Eritrea’s Deliverance Day, Inter Alia

Eritrea's Deliverance Day, Inter Alia

Yosief GHebrehiwet

Recently, many of you must have heard about a radio evangelist by the name of Harold Camping who prophesized the End of the World (or, the Second Coming of Christ) on May 21, 2011. He had many followers of the True Believer type that took his words literally, behaved appropriate to that odd belief they held to be true (some depleted their saving accounts), and waited expectantly for that Deliverance Day to uplift them to heaven, leaving the rest of us sinners to be swallowed by earthquakes, tsunamis and all other pestilences that only their God could handily deliver. Despite the irrationality or despair that drove the modern-day prophet and his followers to wait expectantly for this Grand Apocalypse, the former did us one big favor: he was merciful enough to be specific on the date of the End of the World. He mixed religious gibberish, which he could have easily gotten away with, with empirical evidence to back it up, which he should have avoided altogether given that it could be proven wrong come that day of reckoning. May 21 has come and gone; and, with it, the religious edifice the prophet built. At the start, the poor guy was openly mumbling that he was confused his prophecy didn’t come true; he couldn’t say he has gotten his calculation wrong because he had used that ruse before. Now that he has gotten himself together, he has come up with a new date that supplements his previous prophesy. And so goes on the farce. The lesson is: mix dogmatism and empiricism to your own peril! If the guy had only “spoken in tongues” about the “vision” that God had chosen to transmit through him to us poor sinners, and remained inscrutable so as to elicit multiple interpretations on what he prophesized, he would have still remained potent in the business by now.

We Eritreans though are not so fortunate as to have such falsifiable prophets that could be proven wrong on Deliverance Day come and gone. The diaspora elite are too smart to even give us a range of time for Eritrea’s Deliverance Day: Five years time? Ten years time? Decades from now? No one would say. Our prophets want to hedge their bets unfairly. For instance, if nothing happens 10 years from now in Eritrea, they will still keep saying, “The masses for surely will rise up! It is only that we don’t know the day and the hour of Dagmai Sewra (the Second Coming of the Revolution!)” They have given themselves all the time in the world for their prophecy to come true; their call for patience comes from that ever-extendable dead line that they have generously given themselves. Indeed, it is a strange paradox when religious zealots like Harold Camping go “this-worldly” by providing us tangible evidence to be proven right or wrong in the here and now, that their political counterparts go “other-worldly” to remain as vague and as obscure as possible (including, of course, “Nobody knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the Father!”); always pushing the day of reckoning to the hereafter. By being specific, Camping killed the false hope raised in those followers who have any brain cells left. By being deliberately vague, his Eritrean counterparts are keeping the false hope well and alive.

The diaspora elite of the opposition type always go “religious” when it comes to their dear Eritrea. They use three religious dogmas to remain potent in their prophecy business that “the masses will surely rise up”:

• They make sure that their prediction always remains indeterminate so as to allow multiple interpretations. Their proficiency in speaking in tongues comes as a handy weapon in this enterprise.
• They create a non-falsifiable world where anything you say cannot be proven wrong. Their hedging strategy is impeccable in that it leaves nothing to chance, even as it comes at total loss to intelligibility.
• They try to locate the answer in human essence (spirit, soul, history, etc), in total denial of whatever transpires on the ground: the heroic Eritrean spirit triumphing over all the “earthly” impediments put on the ground by Shaebia.

Below, I will focus on a single quotation from CDRiE’s article, In Commemoration of Our Independence Day, to show how the diaspora elite go “religious” in the three ways mentioned above when they want to obscure facts and confuse the gullible; of course, with remaining active in the business until the ever-extendable Day of Deliverance in their mind:

“When their patience runs out, the Eritrean people who have a heroic history of rising against repression and domination will say ‘enough is enough.’  Whether the Eritrean people say ‘enough is enough’ and the time when they are likely to invoke this slogan is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations.”  (emphasis mine)

Indeed, if there is such a thing as esoteric language – an alphabetized version of crystal ball – this would be it! Here is why:

The hedged world of inter alia

If anyone wants to see how religiously inscrutable the diaspora elite could get in their writings in keeping the false hope well and alive, you need to take a close look at the above quotation. Look at how carefully and meticulously the writers have hedged their bets, without being so obvious about it. First, they claim that the Eritrean people, given their heroic past, will for surely rise up against their oppressors. Of course, their lets-wait-and-see strategy cannot work if they don’t provide that kind of an ever-extendable hope to the gullible, given that their goal is not to rock the boat too violently lest their version of “Eritrea” gets lost in the tumult. But immediately thereafter they make the fulfillment of this prophecy dependent on a congruence of multiple conditions that are as intangible and as nebulous as any unearthly mambo jumbo, with the intention of rendering it totally indeterminate.

With their notorious qualification – “[The prediction] is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations” – the CDRiE writers haven’t left anything to chance: all the stars have to be aligned in the right way for the Eritrean people to say “enough is enough” and for the uprising to materialize! First, all the domestic variables that make a revolution realizable must be aligned in the right way: the youth, the internet, the army, ethnic alliances, religious alliances, political alliances, etc. Second, all the regional variables have also to be aligned in the right way: Ethiopia, Melles, Sudan, Somalia, the Opposition, IGAD, AU, the Arab League, the Arab Spring, etc. Third, all the international variables have to be aligned the right way: the US, the EU, the UN, the Chinese, the sanctions, etc. And what is more, in all the cases, the “right” configuration of these alignments would be known only to the CDRiE writers and their types; for they could always claim that whatever alignment shows up is the wrong one after the fact (that is, if the revolution fails to materialize). And, fourth, since all these domestic, regional and international variables are inextricably inter-linked with one another in a complex way, if any one of the “stars” strays out of this complex alignment, tough luck to the Eritrean revolution. I don’t think even Nostradamus would depend on such a complex alignments of constellations for his prophecies to come true!

But that is not all; CDRiE doesn’t want to leave anything – and I mean anything – to chance. Its writers are extremely cautious: after all, it turns out that they are not so sure that the Eritrean people will ever rise up even after the “inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations” are wholly met. Talk about giving up on the “patriotic” Eritrean masses! They want to add one more condition (a fifth one) that would make their prophecy full proof; we cannot help but admire the genius who came up with that master qualifier of all: inter alia! The phrase “inter alia”, interpreted in earthly language, means “among other things”. So what they are in the end asserting is that even if all the domestic, regional and international stars are aligned the right way, the masses may not rise up because there may still be other factors that may remain unaccounted for by all these earthly considerations (After having exhausted all the earthly factors, of course, one has to search for these additional factors extra-terrestrially in the Milky Way). Still, the guys who came up with the phrase “inter alia” are doubly clever, not only because this addendum makes their prediction of the Day of Deliverance full proof, but it also remains enshrouded in Latin to fool the gullible. Unlike poor Harold Canning who dared to couch his prophecy in a language we all understand (to his peril, of course), these smart guys had to speak in tongues for their prophecy to remain potent.

But all of this hedging comes at a huge cost to intelligibility. After having plugged in every possible loophole that could held them accountable if the prophecy doesn’t materialize in the near or distant future, we feel that their cleverly hedged statement says nothing informative at all. Based on that information – “Whether the Eritrean people say ‘enough is enough’ and the time when they are likely to invoke this slogan is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations.” – no action plan could ever be crafted. To make their statement immune from being rendered false, they have divested it of all meaning. To see how, we need to invoke the concept of “falsifiablility”.

The non-falsifiable world of the True Believers

To understand the extent of diaspora elite’s religiosity when it comes to defending their “Eritrea”, it would be helpful to invoke the concept of “non-falsifiable world” and put the above quoted CDRiE’s statement to test.

Here is how Wikipedia defines “falsifiability”: “Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is ‘falsifiable’ does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment.” (Falsifiability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) If the weather broadcaster says, “Tomorrow it is going to rain”, he has spoken a falsifiable statement because it could be proven to be false if it doesn’t rain tomorrow. Even if it rains, the statement still remains falsifiable because it would have been proven false if it had not rained. In this sense all empirical or scientific predictions are falsifiable. Now we know where poor Canning went wrong: he tried to utter a falsifiable statement in a non-falsifiable religious realm.

Here is an example I have used before what it means to create a non-falsifiable world in the realm of religion:

“For a true believer of the religious sort, no past, present or future evidence that would falsify God's benevolence would ever crop up. If something good happens to the believer, obviously it would be attributed to God's benevolence. If something bad happens to him, it is because God – in his Fatherly wisdom – wants to teach him a lesson or wants to punish him for his sins. And if anything inexplicable takes place, who is he to question the mysterious ways God is supposed to work?  So, whatever happens to him, he will accommodate the contradictory evidence in such a way that God will always come out a winner …” (Romanticizing Ghedli)

Our True Believers of the earthly sort have also created a similar non-falsifiable world where you can never prove them wrong. If they hedge their prophecy the way CDRiE does, they can always get away with their predictions.  If the prediction of the masses rising up against the Isaias regime takes place any time soon in the near future, they will proudly tell you it is because all those “inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations” that they have been talking about have been met. And if it won’t happen any time in the near or distant future, they will also say, it is because all those “inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations” that they have been talking about haven’t been met. Understandably, couched in such general terms, you can never prove them wrong. The trick is never to utter anything determinate or specific that could be easily verified by others. But this, of course, comes at a huge price: nobody would give a hoot about their prediction because its predictive power would remain null.

To see the vacuity of such a prediction, please try to predict anything – and I mean anything – and simply qualify it with saying, “[your prediction] is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations”, and I assure you nobody will prove you wrong. Let’s say, for instance, I ask you, “Will your mother come to visit you in the USA?” And all you have to say is, “Whether my mother visits me in the USA is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations”.  And, dear reader, although you might find this very hard to swallow, this happens to be very true. Here is why:

You mother coming to visit you in the good old USA might depend, inter alia, on the following domestic, regional and international considerations: that the PFDJ gives the visit its blessing, that the US embassy gives your mother a visa; that a terrorist doesn’t blow up the plane your mother boards; that you mother is not suddenly taken ill by a mysterious disease and dies of it; that you may find yourself tomorrow totally bankrupted and would be unable to pay your mother’s ticket; that you will still remain alive when your mother comes to the USA; that your mother doesn’t suddenly decide on seeing you that you are actually not her real son; that your mother doesn’t suddenly take a liking to the charming old Italian guy sitting next to her in the plane and decides to remain with him in Italy for the rest of her life; that Ethiopia doesn’t launch a war and that, as a result, all airlines don’t suspend their flights; etc. Even though all this happens to be true in the sense that if any one of the above takes place that the visit won’t materialize, why do we still find your statement incoherent? Because, as information goes, most of what you have provided have zero predictive power. Except for the first two, people do not base their actions on such possible but far-fetched scenarios. That is to say, even though the above is true, it doesn’t say anything of value upon which you could make actionable plan.

It would be more instructive to insert other possible revolutions, and thus narrow the gap in the possible worlds we are entertaining, in this conditional statement to see its vacuity: “Whether the Zimbabweans (or North Koreans, Syrians, Yemeni, Myanmarese, etc.) say ‘enough is enough’ and the time when they are likely to invoke this slogan is, inter alia, the function of inextricably inter-linked multiple and complex domestic, regional and international considerations”. This, again, happens to be very true. But if you can insert any revolution you could possibly imagine in the slot reserved for “Eritreans” in CDRiE’s master-statement and it comes out true no matter what, it is because the statement is so general that it doesn’t have anything informative to say.

This kind of hedging is like tautology examples we find in Logic 101: “Tomorrow it will rain or not.” Although this sentence remains true for all the days to come, as a piece of empirical information it has no value at all; based on it, you can do nothing because it lacks predictive power. For instance, you cannot plan an outing, given that you will never know whether it will rain or not. Similarly, even though the self-reliance adherents’ statement remains true when they claim, “The masses will rise up when all the conditions for such an uprising are met”, their entire explanation remains as uninformative as, “tomorrow, it will rain or not”. They have to remain religiously tautological to make their prediction full proof.

So far, our protagonists have remained consistent in what they assert, even though vacuous. But that doesn’t mean they shy away from contradiction, if that serves their purpose. This is so either when they are cornered to be specific or when they are presented with specific evidence. This is the time when they adamantly refuse to look at the earthly evidence, after having declared it to be immaterial to matters of the heart – that is, the “Eritrean cause”.

Irrespective of what happens on the ground

The self-reliant revolution adherents thrive in contradictions. On the one hand, they attach so many conditions for the arrival of the Deliverance Day that it seems futile to do anything based on that information. On the other hand, they tell you to focus on the “human spirit” that could overcome any earthly impediments thrown at it. What they learned from their religious counterparts is that, if they are to remain in the business, they better keep hope alive.

The reason why people come up with various interpretations of the same religious content is that, inter alia, the writing remains vague, ambiguous or indeterminate enough to allow multiple interpretations. In some instances, like a Rorschach ink, you can read into it whatever you wish. One of the main reasons why religious scripts allow this is that the context that gave the scripts content has been irretrievably lost. Thus, for the religious zealot, it is essential that there be no earthly context determining or fixing the meaning of the words in the scriptures (a lesson that Canning missed). In fact, the very idea that the Word of God remains true irrespective of time and space comes from that quest. This drive to remain immune to spatio-temporal events has also its political counterpart.

Those self-reliance advocates who invoke “the indomitable spirit of the Eritrean people”, “the heroic spirit of the masses”, “the indefatigable spirit of our people”, “the patriotic spirit of Eritreans”, etc in the present context always do so with one single message in mind: “Please do not look at what goes on the ground; all that matters is what is in our hearts.” It is all about what is inside us! One cannot be more religious than that: that there is nothing on this earth that the masses cannot overcome, if they put their hearts on it! I said the following on this matter in Eritrea: Call for Patience amidst Generational Genocide:

“The very fact that their nonviolent theory is meant to be universally applicable anywhere in the world and at anytime in history also betrays its vacuity. These kind of theories based on human essence will refuse to take account of the differences in time and localities simply because for them no such inconveniences will ever stand up to the indomitable spirit of human nature. Like the cardinals that refused to look at Galileo’s telescope because they believed there is nothing that could show them anything to debunk the centrality of Man – and hence, of the earth – in the Universe (because the Scriptures said so), all the contrary evidence in Eritrea is simply a nuisance that couldn’t stand on the way to people’s power, and therefore no need of examining it closely.”

By telling us not to look at what is going on the ground, they are saying that whatever information we will get from reading the data from the Eritrean humanitarian and political landscape will not be helpful in predicting the future. Instead, all that you have to do is look at the Eritrean spirit – that indefatigable, indomitable, heroic, patriotic … spirit – to plan ahead for Dagmai Sewra. The first part of the CDRiE’s quotation – “When their patience runs out, the Eritrean people who have a heroic history of rising against repression and domination will say ‘enough is enough.’” – is meant to play such a role. This inward-looking advice is given for one single reason: they are afraid that if one begins to seriously take into account all the impediments on the ground planted by the totalitarian regime, that one might seek other drastic means to usher regime change. Of course, this advice runs contrary to all the “domestic, regional and international considerations” they want you to consider when you want to prove them wrong. But then again, they thrive in the world of contradictions – another trait they share with their religious counterparts.

Outside the world of probability

When we talk about looking at the evidence on the ground so as to predict the future, we are talking about the science of probability. Given their “spirituality”, it is no wonder then that the diaspora elite abhor the science of probability and its predictive power that would render their hedging strategy a farce:

“True enough, in the inexact science of human behavior nobody can predict things with pinpoint accuracy. But that doesn’t mean anything goes. If there is a slim chance of an event taking place within a reasonable span of time, even though it won’t be totally counted out, one doesn’t build an overarching policy based on it. Statistically, there is a vanishing point beyond which it becomes insignificant. In the world of believers though, that it could possibly happen one day is all they need to know to wait patiently for it to happen. It doesn’t matter to them whether it will take place five, ten or twenty years from now, or whether it will materialize during this generation or generations to come. What mostly matters to them is that it will happen … one day!” (Eritrea: Call for Patience amidst Generational Genocide )

Nobody knows if and when the masses will rise up against the brutal Isaias regime – this much the diaspora elite are correct. But that information, we have seen, has zero value when it comes to building a plausible actionable policy based on it. We need more pinpointed information than that to base our actions. What the science of probability does is provide tangible information, upon which we could map out actionable plan. The kind of “earthly” questions that such a science asks are: Are there any signs of the youth rebelling? How has the mass exodus affected the resistance from within? Do we find the youth in urban areas in critical numbers? Is there any precedence of rebellion in independent Eritrea? Is social networking in the Internet found in Eritrea in its critical mass? How would the totalitarian regime react to such an uprising? What would be the role of the military in such an eventuality? Why is the young generation opting for passive resistance – mass exodus, religion, etc? Etc.

For all I know, the Eritrean masses may rise up tomorrow morning. But the point is that one doesn’t come out with actionable plan based on the least probable. What the science of probability does is, after having taken account of all the relevant data on the ground, tell us whether there is a fair chance of a certain event taking place within a certain range of time. It is only after that any actionable plan could be mapped out. And it is this concrete action plan that the diaspora elite abhor. Why?

Conclusion: the Ethiopia boogieman

We have seen how the diaspora elite have gone totally “religious” when it comes to their dear Eritrea: they intentionally adopt an indeterminate language whenever they talk about the possibility of uprising; they want us to focus on the “spirit” inside us and not on the various impediments on the ground; they abhor the science of probability and the specificity it brings along to our predictions; etc. The question is: why do they want to remain religiously inscrutable? The answer is: to save their perverted versions of “Eritrea”.

There are two types that we find along the great Eritrean divide that have found a temporary convergence in this unholy task. First, there are the various offshoots of Shaebia that have settled in opposition camps but have haven’t given up on Shaebia yet. This group wants to salvage Shaebia and hence want a tempered revolution that would do away with Isaias but leave Shaebia intact. So anytime a drastic measure is proposed, be it economic sanctions of the stringiest type or military intervention, they fear that such a change will be the end to Shaebia’s “Eritrea” – hence, their resort to language obfuscation to extend that day of reckoning, in the hope that in the meantime a regime change that spares Shaebia (from within the Shaebia family) will take place. Their “soft-landing” is such a heavenly language meant to serve an earthly purpose.

So is it with those at the other end of the opposition spectrum: the pan-Arabists who want preserve Eritrea for their age-old dream to come true. Odd as it may seem, there are many among this group that believe Shaebia is doing a good job of defending Eritrea. The diaspora Moslem elite who came up with “the Covenant” actually bragged that there are more of them left with Shaebia to defend the nation. There are also others of the same ilk who have made no qualms in going against the sanctions because it will “disarm Eritrea” (the Awate team). For the pan-Arabists, Shaebia is not simply to be displaced but to be replaced by them. Like their Shaebia opposition counterparts, they have their own version of “smooth transition” or “soft-landing” in mind.

These two disparate groups, whose dreams happen to be in direct conflict with one another, have found a temporary convergence point in their hatred against Ethiopia. They fear that the “Shaebia” or “Arabized” Eritrea they respectively dream about won’t be realizable with the weakening of Eritrean government, with Ethiopia “hovering” nearby. So these strange bedfellows, that otherwise won’t see eye to eye on anything else, have found a convergence in this mission of “keeping Ethiopia at bay”. Some of these odd bedfellows – those who dream of Arabized Eritrea and those who are an inch (sidri) away from Shabebia – have found a strange convergence in CDRiE. Else than having (or creating) a common enemy, there is absolutely nothing that would hold these two groups together. But then again, the only thing that held the sewra (and the “Eritrea” of that goes with it) together for 30 years was that “common enemy”; that is to say, when it comes to strategizing together, they know nothing else but to depend on that enemy.

Yosief Ghebrehiwet
06/01/2011