power in any meaningful manner. The result has been very familiar: assume power by force; get chased out of office by force. The price the nation has had to pay for this state of affairs or dysfunction has been enormous. We have lost too many and too much both in lives and treasury; we have lost enormously in opportunity cost; and for all intents and purposes, the nation is still backward: we still can’t feed ourselves; and we have taught the young an incredibly bad lesson: that disordered force is the norm in Ethiopia. In my opinion, this is a truly sad state of affairs. On this, I am certain that there is general agreement on all sides.
B) Where We Are Now
As I leave where we have been and transition to where we are now, I am afraid that I don’t have too many things that are encouraging either. Talking about where we are now requires one to take a sort of a survey – kind of a meta-study of the events and then conditions in which we find our country today. Let me first state that when we talk about the conditions in our homeland, we are not waging a vendetta or a personal campaign against anyone; rather it is simply an examination of the unflattering facts.
Though you are all students of Ethiopian affairs, let me try to summarize the situation in the following manner. This summary is based on the review of the literature of important studies; a thorough reading of the opinions and positions of people in academics, the professions, and most of all, of people in government; and a personal assessment of events and conditions on the ground in Ethiopia.
The African Development Bank, in a report on economic outlook in Ethiopia, recently stated that, “Ethnic Federalism has heightened and transformed historical territorial conflicts into contemporary inter-regional boundary conflicts. Inter-clan conflicts have begun to inform perceived or real disenfranchisement and inequitable distributions of economic and/or political benefits. Radicalism has also underlain sporadic religious clashes.”
Where we are today, can charitably be described as, what Thomas Hobbes referred to as “the chaos of competing enemies”. This chaos of the competing enemies afflicting the country is a classic strategy manufactured to sow conflict. When resources are short (the resource here could also be power), people divide, scapegoating one another. What ensues is the turning of one region against another; one culture against another; older people against younger ones; one political party against the others; leaders against members; and one idea against another. Hobbes called this the pre-social pre-political world. For the ruling party, chaos has become power, and an opportunity to remake the world in their preferred configuration.
The ethnic stratification we witness in Ethiopia today, is the result of several factors: the introduction and implementation of the Killil system (a hammer blow to Ethiopian unity) the appearance or perceived appearance of ethnocentrism; the competition along ethnic lines for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory; and the emergence of deferential power. (See Donald Noel). To make matters worse, there is evidence that the competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and would result in inevitable further stratification and conflict. (See Lawrence Bobo & Vincent Hutchings). These conditions, interwoven with what I will call the policy of ambitious domination, have the potential to produce ethno-national conflict.
Where We Have Consensus
Asserting that we have a general agreement on some things is a dangerous proposition among any group much less among Ethiopians who are very passionate about politics, and even more passionate about their country. Over the past quarter of century, we have debated as well as grieved. People are sad about what has happened in Ethiopia, and they have talked and written about all kinds of topics. I have to admit that this ‘grieving’ process continues even today.
I can safely state, however, that there is an amicable consensus on a number of fronts among the commenting class, and those who are engaged with the issue. The debates we have had over the past 25 years—and they were intensive debates–have rendered some arguments moot, and yielded consensus on others. What are the areas in which we have general consensus?
There is general consensus that we wish to see a Democratic Ethiopia. We have experimented enough with other forms of government, and that the future for Ethiopia must clearly, unambiguously and unalterably be Democratic. An Ethiopia in which democratic institutions thrive; an Ethiopia whose leaders have an unflinching commitment to democratic values; and a country whose leaders have purged themselves of all forms of non-democratic impulses. Of this much, we agree.
There is consensus that we wish to see a united Ethiopia. By this we also mean one country, one people, with differentiated cultures but a common root. Diversity with a common root!
There is consensus that we wish to have an Ethiopia whose sovereignty is not questioned (not left to interpretations): not questioned by outsiders; and certainly not questioned by its children.
There is consensus that we wish to have an Ethiopia whose integrity is not violated. By this, we mean that the assurance of sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient: it must also be respected.
There is consensus that we wish to see a developed Ethiopia. What we wish to have is an Ethiopia that is socially, economically, technologically and scientifically developed.
There is no consensus on the issue of how to deal with the ruling party—the TPLF/EPRDF. I hold the very controversial view that when it comes to engaging the government; we might do better to focus on replacing, reforming, influencing and/or humanizing the TPLF/EPRDF rather than its complete eradication as some would wish to have it. The realistic choice that I think we face isn’t really a choice between an Ethiopia without TPLF/EPRDF and an Ethiopia with only TPLF/EPRDF. The realistic choice we face is between an Ethiopia where Democratic values, buttressed with democratic institutions, are supreme; where human rights are respected and upheld; and where the development process is all-inclusive versus an Ethiopia where these are lacking. Given that choice, the former sounds more appealing to me regardless of who rules the country. This, I believe, is an expansionist (as opposed to a reductionist) view that is not only proper, but also consistent with the principles of inclusion as well as that of true democracy.
Furthermore, I hold the view that the more serious and long-term threats to Ethiopia are not the TPLF/EPRDF or nationalist forces by themselves. Rather it is the coalescing threat on the horizon, that which might emerge from the Arab World. The petro dollar enabled alliance between Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti is likely to become an existential threat, with religion as the driving force, but the desire to weaken Ethiopia as the primary thrust.
III. What is Lacking Or What Must Be Done?
For a variety of reasons, Ethiopians have lacked unity in their responses to the ruling party’s policy of ambitious domination. This has been true of all segments of society. We espouse too many divisions; too many plans; too many groups; too much duplication of effort; and too many personal agendas. It seems to be natural to us, that in an instant, we fall back on an almost tribal urge to defend our side. And as you know, sometimes, one choice precludes another. As a consequence, we are ineffective in our efforts even if we were to come together temporarily. It seems to me that what it is called for here is the Latin imploration ‘in things important, unity’. Remember our own adage ‘Dirr Biabir, Anbesa Yasir’. Yet, it seems that when it comes to meaningful action, the adage gets thrown out the window. There are economic and non-economic explanations for that state of affairs. But regardless of the explanations, what is undeniably true is that we remain intangible to those in power if we are not united. We remain intangible to those that might wish to assist us if we are not united; and we remain intangible to those that wish to dominate us if we are not united. The first duty we should have to each other on the matter of the motherland is unity! Unity based on ‘citizenship’ or some other super-ordinate goal.
The second thing we must have is reconciliation. One might ask, who is to be reconciled and with whom? Well, there is plenty of reconciliation that must take place before we unite for a purpose. To be sure, reconciliation is not just about receiving or just about corrective action. It is about the future. It is a means of addressing how we are going to live together; it is a means of taking constructive action; it is a means of sorting through choices; and it is a means through which we take responsibility for past mistakes, and pledge to never ever repeat the offense again.
As such, we should have true and genuine reconciliation between political parties. This requires that the transgressions, real or imagined, of the past must be buried for good, and new efforts must be made to start anew. And I am happy to report that there are groups gearing up and ready to assist with this.
We need reconciliation between the governed and the governing. This is so because the ruling party has so much to explain.
Reconciliation between the government and the opposition parties is also critical if the country is to deploy all available talent to overcome the multitude of challenges.
Reconciliation between Ethiopians and their history is another must. Though this requires time as well as patience, there is a general feeling that many in Ethiopia and some outside of it are revising the country’s history to fit current needs. It may be possible to embellish history, but unnatural to edit it without molesting the truth. As a consequence, our historians have their work cut out for them in this regard.
We also need reconciliation on the issue of ‘ethnic federalism’. There are essentially two recognized methods of dealing with this important issue.
The first method is for the government not to acknowledge ethnic, national or social identities but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. (See Jurgen Habermas & Bruce Barry).
It appears to me that this might be unworkable at the moment. For one thing, the current generation and the one just before it primarily see themselves as belonging to an ethnic group first, and the prominence of ‘citizenship’ is not as strong as we might wish to see it. I have to concede here that while I can only judge my contemporaries, I can only make educated guesses about those before or after me.
Second, ethnic groups in general, and ethnic cultures in Ethiopia in particular, have moved up and down the ethnic ‘diacritic’ overtime. And which ‘diacritic’ of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation. (See Ronald Cohen & Joan Vincent). Furthermore, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as a means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society. (See Barth & Seidner for more on this). Unless the political system changes, people will cling to what appears to them to be safe, comfortable, or even expected.
The second method is for the government to recognize ethnic identities and develop a process through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries and/or sovereignty of the country. ( See Charles Taylor & Will Kymlicka). The Ethiopian government attempted to do the later but with provisions that have had disastrous consequences. These two points of view must be reconciled, and, I believe it is possible to do so.
The third thing that must be done is to provide a unified response to the three questions of: Land Ownership; Religion; and Ethnic Federalism.
Before the TPLF ascended to power and thereafter, it identified these three factors as wounds of the Ethiopian polity, and decided to turn them into weapons. Initially, the three issues resonated with the general population that had already been emotionally decimated by the Derg. While there will be disagreements on the efficacy, policy wise, of the particular factor, it is safe to say that the ruling party has used these three factors as a wedge issue between and among the populous. It is also safe to state that the initial euphoria generated among the population may have started to ebb as the public began to weigh and assess the benefits and costs associated with the particular issue. I am going out on a limb and suggest that the Ethiopian people have not embraced the ‘ethnic’ issue in a way that could make the ruling party claim success. In fact the opposite might just be true as Ethiopians began to view the ‘ethnicity’ issues as very divisive and threatening national unity and security. Indeed, an honest and correct assessment of the issue, notwithstanding what the high priests of ‘ethnic federation’ might think, would lead us to conclude that the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that took place in parts of the country had repulsed Ethiopians and offended their senses.
In all cases, however, there have not yet been clearly articulated positions or alternatives provided by either opposition political parties or academe to the vexing issues of land ownership (as you know, ownership is the prerogative to control); the role of religion, if any; and viable alternatives to ethnic federalism acceptable to all.
The fourth thing that must be done is an identification of a new form of ambition. Simply stated, we need to formulate a new agenda, if you will. The ruling party had promised Ethiopians the freedom from hunger. That concept has sold well overseas where outsiders, having tired of watching little hungry kids on their television sets, had given the government the benefit of doubt. Now that we know the result of that promise, I will refrain from restating it here again. But I think that Ethiopians—both inside and outside of the country—wish to articulate a new form of freedom: the freedom not to have to consider ethnicity in their daily lives. Simply stated, we need to have a new ambition. Because all ambitions require forward thrust, perhaps, this will provide the forward momentum that we desperately lacked.
Finally, we must establish a post-conflict organization to instigate economic, political, social, technological as well as scientific reform, and to make sure that the gains achieved are maintained and advanced; to advance a genuine inclusion agenda that incorporates actors from all stakeholders, and assure that there is no backsliding; and to sustain a conflict containment agenda that is proactive to make sure that the economic costs of violence are contained and managed.
How Would We Accomplish These?
In two recent articles, I have argued that we must have conversation. The conversation we are going to have should be about the solutions to the problems the country faces, and would include conversations about politics, power, authoritarianism and hegemony. If we agree that it is time for solutions, we must also agree that such solutions must be based on a transparent and realistic account of what caused the problems in the first place. Here, I don’t mean to overburden our conversations with a chronology of what took place and when because that won’t help explain it. What we need to do is examine the motivation for the actions taken, and on what basis those actions were taken. In trying to do so, all sides must understand that while the regime in Ethiopia faces considerable opposition, it also enjoys internal support. Most importantly, the government also has powerful allies, notably the U.S and the U.K. just to mention two.
Having framed the issue in this manner, a message has to be framed and delivered, and that message has to be effective. For a message to be effective, first, it must come from a unified group—a united opposition (just remember that no one in their right mind would wish to bargain with an intangible entity that can not deliver); and second, it must reach and influence those in control—whether they are elected officials, dictators, regulators, or private actors. That means, therefore, the communication would ultimately have to be with the ruling party. This is crucial. Take for instance women’s issues: to bring about change regarding women’s issues, it is not enough to talk to women alone. The conversation has to include men as well. Similarly, if we wish to bring about change in power and hegemony, the conversation would have to be with those that wield it. Peaceful change will only take place in Ethiopia with the positive involvement of the ruling party.
So what will we be the modality of the conversation with the ruling party? The Constitution, of course. I have written before that if there is ever anything we ought to talk about, it is the constitution. Why the constitution? Because, like it or not, accept it or not, the current government of Ethiopia is a ‘lawful’ regime and not an ‘unlawful’ one. It may be unlawful in many of its governing practices, but is recognized as a lawful regime by every country in the world. Hence, the focus on the constitution. It should be the center of our effort, the focus of our energies, and the roadmap to any peaceful change that is likely to bring about solutions to the problems Ethiopia faces to day. I have never advocated throwing away the current constitution in its entirety. I hold the opinion that the current constitution is one of the most liberally worded constitutions out there—it even allows for ethnic groups to cede from the motherland! How more liberal can you get? But like everything else, the devil is in the details. While there are elements of the document that might be useful to retain, there are also elements of the document that could produce disastrous consequences, and are damaging to the country.
Although not directly echoing my call for a constitutional reform, even the Chair of the Constitutional Assembly, Negaso Gidada, has given recent testimony that the drafting, approval and implementation of the constitution was fraught with many errors and problems, and expressed regret at the end product. Of the stunning admissions is his regret that the people of Ethiopia had no say in the final document. (See Teshome Abebe; & Negaso Gidada Interview).
Concluding Remarks
Let me summarize these comments as follows: Our country is distressed, and it needs our attention. Each person has an opportunity to contribute their talents and unleash some of their potential (ሀብት ያለው በሀብቱ፣ ጉልበት ያለው በጉልበቱ፣ እወቅት ያለው በእውቀቱ).
The ruling party borrowed strength from the position it held; and from the emotions created by using ethnicity, the issue of land ownership and religion as weapons. We now know the consequences of this ploy. But like all borrowed assets, borrowed strength eventually diminishes as one loses influence with those that they wish to impress, and the strength turns into weakness. It is at this juncture that we must ask, “what does the situation demand? What strength, what skill, what knowledge, and what attitude?”
To me, the situation demands that there must be unity: unity in goals, unity in purpose, unity in effort, and unity in principles.
The situation demands the strength of empathy: empathy to seek to understand, and then to be understood.
The situation demands the skills to build relationships and build them with consistency and sincerity, based on national imperatives and not personal agendas.
The situation further demands the knowledge to be able to teach, to explain, to organize and to execute.
And finally, the situation demands an attitude of reconciliation, inclusiveness, democratic values, and of a new ambition to a new kind of freedom for Ethiopians: the freedom not to have to consider ethnicity in their daily lives!
“This government is at least better than previous ones,” remarked a 74-year-old Eritrean man to me last month in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, his longtime residence. Clad in a tattered grey suit and speaking to me in Italian, the man was peddling a book of useful Amharic phrases he had compiled for the foreign visitor, proceeds of which would go toward the purchase of a second-hand comforter for his bed.
As it turned out, his assessment of the relative superiority of the current Ethiopian administration was for good reason: two of his children had been killed by a previous ruling outfit, the Derg military junta that took power in 1974 and began eliminating suspected opponents in droves.
Although that particularly bloody epoch came to an end in 1991, many a resident of Ethiopia might nowadays still have cause to complain about homicidal activity by the state. In the Oromia region surrounding Addis Ababa, for example, there are claims that more than 200 people have been killed by Ethiopian security forces since November 2015, when protests broke out in response to the government’s so-called “Master Plan” to expand the boundaries of the capital by a factor of 20.
As a Newsweek article explains, the Oromo inhabitants of the region viewed the plan as “an attempted land grab that could result in the forced eviction of Oromo farmers and the loss of valuable arable land in a country regularly plagued by drought.”
This was no doubt a valid concern given the government’s established tradition of wantonly displacing Ethiopians in the interest of “development”—that handy euphemism for removing human obstacles to the whims of international and domestic investment capital.
Comprising some 35 percent of the population, the Oromo are Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group and have regularly decried discrimination by the ruling coalition party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which is dominated by ethnic Tigrayan interests. Politically motivated detention, incarceration, and other abuses have long characterized the landscape in Oromia, and the current protests have seen children as young as eight arrested.
Apparently, torture has also been a difficult habit for security forces to break.
And while the government has opted to shelve the Master Plan for now, protests in Oromia have continued. When I recently visited the town of Woliso, one of many protest sites in the region, residents pointed out that cancelling the plan wouldn’t bring back the dead people.
Events in Oromia have been described as the worst civil unrest in a decade. The United States, never too quick to condemn the excesses of its African ally, helpfully responded by emitting a “security message” for U.S. citizens and restricting the movements in Oromia of its government personnel; the British government, for its part, provided a color-coded map of Ethiopia on which a vast chunk of land around Woliso is designated inadvisable for “all but essential travel.”
Even without the Master Plan, meanwhile, the government is doing a decent job of courting investors. As I traveled west from Addis Ababa toward Woliso — a journey of about two hours — I passed sprawling factory complexes, including one featuring a Turkish flag flying alongside its more indigenous counterparts.
A January report by the Ethiopian News Agency outlines the government’s goal of luring Turkish and other investors to “priority areas” as part of an overall scheme to convert the economy from agriculture- to industry-based. Noting that “about 110 Turkish investment projects have become operational” and that “incentives from the government includ[e] electricity and cheap labor,” the report highlights the exploits of the Ayka Addis textile factory 20 kilometers west of the Ethiopian capital, in the Oromia region.
Launched in 2010 with a price tag of US$140 million, the Turkish factory is said to occupy several hundred thousand square meters of land.
The website of the Ethiopian Investment Commission furthermore lists Ayka Addis as one of “a number of private Industrial Zones” in Ethiopia, described as “success stories.” The site, which advertises thousands of hectares worth of “investment opportunities” in the country, cites perks including exemptions from customs duties for machinery and other equipment as well as certain exemptions from income taxes.
Indeed, the EPRDF can point to double-digit economic growth over recent years to justify plowing ahead with its development model. But there’s more to life than GDP — as sizable poverty-stricken sectors of the Ethiopian population can presumably confirm.
If we want to consider other, less superficial digits, we might take a look at the estimated 10.2 million Ethiopians currently “in need of urgent food assistance”— as reported, perhaps ironically, in a March edition of the English-language Ethiopian newspaper Capital, “the paper that promotes free enterprise.”
Additional troublesome statistics are contained in a 2014 BBC dispatch titled “The village where half the people are at risk of blindness.” The village in question is Kuyu, located in the Oromia region; the risk is due to infectious trachoma, “the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.”
At the time of the article’s publication, 200,000 people were reportedly in danger of trachoma-induced blindness in Oromia alone. Quoted in the piece is one Simon Bush of the Sightsavers organization, who remarks that trachoma is “a disease of poverty” that is “endemic in areas which have poor access to water and sanitation.”
All of this is merely to point out that, in the end, a lot of people in Oromia and beyond might have greater priorities than, say, income tax immunity for international developers. Because it doesn’t take a functioning eyeball to see that such development models are themselves in need of some serious development.
Belén Fernández is the author of “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.
“Nations cannot realise the full promise of independence until they fully protect the rights of their people,” Barrack Obama, president of the United States, said on tour to Kenya and Ethiopia last year. This is ironic, because on that trip he failed to criticise human rights abuses by the Ethiopian government, which he hailed as “democratically elected”.
Ethiopians are very familiar with the government’s attempts to oppress any opposition. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) government took power in 1991. All opponents are persecuted as terrorist collaborators.
Today, Ethiopia stands as a nation in contempt of human rights. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Ethiopia has the second highest number of journalists forced into exile between 2010 and 2015 after Syria.
Evidence of the denial of freedom of expression includes the arrest and incarceration of Zone 9 bloggers in 2014. Their name is a reference to the eight divisions of the infamous Kaliti Prison — suggesting that Ethiopia as whole is effectively the jail’s ninth division. The arrest of the bloggers for publication of news and opinion pieces that were critical of the government and its repressive entourage exposed the country’s non-existent due process.
Last June, Andargachew Tsige, the secretary-general of Ginbot 7, a group banned for allegedly advocating the armed overthrow of the Ethiopian government, was deported to Ethiopia from Yemen while in transit to Eritrea. This transfer violated international law prohibiting sending someone to a country where they are likely to face torture.
Tsige has been detained without access to family members, legal counsel or consular representation, which he is entitled to as a British citizen. His detention location, to date, is unknown.
Terrorising those who publically criticise the government’s endeavours, however, is not limited to media outlets. In April 2015, peaceful protests in Oromia over the government’s planned expansion of the Addis Ababa municipal boundary were met with excessive force, including shootings. Many protesters perished, while others continue to be detained without charge.
Protest against displacement from land and family is not new to Ethiopia.
Under the “villagisation program” 1.5 million rural people have been relocated under the guise of improving their access to basic services. One example of this forced displacement is in the Gambella region, for which relocation was accompanied by insufficient compensation and consultations, and violence including beatings and arbitrary arrests. This was just in the first-year of the “villagisation program”.
In subsequent years, 200,000 indigenous persons from 240,000 hectares of land in the lower Omo Valley were displaced without compensation or consultation, due to the government’s development of sugar plantations. The clearance of land, sold to foreign interests, year-in year-out has lined the pockets of the government, without regard for the region, or the Ethiopian people in general.
Inherent in this inculcating of terror, is the need to maintain the status quo. This is evident in the landslide victory in June 2015 of the ruling party and its insipid allies. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a rebrand of the TPLF, overwhelmingly ejected the only opposition parliamentarian from office.
“This result was completely expected, there is no multi-party system in Ethiopia. It’s just fake,” said Taye Negussie, a sociology professor at Addis Ababa University.
President Obama’s visit to Kenya and Ethiopia was to whitewash a continent.
US collaboration with the TPLF, a party that has expelled all opposition and is dedicated to a reign of pure terror, has a long history — Obama and three of his predecessors have visited.
The people in the Horn of Africa can live in harmony and in peace, and flourish through the development of a stable region, without the need for foreign interference.
The mission to oust the oppressive regime in Ethiopia, is aimed to stop a culture of fear and suspicion, especially if we want to enter into a serious problem-solving dialogue.
We need to be united participants of the political process and not the subjects of a repressive and terrorising government, to address our problems genuinely and solve them definitively.
LADUE, Mo. (KMOV.com) – Three suspects have been charged in what police are calling a multi-state credit card theft scheme.
Kayla Burleson, Fana Kiros, and Haben Sebhatu face felony charges of trafficking in stolen identities and possession of a forgery instrument, police say. KMOV.comThe three were arrested in the early morning on March 25 after a traffic stop for speeding on I-64 at McKnight Road.
The officer reported smelling marijuana in the car, which led to a search, revealing over 100 credit and debit cards, a laptop computer, and credit card reader/writer device.
According to police, those are telltale signs of what is now becoming a common crime.
“We also found a number of gift cards in there,” said Sergeant Ray Hahs of the Ladue Police Department. “It’s very common to use the stolen credit cards or re-encoded credit cards, and then they’ll buy gift cards and they’ll take the gift cards and buy whatever items they want, so that it’s very difficult to track.”
Police say the suspects came to the St. Louis area from Seattle and made several stops.
“We believe they flew into Chicago, rented a car in Chicago, and then they went through Indianapolis, then came down this way, and went into Arkansas,” said Hahs.
Police say it is unclear whose identities may be on those stolen cards, or how many victims are located in the St. Louis area.
Copyright 2016 KMOV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.
Kala Gezahegn, the traditional leader of Ethiopia’s Konso people Kala Gezahegn, the leader of the Konso people, addresses a crowd. His arrest highlighted growing tensions in Ethiopia between state power and ethnic groups’ desire for autonomy. Photograph: Courtesy of Kasaye Soka
Nothing seemed amiss when an Ethiopian government vehicle arrived to collect the traditional leader of the Konso people for a meeting in March. But instead of being taken to discuss his community’s requests for more autonomy, Kala Gezahegn was arrested.
Kala’s detention marked a low point in fraught relations between the Konso in southern Ethiopia and the regional authorities in the state capital, Hawassa. Five years ago, the Konso lost their right to self-govern, and growing tensions since then mirror discontent in other parts of Ethiopia.
The 1995 constitution in Africa’s second most populous country allows different ethnic groups to self-govern and protects their languages and culture under a system called ethnic federalism. The largest ethnicities – such as the approximately 35 million-strong Oromo – have their own regional states, while some smaller groups administer zones within regions, as the Konso effectively used to do.
Many of Ethiopia’s ethnic identities, which number more than 80, were suppressed during the imperial and national-socialist eras that preceded the federal system.
What happened in Konso followed demonstrations and killings by security forces in Oromia, the most populous region. A rights group says 266 people have been killed since mid-November during protests over injustice and marginalisation.
Demonstrations were sparked by a government plan to integrate the development of Addis Ababa and surrounding areas of Oromia. After fierce opposition from the Oromo, that scheme was shelved in January, but protests have continued, fuelled by anger over alleged killings, beatings and arrests.
In Amhara, a large region north of Addis Ababa, there was violence late last year related to the Qemant group’s almost decade-old claim for recognition as a group with constitutional rights. The fact that the Qemant rejected a territorial offer from the authorities, saying it was too small, may have provoked local Amhara people. In December, federal security forces were dispatched to contain escalating communal violence.
In Konso, after Kala and other leaders were locked up, thousands took to the streets to protest. During clashes with police on 13 March, three people were killed, and now the dispute seems entrenched.
The crux of the issue is a 2011 decision to include the Konso – which is in the multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) and has 250,000 people – in the newly created Segen zone, thereby removing their right to self-rule. That decision was taken without consultation and resulted in worsening public services and unresponsive courts, says Kambiro Aylate, a member of a committee chosen to represent the community’s demands.
The budget for Konso’s government was reduced by 15%, says Orkissa Orno, another committee member. “The Konso people used their rights to ask for a different administrative structure,” he says.
In a recent interview, prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn blamed the unrest in Oromia on high youth unemployment and a “lack of good governance”, a line echoed by officials in other regions.
Kifle Gebremariam, the deputy president of the SNNPR, said the Konso leaders were arrested on suspicion of maladministration and corruption, issues “completely different” from the political question.
Kifle added that discussions had been held with residents about the status of the administration. “The regional government, including the president, gave them the right response, but they are not peacefully accepting this.”
Kala’s supporters dispute that account, although there have been signs of compromise, with the traditional leader permitted to take part in recent negotiations.
Concerns over the federal system’s ability to withstand such strains are not new. For example, southern groups such as the Wolayta were involved in violent clashes before they were granted their own zone in 2000.
In 2009, the International Crisis Group wrote in a report (pdf): “Ethnic federalism has not dampened conflict, but rather increased competition among groups that vie over land and natural resources, as well as administrative boundaries and government budgets.”
Officials have argued for decades that the focus on minority rights has been integral to an unprecedented period of peace and development.
Assefa Fiseha, a federalism expert at Addis Ababa University, agrees the system has brought stability to a country threatened with fragmentation in the early 1990s after ethno-nationalist rebellions overthrew a military regime.
But a lack of democratisation and centralised economic decision-making works against local autonomy and exacerbates grievances, according to Assefa.
“The regional states, as agents of the regional people, have to be consulted on whatever development project the federal government wants to undertake,” he says.
In fact, the government appears to have been moving in the opposite direction, as its legitimacy depends on economic growth and improving social services and infrastructure.
National projects – 175,000 hectares (430,000 acres) of state-owned sugar plantations in the ethnically rich south Omo area, for instance – are designed, implemented and owned by federal agencies.
The now scrapped integrated Oromia-Addis Ababa plan is another example, as it was developed without scrutiny by “key stakeholders” in the Oromia government, Addis Ababa city and the federal parliament, Assefa says.
One reason for quick decisions in a devolved federation is that the political positions of Ethiopia’s diverse communities are filtered through a rigid ruling coalition.
Along with allied parties, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front won every federal and regional legislative seat in May’s elections, extending its control of all tiers of government.
The EPRDF has held power for 25 years, partly by building a popular base of millions of farmers and demanding strict obedience to party doctrine and policy, but some say this is now changing.
The wave of protests, so soon after the landslide election victory, shows that the “dominant party system is facing problems”, Assefa says.
“Growing ethno-nationalism, centralised policymaking and the failure to provide space for political dissent combined together make a perfect storm for violence.”
Ethiopians were today on 09.04.2016 on the streetof Frankfurt Germany voicing their protest against the 25 years long dictatorial rule of the EPDRF ( Woyane) in front of the Ethiopian Embassy. At the time when more than 10 million Ethiopians are under severe drought and famine crisis, the ruling party cadres are in the middle of Europe (Germany) hosting a meeting to discuss on the very possible way that they could prepare huge fests in the Amahra region in order to celebrate the so called “Diaspora’s Festival in Amahra region”. The fact that the ruling party disciples, supporters and cadres thinking of fest and party at such critical time when millions of Ethiopians’ life hang on a thread in lack of daily bread has triggered the anger of the Ethiopians in Germanyto gather and oppose these cruel actions. Demonstrates showed their anger on thisSaturday afternoon with unity and oneness. Every one seemed very upset due to the fact the ruling party’s irresponsible actions of spending millions of dollars for unnecessary feasts for exampleto celebratethe Diaspora Day while more than 400,000 children life is on steak because they lack loaf of bread.
BBC has broadcast on its news coverage on 31. January.2016 that more than 10 million Ethiopians are under severe hunger.(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IKqAtJiZUY).In fact these figure is definitely growing in an alarming rate every single day. In addition Aljezera on its news coverage on 25. January.2016 has compared the drought situation in Ethiopia with the political and human crisis in Syria by stating the bitter reality that more than 400,000 children are in need of desperate food aid.(source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ver43qpLTaY)
“Well I am very happy to achieve this goal because it is, it gives us great opportunity and as well as intensives to go forward to achieve even more goals in the next sustainable development agenda. So it is a great achievement and we are so thankful for that.”(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxKIoNes0uo)The above was the direct quote of the present prime minister Haile Marima Dessalegne on the 7th June 2015 at the FAO(Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United nation) in Rome as he took a prize as an example of a country which is self dependent in terms of food and agriculture. The saddest part is that he has not even waited a year toopenly and officially urged the world to lend its generous hand because he failed to feed the Ethiopians. What a shame! “I think if the international community support, it is good, we will continue with that get the support and move forward. And I urge organization like UNICEF, if they think that this is the worst scenario, they have to come in, just talking is not a solution…”. The primeminster has said once in his life the truth “…just talking is not a solution..” That was and is what the Ethiopians saying. The 25 years dictatorial rule was full of talk and problems but with no correct solution. Coming a long way to the heart of Europe and begging for money to spent itonsuch valuelessceremony(Diaspora Day) will not bring our country from these horror of hunger and drought. This is why the Ethiopians were on the street of Frankfurt to voice their protest and direct the TPLF people to their sense.
The EPDRF is under huge influences inside and outside the country. Civil disobedience and protests have been intensified in the Oromiya, Amhara and konso region. On the other hand Ethiopians are putting pressure every time the TPLF representatives or cadres arrange meetings or discussions In Europe or North Americacountries. Although nature has cause the drought and famine, the ethnic centered and dictatorial rule of Woyane has failed to control the problem in its infant stage. Opposition parties, journalists, Educators, religious leaders and human right activities had been trying to highlight the fact that TPLF’s dictatorial rule would lead the country into severeproblems such as migration, civil disobedience and poverty. However the TPLF’s leaders have intensified theirdictatorship and dragged the country into one of the worst hunger and drought crisis in 50 years. John Graham, director of save the children Ethiopia, has given the following comment on Aljezera regarding the current drought in Ethiopia “…. Wehave to be very direct now. It is not the time to be nice and diplomatic. Childrens’life are hang in to the balance.”(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3TGWrRbGiU). Ethiopians who live in and abroad are raising their voice saying it is already too late to handle the Woyanes dictatorial leaders and regime in diplomatic way. As prime minister Haile mariam urged and begged the international community to lend their hands to get Ethiopia out of this famine, he should probably do the same (urging and begging) his party members to hand over the power because his party brought dictatorship, killings of civilians,corruption and hunger. The game is lost!