… In search of David

… In search of David

A friend of mine (no… we don’t expose friends!) told me recently that: in the future every Eritrean activist will have their own radio station, television programme, website, magazine and an organisation with annoying acronyms! He also told me (and then dared me) that one can’t criticise our youth organisations as they are the ‘sacred cows’ of the Eritrean Resistance! So I won’t…

This is a serious article about why there are 33+ political groups, countless civic organisations… many websites… several magazines and radio programmes… all funded out of the inexistent resources that the Resistance has at its disposal…

There is a short answer and a very long explanation so bear with me…

Why is there so much division? Why are there too many duplications? Why is there so much inefficiency?  The short answer is: our activists have gone in search of mosses and got lost in the wilderness… they are thus inventing their own burning bushes and staffs that turn into snakes… and the rest of us are busy putting would be mosses ‘mosses ‘and their battery of plagues (tricks and gimmicks in this case) to the test and judging how massively they all failed! Meanwhile our pharaoh is sitting up in Asmara enjoying the show…

I say… sod Moses let’s find David!

Very often in lobbying circles or even in discussions around leadership for Eritrea… the question of alternative leadership comes up and the 33 plus political organisations have yet to find a convincing answer… hence our adversary (our Goliath) is often heard ranting (through his countless mouth pieces…) ‘men emo alokum?’… who have you got to prevail against him and lead Eritrea to an era of democracy and justice…? the ‘mosess search party, have searched…. And searched and then searched and came back with nothing’ (except for countless gimmicks of organisations, conferences, festivals and so on!)…

And yet all around us we hear tales of young, guileful, courageous underdogs who ousted seemingly immovable goliaths armed with nothing more than a sling and smooth stones… what is wrong with us? (how many times have we asked that since the Arab spring?)… I think one failure is our approach to change in Eritrea… we are looking for a strong man (and very much a man… not a single one of the 33+ political organisations is led by a woman!!) that will confront the Dictator and lead us out of bondage and through the wilderness into the Promised Land!

How many times have we lamented over the conundrum: who is going to tie the bell on the cat’s neck? How about putting the bell on the door so that when the cat comes in, we will hear it and no one needs to die tying a silly bell round its blooming neck? Or how about fitting the carpet with electronic sensor bells so that when the cat saunters around every move will be announced right across?

... Change of strategy…

David the shepherd boy triumphed not because he overpowered Goliath but because he out maneuvered him… David had courage, commitment and motivation… and so do we… but he must have had something that we don’t… and I think it is that something that makes all the difference…A realistic strategy! One that works on the actual presence of resources and ability and not imagined and probable ones and certainly not based on past exploits!

Our obsessive search for a ‘strong leader’ has made us blind to the innovative, often guileful employment of approaches that capitalise on the all too obvious weaknesses of the system in Eritrea… and that obsession in turn continues to produce us leaders who wouldn’t dare innovate and hence we see endless duplication of strategies (our ‘leader’s’ preoccupation is to make the organisation appear strong so they in turn can appear strong at the helm of it!) . Each of our organisations are hence a product of our search for a strong man and not a result of a salient strategic thinking… in other words to defeat Issias Afwerki our strong man has to be at least as strong and possibly stronger than him… However IA got this strong by becoming an authoritarian dictator and so success for our organisations will be the creation of another authoritarian figure to replace the current one…. (procure someone who is brave enough, resourceful enough and strong enough to go tie the bell round his neck!)

To date we have neither a strong leader nor a coherent alternative strategy… how about turning what we have into power instead?

We currently have many committed young people with determination to fight the tyrant… an effective strategy would transform that resource into what we need… but rather than use that resource a lot of what I see is people (mainly political organisations) clamoring to employ this resource into the old strategy of bolstering existing ineffective initiatives and organisations so the respective leaders can appear ‘strong’  i.e. ‘finding Moses’…
… the strategy to defeat pfdj is short circuiting into the failed strategy to find Mosses!

So do we have the ‘David ‘elements in us?

I say yes we do…

David had motivation…. He was determined and committed to the mission… he heard Goliath gloat and was revolted!   Our young people who have been through the sawa system have no qualms about the vileness of pfdj… they have no illusions about the dumps that Eritrea is being driven to and they have no romantic vibes about the ‘leap forward’…. They have seen it all and been repulsed by it! If we focus them on this and on this alone we will have the sustained energy, the ability to focus on the long and arduous struggle and the persistence to keep hammering away… they have a reason… a real reason to fight… they know what is going on and they understand why there is no alternative to change….

Secondly they have salient knowledge…. They have seen the system’s inner working in operation as it impacted on themselves… the world tells us that we have the ‘most secretive government’… and no one seems to understand what makes pfdj tick… well our young people do… to a large degree! This is the most amazing resource we have at our disposal… yet rather than them giving us an insight into the system… we often gather them and try to force feed them our failed strategy of ‘change the strong man at the helm by our strong man at the helm!’ (how many Alenas, Pilots, T Temewos  are we going to hear before we realise the salient information exchange is going in the wrong direction?).  My question for the strategy analysts in our midst is: how have you untilised the information available in the lived experiences of our young people to inform the Movement? I haven’t heard of a single young person being asked to brief the political organisations to enrich their strategy…

Finally David’s key advantage was his ability to re-contextualise the battle field… Goliath was expecting someone armed to the teeth like himself and infact king Soul wanted David to be armed in the same way too… but David imaginatively employed his sling and defeated Goliath where he was least expected to… attacking the only part of the enemy that wasn’t armoured… his forehead! Pfdj’s weaknesses are far too many to list… all we have to do is find, the easiest ones and attack those… instead and because our wrong strategy very much relies on show of strength…. We are actually seeking to match pfdj’s strength militarily and defeat it there… impossible I say (at least in the time scale we anticipate!)… as mentioned above our young people have salient knowledge of the system we are fighting as well as the capacity to reimagine the battle field (their fresh eyes as opposed to the four decades old strategy of replacing the strong man with a stronger man)…when was the last time our Movement encouraged young leaders to inform our strategies with their fresh insight?

… I believe we have not tapped into what our young people can offer… we have simply and all too lazily handed them the tools of our failed strategy and are asking them to take over the mantle… they haven’t yet been given the opportunity to make their unique contribution to our struggle that has become rather stale and in bad need of freshening up… I think an astute leader would allow the youth to lead in identifying Eritrea’s set of Innovative, guileful and courageous approaches to fighting dictatorship… let’s not spoil the new wine by trying to put it into the old wineskin… not good for the wine and disastrous for the old skin….

Selam

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