An open letter to Professor Tesfatsione Medhane

Response to your 58-page (Eritrea is dead) opinion and proposal for solution

Let me begin by registering my utter disappointment at the central theme logic and conclusion of your paper, which to me rests entirely on a conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theory might impress half educated people, but I did not expect that you would scoop to this level. According to you, everything that happened in the last 60 years, i.e. beginning from Eritrean liberation movement up to the present is an outcome of some   devilish plot engineered by Shabiya and Woyane. Even though, before suffering setback, the separate Eritrean liberation armies had reach the outskirts of Asmara  a year or so before Woyane was founded.  Without going far, your tigray-tigringna conspiracy collapses in its face when you contain that “Denkelia will be forcefully wrenched out of Eritrea only to be appended to the tigray-tigringna state”. Now only a twisted mind could expect us to believe that Denkelia, presently an integral part of the sovereign Eritrean state, would somehow be provoked by a joint Woyane/Shbiya machination into raising arms against Eritrea to end up as a province of the future tigray-tigringna state. What takes a leap of faith to credit your fantastic narrative of the hidden bond between Shabia and Woyane is the suggestion that even the Ethio Eritrea war in which thousands died and hugely squandered the meager resources of the two poorest countries is part of the secret plot to achieve the ultimate agenda of establishing a tigray-tigringna state. Similarly, on your view, the present tag of proxy war between the two states and the Ethiopia’s campaign against lifting the sanction on Eritrea is a tactical step towards a tigray-tigringna reunion. Since this alone would suffice to punch a huge hole in your entire conspiratorial theory that informs your paper, I will only add one thing.

And this is that like Issayas you don’t look inwards or take the intellectual trouble of analyzing the internal dynamics that led Eritrean liberation movement to a dead-end before blaming others.  From a professor of your leaning, I expect a balanced appraisal of why Eritrea failed, and not a convoluted conspiracy that is neither open to independent verification or confirmation. Let me conclude by citing two examples of you resistance against self-reexamination. The first has to do with the fact that you blame Woyane for the division within the Eritrean opposition. I am surprised that you are unwilling to ask to what extent the present discord within the Eritrean opposition has to do with the history of political tension between the country’s main faith communities and the lowland-highland cleavage. Besides how do you explain the bickering between the many Eritrean groupings in remote countries where Woyane has no influence? But the most preposterous of your recommendation to Eritreans in exile is to unite with the Ethiopian opposition abroad and topple Woyane, In other words what you are suggesting is that the fate of Eritrean freedom from Shabia lies in the defeat of Woyane at the hands of the Ethiopian opposition allied to the PFDJ. This might indicate your belief in the shared destiny of the two peoples, but as a strategic approach it betrays that you are long on conspiracy and short in effective strategy of chane. Guess what, the Ethiopian opposition in exile today takes its marching orders from Issayas who would not allow any alliance between his opponents and those he sponsors: Whereas, the mainstream opposition in Ethiopia is openly campaigning to reverse the Eritrean referendum and forcefully re-annex Eritrea.