Since day one of the ongoing conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea three perverse dialectics that end up victimizing Eritrea, all epicentered along the fault-line precariously occupied by the Woyanies, have been going on unabated. First, there is this side-dialogue between the Woyanies and the critically positioned mediating outside forces (the US and the OAU being the main ones) that perversely prioritizes Ethiopia’s stability over Eritrea’s. It remains a "side” dialogue because it marginalizes Eritrea by pushing it to the periphery of the arbitration scene. It remains "unarticulated not "because of actions taken, rather of actions deliberately avoided by the involved outside forces. Second, there is this dialectic between the Woyanies and their main constituency that promises the settling of old scores, at a minimum level, and the delivery of Greater Tigray, at a maximum level. And third, there is this most deviant all these dialectics between the Woyanies and the Amharas that promises the erection of the temple of their unholly alliance on the ashes of Eritrea, whose foundations are deliberately built over a shifting ground with the full intention of finally toppling it on one another. In all of these, Eritrea occupies an oblique presence, and for that a forced one. It is here then, within these perverse dialectics, where the war identified as a border conflict gets scant recognition, that Eritrea’s victimization gets its fullest and clearest characterization.

In this article it is the last dialectic – the one holding between the Amharas and the Woyanies – that we will put into scrutiny, and for that mainly the roles played by the Amharas. Besides this being the core dialectic wherein the other two dialectics subsist, it is the dialectic where most of the devious motives that victimize Eritrea clearly emerge to the surface. I will argue that it is only when we look at the war as a means whereby one party is trying desperately to maintain the prevailing ethnic pecking order (the Woyanies) and the other party is attempting to rearrange this order in its favor (the Amharas) that these devious motives – the promise of the sea, the promise of settling old scores, the promise Greater Tigray, the promise of changing guards in the palace, etc – gain their transparency.

I am fully aware that various people have already addressed the issue of who the victim is and who the aggressor is in this conflict rather extensively. My excuse for revisiting the topic is the belief that it is not in the analysis of the war as an event seen in “Ethiopia vis-à-vis Eritrea” approach, but in the analysis of the war as a converging point between the Woyanies and the Amharas – and therefore, within their perverse dialectics – that Eritrea’s victimization gets its best characterization. The reason is simple: the reasons that brought the Amharas and the Woyanies to the converging point – the war against Eritrea – are the very reasons that victimize Eritrea. But here is the crucial point: it is not in the cohesiveness of the converging point – or, if you will, in the “solidarity” reached by the participants -, but rather in what it potentially holds for the realization of their divergent and conflicting goals, that we should seek the motives that target Eritrea as their victim. While the analysis of the war as an event that holds between Ethiopia and Eritrea puts Eritrea as a target at one end of this devious transaction, the analysis of the war as a converging point puts Eritrea as a target caught in a cross fire between these two age-old enemies. Clearly, the motives that we would attribute to the latter would be different than the one we would attribute to the former.

The analysis of the war as a conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea blocks us from seeing three phenomena essential to the explanation of the victimization of Eritrea. First, it blocks us from seeing various aspects of perversity that take explicit form only within the context of the Amhara-Woyanie dialectic, all aspects ending up making a victim out of Eritrea. Second, by acquiescing in the newly constructed identity of “Ethiopia,” it inadvertently helps hide the identities of the real aggressors – the Amharas and the Woyanies. And last, it is instrumental in hiding the real motives that victimize Eritrea. This, of course, automatically follows from the second point. If the an analysis blocks us from identifying the real aggressors, then it goes without saying that it is pointless to attribute motives to unidentified parties.

In this article, I will attempt to address the following questions :

1. How is the concept of “perversity”, as is only relevant to the topic at hand, to be explicated? And wherein lies the connection between the perversity displayed by the dialectic under analysis and the victimization of Eritrea?
2. Why focus on the analysis of the war as a converging point of the Woyaneis and the Amharas rather than as an event that holds between Ethiopia and Eritrea? Wherein lie the advantages in such an approach?
3. What are the aspirations and dreams (and, of course, the motives that lie behind them) of the Amharas; aspirations and dreams that have only come to gain currency since the start of the war? And how do those aspirations and dreams end up victimizing Eritrea?

Aspects of perversity

The Webster Third New International Dictionary (1981) defines "perverse" as "turned away from what is right or good: CORRUPT, WICKED" and as "contrary to accepted standards or practice:INCORRECT, IMPROPER." It is not simply this deviance from right as is displayed by the ongoing dialogue between the Amharas and the Woyanies that interest us, but so far as it negatively affects Eritrea only. Since this topic will be dealt with later in this paper extensively, the various aspects of perversity that afflict the dialectic under analysis will only be briefly discussed here. Nevertheless it is vital that the reader gets the feel of the extent of the problem before we get into the crux of the matter.

There are two questions that we have to keep in mind when examine these various aspects of perversity that permeate the Woyanie–Amhara dialectic: (1) What are the characteristics that make this or that aspect of the dialectic perverse? Here an explanation of what is it that has deviated from what is right or correct has to be arrived at first independent of the issue of the conflict. (2) And how does these particular characteristics end up victimizing Eritrea? Here a link between the identified aspect of perversity and the victimization of Eritrea has to be established.

Imagine a situation where two persons are communicating with one another. Now ask yourself where in this communication could things go wrong so as to render the dialogue perverse? Could it be in the nature of the identity of the participants? Could it be in the nature of the medium of communication? could it be in the nature of context of the dialogue? Could it be in the nature of the motives for conducting the dialogue? Or couldn't it be in the nature of the outcome of the dialogue? A perversity in one aspect of the dialect would render the whole dialogue perverse.But what I will be claiming now is that the Woyanie-Amhara dialectic will be found perverse in all five counts.

There are then five aspects of perversity referring to different aspects of the dialectic that need to be looked at.

1. The identity of the involved parties - There is something wrong when a person poses as someone else. Stolen identities have been the staple of the criminal world. But it gets down right perverse when two antagonistic parties pose as one so as to keep a third party off the track of the conflicting motives that they hold against one another. Of course, the extent of the perversity involved in this shouldn’t block us from seeing the brilliance of the strategy employed here: How could a third party ever come to attribute conflicting motives to "one" entity?

   One aspect of perversity of the Woyanie-Amhara dialogue lies in the new identity of “Ethiopia” that they have come to commonly construct. This new construct has become a camouflage behind which their divergent motives gain opaque vitality. All tracks that lead to these deviant motives are wiped out by this new identity.

   In an act fit for a comedy (had it not been for its tragic consequences), the Amharas and the Woyanies have come to adopt one another under the guise of this newly discovered identity. The Woyanies, masters of deception that they are, suddenly woke up one morning and proclaimed to the rest of Ethiopia that they have re discovered the “Ethiopianness that has always been latent in them.” And to the delight of Amharas, they became ardent born-again Ethiopians. And now the Amahras, who have always believed that they have an exclusive right over Ethiopia and whatever is rendered "Ethiopian", suddenly found ample room for “Tigrean patriotism.” Even though the Tartuffery involved in the ceremony of this baptism carries its own dose of perversity, it is the selling of this fake identity to powerful outside forces that plays a detrimental role in victimizing Eritrea. The semblance of a univocal stance that emerges as a result of the construction of this fake identity is instrumental in hiding the real dialectic – with all its devious motives – that victimizes Eritrea from these outside forces that are critically positioned to affect the outcome of events.

   Once one acquiesces in the new identity “Ethiopia”, it is only a minor step to misidentify the war as a border conflict and as an issue of “national pride”. And once this step is taken, it is only natural that one should try to resolve the border problematic or to look ways for redressing the wounded pride of Ethiopia. But once the war is identified for what it is, it is easy to see the futility in the “appeasement approach” preferred by the US and the OAU. These approaches get their logic from misidentifying the real motives of the war.

2. The language of the dialectic – We all expect that the medium used to communicate with us would signify nothing above and over the literal meanings that we come to endow them with. We would be very disappointed if the medium carries covert meanings that would compromise us, mock us, subvert us or even totally divest the meanings we have come to invest into those words in the first place. And we will definitely be mad if all of this is done with the intention of making us a side-audience; that is, with a third party as a primary audience in the communicator’s mind.

   This second aspect of the perversity of the Woyanie-Amhara dialectic lies in the language of deception they have come masterfully to concoct. These chronically antagonistic forces have come to wear a facade of common purpose – the mission “to protect Ethiopia’s integrity and sovereignty” – whose pretentiousness remains totally transparent to one another and yet intended to remain opaque to the mediating outside forces and the donor community in general.

   Like “Qine”, the main form of poetry in Ethiopia, the language of deception developed in this conflict is Janus-faced, the same linguistic tokens – be it script or acoustic – are endowed with various literal meanings, mostly in conflict with one another, but yet able to avoid inconsistency because they are tailor-made to fit the ears of various audiences with conflicting agendas. What sounds like “clarifications” to the foreign cars, it is a call to arms to the domestic audience. What sounds as a “border conflict” to the mediating outside forces, it is a call to the march to the sea to the masses of Ethiopia. What sounds as “ matter of principle” to a puzzled outsider, it is time for settling old scores to the Amhara and the Tigreans. And the linguistic acrobatics goes on and on.

   So far the world seem to have taken this language of deception as being an authentic one, the testimony to this being the various modifications it is willing to make in the peace proposal to accommodate Ethiopia. But this deception is rather sinister for it is a willful one, one that comes from an ulterior motive to “never let Ethiopia down.” In the meantime the Woyanies have been able to buy enough time to conduct another of their wars. How this will (and has) negatively affected Eritrea are too obvious to relate.

3. The context of the dialectic - There is something wrong when the means used doesn’t justify the end. If this is meant to be taken in a moral sense then it might turn out a hard sell for someone who is morally unscrupulous. But it gets downright perverse if the means used end up derailing the intended goal – all in the agent’s own terms. Take, for instance, the case of a woman who tries to keep some dogs from entering the house by throwing at them pieces of meat in the compound. But if the whole purpose of this exercise is to keep the dogs away from eating the meat in the house, the means ends up defeating the purpose. What we find in the Woyanie-Amhara dialectic is much more worse, for the gains expected to accrue in the end are much more smaller than the losses that would accrue in the very making of the means.

   An epidemic – AIDS – and a famine of biblical proportions are currently ravaging Ethiopia. With a fraction of the amount of money that Ethiopia is spending for its war machine, it could have totally averted the latter, and substantially slowed the former. But using a convoluted logic that only an equally convoluted mind could concoct, the Woyanies and the Amharas have agreed that it is worth it to redress a "humiliation" at one level (“the aggression of Eritrea”) by accepting a humiliation at another level. Perfecting beggary into a form of art, they have been shamelessly “stretching their hands” to all corners of the earth for donor money. But what is really sad is that all of this is unnecessary, for the former humiliation is only imagined and the latter perversely denied. It shows the extent of the alliance’s sick mind that imagined injuries should be redressed through real ones.

   A third aspect of the perversity of the Woyanie-Amhara dialectic then is to be found in the conditions that these antagonistic parties have demanded from one another for their pact to hold. Of particular importance – in the sheer value for their perversity – are the Faustian deals that they have entered with one another and with their respective populations in the hope that their hostile bid of one another would soon come to fruition. They have agreed to meet at a converging point – the war against Eritrea – with the full knowledge that such a convergence would announce a tremendous suffering for their people. This is especially true in the case of the Amhara elite who are, in their hunger for power, willing to keep a blind eye to the two ravages – AIDS and famine – that are adversely stalking their land, all in the perverted hope that in the end this sinister silence will pave way for the power restructuring that will put them back to the top.In short, they are willing millions of peasants of their own kind to suffer - and die - in exchange of power.

   For Eritrea, again the consequences of this unholly alliance are clear: it is the larger resources of Ethiopia – both human and material - that are being put into the disposal of the Woyanies’ war machine.

4. The motives of the dialectic – In a game of cards you and your partner would come to agree on a common means where one of you would end up a winner and the other a loser. But a common means shouldn’t be confused for a common purpose. You could clearly see this by moving the stakes higher. Suppose two old enemies, having decided that the town is too small to hold both of them, decide to settle their differences through a Russian roulette, using a gun. The purposes here are as divergent as could be. The lesson here is that a point of coordination is not necessarily a point of cooperation.

   The above related phenomenon is what is reflected in the fourth aspect of perversity exhibited by the Woyanie-Amhara dialectic, an aspect of perversity whose invested hope is that in time the “common purpose” crafted by these antagonists would out spend its temporarily assigned purpose and give way to the realization of their age-old divergent and conflicting goals; one that aims at keeping the current ethnic pecking order intact until Greater Tigray is delivered, and the other that aims at scuttling these dreams.

   The Amharas have laid all their hopes on the “common means” - i.e.,the war against Eritrea - to deliver their various aspirations, none of which that bode well with the Woyanies. Among these, there are especially two goals that aim directly at the Tigrean power base. One is the hope that as the war against Eritrea gets more and more intensified, the Tigrean power will increasingly get weakened. So the Amharas have no intention whatsoever to end the war now; it is too early in the game to let Eritrea off the hook. The other goal is that, in the end of all this, a permanent wedge between Eritrea and Tigray will be created. They need the continuation of the war until they feel sure that such an acrimony is reached between the two that a point of no return has been achieved. After the degradation of the Tigrean power and the severance of the “Tigrigna-connection”, the Amharas intend to make their final move. They would give the Tigreans two unenviable options: either accept a second pecking order in the Abyssinian ethnic hierarchy or face a complete destruction. Of course, the Woyanies are no fools either. In anticipation all of this, they are in the process of implementing every imaginable counter move. The gamut of these counter moves runs from callous strategies in the war fields that would make sure that the brunt of the burden be carried by other ethnic groups to safe-clauses in the constitution that would make the disintegration of Ethiopia a sure thing in the event of their demise.

   Nowhere in all of this do we see a common purpose coming as a result of using a common means. The motives are as divergent, as conflicting, as devious and as hostile as could be.

   Leaving alone the plausibility of their aspirations, the Amharas at least need to carry this war to its bitter end if any of their dreams will have even the slightest chance of getting realized. The consequences of this to Eritrea need no relating at all.

5. The means of achievement - In the examples provided in number (4) – both the gamble example and the Russian roulette example – the consequences of the agents’ actions remain totally confined to the agents themselves. So you might say, “let them be as perverse as they want to be so far as they don’t hurt anybody else.” So your point would be that it would be much more perverse if an extraneous party is dragged into the scene simply because it would act as a catalyst in the process. Such is the role assigned to Eritrea within these tragic state of affairs. A fifth aspect of perversity of the Amahra-Woyanie dialogue then is to be found in the nature of the means by which their conflicting aspirations are meant to be met: the war against Eritrea.

When one chooses the means whereby he intends to achieve his end, he considers various properties that the means carries that would be instrumental in getting at his end. Some means could be very dependable but painstakingly slow in bringing about the desired end. Others could be fast but less dependable. Some could be cheap but slow. Others could be fast but costly. The Amharas seem to have settled on the last one.

Before the war broke out the Amharas were getting more and more desperate. Their hope of bringing the Tigrean rule to a quick end was coming to a dead end. Their opposition party was in disarray; and their media, though vocal, was increasingly shrill in desperation. There seemed to be no democratic venue available to effectively challenge the Tigrean rule. As the Tigrean power sent tentacles all over rural Ethiopia, there was no hope for the Amahras to start an armed insurgency. Neither the democratic option nor the armed struggle option seemed to be available to them. And besides, the Woyanies had implemented a number of effective steps that terminally neutralized the Amhara power in Ethiopia.

First, by ethnicizing the political map of Ethiopia, the Woyanies have effectively brought the hundred plus years old Amharization program to an end. Second, by allying themselves with various ethnic groups, they have succeeded in denying the Amharas from building a broader base. Third, by moving most of the resources to Tigray, they were taking the first steps in denying the Amharas from building a power base based on riches. And last, by convincing the West – especially the US – into their fake democracy (or at least that they are in the right direction), they have denied the Amharas from the “ferenji’s friendship” that they have been counting on since the days of Menelik. Effectively neutralized, it has began to dawn on the Amharas that the means through which they will have to bring the Woyanies down might be, after all, painstakingly slow. Imagine what their reaction was when the conflict with Eritrea started!

The Amhara intellectuals cried, “Eureka! Here is a means whereby we will get a quick result!” The Amharas didn’t give a damn whether patches of land were taken from Tigray (if they ever came to believe that). They had their own grievances of whole districts taken from Wollo and Gondar to form Greater Tigray. To them, what wetted their appetite was the very nature of the means – i.e., the very properties the means carried – that they could now make effective use of. The war against Eritrea is the catalyst they have bee searching for that would accelerate the downfall of the Woyanies. We can then say that the war against Eritrea is a catalyst in another sense: it is a catalyst that woke up the Amharas from their pessimistic slumber.

When you use someone involuntarily as a means you deny him his humanity. You use him as you use any tool – any piece of inanimate object. In this sense, it is the objectification of Eritrea in the hands of Amharas that we are witnessing.

Conclusion

My point has been that it is in the analysis of the war as a converging point that the various aspects of perversity that victimize Eritrea gain their transparency. In contrast, the analysis of the war as an event taking place between Ethiopia and Eritrea (although it might have its own merits in other respects) leaves most of these aspects opaque. If you have been following closely, you might have noticed that the war as a border conflict never shows up in all aspects of the Amhara-Woyanies dialogue. For the Amharas and the Woyanies the war as a border conflict is a non-issue. None of their divergent aspirations would ever be met if the war is taken as a border conflict. The identification of the war as a “border conflict” then simply ends up as grist for the Woyanies’ propaganda machine to grind.

It is not that the Eritrean government is to be exculpated in all of this. It is guilty on two counts, both having to do with its own people, and none with Ethiopia. First, it has to do with the lack of transparency as the conflict grew from minor border incursions, to blatant ones like that of Adi-Murug, and finally to the various incidents in Badme. Second, it has to do with the very poor profile of Woyanies that the Eritrean intelligence service have constructed through those years of “cooperation.” It seems that the Eritrean government fell victim to the same Janus-faced profile of the Woyanies that the outside world is now falling victim to. But none of these faults would even come close to the devious motives of the Woyanies and the Amharas; for all of Eritrea’s aspirations could easily be met by the simple demarcation of the border.

In the next posting (Part II) we will discuss the first two aspects of perversity extensively.