The late U.S. President Ronald Reagan made "Here we go again" remark very popular during one of his presidential debates! Today, I am gad to borrow the remark -- in a positive sense -- to use for Big Sister GE, who is also a fellow Distinguished Historian (of course, I now see why GE was the Keynoter at the 2018 Toyin Falola @ 60 Conference in Ibadan!).
Big Sister GE, also, thank you very much for the wonderful post on Ethiopia. As a Journalist in the U.K., I relied very heavily on Africa Confidential as a great periodical, to which I also contributed some useful African news stories and commentaries after visits to the continent. Recently, the periodical has had some very insightful news stories about Ethiopia as well as Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali and his rise to power in his country. The icing on the cake, however, is Big Sister GE's excellent piece below! She is very correct that we learn from each other on this great Forum, thanks to SIR Toyin for establishing and, indeed, moderating it impartially!
Retrospectively, we need to let our Ethiopian brothers and sisters know that Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali, aptly described below by Big Sister GE as "a great choice", is their symbolic "Star of David" (with apologies to those, who dislike Jewish History). For some of us -- now spotting grey hairs, and with a memory of solid Ethiopian history -- we thought that Ethiopia's Derg Era (1974-1991), with its popular "Ethiopia Tikdem" ("Ethiopia First") motto, was it for Ethiopians (just to borrow from Michael Jackson's "This is it" musical show)! As I still recall, it was both fascinating and very exhilarating to go on an editorial assignment for Ambassador Ralph ( "Raph") Uwueche's Africa Magazine in Addis Ababa in December of 1974, shortly after what seemed like the no-nonsense and anti-monarchy revolution. In the end, utter disappointment followed the Derg Era and, today, Mengistu Haile Mariam (a principal, violent actor, who ruled Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991) is a fugitive in Zimbabwe. Hopefully, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, at 42, and his many Oromo and Amhara compatriots are ready to let their own "Star of David" shine brightly over all of Ethiopia (and even beyond to reach his kinfolks in Eritrea)! Above all, there is also the reassurance in the fact that the brand new and relatively young Ethiopian leader is a well-educated African! We should be hopeful.
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 7:42 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; Toyin Falola
Cc: Assensoh@uoregon.edu; anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com; ovaughan@bowdoin.edu; Dawn; doyinck@gmail.com; dejigiri@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ethnic Cleansing
Thanks for the nice comments, ABA. The truth is that we learn from each other in this great forum. We have just heard from "yagbetuyi@hotmail" about the many challenges involved in teaching a course on the subject, and you gave us some very useful additional sources. I am inspired to introduce a course on the subject, sometime in the future, as a result of the discussion.
On a different note, let me say that I am very excited today. Ethiopia could not have chosen a better person to
be the new Prime Minister, following the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn February 15. 2018.
There is no guarantee that everything will go smoothly in the country from this point but with a doctorate in Conflict Mediation, experience in peace keeping in Rwanda and experience within the EPRDF coalition,
Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali is a great choice. His inauguration was today.
Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali speaks Oromo and Amhara (and English) and comes from the region that could have brought about the collapse of the regime - if the writing on the wall had been ignored. He is the Chair of OPDO-one of the four members of the EPDRF coalition that emerged after the fall of Mengistu- and is the first Oromo to be in this position.
I can think of a few major issues that the 42 year old politician - who also rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army- must address in the context of the EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front):
- Release of all political prisoners and dissidents, a process earlier initiated by Hailemariam in February, 2018.
- Completion of the GERD (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) at Benishangul - Gumuz, in the west, that is over 70% complete- and negotiation with Egyptian President, el-Sisi, from a position of strength, to enhance water accessibility and generate electric power in eleven Nile countries (300 million people) in the region.
- Continuation of infrastructure expansion in the context of technology transfer.
- Wealth distribution and poverty alleviation across all regions.
- Adjustments to China - Ethiopian relations so that the new industrial economic zones will benefit ordinary people through fair wages and working conditions.
- Consolidation of the reforms of 2017 vis a vis the Rastas at Sheshamane, and elsewhere.
- Improved relations with neighbors such as Eritrea, Somaliland, Punt and Somalia, where feasible.
- Reduction of Oromo-Somali tension within Ethiopia, by solving the land and water issues that are at the root of the conflict.
- Expansion of youth employment programs.
- Persuasion of the TPLF (Tigrayan People's Liberation Front) to re-distribute some of the sensitive military and political posts equitably.
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 8:10 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; Toyin Falola
Cc: Assensoh@uoregon.edu; anthony.a.akinola@gmail.com; ovaughan@bowdoin.edu; Dawn; doyinck@gmail.com; dejigiri@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ethnic Cleansing
Wow! Many of us are VERY grateful to our Big Sister and intellectual Supremo GE, indeed for such a priceless bibliography. In fact, I needed such information when I taught my award-wining "Blacks and Jews in History" seminar at Indiana University. The constant argument between Black and Jewish students was: which was more horrific, Slavery or Hitler's anti-Jewish Pogrom/Holocaust?
Also, Jewish students would often say to Black students in the seminar that "since Blacks did not die in the Holocaust", the Black students think that slavery was a lot more horrible. Yet, the books by Lusane and Massaquoi could have helped to elucidate facts about Hitler's Black victims. In fact, for my seminr a regular bibliographic staple included African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict (1998), edited by V.P. Franklin and others (et al). There were crucial chapters like "Black Sacrifice, Jewish Redemption" , "The Southern Jewish Community and the Struggle for Civil Rights" and "Black Zionism: Marcus Garvey and the Jewish Question". In fact, in discussing ethnicity in Jewish history in the class, we relied on The Russian Jew edited by Bernheimer.
As my Yoruba brothers and sisters would say, Big Sister GE, "Ese pupo" ( "thank you very much")!
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 4:51 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ethnic Cleansing
I found this piece quite balanced and informed as well but thought that the itemized list of the victims of ethnic cleansing in Germany should be expanded.
Don't forget Hitler's Black holocaust victims.
Many Africans from the German colonies and other African countries as well as African American POWs and Black Germans, were sent to the concentration camps and died there. See Clarence Lusane. (2003). Hitler's Black Victims as well as Hans Massaquoi(1999). Destined to witness-Growing up Black in Nazi Germany.
GE
africahistory.net
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2018 4:51 PM
To: 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ethnic Cleansing
Balanced and educative-we are warned of possible outcomes when law enforcement agencies have been compromised by the state and its corrupt politicians.The literature on the fall of the First and Second Republics is instructive.Anthony AkinolaOxford, UK--
On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:
--Alleged Ethnic Cleansing and the Military
Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday column, Daily Trust, 30th March 2018
Nigeria's former Defence Minister and Chief of Army Staff, T. Y. Danjuma, on Saturday accused the Nigerian armed forces of aiding the on-going killings in the country, especially the deadly attacks in his home State of Taraba. "The armed forces are not neutral," General Danjuma said at the maiden convocation of the Taraba State University in Jalingo; "They collude with the armed bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians." He added that the armed forces rather than protect the people, "facilitate" the movement of armed attackers and often provide cover for them. His conclusion was chilling: "If you wait for the armed force to stop the killing, you all die one-by-one," The way forward he said was for the people to defend themselves.
There has been a national debate on his comments. This is partly because he rarely speaks and when he does people listen. People also know he is a close confidant of President Buhari and the expectation is that if he has a message for the Government, he has the access to directly reach the summit of the State. The consensus therefore might be no one is listening to him so he decided to speak out to create impact. The other reason for concern is that people know he chooses his words carefully so this is not an outburst but a decision to openly rebuke and express his disgust against the institution, the Nigerian army that made him.
Many people feel that his statement might push people towards arming themselves and creating anarchy as they give up on security agencies and procure arms to descend on their neighbours who they have re-categorised as enemies. This is my own main concern. We all know that the armed forces often overreach themselves and violate the rights of people. We also know that currently, the armed forces are deployed in at least 32 States in the country where hey are engaged in operations. I recently served on the Presidential Panel Investigating Alleged Human Rights abuses by the military and there are three things that struck me from the evidence we heard. The first is that there are indeed human rights violations by the military but it is not systematic. The second is that when communities are asked whether the military should be withdrawn from their area, the universal response was NO because there are security concerns that only the military could handle. The third issue is that for most Nigerians, the police, who should normally be the agency to handle civil conflicts, is so bad that the military is the only viable option for now. It is for this reason that I am concerned about the blanket condemnation of the military by General Danjuma.
The other concern I have is the assertion by the General that: "There is an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the state and of course, some riverine states in Nigeria. We must resist it. We must stop it. Every one of us must rise up." He did not say who was committing the genocide against whom. The assumption among those listening to the General is that the genocide is by "Fulani herdsmen" against indigenous communities in Taraba State. If indeed this is the assumption, then there is a problem. Taraba State is one area where there are credible reports of large-scale massacre of Fulani pastoralists and there is evidence that the killings go both ways. We need to be careful about the way in which we use concepts such as ethnic cleansing.
The term "ethnic cleansing" came into wide usage in the 1990s, to describe the treatment suffered by particular ethnic groups during conflicts that erupted after the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. It would be recalled that after the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence in March 1992, Bosnian Serb forces waged a systematic campaign of forced deportation, murder, torture and rape with the aim of expelling all Bosnian Muslim and Croatian civilians from the territory of eastern Bosnia. This violence culminated in the massacre of as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at the town of Srebrenica in July 1995. In his 1993 article "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing," published in the magazine Foreign Affairs, Andrew Bell-Fialkoff writes that the aim of the Serbian campaign was "the expulsion of an 'undesirable' population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of those."
Using this definition, historians have rolled back the term to apply to the aggressive displacement of Native Americans by European settlers in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries as ethnic cleansing. The case of Rwanda in the 1990s is also categorized as ethnic cleansing because members of the majority Hutu ethnic group massacred hundreds of thousands of people, mostly minority Tutsis, from April to July 1994. The most prominent example of extremist nationalism-fuelled ethnic cleansing was that of the Hitler regime in Germany and its campaign against Jews in German-controlled territory from 1933 to 1945. This movement began with cleansing by deportation and ended in the horrific "final solution"—the destruction of some 6 million Jews (along with some 250,000 Gypsies and roughly the same number of homosexuals) in concentration camps and mass killing centres. The term ethnic cleansing is often linked to genocide, and is today considered to be "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes." We therefore need to be care about the way we use it.
The allegation by General Danjuma about the lack of neutrality of the armed forces is serious and should be thoroughly investigated. We live in a country with a long history of lack of neutrality of security agencies. During the First Republic, the NPC regime of Tafawa Balewa declared a State of Emergency in the Western Region to give the police full "freedom" to harass the opposition. In the North, the Native Authority Police was used as an instrument to harass and intimidate the opposition and these practices played a major role in eroding the legitimacy of the democratic order leading to regime collapse. During the Second Republic, the police were also used to intimidate the leadership of the opposition states and state police commissioners acted as if they were alternate governors posted to impose the "federal might". This created a huge political anomaly as state governors are supposed to be in charge of peace, security, law and order in their states. Now that the military is deployed all over the country on operational duties, the feeling of lack of neutrality could pose a real problem of State legitimacy.
Professor Jibrin IbrahimSenior FellowCentre for Democracy and Development, AbujaFollow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17
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