By Asgede Hagos
A recent conference visit to Singapore brought back memories of TPLF leaders and their operatives going bonkers in 1998 about Eritrea’s attempt to learn from the experiences of those who had succeeded in developing their countries, but especially from this small Southeast Asian nation which seems to have jumped from the Third World to the First World, as its leaders put it.
“They
[Eritreans] try to be like Singapore,” as these officials put it crudely, was
part of a litany of “grievances” or
“charges” that the TPLF attempted to use to justify its invasion of Eritrea in
May 1998. This particular “grievance” was and is still being banded around as
“evidence” of Eritrea’s “arrogance.”
This is not about Singapore;
nor is it about whether it or any other nation would be a good model for
Eritrea or any other country. Far from it.
It is about what this particular case says of the TPLF, which has been
menacing the entire Horn of Africa. It
serves as an apt metaphor for the TPLF’s small-mindedness, cutting through the
pretensions, distractions, and outright lies we have been witnessing from the
get-go in the current Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict.
But, what is wrong with trying to learn from other
nations, attempting to emulate success? What is wrong with looking for a model
for a very nation like Eritrea to emulate—not copy, to learn from selectively,
because no socio-economic model can be successfully cloned since no two nations
have the same or identical socio-economic factors? Why would the Tigrayan
elite—ranging from feudal regionalists to closet Enver Hoxha Marxists—be so
gravely offended by any effort to develop the neighborhood?
The answer is rooted in the TPLF’s narrow-minded approach to development. Apparently, the TPLF sees development in the region as a zero-sum game. These leaders cannot see themselves developing Tigray without undermining similar efforts in the rest of Ethiopia, let alone “arch enemy” Eritrea. In the era of globalization, such a tribalist perspective can only isolate the innocent Tigrayan people whose just cause the TPLF uses as a cover to hide its crimes.
When most of the wars that had plagued the Horn of Africa ended in 1991, the buzz words at that time among politicians, scholars and development experts were these three words: regional economic integration—integration of the economies of the six nations of the subregion, or even of the Greater Horn of Africa region, which includes Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda.
However, soon after the TPLF launched its invasion
in 1998 the issue began to have a new meaning, and TPLF leaders and their
operatives added it to a host of imagined, unimagined, and hard to imagine
“grievances” against Eritrea in their desperate search for a veil to cover up
the real reasons behind the invasion: the first steps towards the establishment
of Greater Tigray, a dream born in 1976, which seems to drive almost everything
the TPLF does both internally within Ethiopia and throughout the region.
It was natural for Eritrea to look outward
immediately after the end of the 30-year war of independence to rehabilitate
its economy destroyed by successive Ethiopian rulers. This was also a natural
outcome of Eritrea’s ‘can-do’ spirit—the same spirit that sustained its 30-year
struggle for independence despite all odds.
Many find it difficult to understand why Eritrea’s effort to learn from
the experiences of other nations’ success stories, but especially Singapore,
South Korea, or China, would give the TPLF leaders and their operatives the
shivers.
The invasion showed not only that their Greater Tigray dream born in their 1976 Manifesto was alive and kicking, but it also revealed the intensity and tenacity of their hatred, fear and jealousy of anything Eritrean. They may go to extreme lengths to disguise their deeds, as one of their senior leaders, Sibhat Nega, attempted to do recently when he tried to be more Catholic than the Pope about Eritrean independence, but look at the facts of the last nine years. Remember the inhumanity they exhibited in targeting and mistreating anyone with a drop of Eritrean blood in Ethiopia, many of whom Ethiopians by nationality; the way the leaders tried to set these victims up for a genocide by waging a series of systematic campaigns accusing them of being spies, supremacists and racists; and how they confiscated their properties and stole whatever else they had at that time. I hope this deadly mix of hatred, fear and jealousy of anything Eritrean will not lead to another tragedy in the region before we see closure to the current conflict.
The group has no sense of history and its sense of
the future is similar to that of the proverbial donkey, which said, “After I’m
gone, let there be no grass.” The TPLF does not care what or who it takes down
with it when the day of reckoning comes.
It lives for the moment, trying to buy time to stay in power, no matter
what the cost. It knows it could be one mass-rally away from losing it all,
swept away by the sea of seething anger of the Ethiopian people. It has almost no social basis in the center
and almost no political support anywhere in the nation.
Because regime survival seems to be his principal preoccupation, Meles Zenawi seems be willing to do anything for anybody to buy his minority regime a little more time in the imperial palace. The regime’s tragic adventures into Somalia showed how far he is willing to go in that regard. But this invasion has definitely put Ethiopia in the eye of the storm in the war between global forces external to the Horn of Africa, the consequences of which are likely to be felt by Ethiopia and the Ethiopian people—and may even by the rest of the region--until long after the TPLF is thrown into the dust bin of history.
A more sensible and
effective response to any terrorism threat emanating in Somalia or any part of
this subregion would have been a strategy that includes all state and non-state
stakeholders, and not something that rides on the TPLF, a minority group that has
no internal legitimacy and is at war with its own people and the neighboring
nations. A common threat calls for a common response, and not one that is
spearheaded by a minority regime known for its sectarianism, not inclusiveness.
Relying on such a repressive group undermines and corrodes the moral
foundations that is supposed to undergird not only the global war against
terrorists, but also general U.S. policy for the region and the rest of the
world.
There is no question that
the current U.S. strategy for the Horn of Africa needs change in direction.
This is becoming clear every day. We
don’t need another Iraq in the Horn because such an outcome will destabilize
further the already troubled region, and maybe beyond.