💭 Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War?
Courtesy: The New Yorker
👹 የፋሽስቱ ኦሮሞ አገዛዝ ጠቅላይ ሚንስትር ግራኝ ለአሜሪካውያኑ፤ “እኛ ኦሮሞዎች የናንተ ባሮች መሆን እንፈልጋለን!”
🛑 ልብ እንበል፤ ግራኝ፤ “ኢትዮጵያ” ሲል “እስላማዊት ኦሮሚያ ኤሚራት” ማለቱ ነው!
“ኦሮሚያ ለአሜሪካ እና ለአረብ ጦርነት ልትዋጋ ትችላለች” 😲
„Oromia could Fight wars for America & Arabia” 😲
💭 ይህ የጉዞ ታሪክ የወጣው የኢትዮጵያ ኦርቶዶክስ ተዋሕዶ ክርስትያን አመታዊ የመስቀል /የደመራ አከባበር ላይ መሆኑ በአጋጣሚ አይደለም። ግራኝና ጋዜጠኛው አቅደውት ነው። በ ‘The New Yorker መጽሔት’ የታተመው/የሚታተመው ስሪት ደግሞ በመጭው ቅዳሜ 3 ኦክቶበር ላይ ይወጣል። በእርግጥም ትኩረት ፈላጊው ክፉ የኦሮሞ ፋሽስት አብይ አህመድ አሊ ይህን ቃለመጠይቅ በተለይ በዚህ በመስቀል ክብረ በዓል ወቅት እንዲለቅቀው ለጋዜጠኛው በረከቱን ሰጥቶቷል። “የመስቀሉ ጠላቶች!”
💭 የዚህ ረጅም ታሪክ መልዕክት ባጭሩ፤ ከሃዲው ግራኝ አብዮት አህመድ አሊ ለአሜሪካውያኑ እንዲህ ብሏቸዋል፤
“እኔ የጋላ-ኦሮሞው ንጉስ እኮ የእናንተ ተቋም የሲ.አይ.ኤ ቅጥረኛ ነኝ፤ ከኢራቅ እስከ ኤርትራና ሶማሊያ ድርሰ ‘ኤን.ኤስ.ኤን’ እና ‘ሲ.አይ.ኤን’ ሳገለግል ነበር፣ ባለውለታቸው ነኝ፤ አሁን እኛ ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎቹ በኢትዮጵያ ከመቶ ዓመታት በኋላ፣ እንደ በፊቱ በከፊል ሳይሆን፣ ስልጣኑን በእናንተ እርዳታ ሙሉ በሙሉ ተቆጣጥረናዋል፣ ከላይ ከላይ የምናሳየው ከአሜሪካውያኑ ሞግዚቶቼ ጋር የምናሳየው ድራማ ነው፤ ሕወሓትም በጋራ አብረን የምንቆጣጠረው ረዳት’ተቃዋሚ’ ነው። ሕወሓት ከሌለ ሰሜኑን በተለይ የትግራይን ሕዝብ ጨፍጭፈን ማጥፋት አንችልምና የትግራይ ሕዝብ እስካለ ድረስ ሙሉ በሙሉ እናጠፋው ዘንድ ሕወሓቶች ያስፈልጉናል፤ የሕወሓትን እድሜ ለማርዘም እናንተ፣ ቱርክና፣ ኤሚራቶች በሚሰጡን ድሮኖች ገዳማቱንና አድባራቱን፣ ትምህርት ቤቶችንና ሆስፒታሎችን እንደበድባለን፤ ጦርነቱ መቀጠል አለበ፤ ጦርነቱ ከቆመማ በእናንተም ላይ አውሎንፋሳቱን እየላከ መንፈሳዊ ውጊያ በማድረግ ላይ ያለውና ጽላተ ሙሴን የተሸከመው የአክሱም ጽዮን ሕዝብ አይጠፋልንም፣ ሰላም ከሆነ በተሰራው ወንጀል ተጠያቂዎች ስለምንሆን ጦርነቱን ብንገፋበት ይሻላል፤ በዚህም በዚያም ከፍርድ አናመልጥምና። ስለዚህ እናንተ ሁለታችንንም ተጠያቂ ማድረጉን ቀጥሉበት፤ እኛም እያታልልን ጊዜ በመግዛት ጭፍጨፋውን እርስበርስ እየተኮናነንን እንቀጥልበታለን።
👉 ልብ እንበል፤ ዛሬም ሕወሓቶች ስለ አክሱም ጽዮን፣ ስለ ደብረዳሞ አቡነ አረጋዊ ገዳም ወይንም ስለ መቐለ ገብርኤል የመስቀል በዓል አከባበር ምንም ነገር አያሳዩንም፤ የጋላ-ኦሮሞ ወራሪዎች “ምርኮኞች” ግን ዛሬም በዓሉን በኬክና በማንጎ ጭማቂ ሲያከብሩ ለማሳየት ተሽቀዳድመዋል። ዛሬም ከራስ በፊት ለሌላው!
“እኔ የጋላ-ኦሮሞው ንጉስ እኮ የእናንተ ተቋም የሲ.አይ.ኤ ቅጥረኛ ነኝ፤ ከኢራቅ እስከ ኤርትራና ሶማሊያ ድርሰ ‘ኤን.ኤስ.ኤን’ እና ‘ሲ.አይ.ኤን’ ሳገለግል ነበር፣ ባለውለታቸው ነኝ፤ አሁን እኛ ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎቹ በኢትዮጵያ ከመቶ ዓመታት በኋላ፣ እንደ በፊቱ በከፊል ሳይሆን፣ ስልጣኑን በእናንተ እርዳታ ሙሉ በሙሉ ተቆጣጥረናዋል፣ ከላይ ከላይ የምናሳየው ከአሜሪካውያኑ ሞግዚቶቼ ጋር የምናሳየው ድራማ ነው፤ ሕወሓትም በጋራ አብረን የምንቆጣጠረው ረዳት’ተቃዋሚ’ ነው። ሕወሓት ከሌለ ሰሜኑን በተለይ የትግራይን ሕዝብ ጨፍጭፈን ማጥፋት አንችልምና የትግራይ ሕዝብ እስካለ ድረስ ሙሉ በሙሉ እናጠፋው ዘንድ ሕወሓቶች ያስፈልጉናል፤ የሕወሓትን እድሜ ለማርዘም እናንተ፣ ቱርክና፣ ኤሚራቶች በሚሰጡን ድሮኖች ገዳማቱንና አድባራቱን፣ ትምህርት ቤቶችንና ሆስፒታሎችን እንደበድባለን፤ ጦርነቱ መቀጠል አለበ፤ ጦርነቱ ከቆመማ በእናንተም ላይ አውሎንፋሳቱን እየላከ መንፈሳዊ ውጊያ በማድረግ ላይ ያለውና ጽላተ ሙሴን የተሸከመው የአክሱም ጽዮን ሕዝብ አይጠፋልንም፣ ሰላም ከሆነ በተሰራው ወንጀል ተጠያቂዎች ስለምንሆን ጦርነቱን ብንገፋበት ይሻላል፤ በዚህም በዚያም ከፍርድ አናመልጥምና። ስለዚህ እናንተ ሁለታችንንም ተጠያቂ ማድረጉን ቀጥሉበት፤ እኛም እያታልልን ጊዜ በመግዛት ጭፍጨፋውን እርስበርስ እየተኮናነንን እንቀጥልበታለን።
(ማስታወሻ፤ ጋዜጠኛው፤ “አቶ ጌታቸው ረዳ ለጥቂት ከድሮን ድብደባ አምልጧል” ሲለን፤ “ግራኝ እና ሕወሓት ጠላቶች ናቸው፤ ያው ከሞት አመለጠ እኮ” በማለት አብረው እንደማይሠሩ ለማሳየት የተሞከረ አሳዛኝ ድራማ ነው፤ አብረው ነው የሚሠሩት፤ ሕወሓትና ብልጽግና በጣም ይፈላለጋሉ፣ የትግራይን ሕዝብ ለመጨረስና ጦርነቱንም እየቀጠሉ የጋላ-ኦሮሞውን ስልጣን ለማደላደል፤ “ወያኔ/ጁንታ/ጅብ የሚሉት ቡድን መኖር አለበት።) እነዚህ የዲያብሎስ ቁራጮች!)
ግራኝ ቀጠል ያደርግና፤ “አዎ! ኦሮሞ እስኪነቃ ነው እንጂ፣ እስኪነሳ ነው እንጂ ሲነሳ ሚዳቋ አትበላንም፤ እኛ ዝሆን ነን፤ እንሰብራለን፤ እንበላለን፤ እንገዛለን። ሃሳብ አለን፤ ድርጅት አለን፤ ከአለም ጋር ግንኙነት አለን፤ ከስሜናውያን ኢትዮጵያውያን ይልቅ ሮማውያንን/ላቲኖችን መርጠናል፣ አሜሪካና አውሮፓን እናፈቅራለን፣ አሁን ሃያ ሚሊየን የሚጠጋ ወጣት ትውልድ ስላለን ገንዘብ፣ መሳሪያና፣ ስልጠና ስጡን፣ እንኳን በአፍሪቃ በመላው ዓለም የእናንተን ጥቅም ሊያስጠብቁ የሚችሉ ወታደሮችን አምርተን ማውጣት እንችላለን፣ እኛ ኦሮሞዎች ልክ እንደናንተ ኢትዮጵያውያንን፣ ኦርቶዶክስ ክርስትናቸውንና ግዕዝ ቋንቋቸውን አጥብቀን ስለምንጠላ ለእኛ የምትሰጡንን እርዳታ ማጠንከር ይኖርባችኋል፣ እኛ አዲሱ የዓለም ሥርዓት እንዲመጣ ከሚፈልጉት ጥቂት የዓለማችን ሕዝቦች መካከል ነን፣ ለቋንቋችን የላቲን ፊደል የመረጥነው ከናንተና ቴክኖሎጂያችሁ ጋር በቀላሉ ለመገናኘት ያስችለን ዘንድ ነው፤ ቀስ በቅስም ብሔራዊ ቋንቋችንን እንግሊዝኛ ለማድረግ ዝግጁዎች ነን፣ ዛሬ እናንት እንደ ቀድሞው ልጆቻችሁን ወደ እኛ እየላካችሁ መንገላታት የለባችሁም፣ ቅኝ-ገዥ አባቶቻችሁ ሲሰሩ የነበኡትን ከባድና አደገኛ ሥራ እኛ ዛሬ ልንሰራላችሁ ዝግጁ ነን፤ የእናንተ ባሪያዎች ለመሆን ፈቃደኞች ነን።”
👉 ግራኝ አብዮት አህመድ አሊ ለአሜሪካው ጋዜጠኛ። መስቀል፤ ፲፯ መስከረም ፳፻፲፭ ዓ.ም
💭 Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War?
👉 Courtesy: The New Yorker
💭 My Note: No coincidence that this story came out during the annual Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Celebrations of Meskel (The Cross) / Demera. Of course, the attention seeker evil Oromo fascist Abiy Ahmed Ali gave him his blessing.
„Abiy spoke about how Ethiopia could be useful to its allies. For one thing, he suggested, Ethiopia could “fight their wars” for them. He had noticed that Westerners no longer seemed eager to send their sons into combat, but Ethiopians were good fighters, he said, and did not have the same qualms.
“But Abiy has other funders who are less concerned with human-rights violations. On a helicopter trip to Awash National Park, a swampy wilderness east of Addis, he travelled with a group of Emiratis, whom he introduced vaguely as “friends.”
“Ethiopia’s relationship with the United States was a preoccupation for Abiy. During a helicopter trip through the countryside, he turned away from the view and declared how much he “loved” the U.S. “Really,” he said. “America is a beautiful country. And the Americans are very good people. And I know the country, maybe better than some Americans!”
After Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ended a decades-long border conflict, he was heralded as a unifier. Now critics accuse him of tearing the country apart.
Abiy’s interventions can seem counterproductive, even to his allies. As one of his advisers told me, “Sometimes we are angry at him for planting flowers when we have so many other things wrong in the country. But he says, ‘This is for the future generations.’ His attitude is ‘Why only concentrate on the problems? We need to show that we are more than the conflict.’ ”
“Abiy likes to present himself as this charismatic leader who puts himself above it all,” Stefan Dercon, who teaches economics at Oxford and who has advised Ethiopian governments for decades, said. “But his vision is vague, as leaders’ visions often are.” Dercon described a kind of faith-based economics: “He has this belief in free enterprise and prosperity through hard work. It’s the prosperity gospel—he’s directly coming out of that. I think he just likes the shiny projects.”
Many of the impressive results that Abiy touts—huge wheat farms, irrigation programs, industrial facilities—are the continuation of programs started under the T.P.L.F.-led government, which focussed its development efforts on the countryside. Abiy’s own initiatives tend to cluster in cities, where they can benefit young constituents—and, he hopes, impress foreign visitors. Without enough access to domestic investment capital, he needs money from outside.
There is much in Ethiopia to attract investors. The country has an educated population, decent infrastructure, and enormous supplies of minerals, water, and arable land. But development, according to a recent I.M.F. report, has faced a long list of impediments: covid-19, the war in Ukraine, a ferocious drought worsened by climate change. Most significantly, the conflict in Tigray has frozen international aid. As a result of the fighting and the evidence of war crimes, the Biden Administration has cut off Ethiopia’s access to credits and loans.
But Abiy has other funders who are less concerned with human-rights violations. On a helicopter trip to Awash National Park, a swampy wilderness east of Addis, he travelled with a group of Emiratis, whom he introduced vaguely as “friends.” Abiy had built a lakeside tourist resort in the park. The water was disconcertingly infested with crocodiles, but the landscape was ruggedly beautiful, and the developers had erected kid-friendly animal statues around the grounds. The resort was one of half a dozen that Abiy was having constructed in Ethiopia; the idea was to seek international partners that would run them as concessions, and to use them as hubs to develop the countryside.
Over dinner, at a long table by a swimming pool, we listened as Abiy spoke about how Ethiopia could be useful to its allies. For one thing, he suggested, Ethiopia could “fight their wars” for them. He had noticed that Westerners no longer seemed eager to send their sons into combat, but Ethiopians were good fighters, he said, and did not have the same qualms.
Abiy occasionally fretted over how much money he was borrowing. “If you are a really good person,” he told me, “pray for me for just one thing—that I can manage our debt.” He told me that he would like to work more with Western companies, but that the Chinese had been useful. “The Americans should step up their role here,” he said. “But, if they don’t come, there are others, you know, who are interested.”
Ethiopia’s relationship with the United States was a preoccupation for Abiy. During a helicopter trip through the countryside, he turned away from the view and declared how much he “loved” the U.S. “Really,” he said. “America is a beautiful country. And the Americans are very good people. And I know the country, maybe better than some Americans! I’ve driven from Washington all the way to California.” In the mid-two-thousands, Ethiopia became a regional ally of the U.S., sending troops to invade Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda. After Abiy’s time in the military, he worked for the government in cybersecurity and intelligence and spent some time in U.S. training programs. “In the Iraq War, I fought with them,” he said. “I was the one who would send intelligence from this part of the world to the N.S.A., on Sudan and Yemen and Somalia. The N.S.A. knows me. I would fight and die for America.”
Abiy gave a disgusted wave of his hand. “Then these guys came.” He was referring to the Biden Administration. “They don’t know who their true friends are,” he said. Since the war began, “they made the mistake of talking publicly and down to me. Samantha Power announced she was coming to Ethiopia and was going to meet me. Without even consulting me! That’s not the way it’s done. So I didn’t see her, and she left very upset. Now there is a different approach—they know they must behave respectfully.” (U.S. officials have said that Abiy’s office ignored their attempts to schedule a meeting.)
Even though Abiy was desperate for American investment, he couldn’t bring himself to be too reverent about its politicians. He told me that he had “taken a big intake of breath” when he heard that Joe Biden had fallen off his bicycle. “I wish he acted his age,” he said. He went on, “Obama was good at making inspiring speeches, but he made more promises than he could fulfill.” Abiy grimaced when I asked about Donald Trump. “He did a lot of damage to America’s image. Let’s not even talk about him in the same way as the others.” Without discernible irony, Abiy said that he was concerned by the tumultuous condition of the United States. “America’s politics have been ruined by entertainment culture and media, which is why its politicians are always trying to behave as if they are in a drama,” he said. “The world needs America, but it needs it to be stable, and for its system to reflect institutional continuity.”
Jeff Feltman, who served as the U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa until this spring, told me that he was familiar with Abiy’s complaints, and with his habit of discounting the evidence of war crimes. “I had the same tour as you,” he said. “Abiy was saying what a man of vision he was, that the U.S. simply did not understand him, that he was trying to move Ethiopia into the future, and that Tigray was just a distraction. The charm offensive didn’t work.” A current senior U.S. official put it succinctly: “We’d like to support the P.M.’s economic domestic program, but we can’t until there are no more human-rights atrocities.”
Abiy’s war with the Tigrayans had a brutal second act. In June 2021, days after the election in which he secured his second term, the T.P.L.F. launched a lightning counter-offensive, retaking its capital, Mekelle, and parading thousands of captured Ethiopian soldiers through the streets. Abiy was humiliated. Almost overnight, his army had been routed and Tigray had been lost. There was even talk among some Tigrayans of seceding from Ethiopia.
The conflict settled into a dismal stalemate. Abiy’s government sought to isolate Tigray, cutting off its electricity, communications, air links, and food supplies. The United Nations warned of widespread starvation, and called for humanitarian relief to feed four million of Tigray’s roughly six million people.
Abiy’s aides insisted that he was still seeking unity. “The P.M. believes our strength lies in our diversity,” one told me. But, as the conflict grew more intense, Abiy began referring to T.P.L.F. members as “the cancer of Ethiopia,” and as “devils” and “weeds.” Even though he made a show of distinguishing between the T.P.L.F. and ordinary Tigrayans—the “weeds” and the “wheat”—the country’s ethnic factions understood that the constraints on conflict were gone. Both the Amhara and the Tigrayans continued to fight over territory. Oromo nationalist groups were increasingly restive.
This summer, militias in the countryside carried out a spate of massacres. In the first, in mid-June, hundreds of ethnic Amhara civilians were killed in Oromia; among the victims were women and children who were shot or burned alive. When I raised the slaughter with Abiy, he brushed aside the news. He said that there were always people “up to mischief” in the countryside, and that he knew how to deal with them.
When a second massacre took place, a few weeks later, the brutality became harder to ignore. Abiy blamed the violence on a militia called the Oromo Liberation Army, which was allied with the T.P.L.F. But the O.L.A. denied involvement, saying that the killings had been carried out by government-allied militias, while soldiers from the Ethiopian Army stood by. Ascertaining the truth was impossible, because the government had restricted access to the areas. (There were few international media outlets in Ethiopia; correspondents from The Economist and the Times, among others, had been expelled.)
After the second massacre, Abiy appeared in parliament, where legislators questioned him. “When is your government going to stop this?” one demanded. “Why is it difficult for you to hold those responsible accountable?”
Abiy was evasive. “Terrorists are operating all over the world,” he said, reeling off statistics of recent killings in the United States. “Without stopping their children dying in their cities, they are talking about our agenda.” He said that he was hearing a lot of “prescriptive” solutions from people, and added loftily, “I should point out that the government has more information than the general public.”
Abiy’s government had placed Tigrayans in internment camps—many of them makeshift facilities in schools and municipal buildings. She avoided armed security men in the streets, for fear that she’d be asked for I.D. and taken away.
Even non-Tigrayan residents had reason to be concerned about surveillance. Under the T.P.L.F.-led government, Abiy had helped found what is now called the Information Network Security Administration, which oversaw cybersecurity in a country where the state tightly restricted life online. Feltman, the former U.S. special envoy, told me, “Everyone knows that in Ethiopia the walls have ears.”
The director explained that the center was involved in everything from language and mining to national security. It was also working on a voice-identification system—“important for intelligence, for identifying terrorists trying to conceal their identities.” A command center had been established at the federal police headquarters, led by Abiy’s former chief of intelligence, where monitors showed live feeds from cameras at intersections around the city. “Since we built it, traffic crimes have gone down,” the director said. Of course, it was also useful for intelligence and crowd control: “If people are gathering, we see it.” Ethiopia’s main partner in the project was the U.A.E., which maintains one of the world’s most aggressive systems of citizen surveillance.
In April, the U.S. State Department released a dire statement on the ongoing siege in Tigray: “We note with the utmost alarm that thousands of Ethiopians of Tigrayan ethnicity reportedly continue to be detained arbitrarily in life-threatening conditions.” Abiy insisted that the Americans had it all wrong. “I am a real peacemaker,” he said. “I love peace. But the outsiders, they don’t understand what happened to us.” Throughout Ethiopia, Abiy’s allies contended that the T.P.L.F.—“the junta”—had hoodwinked the West into believing that Tigrayans were the real victims of the conflict. They argued that the T.P.L.F. had victimized the Ethiopian people for twenty-seven years, and was plotting to retake control of the country.
For Abiy, Hailemariam was perhaps his most significant link to the previous government. Yet Abiy disparaged him, over lunch at the palace: “He never expected to be P.M. He was picked because he was from a minority, and both the Tigrayans and the Amhara wanted someone without a constituency they could control.”
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 