From Algiers to Awassa: why we keep getting it so wrong….

When President Isaias Afwerki and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi exchanged the document of the peace accord in Algiers at the close of 2000; many anticipated much for its prospects. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed it: “a positive story for Africa which ends the year (2000) with a story of peace”. With hindsight the accord was a typical agreement that is a product of an intense diplomatic pressure, with little consideration to whether or not the signatories would make any shifts in attitude or perception as a result of the accord itself or the processes that led up to it.  Ahhh the wisdom of hindsight!

The trouble with hindsight isn’t simply the fact that it is the most perfect sight that is only available after the event… the more devastating implication of a hindsight is the fact that it is easy to ignore as the foresight of the future and hence often a precursor to many more well intentioned mistakes of similar magnitude.... in psychology we call the phenomenon neurotic compulsion: the consistent repetition of the same behaviours despite the fact that they continue to yield the same undesirable consequences. The Algiers agreement didn’t fail because the treaty wasn’t well written… it didn’t fail because the international community wasn’t committed to it… it didn’t fail because the peoples of Ethiopia and Eritrea don’t want peace. It failed because it was not arrived at, out of paradigm shift towards war in the region and especially in the attitudes of the key leaders of the two countries.

And if we weren’t suffering from collective neurotic compulsion we would have learnt a lesson from Algiers and hence wouldn’t have fallen for the same approach in Addis, in Aqaqi and now in Awassa! At the risk of sounding like my Grandpa who used to always tell us stories about zeben engiliz over and over, I would like to briefly visit my experiences of the very first pre event to Awasa (perhaps I should call this entry from Algiers to Awasa via Addis but circumventing Asmara…but that is a mouthful!). In the summer of 2009 I arrived in Addis for the workshop I believed was going to be a planning meeting for an upcoming Eritrean national conference… few days, interesting discussions and an insight into the political core of Eritrean politics in the resistance later… I was satisfied that the concluding agreements which can be summarised as: engage more players, widen the circle and be prepared to look different at the end of all this … was a real commitment born out of a real attitude change in recognition for doing something different for a serious paradigm shift to effect the change we are allegedly fighting for.... in hindsight I can see how naïve I was… the reason why the agreements at the Addis workshops or the Aqaqi conference (why do they all start with A?... this piece needs to be titled: from Algiers to awassa via Addis and Aqaqi but circumventing Asmara!) … anyway the reason none of these agreements are implementable is the fact that none of them are accompanied by the necessary changes to the attitude of those that are signing the said agreements. When the cameras are switched off and the celebratory party is over people drop them pens and pick up the daggers and aim for each other’s backs with the supremacy of a deft hunter! And in the process shred the agreements that they so ceremoniously signed even before the ink dries… once any danger of a new configuration (a paradigm shift) as a result of the new agreements has been eliminated, everyone goes back to getting busy setting up the next event… electing committees and sub committees and assistant sub committees whose main purpose is maintaining the precariously balanced but extremely defunct structure… with an associated implicit agreement to not do anything about it…. I guess obsessive neurotic compulsion is only an ailment in a world where change is mandatory… in a world where change is to be avoided at any cost obsessive neurotic compulsion is actually an asset and hence Eritrean resistance to PFDJ continues to revolve around the same axis for as long as anyone can remember....

So there you have it… after I saw what was done to the agreements of the workshops that launched the preparations for the national conference… when I realised how that was infact a design and not a fault… I knew that all the Aqaqi event would do was to produce an agreement to come and do the same next year… no new alliances were going to be forged… no old grudges were to be buried… no new strategy was to be hammered and hence no change was anticipated…

In the true manner of obsessive compulsives our resistance camp has mirrored all its old divisions and defunct structures, repackaged it and is touting it as the latest miracle cure to our ailments… well… that is fine for the obsessive compulsives but I will be damned if I willingly consign myself (my time and energy and my good will) to something that produces nothing but pockets of hot air in cyber space every so often….!

For as long us our resistance camp continues to interpret petty squabbles and building of phantom empires as ‘democratic processes’ (provided we don’t run out of alphabets that make up ‘political organisations’)…to the neglect of arriving at a common vision and an agreement to work collaboratively… whilst we continue to refuse to learn that rather than distinct entities capable of being the ‘whole’ on our own,  we are ALL part of a much bigger ‘whole’ ( in dealing with our religious or ‘ethnic’ differences) we will continue to get it wrong all wrong… no matter where agreements and accords are signed and what we call our brand new miracle cure to all our past cures that went wrong.

What we actually need is not a brand new agreement… what we need is:

• A fresh set of rules that will measure success in the strength of our ability to work collaboratively not because the funding agreement requires it… but because we recognise that we share commonalities far beyond the assumed, perceived and even actual differences
• A determination to build back the trust amongst key leaders that have been fractured through years of being stuck in a defunct neurotic compulsive system that obsessively dealt devastative blows against its own self
• A new agreement (and a commitment) based on the fact that power does really belong to the people and it is the reinstatement of that we are fighting for
• Maturity from our leaders … maturity that enables them to communicate with each other beyond dogmatically stating, restating and rerestating their rhetorical positions that they have been holding on to for dear life since God knows when…

…please don’t shoot the messenger but I am afraid Awassa was a dismal failure… but we are a people that have perfected the art of rising out of the ashes again and again and then again… so we will rise... but I hope this time we will rise having buried our obsessive neurotic compulsion to not learn from our hindsight….

selam

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