Africa and the West

Hypocracy or Ignorance: Ethiopia, Eritrea and the West

Ignorance is the mother of arrogance. I don’t think that Jesse Jackson himself is a plain hypocrite only because in his references to Africa he is concerned mainly with the race issues. The US officials in their visits to Ethiopia or Eritrea never noticed that the very conflict between Mengistu and the present parties in power was over the forms of socialism and marxism. If Ethiopian community wants to help the world to understand the situation in the Horn, it should be explained that there is nothing unique in Issayas’ politics. (The Soviet Union practiced the same methods towards beggars for decades, as well as the forceful expropriation of the money earned by the citizens abroad. Nothing new came from the new leadership in Asmara, the same old methods with the very predictable results for anybody who studies history). There’s nothing unusual about the factions of the same party fighting each other to death. You still find Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskists, Maoists and etc. everywhere. I don’t know how many in the media are aware that they belong to the same variety of socialist and communist ideologies. Of course, they love Eritrea the way they loved Soviet Russia till the endless troubles for the West cooled their intellectual enthusiasm for ideas of the forced equality. How could Americans understand Eritrean or Ethiopian political situation when they never experienced one-party system? Nobody explained to them that the combination of nationalism and socialism practiced by Eritrea is the well known national-socialism, the nazism, they like to curse so much. Does it have to go to the extremes of the Nazi Germany for the world to notice? (Maybe they should re-read the American press praising Mussolini till the mid thirties for his socialist renewal of Italy).

China and Russia lived through the same ideological dispute since late fifties and they too had their own “border” war. Do the tv-teachers of the world know how the socialist model in Addis is different (by necessity) from the marxism in Asmara? It is never an issue for the media which is in nature "reporting" mechanism, not analitical. Who does set the agenda for those talks? Issayas. The Americans have no agenda or policies of their own in Africa (it was said by the State Department in the Spring of 1998 that US has no strategic "interests in the Horn" -- and Eritrea moved south the way Saadam did in Kuwait after the similar statement!) The "talks" ARE the Eritrean victory -- get more talks, let the whole world talk to and about Issayas. The world is so easy can be hold as a hostage and terrorists love the attention -- that is what the terror for! The more "senseless" the better -- better coverage and better ratings.

There is history of the NPR, which is the radio station subsudized by the government as well as its British sister, the BBC, -- the Red Terror in Ethiopia wasn't a potic for them and the human rights defender Carter (friquent participant-expert of many "talks" on Africa). The organized by the Dergue 1984 starvation was attributed to the "Ethiopians who never can't feed themselves"; and the only reason why Americans didn't like Mengistu -- he was the African tool of their direct enemy -- the USSR. They never supported the resistance in Ethiopia the way it was done in Afganistan (and what a mess we have over there now!) And if the record is correct the comfortable retirement of Megistu and his safe departure from Addis was arranged through the "talks" of the US Embassy with the TPLF. They didn't know Africa then and know little now (Read the 1993 CIA assesement of Ethiopia and you won't find a single sign of any possible problems with Eritrea). They, the objective observers, should notice that in 1991 the comrades in both capitals thought that their (borrowed) ideology is a guaranty of the unity and the problems of the past are over. That is what Mengistu thought about his model of socialism. How do Americans explained to themselves the difference between "classeless society" in Cuba and Eritrea? Who was there to ask? Not the Public Radio.

Issayas is not even an Eritrean, he is a Marxist first and they are all by their own definition have no nationality. Our Eritrean marxist did what Stalin did in the twenties, thirties and especially during the WW II -- they had to marry their marxism to national idea, because they became the party in power (the prescription from Lenin’s “State and Revolution”). The rest is also in the world history books of the twentieth century. Oh, yes, Revolution eats its children! From the heights of the party mentality Issayas felt that Meles, who was in situation to deal with the multinational (non-homogenic) state, betrayed him, their ideas, ideals and causes. Since “the broad masses” are not the part of the party machine, the only visible and understandable explanation for them is the "national" conflict. It was not enough to be proud Eritrean, Ethiopia has to become a dirty name. It's easy, you can hear that name-calling on this very forum, too.

Do you expect Clinton or Suzan Rice to know long history of Ethiopia and several decades of marxism in Africa? (They even don’t know who is the most celebrated today African, Mandela, is and we only can hope that the statesmentship can moderate his socialist convictions). If the TPLF marxists in Addis had to moderate their ideology because of the size and complexity of Ethiopia, their comrade in Asmara was free to go all the way and he did -- all the way. Now he has no place to go unless by some miracle he will be transformed and cured of his marxism. But why should he? He will drive this conflict to the point when the media and the western governments will do what they do in Yugoslavia -- and the moment the “peacekeeping” force will be deployed on the border, Issayas will be protected from the defeat. Of course it won’t solve the problem for Ethiopians and Eritreans -- but it will cement it. Welcome to the “Cold Peace” era, when we don’t know anymore the difference between peace and war; US daily bombs Iraq to prevent the war between Saadam and the Curds.

How long will it take for Eritrea to get itself a better (representative) government in such “peaceful” conditions? One can only hope that somebody explain to the West that by bombing Saadam we keep him in power.

Ignorance has its reasons. Most often we shoose not to know, because knowledge asks for action. And, yes, ignorance has its price: in the West -- wasted money, in Africa -- lives.
Anatoly

PS. What has to be done? It's my old belief that Americans Ethiopians must organize themselves into active political force in American politics. The size and rather advanced level of Ethiopian diaspora in USA make them noticable and this potential power could be transformed into a new "interest group" which can lobby their causes. In Washington D.C. alone there are 2-3 times more Ethiopians than we have Native Americans in the State of Alaska, but what a powerhouse they are!

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