BY ALMARIAM
Medemer is a covenant of peace that seeks unity in our common humanity. It pursues peace by practicing the values of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and inclusion. It takes a few to make war, but it takes a village and a nation to build peace. For me, nurturing peace is like planting and growing trees. Just like trees need water and good soil to grow, peace requires unwavering commitment, infinite patience, and goodwill to cultivate and harvest its dividends. Peace requires good faith to blossom into prosperity, security, and opportunity. PM Abiy Ahmed, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (2019)
Author’s Note:
Ethiopia emerged victorious by exchanging olive branches for guns, tanks and artillery pieces. Ethiopia won peace and her enemies were left in pieces. Ethiopia won confident in the victory of good over evil!
War, war / Rumors of war
And until that day / The African continent
Will not know peace/ We Africans will fight, we find it necessary
And we know we shall win/ As we are confident
In the victory/ Of good over evil
Bob Marley, GOAT (Greatest of All Time)
Ethiopia has made African history!
Ethiopians have proven to the world, and especially to their African brothers and sisters, they can start a war, end it and make peace!
Starting wars is easy. One or a few damned fools driven by ambition and hunger for power can start a war. But any war is hard to end.
The greatest African “post-independence” tragedy has been the inability of African countries to end conflicts and wars on their own.
Western governments, their press-titute media and intelligence agents donning academic garb have fanned the flames of ethnic division and hate to keep Africans at each other’s throats.
Nary a single instance in Africa’s modern history when the West has not sought to create peace in Africa while fanning the flames of war.
During the Cold War, the West fought its proxy wars in Africa resulting in unspeakable death and destruction. Since the “end” of colonialism, Western military installations and bases were planted all over Africa.
Western intelligence agents have instigated military coups and arranged for regime change by systematic interference in African domestic affairs and manipulation of its civil and military institutions and leaders.
Whenever there is conflict and war, Western countries have showed up uninvited (keep showing up like a bad penny even when openly rejected) dressed as peacemakers, mediators and negotiators.
The old mold that the West can only bring peace to Africa was shattered once and for all by Ethiopia on November 2, 2022.
On that date, the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a permanent ceasefire agreement and made peace. Truth be told, the Ethiopians did not do it entirely by themselves. They had a little help from their African friends. It is a new day, a new dawn in Africa.
Across the African skies is written, “African solutions to African problems.” Henceforth, there shall be no issue or problem that is of Africa, created by Africans that cannot be solved by Africans, and BY AFRICANS ALONE! PERIOD!
Ethiopia’s “homegrown” Odyssey to Peace and Prosperity For the past 5 years, Ethiopia has been on a “homegrown” odyssey (journey) of self-discovery, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, self-governance, self-defense, self-assurance, self-healing, self-pride, self-knowledge, self-sufficiency and self-improvement.
Ethiopia’s massive reform odyssey has been guided by the eternal principle, “Ethiopian solutions to Ethiopia’s problems.”
Ethiopia’s odyssey of structural reform has been powered by determined efforts to create accountable public institutions, democratization of the political process, institutionalization of the rule of law, and transformation of the economy from the so-called “developmental state”-led growth to private sector-led growth.
Ethiopia’s Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda is transitioning Ethiopia from an Asian Tiger wannabe to a proud, self-sufficient, self-feeding and self-reliant African lion. The equivalent homegrown political reform agenda has produced a democratically elected government in Ethiopia certified by the African Union.
Ethiopia’s homegrown foreign policy agenda has transformed regional peace in the Horn of Africa. The no peace, no war two-decade status quo between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been transformed into peace, amity and comity between the two countries.
Ethiopia has been a fulcrum and driver of peace in the Sudan as well as in South Sudan. Ethiopia has leveraged its unique role in the Horn to improve peaceful relations between Eritrea and Djibouti. As part of a broader regional peace initiative and engagement, Ethiopia has played a key role in restoration of diplomatic relations between Somalia and Kenya.
Ethiopia’s homegrown environmental and conservation agenda has resulted in a massive Green Legacy program and planting of billions of seedlings as of 2022. It has been Ethiopia’s homegrown tourism and quality of life enhancement agenda has transformed Africa’s diplomatic capital, Addis Ababa, to live out the true meaning of its name (Addis Ababa means New Flower).
PM Abiy Ahmed was the recipient of the American Academy of Achievement and Global Hope Coalition’s “Outstanding African Leadership Award” for his Green Legacy initiative to reforest Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s odyssey over the past 5 years has been challenging, grueling and formidable. Ethiopia faced a bloody war over the past 2 years resulting in the deaths of over six hundred thousand innocent Ethiopians, displacement of millions more and suffered losses of infrastructure and private property worth in tens of billions of Birr.
The COVID 19 pandemic, coordinated Western sanctions and insidious interference in the internal affairs of Ethiopia and related economic problems manifesting themselves in inflation have made life for ordinary Ethiopians extremely difficult.
War and rumors of war denied Ethiopians peace of mind. Structural corruption continues to be an existential threat to Ethiopia. But Ethiopia has been fighting tooth and nail against domestic insurrection and external oppression.
Ethiopia is likely to be an exporter of wheat next year. No more wheat begging to feed Ethiopians! How sweet and glorious the sound of shattering begging bowls! Millions of hectares are under development for cash crops– coffee, bananas, avocadoes, oranges and rice.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is rising higher and higher and its turbines are coming online one by one. Such glorious sound, the hum of spinning GERD hydro turbines! Somebody ought to invent a dance, “The GERD Turbine Boogie.”
Through war, plague, inflation, corruption and the bludgeoning of Western powers, Ethiopia’s head indeed has been bloodied but remains unbowed.
Paraphrasing the words of the great Maya Angelou:
They wanted to see Ethiopia broken
Bowed head and lowered eyes
Shoulders falling down like teardrops
Weakened by her soulful cries.
Just like moons and like suns
With the certainty of tides
Just like hopes springing high
Still Ethiopia did rise.
Indeed, Ethiopia shall rise and rise and rise… for the sky is not her limit.
What a tangled web we weave when we practice to unmake peace
“O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
The price of peace is forgiveness, tolerance and reconciliation. The wages of war are death and destruction.
Could it be that those who oppose the peace agreement with the TPLF do so because they want a “pound of flesh”, REVENGE?
In Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” Salerio asks Shylock why he wants a pound of Antonio’s flesh that did not pay his debt on time as Shylock does not understand what it is “good for”. Shylock explains the pound of flesh he wants will ‘feed’ his ‘revenge’. Revenge for having himself and his people sorely wronged in the past.
So, is it about revenge against the TPLF after all, and not peace? Ethiopia made peace with its neighbor Eritrea. Did Ethiopia or Eritrea lose anything by making peace? But they lost precious lives, time and resources by engaging in war and maintaining a no war, no peace situation for two decades.
But Ethiopia gains everything. Above all, the unity, safety, security of its people and its sovereignty and territorial integrity!
I wonder on what planet those who oppose the permanent ceasefire agreement spend their time when they are not hanging out in Ethiopia, Planet Earth.
Magnanimity is expected of the victor. Momentary pleasure should not leave a generational scar of humiliation and yearning for revenge. Ethiopia on a homegrown peace odyssey
Now Neptune had gone off to the Ethiopians, who are at the world’s end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East. [In Neptune’s absence] the other gods met in the house of Olympian Jove… who said to the other gods: ‘See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly…”
Ethiopia has been at war of one kind or another for at least the past one-half century. Ethiopia has been at war with its neighbors. War was thrust upon Ethiopia by Somalia and Eritrea.
Ethiopia has been wracked by internal strife and terrorism. But war was not preordained on Ethiopia or on the Horn of Africa. War in Ethiopia was the work of men, not of the gods. The Olympian Jove was right: “See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly…”
War is the ultimate human folly. Peace is the ultimate triumph over the ultimate human folly.
In June 2018, I was overjoyed by the announcement of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Governments to fully implement the 2002 “Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission DECISION Regarding Delimitation of the Border.” That agreement ended a two-decades-long “no war-no peace” status quo between the two countries.
At the time, I reflected: The guns silenced the suffering people of Ethiopia and Eritrea may now speak, shout out, that the two countries hereafter “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Witnessing swords beaten into plowshares is a source of great joy for me.
There were no winners in the Ethio-Eritrean conflict or during the 20-year long stalemate. Many times over the years I pondered what could have been achieved if both countries had been able to expend their efforts waging a united war on poverty.
Today, they would be drinking from the victory cup of peace and prosperity. To the credit of both countries, they quickly began tearing down the border wall and started building bridges after their agreement.
The peace dividends from the agreement to fully implement the Commission Decision were immediate.
They agreed to have airlines services, ports to start working, open embassies, allow free travel for family reunification. When peace became a fact between Ethiopia and Eritrea, I was a witness.
No greater honor have I received in my life than joining Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias when the border between the two countries was opened after 20 years.
Wrote Robert Burns,
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy.”
Homer wrote his epic poem the Odyssey circa 800 BCE:
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
The Ethiopian Herald January 4/2023
