FP: Abiy Ahmed’s Reforms Have Unleashed Forces He Can No Longer Control July 6, 2019
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Abiy Ahmed, Africa, Current Horn of Africa news, Ethiopia, Foreign Policy
add a comment
“Too little attention was paid to characters like Asaminew, who were licensed to act from expanding islands of power amid the breakdown of party structure and control.”
FOREIGN POLICY DISPATCH
Abiy Ahmed’s Reforms Have Unleashed Forces He Can No Longer Control
Ethiopia’s prime minister oversaw the chaotic release of thousands of prisoners, including many ethnonationalist militants. His amnesty may now be coming back to haunt him.
BY NIZAR MANEK | JULY 4, 2019

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—Former comrades in arms described retired Brig. Gen. Asaminew Tsige, who was shot dead on June 24, as a mediocre soldier and a poor administrator. Asaminew was gunned down by government forces two days after allegedly masterminding the assassination of three senior officials of Ethiopia’s Amhara state, including its president—events labeled part of “an orchestrated coup attempt” by the Ethiopian prime minister’s office.
Asaminew had a long history in Ethiopian military circles—and in rebel movements. He was an ex-rebel fighter in the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement in the struggle that in 1991 felled the Derg, a Marxist junta that preceded Ethiopia’s current ruling system. Asaminew met in 2009 with leaders of the banned opposition movement Ginbot 7 in Dubai, according to members of that movement. On April 24, 2009, the National Intelligence and Security Service and Federal Police Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force arrested 35 people allegedly involved in plotting a coup against Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government; most were members of the military or the police. Asaminew was one of them, and he was imprisoned for nearly a decade.
Last February, Asaminew emerged from prison, having allegedly faced solitary confinement and torture, among tens of thousands of prisoners released following a 12-point reform plan handed down by Ethiopia’s ruling politburo in December 2017.
The effort to release and reintegrate former rebels who had once sought to overthrow the federal government was widely hailed as a bold reform effort. But it has also unleashed forces that Abiy may no longer be able to control.Under Abiy Ahmed, who became Ethiopia’s new leader in April 2018, Asaminew was honorably retired with full pension rights—and he was appointed by Amhara state later that year to head its administration and security bureau. The effort to release and reintegrate former rebels who had once sought to overthrow the federal government was widely hailed as a bold reform effort. But as the high-profile June 22 killings have shown, that policy has also unleashed forces that Abiy may no longer be able to control.
Tremors have already rippled through the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), the federal army, whose manpower mirrors the ethnic makeup of the country’s ruling coalition and has been increasingly involved in internal peacekeeping amid innumerable conflicts that have over the last year turned Ethiopia into the world’s largest source for internally displaced persons associated with conflict.
Abiy has brokered an anarchic political opening, leading the four branches of the ethnically-based ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)—Tigrayans, Oromos, Amharas, and ethnic groups from the south—to undertake a grandiose personnel restructuring and rebranding. Asaminew’s own appointment to the Amhara Democratic Party (ADP) central committee in October 2018 was part of that trend.
According to security insiders, Asaminew relied on hardliners affiliated with the Amhara Democratic Forces Movement, who, after returning from Eritrea amid an historic peace deal between the two countries, agreed last November to merge with the ADP. One of his two deputies in the Amhara security bureau, Alehubel Amare, had fled to Eritrea and formed the ADFM with other military defectors after the alleged coup plot of 2009, and another, the retired Brigadier-General Tefera Mamo, had been imprisoned with Asaminew.
Abiy’s intention was, in December 2018, to broker a merger between the ADP (which is part of the EPRDF) and the more radical National Movement of Amhara, or NAMA (which is not). This trend was replicated in Abiy’s native region of Oromia with a planned merger between the Oromo Democratic Front, an opposition movement returning from exile, with Abiy’s own Oromo Democratic Party, which is part of the EPRDF.
Just as the communist nomenklatura in the former Soviet republics survived through adopting nationalist rhetoric when the Soviet Union began to face a crisis due to rising regional nationalism, the EPRDF’s ADP absorbed existing undercurrents of radical Amhara ethnonationalism in an effort to refurbish its damaged credentials
Just as the communist nomenklatura in the former Soviet republics survived through adopting nationalist rhetoric when the Soviet Union began to face a crisis due to rising regional nationalism, the EPRDF’s ADP absorbed existing undercurrents of radical Amhara ethnonationalism in an effort to refurbish its damaged credentials
by appeasing hard-liners in advance of competitive elections intended for 2020.
This ethnonationalist revival in a federal state has unleashed pre-Derg forces seeking to revive a world of feuding dynasties and provincial lords with their own armies competing for dominance based on who has the most weapons while seeking incorporation of so-called ancestral lands into Amhara state, including irredentist claims in other regional states and even in neighboring Sudan.
Prior to his death, Asaminew was overall commander of Amhara state’s special police forces, police, and militia, over which he had direct influence; he did not have a command role in the ENDF. Such militias historically played a pivotal role in Ethiopia’s internal security during the era of princes, between the 18th and 19th centuries, during which nobles had their own militias from their respective communities to defend their territory and security in the absence of any effective central authority.
They were also present during the Red Terror under the Derg, when so-called people’s militias were established largely from the peasantry and empowered to act against so-called anti-revolutionary individuals and groups. In Amhara state, after the Eritrean-Ethiopian War of 1998-2000, residents of North Gondar and the military and police faced attacks from insurgents linked with Eritrean-supported groups. As a result, militias were increasingly entrusted to operate at the grassroots level as local first responders to lawlessness.
The ADP selected Asaminew to its central committee as part of a pivot toward the incorporation of returning opposition forces. The party’s decision to then crown Asaminew as the head of Amhara state’s administration and security bureau—a role accountable to the regional president and supervising all regional security organs—was seen as a way of absorbing and neutralizing hard-liners. But it ended up fueling a bitter power struggle at the core of a fragmenting EPRDF and threatening the survival of the federal coalition’s constituent branches.
Fractious forms of ethnonationalism are now emerging all across Ethiopia—a country of more than 80 ethnic groups—raising the perilous prospect of a Yugoslav-style breakup.
Fractious forms of ethnonationalism are now emerging all across Ethiopia—a country of more than 80 ethnic groups—raising the perilous prospect of a Yugoslav-style breakup.
Mutual animosity between regional states is contributing to a national crisis, with a race to strengthen regional security forces amid rising distrust of federal forces—similar to the distrust of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav National Army by Slovenes and Croats in the early 1990s, as they built up their own territorial defense forces.
As regional nationalism grows, competing irredentist claims are on the rise. One of Amhara state’s borders is with Tigray state. Amhara nationalists want to reclaim the districts of Wolkait and Raya, which they say were annexed to Tigray after the Tigrayan-led EPRDF came to power. Amhara nationalists also want part of Oromia, Al-Fashaga in Sudan, and the federal capital, Addis Ababa—and NAMA labels the EPRDF’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front (which governs Tigray) as a “terrorist group,” according to Christian Tadele, a NAMA politburo member—riling neighboring Tigrayan nationalists.
FP: Dispatch: The Rotten Foundation of Ethiopia’s Economic Boom. #OromoProtests March 23, 2016
Posted by OromianEconomist in #OromoProtests, Africa, Oromia, Oromo.Tags: #OromoProtests, Africa, Civil Disobedience Against Tyranny, Ethiopia’s fake economic growth borrows from ENRON’s accounting, Foreign Policy, Genocidal killings against Oromo people, Land grab in Oromia & Gambella, Oromia, Oromo, The Rotten Foundation of Ethiopia’s Economic Boom
3 comments

The Rotten Foundation of Ethiopia’s Economic Boom
ADAMA, Ethiopia — For those who would speak frankly about politics in this landlocked East African country, the first challenge is to find a safe space.
But on a recent evening in Adama, a city in the heart of a region reeling from the largest protest movement Ethiopia has faced in decades, most people seemed at ease. University students poured out of the city’s main campus, spilling into claustrophobic bars and pool halls. Others crowded around a cluster of aging taxis, jostling for a quick ride home.
Though it is one of the largest cities in Oromia — where members of Ethiopia’s Oromo ethnic group have taken to the streets in recent months in unprecedented numbers to protest their political and economic marginalization — Adama has remained mostly quiet.
Hidden beneath the casual veneer of daily life, however, lurks a deep-seated suspicion of the government, which has built a massive surveillance apparatus and cracked down violently on its opponents
Hidden beneath the casual veneer of daily life, however, lurks a deep-seated suspicion of the government, which has built a massive surveillance apparatus and cracked down violently on its opponents.
Citizens feel they have to watch what they say, and where they say it. At the hangouts where crowds have gathered, a political statement might be overheard. Out on the sidewalks, government spies could be on patrol. Inside the university campus, security officials are on the lookout for suspicious behavior.
In a way, the recent unrest is rooted in Ethiopia’s rapid economic rise. The federal government claims to have notched double-digit GDP growth rates over the past decade, but its rigid, top-down approach to developing industry, and attracting foreign investment, has resulted in mass displacement and disrupted millions of lives. This, in turn, has heightened ethnic tensions that today threaten Ethiopia’s reputation for stability.
All across Oromia, government security forces have been struggling to control the spate of violent protests that erupted in November, partly in response to the government’s so-called master plan to coordinate development in Addis Ababa with nearby towns in Oromia, a sprawling central region that surrounds the capital on all sides. Like much of the country, the vast majority of Oromia is rural, home to small-scale farmers who feel left behind by the dazzling growth of Addis.
When this latest round of protests began last year, demonstrators seized on the master plan as symbolic of broader encroachments on Oromo autonomy. They also accused the government of taking land from Oromo farmers for little or no compensation, suppressing the Oromo language in schools, and unfairly redistributing the region’s natural resources.
In Adama, a 23-year-old engineering student, whose full name has been withheld for his safety, was initially reluctant to speak with this reporter for fear of reprisal. He relaxed only after he and some close friends sat down in a deserted cafe near campus, where a quiet woman brewing coffee over hot coals was the only person listening in.
“There are so many problems facing the Oromo people,” he said. “But those who speak about it are getting arrested. Educated people, farmers, teachers, doctors — the government accuses them all of being part of the protests.”
His caution was warranted. Less than two weeks later, a confrontation erupted at the university, reportedly in response to a small demonstration by students — though the details, as always, are hazy. One witness who asked not be named said he heard gunshots as security forces descended on the campus. Amid the confusion, at least two fires were sparked — one in the school’s backup generator.
“On campus, students already feared the armed forces,” said the witness, who is a student at the university. “Now, no one feels like they have any right to speak at all.”
Government security forces have been accused of exacerbating the crisis in Oromia by violently suppressing the protests. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch said it had “documented security forces firing into crowds of protesters with little or no warning, the arrests of students as young as 8, and the torture of protesters in detention.” The rights group said military and police forces have killed “several hundred peaceful protesters” since November.
Members of the Ethiopian diaspora have been equally vocal, taking to social media to call attention to alleged atrocities. Jawar Mohammed, who is based in Minnesota, is perhaps the most prominent online activist, manning a number of social media feeds featuring bloody photos of dead demonstrators and grainy videos of police brutality that have become hubs for Oromo diaspora members around the world. His Facebook page has amassed nearly a half million followers.
“We have freelancers embedded in pretty much every district across the country,” said Mohammed, who was born in Ethiopia but works abroad as the executive director of the Oromia Media Network, a news broadcaster whose satellite feed here has been repeatedly jammed by the Ethiopian government. “They infiltrate the system from top to bottom,” he said in a Skype interview.
How much of an impact social media activism has had on the actual protest movement is a matter of debate. In a country with limited Internet penetration, and where the sole government-owned telecommunications provider has the power to shut down signals and block opposition websites, online activists like Mohammed are necessarily limited in what they can do. According to the engineering student in Adama, people on the ground are driving the protests, and social media matters “only a little bit.”
Where online activists have succeeded is in channeling video and photographic evidence of abuses to the outside word
Where online activists have succeeded is in channeling video and photographic evidence of abuses to the outside word. But even this evidence is difficult to verify; several journalists, including this correspondent, have been detained by officials for attempting to report in some of the worst-affected areas.
There are also questions about the direction social media activists have steered the debate surrounding the protests. Comments by Mohammed’s passionate social media followers sometimes advocate violence against members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political party from the northern region of Tigray that dominates the government’s security and intelligence agencies. And because he and other online activists are far from the front lines, some argue that their social media posts are ultimately a distraction. The student who witnessed the altercation at the university in Adama, for instance, said he agrees with Mohammed’s political analysis, but is concerned that the Facebook page has become a magnet for a dizzying array of viewpoints — about religion, regional politics, and ethnic strife — that make the movement more controversial than it needs to be.
Still, Mohammed has a clear strategy in mind. When it comes to human life, he advocates nonviolence. But he encourages demonstrators to block trade routes, destroy the property of companies that are seen as operating against Oromo interests, and avoid bringing crops to market in order to raise food prices.
Might such tactics be unethical during the worst drought Ethiopia has witnessed in decades, which has left 10.2 million people in need of emergency food aid? “Morally, yes,” Mohammed said. “Strategically, no.”
Officials have no time for these “activists on the other side of the Atlantic,” said government spokesman Getachew Reda. He claimed that agitators, some of whom have backing from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s archrival, have infiltrated the ranks of the protesters and are responsible for the current violence. The government security forces, by contrast, have generally handled the situation professionally, he said.
“We may have some bad apples,” Reda said. “Otherwise, the security apparatus that we have in this country is very much oriented towards serving the interests of the public.”
Amid this war of words, normal citizens are caught in the middle. In the quiet café in Adama, the engineering student spelled out a set of remarkably prosaic demands: He would like to see more Oromo professors at the university, for instance, and a fairer allocation of resources for the region. But, he said, he stays quiet for fear of Ethiopia’s pervasive security and intelligence apparatus.
“People don’t feel free,” he said. “We are all psychologically impacted.”
After two months of violent demonstrations, the government announced that it was scrapping the master plan. It wasn’t enough. Some protesters said they didn’t believe it had really been canceled. Others were motivated by grievances that run much deeper than any development scheme, citing marginalization stretching all the way back to the late 1800s, when the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II swept in from the north to expand Ethiopia’s borders and establish the capital city in Oromo lands.
On paper, today’s federal system is meant to ensure some measure of autonomy for all of the country’s ethnic groups, including the Oromos. The ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), is made up of four regional parties, including the TPLF and the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). But the government lost some credibility in May, when the EPRDF and allied parties won every parliamentary seat in a national election. Though the OPDO holds more parliamentary seats than any other party, protesters say the party either cannot or will not challenge the dominance of the TPLF — and Oromos remain marginalized as a result.
Officials say they are trying to promote meaningful dialogue. “It is the government’s responsibility to make sure that people’s legitimate grievances are addressed properly,” Reda said. To that end, OPDO officials have convened meetings with concerned citizens across Oromia, and hundreds of low-level officials have been dismissed for corruption.
But the government has continued to lean on its powerful security apparatus, which has both enabled Ethiopia’s impressive, state-led economic development and imperiled it by bringing ethnic tensions to the fore. The ongoing protests in Oromia point to cracks in the facade, where citizens feel left out as the government pursues its uncompromising vision of modernization.
By continuing to crack down on demonstrators instead of listening to their demands, Ethiopia risks compromising the reputation for political stability that fueled its unprecedented decade of growth and foreign investment. In that way, the government may soon erode the very foundation of its own economic ambitions.
FP: UN Sustainable Development Goals: No wonder the SDGs went all vague and utopian September 29, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Foreign Policy, Millennium Development Goals, The Tyranny of Experts, UN's New Sustainable Development Goals, UN's Sustainable Development Goals, WILLIAM EASTERLY
add a comment
If there is something to salvage from the SDG debacle, perhaps it is the idealistic advocacy for “universal respect for human rights and human dignity,” not as a 2030 “target,” but just as an increasing recognition of poor people’s rights for self-determination. Similar language was there in the MDGs but ignored. Such advocacy is needed to accept and respect the mainly homegrown rise of the rest. Such advocacy is needed because there are still many aid programs that violate the rights of the poor (such as involuntary resettlement) or aid that supports others who callously violate the rights of the poor (such as autocratic allies of the United States in the war on terror). Such advocacy is needed, not only because the West itself is now far too prone to xenophobic insults of poor people over fears of migration. For this generation of young idealists in rich countries, development should still be a cause worth fighting for. The many humanitarian programs that have been doing good things should continue, even if they are not quite the transformational things that the MDGs promised. But the decline and fall of the pretensions of foreign aid only tell us to not put our hopes in U.N. bureaucrats or Western experts. We can put our hopes instead in the poor people we support as dignified agents of their own destiny.-
You must be logged in to post a comment.