Kinfe Gebremedhin: The Once Elusive Man

http://www.addistribune.com/Archives/2001/05/18-05-01/Kinfe.htmBy
Surafel G.

We live and die without any hope for compensation...."
Arthur Rimbaud



In the seventies, he joined the political movement of his preference. He was 21. And as an ordinary fighter, he managed to survive the difficult early years of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) when the first few battles were fought, and lost and won. And survive he did the TPLF's critical political outgrowth of the eighties when its top most authors gave way to junior comrades in what was to be a historic departure in the life of the front in agrarian Tigray -- so much blessed with a righteous indignation for an equal representation. That was the seventies. The Ethiopian revolution was into its second year; but before it went too far, the tumult assumed another form and thwarted the whole course of events. In practically no time, the military regime gave way to a full fledged dictatorship.



Kinfe Gebremedhin was born in the historic northern town of Axum. His family then moved to the lesser known town of Dabat (his younger brothers in fact grew up in Endaselassie, Shire, Western Tigray) some few hundred kilometers south of his native Axum, and then to the most famous Gonder where he shaped his early childhood. When he died last week at the hands of an army Major, he arrived at the last count of his age: 46. He was too powerful with enormous authority to wield and too young to die. His passing left a miserable void that will take some time to fill.



Kinfe’s life was linked to security issues, 23 years by the last count. A year after he joined the TPLF as a fighter in 1976, he began work as one of the coordinators of what was then known as Halewa Woyane, "06", or the Front’s security wing that was also primarily overseeing the prison system. In another year, he managed to be the head of that wing. Around that time, Kinfe saw the death of his elder brother Yohannes Gebremedhin, alias Walta, who was one of the commanders of the battle at Adi Da’ero, western flank of Tigray. "Kinfe is perhaps one of the few guys who managed to climb the political ladder without ever slopping downward in nearly two decades and half which, perhaps, is unprecedented in TPLF's political history," says a close colleague who served under him in the seventies and early eighties. "That is largely due to his skills at adapting to complicated situations and changes that were in the making at various times in the movement."



In the 1983 TPLF’s second organizational congress, Kinfe was elected a member of the Front’s central committee. A couple of years later, he rose to its Politbureau that got him to the heart of the group that rallied few influential people who shaped the course of the TPLF in the years to come. That was the year when Aregawi Berhe and Gidey Zeratsion, two of the Front’s prominent leaders left the organization in a bitter ideological dispute that lasted for months on end. The aftermath saw the coming to power of a fresh brand of leadership led by Meles Zenawi and included three of the current dissidents. However, even before he joined the top rank of the organization, Kinfe was always taken as "first among equals," remembers the same colleague.



With the rise to prominence in an organization that largely undermined individual exploits he has seen several side assignments. He was a political officer of the army in the southern region of Tigray (one of the three regions classified at the time for the purpose of field operations) in late 1987 with the legendary commander Hayelom Araya. At about the same time, he also worked in the propaganda section with Meles and at least one other leading member of the Front, and edited a paper that was circulated among the army. In the final battles staged in the last days of the Dergue, Kinfe was credited for having taken a leading role particularly in the offensives the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) waged in North Wollo and Debre Tabor areas. "His skills at executing complicated assignments was phenomenal," says a friend who spent years with him in key battle fronts. "I will never forget the ease with which he managed to do that at a time when the TPLF joined ranks with other political organizations eventually culminating in the establishment of the EPRDF."



Soon after the EPRDF landed in Addis Ababa, Kinfe continued with what he started years ago in the remote corners of Tigray. He began organizing the nation’s security afresh, and in a few years time he was credited for having established a fairly robust institution that later came to be known as the Security, Immigration and Refugees Authority. In just a few years time, he changed the whole mode of operation of the Immigration office to an efficient service giving enterprise. "Thanks to whoever did that," a middle aged woman who was in a hurry to have her exit visa issued five years ago at the office told me, "deserves unprecedented praise; I am picking up my visa in two days." It used to take weeks to do that.



Colleagues say he decentralized power within the institution and rarely



interfered with activities of subordinates. And he must have decided women were a disenfranchised lot. "Perhaps we have the highest number of female executives in his office than anywhere else in the country," says a top female executive in the media business.



For ten years after the coming of EPRDF to town, Kinfe was an elusive figure and the only top official who was all too powerful but rarely seen in the media. He quite regularly traveled abroad but very few noticed his ins and outs. No one would say that this is in keeping with the dictates of the position he had assumed as Chief of Intelligence. Many of his closest friends, in fact, argue that he cherished his liberty very much. And that sense of liberty took him anywhere in town. From the top places that offer cosy evenings to the vibrant and loud quarters that are typical scenes for an Addis night life, Kinfe is said to have been ready to enjoy the best of what Africa’s diplomatic capital had to provide. His ubiquity was amazing. In large measure, it was highly likely for one to run into him in the most unlikeliest of places: an ordinary café along the Bole road or a mere roadside restaurant in Dukem. It was almost beyond comprehension that we saw the nation’s top spy alone and everywhere. "And he had an astonishing mix of friends," a colleague told me. "You name any class or ethnic variety, and he had that uncanny ability to have at least one friend hailing from each; he was a classic cosmopolitan figure." They may look like strange bedfellows, but he was also friends with Professor Mesfin Woldemariam. A young street vendor who sold him cigarettes was a friend that he regularly invited home for Sunday lunches. His untimely death had created an uneasy silence and a very long shriek from every quarter. The young street vendor could not be consoled when he heard that Kinfe was shot dead.



Right from the very beginning Kinfe is said to have refused the pleasures of personal body guards. And metropolitans who recognize his face were quite often bound to see him in a white T-shirt cruising alone along the boulevards of Addis in his posh white Cressida. Most of the colleagues I spoke with say he had remarkable qualities as a person and a friend, leading a substantial member of observers to believe that he was more of a messiah than a man who had to deal with the security issues of Ethiopia. The list of his merits, they claim, is too long. He rarely spoke out loud but was known to have a short temper that surfaced once in a while and subsided in no time. He did not stomach injustice and never drew conclusions from isolated incidents. He quickly came to the support of friends who needed his comfort and was refined in rehabilitating colleagues who had gone down the precipice. "You would never believe me, he was so compassionate that he took all the pains to go out of his way to help people," says a very close friend. However, like men his trade, he was reportedly capable of being decisive and ruthless for a cause he believed was right.



At work, Kinfe, we are told, was rigorous even on himself. In times of real emergencies, he is said to lock himself in for days. In almost all incidents that transpired during his tenure, he succeeded in hitting the mark. (He loved playing dart). When an assassination attempt on a prominent Ethiopian politician and a string of bombings unsettled several hotels in Addis and the eastern city of Dire Dawa in the mid nineties, Kinfe quickly settled down to work and managed to track down the terrorist cobweb that transcended the Ethiopian border. Even with the terrorists being from Somalia, Kinfe did not throw every soul from that country in the same basket. "That is the wisdom we are all going to miss with the death of Kinfe," underscores a friend. "You know, he even played Schindler (the German who saved hundreds of Jews from the clutches of the Third Reich) in other seemingly unrelated events that followed."



At another time, when an attempt was made on the life of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek, he directed the whole operation that turned out to be an all out manhunt. He was called in from Great Britain where he was doing his MBA. "On such occasions, no one, not even his very close confidants could reach him," one of his cousins told me right after the terrorists were tracked down. "If Kinfe is not around, then, trust me, something is certainly going on."



And as such, the question remains to be not 'who killed him' (one man was caught red handed in broad day light on that fateful day May 12, exactly 10 years after his arrival in town), but, 'why?' In the meantime, no one can augur about what will happen without him around in the coming months and eventually years, but there is definitely going to be an empty place for a very long while; and a significant one at that.