Some Basics on Interacting with Ethnic Nationalism

2009/2/24 (Ethiopian calendar)

2016/11/3 (European calendar)

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[Note: An Amharic version of this post will appear sometime!]

In his recent interview with ESAT, Ato Abebe Bogale presents us with a text book lesson on how to interact with ethnic nationalism, specifically Oromo nationalism. In this article, I attempt to expand on some of the principles and lessons he presented.

The subject of the interview was a recent conference on Oromo nationalism in London, during which one speaker strongly advocated for the break up of Ethiopia in the name of freeing the imprisoned Oromo nation from Ethiopia. This speech raised a lot of hackle in the media and among Ethiopian nationalists, even though it was just a repetition of a decades old position of not only Oromo nationalists but all those Ethiopians who starting in the 1960's, imbibed with socialist theories, think of Ethiopia as a prison of nationalities which needed to be freed. Somehow this repetition of a well known political position appeared to create panic in a number of people.

This leads me to the first and most important lesson we can learn from Ato Abebe, which is to remain calm and avoid at all costs projecting any kind of fear or panic about ethnic nationalism. When ethnic nationalists, including moderates, perceive the other side as being hysterical, they tend to become offended and are pushed to take a more defensive and radical position. Why are our heartfelt ideas raising such emotion – why don't they even try to understand us – we just can't relate to them – these are the questions and sentiments raised. In the end, this ends up increasing the support for ethnic nationalism, making non-nationalists moderate nationalists and moderates into hardliners.

Every politician in every country that has had to deal with ethnic politics knows this. I will given an example: During the Quebec referendum, when the province of Quebec was voting on the question of seceding from Canada, one of the Quebec nationalist tactics in their campaign was to provoke anti-secessionists in the rest of Canada into saying something insulting about Quebecers. They would then use these incidents and have their media broadcast them repeatedly in order to fan ethnic sentiment and promote their agenda. Knowing this, most Canadian politicians would be very careful to prevent such incidents. Instead, they would organize various events to promote 'friendship propaganda'. One such event was sending via bus, train, and plane hundreds of thousands of Canadians to Quebec to hold a demonstration whose motto was to show how much Canadians love Quebec! This is the politics of dealing with ethnic nationalism.

Ethiopian nationalists must practice the same type of politics. We must avoid not only inflammatory statements, including equating ethnic nationalism with tribalism and other similar sentiments that could be interpreted as derogatory, but also statements that question people's right to choose their identity and deny the existence any sort of ethnic rights. All such statements and positions only serve to actually promote the desires ethnic nationalists, especially hardcore nationalists.

Note how Ato Abebe was careful in this regard during the interview. While the interviewer tried to impress upon him the impending danger of secession, Ato Abebe completely avoided saying anything inflammatory or anything that could be interpreted as being offensive to Oromo nationalism. Instead, he calmly explained that Oromo secession is not a new position at all. Further, he explained that today, even among Oromo nationalists, and even among those who in previous years advocated secession, secession is now the position of a small minority. This is a fact, and though it is a fact, many Ethiopian nationalists tend to forget it, become hysterical, and unintentionally promote the cause of radical ethnic nationalists.

The second, related, lesson is that there is a diversity of opinions on ethnic nationalism in Oromo politics, all the way from Ethiopian nationalism to soft Oromo nationalism to hardline Oromo nationalism. The fact there are multiple Oromo political organizations and that, even in today's charged political atmosphere, these organizations are holding several conferences to reach some kind of consensus shows that they are far from reaching consensus. They are even far from agreeing to disagree, from agreeing to tolerate each others' views. (Doesn't this remind us of Ethiopian nationalist politics!) This is another reason for Ethiopian nationalists to keep our reaction to ethnic politics proportional to its dangers.

Third, Ato Abebe shows us that we have to look all of reality in the face all the time instead of being distracted by the winds of the day. He reminds us that the Ethiopian constitution today supports the idea of secession! Have we forgotten this? It is a radical ethnic nationalist constitution, the most radical in the world, an 'experiment' according to the EPRDF. (Imagine conducting such an experiment in one of the poorest and at risk countries in the world!). This is the reality we have to deal with. Given that this is what we are living with every day, why do the comments of a single Oromo secessionist at a conference take so much of our time? Rather, Ethiopian nationalists should be focusing on getting their own house in order to as to be able to harness the power blunt the edge of this constitution, a constitution which is everyday proving to be more and more dangerous for the country.

The fourth point that Ato Abebe beautifully explains is that despite the constitution, despite the government putting up fences, so to speak, around the ethnic regions so as to minimize integration and assimilation, which is the key to creating any kind of shared destiny, Ethiopia remains to this day. This is perhaps the strongest testimony against the theory of Ethiopia as a prison of nations. Ethiopia is a country, a nation, where significant integration and assimilation has taken place in the past, and a significant portion of the population, from all ethnic groups, is Ethiopian nationalist.

I remind you that in 1991, the only forces with power (guns) in Ethiopia were ethnic liberation forces. The Ethiopian nationalist elite along was completely absent. The ethnic nationalists – EPLF, TPLF, OLF, etc – could have easily carved up the country in pieces, as per their ideologies. Eritrea seceded, but apart from that, the rest found that they could not, collectively, that is, disintegrate the country. Further, as the years went by, the EPRDF found itself discovering more and more the dangers of ethnic nationalism. TPLF members who in the 1990's would insist they were Tigrean first then Ethiopian today claim to be most 'Ethiopian' of all, much more Ethiopian than their 'anti-Ethiopian' opposition! As Ato Abebe pointed out in his interview, Prime Minister Meles, who would never miss an opportunity to belittle Ethiopian nationalism and who once called the Ethiopian flag but a rag, eventually ended up establishing a national holiday commemorating the flag! Thus, despite the decades long failings of the Ethiopian nationalist elite, the country has managed to remain alive. Ailing, but alive.

The final principle that Ato Abebe brought up and that I would like to emphasize is that healthy politics should always be related to reality on the ground, not ideology or fantasy. An example of this was, during the 2005 elections, Kinijit's position regarding the constitution, which was to accept it and if necessary change it only according to its provisions. This was an acknowledgement of changes in Ethiopia's political landscape with regard to ethnic nationalism, especially in Oromia. Kinijit did not adopt an ethnic nationalist position, but rather proposed to promote its Ethiopian nationalism agenda in another way, working within the constitution that many ethnic nationalists loved. This was very much a feasible proposition. Politics is the art of the possible, after all.

In conclusion, I do hope that we Ethiopian nationalists generally learn to become more nuanced in dealing with ethnic nationalism. We are a large constituency, the largest in Ethiopia, and we have a big responsibility to fix our failures over five decades. One of the ways of fixing our failures is to find the right way to interact with a major reality in today's Ethiopia, ethnic nationalism.