The media attention to the famine situation in Ethiopia has caused many people, even total strangers to the area, to talk about or write articles about their ideas for what would be necessary to bring peace and prosperity to the region. During the last two or three weeks I have read everything I could find, watched interviews with the experts on television, and had conversations with a lot of different kinds of people about what they think should happen to end the suffering in Ethiopia.
It is not too surprising that everyone's solution perfectly fits his or her own interest.
These proposed solutions all have two things in common:
I, for one, am against reform to solve the problems of an empire. No reform can be good enough. The United States had all the opportunity it needed during the Hail. Selassie years to reform Ethiopia in any direction it chose, but at the end, hundreds of thousands of people were Literally starving to death. The Soviet Union has tried its formula during the past decade. It has become extremely clear that theirs is also a disastrous failure, Now millions of people are literally starving to death. Things are simply not working and it is going to take more than time to make matters improve. Ethiopia's present course of action—to grab as much as possible from both sides of the East—West confrontation with promises to both is proving to be the worst option of all for the people. Until the basic diagnosis of the disease that Ethiopia is suffering from is recognized by any of the groups I have just mentioned, nothing they do will even help, it alone cure the country of its agonizing misery. They can merely stretch out the suffering. Only with a clear diagnosis can the proper steps be taken by any one to bring health to the region and its people. I believe, however, that if they recognize a correct diagnosis, most of these groups could contribute in some way to a proper healing. But not until then.
The nations in the Ethiopian empire are suffering from a parasite attached to them, a tapeworm—the tapeworm of a colonial ruling elite. Take the case of the Oromo nation. This tapeworm invaded the living system of the highly productive Oromo Republic and began to suck all the nutrients necessary for life away from the vital organism without contributing anything to the survival of the host. After its invasion, this tapeworm set up points of sucking all products away from the Oromo people for its own and others' consumption.
Almost everything that has kept Ethiopia afloat throughout the history of this empire since the invasion and conquest has come from Oromia—gold, coffee, ivory, skins, and even the slaves. (The slaves that Ethiopia was famous for were certainly not Abyssinians, but captured and sold by Abyssinians from the colonial areas such as Oromia.) If you go down a list of everything that has been exported as Ethiopian, and then look at a map of where that product comes from, you will see that the items come from Oromia. This tapeworm established itself through winding roads that linked garrison posts, trade centers, and customs points to the. emperor's palace, and through the railroad, to Europe and beyond. These posts became the points where the neftennas drew the lifeblood out of the Oromo nation and became fat at the expense of the. people who were made into tenants and slaves to feed them. But the parasite produced nothing on its own. The more help this colonial tapeworm got from outside, the more it grew fat and tried to improve its method of bleeding the producers, not improve the life of the conquered people.
You simply cannot nurse a person back to health who has a tapeworm in his gut. A tapeworm like any parasite survives only by drawing the life away from another. That is its nature. It cannot survive in any other fashion. The relationship between a tapeworm and its host is the perfect example of an antagonistic relationship. You CANNOT reconcile a parasite with the one that it live's off of. It can only live by taking from another. Unless the victim is made free of that parasite, nothing that is done for it can contribute to its survival. The more assistance or food that goes to the victim ignoring the problem, the fatter the tapeworm gets, the sooner the body dies.
This is the true nature of the relationship between the parts of the Ethiopian empire. it is a situation that CANNOT be reformed. Everything done for that victim, even if it is done with the best intention, will make the situation worse in the long term.
Let me add a footnote here. When I think of the generous, well—intentioned humanitarian aid being sent by the public in Europe and the U.S. to help the famine victims in Ethiopia, it distresses me. It is exactly like feeding someone with a tapeworm in his gut. All the food in the world cannot cure him until his real problem is acknowledged. For school children to send their lunch money and old people on public assistance to sacrifice to feed a parasite unknowingly, is an outrage! Until a proper relationship is established and a proper foundation is laid, there is no chance that even the most elaborate programs or inputs could benefit the people who are suffering. Most of the assistance will make the parasitic groups fatter and cause the people to suffer more in the long run. I remember reading about the introduction of motor cars into the Arab world when oil was discovered there. It seemed logical to bring automobiles to where the gas was produced. But there was no local system for refining and delivering gasoline through service stations, there were no road system laid down, there were no repair facilities. The sheiks who acquired the Cadillacs and Mercedes could only get around in them by forcing the peasants to carry the cars around the streets for them on their backs
This same thing is being planned and is happening today in Ethiopia in another form under the reform program put forward by the government and economic consultants for increased agricultural development and resettlement to eliminate famine.” Huge state farms and resettlement sites are being introduced which are designed to use modern equipment and improved technology. It may seem logical to bring large agricultural programs to an area suffering with large food shortages. But the labor is to come from unwilling local people who have to be threatened to leave their homes and farms to move to state farms, famine victims who are given no alternative to starvation, and people who are rounded up in the city streets without warning and trucked out to the site, Setting up a state farm or resettlement in an area where no roads, services, or any improvements exist (except those designed for better exploitation)1 is like sending a Mercedes to a country with out petrol, repair garages, or highways—the work load to be carried by the peasants and increase their sweat and suffering.
These projects aimed at reform through economic improvement are nothing more than status symbols for a parasitic colonial government; they do not function. They are being imposed on the country by force, without any foundation prepared for them. They are showpieces being carried on the backs of slave laborers, and they are not harmless status symbols either, Their very existence swells the Ethiopian tapeworm (the bureaucracy). It makes it fatter and increases its ability to suck more of the lifeblood from the producing peasants. Peasants have to leave their homes and farms to enter these places. There they are more victimized than ever before.
The Ethiopian colonial system is structured to live off of the resources of the colonies. That relationship has only one cure. (I do not know what the cure for tapeworm is called in English, but in Oromoffa we call it heeto.) That cure is a national liberation struggle. It cuts off that parasitic relation by attacking the colonial system itself until it dries up and is discarded. This cure brings health and nutrients directly to the suffering victim, In order for health and prosperity to come to that area, the Ethiopian colonial system itself has to be destroyed. That does not mean destroying the individual persons who are involved in it and benefitting from it (the neftennas and their supporters), it means eliminating the relationship. Those individuals inside the colonial system are then forced by the realities to abandon it and to enter into a different one, one which is a productive contributor to the community of nations in its own right. When this happens the cure will be complete.
Reform is an attempt to improve the social and political conditions inside a system of government without a radical change to the structure. Since anything that goes to the root is considered to be radical. I guess I am forced in this case to be radical. When a fatal disease which requires radical steps is diagnosed for a patient, the family is forced to endorse them in order to save a person. There comes a time to recognize that treating one part or one symptom of a problem at a time will not be enough. In this case, more arms, more aid, more advice, more programs, new faces in the offices etc., are being proposed. But none of these will solve the problem; they will only make the situation worse. I am completely convinced that anything less than a restructuring of the entire relationship among the parts of the Ethiopian empire will only make the problem worse in the long run. Ethiopia as we have known it must cease to exist.
This solution requires that the Amharas and other neftennas have to construct a different way of relating to the Oromos (and other people in the empire, for that matter). They are going to have to deal with those nations that occupy the Horn of Africa with them as their neighbors and fellows and not as tenants and slaves. Amharas are going to have to identity themselves as such and start to find ways of functioning as a productive organic unit. For them to deny the domination and bloodshed now and refuse to acknowledge the source of the problem will only stand in the way of good neighborliness in the future.
One thing is absolutely certain. No peaceful, workable solution can be found to the dilemma of disaster in the Ethiopian empire that does not directly address the Oromo position and correct
it. The Abyssinians who came as neftennas are unwanted, uninvited dinner guests who have stayed too long feeding off of the Oromos and not contributing anything to the survival of their hosts.
Hordhoofa Qabsisa Loltu
P.O. Box 10192
Rockville, MD 20849
U.S.A