Domestic despair shadows Abiy’s diplomatic waltz

Alemayehu Weldemariam

September 18, 2018

As Abiy Ahmed embraces the region to Isaias Afewerki’s gain, Ethiopia’s internal strife continues. A domestic focus is urgently needed to reinforce a fragile federation, writes Alemayehu Weldemariam

In my previous piece, I attempted to offer, far from the madding crowd, a sober assessment of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s first 100 days in office, which rendered the public euphoric. 

There had been the Eritrea detente, political amnesties, and the shuttering of a torture chamber. But also more mass displacement from conflict, and anarchy in parts of Oromia.

Since then, amid pledges to institute the rule of law, a man rumored to have been carrying explosives was hung from a lamppost at a rally for Jawar Mohammed’s return, Somali Liyu police massacred 41 Oromo in Eastern Hararghe, and a Tigrayan suspected of arson was stoned to death in Bure, Amhara. Tigrayans were also victims of mob killings elsewhere.

Also of concern, Semegnew Bekele, the revered project manager of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, died from a gunshot wound in his car at Meskel Square. That has been ruled suicide, but doubts persist.

To crown the horror, in the past few days, Ethiopians suffered the killings of non-Oromo residents on the periphery of Addis Ababa.

I previously highlighted the risk that despite his romantic rhetoric, the Prime Minister’s methods were undermining the political system that ties Ethiopia’s federation together, so risking spiraling ethnic violence, and, ultimately, disintegration. I suggested he would come face-to-face with this challenge when the euphoria subsides and his honeymoon ends. Well, it has now ended.

He is constrained, as he does not want to antagonize the Qeerroo

Speaking of the protests that swept the country in 2015, Getachew Reda, then government spokesman, observed, “he who summons demons cannot be sure if he has control over them. Likewise, the people they have unleashed now aren’t sure they have control over the demons they themselves have summoned.”

As lawlessness spreads, these often misleadingly paraphrased remarks are now looking prophetic.  Accordingly, some of the optimism surrounding Abiy has dissipated, as Ethiopians’ moral sensibilities are offended by the macabre chaos.

The premier had shown signs of getting to grips with the crisis by emphasizing that the government has a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. He has also conducted an overdue press conference, although it left much to be desired, as he failed to offer fulsome answers to the questions that the public care about most. After the Addis carnage, he must go live on EBC to defuse tensions, and also try and redress the harm done by his urging for neighborhood watchfulness, which may have contributed to vigilante violence.

However, he is constrained, as he does not want to antagonize the Qeerroo, the Oromo youth network that helped catapult him to power. Such reticence may even have slowed the police response to this weekend’s murderous rampage around Burayu.

Abiy’s dilemma is illustrated best by the even starker predicament facing activists such as Jawar: he does not trust Team Lemma, so he cannot let Qeerroo go. While Jawar apparently wants a strong government that can administer fair elections, he also wants people power.  “We have two governments in Ethiopia: Abiy’s government and Qeerroo’s government,” he told Nahoo TV. Well, you had better choose one then, Jawar, unless, of course, your model is post-Gaddafi Libya.

Shuffle diplomacy

In the diplomatic arena, there are misplaced priorities amid headline-grabbing moves. Fittingly, as Addis burned this weekend, Abiy jetted off to Jeddah.

It was puzzling that Abiy was slow to encourage a people-to-people approach to the normalization of relations with Eritrea until the New Year. At last, Abiy and Isaias made good on New Year’s day by attending the openings in Bure and Zalambesa with mingling soldiers and jubilant communities.

These events helped build his rapport with Tigray. Soon after, Adigrat and Mekele were flooded by Eritreans who came to shop. However, since these transactions are taking place at a Birr-Nakfa parity, there is a pressing need for institutionalization. After all, it was trade disputes that led to the outbreak of war in the first place.

Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki toast their friendship in Asmara, photo from Eritrean Government

It is sometimes claimed: “good fences make good neighbours”. Citing poet Robert Frost, I think it would be wise to ask at this juncture:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.”

The question of border demarcation would be irrelevant if there was mutual trust, or, in the words of Abiy, “a bridge of love”. Yet, despite such tidings, the devil is still in the detail. And the detail is still vague. What exactly is the letter and spirit, the text and subtext, of the peace deal? How does it resolve differences that led to war in 1998, such as exchange rates and tariffs? 

Despite the progress, there are still fears that Abiy and Isaias seek to exclude Tigray. Kjetil Tronvoll, a veteran observer, sees first the Oromo-Amhara alliance and now Isaias’ overtures to Bahir Dar as a classic case of regional realignment of allegiances; in this case, with the aim of encircling Tigray. And as documented by Alex de Waal, the late Meles Zenawi saw much of this coming: “Isaias … cannot forgive the Weyane for defeating his unconquerable army and so he is looking to punish them. One way he would like to do this is to dismantle Ethiopia, which is proving a lot more difficult than he thought. The other strategy is to hang on until he can find enough Ethiopians who can also demonize the Weyane.”

If Ethiopia’s long-term Eritrea game plan is murky, it has at least become clear that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia brokered the peace. De Waal joins the chorus arguing that Abiy’s priorities are also those of the U.S. and its Gulf allies, who sweetened the Eritrea deal for Abiy with lashings of petrodollars. Abiy seems to have decided to side with the Sunni monarchs, despite Ethiopia having steered clear of the Middle East’s toxic intra-Islamic schism.

Furthermore, Abiy’s diplomacy’s primary effect so far has been emboldening regional enfant terrible, Isaias, now recast as statesman. Coming out of self-imposed isolationism, Eritrean diplomacy is on steroids, zipping across the Horn of Africa, the Gulf, and beyond, while hosting leaders at home, as it strives to get sanctions removed.

We should all be wondering what is really going on in the Horn

Foreign Minister Osman Saleh met with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, who pledged a logistics port, oil pipeline and a refinery, while thanking Eritrea “for the close coordination of our approaches at the UN and other international venues, where our positions are identical or very close.”

There has also been an end to enmity between Eritrea and Djibouti, so the next step in this dizzying waltz looks set to be the removal of sanction against Asmara. Isaias looks to have rendered Ethiopia, whose stellar diplomatic corps are caught up in a distracting transition, irrelevant. 

Isaias and Abiy, who just met again in Jeddah, say rapprochement will be a catalyst for positive regional relations, but Isaias looks set to try and reshape IGAD, even as Eritrea is readmitted to it. And the role of Cairo and trends in hydro politics are worrisome, especially given Abiy’s undermining of the Renaissance dam.

We should all be wondering what is really going on in the Horn, as Cairo’s spy chief makes Addis a regular stop-off. Surely we are not being cynical to imagine that it involves more than peace, love, and open borders. To imagine that would be to buy into the beneficent motivations of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and President Isaias Afewerki. After all, Asmara’s autocrat is not John Lennon. Although perhaps Abiy thinks he is.

Domestic rift

In addition to the need for urgent domestic fire-fighting and savvier regional strategizing, there is also the never-ending never easy business of politics. Which just got trickier as Oromo nationalism slammed up against Ethiopianism in AddisFinnee.

Leaving the opposition to taunt each for a moment, Abiy needs to bring the EPRDF parties together, along with the affiliates, to forge a new arrangement. He can ill-afford for the ruling coalition to divide further into rival factions all because he is focused on making life comfortable for their opponents.

A key arena will obviously be the 2020 elections. Abiy’s OPDO faces a struggle for the Oromo vote, especially while he preaches a rehashed national unity. The run-up to the elections is likely to get uglier, unless Abiy empowers the security apparatus to enforce law and order. But coercing liberated people into competing peacefully for power without triggering a backlash is a conundrum that has flummoxed many aspiring statesmen. Managing the disparate ideologies and interests will require unusual foresight and wisdom.

 Of course, in contemporary Ethiopia it is not just a nascent democratic system that has to be tenderly but forcefully nurtured, it is also its stunted federation. We have heard a lot about togetherness from Abiy, but is it unity in diversity, or the start of another suppressive homogenization?

In 1994, Albert O. Hirschman, asked “How much community spirit does a society require?” To put it crudely, too much gives us Mussolini’s Italy, or the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia. So, how much andinet does Ethiopia’s political, religious, and ethnic diversity require? The Derg didn’t survive its radical mottos of “Ethiopia Tikdem”. The question now is whether Abiy Ahmed’s, medemer, will provide the foundation for a functioning political community that accommodates diversity.

Supporters welcome the OLF, Sep 15, Addis Ababa, Petterik Wiggers

As I have opined, Ethiopia will continue to struggle under its burdens from yesteryear. There are reasons of history as well as theory that prompted the emergence of ethnic federalism. The nationality question, and the ethno-national movements that oversaw the drafting and adoption of the constitution, are alive and well. Any thinking that ethnic federalism can be amended away is at best wishful. If Abiy makes imprudent attempts to reform the federation, it is a recipe for disintegration.

Thus far, his actions in this arena have been clumsy exercises of central power.

Hirschman, in his most famous work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, develops a theory of loyalty as the key factor in the interaction between voice and exit. Loyalty can postpone exit, while voice is more effective with the possibility of exit. The theory is helpful in thinking about the relationship between the Ethiopian federation and its states.

When regions have a credible exit threat, and federations are dependent on their member states, federations are less likely to take action that member states object to. This, roughly, is the rationale behind the self-determination right enshrined in Article 39. This leaves three options for all major players: loyalty to the constitution, voice opposition, or exit via secession.

Yet the Abiy-led federal government does not seem to be paying heed to exit threats emanating from Somali and Tigray.

In the case of Somali, Abiy used federal troops, in blatant disregard of the constitution, to remove brutish Chief Administrator Abdi Mohammed Omer. The relationship between the federal government and Tigray is also tenuous, exemplified by the sidelining of the region during the Eritrea normalization, and in the detention of a group of Federal Police that tried to enter Tigray without consent.

The relationship between the federal government and Tigray is also tenuous

Although rightfully condemned by Abiy for their authoritarian methods, the EPRDF’s previous leaders have also, at times, used force judiciously, and, above all, for sound reasons: to maintain law and order, defend the nation, and disrupt anti-constitutional activity that threatened the federation.

Abiy and his activist vanguard have quickly discovered that they also have to ruthlessly apply the power of the federal government to manage Ethiopia. But up until the present moment, it is by no means clear what vision of the Ethiopian state it is that they are forcefully trying to secure.

The irony of Ethiopian politics today is that the Prime Minister is visiting Saudi, while Ethiopians are massacring each other on the outskirts of our capital. Our air force is bombing Al Shabaab in Somalia, while our security apparatus is in feckless turmoil at home.

Since our gravest national threats are domestic, if he hopes to become a great Ethiopian statesman, the Prime Minister is best-advised to look inwards at the horror, rather than reach outwards to acclaim.

Ethiopia’s Charismatic Leader: Riding the Wave of Populism or Reforming Ethnic Federalism?

Alemayehu Weldemariam

“But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimised — the question involuntarily arises — to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.” GWF Hegel

“The boundary at which the past has to be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, one would have to know exactly how great the plastic power of a man, a people, a culture is: I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Since it is one that can have no end till experience itself comes to an end, the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.” John Dewey

The rise of Abiy Ahmed Ali, the new chairperson of the Oromo wing of the EPRDF, to become the third Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia took many by surprise. His rapid ascendance can be attributed largely to accident, rather than design, as seen by a competitive party election and the unpredictable path to Abiy’s candidacy.

When it became probable, following three years of chaotic protests, that the next leader was going to come from the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), it dawned on Lemma Megersa, then the popular chair of that party, the need to hand his position to Abiy. At that time the future PM was head of the OPDO secretariat and, crucially, a member of the House of People’s Representatives, which Lemma was not, ruling him ineligible for the premiership. Few had predicted Lemma’s selfless strategic move, but without it Abiy’s rise would not have occurred.

The rest, as they say, is history; albeit a history facilitated by Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen’s last-minute withdrawal from the EPRDF chairperson election.

At his inauguration, Abiy then delivered an electrifying speech at parliament that spoke to all sections of the Ethiopian polity. Although mere rhetoric, it went a long way in healing the body and soul of a fractured and feverish polity. On the hill of that historic address, Abiy set out on trips to Jigjiga, Ambo, Mekele, Gondar, Hawassa, and most recently Semera, giving motivational speeches on the theme of love and unity. These were laudable attempts to build bridges between Ethiopians and the national-regional divide, thereby easing tensions. With his trademark talk of love and integration, coupled with his charismatic persona, he has not only become the rock star of Ethiopian politics, but also a messianic figure.

The logic of the politics of hatred in Ethiopia is such that “ressentiment” and “historicism” feed each other, resulting in a vicious cycle of social conflict.

Abiy’s grand appearance on the Ethiopian political scene has to be seen against the backdrop of 27 years of ethnic politics that has seen the rise of autonomy but also enhanced competition. It’s no surprise he has found a receptive audience for his aspirations to transform communal relations and counter the prevailing problem of what Max Scheler calls “ressentiment,” Nietzsche’s “historicism”, or Hegel’s problem of “the slaughter-bench of history.”

We Ethiopians indulge excessively in “ressentiment”, “historicism”, and counting the number of people of one’s ethnic group killed on the “slaughter-bench of history”. As a result of which, we suffer a great deal. The logic of the politics of hatred in Ethiopia is such that “ressentiment” and “historicism” feed each other, resulting in a vicious cycle of social conflict. Abiy appeared at a time when Ethiopians were desperate enough for someone who would break this vicious cycle and imbue social hope.

Many analysts attempt to frame their questions regarding the circumstances that led to the rise of the new PM and his subsequent actions in terms of whether it is a rivalry between an emerging, young cadre of politicians of liberal democratic persuasion, and an old guard of elites towing the official revolutionary democratic line. However, arguably it is not so much a competition between revolutionary democracy and liberal democracy as it is the outcome of an opportunistic populist jockeying for power on a democratizing platform.

In what follows, I wish—albeit his instant popularity renders it difficult—to assess the scorecard of Abiy’s short tenure, to offer a sober analysis of his first 100 days in office, and the promises and perils of his reform agenda. By engaging in critical scrutiny, I hope to contribute to mitigating the risks of passing off showmanship as statesmanship.

Impressive scorecard

The scorecard of his first 100 days is indeed impressive. He has done a great job pardoning and releasing a multitude of domestic prisoners, securing the release of compatriots from foreign jails, setting in motion a wholesale amnesty law, closing the notorious torture chamber Maekelawi, lifting a state of emergency, exposing systematic human-rights abuses (particularly, the use of torture in federal detention facilities, as revealed on the state broadcaster), proactive regional diplomacy, opening peace talks with Eritrea, suggesting limiting his own tenure, and, above all, delivering compelling speeches, which were not only received warmly by the public, but have also rendered it literally euphoric.

First, it should be noted that not all of these initiatives are novel, as some are carried over from his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn. Going by his word and deed, Abiy seems to have high political ambitions. He appears to be hellbent on radically reforming the federal system, but that is a daunting task, which is impossible to achieve peacefully without the support of the ruling coalition and allied parties. This is because radically reforming the federation requires not just constitutional amendments, but a thorough constitutional review where the stances of all political and non-political participants are considered from the grassroots up.

Such reform is fraught with peril and Abiy needs to be cognizant of the risks. The reform conundrum facing federations is how to democratize without risking disintegration. If you set out on that treacherous course by attacking the EPRDF, the elephant that carries the federation on its back, you risk disintegration. The problem is particularly acute for ethnic systems, so, it would be wise to err on the side of caution.

Another test of Abiy’s statesmanship will come when dealing with the consequences of his liberalizing acts, which have included welcoming parties previously designated as terrorist organizations. Now, all factions of the OLF, Patriotic Ginbot-7, and the so-called loyal oppositionists, old and new, are invited to operate in the politics of the homeland.

Abiy’s Herculean task is managing these disparate interests and ideologies.

Abiy’s Herculean task is managing these disparate interests and ideologies. In the absence of any guiding principles, I am not surprised that the ONLF has, days after its commander Abdikarim Muse Qalbi Dhagah was freed, renewed its promise to disrupt oil and gas extraction in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

So far, the PM has not detailed in concrete terms his vision of the country’s political future. We do not know whether his aspirations are for Ethiopia to become a liberal democracy or to stay the course with his party’s revolutionary democracy. This will be important when he comes face-to-face with real challenges after the euphoria subsides. When there are no more prisoners to release, the people will want to see how the promises of radical democratic change—namely, political pluralism, an independent judiciary, and de-securitization of ethnic relations—are to be translated into reality.

The problem with his talk of love and unity—which I’d rather render into familiar political vocabulary as “fraternity and solidarity”—is the lack of clarity on how to translate it into reality. How does he want to operationalize such ideals within the constitutional framework? Or how does he want such ideals to guide his agenda?

Although there is still time, he has not yet laid out a roadmap for the steps that will lead to free and fair elections, which creates a vacuum. For instance, at the pro-Abiy rally in Bahir Dar, Ms. Emawayish Alemu, a recently freed activist, asked whether the plan is to set up an inclusive transitional government, or for the opposition to use this opening to participate in the democratic process.

Speaking of the dangers, in an appearance on VOA Amharic, Professor Messay Kebede aptly observed that Abiy’s rise from within the ruling coalition was unexpected and drew a reasonable parallel with USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev. He also claimed that the problem with Gorbachev’s reforms were that they paved the way for Putin’s dictatorship.

He did, however, miss one important historical fact that took place between the Perestroika and the Glasnost and Putin’s autocracy: the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He fast-forwarded from the USSR to the Russian Federation. Disintegration, rather than dictatorship, is the greater peril of Abiy’s agenda. To reiterate the key point, the democratic reform problem facing multination federations is how to democratize them without triggering disintegration. Can Abiy do that?

Love starts at home

Never before has Ethiopia gotten anywhere near disintegration as quietly as it is now during this spell dominated by the PM’s mesmerizing rhetoric of unity. Arguably, he is consolidating his power by marginalizing member parties of the ruling coalition, thereby endangering the unity that he preaches. It is outside of my remit to speculate on responsibility for the grenade attack at the pro-Abiy rally at Mesqel Square. But I can say with some certainty that had the attack killed the new prime minister, it would have put Ethiopia in the fast lane to 1991 Rwanda.

In a training session held for the top brass of the National Defense Forces, Abiy said that the military must be able to absorb regime change. While he was right in pointing out the threat from the military becoming involved in politics, he was wrong to say that its commanding officers must be able to absorb regime change. I think he mistakenly used the term “regime change” to mean a change in government. It was strange indeed for a head of government to talk in this manner.

Abiy also held a “training” meeting with artists and with members of his cabinet where he delivered a Powerpoint presentation on self-help advice from Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I hope against hope that Abiy would quickly deliver presentations where he analyzes Ethiopia’s macroeconomy and the international political economy, followed by Ethiopia’s foreign affairs priorities. Alas, he does not seem as prepared for those critical tasks as was his political hero, Meles Zenawi.

Abiy has to take care that the hopes he has raised are not replaced by despair. He should take his lessons from the recent flare-ups of ethnic strife, which took a heavy toll in Hawassa, Sodo, Assosa, Kemissie, Bati, and have led to a very large displacement of people in Gedeo and Guji zones. While admirable, rather than personally addressing each crisis by holding meetings with those affected, he needs to get to grips with the levers of the federal system designed to help solve such disputes. Unless he gets on top of this remit, more chaos will unfold. Entropy increases with time.

If Abiy can avoid riding the populist wave, he can make a fine Ethiopian leader.

If Abiy can avoid riding the populist wave, he can make a fine Ethiopian leader. But he had better realize soon that sidelining member parties of the ruling coalition is detrimental to his agenda. His rhetoric of love and unity should start at home with his own political base. TPLF, for example, seems to be still wondering whether Abiy is doing EPRDF’s bidding, or his ego’s.

It will also be wise to include the TPLF leadership in the dialogue with Eritrea. It doesn’t help to operate on the assumption that talks with Eritrea are a matter of foreign policy, and that the TPLF, or Tigray state government, have no business in the matter. After all, the border is shared between Eritrea and Tigray region, a member of a multinational federation with constitutional rights to self-determination.

Snubbing key regional actors will only lend credence to perceptions that this is a one-man show and that Abiy has unseated the EPRDF, making not just the TPLF, but all member parties, irrelevant. This would leave Abiy in a strange place where he is a prime minister who is distant from nine regional governments that enjoy a de jure right to secession and a de facto right of nullification of federal legislations.

If Abiy, as chairman of OPDO and EPRDF, is unable to work with the other member parties of the coalition, then the responsibility for quelling riots and ensuring peace and order falls solely with him and his party. He therefore has to move beyond the rhetoric of love and unity, rise to the occasion, and show his mettle.

Ultimately, Abiy needs to prove that he is the reformist, not the populist, that Ethiopians have long been waiting for.

In memoriam: Donald Nathan Levine

Alemayehu Weldemariam

Scholar, activist, aikido sensei. Born Jun 16, 1931, in New Castle, PA; died Apr 04, 2015, in Chicago, IL, of prostate cancer, aged 83.

Donald N. Levine was the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago and former dean of the College. He graduated with BA in 1950 from the "Hutchins College", MA in 1954, and PhD in 1957 from the University of Chicago under the mentorship of Robert Redfield and Richard McKeon. 

Levine had a brilliant career as the world’s most eminent social theorist and Ethiopianist. He published over a hundred papers and five books and his corpus includes critical interpretations of Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, S.N. Eisenstadt, and above all Georg Simmel. In the realm of social theory, his work focused on reunifying the sociological traditions and imaginations in a book venture that he titles “Visions of the Sociological Tradition” (1995). One evening during my visit at the University of Chicago in 2011, as we were walking to his home where he generously hosted me for the first week, he started telling me "how sociology used to be as big as Humpty Dumpty and how it had a terribly great fall. And after Humpty Dumpty had that fall, it broke into pieces, and all sociologists and social theorists that came “couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.” That is exactly what I wanted to do with my book Visions of the Sociological Tradition."

In Ethiopian studies, he is most famous for his two books Wax and Gold (1965) and Greater Ethiopia (1974). He managed to put together and publish a collection of essays on Ethiopia which came to be his last book, Interpreting Ethiopia, with which my name is associated for which I feel proud and ashamed at the same time. Ashamed because I could not help as much as he wanted me to and proud because I was involved in the project from its inception to its completion, albeit an unfortunate hiatus in between. 

Levine served as Chair of the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association in 1997,as editor of the University of Chicago Press's Heritage of Sociology series for two decades, and as member of the editorial boards of the American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Classical Sociology, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and Theory Culture and Society. For his expertise as an Ethiopianist he served as consultant to public and governmental organizations, include the U.S. Department of State, the United States Senate, and the Peace Corps. 

Levine received a Doctor of Letters honoris causa in 2004 from Addis Ababa University, where President Andreas Eshete lauded him in a citation speech as: "Ethiopianist, sociological theorist, educator: you have succeeded in all three vocations. Your pioneering work, Wax and Gold, has become an Ethiopian classic. As manifested in its title, yours is an exceptionally imaginative quest to reach an understanding of Amhara society from the internal point of view. The very concept of "Wax and Gold" has taken a life of its own: it figures at once in our understanding of Ethiopia's pre-modern culture and in our coming to grips with Ethiopia's reception of modernity. Greater Ethiopia draws attention to the deep fact that Ethiopian life is rooted in multicultural identities, and it also demonstrates the salient bonds that hold them together.”

Levine is a towering figure in Chicago sociology and social thought in the same league as Robert Park, George Mead, Albion Small and John Dewey, Edward Shils, and Arnaldo Momigliano. 

Mr. Levine is survived by his wife Ruth, daughter Rachel, and sons Ted and Bill. His memorial service will be held on Thursday, April 9, 1 pm, at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, 1100 E Hyde Park Blvd, Chicago, IL 60615.

Analyzing Unconfirmed Reports of Ethiopian Bombing of Eritrea

Alemayehu Weldemariam
Washington DC
24 March 2015

The first question that crosses one’s mind while reading reports about the bombing of Eritrea by the Ethiopia Air Force on the night of 20 March 2015 is why Asmara or Nevsun, the Canadian mining company that owns and runs Bisha mining, one of the targets of the bombing, wouldn't confirm or deny the reports?

Because it doesn't make economic and political sense to both of them to admit. For Nevsun, it's not only the stocks that are affected, but also the insurance premium. It seems to me the company has an insurance policy that contains a war exclusion clause or it has a distinct war risk insurance policy with a deductible and the damage it sustained is not substantial . In either case, publicity adversely affects its interests: it raises insurance premium while affecting the stocks in the market. So much for the legal implications. What's more, PFDJ wouldn't let it make the attack public before it makes it and it won't unless it plans to launch counter-attacks, which is tantamount to a declaration of war. Eritrea would rather keep quiet to avoid humiliation. So this I think is why Nevsun prefers to use "an act of vandalism" instead of "an act of war" as a legal euphemism.

Some question the veracity of the reports saying that whistle blowers would bring the matter to the attention the investors. But the problem is no whistle blower of importance seems to have interest in the matter unless such a whistle-blower is an investor. And it seems that investors don’t have the incentive to do that, because the corporate interest in this particular case overlaps with the investors' interest. If the company is lying, it's doing so to maintain the company's interests, its long-run business relationship with Asmara, and its business as a going concern.

What I am saying is, and I have not denied the increased risks to the investment, the company chose to hide such facts, and it did, because both states chose to keep quiet, neither to affirm nor to deny. So it is very likely that the air strikes took place, and apparently the company issued a statement claiming vandalism, while the states kept silent, which is indicative enough that the company is lying. Why lie? Because, it serves its interests and it coincidentally happened to be legitimate, precisely because Eritrea has not made any accusations against Ethiopia of any strikes in the first instance. Nor did Ethiopia claim to have done so. Therefore, under International Law, the air strike is a non-issue for all intents and purposes.

Martin Plaut muses in a tweet: “If the bombing of Eritrea by Ethiopia is confirmed it raises this question: would Addis have acted without informing Washington in advance?” I don’t want to indulge in that kind of unnecessary speculation. However, one thing seems to be increasing certain that, with or without Washington’s blessing, Ethiopia has carried out successful air strikes against selected Eritrean targets in retaliation for its failure to return the MI35 helicopter it hosted after an Ethiopian pilot decided to land it in Eritrea after hijacking. Mesfin Tekle, Canada-based financial analyst, says, “It’s not always about the price, check the volume. The stock price is not a big mover in any case, but the volume tells a story.” In fact, the volume of stocks offered for sale a day before the rumored strike was 371,448  before it jumped to 773,970 on the same day as the strike, reached 778,362, two days after the strike and is 798,109 at the moment. It can reasonably be expected to hit the record high of 800,000 at closing today. Mesfin explains, “the stock has a market cap of less than $1B so I doubt there're a lot of institutional investors who own it. The news seems to have an effect on the volume. Half a million share trades in less than 3hrs may indicate some exiting the stock early but the price has not made an appreciable move yet.”

Ephraim Isaac - A Reflective Conflict Resolution Practitioner

Background

Born, in a small village in Nedjo, Ethiopia, to a Yemenite-Jewish father and an Ethiopian-Oromo mother, Professor Ephraim Isaac is a true polymath and a cosmopolitan. He is a scholar of ancient Semitic languages and civilization, African languages, and Religion. He speaks seventeen languages. Professor Isaac received a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Chemistry and Music from Concordia College, Master of Divinity in 1963 and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 1969, both from Harvard University where he went on to become the founding professor of the African and Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University after graduation. He has won several awards and recognitions for his scholarship and work in conflict resolution, including the 2003 Tanenbaum Peacemaker in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York, where he has also been featured in its publication titled “Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution” (2007) and honorary doctorates from the City University of New York and Addis Ababa University. He has been admitted to the Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star in 2013 in a ceremony held at the Swedish House in Washington DC in the presence of the Swedish Ambassador, H.E. Bjorn Lyrvall. Currently, Dr. Isaac heads the Institute of Semitic Studies, based in Princeton, N.J. and the Peace and Development Center, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is also known as “the Father of Peace”, a well-deserved title he earned for his active engagement in peacemaking in the Horn of Africa region. 

Since 1989, through what has now become the Peace and Development, Professor Isaac has been actively engaged in sustained efforts to resolve conflicts involving his native country of Ethiopia. His experience in peacemaking ranges from intrastate conflict among warring religious and ethnic groups in Ethiopia to international conflicts such as the Ethiopian-Eritrean War of 1998-2000. He has successfully mediated the release of numerous political leaders from jail following the bitterly contested national elections in 2005. He has also played a key role in securing the signing of a truce between the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Ethiopian government in 2010.

In this interview, I will talk to him about what it takes to be a peacemaker, how he intervenes in conflicts, what guides his action, and what it means to be a reflective practitioner .

1. What does it take to be a peacemaker? 

The love of peace and the fear of God. You have to be a peace-loving and God-fearing person to be able to seek and make peace when sought for.  I took my inspiration from my father, who was a silversmith, a very devout religious person, and also a Rabbi. He had learnt to read the entire Torah by heart in the manner of the old Yemenite Jewish tradition. He would always read and chant in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening from the Songs of David by heart. And from him, I learnt two important things: to work very hard and to be respectful to others and be patient. He showed me what spiritual eldership itself means: to be selfless, generous, patient,  humble, sensitive, prudent, and mature. Another source of inspiration is Prophetic Judaism. I love the Hebraic prophets, esp. Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah.  According to the prophetic tradition the world is founded on truth, justice, and peace. Judaic prophetic tradition encourages truth-seeking, peace-making, and resistance against injustice. Yet another source of inspiration is the community in which I was born and raised. There is a custom of immense respect for elders. When elders offer peacemaking, parties to a conflict cannot decline. Even better, they submit themselves to the peacemaking services of the community elders. Today, conflict resolution has become part of the university curriculum, educational program. So it has become professionalized and I have a huge respect for it.  

2. How did you intervene in the conflict resolution processes you were involved in? Once you have intervened in a conflict, how do you manage the process? What is most challenging and exciting about a peace process?

Usually, I don’t like to talk about the work we do, partly because it is very sensitive and partly because we do not do it to get publicity. Instead of answering your question directly, let me try to put it this way: we, Ethiopians, have a tradition of eldership. A tradition I am very proud of. Now what does eldership mean? Eldership means that you have to be very old. With age comes wisdom. There’s what we call the wisdom of ages.  In the Ethiopian countryside, conflicts are resolved are normally resolved by elders. 

Sometime in 1989, as famine and fighting continued to ravage the population, I gathered a group of distinguished former civil servants to reflect upon the condition in Ethiopia and we almost literally made a covenant to approach all the conflicting parties. And the following day, we drafted a letter that in effect said that we, your brothers and sisters, are very saddened by what happened in our country, the bloodshed, the famine. We, as your mentors, friends,  and family would very much like to see all the conflicting parties to come together to discuss how to resolve the conflict, possibly form a transitional government. This letter was sent to all the political parties, including the government. And the first person to respond positively to our call was the then rebel leader, the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. As I have come to know him for the past 22 years, he was a man deeply committed to peace and reconciliation.  We had a an economist in our group who explained that peace and development are inextricably intertwined, that you cannot have one without the other. But the Prime Minister, in fact, seemed to have already known this. He accepted enthusiastically our offer to organize a peace conference in Switzerland, but as we all were gearing up for that, the US Department of State came up with the idea of the London Peace Talks, led by Herman Cohen.  And though ours was put off indefinitely, but we reached an agreement to fund the Peace and Development Conference that took place in Addis Ababa in 1991.    

As far as our intervention in the crisis following the 2005 elections is concerned, I initiated communication with PM Zenawi, who was a very humble person. His humility helped a lot. As they say here, “it takes two to a Tango.” For example, when I appealed to him to release Ms. Birtukan Midekssa from prison, I wrote him out the conviction that he is an open-minded person who listens to counsel. And I kept on writing him for a few weeks. At one stage, one night I got a message at about 3 o’clock, because I told him about what I am personally going through and that I could not sleep thinking of the condition in which the lady, her little daughter, and her aging mother are left. Then the following day, I received a letter from him saying “Dear Professor, how are you doing today? I am writing to ask your apology for your suffering. For the actions the government has taken, I feel badly about it. Please forgive me.” You see, this speaks volumes as to the humility of the man who happened to be the prime minister. No prime minister is supposed to write such a letter to ordinary individuals. He had as much respect for individuals as for the Ethiopian tradition of eldership. 

So the solution to the post-2005 elections political deadlock was based on traditional eldership. So we tapped into long-standing cultural traditions of using elders to mediate between the government and opposition groups. In the Ethiopian tradition of shimagele-jarsa, the mediating elder exercises sympathetic listening, respect for each side, patience, broadmindedness, impartiality and advocacy for serious dialogue. As a result, we secured not only the release of the 35 imprisoned leaders of the opposition party, but also of about 30,000 prisoners throughout the country. At one point I jokingly told Meles that “now we can turn the prisons into schools and clinics” at which he laughed.  

I was not only writing to him. I also used to call him on his phone, calls he never failed to answer. For example, I remember to have spoken to him on the phone several times during the Ethiopian-Eritrean war. But I don’t do that to a point being a nuisance.

3. What values and principles guide your action as a practitioner of conflict resolution and peacemaking? You have an interesting mélange of personal and professional experiences in your background. To mention just a few of them, you are a religious person, a scholar who taught at Harvard for several years,  and a community elder (Shemagele). What have you brought to bear on conflict resolution and how did your diverse background help you in accomplishing what you set out to do?

Spiritual eldership is our guiding principle and in any conflict resolution process that we are involved we do our best to uphold the trinitarian values of truth, justice, and peace that underly prophetic Judaism.  Our elders display an extraordinary degree of strength in character in being moral, upright, humble, patient, truthful, loving, and god-fearing. As a scholar of ancient religious literature, I know that peace itself is a religious concept, messages about peace abound, being practically universal in religion. Religion is and can be a powerful, positive agent of peacemaking and reconciliation. Even if warring cannot be totally eliminated, religion can be a force to reduce it. The work of the Peace and Development Center with which I am involved is a prototype of peacemaking based on that principle.

My most favorite prophet is Isaiah who says “beat your swords into  ploughshares”, who says “lions will lie with cows some day”, who says, “who cares about your fasting? The fasting I want is free the prisoners, take yolk from people’s shoulders, and cloth the naked.”  

What distinguishes us as a group of peacemakers is a first-hand experience of fighting and blood that nurtures what I call “the virtues of the heart” -- humility, empathy, kindness, generosity, respect and sacrifice for others -- a part of the big package I call “wisdom”, and that wisdom has to be communicated in a special language of the heart. That is the making of a true elder.

4. What does it mean to you to be a reflective practitioner of conflict resolution and peacemaking?

The reason why we succeeded in our peacemaking efforts where others have failed is in part because we were reflective conflict resolution practitioners.  As I said earlier, conflict resolution has become a profession and universities around the world offer courses and confer diplomas in  the field.We were not the kind of people who were trained in that field. Being a professional has its own pluses and minuses. The reason why we succeeded where the international community failed is because the expatriates were professional mediators, who approached the conflict from a rational, technical point-of-view. But conflicts, maybe, sometimes ensue from our brains, but in most cases, they emanate from our emotions. The international community could have helped if they took a different approach. They would have resolved it, had they tapped into the rich resources and capacities for peace that were available at the local level.