There is a parable, commonly attributed to activist Irving Zola: two friends are at a picnic, by the river, and they hear the sound of a child drowning. They jump in, successfully rescue the child, and are going back to the river bank, and they hear another drowning voice, rescue, return…then another. “Wait, where are you going?” asks one of the other. “I am going upstream to stop the person throwing all these children in to the river!” answers the other. How much time do we devote to go upstream, and what is stopping us from doing so? And because of that, how is the state of the State on the eve of its 31st independence anniversary? And, one more time, what should be done?
A supporter of the government may say: When our government improves delivery of clean water in the villages; clean energy to replace firewood; planting trees and terracing hills; building schools and clinics in remote areas guaranteeing social justice; meeting all Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), eradicating malaria, HIV/AIDS; pursuing food security by refusing all aid; defying the rules of the unipolar world at great cost to preserve our sovereignty, isn’t that the very definition of upstream: to deliver the next generation a much better quality of life than that of our generation, including our government?
An opposition member will say: it is not the details that matter, as every claim above can be challenged on its accuracy or its lack of context. What matters is the total dismissal of the current generation as a people with no agency, no voice, no autonomy over their lives. Their entire lives. Those who remind the people that they do have a voice are the “enemies of the State.” Those in Eritrea have been, and will be, made to disappear and those who oppose this from exile will lose their passports and their living permits and work permits or marginalized. But, my PFDJ compatriots, believe it or not: we are the reasonable ones on this argument and you are extremists leading bougie lives.
From the perspective of those who support the Eritrean government, greatness can come to Eritrea, but only if President Isaias Afwerki and his trusted compatriots and preferred successor (?) are leading the country. I mean: this is so obvious–who delivered Eritrea’s independence against all odds after all? It was EPLF which rebranded itself as PFDJ. Only compulsive gamblers (ተቌመርቲ!) would take a risk on something so consequential!
From our perspective, that is a lot of pots, kettles in the dark sea calling each other black. Who is the compulsive gambler? The compulsive gamblers are the president and government of Eritrea who have mired Eritrea into never ending wars, with all their attendant catastrophes, since 1995. Since we are approaching Eritrea’s 31st independence anniversary, and since Poet Laureate Awel Saeed insists on telling us mythologies invented at the Office of the President (and looking damn good doing it!), let’s take a short walk down Bad Memories Lane:
Acute Adventurism and Gambling
1. There was the Hanish Islands (Yemen) Crisis of 1995, a senseless, but mercifully brief 2-day war. But there were still casualties, about a dozen on each side. The tribunal, 4 years later, awarded the bigger island to Yemen, but it allowed for generous fishing rights to all sides. We said it was a new telemedien government still learning to govern, we forgave. No, this was yet another US conspiracy to perpetuate war (it instigated the war and the award), explained Isaias Afwerki commenting two decades later about a 2-day war. True to form, he likes to talk alone, so his bogus verdict came long after the journalists (The Economist), scholars (Professor Jeffrey A Lefebvre), mediators (France), UN (which passed a resolution to order Eritrea out of Lesser Hanish Islands) and investigators (the Permanent Court of Arbitration, same place that would also arbitrate our eventual war with Ethiopia) had closed their files. Isaias the Zeragito begins to spin his fantastic stories when the witnesses are all gone and now that tale is being repeated by Awel in his booming voice.
2. A year later, (96-97) Eritrea joined Rwanda’s Coalition of the Looting along with Uganda, Burundi and Angola in the Congo (then Zaire.) Why? All we can say, in the immortal words of Trump, is Laurent-Desire Kabila and Isaias Afwerki “got along.” Until they didn’t and Kabila kicked everybody from the looting coalition out of his country, until some of them re-grouped in the East and came back. It was during Eritrea’s telemedien government years so nobody asked questions and nobody volunteered answers. Although Ambassador Andeberhan Ghebregiorgis was Eritrea’s envoy to the Great Lakes, you won’t find a mention about Congo or Zaire (except in the abbreviation page) in his book “Eritrea At Crossroads”, which chronicled Eritrea’s history from pre-colonial times to the time he disassociated himself from the government.
3. A year later, (98-00) we stumbled into Baduma, Eritrea. Everything you are now hearing in the Ethiopian civil war–killing, maiming, prisoners of war, displacement, property destruction and rape were committed then, too, by both parties as the Eritrea Ethiopia Claims Commission ruled. Everybody knows what the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission said but nobody, apparently, has read the Eritrea Ethiopia Claims Commission ruling on what the two sides did to each other. So now, both Eritrea and Tigray get to tell their mythologies, victimizing themselves and defaming the other. Although both sides have increased their literacy rates to over 70%, they still act like pre-literate societies relying on songs and folktales instead of facts presented following investigations interrogating witnesses and experts interrogating history books.
4. A year later, Beja (Bidhaawyeet) Territory, Sudan. This eventually resulted in the 2006 East Sudan & Khartoum Peace Agreement, brought to the world by the Government of Eritrea. You can read the details of the peace agreement here to see how well that has aged. What matters is that, at the time, the event was celebrated in the courtyard of the presidential palace with Presidents Isaias and Al-beshir and their wives being serenaded by musicians. Proving, once again, that Eritrea is the center of gravity for peace in the region….
5. Except that the exact same year, in 2006, Eritrea joined a proxy war in Somalia. It wasn’t the only one fighting this war, everybody else was including Ethiopia, US, European countries, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, UAE and Ukraine (thoughts and prayers) whose pilots and planes were also there. The UNSC finally blew the whistle that there will be an arms embargo on Somalia and no foreign forces other than those blessed by AU and UN can remain. Eritrea composed the Anthem of the Belligerent: ኣይሰምዕን የ! This was a huge gamble which resulted in mild sanctions (2009) against the PFDJ/military hierarchy. Two years of more belligerence resulted in more sanctions (2011), and these ones were harsh enough to expand to the entire economy costing Eritrea a decade of malaise and regression.
6. In 2008, the “center of gravity for regional peace” spread its peace (by which I mean, obviously, war) at Ras Doumaira, Djibouti/Eritrea. This war was vociferously denied by the Eritrean government: it was all a fabrication, it repeatedly said, to numerous AU/IGAD efforts to mediate, and UN resolutions for its forces to withdraw. The Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea investigated and published its findings, including the fact that Djibouti prisoners of war, who were held in prisons in Sahel, had escaped to Sudan. Even wilder fabrication, said Eritrea’s government. But the mediator, Qatar, had to eventually discuss exchange of prisoners of war, and Eritrea’s official answer was that some of the Djibouti prisoners had escaped. It lied about there not being a war, nor prisoners of war. Thus, when Djibouti released 100s of what it called Eritrean POWs and defectors, hardly anybody covered the news. It certainly was NOT a subject of discussion for even Eritreans. And 14 years later, the dispute is unresolved (leaving future generations more IEDs–Isaias’s Explosive Devices) because, ready for this, Eritrea said that the only country that can mediate its dispute with Djibouti is Qatar, a country with whom we have no relationship anymore, having accused them of being religious extremists, at the behest of our newer, bigger, better allies: Saudi Arabia and UAE. Also, Qatar is suing us for millions of dollars that the self-reliant Isaias took and refused to pay.
7. Now, twelve years later, we are in a stealth war. In a war that not a single independent reporter has been embedded in, unlike 1998-2000 war. A war, where our participation has not been confirmed to Eritreans in Eritrea by Eritrean officials, while Ambassador Sophia Tesfamariam and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tells the world (in English only) that we will withdraw (from places we are not in).
Now, really, judging it objectively: who is the compulsive gambler, the opposition or the government? The Government of Eritrea has pursued a policy that zigzags Eritrea from one terrible war to another and it is hard to resist the temptation that war is its preferred ecosystem. But at what cost to Eritreans? So many refugees living in terrible conditions, and they got there to escape a Predatory State which wants to build a Hawaiian garden for the future generation on their backs, their mind, and their muscles–indefinitely. Till death does them part and they are called martyrs.
The Ethiopian Civil War & Eritrean Responses
All wars are terrible, but the Ethiopian civil war appears to be more so because it is a personal war; a war not for justice but revenge. All sides are seething with a sense of deep betrayal, and you can be betrayed only by those whom you once trusted. Enemies cannot betray because there is no trust to betray. So, what we have is not normal politics, but politics of kin. TPLF feels betrayed by Abiy because it feels he owes his entire career as leader of ODP to them. Where is his gratitude? Abiy is mad at TPLF because they wouldn’t be Prosperity Party’s Tigray franchise and allow him to rule in peace just as he had let them for decades. Where is their gratitude? PFDJ is seething at TPLF because of the 20 year (98-18) purgatory it was put in and all the atrocities of the 98-00 war (same atrocities it had committed per, again, EECC.) Eventually Weyane will pay the price for this unforgivable crime, as Sebhat Ephrem once explained. TPLF is seething at PFDJ for presiding over an actual country with a Sea. And…other stuff. This book explains the other stuff about TPLF: “Identity Jilted or Reimagining Identity: The Divergent Paths of Eritrean and Tigrayan Nationalist Struggles. (The surveys are most revealing.) Meanwhile, PFDJ is looking wearily at Abiy (after all that hand-holding, hugging and chauffeuring) because it doesn’t think he has the mental toughness to endure hardship; and Abiy is looking at PFDJ as a rogue group he is tired of explaining to the West. Wait until you have to explain them to your people, dear Abiy. Anyway, it is all personal. Personalized politics leads to personalized wars. And those are the worst.
All wars are brutal, but this one appears even more savage: dehumanization, extrajudicial killing, torture, rape. Calls for investigation are answered by seeking asylum in a culture or a custom: why, lordy lordy lordy, I never! We are so civilized we would do no such thing! How dare you? There is nothing to investigate, they say, because it is unthinkable that our side would ever ever do that. It is all fake news so hashtag no more. If armies with reputations for being highly disciplined have rogue elements doing terrible things, how disciplined are they really? It is also to avoid that question that investigations are stalled by all sides. There is no introspection or genuine desire to seek the truth. ‘እቲ ድርዕቶ ከም ባህሊ ወይ ልምዲ ተቐቢልናዮ… ክቅንጠጥ ኣለዎ!” as a Tigrayan intellectual said in one of the few occasions where introspection was allowed. But the barbarity on display is beyond troublesome and in countries where religious leaders are in the service of the State, there doesn’t appear to be an institution able to shout “no!”
The Eritrean state media is still silent about the war but in the quasi-official ruling-party affiliated media, videos of Eritrean soldiers celebrating are shared. Mendelay is mendelaying. The message appears to be: hell, yeah, not only are we there, we are winning. It is more gambling, more IEDs.
In response to all this churning, the Eritrean opposition has gone into three different movements. The most recent coalition is the Seedling group whose biggest coalition member is probably (based on social media audience size and participation) Bright Future. You can read about their values and belief system from their manifesto, available here. You can also listen to their leader here. They are the “let’s ally with Tigray and TPLF” forces, a strategy that has failed many formerly Ethiopia-based opposition groups and their member groups (the Alliance), will also fail the most recent Global Bayto (a significant number of whom challenged the unauthorized alliance with Weyane), and every acronym and two-man group that pledged and pledges to do that. This is probably because none of these groups have proven that they can deliver a constituency that will make whatever revolutionary democratic plans they have in mind for Eritrea (ethnic federation reloaded.)
In response to Bright Future and its fellow-travelers (Agazian, Tigray-Tigrina), a coalition (with no name or slogan or logo) of Eritreans who believe the TPLF is a bigger threat to Eritrea than Isaias or PFDJ is forming (or has formed.) They include media (AAN, Facebook Live and YouTube celebrities), One Nation, and those disenchanted with everybody else–Yiakl, Bright Future, and the traditional opposition. They have no time to ponder on what the unexploded mines Isaias Afwerki is spreading all over Ethiopia mean, nor do they question Eritrean involvement in a medieval war, or how much we are paying for it. It is all about national security, beqa. So we are going to trust the judgement of the one man whose judgement we consider flawed about everything else, including exiling us.
In a different field, using their own balls, and referencing old rules are the original opposition–the remnants of ELF and its splinter groups. They play in a field with no audience and reject any calls to make themselves relevant to the Eritrean discourse.
Incompetence vs Sadism
The biggest indictment on the opposition is its incompetence and disorganization. And lack of leadership, organizational discipline, and equating Eritrea’s national interest with PFDJ’s political interest. And on most, I think, we are guilty as charged.
The biggest indictment on the supporters of the government is their selfishness and sadism. It’s their willing embrace of policies that mire Eritrea in endless wars, that exiles them by the hundreds of thousands, that disappears them in prisons that are waiting rooms for graveyards. That Eritrea continues to fail in many areas that the rest of sub-Saharan Africa continues to fail in–provide running water and electricity to residents of its capital city; decent education and healthcare to all; and an economy that works–is just maladministration. We can live with that. It is the mundaneness of its cruelty that is inexplicable and unbearable. As is their casual use of lies:
When the G-15 were arrested, the Eritrean government said it is not disclosing the crimes against them because it did not want to tip its hands to their confederates who are still at large. That was in 2001, 21 years ago. Are the confederates still at large? And what could they possibly learn if the government brought its charges? The independent press were closed “temporarily”, also 21 years ago. The ratified constitution was the greatest thing the PFDJ produced, said the PFDJ, until it told us such a 3-year long, participatory process producing a liberal, democratic and a unitary state guaranteeing its citizens rights, was actually so fragile that it was fatally wounded when its chief drafter, Dr. Berekhet Habtselassie, then 70 and a free citizen, “fatally compromised it” by fraternizing with his compatriots who were not big fans of the document he helped draft. I will give you a new one, said the king, disingenuously, in 2014. That is 8 years ago, almost as long as it would have taken Dr. Berekhet to draft three different constitutions for 3 different countries.
What Is To Be Done?
For the supporters of the government, going upstream means fighting the United States and ending the unipolar, hegemonic world order. Even if we assume this is a desirable goal, what is it that Eritrea can offer the countries that will help make the world multi-polar, i.e. Russia and China? A vote at the UN, and rent-seeking on the ports of Massawa and Asab? Given that we are a small country (small market) won’t these super-powers-in-waiting have other alternatives like Sudan? (Russia already does.) How long will it take for the “hegemony” to end? A decade? Two? And can Eritrea sustain that? And towards what national security interest when we know that if the Biden Administration was to invite Isaias Afwerki to the White House he would sing a different tune as he did many times with previous “the sky is the limit” allies like Iran?
The Eritrean government bemoans the fate of Somalia, but that was largely driven by a president who had long outstayed his welcome and, while pretending to be a secular nationalist, was playing clan/ethnic politics with zero succession plan. And the Eritrean government, without a party congress, party elections, constitutionalism, institution-building, even Council of Ministers, or even a vice president, has been on the same path of countries ruled by those who believed “The Man Is The State”, as was the case in Zaire’s Mobutu and Somalia’s Barre.
The most painless path to change in Eritrea would be if the ruling party asserted itself as a political party; held congresses and elections; implemented its constitution; legalized opposition; opened the press; and emptied out its prisons. Then we would have an evolutionary change: bloodless and healing. But because the regime is addicted to gambling, it would rather postpone all of that to fight US imperialism.
So what must the opposition do?
1. If you have nothing to offer the TPLF, you cannot be an ally. All the opposition members (and individuals!) who publish press releases telling us they have agreed to ally with TPLF have to ask themselves: what am I offering? And can I deliver on what I am offering? Can Bright Future deliver on its belief that it wants to reset Eritreanism to pre-Ghedli, pre-colonial times? It cannot, I don’t think, get away with equating freedom fighters with bandits. Because Eritreans are proud of their ghedli–warts and all–and have accepted Italian colonialism as an irreversible and transformative development that Eritrea can capitalize on. Can anyone selling ethnic federalism deliver? Those who had that vision–Sagem, de.me.Ha.E, and the various ethnic groups didn’t even come close to doing that, rejected as they were by their alleged core constituencies. This approach is a non-starter for any post-Ghedli generation, and definitely the post-Sawa High School generation. In short, the overwhelming majority of Eritreans. And in the end, all TPLF has to sell is its first principle: ethnic federalism.
2. If you are not organized, and if you don’t believe in organizational discipline, you will break apart and your effectiveness will decrease until you are a totally irrelevant two-man crew. This is basically the history of Eritrean Opposition 1.0 (1991-2001), Opposition 2.0 (2001-2005), Opposition 3.0 (2006 to present.) I thought, and I proposed, that the highest form of organizational discipline is a government-in-exile, but many of those who were nominated to lead it would rather be news analysts, EU-funded symposium organizers, and maintaining their cordial relationship with their friends at the UN and Geneva. (More on this when National Task Team on Government-in-Exile issues its report.)
3. You cannot start an “armed struggle” because, as the hundreds of thousands of armed Eritreans who threw away their arms and sought asylum in lieu of “fighting back” demonstrated, there is zero appetite for civil war in Eritrea. Especially after the “melting pot” of Sawa. If there were any doubts about that, the front row seat we had to Ethiopia’s civil war should compel us to renounce war as a means of bringing change. This, even as we know that the ruling party would never extend that courtesy to us in the opposition.
This leaves us with: back to the basics! Organize as civil society or political party (on the basis of values not tribes); commit to the foundational principles of the organization, embrace organizational discipline, relentlessly work without let up to win. To go upstream, to stop it at the cause. Define winning as an Eritrea that has rule of law, is constitutional and democratic that is big enough for all Eritreans. The goal should always be to win and the strategies pursued have to always be about winning. It is a tedious, thankless job that will take time because we didn’t do it right. Dont worry yourself too much about alliances when you are small: you will always be a junior partner. Be big and strong and truly represent the Eritrean heartbeat and the world will come a-knocking.
