Exhausted survivors of the Gulf of Aden crossing wait for help on a beach in Yemen/Photo: J. Björgvinsson/UNHCR

Recent years have seen Ethiopians make up the majority of these migrants: Of the 107,000 recorded migrants crossing the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden into Yemen in 2012, around 80,000 were from Ethiopia.

Four irregular migrants with diverse backgrounds, all from Ethiopia, told IRIN about their journeys to Yemen.* While their stories differ in details, they all share a similar set of experiences: brutality, broken promises and extortion.

Marta, mid-30s, from Dire Dawa, eastern Ethiopia:

Marta, mid-30s, from Dire Dawa, eastern Ethiopia/Photo: Casey Coombes/IRIN

“I spent a year and a half in Djibouti, where I gave birth to my daughter. After her father disappeared, we left for Yemen. I paid a broker 10,000 Djiboutian francs [about US$55] to ride in a boat with 15 others from Djibouti to Yemen.

“Our night-time crossing of the Red Sea was calm until the end. As we neared the Yemeni coast, the owner of the boat, who was part of the smuggling operation, threw us into the sea. No one knew how to swim because in Ethiopia, we don’t have a sea, just lakes. The brokers and their thugs were waiting for us as we came ashore. They raped me and the other women. I’m 9 months pregnant with a child from that night.

“When I arrived to Sana’a, I was tired and decided to stay. For seven months, I was a house maid, but now I can’t work because of the pregnancy, so I have no income. [Ethiopian] migrants from the community in Sana’a are supporting me.

“I’m interested in tackling my problems, but at the moment I am pregnant and I am tired. All my money goes to my daughter, so this makes me tired. One day I will win.”

Alima, 18, from Miesso, eastern Ethiopia:

Alima, 18, from Miesso, eastern Ethiopia/Photo: Casey Coombes/IRIN

“I paid a broker 20,000 Djiboutian francs [about $110] to take me to the island of Haiyoo, where we would take a boat to Yemen. Thugs captured us and demanded more money when we arrived to Haiyoo. Because I had no money, they raped me. Men who did not have money were beaten, and the women were raped. Eventually, I contacted family and convinced them to send $200.

“We arrived to Yemen, north of Bab al-Mandab [the Mandab Strait], in a 120-person boat, and were transferred to the Yemeni smugglers who control that part of the country. The gangsters raped most of the women and tortured and beat the men to extort more money.

“They sell women who can’t find more money to other brokers, who send them to work as maids in Yemeni households. A broker bought me and sent me to Radaa, where I worked for three months cleaning houses.

“One man who loved me paid for my release and married me. He was also in Radaa, working on a qat farm and raising livestock. We moved to Sana’a two months ago. He cleans in a restaurant and I’m a maid.

“If an opportunity arises, or if I make money, or if the situation in Yemen gets worse, I’m interested in going to a better country.”

Mesfin, 38, from Dese, north-central Ethiopia:

Mesfin, 38, from Dese, north-central Ethiopia/Photo: Casey Coombes/IRIN

“I travelled five days on buses, trains and hiding out on heavy trucks before arriving at the border with Djibouti. I could have cut straight across the Welo desert to the Red Sea, but it was too dangerous. Most people spend their lives there.

“I paid brokers 1,000 Ethiopian birr [about $50]. That was supposed to cover the entire trip from Ethiopia to Yemen, but I was forced to pay 400 Ethiopian birr [$20] extra at Haiyoo.

“We crossed the Red Sea in a small fishing boat loaded with about 80 people. While we were boarding, I heard the brokers contact Abd al-Qawi’s* people, who said they were prepared to receive them near Mokha. About five hours later, we hit land, and Abd al-Qawi’s gangsters started beating the men trying to escape and raping most of the women right there on the beach.

“They took me and some of the men and women to a detention centre, where they tortured them until money was transferred. The building was like a jail; people are not helped until someone sends them money. The women were raped there. I was detained and tortured for five days. On the fifth night, they untied me because I was in charge of feeding the others, and I managed to escape.

“I ended up in the main street of Mokha and caught a ride to Taiz in a day. An Ethiopian migrant paid for me to come to Sana’a, where I’ve been for five days. I want to work here, make some money, then return to Ethiopia to search for relatives.”

Yassin, 23, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:

Yassin, 23, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia/Photo: Casey Coombes/IRIN

“I stowed away on a train from Addis to the Djibouti border, and from there to Haiyoo we travelled in a Land Cruiser. I paid a broker 1,000 Ethiopian birr [about $50] for the whole trip.

“After a week of waiting in Djibouti, we took a fishing boat filled with 45 people to Yemen. Before pushing off on our four-and-a-half-hour journey, another boat left ahead of us, which was built to hold 25 people but 50 piled in. The boat split in half and sunk not long after its departure. We could hear their screams as they drowned in the night. When the bodies washed ashore, we buried them before leaving. During the pitch-black crossing, we encountered a ship which seemed like an island it was so big. The waves filled our boat with water, and we almost capsized. We arrived near Bab al-Mandab.

“The landing wasn’t very scary because we were dropped so close to shore. But as we waded to the beach, Abd al-Qawi’s thugs started shooting guns into the air to scare those who tried running away. They loaded us into trucks and took us to detention centres to extract money. Because I know different dialects, I acted as translator and was released with those who paid. I saw them rape women, hang men by their hands and beat them with metal rods and red-hot poles; they shot off fingers and toes, poked hot shards of metal into their eyes and poured boiling plastic on their bodies.

“I travelled one day by Hilux to Haradh along the Saudi border. I saw the same beatings and rapes for extortion in Haradh throughout my six months there. As you see in Yemen, there is no work, so I have plans to leave to anywhere by any means.”

*Full names withheld
*Most migrants referred to Abd al-Qawi as the name of the Yemeni gangs who carried out the abuses, though the origin of this name is not clear.

cc/jj/rz

IRIN News
www.irinnews.org

For more information see: Desperate Choices – conditions, risks and protection failures affecting Ethiopian migrants in Yemen

Theme (s): Human Rights, Migration, Refugees/IDPs,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

The writer, Dr Michael J.K. Bokor

From the happenings in the Arab World and the warped approach by these powerful voices, we can tell that they are not using the same yardstick to measure the various leaders of countries facing uprisings and demands for reforms.

It is still difficult to understand why the West would promptly rush to Libya to divest Gaddafi of his hold on power while turning a blind eye to others elsewhere whose regimes have so far done worse than Gaddafi can be accused of.

Why are they more invested in dealing with only Gaddafi as they’ve done so far through the military campaign, diplomatic recognition for his opponents in the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, and now seeking to use the judicial process to finish him off under the auspices of the ICC?

Assad of Syria has so far done worse than Gaddafi, but nothing more than a mere declaration of sanctions against him is what the West has done. In a communiqué issued at the end of a two-day summit, all the G8 could do was to criticize Syria’s deadly crackdown on protesters, and to make a faint-hearted appeal to the regime to “stop using force and intimidation” against its people.

In the G8 deliberations, Russia came across as highly hypocritical because while it was seen as having toughened its stance on Libya, it insisted on softening the G8′s wording on Syria. Russia obliged its partners to drop a threat of UN Security Council sanctions in favour of more general warning of “further measures,” according to a BBC report.
In the end, no decisive step was taken to do to Assad and his regime what we have seen being done to Gaddafi. Has the crackdown on the protesters in Syria stopped?

In this shoddy manner of handling international crisis, it is quite clear that the so-called powerful voices in the UN are unashamedly manipulating the world body to do their bidding while pretending to be impartial. This attitude portends danger for the world and doesn’t present the UN as reliable. It may turn out to be part of the problem and not the solver of problems on the globe.

The numerous conflicts spread out in the world don’t redound well to the UN’s image. One expects that it will be proactive instead of what it is known for doing best—waiting for problems to erupt and authorizing military actions (wrongly dubbed as peace-keeping or solving humanitarian crisis) in reaction.

The UN itself is to blame for allowing itself to be turned into a marionette and tossed about by those who pay it and feel empowered enough to call the tune for it to obey. Of course, what else do we expect it to do in its current state when it can’t survive without the financial wherewithal from those powerful voices, especially the United States?

Once the UN becomes docile and malleable, we should expect it to be at the beck and call of those who support it financially. Can such a body be expected to act impartially? I doubt it.

The UN’s complicity in NATO’s devastation of Libya is not surprising because of its past record of authorizing war instead of negotiated settlement for conflict resolution. As far back as June 27, 1950, the UN Security Council called on its member countries to use their military strength to support South Korea under the pretext that it was being invaded by North Korea. That was the authority with which the US entered the Korean War, which dragged on for three years and ended in an Armistice in 1953.

Technically, the Korean War is still ongoing because no peace treaty was signed. The UN hasn’t taken up that problem to find any lasting solution to and the US has remained actively involved in the war of nerves in the Korean Peninsula—and seems to be benefiting from the situation.

Strategically, the US’ presence in that region offers it the opportunity to peek into China, which advances its intelligence-gathering capabilities. Given this strategic benefit, then, the US will be the last to work for a conclusive resolution of the Korean conflict.

From another angle, the Libyan crisis opens another window of opportunity for the US and its allies to extend the confines of their military-industrial complex to the North African part of the Mediterranean Region. That can be the only reason for the speedy approach to forming the International Coalition of 24 states under the US’ command to launch the military campaign against Gaddafi on March 19, just a day after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 in response to the so-called humanitarian crisis that the West touted as evidence of Gaddafi’s brutality.

We all know the trend of bombardments over the past 100 days of this military campaign and the noxious boasts by the political leaders of NATO and their military lackeys commanding the destruction of Libya that Gaddafi’s military capabilities had been neutralized.

Fearing that the fighting in Libya had reached a stalemate, NATO ramped up its airstrikes in an attempt to break Gaddafi’s back and either assassinate him or force him out of the country to be dealt with from another angle, which the International Criminal Court had been positioned to do. With this decision to declare Gaddafi a “wanted man,” the plot is in full gear. We expect NATO to intensify its airstrikes in the hope that Gaddafi would expose himself to be dealt with either way.

That is where the current moves by the African Union to seek a peaceful negotiated settlement to the Libyan crisis will hit a snag. We have already been told that Gaddafi has chosen not to be part of the negotiation, meaning that he has resigned himself to Fate and would allow others to deliberate on how the crisis could be ended and the country restored to its status.

By agreeing not to be part of the negotiations, Gaddafi seems to be softening his stance, even if he insists not to step down or leave his country as is being instructed to do by the West. At least, he has made a positive shift in stance that can be capitalized on to begin peaceful negotiations. But given the current state of affairs at the military front, the rebels and NATO will as usual reject the AU’s moves and Gaddafi’s own less hardline gesture.

After all, the rebels are claiming to be making gains in their exchanges with the pro-Gaddafi forces and have set their eyes on Tripoli. With this level of optimism and expectation to win the war, they will not listen to any plea for a ceasefire. Now that they’ve pinned their hopes on the ultimate, they will not stand to stare or allow any influence from peacemakers to deflect them from their choice of option to end the conflict.

We can’t tell what exactly will happen if the rebels manage to take the fight to Tripoli itself but we can take a sneak peek into the battleground to guess that more blood will be shed before anything happens to turn the stalemate into a victory for the rebels. In that situation, then, Gaddafi will have only one option—to die a martyr as he has insisted.

If, however, his human part overcomes him to make him cherish his life and want to preserve it, he will face the inevitable—arrest and prosecution at the ICC. The outcome of that prosecution is already moot. He will be the loser because all the odds seem stacked up against him already, at least, judging from the highly predictable course that the ICC’s so-called investigation took that has culminated in today’s verdict by the ICC judges.

Anybody can predict rightly that Gaddafi will be found guilty by the ICC and dealt the severest blow. The question now is: Will Gaddafi fear for his life and jump from the frying pan right into the center of the roaring fire?

This decision by the ICC—which the Libyan government says it doesn’t recognize, apparently because it doesn’t even value the ICC itself—will be difficult to implement, especially if Gaddafi manages to dig in to remain in charge of affairs. But it leaves the options open for his opponents too.

It may be the basis for the heightening of their efforts to either assassinate him (to end everything at that point) or to push his back further to the wall so he will go into hiding only to be fished out (as was done to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein) and humiliated.

Every political leader—especially those ruling for so long as Gaddafi has done—fears humiliation at the hands of their opponents. Gaddafi nurses that fear too; and that fear alone is enough to strengthen his resolve to resist all the moves being made against him until he exhausts all his trump-cards and succumbs to the stronger force. For now, Gaddafi doesn’t think the stronger force exists.

Gaddafi now knows how narrow his path has become and will do all in his power to keep afloat. There have been speculations about his having a good arsenal of weapons that he hasn’t yet turned to in his battle against his opponents. No one knows what exactly the arsenal contains and we can’t be certain how he will deploy anything of the sort as the last resort.

Assuming that he has some biological or chemical weapons at his disposal, we can only pray that he doesn’t unleash it in a desperate attempt to ward off those now on his trail. Only he knows what he has up his sleeves and why he remains adamant despite the persistent NATO bombardment and infiltration of the rebels into territories under his control.

Whatever the case may be, this decision by the ICC reinforces the military campaign against him, and he knows that the noose is gradually narrowing around his neck. As he finds himself between the devil and the deep blue sea, what options does Gaddafi have to hang on in life?

E-mail:mjbokor@yahoo.com

Protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh started in the first week of February and have since intensified/Photo: Obi Anyadike/IRIN

“There has been continued shelling in the northwest of the city but there is no evidence yet of large-scale displacement in the city,” OCHA deputy head of office Pete Manfield, said. “But the situation could deteriorate into a major humanitarian crisis. At the moment, there is very limited fuel because of a blockade around the city which is starting to significantly affect daily life and activities.”

Figures compiled by the UN World Health Organization on 26 May, he added, indicated that 66 people, including a child and a woman, had died while 266 had been injured in the city. Another six reportedly died during clashes in Arhab area close to the airport.

The fighting could also worsen the existing humanitarian situation in the north by reducing access to vulnerable populations including 320,000 internally displaced people, and in the south where 190,000 refugees have been registered. “We have no evidence yet of impact, but the situation remains a complex political and military one with potential humanitarian implications,” Manfield added.

Other sources told IRIN long queues had formed at bakeries, banks and petrol stations as residents tried to stock up on cash and food. The power supply, internet and phone services in the city had been disrupted. The USA ordered all non-essential diplomats and embassy family members to leave the country. G8 leaders meeting in France called on the president to quit.

The fighting in the capital comes at a time when conflict in the north is continuing with the Al Houthis taking control of most of Sa’dah Governorate. Currently, the humanitarian country team is involved in dialogue to try and improve access to populations in need in the north.

The fighters who have reportedly taken control of some buildings in Sana’a, are headed by Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, leader of the Hashid tribal confederation, one of the two main tribal groupings. In the northern Al Hasabah area of the city near the airport, opposition fighters have also set up roadblocks. Shops were closed and some cars belonging to the Interior Ministry staff burnt.

On 25 May, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply troubled” by the continued violent clashes, warning that the confrontation might further destabilize the situation and called for an immediate end to the fighting.

Protests against the 32-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh started in the first week of February and have since intensified. Incidents of violence have taken place frequently leading to deaths. The president insists he will not step down and leave Yemen, telling his supporters on 13 May: “We will encounter defiance with stronger defiance.”

The crackdown on demonstrations and absence of agreement in the negotiations between the government and the opposition, analysts say, mean insecurity and instability will continue to increase throughout the country, even in relatively stable governorates like Hadhramaut.

According to Michael Horton of the Jamestown Foundation, frequent use of violence against demonstrators could also drive Yemenis from a range of political and tribal groups to take up arms against it. If the president leaves, such groups could also turn on one another.

Ginny Hill and Gerd Nonneman of Chatham House, on the other hand, argue that dramatic political change in Yemen could lead to violent upheaval and a humanitarian crisis, given the country’s deteriorating economic and security conditions.

IRIN News
ah/hh/eo/cb

Theme (s): Conflict, Early Warning, Economy, Governance, Refugees/IDPs, Security, Urban Risk,

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Bin Laden remained an iconic figure during a decade of al-Qaida's dispersal

This national wound was revealed by President Obama’s differential arguments over Iraq and Afghanistan: the former was a bad war (of choice) which now demanded the withdrawal of US forces, whereas the latter was a good war (of necessity) because it connected directly with 9/11 through the continuing presence of al-Qaida.

Osama bin Laden’s active leadership al-Qaida had long receded, though he remained aniconic figure during a decade of the movement’s dispersal. There is now too little residual connection between the Taliban and al-Qaida. The Obama administration’s signals of willingness to negotiate a progressive withdrawal from Afghanistan too, even if it involves talking to the Taliban, may reflect its understanding of this reality.

The administration’s problem in pursuing this strategy has been that the Republican right – sharing and (via the media) amplifying the view of many Americans that the Taliban and al-Qaida are interchangeable – would depict any lessening of military commitment in Afghanistan as a sign of presidential weakness. Bin Laden’s death, in removing al-Qaida’s figurehead and breaking the Afghanistan-9/11 connection, partially resolves that problem: Obama now has an opportunity to speed up the withdrawal before the presidential-election campaign for 2012 gets underway (see ” Afghanistan: between war and politics”, 28 April 2011).

The predicament

This domestic American dimension throws light on the viability of al-Qaida after the death of a leader whom the course of the campaign had made peripheral. It is worth at this point recalling the key aims of the al-Qaida movement:

* to evict “crusader” forces from Islamic lands
* to terminate the House of Saud and replace with “true” Islamist rule
* to end and replace other unacceptable regimes, especially in Egypt
* to oppose and eliminate the “Zionist entity”
* to support local Islamist movements, such as in Thailand and Chechnya.

These are all short-term aims measured in decades and imply a century-long struggle to create a pure new Islamist caliphate.

In none of these aims – excepting the departure of the US uniformed military from Saudi Arabia – has al-Qaida made serious progress. At the same time, the movement was greatly aided by the George W Bush administration’s excessive concentration on military responses, especially the spectacularly counterproductive occupation of Iraq.

Barack Obama, inheriting the toxic legacy left by his predecessor, has followed a more cautious policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now also in Libya. This has already posed difficulties for the diffuse al-Qaida movement; but a much greater problem for it, transcending the death of Osama bin Laden, is the Arab spring.

The choice

In the al-Qaida cosmology, the corrupt regimes of the Arab Islamic world were to be humbled by the radical and violent actions of a determined vanguard. Instead, non-violent and courageous demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of citizens have ended autocracies in Tunisia and Egypt, and threaten others.

The effect of these protests has been to reduce al-Qaida to a spectator in a way that is immensely disturbing to its ideologues. Its influence lingers, and it can yet make some progress in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Maghreb; the anti-American mood in much of Pakistan may also bring more recruits. But even Yemen is to an extent peripheral to al-Qaida’s main areas of intended operation, and Afghanistan and Pakistan are hardly central to its worldview of a new caliphate centred on the holy places. In the long term this is a far greater problem for al-Qaida than the loss of Osama bin Laden, who now in any case can be represented as a martyr to the far enemy.

Against this canvas, some of al-Qaida’s strategists feel both fear and hope. The fear is that the Arab spring is the prelude of real change – and that emancipation, equity and democracy combine to change the face of the Arab world. If that happens, al-Qaida will eventually fade into mere memory.

The hope within al-Qaida is that the aspirations embodied in the Arab spring are dashed, and that it can benefit from the ensuing deep disillusion. If autocratic rule is maintained in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen (and if it returns in Egypt) then the movement and its disparate associates will again have their day. After the failure of democratic and non-violent protest, they will work strenuously to embed a core idea – that the only path to renewal is Islamist and it must be won by violence.

The future of the middle east, the livelihoods of millions of people there, al-Qaida’s chances of survival and all that entails – the Arab spring is carrying the world in its hands.

Dr Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010).

This article originally appeared on openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.

President Hosni Mubarak addresses his people over the week-end

As the African Union meets in Ethiopia, two of its long-serving members will not be there. Tunisia’s former President, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, has been forced out of office by a determined mass of those he had ruled for 23 years. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled his country for 30 years now, is in the throes of losing power and cannot afford the luxury of leaving Cairo to attend the AU summit.

Will these two familiar faces be sorely missed by their colleagues at the AU summit? Or will their fate teach these “colleagues” the lesson that they have refused to learn all these years as they rule their countries without listening to the voice of the people? Are the events in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, and Egypt forcing their hearts to do overtime? Or will they refuse to read deeper meanings into what a disgruntled but determined people can do if pushed too far to the wall? Counting on the domino effect of such uprisings, any African leader who shrugs off the current happenings in the Arab world will end up laughing at the wrong side of his mouth. Falling suddenly from grace to grass is not a good feat.

Perhaps, the Iranian opposition leader, Mir Hossain Mousavi (who was defeated by President Ahmadinejad in the June 2009 elections, sparking off devastating public protests), says it better: “If governments do not listen to legitimate demands of their people, the people would have no option but to call for their downfall,” the BBC Persian Service reported (January 28, 2011).

This statement is worth repeating: “If governments do not listen to legitimate demands of their people, the people would have no option but to call for their downfall.”

Nothing can be closer to the truth than these words. Indeed, the events

Oposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei

precipitating the turmoil in these Arab countries were engendered by legitimate demands for decent standards of living and respect for democracy, all of which fell on deaf ears. Charged with complaints against the unsatisfactory performance of their governments and going ahead to remove the rug from under those leaders’ feet, these citizens of the Arab world seem to be giving the world a new definition of politics—rulers who tempt those they rule will be hounded out of office. Truly, the voice of the people rings loud and clear. Only those hard-of-hearing can’t hear it.

Is what we are witnessing in the Arab world a strange phenomenon? Or a sustainable revolution? One may be alarmed by the unprecedented, spontaneous, and purposeful acts of positive defiance with the main objective of forcing the autocratic leaders out of office. But the truth is that the embittered citizens have endured hardships for far too long under those leaders and now want more than mere cosmetic reforms. They want to give a new meaning to leadership and governance. And a determined people can force a river to flow upstream!

The writing on the wall was visible for all but Ben Ali to see. What began in Tunisia as a usual and taken-for-granted public protest against the unsatisfactory living conditions, especially the rising cost of food, quickly spiraled into a mass movement to oust Ben Ali and to send positive signals to people in other countries facing similar circumstances that they can oust their leaders by determined and purposeful public protests. The flame immediately spread, igniting a similar uprising in Algeria, which seemed to have been brought under control but may still be simmering.

In Yemen, the Tunisian example was emulated against the President, who has been in office for three decades now. The outcome is yet to be known. The fire spread to Egypt, where the situation seems to be outstripping that of Tunisia and Yemen. Scared stiff, the embattled Hosni Mubarak was forced to take desperate actions—dismissing his government and creating overnight a new position of Vice President (for the first time in his 30-year rule), which he has filled with the country’s intelligence chief. He has also appointed a new Prime Minister in a vain effort to appease the angry protesters.

Mubarak with his newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman

More intriguingly, Mubarak has imposed a curfew that the protesters have defied and which the military are not interested in enforcing. In a clear manifestation of collapse of law and order, the police have deserted their post, looting is going on unchecked, and unfortunate lives have already been lost. The situation is deteriorating further as the mass protests continue to shake Egypt to its very foundation.

Indeed, Mubarak is facing a desperate situation and is adopting desperate measures to retain himself in power. But indications are clear that he will not survive. There are strong signals that the measures he has taken are not only too little too late, but they are also spurned by the people. They are insisting that he is the problem and must leave the scene. Such a determined and resolute people cannot be easily cajoled.

Egypt’s situation is particularly intriguing because of its complicated peculiarities. For many years since independence, the country’s leaders (Abdel Gamal Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Mubarak) have emerged from the military and ruled with unlimited powers; no established mechanism for succession has been put in place, leaving the destiny of the country in the hands of one leader; religious intolerance and extremity have torn the population apart; Mubarak has knuckled under to the West and served its interests as far as the Arab-Israeli crisis is concerned; and many more, which have now pushed Egypt to the precipice of chaos.

One fact, which has emerged in the wake of this mass protest to oust Mubarak from office, is clear. The diverse and seemingly irreconcilable political and religious sentiments of the citizens seem to have taken the back seat. All of a sudden, these forces have come together for a common objective: to rid themselves of the leader they consider as a pest. The Muslims or those of the Brotherhood (who haven’t been at peace with others, especially elements of the Coptic Church) and youth of all political shades have come together in this mass movement to oust Mubarak from office. When the dust settles, will these disparate elements (nursing diverse political and religious interests) sink their differences and come together to provide a reliable democratic system for their country?

The implications of these mass protests to the internal politics of the affected countries are clear—either new leaders emerge soon to right the wrongs for which the long-serving leaders were ousted or these countries would slide into further turmoil. The aftermath of these mass protests will also give us something new to think about. That these mass protests are happening in Africa is crucial. African politics is not growing well enough to provide the much-needed comfort to its citizens. Our political leaders are still far away from doing us good.

A military tank takes position on Tahrir square in Cairo

The current happenings raise very serious questions that must jolt other long-serving leaders. No matter how rigidly they may think that they can control the affairs of their countries, what is happening now should tell them that their hold on power will definitely weaken one day, especially as they continue to create opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of those they rule. They will pay for their long hold on power, even when their rule creates conditions to worsen living standards while they live in obnoxious affluence. For as long as the people don’t enjoy the benefits of their citizenship, and for as long as they see no immediate indication that the deplorable situation in which they live will soon change for the better, they will have no other option but to come together to do what Tunisia has blazed the trail on.

Current events should be a timely harbinger for African leaders to see their fate in advance. As we’ve begun witnessing already, they will surely face the ugly consequences of their greed and insensitivity. Tunisia has laid bare the lesson that they must learn. It is not too late to make amends and serve the interests of the people they rule.

African leaders, especially those among them in the Sub-Saharan region who are toying with the people’s lives and manipulating the situation to advantage, must be forewarned. The pitiable living conditions of the people do not justify their hold on power any more. They are known for presiding over corruption and fleecing of the system while failing to enunciate or implement policies to reverse the trend of under-development and excruciating poverty. The last straw to break the camel’s back is not far off.

Those who manipulate the political system to entrench themselves in power must lose sleep over happenings in Tunisia and the other countries. Such leaders as Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Chad’s Idriss Deby, La Cote d’Ivoire’s Laurent Gbagbo, among the lot, need to take stock immediately and put in place plans to exit the scene before their people resort to what is currently unfolding before their eyes. The domino effect of the Tunisian-way is inescapable.

It is a simple issue of common sense. What do these long-serving leaders think they can do to reverse the trend after many years of inaction and unproductive rule that have left their countries under-developed while they still remain on the throne? What else do they think they have to solve their countries’  problems after all these umpteenth years of lethargy on the throne? If after (mis)ruling all these years they haven’t been able to solve their countries’ problems, what again do they think they have to justify their hold on power? Rather annoying, the more they remain on the throne, the worse the situation becomes.

As complete failures, they have no justification for being in office all that long. It is a simple case of being in power and loving the power that they have worn on their sleeves and exploited to enhance their lives while condemning their own people into wretched lives of perpetual poverty and painful death!

Those of them relying on Western hypocrisy—talking about democracy, yet propping up undemocratic systems headed by their allies in Africa—should know that their days are numbered. When a determined people embark on an act of self-liberation, no amount of witchery, prayers, or force of arms can prevent them from crossing the Rubicon. Tunisia’s Ali has already crossed the Rubicon; Egypt’s Mubarak is at the banks of the Rubicon; and many other political dinosaurs in power in other African countries are tottering toward the precincts of the Rubicon. Once there, there will be no turning back for them.

As we see seemingly untouchable and powerful (African) leaders crumble or pushed to the brink of recognizing the limits of their senseless autocratic rule, we must continue to seek ways to reform our democracy. Those who find themselves in power today must not deceive themselves that they can remain there forever to rule by might. When the day of reckoning dawns, they will be forced out and made to lick the dust of their infamy. That’s the lesson that Tunisia teaches; and our politicians had better learn it.

By Dr Michael J. K. Bokor

E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com

This article was written by Dr Michael J.K. Bokor. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein are those of the author’s, and do not necessarily reflect the official views or have the endorsement of the Editorial Board of www.africanewsanalysis and www.africa-forum.net