By Blogger Addis

Eritrea’s dictator Isaias Afeworki is famous for his shoot to kill policy if any Eritrean is found crossing the country’s border with Sudan or Ethiopia. Even if thousands of Eritreans still manage to cross the borders every month, hundreds of innocent Eritreans have died over the years under the dictator’s rule. Their crime was just for trying to escape the ongoing dictatorship and famine in Eritrea.

Now the dictator has even banned the Eritrean National Football team from leaving the country.

According to Kenyan media, the dictator Isaias regime has suspended his country’s participation in the CECAFA tournament. There are many possible reasons given. One reason was that the Isaias government does not have money for the team. But that is ironic, because the Isaias government has been pretending like there is no famine. The Eritrean dictator was saying his regime has plenty of revenue from recent investment on natural resources in the country. He was boasting about his economic success. Now he is saying his government has no money for a small football tournament in Tanzania?

Maybe the dictator is playing games again. Recently Kenya accused him of financing terrorists in Somalia. So maybe He wants to prove to Kenya that his regime has no money to pay for a football team let alone to finance the al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia.

Another possible reason is that the Eritrean football team is terrible…even worse than the worst teams like Somalia.

But the most likely reason is that the dictator knows that all Eritreans hate him, even the national football team. In 2009, the whole Eritrean national team disappeared and applied for asylum in Kenya. Again recently in July, more Eritrean footballers fled to Tanzania. Historically in 2006 and before, many Eritrean athletes and footballers have disappeared. Unlik... [Read More]

Blogger/Addis

 

Looking at the chaos that has happened in Kenya the last two weeks, it would be naïve for us to disregard the importance of reducing corruption in Ethiopia. After all, the opposition party in Kenya made corruption their number one concern against the government of President Kibaki.
 
Using Kenya as an example, it is easy to see the role of ethnicity in corruption since the Kenyan opposition fight against corruption has led to a fight against the privileged ethnicity of Kikuyu. So what can we learn from Kenya? For more than a century, all Ethiopians know that the ethnic Amhara has been more advantaged and today it might be both Amahra and Tigre. When people conclude these statements, many other northern Ethiopians defend themselves by saying that the “peasant Amhara” has been disadvantaged too. But this is laughable and at worst disputable on many grounds. Being advantaged is not just a word to throw around. It has a valid socioeconomic and ethnolinguistic foundation. These include the use of Amharic as the working language of Ethiopia and the social & ethnic background along with the connection to power that comes with it. Thus, to say that a peasant in the north has been disadvantaged as much as the rest of oppressed nations and nationalities in Ethiopia is merely a cover up to reality on the ground. Particularly, an attempt to conceal the ethhnolinguistic advantage a small portion of Ethiopians have over the large portion is doomed to failure.
 
It is in this and other perspectives that corruption should also be tackled. Today corruption can be discussed in ethnic, clan and political languages. Those who support the people in power have always received better treatment for many decades. Due to this we have witnessed a clan or sub-division of one single ethnicity getting more share than another clan of the same ethnicity. Good examples o... [Read More]

 BLOGGER

December 28 is an important day for the horn of Africa, though most haven’t felt its significance yet. If things go wrong in this week’s Kenyan elections, no one will be able to ignore its impact on further destabilizing the horn of Africa.  

According to Kenyan polls and latest vote counts, the opposition might win the election in Kenya. But once again, the question is, would the ruling party leader give up power? Or will it just rigg the elections?  Sadly, there are already allegations of vote rigging against the current Kenyan president. But I believe it is a false allegation since the opposition always wants to go on the record for having said that, just in case they lose the election.  

The US and EU said around 300 people have already died in violence related to the Kenyan election the last few weeks. However, unfortunately, no African country has went thru an election with zero violence. With the poverty especially in east Africa, dissident is more likely to raise arms. Kenya itself transformed into a multi-party system less than ten years ago, which leaves us to wonder if we can put too high expectations.  
 
But if a lesson is to be learnt from a neighbor, Kenya must ask, was it the violence or was it the voting irregularities that marred the election in Ethiopia? So far the EU and US have praised the early voting conditions and the progression of the Kenyan election. If the Kenyan election is ruled free and if the vote counting is reliable and accepted by the top candidates, Kenyans will not remember the pre-election violence and it will become a role model for regional countries. 
 
But if the Kenyan election fails, it can potentially start a more devastating cycle of violence. The failure of Kenyan election will also become... [Read More]

BLOGGER/ADDIS
The news that Ethiopian Olympic champion and record holder Haile Gebresselassie has been snubbed by the IAAF annual awards was shocking to many Ethiopians. First it was the Athlete of the year award that Haile lost and then second it was the Performance of the Year award. Ironically, Haile broke the grueling Marathon world record by more than 20 seconds by finishing it in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 26 seconds. But instead of Haile taking the award, once again IAAF snubbed another Ethiopian athlete by giving the award to Asafa Powell, the 100 meters runner from Jamaica.

 

Even though it is debatable, Haile might not have entirely deserved the Athlete of the year award since Haile didn’t finish some competitions this year. Other than the Marathon in Berlin, the New York City Half Marathon was the other significant victory for him. But the Best Performance of the Year award is not debatable. It belongs to Haile. He broke a record that is not easily and not frequently broken by lowering the Marathon record time almost half a minute! One has to wonder what was in the minds of the IAAF committee to make such huge mistakes in response to a legendary performance by the aging Ethiopian hero. The performance by Haile was one of the perfect signatures and ending performances for Haile. We don’t know if his ailing legs will let him compete in the coming Olympics but one of his last great performances not being honored by the IAAF was disappointing. 



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Haile himself said he is deeply unhappy with the IAAF decision. The sad thing about all of this is that the IAAF made the Marathon worth less than the 100 meters. It is not just that Asafa Powell... [Read More]

BLOGGER/ADDIS

Reading that article from Economist.com about the current conditions of Ethiopia and our future, it certainly sent chills down my spine. It often needs a foreign assessment of the grim realities in Ethiopia to remind us where we are going. Most of us Ethiopians are faced with two extreme assessments and views. The opposition’s assessment is always to the negative extreme, claiming that the government is the devil, nothing is improving and Ethiopians are living in hell. In contrast the government’s assessment is always to the positive extreme, claiming that they are overachieving, everything is progressing well and Ethiopia will be utopia very soon. So it is nice to finally read an assessment in the middle.

 

Even though the Economist newspaper’s assessment on the politics aspect was flawed, all Ethiopians can agree on the newspaper’s assessment of the progress, the failures and challenges of the economy. (The newspaper should probably stick to its name and leave the political analysis task to the pros) Anyway, other than shortcomings of the private sector, the second most important message in that newspaper was about the overpopulation problem in Ethiopia. It said: 
   

“The number of jobs created by flowers is insignificant beside an increase in population of about 2m a year, one of the fastest rates in Africa. Since every mother has about seven children, it is conceivable that Ethiopia, with 75m-plus people today, could overtake Nigeria (now 140m-strong) as Africa's most populous country by mid-century. Just to stand still, let alone make inroads into poverty, the country must produce hundreds of thousands of jobs a year.&rdquo... [Read More]

BLOGGER/ADDIS

The horn of Africa has endured some of the biggest wars in Africa. The region is one of the most unstable in the world. Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are historically the principal states shaping the region’s politics and due to the Greater Somalia (GS) ideology Somali children know how to shoot machine guns more than they know how to use a pencil. Because of the GS, Somalia has been the only country in the world without a government the last 16 years. And these irredentism ambitions of Greater Somalia will bring more wars in the region since satisfying Greater Somalia means destroying the boundaries of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. So the big question is, why aren’t horn of Africa countries assisting Somaliland get its independence and give GS the final blow?

 

As Ethiopia and Kenya keep quiet, the propaganda attack against Somaliland by Greater Somalia (GS) advocates is increasing everyday. Many GS supporters are accusing Somaliland of being Ethiopian puppet. This is comical because it is not Ethiopia that originally put the Somaliland boundaries; it was UK holding it as a “British protectorate.” So Ethiopia has nothing to do with the plan of Somalilanders to have their own country. They already declared independence many years ago and for them it is a done deal. Ethiopia has nothing to do with their decision. Yes, Somaliland was “federated” with Ethiopia 500 years ago and Yes, a small part of Somaliland was governed under the Ethiopian ancient Kingdom of Axum in the 3rd century. But today it is the 21st century. Ethiopians today don’t have any ambition to take any part of Somaliland. In fact, Haile Selassie was able to reach Mogadishu and Hargeisha many times during various battles six decades ago, but he was never interested in taking over Somalia. Also after the failed invasion by Siad Barre, Ethiopia could have kept its troops in Somalia and tried to pe... [Read More]

Addis/Blogger

Zeresenay Tadesse of Eritrea is sneaking in sharing Ethiopian athletic medals these days. First time I saw his name on a race board, I actually thought he was Ethiopian. Tadesse is a typical name in Ethiopia, almost like John in America. And Zersenay is the name of the famous Ethiopian Scientist who discovered "Selam",  “the oldest known skeleton of hominid child”.   So it took people like me a long time to finally realize that Zersenay Tadesse is actually NOT Ethiopian!  Anyway, he is starting to share the spotlight from Ethiopian runners. Even though Kenenisa was sick that day in Kenya and the swarming heat made most runners stop, Zersenay even defeated our hero Kenenisa Bekele at the cross country championships. That is a big accomplishment, no matter what the circumstances. We saw that Kenenisa is human after all, and Kenenisa not getting his sixth Gold medal in world cross country that day in Kenya made some Ethiopians very mad, while many others didn’t care. But if I was the manager of Ethiopian athletics team, I would take these threats from Eritrea very seriously. Zersenay can single handedly replace the Kenyans as our biggest challenge in the long distance men’s competitions in the future. Ofcourse as a nation, Ethiopia has walking legends like Terunesh Dibaba, Meseret Defar, Haile and some new comers like Tariku. Most of these have already won more than ten Gold medals, and have already set so many world records so the Eritrean Zeresenay winning just one or two gold medals makes only a small dent in Ethiopian dominance.
 

But, there are some big problems for Ethiopia ahead. For example, Haile will soon retire and Kenenisa is more focused on shorter 3k, 5k and 10k races, which forces only our third & fourth best runners in the marathons to challenge Zersenay. S... [Read More]

Blogger/ Addis  

 

The word Eleh is an Amharic language word, one of the dozens of languages inside Ethiopia. I don’t know the exact translation of this Amharic word to English but you can understand the meaning of the word from this context.

 

Recent developments seem to show that all Ethiopian politicians are sadly in “Eleh” politics and care less about the future of Ethiopia. Some Ethiopian opposition parties are only trying to corner the ruling party and smear its reputation. They don’t want to recognize progress made by the ruling party and they want to emphasis its failures only.  Sadly some of them find satisfaction in quoting western articles and statements as a verification that they won against the ruling party. Meanwhile, the ruling party is also trying to harm the work and reputation of opposition parties by trying to divide them and win the new round of bitter competition.
 

The recently freed CUD party opposition members are also damaging the reconciliation process started by the elders. Meanwhile the ruling party knows what mistakes it is doing but it doesn’t want to be told by others that it is doing those mistakes. It wants to improve everything by itself, and be recognized & admired for making the improvements. This is part of the Eleh politics spreading in Ethiopia. The politicians are acting like children.  I think the HR 2003 bill will increase the Eleh politics in Ethiopia to a dangerous level. The bill had the potential to improve Ethiopia but the bill is also now being owned by ONLF rebel associates and other pro-armed movement groups to legitimize their violent insurgency.
 


Another example of this is; the CUD opposition party leadership’s growing alliance with the separatist ONLF rebels. The ONLF and CUD are opposites. As a CUD ... [Read More]