‘Silencing the Guns’: The Beginning of a Lasting Peace and Reconciliation

November 12, 2022   

BY MULUGETA GUDETA

In its historic document signed by all member countries back in 2004, the African Union had coined a term to describe one of the most urgent tasks at hand, namely the need to silence the guns everywhere on the continent without which the vision of African renaissance would remain insignificant or hollow. In other words, stopping all internal conflicts in individual countries has become a precondition for the Africa’s rebirth and the realization of Africa’s economic union by 2060.

This grand vision had earned the enthusiasm of all Africans and fascinated the well-educated elites as well as the common people. The African media were busy popularizing it, commenting and criticizing it. The idea of silencing the gun in Africa was indeed captivating and inspiring. The hype surrounding the idea often reflected serious intentions while some sections of Western the media considered it unrealistic. This was because silencing the guns in Africa was tantamount to opening the path of Africa’s economic independence.

The slogan or motto was floating around for quite some time although its implementation left much to be desired. Africa continues to be captive of civil wars and ethnic conflicts inspired both by internal political actors as well as their external mentors who want to bring to power puppet regimes that would take orders from them and implement their neocolonial master plan while the elites would consolidate their niches of power and wealth.

Ethiopia has just gone through this same paradigm of internal conflicts aided and abetted by external masters with the view to destabilizing the country and establishing a kind of protectorate that would be ran by submissive political and business elites whose agendas converge with those of their paymasters. This has proved to be some kind of pipe dream that could not be realized simply because Ethiopia has a solid anti-neocolonial political tradition that could not allow what happened in other African countries be repeated here.

Now that Ethiopia’s domestic conflict is showing signs of abetting with the African Union peace plan that is beneficial to all the parties without putting unrealistic demands on the peace negotiators. One chapter of Ethiopian history is apparently closed and a new one is being written with the recent peace agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government. Meanwhile, a new history is being written, the history of Ethiopia’s post-conflict reconstruction, rehabilitation and reconciliation, a history whereby there will be no loser or no winner, and Ethiopia emerges as the sole winner from the fratricidal conflict.

Historians often maintain that Ethiopia history is largely a history of wars and conflicts feeding on foreign ideologies or a misreading of history. The last 50 years of Ethiopian history in particular has largely proved a disaster in terms of the extent of the losses. The post-revolution Ethiopia was faced with the war in the north of the country, political instability that was unnecessary, absurd and devastating. The nation lost previous time that could otherwise be used for economic development and rehabilitation from the repeated episodes of famines and humanitarian disasters.

The post-2018 reform process in the country had breathed a new wind of hope in the otherwise suffocating Ethiopian political process. Unfortunately, hopes were dashed as a result of a new cycle of post-reform political violence. As they say, history repeats itself as a tragedy and then as a farce and the main losers were innocent civilians, children and women who were sucked into the vortex of blood conflicts with no apparent way out.

Time is a healer as they say and time is now proving that there is a way out of the quagmire provided that the confrontational parties sit down at the negotiating table as they have done recently in South Africa and see eye to eye, to talk and hammer out their differences. It does not matter who wrote the agreement as long as that all parties have now agreed to abide by it and implement it as soon as possible. Everybody has lost from the conflict and now Ethiopia as a whole is the winner from the peace initiative. Ethiopia is now tired of conflicts and eager to get the guns silenced, because it deserves a breath of fresh air after so many decades if not centuries of one tragedy after another.

Ethiopia is now standing at a critical juncture in its modern history when its future will be shaped not by war, as it used to be until recently but by peace and brotherhood. The 1789 French Revolution has liberty, equality and brotherhood as it main slogan. The slogan helped the French of the time to leave behind monarchic and revolutionary terror and unite around the national flag and become one by vowing not to take up arms again to subjugate one another. Human beings anywhere in the world have similar aspirations and dreams. So many revolutions and wars took place in the world for freedom, equality and brotherhood. But few achieved their objectives and the slogan of the French revolution is still reverberating around the world inspiring others to fight for peace and liberty.

Ethiopia too has been in the forefront of countries that aspired for freedom, equality, and peace. It is almost the only country in Africa that fought for freedom for the peoples of the continent who were subjugated to colonial rule. It inspired Africans by its example as a country that never went through European colonialism. Emperor Haile Sellassie, the last Ethiopian monarch was a statesman who fought for peace and a peaceful transition from colonial rule in Africa to freedom. Unfortunately Ethiopia has always been good in advocating peace and freedom for other African brothers and sisters while it deprived itself of these basic rights.

Now has come the time for building a new culture of peace and freedom in Ethiopia. Peace and freedom are mutually complementary processes, the one impossible to achieve without the other. Great leaders and great movements come and go in history but a nation like Ethiopia remains as witness to the hopes and disappointments of generations. Now, Ethiopia is witnessing another hope for lasting peace in its own backyards. It has worked hard for it and deserves to enjoy its fruits and be given another chance for survival. As the guns are silenced, Ethiopia will continue with its peaceful works of greatness that was interrupted several times in the past. Achieving peace is by itself a sign of national greatness.

As anyone can imagine, the culture of peace is not built overnight. Rome was not built in one day. It is as hard or even harder to build peace than to build a city. Peace building may take generations and many decades if not centuries of hard work, great commitment and sacrifice. All the country that we now consider peaceful, stable and prosperous were at one time or another in their long histories, epicenters of great conflagrations, European or American wars, some of which took 100 years to unravel.

What is known as the Hundred Years War in Europe is such an example. What is known as the War of secession in America between the unionist north and the separatist and slave-holding south, claimed tens of thousands of deaths and devastation before it was ended with a Treaty.

Here in Africa, the 1967 Biafra war in Nigeria between separatists and federalist forces equally claimed a million lives and an equal number of wounded before it was concluded with the defeat of the secessionists and the victory of unionist forces. Practically all parts of the world have seen war of one kind or another before they achieved peace and attained the level of economic development they are now proud of. Ethiopia is going through the same process, although it happened late in human history when the time for conflicts is left behind and the time for civilized dialogue, reconciliation and peace building has already dawned on us. The 21st century should be the century of peace for everyone but it looks that this hope too is being dashed everywhere.

Greek philosopher Plato once stated that “only the dead have seen the end of war.” It is now time for the living to see the end of war in Ethiopia and the beginning of an era of stability, and fast economic development. Peacemaking is presumably harder than war making. As former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo stated during the signing of the recent peace agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government, this is a new dawn in Ethiopia after so many false dawns had come and gone. He said, “Today it is the beginning of a new dawn for Ethiopia, for the dawn of Africa and for the entire African continent.”

Exactly two years after the start of the war between Ethiopia and the TPLF, a new peace agreement has been signed .According to information released in the follow up to the recent cease fire agreement between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF the two-year war has claimed 500,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million compatriot preys to near-famine conditions. Although these figures may be disputable, there is no denying the fact that the scale of the misery of war is staggering. At the end of the day, war brings more tragedy and more loss than gains. No statesman has ever said, “We gained from war!” This is not a matter of winners and losers but the end of all loss to the country.

As war has its price, so has peace. The tasks ahead are gargantuan. The restoration of law and peace, the supply of humanitarian supplies and most of all the silencing of the guns would require greater mobilization commitment and sacrifice than required by the conflict. The agreement addresses the need for transitional justice, and the restoration of a legal administration in Tigray as well as restoration of communication in Tigray and the resupply of services.

Conflicts can take place between two or more parties but peace building and reconciliation requires the attention, resources and commitment of the entire world. However, this is bound to prove easier than war making because the whole world will be involved in peace building in Ethiopia and that is where the hope for lasting and sustainable peace and the beginning of a new era of genuine reconciliation is built on.

The Ethiopian Herald November 12/2022