This is about Eritrea. But since Eritrea’s sole agenda has been Ethiopia for two years now, we have to begin there, with our neighbors down south.
Have you ever tried to discuss a conflict, any conflict? It always ends up being a case of each one trying to take back the starting point to an earlier time. Don’t even try discussing the Israel-Palestine feud. You will want to start in 1948 and somebody will take you back to the Roman Empire occupation of Jerusalem. How do you think Spinoza ended up in Amsterdam, huh? It is the same with the TPLF-Ethiopia wars and the attendant territorial disputes and power de or re-centralization: do you go back to 1975 when TPLF started its rebellion? 1991 when it came to power and ushered in whatever you believe it ushered? 2018 when Abiy came to power through a series of unlikely developments?
How about something more recent: January 2020 and the break up of Ethiopia People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party or EPRDF. The “coalition party” of EPRDF (የኢትዮጵያ ሕዝቦች አብዮታዊ ዲሞክራሲያዊ ግንባር, or more colloquially known as ኢሕአደግ) was made of “nations” satellites of Tigray (TPLF), and three others with evolving names: Oromia (ODP), Amhara (ADP) and Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM) representing over 50 nations in the region of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples. This was so since 1988, when the TPLF, um, formed them. The fate of Ethiopia being the fate of many African States, we tend to be made up of a few large nations–Oromia, Amhara–and many, many, many single-digit-percentage nations that were too small to be mentioned–Kichebo, Shabo, Mello, Shakacho, making governance a challenge. It was inevitable that some would feel completely left out as they were too big to matter (Somali, Gurage, Silte, Afar) and had to endure the shame of being, literally, a “Fellow-Traveler Party.” Ah the tinder box that is nations and nationalities.
Nation and Nationalities
This issue of how does one define a “nation” — now re-branded by social scientists into “ethno-linguistic group”– was an issue that every serious red-blooded communist from the new Nation States had thought of, and found its answer in Stalin’s “The National Question and Leninism.” This letter by Stalin, addressing those who had wanted to introduce a new requirement for a nation to be a Nation (that it be independent State), re-states what is the socialist (and therefore the “correct”) view of a Nation: that a nation is a “historically evolved, stable community of people based upon the common possession of four principal attributes, namely: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, a common psychological make up manifesting itself in common specific features of national culture.” Now Stalin was from Georgia, a territory that had been annexed by Russia, but also a hard-core Bolshevik, and so his definition of what makes up a nation (later re-branded as ethnic group) made it the official definition of every liberation movement, including ours, which is how our magical 9 bherat appeared. After independence and Sawa and the consolidation of a one party-state, ours is now just focused on only one attribute: “common psychological make up” manifesting itself in Mekhete against eternal enemies, foreign and domestic, Awet n’Hafash. Georgians had the last word in 1991 and told Russia and the very dead Stalin that such a fine group of people like themselves possessing such great attributes should also become a State. Thus, TPLF occasionally flirts with this (statehood), earning it rebuke and condemnation not from Ethiopians, but the Guardian of that particular Galaxy, Isaias Afwerki, who has never met a single liberation movement he has liked.
Anyway, that was (and still is) the foundation of the kilil system in Ethiopia. With a constitution that allows every kilil to pull a Georgia if Mother Ethiopia starts misbehavin’. EPRDF used to celebrate nation and nationalities day, which Abiy (to the extent he has any ideology) did not appreciate, because he believes it gets in the way of Prosperity; focuses the people on their ethnicity at the expense of their patriotic identity, and it gets in the way of the supplication that Ethiopia ታፍራና ተከብራ ለዘልአለም ትኑር. Amen. This is to say ideology, such as it is, is part of the brew, within the vengeance wars of Ethiopians.
Let’s go to something more recent.
A Year Earlier
It’s November 2019, a year before the launch of the #StupidWar. The “Central Committees” of three of the four political parties of EPRDF (EPRDF-sans-TPLF) had voted to create a single national party. The inevitability of Math guarantees that this, TPLF boycott or not, actually happens: not just lumping the three but the Fellow Travellers as well. Meanwhile, same month, TPLF, after calling what the EPRDF Council did “illegal”, counters by organizing an event in Mekele to form a coalition of Federalist forces as an alternative to the emerging “unitary” Prosperity Party. How did it go? That is what writers call foreshadowing: it was a bust. It was the first clue to the TPLF that, whereas it saw itself as the Champion of Federal Forces, that was not the first word-association triggered by “TPLF” to the rest of Ethiopia. Prison, torture, dispossession, internal displacement is all they remember.
So, it is January 2020. To the TPLF, that a man-child by the name of Abiy Ahmed Ali, a person who had never spent five minutes ruminating on what the meaning of a Nation is, had never formulated a political programme, and was prone to refer to himself as a Destiny Fulfilled, the Prophesy of the Mothers for the 7th king manifesting itself, that such a man was inviting them to join his Coalition Party, now given the very Aspirational name of Prosperity Party, was an affront to all the late-night debates they had on nations, nationalities and, surely, all the ብሔር: ብሔረሰቦችና ሕዝቦች would see through it as a return to the Unitary State of the bad ol’ days of the Ethiopian Empire.
That was TPLF’s First Miscalculations of many: they actually thought Ethiopians were an ideological people, between those who pined for Haile Selasse-Derg Era Ethiopia and an EPRDF Ethiopia. In reality, Ethiopians are probably (per surveys done) some of the most religious people on Earth, where religion includes regular group prayers to guide and protect the King.
So they were not going to join this defilement called Prosperity Party, but they sure would very much like to divide up the assets of EPRDF–and the assets are considerable. In a move pioneered by EPLF/PFDJ (Patient 0), all the EPRDF parties had decided to have para-statal organizations–EFORT in Tigray; Tiret in Amhara; Tumsa in Oromia; and Wendo in the Southern Nations to mostly enrich and corrupt the political leaders. But the biggest and baddest and richest was Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFORT) and its 34 (!) subsidiaries and TPLF wanted a piece of that. This, of course, was naturally objected to by His Abiness who took over the whole lot. So if you are into the “follow the money” school of thought, here’s where you can hang your hat to explain the Stupid War.
SARS-COV-2
Then God showed up to announce he is still in charge, after he allowed the devil to tempt a Chinese scientist to have sex with a bat. No, wait, my apologies: my research apparently includes comments in Fox Nation. I need to be more circumspect here. Let me put my San Francisco Bay Area hat (and mask, and gloves) and talk like them: for reasons that we may never know, but we are going to assume it is climate change because climate change is responsible for everything, the Universe gave us a pandemic so our movements can be restricted and we can stop polluting Mother Earth and use our bicycles. More research and funding is needed, but in the mean time, please wear your mask indoors, outdoors, shelter in place by your lonesome self listening to updates in your (public) radio as you go slowly insane.
You know the rest: Ethiopia, citing the pandemic, delays the elections. TPLF decides to have it. The Ethiopian parliament votes to refuse to recognize the TPLF and suspends budgetary support. The Federal government wants spymaster Getachew Assefa, TPLF says no. The Federal government wants to make personnel changes, location changes of its Northern Command, TPLF says no. The war of words escalates (Abiy tells Oromo audience it was the Oromo that overthrew TPLF and confined them to Mekele); the TPLF floats the idea of an Independent State. Tit, tat, tit, tat.
Joining the tit-tat was Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki. In what is perhaps the only known case of a Head of Government cursing an out-of-power neighboring political party, Isaias Afwerki and his media had non-stop commentary about TPLF. TPLF Game Over, TPLF Game Over, TPLF Game Over, over and over and over. In case the Tigrayans were thinking well at least our new young King will tell his new best friend to knock it off, there was none of that: just more hugging and giggling. As Isaias tried (so far unsuccessfully) to infiltrate the Ethiopian economy, the way he has South Sudan’s where every truck owner and truck driver is Eritrean.
So war broke out in 2020. It continued on its inexplicable journey in 2021.
Good Riddance 2022
The year 2022 began by smelling like War spirit, and the stench dragged on all year, accompanied by terrible sound track. Offensives, counter-attacks, Shilalo Front, Afar Front, Rama Front. Prisoners of war thanking the generosity of their hosts and the wrong-headedness of their leaders. Isn’t that every war since propaganda was invented, or at least named so? Scientific lightening and victory news. And conscription, conscription, conscription. There were names of towns and villages in Tigray, in Wollo that you wish you would have heard of on a tourist bus, instead of breathless announcements of “strategic military posts” that each side just had to have. There were boasts and taunts and irresponsible people acting irresponsibly, and near the end of the year, this Silliest of Wars, as it had begun two Novembers ago, just as abruptly, came to its finale. It’s like watching a sun set over a horizon, slow at first, then it is abrupt, gone, leaving you nothing but an after-glow of orange.
The after-glow of the Ethiopian Civil war, which should be their national colors, is just shades of grey and ember. ረመጽን ሓሙኽሽትን:: You know that peace treaty of South Africa and Kenya we celebrated last month? The Unreasonable have all decided that it would be more fun for all involved if we all just went back to shooting again:
PFDJ: we are so close, we can’t possibly stop now. Let’s finish them off! We will never vacate a place we are not in.
TPLF: Can you give us some space? It is not easy to try to sell a humiliating loss as a draw. Just give us space!
PP: My Eritrean franchises (Amhara PP) want me to destroy TPLF and my American Wallet wants me to make me peace. Let me think!
So this year from hell, this 2022, is looking like its going to replicate itself in 2023, at least for the first quarter. There is no talk of the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians and Tigrayans dead. In Eritrea, there is no official talk that we are/were even fighting in Ethiopia, much less the timetable for our withdrawal. They will just send us a propagandist, an accredited Ambassador to Diaspora, to boast of everything under the sun in the most unattractive Ewalini Lingo of Asmarinos.
There is no talk of the hundreds of thousands who are displaced. There is no talk of our wounded and killed because it gets in the way of Game Over. In fact, we are not allowed to visit our wounded. There is no news of the war that has dragged the Third Generation of Eritreans, into a None of Our Business War. There is some talk about accountability for the thousands of civilians victimized in the war–but only as it deals with conditionality for providing financial aid (AGOA), not because it is the right thing to do. The Tegaru Diaspora are settling into the lives of the Eritrean Diaspora, circa 2002: perfecting the politics of protest to mostly deaf ears. The Eritrean Diaspora, the part that is not loudly and emphatically pro-PFDJ, appears to have exhausted itself after pursuing many dead-end goals of “Tigray Prevails” and “Agazianism” and “Conference Organizing As A Profession.” They have been joined by new Dead-Enders who actually believe PFDJ is reformable and they are going to “change it from within.” After all, they have polished their patriotic creds by proclaiming they stand with Eritrean Defense Forces and our People (except for the EDF and the People that are tortured and disappeared and imprisoned every day. You know: the same people they used to fight for before they fell in love with the flag. ) Some have dropped out, specially after witnessing the Brigade nHamedu bullies. No less authority than the exiled Karl Marx had written that “exile is a school of scandal and meanness.”
We Can Matter If We Want To
But to be exiled is not to be powerless, unless you choose to be. Nobody describes the Polish exiles of pre-independent Poland as powerless! They are venerated. In fact, the world over, the literature on exiled communities is very flattering. Eritrea’s two founding fathers, Ibrahim Sultan and Woldeab Woldemariam were exiles. Our first liberation movement, ELF, was almost entirely made up of exiles, in its first year. We can matter! But only if we take the initiative to play our role, however we define it. Passively (as the guardians of Timeless Eritrean Values) or assertively (as organized emancipators.)
The latter requires a lot of hard unglamorous work: more “clustering, networking, conditioning and organizing” and building the relays (amplifiers) that must accompany it. We have no choice but to try again! If nothing else, but for future Eritreans to know that the sadistic Isaias Afwerki era and its eternal vengeance wars and the propagandists who tastelessly brag about it, never represented us. Because we too are a Nation, a Diaspora Nation, and we have our own “common psychological make up manifesting itself in common specific features of national culture”, of a Nation we remember and are proud of. Of fairness, of justice, of Democracy. We can own our narrative and then mobilize our people to act on them. It will require the same thing a post-war Eritrea needed in the 1940s: a National Conference ( ሃገራዊ ዋዕላ) of every Eritrean who believes Eritreans deserve better than Isaias-PFDJ rule. The National Conference (funded and organized by us) is the first step; we will then decide what we are organizing for, and how to organize. That’s the conversation we should be having. That’s the conversation I will be having, preferably with you.
