Think Sophia Loren meets Miriam Makeba, then think Nelson
Mandela meets Malcolm X, and you have the exquisitely beautiful countenance of
the most formidable, effective, "won't-take-no-for-an-answer" woman
in Somaliland today. Her name is Edna Adan and she is fighting for the health
Rights and well-being of Somalilander women.
As we first arrived in Hargeisa, the capitol of
Somaliland, I felt like we were driving through a dusty powder blue thorn bush
sanctuary, their branches having successfully impaled thousands of wind-blown
garbage bags.
Later I was to discover that the same slim and sleek 2
Inch thorns are used as stitching material, in the absence of needles and
thread.
In a village outside of Hargeisa, Edna fingered the
thorns, pressing the hard needle sharpness to her fingers. She looked at us
and, at me, I felt, in particular. "You see these? This is what they use
to sew up what's left of the girl's vagina when they perform SUNA on her. They
hold the thorns in place with twine or leather string, whatever they have, for
at least a week, maybe longer. The girl must be very still. But still she must
urinate. Defecate. Imagine how painful. Imagine." She shakes her head and
walks away, then smiles as she leans to pet a new-born goat, floundering on
spindly legs.
Her mission is urgent, but her life carries with it a
balance of laughter and tears like any other. In Hargeisa she not only trains
mid-wives so they can return to their rural environment and provide pre-natal
and birthing support, but also teaches these young women to carry with them the
message that genital mutilation of any girl or woman does not serve them. But
as I could hear from one young 23-year-old midwife, relaying that message,
youth to elder, is difficult. Edna says to her before graduation, "What
will you tell me, a grandmother, who wants to cut her little
granddaughter?"
"I will tell her that it's bad and not
healthy."
Edna role played the elder woman.
"But we have all had this done! I am here. I
survived. What is so wrong with it?"
The young mid-wife stuttered. "It will make the
birth more difficult. Infection can happen."
Edna throws her arms up in the air. "It's our
custom. It must be done. My daughter is not pure otherwise. Convince me!"
"She could die from infection even before the child
is born." Edna waves her hands. "I didn't die. Your mother did not
die. But OK. Tell me more." Edna concedes, not wanting her student to
spiral into a zero confidence zone.
Edna puts her hands on her shoulders, as her mentor and
friend. She tells her that she must convince the elder to perform the least
harmful type of circumcision. That it's the best they can hope for, for now.
The shooting is over and I reach into her pocket to
retrieve my audio transmitter. Edna sings her usual jolly song, to the tune of
"Dear Liza": "There's a hole in my pocket, dear Brenda, dear
Brenda."
And I respond, "There's a hole in your pocket, dear
Edna, my dear." We laugh and give each other a hug. Tomorrow we will sing
it again.
.
By Ethiopiawi
Introduction
The Nile is God’s gift to Ethiopia. For this reason one
cannot dispute Ethiopia’s ownership right over the Nile without defying the
will of the Almighty. Yet the decision
of the Ethiopian government to build a
hydroelectric dam thereon, called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
(hereinafter GERD), has been met with open hostility by Arabs. Ethiopians are hardly surprised by the Arab
reaction, since, for the last fifty
years, Egyptian leaders have made the empty threat that they would invade Ethiopia if it built a
hydro-electric dam on the Nile. What has surprised Ethiopians is the
audacity of a former Saudi deputy defense minister, Khaled Sultan, who,
during an Arab water summit held in
Cairo last February, allowed himself the provocation that Arabs should envisage
the use of military force to prevent
Ethiopia and other upper stream ( African) countries from harnessing the
Nile waters. Does it mean that Africans must
resign themselves to live forever under poverty so that Arabs can lead a better life? Do Arabs really think
that Africans can accept the Arab self-serving motto that “Africans must perish so that Arab economies
can flourish”? The rodomontade of some Arabs like the former Saudi deputy
defense minister is disquieting, to say
the least; not that Ethiopians are afraid lest Bedouin should invade them, but
they cannot understand how it can occur to a normal human being with minimum
intelligence to believe that a developing country such as Ethiopia can invest
4.8 billion dollars on the construction
of the GERD “just to harm” Arabs. Ethiopia has never tried to harm Arabs,
although the converse has never been true. The reason is that Ethiopia could
not hope to export electricity to Sudan, Egypt, Yemen and Saudi-Arabia or to
trade with them if its aim in building
the GERD were to harm Arabs. Ethiopia
has decided to build the GERD because it is the only means for the country to
translate into economic reality its huge potential of becoming the breadbasket
of the Middle-East.
Ethiopia is indeed richly endowed with one of the most
fertile lands on earth. It has abundant natural resources and huge untapped
mineral wealth. It is also the water tower of Eastern Africa. Paradoxically, it
has been a victim of recurrent famine provoked by drought to the extent that
Ethiopia has become a byword of famine. Ethiopia’s proneness to drought in the
second half of the 20th century was undoubtedly due to the fact that the
country was ruled for one hundred odd years by
unpatriotic individuals appallingly indifferent to the nation’s
development problematic. Hamstrung by
the shackles of underdevelopment, Ethiopia has been consequently unable
for 100 years to use its natural resources
and man-power to promote national development.
But things have started to change since the advent of a developmental
democratic regime in the second half of
1991. The new rulers have come up with a revolutionary approach to the economy,
which approach considers
prioritizing the economy as the best way of doing politics. Prioritizing
the economy as a way of doing politics is indeed a completely new thing in the African continent. In accordance with
their revolutionary approach to the economy, the new rulers designed an
economic modernization strategy aimed
at jump starting and sustaining the
country’s rapid economic transformation.
Between 1991-2003, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 4% ( Saheed A. Adejumobi, The history
of Ethiopia, Greenwood Press, 2007). Compared to the growth registered between
2004-2012, the growth between 1991-2003 was rather lackluster, but it was quite
respectable in comparison to the rest of Africa where the average growth
rate was 2.8% (M. Adetunji Babatunde and Dipo T. Busari, “Global Economic
Slowdown and the African Continent: Rethinking Export-Led Growth »,
(http://www.eurojournals.com/African.htm ). If truth be told, the Ethiopian
economy could have shown a more impressive growth had it not been for the decision of Ethiopia to
assume itself the responsibility of
reconstructing the Eritrean economy
between 1991-1997 (Saheed A. Adejumobi, op.cit.) and for the devastating consequences of the
Eritrean invasion of Ethiopia between 1998-2000, which invasion took place
after Ethiopia had told Eritrea to stand on its two feet and to no longer count on Ethiopia’s generosity.
Eritrea invaded Ethiopia in the hope of constraining Addis Abeba to change its mind. No Ethiopian
had suspected that the country would be invaded by toddling Eritrea, which had
been militarily, financially and economically dependent on it. In invading the northern part of the country
where the Ethiopian army was conspicuous by its absence, the Eritreans had not
either expected that Addis-Abeba could resort to an all-out war to cripple Eritrea militarily and economically. But Addis-Abeba decided to
break the back bone of the numerically superior Eritrean army on which Isayas
Afewerki had pinned his hope to transform Eritrea into the “military power
house” of the Horn of Africa.
After having put Isayas Afewerki in his place, the
Ethiopian government instituted in 2003 an updated version of its development
policy. This has led to an economic boom
unprecedented in the nation’s history to the extent that Ethiopia is now unanimously billed, to the
use the words of The Economist, as the “development star” of Africa. Indeed,
although Ethiopia is not yet oil-producing, it has outperformed oil producing
African countries. According to the World Bank Report 2012, the Ethiopian economy grew annually at an average rate of
10.6% between 2004-2012. The World Bank report showed that Ethiopia’s growth
rate during the last nine years was the double of the average growth rate in
the rest of Africa (i.e., 5.4% ).
Ethiopia’s growth rate has been unprecedented in Africa, barring the erstwhile high-growth Ivory Coast, which
booked 8% growth for two decades (i.e., from 1960 to 1979). But unlike the
Ethiopian economic growth in which the preoccupation of the Ethiopian state to embark the country on an autocentered path
of development has led it to invest a
lot of time and energy in promoting manufacturing value creation/addition and
combating remorselessly rent-seeking behavior, Ivory Coast pursued a
neocolonial path of development in which economic growth was dependent on foreign capital and inputs (Dadié Attébi, Le défi africain:
l’urgence d’une alternative économique en Côte d’Ivoire, L’Harmattan, Paris,
1995). The fact that Ivory Coast is today viewed as a washout shows that the much-vaunted Ivorian economic miracle was a
mirage (ibid.). Ivory Coast’s descent into hell in the 1990s and 2000s is also
another evidence that dependent development (based on the export of natural
resources) can take Africa nowhere. The foregoing is not to say that Ethiopia’s
economy is not a dependent one.
Ethiopia’s growth has been dependent on foreign market, capital,
technology, etc. But the strategy is clearly an autocentered one in the sense
that the objective of the government has never been to generate economic growth
for the sake of economic growth, but to build patiently and intelligently an
independent national economy. From this point of view, Ethiopia’s economic
growth is qualitatively unique in the economic history of Africa for it has
been a growth generator of agricultural and industrial development.
The blinding economic growth and the government’s
unremitting efforts to lay the ground work for an autocentered and
self-sustaining economic development shows that the current regime is
undeniably the most competent and the most creative regime that the African
continent has ever known. The Ethiopian regime has a clear awareness that
development is not synonymous of economic growth although there cannot exist
development in the absence of the former. The war waged by the government against
underdevelopment has had impressive results in poverty alleviation, in reducing
child and maternal mortality, in the expansion
education from elementary to tertiary levels, in ecological conservation
and restoration and in developing rural and urban infrastructures such as the
construction of roads, rail ways and hydroelectric dams. The government has
also contributed to the creation of hundreds of thousands of micro, small and
medium enterprises by providing young Ethiopians with seed capital. Today, one
can say that Ethiopia has met all the necessary conditions for takeoff.
There are however three prominent challenges which the
country will have to overcome successfully if it is to embark on a path of
dynamic industrialization: the miseducation (or the cognitive colonization) of
Ethiopians, the occupation of the Ethiopian region of Assab by Eritrea and the
problem of energy. I will not linger over the first two. Only the third will be
discussed within the compass of this paper.
The economic growth and the increasing urbanization have brought to
light the urgency of resolving the energy problem. Without cheap
and unlimited electric supply round the clock, no industrial development can
take place. In addition to that, environmental degradation caused by climate
change, deforestation and water resources depletion have become pressing
problems. This means that Ethiopia’s
economic growth may be short-lived unless the country buckles down to producing
a clean (hydro-electric) energy with view to resolving the energy shortage and
the problem of environmental degradation caused by climate change. It is with view to finding a lasting
solution to the environmental and energy
problems that the Ethiopian government decided
in 2011 to build the GERD .
In deciding to build the GERD, Ethiopia has not had any
intention of harming any one. Its aim is only to resolve its socio-economic and
environmental problems by harnessing the
waters of the Nile for electrification. What is incomprehensible is that
although Ethiopia has repeatedly said that it was building the GERD only to
generate electricity and not to reduce,
much less to stop the flow of the Nile water, Arab elites and media have
been involved in a campaign of disinformation and defamation against Ethiopia, making as though Ethiopia decided to arrest the flow of the Nile River or to reduce the volume of water that the Sudan and Egypt receive from
Ethiopia. The Arab led anti-Ethiopia
campaign has snowballed especially since
the passing of former Prime Minister, Melles Zenawi. It leaps to the eye that
Arabs have been trying to pressure the government of Hailemariam Desalegn in
the vain hope that it might not prove its mettle.
However incredible it may be, some “Ethiopians” have also entered the fray
on behalf of Arabs against Ethiopia. A case in point is Alemayehu Gebremariam
who has been involved in a campaign of disinformation and vilification against
Ethiopia, in distorting the truth about
the GERD and in tarnishing the good image of the people of Ethiopia and that of
their hard-working government. In a bid
to please his Arab masters, Alemayehu Gebremariam, has become more Catholic
than the Pope since, in an article published
on March 11, 2013 and “Ethiopia: Rumor of water war” he asserted with
Spartan certainty: “ there is little doubt that if the GERD is completed, it
will have a significant long-term impact on water supply and availability to
the Sudan and Egypt. The general view among experts is that if the dam is
constructed …it could result in a significant reduction in cultivable
agricultural land and water shortage throughout Egypt ”
I have always thought that educated Ethiopians of all
political stripes would stand united when it comes to defending the superior interests of the nation against
foreigners. But Alemayehu has proved me wrong; he has showed that he and others
of his ilk would not hesitate to sell their soul to the historic enemies of
Ethiopia if they think it is politically advantageous for them. All the same, I never thought that Alemayehu
would stoop so low as to lie arrantly with view to prodding Arabs to declare
war on Ethiopia. I say the above-cited quotation is an arrant lie because Alemayehu knows that
he can not adduce the slightest bit of
evidence in support of the statement: “ there is little doubt that if the GERD
is completed, it will have a significant long-term impact on water supply and
availability to the Sudan and Egypt”. He cited no study by an independent
expert to support his claim. If
Alemayehu were not a fake intellectual, he could have taken
up in all objectivity the question whether Ethiopia has the right under
international law to build the GERD. And if
Ethiopia has the right under international law to build the GERD, he
should have defended Ethiopia’s right and condemned the Arab campaign of
disinformation against Ethiopia. But in a
flagrant disregard of the rules
of the intellectual profession, Alemayehu prodded Egypt to smash and trash the
GERD with duster bombs. Alemayehu said
barefacedly that the GERD would have a negative impact on the availability of water to Egypt
although one does not have to be a genius in order to realize that the Nile will
as usual continue its normal flow once
it is used to drive the turbine which powers the generator.
For over twenty two years, Alemayehu has made a scathing
attack on the government of Ethiopia.
What he has never understood is that criticism must be constructive if
it is to bring about the desired result and must, for this reason, remain
within the limits of what is reasonable. If truth be told, Alemayehu has never
been interested in intellectual
criticism. All his articles show invariably that he has past master in the art
of propaganda mongering, which propaganda consists of the promotion of defamation, character assassination and
distortion of the truth. For example,
he resorted to sheer distortion of the truth about the GERD with view to beefing up the
Arab campaign of disinformation and defamation against Ethiopia. This shows that Alemayehu has been lying
about his “commitment” to “democracy” and “ human rights”. How can one pretend
to fight for the “advent” of “democracy”
while exhorting Arabs to declare war on Ethiopia? How can one pretend to
be working for the well-being of the Ethiopian people while one gives priority
to Arab
interest over Ethiopian national interest? The GERD is not a property of the Ethiopian
government. But the government has been mobilizing national resources and
knowledge to build the GERD for the well-being of the present and future
generations of Ethiopians. The government deserves to be praised and respected
for that. Patriotic Ethiopians are very proud of the government’s decision to
build the GERD. Alemayehu’s decision to
ally himself with Arabs against Ethiopia shows in no uncertain terms that he is
a mercenary of the worst sort.
The purpose of the present article is to defend Ethiopia against the malicious propaganda by Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and by their
mercenary, Alemayehu Gebremariam.
To that end, the article labors to show why the argument that the GERD
poses a threat to Sudanese and Egyptian
security is a straw man. The article is organized as follows. Part one is
devoted to showing that the real problem between Ethiopia and Arabs is not the GERD; the real problem stems
from the centuries-old unfulfilled dream
of Arabs to Arabize Ethiopia and the steel determination of the Ethiopian
nation to preserve its (African) exceptionalism. The economic and military renaissance of
Ethiopia will certainly lead it to abandon its hitherto defensive attitude and
to take initiatives in its relationship with Arabs. From this point of view, it
is quite comprehensible that the close relationship between Ethiopia and the
state of Israel has got the Arabs rattled. The former Saudi deputy defense
minister, Khaled Sultan, alluded to this relationship when he said: “there are
fingers messing with the resources of the Sudan and Egypt which are rooted in
the mind and body of Ethiopia. They don’t forsake an opportunity to harm Arabs
without taking advantage of it” (italics
added). Needless to say, this accusation is based on a crass ignorance of the
facts on the ground. First of all, the Nile is not, has never been and will
never be an Arab property. Second, the argument that Ethiopia has decided to
build the GERD at the behest of Israel “just to harm” Arabs is a demonstration of the Saudi deputy defense minister’s crass
ignorance. Israel’s national interest is
not and cannot be Ethiopia’s national interest. Ethiopia’s decision to build
the GERD is dictated only by the urgent
need to pull its own people and the peoples of the Horn of Africa out of
underdevelopment. The Arabs don’t seem to have realized that their opposition
against the efforts of Ethiopia to pull its 90 million population out of poverty
may have a boomerang effect, for the Arab hostile diplomacy may constrain Ethiopia to abandon its balanced
policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict
and to adopt a totally
pro-Israeli policy. It is the Arabs who stand to lose from that since Arabs
need more Ethiopia than Ethiopia needs them. The former Saudi-Arabia deputy defense minister
did not seem to be aware that Ethiopia had been feeding his fellow countrymen.
The second part of the article shows why the GERD is, as
its name indicates, indispensable for Ethiopia’s renaissance and why mercenary
Alemayehu Gebremariam’s portrayal of the GERD as a “make-believe project” is a desperate attempt to discourage the
patriotic members of the Ethiopian diaspora from contributing financially
towards the completion of the GERD. Alemayehu has become a shame for the whole Negro-African race since he has
chosen to do the dirty work for Arabs against his own black race. The description of Alemayehu as a mercenary
of Arabs should not be seen as ad hominem, for the objective of the article is
not to attack the person of Alemayehu Gebremariam (which is intellectually of
no interest whatsoever), but to underscore the fact that Alemayehu and the Arabs have made common cause to nip
in the bud the Ethiopian economic revolution. In this regard, I would like
to argue
that a notorious Arab mercenary,
like Alemayehu, who has betrayed his own
race, cannot criticize the great
Pan-Africanist leader, Kwame Nkrumah. It is intellectually dishonest on part of
Alemayehu to lump together Africa’s great anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist
leader, Kuwame Nkrumah, with the errand boys of Western neocolonialism such as
Mobutu Sesseko of the former Zaire or Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast. One must also be hopelessly stupid to compare Melles Zenawi, the most
intelligent leader that Africa has ever
produced, with the likes of Mobutu Sesseko, Houphouet-Boigny and Jean Bedel
Bokassa. Melles was not a puppet of Western imperialism. Quite to the contrary,
thanks to his superior intellect he always got what he wanted without conceding
on what was essential for him. It was for that reason that Melles is regarded
by Westerners as the wiliest leader that Africa has ever produced. Unfortunately
for Ethiopia and Africa, Melles died prematurely.
PART 1. WHY THE GERD DOES NOT POSE ANY THREAT AGAINST
EGYPT
I stated above
that the argument that the GEDR poses a
threat to Sudan and to Egypt is a straw man. The Sudan and Egypt have obtained
a strong reassurance from the Ethiopian
government that both down stream countries had everything to gain and nothing
to lose from the construction of the GERD. The position of the Ethiopian
government is confirmed by independent experts. But Ethiopia has also gone the
extra mile to prove its good faith. It has established an international panel
of experts whose task is to assess the impact of the GERD on the Sudan and
Egypt. Composed of Ethiopian, Egyptian, Sudanese and Western experts, the International Panel is expected to release its findings at the end of
May.
That being said, there is unanimous expert opinion that
if Ethiopia builds a hydroelectric dam
over the Nile, it will not be
necessary for the Sudan to build its own
dams which could cost it billions of
dollars. This was also confirmed by a senior official of the Sudanese Ministry
of Water Resources and Irrigation who is reported to have said in 2010 “ it makes no sense to build (a dam) here in Sudan: the opportunity cost is huge.
There is no comparison: a dam in Ethiopia has more benefits for the Sudan than
for Ethiopia” (quoted by Harry Verhoeven (2011), “Black gold for blue gold.
Sudan’s oil, Ethiopia’s water for regional integration”( available on line). Experts are also
unanimous in saying that the GERD will solve the problems of flooding to which
the Sudan has been confronted.
The GERD will also prove to be very beneficial for Egypt.
Because as experts insist rightly, the GERD will enable Egypt not to lose
between 10 to 15 billion cube meters of water that it loses to evaporation
(Gezu Karma, “Misleading article by a Sudanese on Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam” published on the Website Ethio-media on December 6, 2012). The
foregoing shows that the argument that the GERD will reduce the amount of water
necessary to feed the Egyptian people is a ploy intended to tarnish the good
image of Ethiopia. The GERD will enable Egypt to buy electricity, which it
badly needs to accelerate its industrial development.
Why is then Arabs and their mercenary, Alemayehu
Gebremariam, have been saying that the GERD will pose a serious threat to the
very existence of the Egyptian people? The reason why Arabs and mercenary
Alemayehu Gebremariam have leveled
against Ethiopia the false accusation that it is trying to destroy the Sudanese and Egyptian people is simple:
thanks to the GERD, Ethiopia hopes to embark on rapid industrial modernity. But
the industrialization of Ethiopia is the
worst nightmare for Egypt and Alemayehu Gebremariam. Mercenary Alemayehu wishes
Ethiopia to be straitjacketed by lack of investment or that it be faced with
huge economic and financial difficulties so that the incumbent government would
fall and that Alemayehu and other power-thirsty anti-Ethiopia individuals could
take over the reins. But, since the government’s management of the economy has
proved to be stellar, Alemayehu does not think that the fall of the regime will
happen any time soon unless Barack Obama
messes with Ethiopian affairs or Egypt declares war against Ethiopia or unless
Wahhabi Salafist terrorists supported
by Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and Egypt succeed in igniting religious war between Muslims and Christians in Ethiopia.
In short, extreme power-thirst has led mercenary Alemayehu to declare an
all-out propaganda war against the Ethiopian nation while the Ethiopian government
has been working hard to enable it to regain its past glory. Was it a
coincidence that the number one enemy of Ethiopia, Alemayehu Gebremariam, made
a strong attack on the GERD at the very time when his political friends went from the United States to Egypt to tell
to the Egyptian government that they would dismantle the GERD if Egypt helped
them to overthrow Ethiopian government? Indeed, Alemayehu’s friends have been
telling us: “Ethiopia has a lot of rivers, it does not need to build a dam on the
Nile. Let’s leave the Nile to Egypt,
which does not have any other river”. Alemayehu him self said the same
thing when he stated that Melles Zenawi did not need to build a dam on the Nile
for his “prestige”. He added the Ghibbe
dam with 1870 MW would be more than enough for Melles’ prestige. This clearly shows that Alemayehu and his
friends have been in the pay of Egypt to
tarnish the image of Ethiopia.
The aim of Arabs
in general and that of Egypt in
particular is not different from that of Alemayehu, although they are less
dangerous to Ethiopia than mercenary Alemayehu and others of his ilk. I say
Arabs are less dangerous to Ethiopia
than their mercenary Alemayehu because while Alemayehu and others of his ilk in
the diaspora have been trying to dissuade members of the Ethiopian diaspora
from investing in their home country, Arabs are one of the big investors in
Ethiopia. The Saudi government’s over
all investment in Ethiopia is estimated to be in the region of 13 billion
dollars. Nevertheless, the Arabs want to see the weakening and eventually the
fall of the current Ethiopian government. Why?
Because it is the first government
in hundred years whose obsession has been how to propel Ethiopia into
the league table of developed countries. The Arabs fear that with such a very
competent and committed nationalist leadership it is most likely that Ethiopia will leapfrog Egypt
to become together with Nigeria and South Africa one of the three largest
economies in the African continent.
As the second most populous nation of the continent,
Ethiopia’s economic development will certainly infuse dynamism into the
economies of its immediate neighbors and beyond. In this regard, there is no
doubt that the extension of Ethiopian rail way network to Djibouti, Somaliland,
Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan would boost intra-regional trade and contribute to the
advent of economic prosperity and lasting peace in the hitherto beleaguered
Horn of Africa. War, terrorism, regional tensions will be closed chapters in the region all the more so since the
potentially huge Ethiopian market will enable countries with small domestic
market like Djibouti, Somaliland, Somalia and South Sudan to achieve
economies-of-scale in their respective industrial drive. An economically integrated Horn of Africa
will certainly look to Ethiopia and no more to the Arab world. For this reason,
the Arabs in general and Egypt in particular do not want to see the economic
ascendancy of Ethiopia with or without the construction of the GERD. In brief, the Arab world and its pivot,
Egypt, have been very much scared not by the GERD ( because the dam will increase the amount of water that the Sudan
and Egypt receive), but by the inevitable economic, military, political and
diplomatic climb up of Ethiopia. The
Arabs have not forgotten that their ancestors were once under Ethiopian rul
The rise of Ethiopia is also regarded as dangerous by
some circles in the Western world. To
illustrate, Western organizations with hidden neocolonialist agenda such as
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Committee for Journalists, Genocide
Watch, International Crisis Group,
Survival International, etc., have left
no stone unturned to nip in the bud Ethiopia’s nascent socio-economic
development under the false pretext of defending “human rights” or “protecting” the
environment. Those organizations with neocolonialist agenda have been trying to
rule Ethiopia indirectly. “Human Rights”
watch’s request of the World Bank not to finance the government’s villagization programs unless the government
listens to its ukase evinces its desire to impose its indirect colonial rule on
Ethiopia on behalf of multinational corporations. It is million times better to
violate “human rights” than to submitting oneself to neocolonialists with no
legitimacy whatsoever to control a democratic
and patriotic government.
The question now is: why
should the rise of Ethiopia be seen as a danger by Western multinational
corporations on whose behalf “human rights” organizations and “environment
protection” groups have been trying to nip in the bud the Ethiopian economic
revolution? The reason is that first
Ethiopia’s economic development path and political system diverge largely from
what the Western multinational corporations have prescribed for Africa, viz.,
an inhuman ideology called neoliberalism, a fake democracy called liberal
democracy and respect of formal
bourgeois rights. The Ethiopian government and people have been determined to
be the main actors of their own political and economic destiny. They have
refused to outsource their political and economic modernization. That is why they want the Western world to
refrain from trying to make the history of Ethiopia in lieu of Ethiopians and
to recognize the latter’s absolute right to make political, economic and
administrative mistakes and to learn by
doing. To put it philosophically, the intelligent Ethiopian leaders don’t
want to imitate blindly Protestant
modernity.
That is why the pro-Western Ethiopian government doesn’t
accept the Western bourgeois (pseudo) democracy; nor has it been willing to
apply uncritically the economic recipes of Western orthodox theory whose aim is
to subordinate African economies to the needs of the developed world by
preventing them from becoming independent national economies. For historical
reasons, Ethiopia’s political system and economic policy are indeed without
equivalent in the rest of Africa in the sense that they are not a carbon copy
of the anti-democratic political and economic systems obtaining in the Western
world. If Ethiopia succeeds (there is no reason why it can not succeed), it
will surely be a true political and economic democratic model for other African
countries and also for the toiling masses of the Western world. Second, Ethiopians
believe that Africa’s true salvation lies in
the formation of the United and
Federated Black African State. As things
stand, Balkanized Africa cannot meet the
new challenges of the third millennium.
The formation of the United and Federated Black African State is
therefore a must if Africans want to defend successfully their interests in the
third millennium. The United and Federated Black African State, probably with Addis Abeba as its capital city, will
accelerate the total emancipation of the
peoples of Africa from centuries-old
Western and Arab religious,
intellectual, cultural, economic and military domination.
Industrial development will allow Africa to become
economically autonomous. But for that to happen, Africa needs energy. The GERD
is designed to solve in the long-term Africa’s energy problem. Ethiopia’s
hydro-electric potential estimated at “45, 000 MW is enough to meet most of
Sub-Saharan Africa’s current demand” (Harry Verhoeven, ibid.). Indeed, if the United and Federated Black
African State can tap the water resources of Ethiopia and that of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (estimated
at 100,000 MW), Africa will become the
industrial power house of the world. The GERD will contribute immensely to
close economic integration of African countries. And more than anything else,
economic integration will lead Africans to work for the formation of the United
and Federated Black African state. This
will enable Africans to negotiate on equal terms with Westerners and Asians.
From the foregoing it is clear that behind the Western
and Arab media offensive against the construction of the GERD, there is a
racial issue between Arabs and Africans. Africans want to regain their past
prestige and glory while Arabs want,
with the help of the Western imperialism, to prevent the emancipation of Africans from
Arab cultural, religious, intellectual and economic domination. To put it
bluntly, Egypt is worried not about lacking food or water as a
result of the construction of the GERD.
Egypt knows that the God-fearing people of Ethiopia will never harm the Sudanese and the Egyptian
people. But Egypt has convinced itself that the GERD would nullify its influence in Eastern
Africa. The declaration of the late
Melles Zenawi in the early 1990s that the long-term objective of Ethiopia was
not to be a leader of Africa, but to become the leading power in the
Middle-East may have also added to the jitters of Arabs about the new Ethiopia.
EGYPT’S LONG-STANDING POLICY OF DAMAGING ETHIOPIA
Nothing shows more Egypt’s determination to harm Ethiopia than its contrasting attitude towards Eritrea and Somaliland. Between 1950
and 1991, Egypt left no stone unturned to help Eritrea to secede from Ethiopia.
In the 1960s Egypt and other Arab countries claimed that Eritrea was “part” of
the Arab world. Egypt trained, armed and financed Eritrean rebels. However,
Egypt’s determination to help the Eritrean rebellion was solely motivated by
geopolitical considerations to prevent Ethiopia from becoming a potential rival
in North-East Africa. The reason is plain:
86% of the volume of water that Egypt receives from the Nile waters
comes from Ethiopian highlands. In the remote past Egyptian leaders had dreaded lest Ethiopia should divert the course of the Nile to punish
Egypt. But in the last quarter of the
19th century, the Egyptian army, trained and led by European and American
military generals, tried two times to invade and colonize Ethiopia. The aim was to take control of the source of
the Nile River. Emperor Yohanes IV of Ethiopia put to rout the Egyptian army in
1875 and 1876, capturing a huge amount of modern fire arms. The annihilation of
the Egyptian army by the Ethiopian army
had set the stage for the colonization of Egypt by Great Britain
and for the emancipation of the Sudan
from Egyptian colonial rule. Since then direct military confrontation
between Egypt and Ethiopia has not been
possible if we except the Ethiopia-Somalia war of 1977 in which, according to
the previous Ethiopian communist government
sources, twenty nine thousand Egyptian
and Iraqi soldiers fought along side the Siad Barre army. Indeed, Egyptian leaders, from Nasser to
Mubarak, did their best to provoke a
proxy war against Ethiopia so that Ethiopia would not direct its attention to
economic development. Egypt was behind the Eritrea rebellion from 1962 to 1991
and the
Eritrean invasion of Ethiopia in 1998.
Now that Eritrean secession has proved to be a blessing
in disguise for Ethiopia, Egypt believes that it can play the Somalia card to stop Ethiopia’s
ascendancy. That is why Egypt’s effort to facilitate the secession of Eritrea
from Ethiopia contrasts sharply with its
intensive lobbying of Western powers and the African Union not to recognize
Somaliland. Why has Egypt been so determined to prevent Somaliland by all means
from being recognized internationally as a sovereign state? If it were not for
Egypt’s opposition, Somaliland would have obtained international recognition a
long time ago and would accelerate its economic development. Is Egypt really committed to Somali unity and
territorial integrity? Not really. Anyway, the
Arabs don’t seem to have realized that
Somalia has never been and will never be a counterweight to
Ethiopia. The greatest counterweight to
Ethiopia during the 20th century was Ethiopia. After its resounding military
victory over Egypt in 1875, 1876 and
over Italy in 1881, 1884 and 1896, Ethiopia could/should have become the
Japan of Africa. This means that only
internal factors will determine the success or the failure of the rise of Ethiopia.
That being said, the Egyptian political elites have not yet
realized that the scales have fallen from the eyes the Somalis; they believe
that they can persuade Somalia to sacrifice its future at the altar of Egyptian geopolitical interest of preventing the economic and
military rise of Ethiopia. That is why Egypt has been the greatest obstacle to
Somaliland’s quest for international recognition. Somalilanders should not believe that the
“international community” is against the
recognition of their country just as Somalis should not be
under the illusion that the “international community” stands for Somalia’s territorial integrity. The
“international community” has refused to recognize Somaliland because Egypt has used its diplomatic clout to
prevent the international recognition of Somaliland. The so-called
international community has been acting on behalf of Egyptian geopolitical
interests against Ethiopia.
Viewed against the Egyptian position, Ethiopia’s decision
not to to recognize Somaliland seems to
be irrational. If Egypt believes that preventing Somaliland from obtaining
international recognition will enable it to use a united Somalia to counteract Ethiopia’s position in the Horn of Africa,
the appropriate way for Ethiopia to prevent Egypt from using Somalia against
Ethiopia should have been to save
Somalia by helping Somaliland to obtain
international recognition. But it seems that Ethiopia is keen on forging a durable close relationship with
Somalia. It has imposed on itself the obligation to respect the moral precept that one should not “harm”
one’s neighbor in trouble. This explains why Ethiopia has been saying it won’t
be the first to recognize Somaliland despite its sympathy and admiration for
the tenacity and resourcefulness of the Somaliland people. Isn’t the Ethiopian
position of withholding recognition from Somaliland tantamount to behaving vis-à-vis the Egyptian enemy in accordance with the Sermon of the Mount
Ethiopians seem to have chosen to ruin the Egyptian plan
by trying to convince the Somalis that the two sisterly neighboring countries
stand to gain a lot from a fruitful
cooperation and mutual help and everything to lose from confrontation. Since Egypt’s use of Siad Barre to weaken
Ethiopia has had devastating consequences for Ethiopia (without that invasion
Ethiopia would not have become communist and for Somalia, Ethiopia hopes that
Somalia would no more be used by Egypt to damage Ethiopia.
If Egypt has the will and the capacity to attack
Ethiopia, it can do it itself directly, not through the proxy of Somalia. It is
not therefore far from the truth to argue that Ethiopia’s determination to
forge a harmonious and a mutually beneficial relationship with the Somalia is
informed by the geopolitical calculus to keep the Arabs away from the Horn of
Africa. The problem is that Somaliland
has become the victim of the rivalry between Egypt and Ethiopia.
However, Egypt’s policy of damaging Ethiopian interests has
not been limited to preventing Somaliland from obtaining international
sovereignty. Egypt has also successfully dissuaded international financial
backers (the World Bank, the African Development Bank, etc.,) and even the
friendly government of China from giving loans to Ethiopia to finance the
construction of the GERD. It is a testimony to Egypt’s determination to
frustrate Ethiopian efforts to fight underdevelopment. It also shows how much the United States has been
willing to be used by Egypt against Ethiopia.
Unfortunately for Egypt, the completion of the GERD has become for the Ethiopian people the
mother of all wars that they cannot fail to win against Egypt. Ethiopia
has decided to fund the the construction
of the 4.8 billion dollars worth GERD
project by mobilizing its own domestic
resources. The Ethiopian people and their government have promised not to back
off in the face of Egypt’s determination (with the complicity of the Western
powers) to checkmate Ethiopia’s efforts to fight underdevelopment. It is the first time that an African country
has decided to finance through its own resources the construction of a
hydroelectric dam that will improve dramatically the lives of its 90 million
people. By doing this, Ethiopia is
setting an example of national self-confidence and self reliance for the rest
of Africa. There is no doubt that the completion of the GERD in 2016 will boost
the attractiveness of East Africa for foreign investment.
The construction of the GERD will also change completely
life in rural Ethiopia because every
Ethiopian village will benefit from electrification. Thanks to the clean energy generated by the GERD, the
industrialization of Ethiopia will be environment-friendly. But the industrialization of Ethiopia will
not take place at the expense of Egypt and the Sudan. It is therefore of no
use for Egypt to rattle sabers, which saber-rattling does
not any way grab Ethiopia.
But let’s assume that the International Panel of Experts
arrives at the conclusion that GERD will
reduce the volume of water that Egypt and the Sudan receive. So what? Should
Ethiopia give up its fight against underdevelopment for the sake of the
well-being of Arabs? The only thing Egypt can do is to ask Ethiopia to take the
necessary measures so that the GERD would not inflict huge damage on Egyptian
economy. I mean, no one can dare ask the Ethiopian people to
stop their uphill struggle against underdevelopment so that Egyptians can lead
a better life. The Ethiopian government has always expressed its readiness to
cooperate in the spirit of mutual consideration on best ways of developing the
waters of the Nile for mutual benefit. It is in this spirit that Ethiopia has
played an active role in the preparation of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). But if the Arabs think that they can cow Ethiopia into giving up its uphill struggle against
underdevelopment, they are committing a great error. Never in history has
Ethiopia been cowed even by Westerners. In this regard, the Arabs would rather
read again the Hadith and defer to the Prophet Mohamed’s statement about
Ethiopia.
This is to say that although Ethiopians are peace-loving
people, they are ready to confront militarily anyone hell-bent on humiliating
them. It is important to know that if
Ethiopia cannot use the Nile waters for generating electricity, Egypt and Sudan
will not have either the possibility of using the Nile for agricultural
purposes. Ethiopia can take measures to deprive Egypt of any drop of water from
the Nile. The Nile waters can diminish considerably if Ethiopia decides to use
Nile’s different tributary rivers to irrigate the Ogaden desert and transform
it into the bread basket of the whole Horn of Africa. Until now Ethiopia has
not harnessed the tributary rivers of the Nile for irrigation; it only wants to
generate electricity to satisfy its own energy needs. However, if Ethiopia
decides to harness the tributaries of
the Nile with view to irrigating the Ogaden, Egypt does not have any means of
stopping Ethiopia.
Besides, Egypt cannot “attack” the GERD unless Sudan allows its territory to be used by
Egypt as a launching pad against Ethiopia. In that case, Ethiopia will consider
Sudan’s behavior as a declaration of war
and may be compelled take appropriate military measures to defend itself. The
Ethiopia of today is not that of
Haileselassie or of Mengistu Hailemariam.
Egypt and Ethiopia occupy respectively the 14th and the 29th place in the global rankings of
military strength. In the African continent, they are followed respectively by
South Africa (34th), Nigeria (36th) Algeria (38th ) and Kenya (46th) place
(source: Global Fire Power military ranks 2013 available on line). This shows that Ethiopia has never been as
strong militarily and economically as it is today. The Arabs left no stone
unturned to destroy Ethiopia between 1950-1998. But the Ethiopian people
resisted heroically and foiled all Arab conspiracies. Now, it is too late for
Arabs to prevent Ethiopia from directing its attention and resources to
national development.
Of course, mercenary Alemayehu Gebremariam has been
praying that his Egyptian masters destroy the GERD so that Ethiopia runs up
against financial problems. But the Egyptians are not that much stupid to try
to provoke Ethiopia unless Egypt wants to dig its own grave. Ethiopia being the
source of the 86% of the Nile waters, Egypt will always be at the mercy of
Ethiopia. This is not an exaggeration. A
documentary film entitled “Mother Nature calls for help”, broadcast by the Ethiopian television two months ago showed the existence of risk that the tributary
rivers of the Nile might become dry at
the beginning of the second half of the 21st century as a result of climate
change. The documentary film arrived at such a conclusion because one lake in
Eastern Ethiopia has already dried up and there is also a risk that two other lakes in Southern Ethiopia may dry
up unless the Ethiopian government takes the necessary measures. The documentary film warned
that if the tributary rivers of the Nile dried up the Nile would also dry up. And the death of
the Nile would mean the death of Sudan and Egypt. But it would also mean
that Ethiopia’s development efforts
would be seriously compromised. From the foregoing, it is clear that the fate
of Sudan and Egypt is in Ethiopia’s
hands. Unless Ethiopia exerts effort to protect the tributaries of the Nile and
if Egypt and Sudan are not willing to make financial contribution with view to
helping Ethiopia in its effort to prevent the Nile from becoming dry, the Nile
would eventually dry up and Arabs would not be able to receive any water from
Ethiopian highlands. The GERD is the
only means to remove the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the next generations of Egyptians. I mean, trying to attack the GERD amounts to
inviting disaster on oneself.
That said, completing the GERD and defending it from any
internal and external enemy attack is a question of life and death for the
Ethiopian people. Because the GERD will
improve dramatically the life of the current generation of Ethiopians and that
of their descendants. It will also benefit other Africans. Already Sudan and
Djibouti have been importing electricity from Ethiopia. Kenya and Tanzania will
be the next beneficiaries. Somalia and Somaliland will also need cheap electricity when they start to
implement their respective industrial policies. This shows that far from being
a white elephant, the GERD is indispensable for the industrialization of East
Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular. It is not therefore an
exaggeration to say that a war between Egypt and Ethiopia will also be an economic war between Egypt and other
Eastern African countries. The
completion of the GERD means for countries of Eastern Africa getting cheap
electricity without which there cannot
exist industrial development.
PART 2. WHY THE
GERD IS INDISPENSABLE FOR EAST AFRICA’S INDUSTRIALIZATION
Mercenary Alemayehu Gebremariam said that war between
Egypt and Ethiopia was in the offing. Minimizing Ethiopia’s capacity to defend
itself and exaggerating Egypt’s military capacity, he posed a false question
and gave a fake response: “ what will
Egypt will do if Meles’ Grand Renaissance Dam is in fact built? “Simple”. They will use dam busters to smash
and trash it”. This quotation is not based on the analysis of reality. It is an expression of
Alemayehu’s personal wish that Egypt attack the GERD. Egypt’s mercenary had
also the gall to criticize the late Melles Zenawi simply because Melles did
what no Ethiopian leader before him had been able to do. Namely, building a hydroelectric dam on the
Nile with view to accelerating
Ethiopia’s industrial development. Mercenary Alemayehu is mired in his own
contradictions. On the one hand, he wrote off the GERD as a “make-believe
project”. On the other, he said Ethiopia did not have the means to complete the
GERD. The notorious propagandist and Arab mercenary even wished that Ethiopia was bankrupted. But he also expressed his
wish that Egyptdestroy the GERD if it was built. One cannot understand why Alemayehu
wished that Egypt destroy the GERD if he
believed that it was a make-believe project. What is more, by describing the GERD as “white elephant” Alemayehu reproduced slavishly the former Saudi-Arabia deputy defense
minister’s propaganda that “the establishment of dam 42 kilometers from the Sudanese border is…
for political plotting than economic gain and constitutes a threat to Egyptian
and Sudanese security”.
The
fact of the matter is that the GERD is not a white elephant. To the contrary,
rural Ethiopia will benefit from
electrification thanks to the GERD. The electrification of rural Ethiopia will
facilitate rural industrialization; Ethiopian agriculture will no more be
rain-fed; it will use irrigation through out the year. Thanks to electricity
Ethiopian peasants will be able to
export finished goods such as
cheese, pasteurized milk,etc., to urban Ethiopia. This will protect Ethiopian
peasants from unfavorable terms of trade with urban Ethiopia. But Ethiopian
pastoral regions in the Southern and Eastern part of the country will also be
big beneficiaries. They will not be compelled to lead a precarious nomadic life in search for water
and grass for their livestock. They will be able to lead a sedentary decent
life and depasture their animals in their respective villages by using
irrigational techniques to cultivate their farm land. Sedentary life will
enable them to benefit from health,
educational and other public services.
The upshot of this is that there will be no rural exodus
to urban areas. To the contrary, being a farmer or a pastoralist will no more
be a neglected occupation. It is not
only rural Ethiopia which will benefit from electrification. In urban Ethiopia
too, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian
entrepreneurs have been waiting eagerly to see the completion of the GERD so
that their enterprises can produce at full capacity. Without the GERD, Ethiopia
cannot embark on a successful industrial revolution. Thanks to cheap and
unlimited electric supply, not only will Ethiopian industries be very
competitive, but Ethiopia will be the mecca of foreign investors. Mercenary
Alemayehu is not without knowing that.
But as he is the worst enemy of Ethiopia, he said the Ethiopian people should not build, could
not build the GERD. What grounds did
mercenary Alemayehu have for saying that
Ethiopians could not build the GERD?
Alemayehu did not try to find out in all objectivity what
the Ethiopian people and their government had been doing to complete the GERD
according to schedule; he did not try to show in all objectivity the
difficulties that might prevent the
Ethiopian people from completing the GERD.
To the contrary, he resorted to denigrating the Ethiopian people, their
government and the GERD. He denigrated
the Ethiopian people by describing them as the “poorest” in the world, and as
too weak to be able to defend the GERD from being smashed and
trashed by Egypt. The government was
also vilified as “corrupt” and “incompetent”. One would say Alemayehu
did not know how to argue. He made “conclusions” without showing first why he
had arrived at this or that conclusion. For example, he said the GERD would
never be built because a country whose citizens lived on one US dollar per day
could not be expected to raise 4.8
billion dollars. First, using uncritically the Western measure of wealth and poverty to evaluate
Ethiopia is a sign of cognitive colonization and not of education. The idea behind per-capita income is the belief that the
wealth of a society is the sum total of atomistic individuals. This is based on
methodological individualism. He who
applies such an approach to Ethiopia supposes wrongly that Ethiopia is an
individualist society and that it has also espoused the materialistic world
view that underpins the Protestant modernity. That said, there is no doubt that
the Western measure of wealth and
poverty does not take into account the production of wealth by Ethiopian
peasants or nomads who own a large livestock, and by other Ethiopians who
produce for their own consumption. The calculation of Ethiopia’s per-capita
income according to the Western measure of wealth and poverty is based only
on what is available in the country’s official statistics, i.e., a very small
part of Ethiopia’s annual domestic
production.
As for the issue of poverty, Alemayehu does not seem to know that the
problem of Ethiopia has never been poverty; the problem has been under
development. it is very important to be able to make such a distinction, for,
number one, poverty is relative. If we admit that poverty is relative, one can
argue that there are as many poor in the United States as there are in Ethiopia
if one compares America against America. But, there are also as many rich in Ethiopia as there are in the
United States if we compare Ethiopia against Ethiopia. Number two, poverty has
always existed in Ethiopia as it has existed
everywhere in the world. But the underdevelopment of Ethiopia is a
recent phenomenon which dates back to the country’s conflictual encounter with Western Protestant Modernity
in the 1940s.
Be that as it may, per-capita income as a measure of
wealth and poverty is a Western ethnocentric measure. What Ethiopia badly needs
is not the dramatic increase of GDP or of the per capita income (although that
is not bad in itself), but autocentered development. This means that the
objective of Ethiopia should not be to become like Qatar or Luxembourg (two tiny countries with the
highest per capita income in the world), or to become a middle income country
by 2025, but to build patiently and intelligently an indigenous industrial,
technological and scientific capability. That said, if we were to adopt the
discourse of miseducated individuals like that of Alemayehu, Ethiopia cannot be considered as the
“poorest” country in the world while it is the 72nd economy in the world, the
6th economy in the African continent, the 4th in Sub-Saharan Africa and by far
the largest economy in Eastern Africa.
Even if we were to accept as valid Western crass materialism as measure of wealth and poverty, mercenary
Alemayehu did not show why a patriotic “poor” society with a committed and
competent leadership could not raise the necessary funds to construct a dam
which would enable it to make underdevelopment history. The proof is that Ethiopia has already had 85% of the fund necessary for the project.
For Arabs and for Alemayehu, this is
very bad news. But for Africa, the completion of the GERD will be another
testimony to its renaissance.
Mercenary Alemayehu Gebremariam believes that he can
thwart Ethiopia’s industrial drive
through a campaign of disinformation and disseminating fear among the
members of the Ethiopian diaspora. He
seems to have taken literally the
Amharic saying to the effect that “an
army victorious in the battle field can be defeated through a campaign of
disinformation and rumor-mongering”. I mean, by saying that the GERD is a
“make-believe project”, or that it is Melles Zenawi’s private dam, mercenary
Alemayehu’s main aim is to dissuade the Ethiopian diaspora from buying bonds to
fund the completion of the GERD. What mercenary Alemayehu does not realize is
that unlike him and others of his ilk, patriotic Ethiopians in the diaspora
know full well that what is at stake is
Ethiopia’s future industrialization. Only the enemies of Ethiopia like
Alemayehu, who don’t want to see Ethiopia win the fight against
underdevelopment, can say Ethiopia should never think of building
hydro-electric dams on the Nile.
But if one is patriotic enough and wants their mother
land to win the fight against underdevelopment, supporting the GERD financially
is a duty from which no patriotic citizen can shirk. The GERD is indispensable for
industrialization for two reasons: number one, the GERD will satisfy the country’s energy needs. This will
facilitate the ecological restoration and protection of rural Ethiopia. Second,
the country will export
electricity. The energy export will enable the country to build a
dynamic comparative advantage, and to
pay the import bills of intermediate and capital goods necessary to accelerate
its industrialization. It is with this
noble objective that the intelligent Ethiopian regime has been exerting
herculean efforts to complete the GERD according to schedule.
Given that the GERD will change the economic landscape of
Ethiopia root and branch, one cannot,
unless one is in the pay of the arch enemies of Ethiopia, say it is a
white elephant or that it is meant to magnify Melles Zenawi’s international prestige. Mercenary Alemayehu
did not produce one single evidence that Melles Zenawi was ever interested in
his per
