The Bullseye!.... it’s behind you!

I think it is that time of the decade again… everyone I speak to is exhausted and really not looking forward to another round of tag war across the internet … a few friends and I have actually taken to musing over what we would do if we weren’t here… a bit like when we were in school and we mused over what we would do when we grew up…

I recon it is too late for me! I am here for life… I have lost the ability to untangle myself… but I am thinking of perhaps diversifying to make this more interesting… I am thinking of going into the dart making business… you know; those custom made dartboards with your worst enemy printed on… I can scan all internet articles and paltalk discussions (same as I do now) but won’t then have to make heads or tails of them … I will simply do it for market research to try and identify the latest brand for my custom made dartboard!

…So for the folk that are sooo upset that EPDP are not joining the national conference because there are gaping gaps in the space where there should  be a link between lofty objectives and the ground work undertaken… I would produce a batch of W Amar boards… for everyone else in that camp I will make one with the CDRiE logo (or one of the entire CDRiE crew if I can get a picture of them! The lovely thing about CDRiE and its enemies is that there is no named recipient of that venom… I don’t quiet know how that was achieved…but I love that little quirk of Eri pol).

… for those who are still winging and whining about Brussels 2009… I would ask Mirjam  van Reisen to donate a picture with her best smile on… and for the YPFDJ I will make one with Jendayi Frazer and for that boy who was mounted on someone’s shoulder to address the PFDJ faithful at the DC rally (actually for all PFDJites) I would make one of Obama or Susan Rice….

For IA’s close circle and for the Kinijit coalition down in Asmara one of PMMZ… for Ali Salim and co I will find a Tigrigna intellectual (not Dr Berket H Sillasie!) and for the ENSF and RSADO I will find a scrawny EDF recruit fresh from sawa dub him abal kifli sileya (BTW….how do they get to become abalat kifli sileya the minuet ENSF/RSADO shoot at them?)…

By now everyone must have found their appropriate dart board to aim all their angry venom at… therapy at its best! And if pente sensibilities don’t take over I might even re-branch out and take up making voodoo dolls!  Everyone would get to poke the sharpest needle into their choice enemy… with intent to cause enough pain! .... And if they are not happy with that I could produce a series of cuddly toys named after their choice enemy that they could throw down the stairs (or cliff where available) like my children take to doing as an ultimate revenge against each other!

If my business was up and running right now the only voodoo doll I wouldn’t be able to sell at the moment would have been that of IA… no one is interested in him right now! At least not in the Eritrean resistance… oh international human rights groups are still on his back (the US religious rights commission just reaffirmed what they had affirmed for several years running!)… journalists’ rights groups across the globe… religious rights groups world wide… it seems that the heat is never off of him there. But in Eritrean opposition circles currently the top spot for enmity is reserved for fellow members of the resistance… It seems that we have all decided that PFDJ is too ugly an enemy and hasn’t budged a bit in all our years of struggle that we need a more convenient enemy come scapegoat…so that when we see them bleed… or crumble (depending on what they are made of) we can break into a victory dance!

… hence the reason why EDA has been ineffective has nothing to do with the actions and inactions of EDA but the sabotage of the flavour of the month saboteurs within EDA or around it (eighteen months ago it was CDRiE’s fault last year it was the Brussels group’s fault and now it is EPDP’s fault)… The reason why the national conference failed to take off in the manner that the precursor workshops anticipated was to do with the aftermath of the Brussels conference and so on and so forth. An objective observer (I am not so objective about these things) would find it so difficult to understand how this whole system works…and would perhaps see what is visible to the naked eye… EDA’s core has become more ineffective than everything around it including it seems its branches across the globe, sometimes (but please don’t tell them that because they would do one of these two things; they would either ask you what you did to strengthen them or they would tell you that it was EPDP who weakened them!)

BTW I really don’t understand the latest EPDP announcement either… I mean EDA is not that multifaceted to be able to hold a national conference whilst also keeping other activities and initiatives diplomatic or otherwise in the go at the same time (and I am not even asking … what diplomatic activities?!… I bet even the ‘permanent representative to the EU’ has been drafted to national conference activities)… so the notion of withdrawing from the one initiative that EDA has in the go and remaining in EDA really doesn’t make sense… (unless they too are preparing to go shoot at the scrawny boys and call them kfli sileya too! The only other activity happening)… if it was an effort to mitigate the enmity against them… then they really don’t understand how easy it is to make an enemy of a friend in our circle friends (honest ask the cyber dartboard manufacturers!)…. By pulling out of the one horse EDA race they have effectively pulled out of EDA, and no amount of words beating around the bushes would change that!

The trouble in Eritrean politics is unidimentionality… every trouble that brews be it in a teacup, the cyberspace or a full-fledged civil conflict… often revolves around the fear that this jungle might not be big enough for more than one lion roaring! … the ‘meda Eritrea is not big enough…’ mentality of yester years… or the ‘EDA is the only authorised body that EU should be talking to’ brand of the same genre… gives way to them versus us mentality …even when it obviously is - us versus us -  in reality…and any blood spilt is only our own blood…

The really sad thing is the fact that we seem to revisit the same spot over and over again… falling for all the usual traps and tripping ourselves over and over again. EDA really had an extra ordinary opportunity to expand and widen out and challenge the state of affairs in Eritrean politics… a decade and ample opportunities to get to grips with the notion of working together later; that project has delivered us right back where we started! A poor and fragmented opposition that is shunned by the youth of the nation and has not done anything significant to address any of the challenges the country is facing… (have you noticed that every time there is trouble in eritrosphere… like the latest threat from the Israeli authorities… everyone looks to the volunteer led human rights organisations and not the full time politicians…?)…

I don’t blame anyone who at this point chooses to say; ‘thanks for the rollercoaster ride’ on the EDA cart and walks away to sleep the headache off somewhere far far away from Eritrean politics…whilst  over at the noisy corner everyone is practicing their darts, with the bulls eye on the back of their favourite enemy of the month… and  behind them the clock ticking all the time as PIA drives the nation into the dismal abyss from where no one emerges!   

Selam

….here is something I wrote back in November on a dreary day when all I wanted to do was walk off…walk fast …and walk as far as my feet would take me!

…In conversations with herself….

Are we lost? She asked…
…then…
She shut her eyes shook her head
Lost is when there is no terrain familiar…
Lost is where there are no footsteps to follow
Lost is where nothing is proverbial …
We have been here before …
A thousand times
There…right there is the ditch we fell into
…Last time…
…and that must be where we buried our hatchets
…again…
And here is the spot where we resolved to restart
…once more…
That footprint is ever so familiar… could it be mine?
Are we lost? She asked…
Then she shrugged
We were not … were we?
Surely lost is uncharted
But
We have been here before…
…A thousand times…
Are we lost? She asked…
And bowed
She stared at her own footprints
We are just going round and round in circles
Using our own foot prints as a guide
Aren’t we?
Are we lost? She asked…
Still bowed
…she nodded…
And cried

Nov 2009