When my children were small and a lot easier to entertain I used to play tic-tac-toe with them and either let them win or ask them to play each other and watch them challenge each other for hours on end…but soon they discovered that once you understand how the game works, the best outcome was that you draw even… there are only so many options and there are only so many tactics and once you discover these the outcome was the same every time…you draw! At our house that usually meant; mum having to find (and fund) alternative gap filler … 

Tic- tac-toe or naughts and crosses as it is known here in the UK, is a  game for two players, who take turns marking, naughts and crosses, in a 3 by 3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game. 

These days I am convinced that, this is also the rule that politics is played on, certainly the politics I have been following in Eritrea… let me give an example… if PIA was playing naughts and PMMZ was playing crosses… then for every naught placed a corresponding cross was successfully placed in a manner of adept tic-tac-toe players that always draw… if one proposes something the other matches with a counter that reasserts the state of affairs…they even coined a name for it; the ‘no- war-no-peace’ era… not unlike the cold war of yesteryears… but not so cold…maybe a tad tepid…and just like in the bad old days there is a constant tit-for-tatting that goes on across the field… militarily… un/diplomatically…an unfortunate extension of this policy is of course proxy wars that have beleaguered the entire sub continent, with grave consequences for the youth in Eritrea. The current torrent of immigration is sourced right at the heart of the lukewarm spring of malevolent poison in the Horn of Africa… the lack of peace, even in the absence of war, between Eritrea and Ethiopia. 

It seems the regimes in Ethiopia and Eritrea have worked out that playing tic- tac-toe with each other isn’t that much fun anymore, especially when you know each other so well and can pretty accurately preempt each other’s moves perfectly… the best outcome possible is no outcome i.e. no one wins… every tic-tac-toe duo comes to that conclusion in time…you get to a point of   break even and then the game looses its initial luster…  

Enter the chicken… casino owners who have worked out the initial appeal of tic-tac-toe and the problem of players soon breaking even and hence loosing interest in the game have overcome the problem by challenging them to play against a trained chicken… if you can’t beat a trained chicken then you are not worth of the game… similarly, to this, PIA trained Al-shebab to play PMMZ and when several Christmases back his trained chickens were on the run he appeared on media lamenting the situation… the rest is history as was played across resolution 1907. Alshebab isn’t the only chicken IA has or is attempting to train… the last count put the number of trained/ing groups  to several dozens. I once asked a question to a person who was explaining to a group of people how some Ethiopian groups, being trained, supported and equipped in Eritrea, were doing… my question was: ‘what is in it for the poor chicken?’, but diplomatically I asked ‘how can a group being trained and supported by one of the most brutal and undemocratic regimes in the world…hope to achieve democracy and justice for the country next door?’ … the person didn’t like the question … in his answer he came across as most pathetic PFDJ apologists do and our hosts didn’t like the direction of the conversation and I am convinced that the chicken was in it just for the ride… the chickens in this case (and often in most cases) were not the people with western passports crisscrossing the globe making it possible for the casinos to have such lucrative businesses… the poor chickens were the poor young men and women who don’t have much to live for, but have many telling them there is a qualitative difference between dying of hunger and dying with a Kalashnikov dangling from your emaciated shoulders! The other lot are the chicken farmers who supply the chicken markets. 

I fear that the appeal of tic-tac-toe… or rather chick-tac-toe may have reached Addis too… I worry that the Ethiopians may be looking to train their own set of chickens and challenging PIA to play chick-tac-toe in the not so distant future… and this is probably just what he has been waiting for… to showcase his military prowess…a perfect excuse for him to further tighten his grip around the throat of a nation that has already  been chocked to near death. 

The writing on the wall has been there all along but recent months have seen an increasing array of activities of diaspora activists… touting their businesses of supplying chicken markets of the region.  My concern is that as the supply of willing chickens is extremely low, as demonstrated by the number of young people who are choosing the option of gambling it all in the deserts and high seas as opposed to becoming trained chickens of proxy wars between casino owners and their selfish suppliers against the war thirsty regime that has squandered their youth and vitality already, we may see a rise in the number of chicken traps set to catch any bird fitting the description… 

Back in the days when armed resistance against the regime in Eritrea was being discussed, people used to sell it as a self defense tactic especially for those who are facing targeted attacks against their Ethnic groups…and in some bold moments people used to also talk about targeted attacks against high ranking PFDJ officials and their economic power basis…Nowadays these same groups talk about Ethnic organisations being the only effective form of organisation and armed struggle being the only way forward… I worry… I worry because I know that they know (as well as we all do)  that there is no hope for them or them and any of the rest of us put together, to  pursue this course without the concerted hands on support of whoever is willing to train and support them to use them to score against the contender on the other side of the chick-tac-toe board! In fact the best these organistaions can hope for is to be chicken suppliers for the unquenchable casino… I worry… I worry a lot… and I am disappointed that this is what has become of the just cause I have joined… 

Our region is littered with ample examples of the futility of war… as a short or long term tactic… more importantly our war mongering regime is a global expert in turning the war machine to its advantage even when it looses these wars so terribly, in other words even making IA loose a battle is not going to gain us a country at peace with itself and its surrounding… there is a less travelled means to the kind of change we want in Eritrea…making it impossible for PIA to carry on with the impunity he had been…making his politics unpalatable both internally and globally…and we have been getting there slowly but surely… count the heads of states who are willing to be counted as ‘friends of IA’ for how well the strategy is working… we are less successful internally but there too there are significant areas of progress…. 

One of the reasons for my annoyance with politicians in our resistance movement is their insistence in attempting to sell us, a pie in the sky of a quick victory, through violence…their track records don’t justify this audacity… haven’t they been threatening this forever? And what have we got to show for it? 

In fact if truth be told… my fellow evangelical believers have resisted the regime more forcefully, from their container cells, than all the Kalashnikov totting groups put together! They have also made many inside Eritrea and in the international community see the brutality of the regime… the disabled veterans of maihabar did more to rally support for the resistance movement and the incarcerated journalists and politicians continue to pause as the only challenge for the regime’s ability to operate unchallenged (all the way from their cells in Era Ero!)… 

 It would actually not be an exaggeration to state that the opposition political organisations have been a liability more than they have been an asset to their own struggle. The un-clarity of their message, the confusion in their means of attaining their objectives and the disagreements over their strategies continue to hamper any progress they make… and now to make matters worse I fear they may be priming themselves to be used as casino chickens and/or chicken suppliers, for the grand contest of naughts and crosses that. If PIA wins, it will loose us Eritrea for a long time to come and if he looses it will also loose us the kind of Eritrea we dreamed of for a long long time to come too… and both options will cost us countless young people who will go to war either at the grip of IA’s throttling grip or the similarly tightening grips of the middle men of the chicken markets… this is my fear as we enter a new year and possibly a new era…and a new dimension in our resistance for a democratic and just Eritrea. 

I guess… A luta continua …still

Praying for a better new year