It takes two

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Peace which begs the question: if it takes two sides to fight a war doesn’t it take two sides to make peace?

Just as it takes two hands to clap it takes two to make peace and PM Abiy has taken pains to give credit where credit is due, that Eritrea President Issias Aferwerki, his partner in the peace process was the leader in this process. Abiy said it unequivocally on July 8, 2018 at the end of his speech welcoming Issias for the first time to Addis Ababa, stating that “Issias is leading us”.

Abiy is 43 years old, leading Ethiopia only since April of last year, 2018. Issias is well into his 70s and a gray haired battle hardened veteran with almost 60 years of revolutionary leadership under his belt. Who do you think was the primary party responsible for peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Abiy or “Issias is leading us”?

Abiy has been unstinting is his praise for Eritrea and our leadership, saying how, during his first visit here in June 2018, that he would like to be an unofficial foreign minister for Eritrea so he could let the truth be known and help fight the lies being told about our country.

Not a word of this is being mentioned in any of the international media other than in pages such as these and we here in Eritrea have learned to expect nothing else. For how can so called “democracies” allow praise for a leader who came to power through the armed struggle, by “the barrel of a gun”?

Revolutionary and socialist, Eritrean President Issias Aferwerki is an anathema to those perpetrating neo-colonialism to maintain control of the wealth of the richest continent on the planet, Africa. They do it through elections and the IMF, who supposedly saw their recent offer of $1.6 billion to “modernize” Eritrea’s economy ignored. Issias is not about to sell the future to pay for non-essentials today and fall into the trap of economic debt bondage that inflicts on the rest of Africa.

In other words, Eritrea will “never kneel down” as the national motto goes and the western powers will not recognize anything positive about us, to the point of ignoring reality when it comes to making peace.

It takes two hands to clap and it takes two parties to make peace. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee showed it’s real agenda in this case. Then again, this award was given to Barack “The Libya War Criminal” Obama so it’s not like Abiy is joining any sort of honorable inner circle, farfrom it.

We will wait and see what PM Abiy has to say when he accepts his award in Stockholm, though somehow his words will be twisted away from their real meaning and only one party will be praised for the impossible task of making peace all by themselves.

Excerpted from: ‘Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed Wins Nobel Peace Prize, But It Takes Two to Make Peace’.

Counterpunch.org