Egypt & Ethiopia, with Dr. Asnake Chanie
Last week, my Ethiopian guest pulled out.
Not because of me. Because of the recent escalation of threats between Egypt and Ethiopia. Because an Egyptian and an Ethiopian talking publicly, in this climate, can pose a risk.
That is the reality we face right now.
So I put out a public call. Arabic or English. Anonymous if needed.
Dr. Asnake Chanie answered. Publicly. Under his own name. He said he saw what I was doing and decided to join, because "it has to be a discussion among the ordinary people, like you and me. We don't represent any political party or any interest groups."
That is the whole point of Janoub.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwUcV4L7giE&list=PLOxrsm_FdZSw&index=4
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4rM6ed4SwbYg5IbWAyjUTM?si=tFe06f0iSt-0Nk0A7KHWGQ
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/egypt-ethiopia-with-dr-asnake-chanie/id6799905403?i=1000796344932
I have been outside Egypt for 13 years now, in exile. I can't go back.
I live in Silver Spring, outside Washington, DC. A lot of my neighbors are Ethiopian. We have fun together. I watched the World Cup with them. Our kids go to the same schools.
Five months ago I went to Ethiopia for the first time, to see for myself what Ethiopians think and say about Egypt and Egyptians.
I had the best coffee of my life there. The best honey. Every Egyptian would agree.
And the best haircut. People kept looking at me, confused. There is something familiar about you, they said. Then they pointed at my hair. This is Ethiopian hair.
What Asnake told me
Ordinary people get along. His best friend in Prague is Egyptian. They don't talk politics. They just live.
The problem, he said, is the media and the political elites, in both countries. They sensationalize. They aggravate. They play a disruptive role instead of a constructive one.
I know this from my own research. In Egypt, the dam is one of the media's red lines. Asnake, who also comes from journalism, follows Egyptian media closely. He sees the same provocations there that he sees at home.
He reminded me that it has been done before. In 2011, more than 50 Egyptians from different sectors went to Ethiopia on a public diplomacy mission. In 2014, Ethiopians came to Cairo. Those efforts stopped. They should be continued.
The connections no one talks about
Egypt and Ethiopia share the Nile, but not only the Nile.
The Egyptian and Ethiopian churches share centuries of history. And as a Muslim, I learned as a child about the first Hijra: when the Prophet's early followers fled persecution, it was the king of Abyssinia who gave them protection. About a third of Ethiopians are Muslim. Most Egyptians don't know that.
These legacies have been forgotten. They are still in people's minds. No one is talking about them.
Sudan, and the money we leave on the table
Sudan connects us, north and south. It holds both the essence of the conflict and, I believe, the solution. Instead, it is being used as a proxy battlefield between our two countries.
Egypt and Ethiopia are both US allies. Both are allies of the Gulf. Both have diplomatic relations with Israel. We have more in common than our governments admit.
We are two huge markets, over 100 million people each. Ethiopia has surplus electricity. Egypt would rather import its energy from Israel. Ethiopia trades with Turkey. Neither trades with the other.
Asnake asked the simplest question of the whole conversation: why not build rail lines connecting Cairo and Addis Ababa, instead of investing in military technology?
My apology
I ended with an apology, because it is true.
As an Egyptian, I have apologized recently for how Egypt has treated Gazans on the borders. When I pushed the people I spoke to, many eventually admitted that Egypt's view of Ethiopia in recent history has not been good.
I don't want to say imperialist. But we did have a racist look at the people to our south, across Africa, and that shaped how we see Ethiopia. Egyptians are not unique in that. I call out racism in every form. People look down on people with dark skin here too, in our region, in Egypt.
For that, I apologize.
Asnake answered with generosity. The idea that "the Nile belongs to us," he said, is not the mainstream view in Egypt. It belongs to a small group of provocative politicians. Egypt depends on the Nile, and Ethiopians should understand that. Then he pointed at Europe. Germany, France, Italy and Spain compete, and they still work together. Egypt and Ethiopia, he said, "could work together and become regional powers, global powers, without harming each other."
"We have to see each other as friends and neighbors, not as adversaries."
War is not inevitable. It is a choice. And a bad one.
Egypt and Ethiopia Dialogue
Janoub Group will partner with Addis Insights and others to build a Track III diplomacy initiative. This project aims to bring together grassroots and civil society organizers across the Egyptian-Ethiopian border, developing a series of regional workshops that will build platforms for citizens, experts, and activists to share data, strategies, and narratives on peace-building between Egypt and Ethiopia.
Partners are in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, in addition to experts from Sudan and Yemen.
More at: https://www.janoubgroup.com/projects
