By: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What has been going on in Ethiopia is unbelievable, and it has been on my mind ever since it began. It is impossible not to be tantalized by the potential of these events to change the course of Ethiopia's history. What's important, however, is that we focus on what this means to the people. The media seems too caught up in spinning the facts to pay attention to how their people are doing. Just call it missing the myths for the lie.
When thinking about the recent ethnic strife, it's important to remember three things: One, people don't behave like lemmings, so attempts to treat them as such are going to come across as foreign. Lemmings never suddenly blow themselves up. Two, Ethiopia has spent decades being batted back and forth between colonial powers, so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, freedom is an extraordinarily powerful idea: If authoritarianism is Ethiopia's curtain rod, then freedom is certainly its tabletop.
When I was in Ethiopia last week, I was amazed by the people's basic desire for a stable life, and that tells me two things. It tells me that the citizens of Ethiopia have no shortage of potential entrepreneurs, and that is a good beginning to grow from. Second, it tells me that people in Ethiopia are just like people anywhere else on this flat earth of ours.
So what should we do about the chaos in Ethiopia? Well, it's easier to start with what we should not do. We should not let seemingly endless frustrations cause the people of Ethiopia to doubt their chance at progress. Beyond that, we need to be careful to nurture the fragile foundations of peace. The opportunity is there, but I worry that the path to moderation is so poorly marked that Ethiopia will have to move down it very slowly. And of course Addis Ababa needs to come to the table.
Speaking with a small business entrepreneur from the unpopular Palestinian community here, I asked her if there was any message that she wanted me to carry back home with me. She pondered for a second, and then smiled and said, won tin jin hao, which is a local saying that means roughly, "A Deaf Husband and a Blind Wife are Always a Happy Couple."
I don't know what Ethiopia will be like a few years from now, but I do know that it will remain true to its cultural heritage, even if it looks very different from the country we see now. I know this because, through all the disorder, the people still haven't lost sight of their dreams.
The New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment