Anthropology of the Horn of Africa

The following text is a response sent to an email dispatched to me by the Chairman of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians who struggle for the Independence and Self-determination of the 5 millennia long Kushitic Ethiopian Nation of the Oromos.
The Hamitic - Kushitic Oromo Nation - due to criminal, inhuman and evil persecution conceived by the colonial powers (France, England and America) and executed by the colonially promoted barbaric and incestuous pseudo-Christian Abyssinians - lost their kingdoms and were engulfed within the Cemetery of Nations Fake Ethiopia, which consists in the world's most tyrannical realm and the location of the world's more abhorrent, more enduring, and more multifaceted genocides. There are more than 45 million Oromos in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) and Kenya today, despite the notorious and pathetic falsehood propagated by Wikipedia.
The present text enumerates all the major points of historical distortion and falsification carried out and diffused by the colonial academia, mass media, and diplomats, as well as by their local agents and criminal executioners, i.e. the barbaric, incestuous and Anti-Christian tribes of Amhara and Tigray (: the Abyssinians), who usurped the fair name of Ethiopia, which historically denotes the land of North Sudan and the Kushitic Nation that prospered there either in the Antiquity or in the Christian Era. Both, the Oromos and the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populations of Northern-Central Sudan are the descendants of Ancient Sudan's (i.e. Ancient Ethiopia's) Kushitic populations.
Representative photographic documentation was herewith added to the text in order to better illustrate the topic.

Refutation of historical forgeries propagated by European colonials and incestuous Abyssinians
First published here:
https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/kushitic-oromos-ancestry-in-ethiopia-ancient-sudan-semitic-amharas-tigrays-abyssinians-ancestry-in-yemen/

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

In the last 20 years the Ethiopian education system has rapidly expanded, leading to a 500% increase in primary school enrolment. The Ministry of Education (MoE) has sought to address a perceived decline in educational quality through nationally-mandated programmes for school improvement and teachers’ professional development . Such programmes – imported on the advice of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Department for International Development (DfID) and other development partners – are implemented “mechanistically”, without adaptation for societal or organisational cultural contexts. This article reviews empirical research from the last decade, including “grey” literature, in the school improvement (SI) and school effectiveness research (SER) traditions to draw implications for primary school principals in Ethiopia.

Preconceived ideas, misperceptions, misunderstandings and distortions are omnipresent within this book which served as basic point of study and reference for the formation of the English colonial policy in the area of the Horn of Africa at the second half of the 19th century. As criticism, refutation and commentary will be published after the re-publication of the entire book, I welcome your comments that along with mine will highlight the destructive role and the racist nature of the English colonialism.
First footsteps in East Africa or, An Exploration of Harar
By Richard Burton
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/burton/richard/b97f/index.html
Chapter II – Life in Zeyla
First published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 20th July 2008
Republished on 23rd July 2008 here:
http://xaqsoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/northern-somalia-and-zeyla-described-by.html

Coffee drinking is fundamental to social life in Ethiopia. Based on research in eastern Amhara Region between 2011 and 2015, this paper explores the omnipresent buna ceremony during which coffee is prepared and served, and its role in the lives of rural government workers as an occasion for building group solidarity as protection against the hardships they face. While Ethiopian society is commonly portrayed as highly authoritarian and hierarchical, this ethnographic account of the social lives of low-level officials complicates the picture of a strict divide between state and society, and is a contribution to calls for attention to the ways in which material practices continually constitute the state as a reality.

Winner of the 2017 Christine Wilson Graduate Award from the AAA's Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition.

Amharic as a Lingua Franca in Ethiopia (Amharic, a Creole Language between Ethiosemitic and Cushitic Lamguages).
(Original Publication: https://www.academia.edu/5514187/Amharic_as_lingua_franca_in_Ethiopia)
By: Ronny Meyer
Re-Publisher: Habesha Gaaffaa-Geeska Yäafrika, PhD., [Habesha Union (ሐበሻ)].

This paper is a summary of new research results on the obscure period of government under the uncrowned Emperor of Ethiopia, lij Iyasu, who was acting head of the state from late 1909 to 1916 (not from 1913 to 1916 as modern history books usually claim), in a crucial period of northeastern Africa, marked by the outbreak of World War I. The form of a "glossary" was chosen in order to facilitate insights into a number of rather unknown topics, but also well-known (in some cases controversial) discussions, largely based on recent new research and new archival findings. This form also allows access to the theme to a wider interested public, lij Iyasu's government still being a subject of wide debate in Ethiopia. Many of these topics are first discussed in this paper. As this is part of a book, references within the short passages are kept short, but refer to the major sources.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

Traditional database access mechanisms use role based methods and attribute based information to present and store facts. Ewes have the belief that every adult portrays the child s/he was, and every child portrays the adult s/he will become, and in every society, children grow to become the adult whose traits they exhibit in childhood. As such, some of such adult traits are believed to be part of their behavior patterns in their stages of life and growth. The saying that 'agble si le nu wɔ ge la xi mee wokpɔnɛ lena (the bumper of a harvest is seen in the growth of the seedlings)" emphasises the futuristic view of Ewes on their children. Generally, folklore, for centuries, has been a tool for various social functions and a treasure of knowledge. Among the Ewes, oral tradition has been, and is playing fundamental and advanced roles in the study of various folkloric and narrative elements and proverbs are not an exception. Proverbs, as the philosophical views of societies, provide extensive data for folkloric studies. In reality, proverbs and other figurative expressions as well as indirect and direct expressions project pictorial concepts about a people. These provide a password for in-depth study about a people, and in this context the Ewe people. This study investigates how proverbs reveal who a child or adult is in the wisdom of the Ewes. This informs on how the needy and the weak are seen and catered for among Ewes as well as how role performance and responsibility measures are regulated among Ewes. The study employs contextual and functional approaches on studying this concept in the natural setting. Data was collected through documents, interviews, group discussions and native speaker intuitions. Data from primary sources were recorded, transcribed and translated for analysis. The analysis was in logical narrative form. It shows that children are part of the community, embodying past and future traditions of a society. They are viewed as valuable and immature hence need care, love, affection and much attention while elders are viewed as knowledgeable, experienced, wise, and custodians of culture and tradition as well as agents of their transmission. In addition, age and gender were found to be regulating or skewing expressions involving child-adult relations when proverbs are used. It views literature as the blend of knowledge, culture and architecture and their employment is performing acceptable sociocultural roles. The study concludes that the substance of the content, the text and the intentions for speech performances involving proverbs and others are controlled by relational parameters of gender, age, appearance, environment (habitat, climate, space and time), roles and responsibilities, context and purpose of the speech occasion. 1.0 Introduction Studies on traditional data adopt 'roles' and attributes' as information components that present and store facts about a system or an occurrence. The attributes inform on qualities that give form and meaning to components deemed as fit in performing given roles. In this regard, compositions surrounding the understanding of life or a system consist of a relational view on the natural form, behavior, appearance and location of things as compared to the other. Such relations present a direct or indirect information about the features or forms of one object that makes it unique in performing certain roles as or than the others. It also shows that one needs to be familiar with each entity and the features in order to understand why and how they function and exist. This study considers how Ewe proverbs present children and adults and their roles in the society. Here, words are used to elicit and describe who an adult or a child is as found in the selected wise sayings or proverbs of the people. These wise sayings or proverbs are the highest forms of knowledge and understanding through which the totality of the culture or ways of life of the people are portrayed, performed and preserved. It is the total core, which projects the beliefs, the traditions and the wisdom of the people through verbal and non-verbal arts. Language is used mostly, for the constructions, representation and interpretation of such compositions or the proverbs. As an oral art, such compositions demand the higher mental properties of decoding and encoding texts, associating and analyzing the texts along the lines of how they are constructed, the components used in the compositions and how they are used in contexts as acceptable according to the culture of the people. Employing such approaches (Dogbey, 2012) in order to have a clear understanding of a people through the various forms of their language usage is believed to be having a correlation with individual's psychological levels of maturity, experiences and the acceptable or standardized social ways of expressing thoughts. Being literate in such knowledge and education of a people made one a cultured citizen of that society and one can function by playing varied roles among the people. These features and assumptions made some scholars to classify proverbs as speech for the elders and the learned in the society (Dogbey, 2012).

In three earlier articles,, we briefly described the place of Somalia as commercial and navigational hub at the times of the Late Antiquity, we identified Malao (today's Berbera) as capital of 'the Other Berberia', and we underscored the fact that the port of call Avalites (Assab) was presented as part of Somalia (the 'Other Berberia'), and not Axumite Abyssinia. In addition, we refuted aberrations advanced by Jesse Benjamin, who believes that (no Somalis, no Yemenites, no Meroitic Ethiopians, no Axumite Abyssinians but) Nabataean Aramaeans controlled the African land routes and that these roads helped transport the largest part of the merchandise.

We referred to the major textual source of our information, namely the Ancient Greek text 'Periplus of the Red Sea', which was written ca. 70 CE by an anonymous Alexandrian Egyptian merchant and captain, who certainly had personal experience in vast parts of that navigation and trade network area and wished to compile a kind of guide for sailors and traders.

From 'the Other Berberia' to Azania

Completing the series of articles on the excerpts of the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' that bear evidence to the 'Other Berberia', a country that spanned from Eritrea's Assab to the Somali harbour of Ras Hafun, we will focus here on the easternmost coasts of that land.
2008-05-19
http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/Sailing-around-the-Horn-of-Africa--before-2000-years/102092

Öz Modern toplumların sahip oldukları inanç ve geleneklerin çoğunluğunun izleri eskiçağın derinliklerine kadar uzanmaktadır. Bunlardan bir tanesi de Bucranium kültü adı verilen ve genel olarak kurban edilen boğa hayvanına ait kafatasının, asıldığı yeri kutsama inancıdır. Anadolu için, bu inancın örnekleri olarak düşünebileceğimiz malzemeler Neolitik Dönemden itibaren yaygın bir şekilde görülebilmektedir. Göbeklitepe'de bulunan T sütunlarda boğa figürü işlenmiş ve özellikle Çatalhöyük'te Bucranium örnekleri görülmüştür. M. Ö. III. binyıla ait olan Alacahöyük mezarlarında boğa kafatasları bulunmuştur. Hitit dini inancına göre boğa, fırtına tanrısı Tešup'un simgesi olarak Hitit eserlerinde yer almıştır. Eski Yunan ve Roma dönemlerine ait birçok eserde de Bucranium örnekleri görülebilmektedir. Konya ilinin güneyinde yer alan Bozkır ilçesinin bazı evlerinin duvarlarında boğa kafataslarının asıldığı görülmektedir. Bu çalışmada, Bozkır ilçesinde bulunan Bucranium kültünün yansımaları incelenecektir. • Anahtar Kelimeler Bucranium, Boğa Kültü, Boğa İnancı
•
Abstract The belief and traditions, have gotten modern society, that the trails of plurality trace to deep of prehistoric period. One of these is named Bucranium cult is faith generally to consecrate the skull of was sacrificed bull where hang on. It can seen commonly examples of this faith since Neolithic Period for Anatolia. Especially it was seen examples of bucranium in Çatalhöyük and the bull figure was engraved T pillars in Göbeklitepe. The bull skulls was found out in Alacahöyük belonged to B. C. IIIrd millenium. According to Hittite religious belief, the bull took place in Hittite objects as Tešup, the storm god of the Hittites. Also it can see examples of bucranium in many object which was belong to Ancient Greece and Rome. Bozkır take place in South of Konya. It is seen that the bull skulls was hanged on the walls of some home in county. In this works, will examine the reflects of Bucranium cult in Bozkır county. •

Following an earlier article about the recent developments in the area of Sanaag, I came to recall a fascinating text that is not widely known among today´s Somalis. I would characterize it as a Classic of Orientalist literature, and it was written in the middle of the 19th century.

However, it was not written for the purpose of educating the ancestors of modern Somalis. In fact, it was composed by a leading English adventurer and Orientalist who contributed greatly to the formation of a great number of ideas and preconceived schemes the English shared about the wider Red Sea area, involving the Eastern African coast, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa.

The book is a real goldmine in revealing precisely

1. how the colonial European powers, and more specifically, the English, projected their preconceived ideas about other nations, religions, faiths, histories and cultures, their misconceptions, delusions, misapprehensions, and their misunderstandings onto the sphere of academic knowledge, science, and truth,

2. how they fell victims of their own errors,

3. how their initial errors dragged them to further and more critical, political, errors,

4. how they projected their aforementioned inconsistencies onto the sphere of the foreign policy, and more particularly onto their relationship with the various local peoples, and

5. how this unfortunate chain of discrepancies and anomalies was projected onto the Somalis to plunge them in confusion and tie them with the colonial power.

The book, in and by itself, reveals in a splendid way what colonialism has always been: a misunderstanding and an aberration built thereon.

Somalia in its totality is not the main subject of the book; a marginal part of Somalia is. However, Harar´s historical magnificence and radiance was such that anything written about Harar normally concerns parts of the greater Somalia.

Not a single chapter of the main part of the book describes the illustrious province of Sanaag; the first Appendix does. As a matter of fact, it is about a diary written and the observations made by an English army lieutenant, who was the first to identify the Lake Victoria as source of the Nile, and he was the first European to reach there. The lieutenant is not the author of the book, who also was a famous explorer, and bitter rivalry characterized the two English explorers.

The diary concerns none else than Lieutenant Speke for whom an interesting, brief but informative, profile was composed by the BBC Historic Figures section (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/speke_john_hanning.shtml).

The book was written by Richard Burton, the famous explorer and treacherous traveler, who – due to his excellent linguistic skills in Arabic – managed to enter Mecca, although a Christian. He was the first European to enter Harar, Africa´s holiest Islamic shrine and the Islamic world´s fourth most venerated place. An introductory presentation can be found in wikipedia, but it is highly biased (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton). On the contrary, an interesting book review about his ´First footsteps in East Africa or, An Exploration of Harar´ and Burton´s adventures in Harar was published here: http://www.roadjunky.com/article/711/richard-burton-harar-travel-book.

I republish here integrally the Appendix I, Diary and Observations Made by Lieutenant Speke, When Attempting to Reach the Wadi Nogal. Richard Burton´s ´First footsteps in East Africa or, An Exploration of Harar´ was published in 1856.

I would be ready to publish various comments, and to comment on excerpts of Lieutenant Speke´s Diary, so I welcome your comments, corrections, rectifications, and criticism of this deeply anti-Somali text.

I re-publish the controversial text here because I am convinced that it reveals negative intentions against, and a wrong perception of, Somalia; the ensuing English colonization of the northern part of Somalia was carried out by people who were based …. precisely on this text!

It is therefore essential for today´s Somalis not to have illusions about the permanently anti-Somali policies of England. To liberate, pacify, re-unify, and rehabilitate Somalia, one has to bear this in mind.

Diary and Observations Made by Lieutenant Speke, When Attempting to Reach the Wadi Nogal - Appendix I
From: First footsteps in East Africa or, An Exploration of Harar
by Richard Burton
First published in AfroArticles, American Chonicle, and Buzzle on 17th July 2008
Republished on 23rd July 2008 here:
http://xaqsoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/richard-burton-on-sanaag-at-origins-of.html

For the past year and a half, al-Shabaab has continued to take advantage of the ongoing political and security turmoil between Somalia’s federal government, regional state administrations, and other powerful social groups, including the country’s clans and sub-clans and minority groups. Militarily, the jihadi-insurgent group retains significant capabilities to launch a range of attacks targeting both military and “soft” targets, including major suicide-vehicle bombings inside the most secure areas of the country such as central Mogadishu. In 2017, the group also overran a number of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali government military bases and forcefully reasserted itself in the northern Puntland region. Meanwhile, the Islamic State in Somalia, al-Shabaab’s main jihadi competitor, continues to lag behind it in terms of numbers, military capabilities, and media reach, though there are recent signs that the Islamic State-Somalia has been able to penetrate more deeply into the Afgooye area to the west of the capital and outside of its Puntland base.

The fluidity of state-religion interaction has always been a challenge demanding creative responses. For many centuries, religion determined Ethiopia's local, regional, and international ventures. Yet, as this could not continue, at least officially, beyond the monarchical rule, different modes of interaction characterized the nature of state-religion relation. Unlike the Dergue regime, the nature of state-religion interaction increasingly became a matter of managing religions under successive administrations. Although the Dergue regime, either due to its ideological aversion or practical reasons, had been less interested in managing religions, the same thing can not be said for what came after it.

The author posted independently in his blog the answer that he gave to a viewer of a video-presentation of my article "Yemenis are Not Arab - Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis". The video is uploaded in many portals; indicatively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpOx9xiHNGc
The author referred to me before replying and so his answer fully represents my opinion on the matter.
https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/if-yemenis-are-not-arab-why-did-the-romans-call-yemen-arabia-felix/

The classical sociological literature on Amhara hierarchy describes a society based on open relations of domination and an obsession with top-down power. This article asks how these accounts can be reconciled with the strong ethics of love and care that ground daily life in Amhara. We argue that love and care, like power, are understood in broadly asymmetrical terms rather than as egalitarian forms of relationship. As such, they play into wider discourses of hierarchy , but also serve to blur the distinction between legitimate authority and illegitimate power.

This paper is written from field research performed in Ethiopia between 2010-2011. It is about Ethiopian Policy on handling Conflict Resolution specifically focusing on the Afar and Harrar Regions. It is found that the government relies heavily on traditional conflict mediation techniques and has a heavy hand on what methods can be used. Due to IRB requirements and the nature of some of my interviews and their safety, their identities are to remain classified.

Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, La Reine Mysterieuse (the Mysterious Queen) Hatshepsut, Pygmalion, Paris, 2002, 504p.

The last book of the famous French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt is dedicated to a not yet very well-known royal person of the Pharaonic times: Maatkare Hatshepsut, the First Queen of the World History. The importance of Hatshepsut lies above all in the fact that, referring to her, we use the term "queen" not in the simple sense "wife to a Pharaoh", but with the meaning of the sole and indisputable ruler of the country. In that way, Hatshepsut has truly been the first queen all over the World! Daughter to Tuthmosis I, wife to Tuthmosis II and aunt to Tuthmosis III, Maatkare Hatshepsut prevented the latter from becoming a Pharaoh and fully exercising his tasks, and she ruled in his stead for about 20 years, 1479 - 1457 according to the recent studies of Desroches-Noblecourt (p. 8 - 10).
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First published in the Egyptian monthly CLEO, October 2002
Republished online in Buzzle: 2nd August 2005
Transformed into a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEH9cFUoyfw

Between 1984 and 1996, public health authorities in Israel maintained a secret policy of discarding blood donations made by Ethiopian-Israeli citizens and immigrants. Officials later attempted to justify this policy on the grounds that immigrants from Ethiopia were subject to high rates of infectious disease (especially HIV). In 1996, this led to an explosive and violent confrontation between Ethiopian-Israeli protestors and agents of the state, including police and public health authorities. This essay explores the cultural and political context of that confrontation, including the discourse of political violence which it occasioned. The conflict between Ethiopian-Israelis and the state was located within a wider set of political contexts, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was linked to it through a shared trope of “spilled blood” common to both. Cultural analyses which ignore this dynamic political context are in danger of seriously misrepresenting the meaning of the “Blood Affair” to its participants. At the same time, this essay also engages a critical analysis of the public health policies which led to the crisis. Public health and nationalist discourse reinforced one another at the expense of Ethiopian immigrants in general, and so-called “Feres Mura” Ethiopians in particular.

"This anthropological study describes a specific form of mediation, as it is practiced in Ethiopia (Northeast Africa) by members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups. It introduces elders as male household-heads in their advanced ages, who settle conflicts and arrange marriages for the members of the junior generations. There are not only 'easy' cases dealt with, which one might assume to be too 'unimportant' for state courts or other juridical institutions but also aggravated cases that may affect the wider group or that have inter-ethnic dimensions. The study uses specific case studies of marriage, bride abduction, physical injury and homicide for illustration. Within the book, reference is made to speech-act-theory and the 'new ethnographic' approach related to it. Both rhetoric strategies and non-verbal means of communication are discussed, such as postures, gestures, spatial arrangements, numerical symbolisms, or the deliberate use of certain kinds of dress and of material objects. Special attention is paid to the use of ritual in mediation procedures. The book brings to light significant regularities that are inherent to the different types of elders' proceedings. Peculiar elements and phases can be distinguished that re-occur in all types of processes analysed in the study. This cannot exclusively be explained by reference to 'process', as a general idea of people negotiating law. It moreover hints to the existence of a formal 'procedure', which follows its own rules. Accordingly, a change of perspective 'from process to procedure' is suggested in the book's programmatic title.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_2776.ahtml

Book Order US:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Process-Procedure-Aethiopistische-Forschungen/dp/3447066113/

Book Order Germany:
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In the years ahead, Yemen may have another chance of progress and radiation. This will happen only if the Yemenites assess better their non-Arab history and identity. Yemen should join other Eastern African countries in an economic, political, and cultural union, closing the door to the fictitious Arab world.
First published in Buzzle on 4th August 2005
www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-4-2005-74197.asp
Republished: http://phoenicia.org/imgs/YemenAfricaArabWorld.pdf

PhD Thesis, Social Anthropology Department, University of Edinburgh 2017
Passed with no corrections
Supervisors: Dimitri Tsintjilonis and Maya Mayblin (University of Edinburgh)
Examiners: Andreas Bandak (University of Copenhagen) and Magnus Course (University of Edinburgh).

Il pregio del libro di Fabio Fichera s'intuisce sin dal titolo volutamente ossimorico Ammalarsi di benessere che richiama, da una parte, le narrazioni della malattia e le pratiche della cura osservate in un'area dell'Etiopia e, dall'altra, i programmi di sviluppo promossi dal Governo e dalla cooperazione internazionale. È questo solido incastro tra prospettive soggettive, credenze e prassi comunitarie e dimensione politica che marca l'andamento del ragionamento restituendo la complessità del fenomeno. La categoria di "corpo", che -come ricorda l'autore (p. 74) -si applica all'individuo, alla società (corpo sociale) e alla politica (corpo politico), restituisce la pluralità dei livelli di analisi. La ricerca etnografica è stata svolta nel periodo 2010-2013 nel villaggio di Shala, nel nord del territorio oromo abitato dagli arsi. L'intero distretto di Shala è un'area rurale, come gran parte del Paese abitato per l'80% da contadini, dove sono carenti i servizi pubblici (rete idrica, rete telefonica, strade, fognature, energia elettrica), così come le strutture sanitarie ed educative. «L'aspettativa di vita per un uomo rimane al di sotto dei 45 anni e solo il 2% della popolazione supera i 64 anni» (p. 59). Le politiche di sviluppo, promosse già in epoca imperiale e in seguito dal regime di ispirazione comunista del Derg (1974Derg ( -1991, sono state rilanciate dalla Presidenza e dal Governo di Meles Zenawi (1991-2012) che mirava a ottenere l'autosufficienza alimentare (raggiunta nel 1995) e a promuovere l'esportazione di surplus. Per incrementare la produzione agricola il Governo è ricorso a fertilizzanti, micro-credito e semenze selezionate (coltivazioni di mais nel caso Shala). Benché fautore di una "democrazia rivoluzionaria" basata sui principi del leninismo, dello stalinismo e del maoismo (p. 40), l'Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (a leadership tigrina) ha promosso l'inserimento del Paese nell'economia del mercato globale. Ne è scaturito un amalgama paradossale tra politiche neoliberiste ed economia burocratizzata senza spazio per l'iniziativa privata. Lo sviluppo è divenuto una fonte di legittimazione per un Governo sempre più autoritario (p. 43).

Based on ethnographic research I conducted as senior honors student, this paper examines the ways in which Ethiopians in Israel talk about race and color as elements of both distinction and shared identity in the context of meetings with African Americans, white Israeli and American Jews and Black Hebrews in Israel

The State of Israel was consolidated in the early twentieth century as the homeland of the Jewish people. While nominally secular, it also acknowledged in law and practice the complex , possibly inextricable relationship between ethnic, religious and national or genealogical forms of imagining what it means to be a Jew in the modern world. In one celebrated Supreme Court case, it was made clear that a "Jew," for purposes of immigration, could not include someone who clearly identified in a religious sense with Christianity. Yet the demography of Israel has been changing through mass immigration (especially from the USSR and Ethiopia) as well as strong foreign missionary efforts. In the Ethiopian case, tens of thousands of individuals immigrated over the last two decades who were considered by the state to be descendants of converts to Orthodox (or Protestant) Christianity: their case was normalized, from the state's point of view, by encouraging them to undergo a state-sponsored "return to Judaism" program that brought ethnic and religious grounds of identification back into synch. Yet this has remained contested and conflictual at both the policy level and the level of everyday, vernacular experience of Ethiopians. Moreover, a smaller but even more challenging group of Ethiopians, from the state's point of view, have begun, with other Jewish Israelis, to embrace various forms of Messianic Judaism and charismatic Christianity in Israel--making a frontal collision with the state's basic imaginary almost inevitable. My paper, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork among both groups of Ethiopian-Israelis,  begins to pry apart the  tortured relationship between Christianity and Jewishness in the Ethiopian case: its corollaries in everyday religion, distinctive practices of aversion or mimesis, and its explosive political implications for Israeli self-understanding.

On Ovtober 4 th , 2002 women from eight different ethnic groups arrived at the South Omo Research Center in Jinka. Spme came with their husbands, some with their children. For four days questionsconcerning "The Pride and Social Worthiness of Women in South Omo" were discussed. As our aim was to disuss various aspects concerning all life stages of a woman, we invited from each group an elder woman, a young married woman or bride, and an unmarried girl.

Il nuovo lavoro di Matteo Guglielmo 1 si intitola Il Corno d'Africa. Eritrea, Etiopia, Somalia pubblicato dalla casa editrice Il Mulino nella collana Universale Paperbacks nei primi mesi del 2013. Questo testo cerca di analizzare una regione del mondo che è sempre stata al centro degli interessi politici ed economici sia delle grandi potenze europee -come Gran Bretagna e Francia -, sia degli Stati Uniti d'America e dell'Unione Sovietica durante gli anni della Guerra Fredda. La complessità storica, geografica e politica di questa regione africana porta Matteo Guglielmo a cercare un filo conduttore lungo il quale costruire una narrazione approfondita del Corno d'Africa. Questa prima difficoltà incontrata nella ricerca ben si evince sin dalle prime parole dell'autore che a tal proposito afferma: Su questo punto ho trovato utile considerare proprio il "conflitto" come il tratto distintivo che attraversa -a vari gradi e livelli -tutto il Corno d'Africa, e l'approccio cronologico il miglior metodo di rappresentazione, in quanto la sequenzialità degli eventi può forse rendere più visibili quelle che sono le ciclicità storiche che continuano a segnare quest'area. Ciò che si può affermare con certezza, Diritti: gli articoli di Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea sono pubblicati sotto licenza Creative Commons 2.5. Possono essere riprodotti a patto di non modificarne i contenuti e di non usarli per fini commerciali. La citazione di estratti è comunque sempre autorizzata, nei limiti previsti dalla legge.

First published in the American Chronicle, Buzzle, and AfroArticles on 1st May 2010

Republished in the portal of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians
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There are no world leaders or African statesmen to come to help; and the Oromo leaders, either in Occupied Oromia or in the Diaspora, delivered nothing; one can therefore safely anticipate that they will equally deliver nothing in the years ahead. It is very well like that; they are not necessary for Oromia´s liberation. Who are needed? The dozens of millions of tyrannized Oromos who face the Amhara and Tigray pestilence and inhumanity every day and every hour. They are the best leaders Oromia can have. Disregarding the fake, gullible, inefficient or bribed pseudo-leaders, who offered nothing to the Oromo Cause except words, is a great development among the Oromo nation; it testifies to a change that can end up with a thunderous revolution: the transition from dreaming to realistically acting. This development offers every average Oromo the opportunity to take full responsibility for his life, freedom and future, as well as for children´s. Do not ask anything from anyone! Either you will do it by yourselves or perish.

A vários títulos, o trabalho de sólida e cuidadosa investigação que o leitor tem nas mãos dá corpo a um estudo notável -que por vezes o autor trata como um position paper, mas que julgo ser muitíssimo mais do que isso. é particularmente evidente, ao que creio, num país como o nosso, em que (seguindo aliás as pegadas do que se passa nos palcos académicos e informacionais do Ocidente, da Europa ao Novo Mundo, no Pacífico, da Austrália à Nova Zelândia, e em tantos outros lugares) abundam publicações sobre o chamado «fundamentalismo islâmico«, «o islamismo», ou «o terrorismo muçulmano radical», para apenas citar alguns exemplos evidentes. O leque é amplo. Algumas dessas publicações debruçam -se em maior ou menor detalhe, e com mais rica ou mais pobre fundamentação, sobre entidades institucionais como a al -Qaeda ou o «Estado Islâmico» (para uns, o EI ou o IS; para outros, o ISIS, quando não o ISIL ou o Daesh), o grupo Abu Nidal, o al -Shabbab, o Abu Sayyad, o Hezbollah, a Irmandade Muçulmana ou o seu braço armado, o Hamas. Outras, focadas também em instituições, ficam -se por agrupamentos mais pequenos como os que têm vindo a emergir nas Filipinas ou no Paquistão, no Egipto ou no Irão, no Magrebe ou na Península Arábica, ou no Sudeste da Ásia. E outras publicações, ainda, abrem a lente angular de análise e escolhem relatar a encontrar fundamentos sobre as «guerras por procuração» (traduzo proxy wars) que se acendem e apagam em lugares tão díspares como o Iémen, o Sul da Tunísia, a Argélia, o Líbano, o Mali, a Mauritânia, a «região tribal» do Afeganistão ou o Paquistão.

As I promised, following the publication of R. Burton´s itinerary to Harar, I intend to answer many questions that I have received from readers, and publish several comments. I believe that 19th and 20th century colonial literature is one of the many instruments that can help Somalis find out that there are much more elements to unite than to separate them.

In a society organized in tribes, and with historical pride running high for every tribe´s members, there has to be an Islamic Empire to forge a real unity around a faith and a culture, a civilization and a science, a philosophy and an art that have by now gone. It would be great for the Somalis to focus and analyze why there were no fratricide antagonisms at the times of the Awdal Empire. The exploration of the subject and the conclusions drawn would be able to forge a new unity – again. The truth is that when one focuses on the positive aspect of things, one always wins; and whenever the accent is placed on the negative elements, disaster comes.

This is the real way out of today´s Somali quagmire; differences must be put aside. Past discords must be forgotten; variance of opinion and approach must be thought of as an advantage; and minimal consensus must be sought after as a first step for obliteration of the bad memories.

In this procedure, great focus must be made on the long 4-millennia long Somali History, which is incomparably more glorious, more magnificent and more dominant than the poor and mean past of the barbaric enemies of Somalia.

Under various names, Punt, the Other Berberia, Azania and Somalia, the Horn of Africa land was always free of vandals and barbaric ruffians who however have been targeting Somalia´s glory, wealth and civilization for hundreds of years. The reason Somalia´s enemies acted like this is simple: they always knew how much lower, lewder and paltrier they had been. That is why the racist and barbaric Abyssinians tried – with the support of the criminal colonial English – to usurp or minimize pages of Somali History, ages of high Somali culture and centuries of sophisticated Somali civilization.
First published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 24th August 2008
Republished (amongst others) here:
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