You can also refer to this article as “An Eritrea Without Wars” to follow up on “An Eritrea Without Prisons.”
Only in Eritrea can the same person who has fought in its Liberation War (1961-1991), then its Senseless War I (1998-2000), will now fight in its So Very Necessary War, later to be named So Very Unnecessary (2020-2???). And these are just the wars against Ethiopia, not counting those who had to “serve our country” in Congo’s Civil War and in Sudan’s Civil War, and Somalia’s Civil War and maybe Yemen, too. Eritrea’s president is often aggrieved about one of God’s cruel jokes–that such a visionary leader like him can only, legally, govern a small country. And so he finds reasons to insert Eritrea in other countries’s civil wars. Fortunately for him, the “international community” has a short memory and there is this big, complex country to the South, which is always in a state of war or the verge of it. Ethiopia, again.
Those who ignited and intensified the 1998 war were never pleased that the “border war”, which in actuality was a “Ethiopia-Is-Not-Big Enough-For-Two-Looters” showdown, was interrupted.
War Is In The Agreement
You certainly cannot now all act surprised of the civil war (apologies: I mean clean-up-operations to enforce rule of law) between the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and that of Tigray Region. You can be angry. You can be hurt. You can be disappointed. But you cannot be surprised. Because it was Article 2 in the seven very short articles of the 2008 Agreement on Peace, Friendship and Comprehensive Cooperation Between the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the State of Eritrea.
This agreement cannot be accused of having dense, impenetrable language, nor can it be claimed it was done in secret: no! They had the pre-party, the party and the after-party for it in Asmara, Massawa, Sawa, Addis, Jimma, Jigjiga, Hawassa, Jeddah and Abu Dhabi. In fact, in Saudi Arabia the Agreement is called the Jeddah agreement. Surely you saw all the bling bling Isaias got from the Saudis, Emiraties and Ethiopia. Horses, camels, shawls and jackets and more shawls and ring, necklaces and hats and, yeah, shawls. The honeymoon period of the blessed wedding. So yes, of course, logic and common sense led you to believe there would be no war despite the fact that the two Unelected Heads of Governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia had told you, over two years ago, that war is part of the Agreement’s trajectory.
On the Eritrean side, they even told you the credits which will roll, and the soundtrack which will play, when the documentary of the war is made:”Game Over Weyane!” It’s the climax of two decades (20 years of young Eritrea’s 30 year life!) of the previous chants: “Weyane is in the IV Unit”, “Weyane is on life support.” Isaias Afwerki Abraham is 78 years old. A year older than Biden who has been “practicing politics as the businessmen get slowly stoned”, for 48 years (since 1972) and Isaias has even longer experience.”Game Over Weyane” happening 20 years after it was first announced in 2005 also meets the arc of the other story line: Isaias Is Prophetic. The 15 years of Isaias abuse Eritreans were subjected to were just his way, as God was with Prophet Job, of testing your faith and resolve. How did you react when you were subjected to serial, uninterrupted disasters? Did you, as Job did, look inside yourself to see what terrible things you had done to deserve your punishment or did you, like a whiny Weyto Weyane, lose your faith, and blame your demi-god? If you are whiny and faithless, just remember ” Aykhesernan! Nibretna b’mulu’u melisna” (We didn’t lose! We have recouped everything) and everything will be fine.
Because Isaias has an unwritten agreement with the people of Eritrea. His oppression is not something to be resisted; it is an endurance test so it must be endured. Your reward is that once in a while he will get emotional, on TV, reflecting on what a stoic, dignified and civilized people you are. It’s only the whiny, the undignified, and those with no stamina who would complain about the oppression and try to resist it.
But Isaias Afwerki will find out that the unwritten agreement is null and void. No Eritrean is fighting for his causes.
On the Ethiopian side, well you don’t want to be harsh. Abiy Ahmed Ali just turned 44; he is Africa’s youngest, with only a few years of back-benching, technocrat-izing, and spying and practicing the fine craft of government and party ladder climbing. It is not a lot of experience, not a match for a large complex country. But a messianic drive for power, plus a Nobel Peace Prize, is more than adequate to make up for any deficiencies. And so the transition is relatively fast: from calling Weyane “daylight hyenas” to an appeal, in Tigrinya, to Tegaru audience to side with Dr. Debretsion wing of TPLF, and then to create a Wanted Dead Or Alive List that includes Dr. Debretsion topping the list, and a naming his replacement, a new regional governor/President’s, Dr. Mulu (of the Tigray Prosperity Party and why not) and changing the title from Region President to Chief Executive because it is really annoying that the regional top guys are called presidents when he is only Mr. Prime Minister… That’s all in Article 2 of the Agreement.
Article 2 Explains It All
Eritrea shelled Humera? It is in the agreement.
Ethiopian federal soldiers/Amhara region special forces retreated to Eritrea to regroup and attack from the new Eritrean front? It’s in the agreement.
Planeloads of Ethiopian soldiers have been landing in Asmara and some in Massawa to create the New Northern Command? It’s in the agreement.
There are frequent trips to and from Eritrea/Ethiopia? It’s in the agreement.
They traveled with a delegation which included so and so? It’s in the agreement.
You say you know about the High Level Delegation but why is Isaias’s itinerary always to visit the Shrines of Weyane (AU, Metec, Dams, and Industrial Cities)? It’s in the agreement, on articles dealing with complementarity and synergy and Hrrr Dea Bela Me’Antakhn. This is how we translate Meddemer, in Tigrinya, apparently.
And all that giggling and chest beating? Surely you understand that is just a human reaction of joy derived from an elder at the craftiness of his protege and the gratitude of a political leper brought back from the dead, reciprocated by the young religious man who sees God’s handwriting everywhere and who feels God sent him the perfect mentor. (I am sure he can find you the verse, if you insist.) You need an ally in your fight against your own countrymen. It is not taboo to get it from Eritrea because Eritrea and Ethiopia are One People! Well, so were told the One Ethiopia gang very publicly and repeatedly. Remember: it is a misreading of history to say Eritreans and Ethiopians are two people. It is in the Agreement title itself: friendship and COMPREHENSIVE COOPERATION.
They will give the nerds at the High Level Joint Committee (the Yemanes, Osmans, Woldays) a chance to hurry up and do nothing on the rest of the articles, but they cannot suck up resources that are needed for Article 2 (Colonel Tesfaldet, Simon Gebredengel, Abraha Kassa.) Banking, commerce, trade are not priorities now (never are: think thou Eritrea not having an ATM machine or mobile data or any construction is an accident?) Peace and Security are priorities (always are)! And surely, everyone knows that the path to peace– “lasting peace”, they claim about every agreement they sign and NEVER implement!–goes through war. They have to destroy the peace to ensure lasting peace, and sometimes that may require bombing assets now because they can be rebuilt later. Because you can’t talk about developing a nation or trusting its citizens with it (elections), until it is secure. Peace comes from exhaustion from war and it is unreasonable of you to demand peace now before the exhaustion from war has set in. Ask the Ethiopian Minister of Peace: she said so.
It is in the agreement.
Maybe the reason you didn’t pay attention to the agreement was because, you concluded, it was just meaningless jargon to ensure that the supposedly, for twenty years (May 1998 – June 2018), most important thing, demarcation, is vaporized. Article 4 (that is, the fourth priority) refers to EEBC, and not Algiers Agreement. Calling for implementation of the Algiers Agreement would include implementing the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (EECC) not just the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC.) That would require a tiny soul-searching for the 150,000 youth who perished in the Last Senseless War (1998-2000.) One of the reasons Eritrea and Ethiopia are always at war is because Eritrea is so abnormal that its leaders claimed the loss of “only” 20,000 in two years was miraculous, and Ethiopia is so strange that it is not in its “political culture” to publish the names of its dead. If they didn’t return, you must assume they are dead is what TPLF told its people after 1991 and again in 2000.
The other reason war is a regular visitor to Eritrea and Ethiopia: Shouldn’t the claims the two countries filed against each other, after hiring 70+ lawyers and arguing in front of 6 arbitrators, be read and the courts decisions of the damages be implemented? NO! Its a New Chapter. New Era. Discussing those things is creating obstacles for the complementarity and synergy and rapid development we want (this time we really mean it.) Also, because it is a New Era, there shall be no discussion of yet another thing the Algiers Agreement called for: investigation into the root cause of the 1998 war. It won’t happen because it will show those posing as Princes of Peace were the Princes of War.
No pause to read the report of the Claims Commission. No autopsy to study and avoid what caused it. No review of how last time that created its own alignments and realignments. No lessons learned.
We also must forget, at all times, that we do does not have an equal and opposite reaction. A mutual-defense agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia (without any consolidation of intra-Eritrea and intra-Ethiopia peace) expedites that between Sudan and Egypt. Let’s all now pretend we were surprised by that. “Zgerm iyu” (“it is so unbelievable!”) is one of Eritreans favorite expressions: every fucking thing is “zgerm iyu” when it shouldn’t.
An Avoidable War
This is a war to avoid. First, because all wars must be avoided: they are vile, cyclical and never ending. Because “collateral damage” is bureaucratese for “we just killed unarmed women and children and the elderly.” Because you are extremely poor. Because it is the harvest season. Because you don’t have elected government responsive to the opinion of its constituency. Because it is bad enough you have to deal with the economic destruction of COVID19 and locusts do you need another Jobian test? Because, no Eritrean is fighting for Isaias, since Isaias equated Eritrea with himself. Because, the three antagonists represent deplorable values. Abiy wants a return to the defective-at-birth Unitary State with a strong dominant center and tightly controlled peripheries, a model which has never worked for Ethiopia. Isaias represents Africa’s Old Guard: a totalitarian unitary State which impoverishes and exiles and disappears its people, under One Party, One Strong Man who always manage to create a dynasty or die trying. And Weyane? Because they governed so atrociously for 27 years, that enough people in the Horn (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia) have said, “anybody, even Abiy and Isaias and Formajio, are better than that group”.
But the war must be stopped. To those who say what else then, the answer is everything else.
Because war is unpredictable: the whole Northern Command surrender/defection/redeployment to Eritrea did not go the way the Peace, Friendship and Comprehensive Team had plotted. That’s the only thing we know, based on how it changed the tenor of the war. We also know that, so far (and it’s “only” a two-week war) everything that the TPLF said they would do they have done and nothing of what Abiy claimed he will do he has done. That’s all we know for sure. Everything else…. it is worse than the 1998-2000 war. Why? Because back then there were independent journalists reporting from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Now it is social media boasts and very Cheney-like declarations of the enemy in its last throes. When US Vice President Dick Cheney said of Iraq combatants “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency” in 2005, well, sure, he was 6 years ahead of reality but at least he waited two years after the start of the war to say it. Now we have 4 Ethiopian State media reading from the same hymn book about this being a short term law-and-order operation. Habesha, please. Tigray is not Ethiopian Somalia.
The Eritrean Government will say nothing–when Operation ስቕታ መሪጽና (We have chosen to be silent) is in session. The mouth, the same mouth that never shuts up, must say nothing lest it accidentally distract the limbs. Isaias had already telegraphed not just in the Peace Agreement but in his State TV interview that he has every intention to be involved in Ethiopia’s internal affairs. Because Ethiopia’s internal affair is Eritrea’s internal affair.
The worst-kept secret: Are #Eritrea tyrant Isaias Afwerki & his cabal helping out #Ethiopia|s Pastor @AbiyAhmedAli in the war he is waging in Tigray?
Here: the mob-boss and his consigliere Yemane Gebreab confessing that they have every intention to do so. #SayNoToWarEthiopia pic.twitter.com/mA8kH4NIhr
— SAAY #Eritrea (@saayEritrea) November 9, 2020
Meanwhile, the Weyane have daily briefs using their State media (Dimtsi Weyane) and their version of Hade Lbi Hade Hzbi private media (house) where they talk of precision launches and More To Comes. They are playing the underdog thing now, appealing for peaceful solution, but if the tides turn and they calculate they have the upper hand, they will be talking less of political solution and more of military. Abiy is racing to stick the label of “terrorist” on them–the only way to get them silenced and booted out of Satellite TV and have all their assets frozen–and he should find some encouragement in the outgoing US government statements on the Civil War.
It is worse than 1998 because then we Eritreans and Ethiopians could say of our governments, “it is a novice government and it is have growing pains.” But now, almost 30 years after the fall of Mengistu Hailemariam regime, we can’t even say that.
It is worse than 1998-2000 because there was no social media then with all its disinformation. It was centralized then with a certain Salome Taddesse from Walta: now the misinformation and disinformation is diffused. And the two countries, the oh-so-civilized, so-self-reliant, so-proud nations of Eritrea and Ethiopia will cling to any know-nothing Mzungu, however unqualified they are, as long as they uncritically support their disinformation.
In some ways, war is very predictable. Especially in poor, marginal, subsistence countries, on the verge of starvation. There will be exile, there will be hunger, lack of water, and electricity. The men who make the decision to go to war (while, of course, claiming they were “forced” to wage it) and those who actually fight the wars (mostly boys and young men) have no familial relationship: the order takers despise the order-givers in Eritrea. You would, too, if they committed documented crimes against humanity on you for twenty years. They live in two worlds: the political tribe, unelected, ordering the subjects to go to war. And the Diaspora PFDJ, with all their children safely tucked in with their tablets and iphones, are already foaming at the mouth for more war. All will say they are winning. Not only are they winning, “the enemy” is devastated, destroyed, cannot get up without a defibrillator. It is only a matter of days if not hours, they will tell us for months maybe years.
Don’t you dare say you were surprised: the war will have its surprises. All wars do. There will be catastrophic mistakes. (Read, if you dare, the Eritrea Ethiopia Claims Commission decisions, argued by over 70 (SEVENTY!) lawyers in front of 6 arbitrators. Nothing to worry about because Smiling Professor Asmerom Legesse told you we are too civilized to commit uncivilized things? Dive in: discover all the horrific things the very civilized, disciplined soldiers of Eritrea and Ethiopia inflicted on each other, including rape of civilians and what the damages were. So you can be sure, there will be events that occur during the war that will be used as reasons to continue the war. In fact they will be substitutes for the original reasons given. There will be horrific human rights violations. These reasons will then rationalize dialing up the enmity to raging hot.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has detailed the objectives of this “rule of law” operation. The TPLF (Weyane) has said, “oh yeah, you and what army?” The mutual taunting (of Tigray Region President Debretsion declaring his side will shift from defense to offense, and the Ethiopian Air Force Commander saying with what rockets, all you have is rocks because we control it remotely) invites more and it is always a stark reminder to ask: could this war happen if women were in charge? War appears to be just another form of “let’s take it outside.”
Excepting for some crazy things female praying mantis and female mongoose do, this occasional but habitual resort to violence is a male thing, no?
You have been telling your friends you are more angry than surprised. You tell a friend, “why are we still surprised?” She says, “you know who is not surprised? Women. Eritrean women are so accustomed to tyranny from violent men and toxic patriarchy that we are not surprised or angry. We are numb.” Fine, can you at least be angry? We have things to do and not to do.
Regarding Ethiopia, if you are Eritrean, you shouldn’t presume to know enough to recommend what they should do (unless you are Isaias, of course), but you can say for certain what they shouldn’t do: go to war. And to know the difference between nationalism, and ultranationalism. Ultranationalism is narcissism elevated to a cause. It makes you believe in absurdities and readies you, in the words of Voltaire, to commit atrocities.
Regarding Eritrea, here’s a question: when was the last time you protested the presence of UAE in Assab, to the Government of UAE? I have the answer: here’s the list of times, whenever you are ready: you may put down your calculator: it is zero times. Because you correctly assess that it is your government that is doing the inviting to blame, not the guest and business partner who accepted the invite. So, now, if more than two dozen flights arrived from Ethiopia to Eritrea in one day (remember, due to COVID19, there are no flights so that is the only “business” Asmara Airport gets), is that the fault of the guest or the host? Why are you mad at Ethiopia? If you tell them you have every intention to take sides and get yourself involved in the war, why would you be surprised if the other sides tries to pre-emptively strike you? In other words: why aren’t you just a bit smarter and more prudent LIKE Ethiopias 5 other neighboring countries?
Should you freak out by what the frequency of the flights from Addis to Asmara suggest? YES! But then where do you direct your energy? Do you follow the nationalist slogans of counting the balls and the gorilla remains invisible?
We must widen your gaze: you are a citizen of Eritrea (or Ethiopia, or Sudan, or Somalia….) and not the Confederation of East Africa. And as citizens (YOU ARE NOT A SUBJECT!) you have the right to hold accountable the host of this crisis, and the man with the longest rap sheet of crimes, President Isaias Afwerki. Ethiopia has 5 other neighbors: Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya. Not one of them is involved in Ethiopia’s Civil War. Sudan, which chairs IGAD, wanted to bring the Civil War as an agenda item and PM Abiy took his notes: “slower wedi Afey! Yes,yes, yes? Ok, Got it!” before replying thusly to Sudan: “If you insist on making this an agenda item at IGAD, we will withdraw our membership from it.”
It’s no longer a mystery why some Ethiopians think Isaias Afwerki is fit to mentor them how to govern a large, complex, diverse, ancient land. Here’s a man who has failed at governing a small but diverse population of 4.5 million, a million of whom now live in exile. The only thing he can mentor on is how to create an isolated, totalitarian state. How to exile your people. How to transform a city (Asmara) built as a shrine to Italian architecture, and Massawa, a shrine to Turkish architecture, into shrines to Mengistu Hailemariam: war devastated, ghost towns, exactly how Mengistu left them 30 years ago, now aged and crumbling. The Ethiopians who clamor for his type of leadership are those who believe in the right of an Elect of God, with a special skill to arouse ultranational-erogenous zones, to rule with unquestioned authority because that would “unify the country.”
But you are a citizen of Eritrea and must always focus on the reason your country and your people are always exposed to danger: because of Isaias Afwerki’s emotional decisions and flawed judgements.
We The People
It is not all politics and politicians. Isn’t it us, the people, too? It is ok to ask, that was what the Eritrean liberation fronts did: itemize all customs and then classified some as ድሑር ባህሊ (backward customs): one of them being tribalism. The post-World War II Japan is, culturally, very different from World War II Japan and better for it: because it is a country that has done a cultural autopsy. We, Eritreans and Ethiopians, need to do the same because it is abnormal to be in a continuous state of war for decades.
What fuels ultranationalism is Birtherism: “If only these __ would ___ then __ would happen.” It is dropping all the sins on the other, with no pause for self-reflection.
Ethiopians: if a country that takes pride in a 3,000 year long civilization is now experiencing ethnic strife, people hacking each other with axes and machetes, kidnapping college girls, and lynching and burning and blocking roads, now in 2020? Isn’t something broken? Isn’t ሟቹ ባልሽ: ገዳዩ ወንድምሽ just an ironic punchline with no application because you are so estranged to one another you don’t see each other as husbands and wives and brothers and sisters?
Eritreans: if a country that takes pride in its long armed struggle whose objective was independence and whose post-independence platform included freedom, elections, civil liberties, constitutionalism and while those who sacrificed for it are venerated those who demand it are disappeared, now, in 2020? Isn’t something broken?
So what is to be done to oppose the war? Everything else. The war camp (the supporters of Abiy Ahmed, Isaias Afwerki) will tell you that all Ethiopians and Eritreans support Abiy Ahmed. The supporters of Weyane will tell you all Tigrayans, all Federalist Ethiopians, and you, too, Eritreans (“Ahwat equa eena”) support them. Victory is inevitable, claims each side, because the people are on their side, justice is on their side, and Jesus is on their side. Do not be the conveyer belet for any misinformation/disinformation from any of the antagonists, all of whom are compulsive liars. There is no dissent; there is no time for dissent, there is no room for dissent. We have to create it: to express dissent is to say “not in my name!” You create your own meddemer, synergy, of the Peace Lobby. Organize, coordinate a trans-Horn petition, protest, work on a trans-Horn civil-society alliance; conduct civil disobedience to express your view that you did not lend your name to supporting war and the ensuing disaster. Children of the Horn of Africa: Tell the warmongers: your enemies do not automatically become my enemies and your friends are not automatically my friends because you haven’t even bothered to pretend to ask my opinion: you are too busy lecturing me.
Fight the war. Feel more. Say more. Do more. Of everything else besides violence. Not just to prove to them that you too have the fighting spirit, not just to emphasize the point that generations of people living in wars or state of wars is NOT normal, and Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Djibouti cannot withstand this bleeding out, but also because to speak out is the right thing to do. We do not have to pass an endurance test: we fucking hold the world record for it. We are done taking tests! Resisting war and calling for unconditional peace when your country is locked down for COVID and visited by swarms of locusts is the right thing to do: let’s give that one a try.
