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Power Play: Tigrai Beating Eritrea

Ethiopia is busy investing in multi-billion dollar projects, while we are peppered with miniscule projects in Eritrea that have no impact on short and long term well-being and prosperity of Eritrea.  Most of the Eritrean projects advertised on ERITV are designed to deceive Eritreans into thinking that there is economic progress in Eritrea, while in reality most are band-aid projects that don’t have usage life longer than one or two years.  For instance, those micro-dams that we are repeatedly told about fill quickly with sediments within two years that they no longer hold significant amount of water.  These are NOT one of those build once and use forever with little maintenance projects, but are high maintenance projects that become neglected as quickly as they come into use.  Good luck finding these types of neglected projects on ERITV.

"Independent Eritrea": A crumbling nation and a tragedy - Part I

And there are the silent majority mostly the youth.   Those Eritreans who are under the age of 30 which happen to constitute the majority of the Eritrean people.   This group is absolutely silent and does not identify itself with any of the opposition group  ...

For this age group the very word Eritrea means suffering, war, death, slavery, forcible recruitment.  They have no romantic attachment to the "Zebene Gedli" the struggle era.   Their nationalist feeling is very low.  In their minds the word Eritrea simply means suffering and death and want to run away from it as far as possible by any means possible.  ...

They have no lost love for Eritrea and do not care what happens to their home land.  Eritrea for them is a nation of stolen youth, camouflaged slavery and a land of one vast military camp celebrating death. One thing they want is to somehow escape to some corner of the globe, find asylum, get married and live their lives in peace.

The Zenawi Doctrine: Deter, Contain, Isolate - Part I

As the leading architect of Ethiopian foreign policy towards Eritrea’s Sultanistic government, Prime Minster Meles Zenawi had framed and shepherded a comprehensive doctrine that can be encapsulated in a dynamically interrelated and integrated three political concepts; “Deterrence, Containment and Isolation”. The intelligently articulated triangulating doctrine has evolved into a coherent overarching foreign policy guiding principle post 1998 Ethio-Eritrea war. At the core of the dynamic doctrine is the strategy of doing everything possible, short of another full-blown war, to contain, influence and transform Isaias regime’s outlandish policies and actions (direct and proxy) towards Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and to a certain extent towards its own people.  Whether this strategy would have evolved into an active effort to depose the government in Asmara had the Prime Minster not been taken away by a sudden death from the people of Ethiopia is one of the vexing question the writing will try to address.

ERITREA: APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE ... WE ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

... It wouldn’t be that far fetched to embark on an ‘archaeological journey’ or a ‘forensic investigation’ into the ‘fossil’ of Eritrea while it is still breathing.  As one of the last nation states to emerge from Africa, it would probably serve as a good example on how nation states were made and corrode in the process – in fast forward but, back in slow motion.

The current crisis – very serious crisis – is an outcome of a cocktail of euphoric relief, total and absolute trust, wilful blindness and dead tiredness on top of groundless and misguided overconfidence.

Forging a nation is one thing and beating it to death is quite another.  Despite all that desperate need to open their eyes to the living, Eritreans still talk about ‘martyrs’ who shed their blood for the liberation and independence of Eritrea.  In hindsight, it looks and feels like a stream of bloodshed – the only thread that binds Eritrea’s unsustainable present ...

Asmara’s Crumbling Buildings: Let the pictures speak- Part II

This way of life and the worldview from the field sustained itself after Eritrea’s independence. The old guerrilla and liberation movement-turned- government remains unfazed by the continuing breakdown of the built environment in Asmara and other places in Eritrea. It finds today’s damage in environment immaterial in comparison to the scale of destruction it witnessed in the field. Its taste of aesthetics and preservation seems robbed by the years of war and attendant destruction. Instead of by the appeal of cityscape, the government of former liberation fighters is enamored by war-ravaged field life with its mountains and valleys. Even years after having taken control of cities and towns, it looks at city life as if it is looking at parched earth and rocks in the Sahel. The people in power in Eritrea are just stuck in their old rugged environment.

Critical review of Professor Tesfatsion Medhanies’s discussion paper Eritrea ’’kem adebo’’

Professor Tesfatsion’s discussion paper rotates around the word ‘’Adebo’’ and by extension of Eritrea as a nation and its predicaments.  The paper deals with the historical background to the creation of Eritrea and to some extent about the peoples of Eritrea. The paper discusses in detail the Tigray-Tigrigni concept, its inception under the British trusteeship and revival during the present. I have no problem with the description of nature of the Eritrean political entity.  ... Like an inexperienced cooker, who mixes different raw materials in a cooking pot with a hope of producing  a tasty soup, forgetting that right and compatible ingredients are required to produce a tasty one, Pr. Tesfatsion has tried, by mixing irrelevant terms and issues, to create political sensation. ... Since I believe that it lacks objectivity, I have felt obliged to respond and put the record straight by comparing his claims with the facts on the ground. I want to make it clear from the very beginning that this review is not meant to defend Isayas and co. ...

(Photo: Prof. Tesfatsion Medhanie)

Asmara’s Crumbling Buildings: Let the pictures speak- Part I

Asmara’s buildings which only forty, fifty years ago were the pride and joy of their citizens and the attraction of visitors are now falling to pieces. They are now succumbing to the elements, old age and utter neglect. It is not unnatural for buildings to grow old with the passage of time. That is why buildings periodically need professional inspection and renovation, particularly where they are historically significant. However, Asmara’s buildings have not been lucky to receive this much needed care and overhaul. They have been abandoned to degrade and fall apart. The level of degradation is so appalling that one is tempted to conclude it is being overlooked deliberately. The building plasters have peeled off looking oftentimes leprous skin and at other times new, festering wounds; the walls have been left stripped and are growing weak; cracks have formed and continue to form everywhere on the walls and other structures; the roofs have rusted away and some of them have fallen down; the building joinery (doors and windows) is broken and rickety; many of the glass panes are shattered and hanging in their places are plastic or clothing sheets, and so on. The pictures attached with this article speak for themselve. ...

Eritrea: The Usurpation of Christian Religious Power and Lexicon

In Eritrea, the day of the armed rebellion and name of its Founders is quite known among its inhabitants and the writers, who chose the history of the region as their specialty. Ask, however, anybody about the origin and purpose of the use of the word “ghedli”, (derived from “gadla”, the language of liturgy of the Ge’ez-Rite religions), and chances are nobody has a given a thought about it. Is the use of this word, which means life or act of saints in English, an incidental borrowing of the fronts or a deliberate use of religious concepts for political propaganda?  ...

... The Tewahdo Church and the others unwillingly abdicated their power to the yekealo princes, who did not blush to hear kibrin megosn n’e Hizabawi genbar (Glory and Praise to Hizbawi Genbar).  ...

Time to Solve our National Challenges

The lopsided defeat of the Republican Party has also inflicted some ego bruising to the Eritrean government, its minuscule members of PFDJ in North America and the sorry excuse for an embassy in Washington DC. A semi –unofficial campaign was being orchestrated to vote against president Obama after he went public with his sanction against the Eritrean regime for “human trafficking”.  As usual the followers of Isaias are full of themselves. They overestimate their significance and more sadly their imaginary leverage against the American government. What will be their excuse and agenda moving forward? More lecture about America’s jealousy over the extraordinary economic development in Eritrea? Recommend to President Obama how to learn from the exemplary water and energy management strategy of their visionary leader? ...

Nevsun's CEO Cliff Davis on Eritrea: I have nothing to declare

What is strange is that when a limited company like Nevsun Resources dived into the Eritrean underground space of exploration for gold, copper and zinc, it had already failed to do the preliminary work into the credibility of who owns the land. ...

Has the Government of Canada or Nevsun Resources figured out why thousands of Eritreans are applying for asylum in Canada?  Why are governments, global corporations and some unaware Canadians complaining about immigrants from Eritrea when Canadian companies like Nevsun Resources are doing a deal with a totalitarian African regime that is literally driving its own citizens out of the country?

Eri-Leaks: Uncovering the Secrets of the Eritrean Regime

President Isaias Afwerki oversees a totalitarian regime, with only a privileged few in his inner circle. Decisions are made in secrecy and the general population struggles to survive in a failed economy while living in fear of being arrested, detained, tortured and possibly killed. The GSE affords its citizenry virtually no human rights and for all practical purposes civil liberties do not exist. Yet, despite these failings many well-meaning Eritreans in the diaspora, continue to support the government by falling prey to the propaganda due to the lack of information available on what is really happening within the country. By publishing Eri-leaks we're trying to address this information gap and inform Eritreans about the inner working of their government, albeit through the eyes of the US embassy in Asmara and their intelligence network.

Long live Areopagitica!

You see apparently even Goebbels was in favour of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin (so says Noam Chomsky) …our commitment to freedom of expression will not be measured by our ability to tolerate the views we approve of but those we actually despise…

To my friends at EYSC who felt put out by my criticism of the work that we are doing… to those who thought I shouldn’t have gone public with my views to those who thought my criticism wasn’t ‘constructive’ (when we are done here we can write a new dictionary)… and finally to those who feel that people who are working as hard as we are (voluntarily) shouldn’t be criticised…I say watch it or you might end up in the company of : the good men of Vatican who banned Copernicus and punished Galileo for expressing a thought… and those who declared fatwa on Salmon Rushdie… and I am sure that isn’t where you want to be!