Horn of Africa History, Colonial Plans, and the Outrageous Forger Mammo Muchie – Part II

In a series of earlier articles, we dealt with a set of colonial plans promoted by the Horn of Africa Conference; by unveiling their biased selection of target countries, we found out their secretive schemes, namely the formation of a vast tyrannical and colonial empire spanning from Egypt’s southern border to the coast of Kenya (Colonial Plans for the Horn of Africa – ‘Ethiopia’ to border with Egypt? / Horn of Africa - Monstrous Colonial Plans Unveiled ).

As these schemes are being advanced through irrelevant, anti-academic and forged literature, we concentrated our efforts in refuting an indicative - not exclusive - case, namely the article – report about the Horn of Africa Conference (http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article23512) by Mammo Muchie. To refute his incredible and absolutely unscholarly forgery, we analyzed in an entire article the historical falsifications and the political – ideological bias entrenched in just his text’s introduction and first part (The Horn of Africa Conference Clique, and their Dark Plans for Egypt, Sudan, 'Ethiopia', and Somalia).

We started refuting the main part of Mammo Muchie’s text in the article ‘Horn of Africa History, Colonial Plans, and the Outrageous Forger Mammo Muchie’; in the present article, we will continue, focusing on Mammo Muchie’s ‘Myth of Origin’ (part of his article ‘Unite the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean’).  To  help the reader, we will first publish the text, and then its refutation. Numbers encrusted in Mammo Muchie’s text refer to points of refutation. The first five points have been refuted analytically in the last of the aforementioned articles; consequently, we will start with point 6.

Myth of Origin (Unite the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean)  by M. Muchie

"Looking back far ahead at the possible birthdates of the names Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia, 1 one finds a remarkable history that they more or less originated in the same area 2 and the forces that shaped each one has shaped the other. 3 If we look back thus to the myth of origin of these entities, 4 we find that it argues for their unity and composition rather than their division and fragmentation. 5

If we take the Pre-Judaic, Pre- Christian and pre-Islamic phases of historical evolution, 6 again the same thing transpires: the same forces that shaped each have shaped the others. 7

If we take the Judaic, Christian and Islamic periods 8 respectively, we see a history of interaction, 9 communication, 10 migrations, 11 wars, 12 and a shared civilisation 13 and extensive contact through trade with the outside world of Europe, India and China. 14 We see not only did these entities from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean communicate through mutual subjugation and the brutalities, injustices and oppressions recorded in history from the outside medieval and ancient worlds, 15 but also through the migration of their own civilisations 16 through the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, even the Atlantic and other outlets. (Shihan de S Jayasuriya & R. Pankhurst (eds.) The African Diaspora in The Indian Ocean, 2003) 17

The division of these entities into the states as we know them as they are arranged now came during the notorious period of the European Scramble for Africa. 18 During this period in the 19th century the people of this region were divided 19 or mutilated 20 and their determined resistance against the colonial encounter was largely and on the whole, though heroic, was unsuccessful. 21 Even the Ethiopian 22 kings that appeared to have been able to snatch and retain a territorially carved Ethiopian state formation that waxed and waned territorially over time from the jaws of the European scramble 23 only were able to maintain and retain on the whole a tenuous grip. 24 Their states have been constantly threatened by perfidious imperial humiliations 25 through unequal treaties 26 and unrealistic and unfair border demarcations 27 that imbedded the seeds of all sorts of conflicts and antagonisms that have undermined state and unification in Ethiopia. 28 The imperial-colonial pressure was victimising rather than building. 29 Ethiopia emerged scathed with the scars and threats of the imperial agenda of the time falling prey 30 to it once more by those it defeated, for example, at Adwa in 1896 31 and falling under fascist occupation 32 between 1936 and 1941 under the Italians colonial adventures. 33

Whilst it is very clear to any sober person that Ethiopia suffered as an oppressed country, 34 and whatever it managed to recover from the imperialist onslaught 35 is gained through huge sacrifice and resistance, a particularly sinister reading and twist was given to its role during the Scramble for Africa, as if it was part and parcel of the Great Powers, and indeed a great power itself!! 36 Nothing can be furthest from the truth than this preposterous claim that Ethiopia was part and parcel of the imperial and colonial system. 37 Ethiopia was a victim of the colonial-imperial order 38 and cannot be considered as part and parcel of the imperial system 39 even if it were to have allied with one sort or group of imperial powers 40 locked in rivalries with each other to retain a partially 41 carved state from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.

In the Conference in Lund some delegates who should know better 42 tried to spread some unusual tales claiming that the current Somali invasion by the Ethiopian Government 43 was a continuation of the imperial colonial project of the Scramble for Africa 44 where they alleged Ethiopia participated by sending a delegation to the Berlin 1885 infamous meeting. 45 Even if Ethiopia sent an observer, it is a far cry from exaggerating such a presence into a role that Ethiopia was part of the forces that carved the African continent. 46

Conceptually such a claim is outrageous and bankrupt. 47 The Ethiopian emperor was clear that the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean are historically and culturally connected. 48 But he lamented the fact that the imperial project disrupted their unity 49 and appealed to God to restore their unity at some possible time in the future. 50 That prescient insight by emperor Menelik has nothing to do with a colonial project. 51 It has everything to do with redressing great power imperial and colonial injustice 52 visited upon not only on the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, but also Africa from the Mediterranean to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. 53

In Ethiopia those who have legitimate demands to decentralise the states of the region particularly in Ethiopia by localising authority at the grassroots 54 by devolving power and empowering ordinary citizens 55 went overboard and created false ideologies 56 of Ethiopia as a’ colonial’ power. 57 This thesis has been loosely spread by books such as Addis Hiwot’s From Autocracy to Revolution, London, published by the Review of African Political Economy group, 1975, Bereket Habte Selassie, Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa, MRP, New York, 1980, A . Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict 1868-1992, Lynne Reinner, 1992, Sisay Ibsa et al The Invention of Ethiopia, Trenton, Red Sea press 1991. There are many articles and pamphleteering from the various fronts from the TPLF to OLF, ONLF, Sidama Liberation Front and others that spread loosely the false conception of Ethiopia ’s relations with the various communities both inside and outside the region as a colonial relation. 58 This sinister anti-intellectual 59 and devious misconstruction 60 must be rejected and the precise concept that truly characterises relations of oppressions involving the peoples of the region re- formulated by mounting an unsparing criticism of so much of the propaganda masquerading as science. 61 Ethiopia’s relations with Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti or Sudan has never been colonial 62 and is not colonial in the sense of a relationship that Britain, Italy or France had with these various states including Ethiopia. 63"

Refutation of Mammo Muchie’s Myth of Origin (Unite the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean) 

Point 6

Only this would be enough to oust this incredulous person from any university; the rector and the administration of the Aalborg University in Denmark should seriously consider whether they want Danish youth to take this nonsensical assumptions and biased approaches of Muchie’s in. Quite interestingly, he does not provide his CV data (http://personprofil.aau.dk/CV/108607) in his university ‘profile’.

In the aforementioned excerpt, speaking about the five selected countries (namely, Sudan, ‘Ethiopia’, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia), he refers to the supposed "Pre-Judaic phases of historical evolution"; this is an aberration, as there have never been Pre-Judaic phases of History in the aforementioned countries, nor in Egypt or other parts of Africa.

Ignorant and self-confused, Muchie tries to project terms pertaining to the History of Palestine, Eastern Mediterranean and the History of Religions into the Horn of Africa History. The term Pre-Judaic itself is wrong; if we deal with History of Religions, the correct term is Pre-Biblical. One can use the term ‘Pre-Judaic’, only to describe phases of the Ancient Hebrew religion before the formation of Judaism. It relates to the Exile of the Ten (10) Northern Tribes of Israel in Assyria, following the invasion of Israel (Northern State) by Sarrukin (Sargon II) of Assyria. Similarly, for the History of Palestine, the term refers to periods preceding 722 BCE; one has to take into consideration that, following the disappearance of the bulk of the Hebrew Nation, namely the Israelites, only the Jews have been left as the exclusive remnant of the Ancient Hebrews.

However, the term means nothing in Classical Studies, in Assyriology, in Egyptology, in Iranology and in any disciplines pertaining to the History of Sudan (Meroitic Studies), Abyssinia, Yemen, and Somalia.

Point 7
 
The fact that different – not the same – peoples (these are the ‘forces’ about which Mammo Muchie speaks) shaped the History of Sudan, Somalia and Abyssinia we analyzed extensively in the last of the aforementioned, antecedent articles. The Nilo-Saharan peoples of Egypt and Sudan do not exist in Abyssinia and Somalia. The Kushitic peoples of Sudan and Somalia are different from one another, and those invaded and occupied by the Abyssinian kingdom did not participate in that country’s Modern History, let alone ‘shape it’. And the Yemenite tribes that shaped the History of Abyssinia did not exist, let alone play a role, in either Sudan or Somalia.

Point 8

The entire statement looks like an excerpt copied and pasted from another text; again, there has never been a "Judaic" period in the History of the countries the irrelevant Mammo Muchie talks about, namely Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, ‘Ethiopia’, and Somalia.

Point 9

‘A history of interactions’: said like this, it is vague, pathetic and inane. Everything in this world is a matter of interaction; the Vikings interacted with Northern Americans 500 years before Columbus, but not all the cases of interaction are the same.

The interaction between the Kushitic peoples that shaped Sudan’s History and the Semitic peoples who are the backbone of Abyssinian History is minimal. Between the Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia (in Sudan) and the tiny state of Abyssinia around Axum and Adulis there was very limited interaction at all levels, political, commercial, cultural. Meroe, capital of Ethiopia, in times like 300 BCE or 200 CE looked as an Egyptian variant, despite the introduction of the Meroitic Hieroglyphic writing system. At the same time, Axum and Adulis looked as Yemen’s substitutes on African soil. There were certainly commercial contacts through the Mereb Wenz, Gash, and Atbarah riparian environments, but if we compare Meroitic Ethiopian and Axumite Abyssinian art, religion, architecture, Weltanschauung, literature, and social structures, we soon realize that they present no interconnection at all.

Comparing Meroe and Axum would be like as if putting Edfu and Marib side by side.

Axumite King Ezanas’ victory, destruction of Meroe, and partly and ephemeral control of Ethiopia must therefore be seen within a transient context.

Quite interestingly, the same lack of interaction characterizes the two lands during the Christian times. The three Christian Ethiopian states, Nobatia, Makkuria and Alodia, spanning from southern Egypt to central Sudan had many affinities with and dissimilarities from one another. But they were completely unrelated and different from the Christianized Axumite kingdom that was isolated in its tiny and mostly mountainous location. Drawing from Ethiopia’s Pre-Christian times, the three Ethiopian Kingdoms of Nobatia, Makkuria and Alodia were mostly interconnected with Egypt and the desert, either Western or Eastern. Axumite Abyssinia was mostly involved in Yemen, pursuing disruptive, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian policies against the Yemenite Jews and the Yemenite Christian Nestorians. 

In Islamic times, the Ethiopian kingdoms persisted for many long centuries; Nobatia and Makkuria had to merge to do so, but they resisted against the Islamic North (Egypt) until as late as the 13th century. Christian Alodia in the area of Khartoum survived until ca. 1600.

Contrarily to the Christian Ethiopian kingdoms, Axum collapsed soon. Due to the quasi-total dependence of Axum on the Adulis (Massawa) trade, when the early Islamic expansion cut Axum off the Red Sea coast, the kingdom’s annual income was reduced by more than 95%. Axum had never controlled territories as much in the south as Lake Tana; the connections with the Christian Ethiopian states on Sudanese territory certainly could not offer an economic substitute for the loss of Adulis, and the coast. Subsequently, Axum disintegrated, and around 750 CE disappeared.

Similarly, Somalia had very little interconnection with Axumite Abyssinia, although Azania (Eastern Somalia and Kenyan / Tanzanian coast) was for many centuries a Yemenite colony. Axumite Abyssinia, even at its strongest moments did not control the coast beyond Bab el Mandeb straits, let alone the inland. Contrarily, Somalia had dense interaction with Yemen, and following the strong Sassanid Persian presence in Oman, and later in Yemen, with Persia as well. Not with Abyssinia.

Point 10

Communications have a limited impact on the economy; certainly Axumite Abyssinia had communications with Meroitic Ethiopia, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and India, but all this does not mean much more than what it was: communications, not common formation! Communications helped other countries influence Axum, notably Egypt and Greece. King Zoskales of Axum was able to communicate in Greek, according to the Periplus of the Red Sea. Contrarily, we do not find traces of Abyssinian influence anywhere outside that country. In Yemen only, there was an interference due to Kaleb’s expedition, but it was only of military / political aspect.

Point 11

Migrations never occurred from Abyssinia to areas included today either in Sudan or Somalia; contrarily, various migrations occurred in the past from areas presently belonging to Sudan to parts of today’s Abyssinia. However, the story of these migrations did not affect historical developments in Abyssinia except recently, following the Amhara Abyssinian invasions of other, neighboring countries.

Point 12

Wars are inimical actions; you cannot cite wars as example of interaction, it’s an oxymoron.

Point 13

As we analyzed extensively in the first part of refutation (previous article) and also above, the various peoples in the target countries did not share the same but had different civilizations: Kushitic Ethiopian, Azanian African Somali, and Axumite Abyssinian.

Point 14

‘Trade with other parts of the world’: this expression is correct but it is wrong to make a distinction between a supposed group of countries and the rest of the world. Yet, the author does so, through the mistaken use of the term ‘outside’. Contrarily to his assumptions, the target countries are not ‘inside’, as they do not constitute one group.

Having trade with Rome, India and China did not make of Meroitic Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, and Axumite Abyssinia an amalgamation; each country and each people reacted differently to the trade, which is another proof of them being irrelevant from one another.

Point 15

The entire sentence is clumsy, and the text is so poorly edited that it becomes incomprehensible. To "communicate through mutual subjugation" is not a concept; it’s a sickness; subjugation does not mean communication. The approach would have been rejected by any scholarly Historian anytime anywhere.

In any case, we have poor understanding concerning what the author seems to assume; Axumite Abyssinia invaded Meroe only once. The same for Yemen, the Axumites invaded Yemen only once. As far as Yemenite colonial rule in Azania in concerned, it seems that it had nothing to do with brutalities and injustices.

The other misarticulated assumption of Muchie’s about brutalities and injustices from the ‘outside medieval and ancient world’ seems to be equally ridiculous. You cannot see the rest of the world as ‘outside’ because these countries do not consist in a unit. As the ignorant and irrelevant author speaks about the Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it is necessary to remind him that Kushitic Ethiopia was invaded twice by the ‘outside world’; at 591 BCE by Psamtek (Psammetichus) II and his Carian, Jewish, Greek and Phoenician mercenaries, and at 525 BCE by Cambyses the Achaemenidian Shah of Iran. Then, Meroe was destroyed by King Ezanas (360 CE).

Yemen was attacked by the Romans who sacked Arabia Felix (Aden) at 26 BCE; it was then invaded in the middle of the 6th century by the Axumite King Kaleb, who was finally kicked out by the Iranians who stayed in Yemen until its adhesion to Islam. Somalia was never invaded, except commercially colonized by the Yemenites, as we already said.

So, even if we consider the target countries as a unit, and the rest of the world as an ‘outside’ entity (as a working hypothesis), we conclude that the ‘outside’ world did not cause brutalities and injustices to people of the area, but to a very limited scale, if compared with what happened to countries like Greece, Mesopotamia, Persia. This shows the ignorance and the preconceived schemes Mammo Muchie tries to support throughout his erroneous composition.

Point 16

Mammo Muchie has no background in History, and therefore does not know that people migrate, civilizations do not! Among the target countries’ peoples, only Somalis’ and Kushites’ migrations brought about historically important developments. Abyssinians did not have any impact outside the borders of their tiny country, and actually they seldom traveled; last but not least, the Abyssinian 19th century invasions do not consist in migrations but are considered as illegal and ephemeral occupation of foreign lands.

Point 17

Plus, the bibliography added is irrelevant and useless. Pankhurst is an amateur, not a professional Historian. His texts are flooded with mistakes. 

Point 18

Another preposterous falsification is advanced, with Mammo Muchie saying that the target countries have been divided ‘as we know them’ during the so-called period of the European Scramble for Africa, namely the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This is incredible! Before the beginning of the 19th century, important parts of Sudan, Eritrea, ‘Ethiopia’, Djibouti and Somalia were parts of the Ottoman Empire that also encompassed today’s Algeria, Egypt, Romania, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey and Greece, amongst others.

Beyond the parts of the five countries that were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, various territories belonged to local kingdoms and states that varied tremendously from Sudan to ‘Ethiopia’ and Somalia. Never one state ruled over the entirety of the non controlled (by the Ottomans) territory of even one of these countries, Sudan, ‘Ethiopia’ and Somalia at those days; what the rulers of small and poor states and sultanates like Darfur, Gonder, etc. attempted to do at those days was simply to successfully oppose the Ottoman soldiers, and therefore preserve for themselves some degree of authority and income. They were multi-divided, did not have any sense, let alone knowledge, of the colonial and postcolonial entities that have grown much later and out of the colonial antagonism. If the French prevailed in Fashoda (1898), Sudan would be at least partly French today, and the borders between Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Central African Republic, ‘Ethiopia’ and Kenya would follow different lines.

Of course, if we go back, we will find the great state of King Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim who merged sizeable parts of Eritrea, Djibouti, ‘Ethiopia’ and the entire Somalia under his scepter, but there was no part of Sudan included, and in addition this state was short-lived. If we go further back in History, we will never find any sort of ‘commonwealth’ or one unitary state stretching over the territory of the target countries of the Horn of Africa Conference. 

Point 19

Another example of Muchie’s vicious forgery; there is not one but many peoples in the region, the targeted countries; so the people were not ‘divided’ because simply they were many, different, and organized in independent states that were all far more preferable than the pestilence of the uncivilized and barbaric Amharas who managed to invade them only after repeated wars, because this was what the English and the French had decided for Menelik.

Point 20

To use the expression ‘mutilated’ for an entire people metaphorically means that you must be deprived of the most rudimentary elements of stylistics, and in order to excite low level readership feelings you are about to become a butcher. As part of Muchie’s vocabulary and context, it highlights his poor skills of propagandist of tyrannies and dictators.

Point 21

Resistance that ‘though heroic’ was ‘unsuccessful’; Mammo Muchie seems to refer to the Oromos, the Somalis of Ogaden, the Afars, the Sidamas, the Anuaks, the kaffas, the Shekachos and others invaded by the colonial Amhara Abyssinians! Probably, he was not prudent enough! He referred to others, but his statement reminds him the reality that he does not want to see in the Cenotaph Abyssinia - that he keeps calling ‘Ethiopia’.

Point 22

Another faux pas for the obdurate apologist of tyrannies Mammo Muchie! From whom did the Abyssinian (not ‘Ethiopian’) king "snatch" territories? From the European colonials? No! From African kingdoms and states that they were abolished, from African peoples whom the Abyssinians oppressed for more than a century, trying dictatorially, criminally, inhumanly and - thank God – fruitlessly to Abyssinianize!

‘Retain’! What a verb! It highlights the criminal Abyssinian tactics and policies of expropriating the land lots belonging to oppressed peoples, usurping national names of other nations, exploiting the natural resources of the invaded territories, prohibiting the indigenous languages, making primary and secondary education impossible for the outright majority of the impoverished and enslaved peoples, and desecrating holy places of other religions’ followers.

You cannot "retain" but what is yours, and Mammo Muchie knows very well that neither Oromia, nor Afar Land, nor Ogaden, nor Sidama Land and so many other kingdoms and territories belonged to Menelik and Haile Selassie. They had no right to ‘retain’ these territories, and actually they did not; they simply ‘invaded’ them in a definitely worse way than the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the French invasion of Egypt or the British invasion of Sudan.

‘Territorially carved state’; this term is correct! The territories invaded by the Amhara tribal army of the bogus-king of Abyssinia were carved on the flesh and the blood of millions of oppressed people, and of all those who were massacred instead of being sold as slaves.

Point 23

"From the jaws of the European scramble"? This is a racist type of Anti-European insult and the Aalborg University authorities should carefully examine the academic slang on Mammo Muchie, who seems to suggest a discrimination between the European colonials’ jaws and the Murderous Cannibal Menelik’s jowls.

It would perhaps be appropriate for the Aalborrg University authorities to offer some courses of Political Science to Mammo Muchie so that he comes to terms with the down to earth realities: the cruel monarchical tyrant’s jowls were indeed worse than the European colonials’ jaws.

If the Oromos and the Sidamas, the Somalis of Ogaden, the Kaffas and all the other oppressed peoples of fake ‘Ethiopia’ were invaded by the British and French colonials, like Zimbabwe and Senegal, they would be by now free and independent nations.

Amhara Abyssinian colonialism lasted much longer and was far crueler, So, the Abyssinian monarch’s criminal, anti-African, and antihuman, colonial deeds must become a matter of overall African indignation and condemnation.

Point 24

The attempt to depict the inhuman beasts of Menelik, Zauditu, and Haile Selassie as innocent saviors is pathetic and appalling. There is plenty of evidence that they did expand cruelly their borders aiming at the profit coming from invaded and robbed territories and the slaves’ sales. 

Point 25

They were not ‘emperors’, except for the needs of their fallacious and tyrannical propaganda; they were not humiliated because they knew that they had willingly become the puppets of the British colonials, and that they had behaved in an inhuman way towards the various nations they had invaded. Consequently, they were deprived of the last traces of respectability that could have been left in them.

Point 26

Why complain about anachronistic Abyssinia’s defeat at the hands of Italy? The kings and the elders of the Kaffas, the Oromos, the Sidamas, and the other oppressed peoples were more ‘unequal’ because of the Abyssinian arsenal; they lost their kingdoms and states because they had not bought as many weapons as Menelik had. Comparatively speaking, they were in worse conditions; so Mammo Muchie should express his magnanimity towards them first.

Point 27

‘Unfair demarcations’? This is an outrage! The only borderline that is correct and fair for the Amhara Abyssinians passes nearby Bahar Dar in the south of Lake Tana. The rest consists in just illegal annexations that will all soon be lost for Abyssinia.

The analysis of Mammo Muchie’s text will be completed in a forthcoming article.

Note
Picture: Old Dunqula, Capital of the Christian Ethiopian Kingdom of Makkuria in today's Sudan. Unrelated with Axumite Abyssinia, the kingdom of Makkuria was formed by other 'forces', a different people; with limited relations with Axumite Abyssinia, Ethiopian Makkuria developed a completely different culture, art, and civilization.