My African Dream in America- A Nightmare?

As an Ethiopian-born individual, I always aim for the artificial borders between the tribes to disappear and for the region called the Horn of Africa to be organized under the most efficient, democratic, and advanced economic system borne into the United East Africa (UEAF). (just a dream) My dream includes

• extending highways and railways beyond the current borders,
• allowing people to move freely from one end to the other,
• expanding and strengthening communication and cooperation among people and
• encouraging mutual learning to a higher level.

I hope my aspiration reduces misunderstandings and liberates the people's arrested communality, which is the central demise of the narrow mindset of the current governance and the source of all conflicts. (Just a wish). Above all, the mental and physical libration of the people expands choices of people where to live and work, choices of interests to explore, viable skills, and knowledge fitting to make fundamental differences in communal life. If the dream had turned into reality, the land of fleeing refugees would have transformed into a harbor for the incoming migrant population and a land of opportunities and luxuries from all over the globe. The Horn of Africa has the best natural environment for human existence: the long sunny beach, a seaport with twelve months of sunshine and a deep water shelf, a landscape with a mix of all-natural Venera, rich high and law, the culture of people preserved for centuries, and home of many endemic animals and plants. I am sure my grandchildren would like to run from the constrained and humanly complicated environment and have the choice to return to their grandfather's place of birth and feel proud of the land of their origin.

I want to share an intriguing metaphor to help me explain the current affairs of East Africa and the safest and most viable alternative in the most common term we all Africans understand well. A diligent farmer plows the land with all his might, sows seeds tends them, and finally reaps what he sows. At last, the farmer was delighted with the outcome of his hard work. The harvest yield depended on the farmer's input and the fertility of the land. On the comparative side of the story, a lousy farmer was hoping to collect a surplus harvest without any effort and input into the land. However, the lousy farmer received none as he wished. The terrible person lost his name, and lastly, he became homeless without a name.

Let us apply the farmer's metaphorical example to community leadership. However, community leadership may involve more complex problems than farming. To achieve results, like a good farmer, community leaders must be willing to lead their people into a progressive system and equipped with the knowledge and practical skills to solve communal or state problems. Community leaders who depend on ethnic conflicts in their community to survive are just like lousy farmers who only wish to harvest more from nature without much good input to the land; for community leaders with characteristics similar to those of lousy farmers, inserting conflict and managing its expansion in society as the primary source of survival. Conflict is their mode of operation because it ensures their unwell ego that they are in command and control, needed to satisfy their urging psyche. Contrary to sowing good seeds and cultivating cohesion and understanding amongst people, all other expansions of people's rights, lousy leaders, like the lousy farmer, depend on their harshness and a firm hand to hash out and silence any communication that threatens their power. Their logical tendency of detestation is always to maintain the status quo and generate conflict within the community.

One of the distinct conflict markers of the early 21st century in the Horn of Africa is the increase in international havoc regarding natural resources, particularly the pursuit of fresh water and access to the sea. So-called historians created stories claiming to have owned the origin or content of the sources for centuries, and their sentiments are narrowly designed and hold out their people in the hang (cheap shots to the fame ladder). In turn, feeding from the trend, lousy leaders agitate the community based on imaginary lines of interest and procreated history limited and suited to create conflict and expand animosity between brothers.

War is a destructive force used as a temporary last resort to control a situation and is never a permanent solution. War is always a bad memory that remains as history in the womb of society for centuries. Sometimes, another war may break out between people with different interests at the time, with similar events—instead, the strength of the beautiful, diverse cultural heritage misguided and exaggerated conflictual understanding of our diversity remains to be the cause of fratricidal warfare for African peoples until now. Following the colonial period of "Divide and conquer," the Horn of Africa used social structures, ethnicities, languages, and religions to mark the boundaries of fiefdom and establish boundaries of dominance (what is called national boundaries). Ever since, community leaders abandoned all other viable alternatives to create better governance. The colonial heads encouraged the status quo to continue as a means of structural exertion and influence under their control. The arrangement created conflicts between people and restricted the necessary movement to foster communal engagement to blur artificial boundaries.

Most people in the Horn of Africa share common interests in sustainable lifestyles. For example, most are farmers, and many flock to the nearby urban centers to work and earn, educate themselves and their children, seek equal justice under the law, and thus seek equal citizenship rights.

The people of the Horn of Africa, from their devastating experience, understand very well that all wars are destructive and that a great war is no war. Therefore, they fear war as a counter-effective activity to their livelihood. The simple evidence demonstrating this fact counts the vast majority of highly educated East Africans living abroad and the continued growing number of refugees fleeing war and seeking opportunities for a better life inside and outside of the continent ( some scholars hint the brain drain is a part of the destabilizing mega plan). The trend has increased and become a common threat to the Horn of Africa youth and working-age adult population.

All wars are fought to establish psychological or assert dominance and exploit local resources in favor of established central power. This action is sometimes supported and financed by external forces and entities. Exception to rule, some countries try to escape the well-planned existing trap in vain. These countries are currently in the midst of frequent and intense civil wars and border conflicts. Because the road to freedom in the Horn of Africa involved many wheels and rings before the real road to freedom. In a planned and managed masterpiece, the participating selected African leaders, in general, are composed of solitary participants who want to achieve maximum levels of exploitation and are selected for self grandiose but do not own the same mindset as their citizens (the old colonial strategy of divide and conquer). Therefore, war that starts in Africa never ends in Africa because Africans do not own the master plan in the first place (since war is one way of creating a desire). Most corrupted African leaders are selected and groomed to power by outside groups, and they are helped to remain in control forever due to the high expenses to bring them up to power in the first place. Primarily, the hierarchy structure assigns the executive body and officials to be qualified and certified by institutions from the master plan holder. Unfortunately, this type of employment has no permanency or independence, and the hired leader serves only at the employer's discretion. Most of the tenured leaders in this category are lucky enough to reach retirement age. Planned coups are special tools used to remove most of these types of leaders, and thus, most prefer to stay in power beyond their prime.

Potential natural resources are plenty in the Horn of Africa. East Africa's populace is wealthy in terms of working age. The missing part is the genuine cooperation of leaders to give up their empty and endless desire to dominate others and help our people transition free from war and into an eternally optimistic, peaceful, prosperous life. The people of the Horn of Africa do not need and cannot afford another war to solve poverty and indignation. The people of East Africa and Africa, in general, need to cooperate and get enlightened about the current dilemma of their affairs, refusing war as an option and increasing their inherent potential to lift each other. The money each country spends on buying sophisticated weapons and training military recruits is astronomically more expensive than bringing about cooperation between like-minded people and creating wealth together.

On the other hand, wars between people can have disastrous consequences that last for many generations and mightily affect the lives of living generations. Therefore, bringing peace, cooperation, and unity is equal to ensuring the existence and prosperity of the people of East Africa. No African deserves war at any time in life. Africa needs leaders who dream big with their people and work hard to create a prosperous Africa to hand over to the next generation. Hatred among African people is an artificially and purposefully created phenomenon, and leaders who thrive on hatred and conflict are followers of their foreign masters.