Ghassan Charbel is the editor-inchief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. In the opinion column of Asharq AlAwsat newspaper, the article entitled “The Davos Forum and the Ethiopian Guest” and issued on Monday, 28 January 2019 he summarized his observations and made a wonderful analysis focusing on the speech of Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed.
While praising the premier’s speech and the significant steps he has taken in addressing the age-old problems the country and its peoples faced. He further advised others to pursue similar road at a time when various countries are still struggling to come out of deeply-rooted problems. For Charbel, backwardness is not an inescapable fate. The most important thing is that a people, who have long suffered, can change the course of events if they had the will, vision, and leadership. He takes Ethiopia as an example of such a phenomenon: A country locked in a great difficulty but now striving to come out of the quagmire.
“Ethiopia could have remained stuck in the wars of the past. It could have remained embroiled in endless ethnic and border conflicts and compounded its poverty and hunger. It instead chose to go against this path. It chose to belong to this era and hop on to the train that is headed towards the future,” Charbel wrote.
According to him, that was the kind of feeling officials at the World Economic Forum in Davos sensed when they listened to what Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said. With regard to the quality of Dr. Abiy as a leader, Charbel concludes as a man who knows his country very well. “He has witnessed the catastrophic impact two decades of war with Eritrea have had on his country.
Prior to that, he witnessed the heavy price paid over the Ogaden war with Somalia. He also witnessed the terrible failure of Mengistu Haile Mariam when he rose up against dictatorship. Moreover, he saw the suffering and hunger among the people and their longing for an end to their misery,” he says. Charbel went on clarifying as to how Dr. Abiy derived lessons from the past. “Poverty, not Eritrea, was the main enemy. What good is a victory against a neighboring country when you are being defeated at home by poverty and backwardness?
He also realized that victory by one ethnic group against the other was meaningless as long as hunger and unemployment persisted. He learned that the solution lies in getting out of the wars of the past and forging partnerships with the future through creating opportunities and raising hope,” he wrote. According to Charbel Dr. Abiy had to make a major decision between remaining in the catastrophe of the past and becoming an additional burden on Africa and the world or between becoming part of the cycle of development and making a decisive move that completely breaks free of the past. For him, that was a decisive moment.
Dr. Abiy made the appropriate measure which has made a preference to coexistence over conflict. “Ethiopia turned towards development, progress and investment in an effort to join the successive technological revolutions.
His motto became ‘breaking down walls and building bridges.’ He shunned wars with neighbors and instead opened partnerships with them. In Ethiopia, he built a country of law, institutions, respect for human rights and transition of power that is attractive to investors.”
He also praises Dr. Abiy for knowing the right time for a change as now because “countries did not have the luxury to keep stalling forever.” He then went on elaborating the series of reforms launched by Dr. Abiy and major results unfolded subsequently, most importantly, the hope he revived among his people. “The Ethiopians, who had given up on their country, started to return. This was demonstrated by the figures Abiy Ahmed presented at Davos this week that revealed Ethiopia as the fastest developing country in Africa.
His figures showed that Addis Ababa had put behind it the phase of censorship and arrest of journalists and political opponents. He proved that the war on corruption will not spare anyone.” According to Charbel, another African who caught the attention of Davos participants was a Somali refugee, whom he said sounded the alarm over the situation in his country, Somalia. He describes the man as Mohammed Hassan Mahmoud, 28, whom he said saw snow for the first time when he landed in Davos. He recounted a painful story about being born amid civil war in his country.
He fled with his mother and a sibling to Kenya after his father was killed. He moved from refugee camp to another until the Kakuma camp became his new country. He could not go to university because he lacked the necessary identification papers. In the camp, he became the liaison between the UN refugee agency and the Kenyan government. Addressing the gatherers, he said: “There are 60 million refugees in the world today.
I want to be part of the last generation of refugees who have been stuck in camps for 20 years.” He called on countries to change their views on this issue. “It is time for refugees to be treated as partners in development efforts instead of a burden on governments. There are people among them who boast talents and competencies. They can become productive partners if they are given the chance,” he pleaded. According to the analysis made by Charbel, Abiy Ahmed and the refugee’s remarks were not the highlights of the Davos forum.
But he has own remarks about them. “I chose to speak about them because a sizable amount of our countries are still living in the war and delusions of the past. ‘Small wars’ are still depleting budgets and eating away at stability. Corruption rears its ugly head whenever a government attempts to uproot it from state institutions.
I spoke about the refugee’s testimony because some of our countries produce refugees, while others, who eye them warily, are tasked with hosting them.” According to Charbel some attention was given to the marginalized, who have been forgotten by globalization and persistence of high poverty rates in the world.
He says that this may lead to political and security unrest and massive migration waves that have started to spark populist movements and severe identity crises. What Charbel sensed from the speeches at Davos was that officials prioritize their governments and countries. And he concluded with what he felt from the discussions as “ongoing concern that the world will be divided between those who hold technology and the keys to the future and those who are still stuck in the past and refuse to swallow the bitter pill and turn to the future”
The Ethiopian Herald January 31 /2019
BY FERHAN ZUL-KIFL
