Peace, justice and healing: my plea for Ethiopia

By Eyosyas Ayalew

Ethiopia’s repute has in recent years become like that of the [first-century] Church at Sardis, of which it is said in the Bible: “…thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”

War has plagued the second-most populous country in the continent like at no other time in recent memory, and for a protracted period. Until its attention largely turned to the Russia-Ukraine crisis some 100 days ago, the world had been looking on with horror as the civil war broke out, first on early November 2020, and then intensified after the Tigrayan rebels started pushing back beyond the region’s borders following a unilateral ceasefire made a few months later.

Ethiopia’s good name as a vibrant cultural melting pot and a historical bastion of African independence and civilization is heavily in doubt.

There is no magic bullet to fix this deeply divided and economically frail country, but the end we are looking for is evidently clear—stability and a subsequent journey toward peace and prosperity. No matter the means which may be sought to attain to this noble goal, a three-step paradigm is the surest and shortest way to that path.

We are today a war-torn country. During the height of the conflagration, several small towns afflicted were reminiscent of Aleppo in the early 2010s or Mariupol to cite a recent ensample.

Massive loss of life and internal displacement (second to none for the second year in a row) has occurred since the advent of the crisis.

Thus, the very first step to be had is to uncompromisingly pursue peace. In the words of Jesus Christ, a kingdom at war with itself cannot stand let alone thrive. In the event that war should ensue (which it has), the first step is to seek a means for peacefully ending it.

Peace is, however, not an end in itself. The war might have cost tens of thousands of civilians their lives and millions more seeking basic humanitarian assistance. Countless women had become a target of sexual violence. Multiplied thousands are displaced and in jeopardy of seeing a future if at all.

There are individuals responsible for bringing upon the peoples all this havoc and untold misery. They are the perpetrators and hence must be recompensed. One of God’s principal attributes is his justice and wrath. God is not only called “love” in the Scriptures but also “a consuming fire” and “He who will judge the living and the dead”. The very last book of the Bible closes with the ‘great white throne’ judgment. “All of us shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ,” writes St. Paul.

Justice is the balancing order of things, the weight on the moral scale of good government.

Entire legislations and criminal codes are designed to mete out judgment in proportion to the wrongs committed by the wrongdoer. Individuals who fanned the flames of ethnopolitical strife must suffer the full wrath of the law. Those involved in the facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide and widespread atrocities, in recruiting underage conscripts, drugging them, and sending them out to fight their battles should be tried and imprisoned as per the country’s jurisdiction.

If we ever want stability in our country, this is an imperative. Or how will we answer to those who had lost loved ones, limbs, property, and more? There is a lovely and satisfying verse in Revelation. It reads:

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

Justice, no matter how severely it is served, may be a tool to ‘atone’ for past grievances and grudges, but it is not the ultimate solution to prevent future wars. We have to go one step ahead for that to occur. While peace and justice are indispensable, only healing will be able to guarantee lasting security and set a nation on the path to true prosperity in all its forms.

Healing is itself a beautiful word. And so is the process. It marks the restoration of what had been perturbed before. Just like a fractured bone regains its full vitality and strength once it seamlessly patches itself up, a diverse society that undergoes healing is able to maintain smooth relations and mingle together with trust, egality, and solidarity.

In our country’s context, healing is of infinite value to desecrate an ailing ethnopolitical matrix and preserve a flailing social fabric. We have a democracy, and in a democracy, it is in the people’s hands that the greatest power lies to navigate the future of the state.

A key ingredient to initiate the healing process is a vivid, unbiased portrait of the results of the partisan excesses of our tribal elites. We have to ask ourselves: What damage has the war wrought?

The Amhara, Tigray, and Afar regions have been devastated by the war. Public buildings, schools and factories have been detonated by tanks, drone strikes, and other heavy artillery. Many a young girl and elderly woman has suffered the terrible fate of sexual violence at the hands of soldiers on both sides of the aisle. Numerous children have been orphaned and teenagers have succumbed to the war in the flower of their lives. This is real, and its impact in the short- and long­term cannot be overstated.

One must not be a distant observer of these horrors in order to fully appreciate their effect.

Nor does one need to imbibe of the bitter gall fomented by the war or receive the wounds it has inflicted on countless fellow citizens, so as to value the power and promise that healing can lay before us. The greater the suffering, the greater the need for healing.

We need not only sympathize but also empathize with these victims. The televised depictions of sufferers of this war may be used by both sides to boost their counterwar effort by arousing retaliatory sentiments among the public, but we can and should take them instead as a clear message to save our country from further descent into the abyss. This message is aptly put forth by the author of Hebrews:

Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

It is sickening to watch calls for peace and reconciliation not only ignored but shrouded in deafening cries of protest. Such calls must be encouraged—they should in fact be a common chant of the people.

In the last analysis, it stands to reason that the healing of our country and its citizenry is a panacea for the deep-seated tribal tendencies, long-standing injustices, and the great rift that cuts asunder the country’s demographics not in two but in a mélange of religious, ethnic, and political lines.