Why There Can Be No Peace with Meles Zenawi

Vulgar Wisdom

I have no intention of discussing Elisabeth Pisani’s unsettling stories from the red-light frontlines of Jakarta in the “Wisdom of Whores”. I mention it here to drive home the point that wisdom is to be found in the unlikeliest of places for those who are in thoughtful quest. It does not always gush out from professorial eloquence or excerpts from hard-cover autobiographies of prominent personalities.

For example, there is a vulgar wisdom to be learnt from a seasoned adulterer. The day you walk into the connubial bed of a married women, you do not sleep naked or with only slender vest on, and all eyes slammed shut. Rather, you keep your shoes fastened on your suffocated feet, shirtfront open but shirt on, and with one unblinking eye resolutely fixed on the exit door. You enjoy the stolen fruits with the alertness of a sprinter waiting for the sound of the bell to start flying. The slightest stupor in mind or body earns you a broken skull and fractured bones; or if unlucky, a fatal shot at the abdomen. And the bad thing is the police will not take bloody chin and split bones as vivid exhibitions of abuse suffered; they are not a cause or explanation of violence. Blood and gaping wounds, however gruesome, will not grant you automatic innocence. You will have to answer tough questions about how you got the bruises and burns, even if that has to be from a hospital bed.

But this is commonsense; an adulterer does not have to be a veteran to know this. Where the smartness of a serial bed-hopper kicks in, is with the prudential selection he makes about where to feast and where not to. This involves a rapid assessment of who the owner of the carnally charitable women is. The wily adulterer asks for information from those who would know about the fate of other womanizers who dared to sneak into this house of sin. If a pioneer before him lost limbs or teeth for stepping into the target women’s house, he decides that this particular house is a no-go area, with the calculation that the danger outweighs the sensual pleasure to be had.

This thought ecology was necessary to introduce the theme I intend to discuss in this installment; which is about why those who wish to make peace with Meles Zenawi must first conduct a methodical review of Meles’s record in making peace with erstwhile adversaries and honoring such agreements. The moral import of the foregoing metaphor is that an analysis of the present Meles cannot be comprehensive, if delinked from a look-back at past practices of this deadly political serpent.

Invincibility Hangover

Meles Zenawi joined the Tigray People’s Liberation Front at a very young age. Unlike the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) who faced a long-drawn-out war with Ethiopia, the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) faced trying times only in the first ten years. By 1985, the tide started to decisively turn against Mengistu Hailemariam’s Derg regime. The last seven years of the 17 years the TPLF fought were not easy for them by any imagination, but politically, victory was always in sight as the hated Military junta started to quickly unravel and die. What led to the demise of Mengistu’s regime is beyond the scope of this discussion. The relevance of this historical review is to underscore the relative brevity of difficult days in Meles’s political life and how this shaped his political attitude.

Aregawi Berhe (Berihun - TPLF Founder)

The fervor of youth and the hypnotizing idealism of Marxism-Leninism insulated Meles from despair in the early days of the struggle when things were tough. Soon, the TPLF struggle started blooming and from there on, it was a joyride for Meles, who worked in the propaganda department, and did not have to contend with lethal encounters with the Derg military. Meles and the TPLF met few setbacks along the way, and no real defeats from 1985 onwards. This instilled a feeling of invincibility in him and an inherent belief that the TPLF can win all wars – present or future. He therefore sees little value in making compromises. He (as part of the group led by Abbay Tsehaye) overcome the second internal dissent (Hinfishfish) within TPLF in 1978 by killing dissenters; He defeated the Derg; he outfoxed the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF); he won the war against Eritrea; he survived an attempted purge by his former TPLF comrades; he incapacitated an Amhara resurgence in 2005 elections; he crushed the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia. 

These reassuring chains of victories intoxicated his political mind, and he simply cannot contemplate the possibility of defeat. It follows that if defeat is out of the game, there surely is little reason for him to seek compromises that would limit his political reach and dent his personal ego. The attendant invincibility hangover therefore underwrites and explains Meles’s political chauvinism. Meles partially attributes this ‘invincibility’ to his ancestry.Continued