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(III) The Circular Journey in Search of Eritrea: “Hadnetna” from Sahel to the Sinai

You wake up early in the morning to start your new job in a new city. You have all the directions written so that you do not get lost. You don’t want to take any chances, so you decide to beat the rush hour as early as possible. But to your amazement, even at that very early hour, the whole city is in total chaos, and it has become impossible to drive. Worse yet, it has become impossible to find your way out of this mess – be it to your work place or even back to your home. You see, something odd has happened overnight: all the road signs have been taken off, and randomly reassigned to all the streets throughout the city. This could be nothing but the work of the Devil himself. If you add to this bizarre situation the fact that you are not even aware of the mixed up road signs (given that you are a newcomer), your condition would accurately describe the current predicament of the Warsai generation, aptly called the Lost Generation. All the reference points – historical, cultural, moral, legal, societal, religious, global, familial, educational, etc – that would have told them with pinpointed accuracy their current whereabouts have been thrown away by Ghedli (the Devil in Eritrea) and replaced with signposts that are meant to keep them constantly disoriented.

[Photo: The Eritrean woman: from a freedom fighter to a rape victim]

Leaf

the roots; would you believe
say; from up on air
sound like twigs; planted upside down

the young are wasted
as the old wither
in a land laid bare; abandoned

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)