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Fighting or flirting, elephants continue to
trample on the grass
1 September, 2011 | By Kiflu Hussain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 18 August Douglas Mpuga who hosts a talk show called
Reporters Roundtable on VOA put me on air to pick my brain
regarding Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea’s apparent change of
heart to come out of the diplomatic freeze which was partly self-
imposed. On the show were Suleiman Mugula an independent
political analyst based in Durban and Charles Mwanguhya a political
editor for Daily Monitor as well as host of Hot Seat on KFM.
the Great Lakes to meddle in Somalia under various pretexts. While
Suleiman described Afwerki’s visit by equating it with Museveni’s
earlier so-journ in Kigali as a “fence mending campaign,” Charles
expressed his optimism on the possibility of “a glimmer of hope” for
Somalia that has been ravaged by a civil and “proxy war”/my
description of Afwerki’s opposite stance in Somalia from his former
secessionist bosom friend, Zenawi of Ethiopia who outwitted him by
ingratiating himself to the West/.
Due to time constraints in the half hour talk show, none of us
elaborated on how the two former comrades pitted Ethiopians and
Eritreans in a bloody war in 1998-2000 after promising that the
“liberation” of Eritrea from Ethiopia would seal the fate of all
warmongers in the region, thus closing all venues for war drumming.
Again time was not our best ally for one of us to highlight the
speculation that Museveni may attempt to bring the two rulers
together whom he described once as his “brothers in Ethiopia and
Eritrea” so that they “mend fences” like he did with his counterparts
in Rwanda.
Unfortunately, irrespective of a fence mending campaign, the travails
of the region is far from over. To begin with, even if our rulers
manage to put aside their bickering, there is no guarantee that it won’
t be short lived like Ethiopia’s former dictator Mengistu Hailemariam
and the late Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan’s brief reconciliation. Since
the present rulers like their predecessors have little quality of
statesmanship, they are unable to attain durable peace and stability.
On the contrary, they are in that “school of thought” that since chaos
and instability gained them “legitimacy” that it would also sustain
them. On the rarest occasion they seem to have achieved lasting
peace, the peace dividend like their other ventures such as
“liberation, development”etc never trickle down to their subjects.
Just as the war they unleash cause unspeakable suffering; their
coziness too doesn’t augur well. Although, the short-lived making up
between Mengistu and Nimeiry didn’t give them chance to trade off
on their respective dissidents among whom were insurgents like
South Sudan’s SPLA and Ethiopia’s TPLF and EPLF, depending
on the order of the day, dictators have always bartered on dissidents
by harboring them or handing them over.
The fact that the State they purport to lead is signatories to the
Geneva Convention and similar other international instruments have
never deterred them from violating the rights of refugees. For
instance, the regime in Djibouti wasted no time before it gained
notoriety in the forcible repatriation of Ethiopian refugees right after
its emergence as an independent State. /See “Djibouti-A Model for
Repatriation?” Available on internet by googling the title/. It’s a case
study collected in 1983 by Cultural-Survival partnering with
indigenous peoples to defend their lands, languages and cultures.
Djibouti still caters to the needs of its counterpart in Ethiopia that
emerged from the bush after toppling the one from the barracks.
Accordingly, in July 2005; it deported two bona fide asylum seekers
who defected in a helicopter gunship they were flying despite the
knowledge that they might face torture prior to the possibility of
being sentenced to death. Sadly, the UN Refugee agency /UNHCR/
supposed to oversee the protection of refugees almost always
collaborate with these regimes in the forcible repatriation of refugees
under the aegis of a so-called Tripartite agreement. That’s what
happened in Djibouti in 1983.And recently in 2010-2011, it
happened to Rwandese refugees in Uganda while the UNHCR just
looked on. /See Press Statement titled “Is Rwanda safe for all
citizens to return?” By Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law,
Makerere University/.
By and large, the freezing or resumption of relationships by our
rulers makes one wonder as to how safe the grass would be even
when elephants are flirting. If Rwandese refugees in Uganda cannot
feel safe while the host country’s and their own strongman’s relation
is at an all time low, imagine what would happen, when they get
chummy again. Perhaps, they will sign a deal like the one signed
recently between the regime in my country and my host which was
termed “Strategic Framework Agreement.” The document provides
for extradition treaty the details of which to be worked out. One
hopes the 8th parliament of Uganda which reportedly hindered the
President from having the usual free ride, to also see through the veil
of this “extradition treaty” during mention for its ratification.
---------------------------------------------------------------
trample on the grass
1 September, 2011 | By Kiflu Hussain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 18 August Douglas Mpuga who hosts a talk show called
Reporters Roundtable on VOA put me on air to pick my brain
regarding Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea’s apparent change of
heart to come out of the diplomatic freeze which was partly self-
imposed. On the show were Suleiman Mugula an independent
political analyst based in Durban and Charles Mwanguhya a political
editor for Daily Monitor as well as host of Hot Seat on KFM.
- Seizing the occasion
that brought Afwerki
to Kampala, all of us
in the show agreed
the Great Lakes to meddle in Somalia under various pretexts. While
Suleiman described Afwerki’s visit by equating it with Museveni’s
earlier so-journ in Kigali as a “fence mending campaign,” Charles
expressed his optimism on the possibility of “a glimmer of hope” for
Somalia that has been ravaged by a civil and “proxy war”/my
description of Afwerki’s opposite stance in Somalia from his former
secessionist bosom friend, Zenawi of Ethiopia who outwitted him by
ingratiating himself to the West/.
Due to time constraints in the half hour talk show, none of us
elaborated on how the two former comrades pitted Ethiopians and
Eritreans in a bloody war in 1998-2000 after promising that the
“liberation” of Eritrea from Ethiopia would seal the fate of all
warmongers in the region, thus closing all venues for war drumming.
Again time was not our best ally for one of us to highlight the
speculation that Museveni may attempt to bring the two rulers
together whom he described once as his “brothers in Ethiopia and
Eritrea” so that they “mend fences” like he did with his counterparts
in Rwanda.
Unfortunately, irrespective of a fence mending campaign, the travails
of the region is far from over. To begin with, even if our rulers
manage to put aside their bickering, there is no guarantee that it won’
t be short lived like Ethiopia’s former dictator Mengistu Hailemariam
and the late Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan’s brief reconciliation. Since
the present rulers like their predecessors have little quality of
statesmanship, they are unable to attain durable peace and stability.
On the contrary, they are in that “school of thought” that since chaos
and instability gained them “legitimacy” that it would also sustain
them. On the rarest occasion they seem to have achieved lasting
peace, the peace dividend like their other ventures such as
“liberation, development”etc never trickle down to their subjects.
Just as the war they unleash cause unspeakable suffering; their
coziness too doesn’t augur well. Although, the short-lived making up
between Mengistu and Nimeiry didn’t give them chance to trade off
on their respective dissidents among whom were insurgents like
South Sudan’s SPLA and Ethiopia’s TPLF and EPLF, depending
on the order of the day, dictators have always bartered on dissidents
by harboring them or handing them over.
The fact that the State they purport to lead is signatories to the
Geneva Convention and similar other international instruments have
never deterred them from violating the rights of refugees. For
instance, the regime in Djibouti wasted no time before it gained
notoriety in the forcible repatriation of Ethiopian refugees right after
its emergence as an independent State. /See “Djibouti-A Model for
Repatriation?” Available on internet by googling the title/. It’s a case
study collected in 1983 by Cultural-Survival partnering with
indigenous peoples to defend their lands, languages and cultures.
Djibouti still caters to the needs of its counterpart in Ethiopia that
emerged from the bush after toppling the one from the barracks.
Accordingly, in July 2005; it deported two bona fide asylum seekers
who defected in a helicopter gunship they were flying despite the
knowledge that they might face torture prior to the possibility of
being sentenced to death. Sadly, the UN Refugee agency /UNHCR/
supposed to oversee the protection of refugees almost always
collaborate with these regimes in the forcible repatriation of refugees
under the aegis of a so-called Tripartite agreement. That’s what
happened in Djibouti in 1983.And recently in 2010-2011, it
happened to Rwandese refugees in Uganda while the UNHCR just
looked on. /See Press Statement titled “Is Rwanda safe for all
citizens to return?” By Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law,
Makerere University/.
By and large, the freezing or resumption of relationships by our
rulers makes one wonder as to how safe the grass would be even
when elephants are flirting. If Rwandese refugees in Uganda cannot
feel safe while the host country’s and their own strongman’s relation
is at an all time low, imagine what would happen, when they get
chummy again. Perhaps, they will sign a deal like the one signed
recently between the regime in my country and my host which was
termed “Strategic Framework Agreement.” The document provides
for extradition treaty the details of which to be worked out. One
hopes the 8th parliament of Uganda which reportedly hindered the
President from having the usual free ride, to also see through the veil
of this “extradition treaty” during mention for its ratification.
---------------------------------------------------------------
- Kiflu Hussain is an attorney and
Ethiopian human rights defender
based in Uganda, he can be
reached through:
kiflukam@yahoo.com
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