Kidane Alemayehu, My Journey with the United Nations and Quest for the Horn of Africa’s Unity and Justice for Ethiopia
Kidane
Alemayehu, My Journey with the United
Nations and Quest for the Horn of Africa’s Unity
and Justice for Ethiopia, RoseDog Books,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2017; 353pp. $30.00;
ISBN: 978-1-4809-7048-9
Getatchew
Haile
Prof-Getachew-Haile
The journey which author Ato Kidane Alemayehu
chronicles in his new book takes him through
Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda, United Arab Emirates
and the Horn of Africa as a representative of the
United Nations, and ultimately to establish an
organization dedicated to confronting “Fascist
Italy and the Vatican.” His book contributes
valuable information to the history of East
Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and to the
rationale behind Ethiopia’s struggle to win
recompense from Italy for crimes committed during
the Fascist era. Ato Kidane describes his
varied experiences in beautiful, lucid English,
and indeed it is a credit to Ethiopia and its
educational system that the United Nations looked
to her for qualified people to serve in other
African countries.
A
Successful Journey for Development
The
first country Ato Kidane served was the Kingdom of
Lesotho, where he went in 1972 at the request of
the UN to serve as Director of Posts,
Telecommunications and Civil Aviation. Once
there, Kidane’s central problem was human and
financial resources. Many of the offices,
including Posts, Telecommunications and Civil
Aviation, were staffed by expatriates. Since
Kidane wanted the national Basotho (pl. of Mosotho)
to run their own country, he immediately designed
a training program for nationals, including
Mothibi as supervisor. The Assistant Director, a
South African, was amazed at this plan and asked,
“Do you want to train Mothibi? He is no better
than a monkey!” For his part, Ato Kidane
was greatly satisfied with the training and
performance of the nationals, one of whom, Percy
Mangoaela, eventually took over as Director.
“Upon
completion of my assignment,” writes Kidane,
“I was ready to depart Lesotho for Ethiopia
when, however, the Lesotho Government and the UN
came up with another idea!” Kidane’s next
assignment was Permanent Secretary for the
Ministry of Works. The list of Kidane’s
achievements in modernizing Lesotho, as testified
by the country’s authorities, is impressive.
Thanks in great part to his tireless efforts,
airports were built, pilots were trained, rural
cities and neighboring countries and cities
(Maseru, Johannesburg, Swaziland, and Mozambique)
were connected by air, and all weather roads were
built to connect many cities. Other
highlights include Ato Kidane’s leading a
Lesotho delegation to Cape Town, South Africa, to
resume water negotiations that led to the building
of the huge Katsie Dam and water self-sufficiency
for the country, and the fact that under his watch
a Lesotho national was assigned to the ichair of
the Director of Posts, Telecommunications and
Civil Aviation.
In
1979 Ato Kidane moved to Tanzania where he served
in the Ministry of Capital Development,
representing the United Nations as an expert.
“The Ministry’s main purpose was to set the
policy and strategy as well as oversee the
development of a new capital city at Dodoma,
located at the center of the country. The
implementation of the capital city’s development
was the responsibility of the Capital
Development.” The responsibility included
policy and planning, coordination and transfer
programs, land use, and administration and finance
branches, low-income housing. In 1981,
Kidane was transferred from Tanzania to Kenya, to
the headquarters of the United Nations Center for
Human Settlements, located in Nairobi, where he
served for a year as Inter-Regional Consultant at
the UN Center for Human settlements (UN Habitat).
Since Nairobi was the center serving many African
countries, during this posting Kidane traveled to
Uganda, Malawi, Botswana, Swaziland, Nigeria, and
The Gambia. Kampala in particular was
a difficult place at that time, as Idi Amin Dada
had just been ousted and the city was neither
stable nor safe. Yet, with courage and good
luck, Kidane’s mission there was successful.
“The overall strategy was to bring about a
speedy recovery of the shattered economy,” he
writes. Kidane’s book reminds us
that a lack of human resources, migration from
rural to urban areas, population growth, lack of
energy sources and easy access to water are
problems shared by most African countries.
Off
to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE)
No
sooner than he migrated to the United States, Ato
Kidane was offered an assignment he could not
resist: he was invited to give assistance to the
Ministry of Public Works and Housing in the United
Arab Emirates. He went to Dubai in 1982 to
commence a one-month consultancy service that
eventually became a two-year term of service.
During the first month review of the Ministry’s
overall policies, plans, and performance, he
discovered that the Ministry was facing serious
challenges in virtually all aspects. On the
basis of his findings, Kidane presented to the
authorities his fitting recommendations to solve
the daunting problems the Emirates faced.
After his ideas were thoroughly scrutinized, and
were found adequate, he was asked to lead a team
to implement his recommendations. The
success that followed is recorded on pages 76-88.
Ato
Kidane writes that “Dubai Municipality is a
success story by international standards. More
than anything else, what Dubai Municipality has
clearly demonstrated is the fact that a leadership
with the courage and unbound vision, firm
principles of accountability and transparency and
the wisdom to apply modern systems of management,
technology and methodologies would achieve
positive results. The Municipality’s ability to
formulate sound policies, strategies, systems and
action plans have enabled it to transform Dubai
from being a mere fishing village less than half a
century ago to its present international
cosmopolitan center of commerce, tourism and
industry competing with urban centers such as Hong
Kong, Singapore and other such renown cities.”
It is no surprise that the story of Dubai has the
lion’s share of My Journey with the
United Nations. The book is also a reminder
that the United Nations, including the agencies
that facilitated Kidane’s services in the
various countries, namely, the UNDP, ITU
(International Telecommunications Union), and
UN-Habitat deserve appreciation for their
contribution to the quest of institutional
development in Africa and the Middle East.
If
only they have ears to hear
Soon
after he retired from the United Nations, Ato
Kidane shifted his focus to the countries of the
Horn of Africa. He devotes three chapters of his
book to them: “Horn of Africa’s History and
Challenge” (chapter 6), “Vision for Horn of
Africa’s Peace and Development” (chapter 7),
and “Red Sea Cooperative Council” (chapter 8).
Despite the well-known and difficult problems of
the region —abject poverty, famine, epidemics,
and civil wars— Ato Kidane writes that it is his
“considered view that there are good prospects
for hope in this beleaguered part of Africa.
Such a hope, however, presupposes a more vigorous
effort by all internal and external stakeholders,
including governments, non-governmental and
international organizations as well as academic
institutions in the formulation, promotion and
achievement of appropriate socio-economic and
political development strategies for the benefit
of the region and the international community.”
(p. 180).
One
wonders if the Horn of Africa countries will ever
follow through on Ato Kidane’s recommendations.
Unfortunately, these countries have not been
endowed with leaders dedicated to its development,
and one is reminded of the Amharic proverb, ከሞኝ
ገበሬ
ደጃፍ
ሞፈር
ይቈረጣል
“One cuts a highly-priced plow-log from the
backyard of a fool farmer.”
Eluding
Death for a Cause
In
March 1981 Ato Kidane and other members from the
UN flew from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, in central
Tanzania, apparently in a chartered plane, to
participate in a meeting to resolve a controversy
between the Tanzanian government and the UN
Department of Technical Cooperation and
Development. Several officials some of whom came
from New York attended the meeting. Ato Kidane
recollects: “During the meeting, it was decided
that I remain in Dodoma for a few more days to
follow-up on issues concerning my work with the
Ministry of Planning. . . I learned later in the
morning that the UN team that had flown from
Dodoma had perished because of the plane’s crash
due to adverse climatic conditions. . . My time
was obviously not up” (p. 53).
No,
Ato Kidane’s time was not up. As reported in
chapters 9 and 10, he had yet to “Cry for
Justice” for the Ethiopian people for the crimes
the Fascists committed against them, and to demand
an apology from the Vatican, reminding it that
this is no more than Christian penance, for its
“Complicity with the Fascists.” “If there is
any country that can be clearly identified as a
nation that has been the victim of huge war crimes
and destruction, despite its membership of the
League of Nations, but continues to this day to be
denied the justice it deserves for over (80)
years, it is Ethiopia,” writes Ato Kidane,
referring to the crimes the Fascists committed
against Ethiopians during their invasion in
1935-41 with the connivance of Vatican leadership.
“My concern with the Fascist war crimes in
Ethiopia and the Vatican’s complicity”, writes
Kidane, “dates back to my younger days when I
was told stories by my father about the war he
participated in Eastern Ethiopia, the Ogaden”
(p. 296)
Kidane
started his challenge of the Italian government
and the Vatican by writing a letter in 2005 to
Pope Benedict XVI. The occasion was the Pope’s
visit of a synagogue in Nuremburg, in Germany, and
his statement that the Nazi holocaust against the
Jews was an unimaginable crime. In his letter
Kidane reminded the Pope “about one other issue
that has been awaiting justice for a long time and
that the Ethiopian people deserved a Vatican
apology” (p.269). Since then he has
continued his campaign, establishing an
organization, Global Alliance for Justice:
The Ethiopian Cause. The historical
facts justifying The Ethiopian Cause are
convincingly narrated in this book and in many
articles Ato Kidane has authored since he
established the organization. Historians who
have seen the documents of the time agree with his
positions and are cooperating with his demands for
justice, reparations, return of looted properties,
and an apology from the Vatican. The Global
Alliance is not demanding more for
Ethiopia Italy repaid to Libya, a country against
whom Italy’s crimes were considerably less
severe.
As
for the Vatican and Pope Pius XI’s complicity,
it has been argued that Benito Mussolini would
have put the Catholic Church in great danger if
the Pope had opposed him. Even if one accepts this
untenable argument, there is no reason why the
leadership of the Church cannot now apologize for
its role during the war. Kidane has made it
his mission to see that Ethiopia be given the
respect it deserves, and it seems he will not rest
until he has succeeded. He is not pleading but
demanding.
To
sum it up, Ato Kidane Alemayehu has written a book
that has contributed to the history of East
Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and to an
understanding of Italy’s crimes against the
Ethiopian people by presenting facts and
information not known in other sources. The
valuable services Ato Kidane rendered to the
countries he consulted are testified to by the
grateful authorities of those nations. As a
primary source, then, the book’s only
shortcoming is that it has no indices.
PS.
Your support in the quest of justice for Ethiopia
is herewith requested by signing the petition you
can find at (globalallianceforethiopia.org)
calling on the Vatican to apologize to the
Ethiopian people for its complicity with Fascist
Italy’s war crimes in Ethiopia during 1935-41.
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