It has been two months since the former Secretary Of State Mrs. Madlaine Albright passed away. I had the temptation to write comments, as many have done, on U-Tube channels broadcast during her funeral services. In the Eritrean tradition, speaking against a dead person is considered an immoral act. So, for the respect of her grieving family, withholding the comments for some time seems appropriate. However, as a Secretary of State and one of the key post-Cold War US policy architects, it may be useful to share with her close associates and family members who may be oblivious to the impacts her choices have had on nations like Eritrea, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in general. Obviously, the accolades made by certain politicians during her funeral services, in part, constitute an echo chamber to rationalize their wrong policy choices by sugar-coating them with the lofty ideals of democracy and human rights. So, to learn about Mr. Albright's insights and character, the most credible source is non-other than the eulogy from her daughters. I believe they were sincere in telling the love she had for her family and how she was guiding them on how to conduct themselves as children and grow to be responsible citizens. How do the values that Mrs. Albright was instilling in her children square with the policy choices she made as a politician, a very influential at that? One of her daughters shares with pride: “ Mom never forgot where she came from. Even if she became a top diplomat, she never forgot where she came from, how precarious her condition was when she first arrived in the United States” In May 1998 when an instigated war started between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the ruling party inhumanely deported about 80,000 Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean heritage. Then, I wrote an open letter to then-Secretary of State, Mrs. Albright by invoking the harsh experience she got to endure as a child. Among several reactions to the war, alarmed EU diplomats who offered to mediate were instructed by the US ambassador that he is taking care of the situation and that it was a serious security concern for the Ethiopian state. In that brutal instance, parents were forced to leave behind their kids, as small as four years old, unattended and eighty plus-year-olds were deemed as security concerns!! 1/2
No doubt that Chris is an extraordinarily talented musician, but I listened to this twice, and the original song (melody/chorus) was completely lost to me. There were brief hints that this was Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," but those came mostly from the guitarist. If I had not seen the title, I would not have known what this was supposed to be.
After the war ended with a peace agreement drafted by the US and with an official declaration that the US and other five entities like the EU as guarantors of the agreement, the TPLF-led Ethiopian government absconded from implementing the binding agreement. Not only that, an illegal sanction was imposed on Eritrea with the unconditional diplomatic support given to the Ethiopian “government” from the US. All sorts of hostilities, overt and covert, kept on coming against Eritrea which insisted on the implementation of the agreement before any meaningful relationship is restored. A clear disregard for the rule of law that only emboldened the TPLF fascists at the expense of Eritrea. Fast forward to 2018 when a reformist group took over control of the Ethiopian state and accepted the peace agreement without any preconditions, a new phase of relationships between the two states was about to start again. Both the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments were set, as they still are, to go to work and take concrete steps to implement the multifaceted agreement on the ground. Well, to make a long story short, against such hope and readiness to start afresh, the Ethiopian people, especially its political elite, clearly learned all the contradictions and blatant adoption of double standards by the US administration. As Mrs. Albright used to stress often that America is an indispensable nation, why are several industrially developing nations opting for better choices? where democracy can be cultivated contextually but not weaponized for short-term goals that usually lead to chaos. That is what the Ethiopian people who had a relatively fair national election last year find themselves puzzled about when they witnessed the US and the EU giving support to the notorious group that was deemed by the Ethiopian parliament a terrorist organization. On a positive note, some of the children that were inhumanely deported to Eritrea in 1998 are members of the Eritrean defence forces which played a significant role in saving Ethiopia from a likely fate of disintegration after the TPLF fascists opened the war on 3 November 2020. How would Mrs. Albright reassess her policy choices had she learned about the evolving Horn politics. Among other unexpected phenomena, Ethiopians have witnessed that a much smaller nation like Eritrea can play an indispensable role at certain moments in history. Large or small, a nation cannot be indispensable,, especially when it does not walk the talk. It would be insincere of me to say RIP since it makes no difference nor feels to have moral certainty to speak for the children/nations impacted under the cruel hands of a group emboldened by myopic or self-serving US policies. With this remark, I express my sincere condolences to the daughters of Mrs. Albright and their families. 2/2
Botti reprend Cohen. Magnifique, mais il s’agit de l’enterrement de Cohen?? Cette cérémonie ? Ou autre sachant que Cohen est juive. Le cadre me semble une église
