The National Identity
Abate Bejiga
Most probably, the time the nation should have asked about its new identity is overdue, because until recently it was using an identity someone had carved for the whole nation, which means there was no consensus. There seems to be a big crisis in the nation as to what exactly means to be an Ethiopian (even the term itself could be foreign for some although there is nothing wrong with the name) at this particular juncture in the nation’s history and most probably what everyone taking solace on is the fact that they are allowed to live peacefully and constructively in their own region that they call their homeland.
However, the existence of a federal system will necessitate that the system should spell out what it exactly represents, stands for, and what the future of the nation is. Up to this point, because of some technicality, the existing government was patched up by TPLF, which went into office by relinquishing its drive to attain independence for its region, which was the first priority on its agenda. Whereas, OLF, which had an equivalent input in bringing down the Derge regime, either wavered or took a shine to secession that resulted in making it vulnerable as to which direction it will take if it is given the opportunity to run the nation. This means if it had what it takes, including military might, the Oromos should have been a better choice to take over from Derge because of their number, and had been insiders more than the Tigreans in the nation’s affairs for a prolonged period, although this outlook could be defied if it is found to be wrong.
As it is witnessed by what took place in Oromia recently, the inhabitants of the Oromia region still favor some kind of self-determination, and it is so after the existing administration went back into office after wining an election, which manifests the fact that there is still a political strife whose root is proving to be elusive. Most observers do not foresee an independent Oromia, because it is not to the advantage of the people of the region if not for those who are advocating secession or self-determination. The much better route to take for them is to stay in the federation, and wheel and deal for what their region needs and work on issues they believe that needs to be improved, because the overall Oromo population, obviously, might not be ready to function as a nation by its own. There are a big number of things that will have to be in place before such a thought is entertained in the first place. Otherwise, it could definitely be an omen for disaster, and it might not be enough to be blessed with a fertile land only.
Similar dissatisfaction might be prevalent among the other ethnic groups in the southern and eastern part of the country too and the only way it can be eradicated for good is when democracy starts flourishing, which will not be far when it is inferred from what is taking place in the nation. Of course, there will always be some element of the society that do not want that aspiration to come a reality and like we saw it, they are working hard at it to the point where they have managed to have innocent people sacrificed for their own end. Moreover, the members of this group are the people that gave the existing identity to the nation, because they had somehow managed to play a leading role that every ethnic group, more or less, had a hand in.
Just to go back briefly, these compatriots who are known to come south when the Axumite Kingdom declined and took their name Amhara (mountain dwellers in Hebrew) after starting to inhabit the western mountainous region of the nation, had somehow managed to finish ahead even if at one point in their history they used to be governed by an off-shot of the Oromo people who they later oppressed mercilessly after they conquered them militarily. Then they were also under the rule of the Tigrean king Yohanes lV until his death.
In the southern part of the country, after the conquest, what took place was a ruthless indoctrination of the southern region to assimilate them into the culture of the north. The southern part of the country was not advanced compared with the Amharas and their cousins the Tigreans, which includes the Eritreans who were descendents from the same Axumite Kingdom, but they did not have to intermarry with other ethnic groups because they had not left their original birth place at the same time with those who became Amharas, one of the major differences among them.
What gave this group the clout was they had a much better contact with the outside world over the years even if the Oromos themselves had a similar contact as the history of Gran Ahmed attests who historian say was a Somali, but had Oromo soliders in his army and came to their door in his quest to spread Islam and expand the Oromo or the southern, that is the Adal territory taking advantage of the back up he got from the Turks and that was how the Oromos ended up being their administrators and governors for close to 100 years. Up to the overthrow of the Derge regime the dominant political actors were the Amharas even if power sharing and intermarriage were the order of the era, and it is difficult to say who was number two because both the Oromos and the Tigreans had an ubiquitous presence and part in what was taking place.
At this particular juncture, it is difficult to say what the exact identity of the nation is because everyone has rejected the Amhara identity that they shoved down their throats. That is what makes it very crucial for all people of Ethiopia to work together to come up with a new identity so that there will be some kind of a tangible consensus on the table. The Tigreans who are playing the dominating role at the moment do not seem to have any plan of attaining a magnanimous status of any kind because they know the time is not right as everyone’s awareness level is raised to a considerably high level and that is not what they went out to accomplish from the nature of things. To attest to that they have included in the constitution a clause that will allow any ethnic region to secede if it meets certain requirements and they had shown that they stand by their conviction by allowing Eritrea to declare its independence after a referendum.
This means that everything in the nation, more or less, is in a limbo and if there is anything that the general public is enjoying at this particular moment, it is the respite it got from the systematic opression that was directed at them from the Amharas for all these years whom most consider to be colonizers. There were recent comments from outside observers who had difficulty of fathomizing why the CUD party, which is a representative of the Amharas won in the cities and lost in the countryside. This might answer this question and there was no need to rig the vote if there is anyone who wants to listen. Most probably if there had been anyone from outside of the capital city that voted for the party that represents the Amharas were the Amharas themselves who are spread around the country, even if their number is very few.
Everyone knows the flourishing of democracy will be the first step toward that direction and as we know it the die had been already cast, except that some interest group that everyone knows well had to stir an unprecedented unrest to prevent the country from forging ahead. What that means is what will ensue might not be clear for some time to come as different camps are being formed to distort what is taking place in the county and no one seems to realize that the key here is the "democratization" of the nation.
Even if there are groups that are hell-bent to see the country go back to where it was and they are brazenly fighting for it in the open, the issue that will have to be addressed eventually is the power sharing of the nation, and outside observers will be reminded time and again, that the Amaharas and the Tigreans together might not even make up 25 percent of the general population. Therefore, if these observers are advocating democracy they will have to change their stance and look at the overall picture. Otherwise, the impression will be their effort is a scramble for whatever could be had as long they are behind a group that promised them a share of the windfall to be won.
At this point in time, it does not make sense addressing two minority groups only when they know the country is made up of a larger body of people. OLF does not represent the other 75 percent of the population and should not be used as a pretext to alienate the greater part of the nation, because there are other parties that are working hard to see the rest of the nation live under one democratic umbrella, where there is equal power sharing. As guerrillia fighters, it is the direct responsibility of the governments of the day to deal with OLF because the people they claim to represent do not have a ready means to fend off their propaganda, and as we know it, it is not difficult to sway a few individuals to carry their banners, and this is without undermining what OLF could do for the region. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that the number of OLF adherents could rise if there is nothing done to address the power-sharing problem.
The case of the TPLF has a mutual benefit among those who are fighting off the resurgence of parties like CUD and should be dealt as an internal matter among those who are democratically elected and are sharing power equally. Which means there is no easy way of sending a wedge between those who had been fighting for the same cause for decades, that is without mentioning that they had put their lives on the line in the name of keeping the disintegrating nation together. Their time to enjoy the fruit of their hard work is almost at the door. It seems that even the members of the so called sectarian opposition party will be welcome (in fact they do not have a better choice) to join hands with the rest of the people and start tackling the problem of the nation that they seem to be running away from by creating a nonexistent pseudo-problem, because what they are doing is taking the nation backward. As long as they want to join hands and help with the democratizing process of the nation, they will be a welcome asset rather than a liability.
Most probably, the time the nation should have asked about its new identity is overdue, because until recently it was using an identity someone had carved for the whole nation, which means there was no consensus. There seems to be a big crisis in the nation as to what exactly means to be an Ethiopian (even the term itself could be foreign for some although there is nothing wrong with the name) at this particular juncture in the nation’s history and most probably what everyone taking solace on is the fact that they are allowed to live peacefully and constructively in their own region that they call their homeland.
However, the existence of a federal system will necessitate that the system should spell out what it exactly represents, stands for, and what the future of the nation is. Up to this point, because of some technicality, the existing government was patched up by TPLF, which went into office by relinquishing its drive to attain independence for its region, which was the first priority on its agenda. Whereas, OLF, which had an equivalent input in bringing down the Derge regime, either wavered or took a shine to secession that resulted in making it vulnerable as to which direction it will take if it is given the opportunity to run the nation. This means if it had what it takes, including military might, the Oromos should have been a better choice to take over from Derge because of their number, and had been insiders more than the Tigreans in the nation’s affairs for a prolonged period, although this outlook could be defied if it is found to be wrong.
As it is witnessed by what took place in Oromia recently, the inhabitants of the Oromia region still favor some kind of self-determination, and it is so after the existing administration went back into office after wining an election, which manifests the fact that there is still a political strife whose root is proving to be elusive. Most observers do not foresee an independent Oromia, because it is not to the advantage of the people of the region if not for those who are advocating secession or self-determination. The much better route to take for them is to stay in the federation, and wheel and deal for what their region needs and work on issues they believe that needs to be improved, because the overall Oromo population, obviously, might not be ready to function as a nation by its own. There are a big number of things that will have to be in place before such a thought is entertained in the first place. Otherwise, it could definitely be an omen for disaster, and it might not be enough to be blessed with a fertile land only.
Similar dissatisfaction might be prevalent among the other ethnic groups in the southern and eastern part of the country too and the only way it can be eradicated for good is when democracy starts flourishing, which will not be far when it is inferred from what is taking place in the nation. Of course, there will always be some element of the society that do not want that aspiration to come a reality and like we saw it, they are working hard at it to the point where they have managed to have innocent people sacrificed for their own end. Moreover, the members of this group are the people that gave the existing identity to the nation, because they had somehow managed to play a leading role that every ethnic group, more or less, had a hand in.
Just to go back briefly, these compatriots who are known to come south when the Axumite Kingdom declined and took their name Amhara (mountain dwellers in Hebrew) after starting to inhabit the western mountainous region of the nation, had somehow managed to finish ahead even if at one point in their history they used to be governed by an off-shot of the Oromo people who they later oppressed mercilessly after they conquered them militarily. Then they were also under the rule of the Tigrean king Yohanes lV until his death.
In the southern part of the country, after the conquest, what took place was a ruthless indoctrination of the southern region to assimilate them into the culture of the north. The southern part of the country was not advanced compared with the Amharas and their cousins the Tigreans, which includes the Eritreans who were descendents from the same Axumite Kingdom, but they did not have to intermarry with other ethnic groups because they had not left their original birth place at the same time with those who became Amharas, one of the major differences among them.
What gave this group the clout was they had a much better contact with the outside world over the years even if the Oromos themselves had a similar contact as the history of Gran Ahmed attests who historian say was a Somali, but had Oromo soliders in his army and came to their door in his quest to spread Islam and expand the Oromo or the southern, that is the Adal territory taking advantage of the back up he got from the Turks and that was how the Oromos ended up being their administrators and governors for close to 100 years. Up to the overthrow of the Derge regime the dominant political actors were the Amharas even if power sharing and intermarriage were the order of the era, and it is difficult to say who was number two because both the Oromos and the Tigreans had an ubiquitous presence and part in what was taking place.
At this particular juncture, it is difficult to say what the exact identity of the nation is because everyone has rejected the Amhara identity that they shoved down their throats. That is what makes it very crucial for all people of Ethiopia to work together to come up with a new identity so that there will be some kind of a tangible consensus on the table. The Tigreans who are playing the dominating role at the moment do not seem to have any plan of attaining a magnanimous status of any kind because they know the time is not right as everyone’s awareness level is raised to a considerably high level and that is not what they went out to accomplish from the nature of things. To attest to that they have included in the constitution a clause that will allow any ethnic region to secede if it meets certain requirements and they had shown that they stand by their conviction by allowing Eritrea to declare its independence after a referendum.
This means that everything in the nation, more or less, is in a limbo and if there is anything that the general public is enjoying at this particular moment, it is the respite it got from the systematic opression that was directed at them from the Amharas for all these years whom most consider to be colonizers. There were recent comments from outside observers who had difficulty of fathomizing why the CUD party, which is a representative of the Amharas won in the cities and lost in the countryside. This might answer this question and there was no need to rig the vote if there is anyone who wants to listen. Most probably if there had been anyone from outside of the capital city that voted for the party that represents the Amharas were the Amharas themselves who are spread around the country, even if their number is very few.
Everyone knows the flourishing of democracy will be the first step toward that direction and as we know it the die had been already cast, except that some interest group that everyone knows well had to stir an unprecedented unrest to prevent the country from forging ahead. What that means is what will ensue might not be clear for some time to come as different camps are being formed to distort what is taking place in the county and no one seems to realize that the key here is the "democratization" of the nation.
Even if there are groups that are hell-bent to see the country go back to where it was and they are brazenly fighting for it in the open, the issue that will have to be addressed eventually is the power sharing of the nation, and outside observers will be reminded time and again, that the Amaharas and the Tigreans together might not even make up 25 percent of the general population. Therefore, if these observers are advocating democracy they will have to change their stance and look at the overall picture. Otherwise, the impression will be their effort is a scramble for whatever could be had as long they are behind a group that promised them a share of the windfall to be won.
At this point in time, it does not make sense addressing two minority groups only when they know the country is made up of a larger body of people. OLF does not represent the other 75 percent of the population and should not be used as a pretext to alienate the greater part of the nation, because there are other parties that are working hard to see the rest of the nation live under one democratic umbrella, where there is equal power sharing. As guerrillia fighters, it is the direct responsibility of the governments of the day to deal with OLF because the people they claim to represent do not have a ready means to fend off their propaganda, and as we know it, it is not difficult to sway a few individuals to carry their banners, and this is without undermining what OLF could do for the region. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that the number of OLF adherents could rise if there is nothing done to address the power-sharing problem.
The case of the TPLF has a mutual benefit among those who are fighting off the resurgence of parties like CUD and should be dealt as an internal matter among those who are democratically elected and are sharing power equally. Which means there is no easy way of sending a wedge between those who had been fighting for the same cause for decades, that is without mentioning that they had put their lives on the line in the name of keeping the disintegrating nation together. Their time to enjoy the fruit of their hard work is almost at the door. It seems that even the members of the so called sectarian opposition party will be welcome (in fact they do not have a better choice) to join hands with the rest of the people and start tackling the problem of the nation that they seem to be running away from by creating a nonexistent pseudo-problem, because what they are doing is taking the nation backward. As long as they want to join hands and help with the democratizing process of the nation, they will be a welcome asset rather than a liability.
posted by Ethio-Probe @ 5:01 PM
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