No Country for Young Men

In the movie No Country for Old Men, Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) asks, with a bewildered mask on his face, “Why do they always say the same thing?”  

His victims, having forgotten what they’ve just said and equally perplexed, would ask back, “What?” 

“You don’t have to do this!” he says but does it anyway.  He blasts them out of existence with absolutely no hint of emotion. 

He is a ruthless killer who would stop at nothing to get what he wants.  Even his name (Chigurh) says it all.  Think about that.

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About six years ago, asked about young Eritreans fleeing the country, dying in the Sahara and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, I heard an elderly Eritrean woman in London saying, “They shouldn’t have left the country.  Who will defend it without them?”  She even had the audacity to go further and declare, with a contorted expression, that they deserve it!  She, with her traditional dress, earrings of gold and fake concern, is not different from that of Anton Chigurh.  She and her type wouldn’t hesitate to forfeit the lives of their grand children.  They are just benign imitations of the deadly government officials who are running Eritrea.  Not only have they held the population hostage, they actually believe and behave as if the country is their own personal fiefdom.  There are many more foot soldiers or mercenaries who operate along the same wavelength to do the same thing.  They are all like Anton Chigurh in a live setting and would stop at nothing to get what they want.  The problem is: do they know what they want? Or shall we simply say: forgive them for they don't know what they want?

It is the kind of event or mania that won’t wash clean in living memory.  The defense lies in denial and it does serve as background mental material why Eritrea finds itself exactly where it deserves to be.  When cultures, histories and narrative of the past are purposely wiped out or denied access to the present, the future has no option but to wander in no man’s land. 

Do Eritreans have any idea what they were before they were branded, identified or nationalised as Eritreans?  It is almost like asking an adult what religion they had when they were just three.

We have come a long way. 

People talk about hope and there is nothing wrong with that.  They forget it takes a lot of energy, time and work to sustain that spark or seed for a new beginning as in the kind plant matter of new shoots days or weeks after a devastating forest fire.  The aftermath of the dictatorship in Eritrea may not even have the capacity to do what nature does so naturally. 

So much has been sacrificed for so little and everyone – well almost everyone – is aware of that.  It is just that Eritreans are so desperate for hope that they have been blinded - not by what they can achieve, but what they have paid for in the past. And that is exactly why the hope element is not working.  It beggars disbelief and goes to bed with denial as usual. 

Although the idea of the nation state is not that old, it is too recent for Africa and still going through the early stages of reconfiguring itself to accommodate or upgrade to current trends of development.  The socio-economic and political format in Eritrea, mapped on a mosaic of ethnic, traditional and religious set-up, has shown the underlying inability or disability to register any meaningful or sustainable ‘progress.’  It just doesn’t have the qualifications to call itself a nation state.     

Is it because nation states like Eritrea have lost the plot and just survive on rhetoric to justify their rationale of existence?  It is going through all that mayhem to make any sense of its newly acquired identity. It is as if one has to die first to be identified.  In Eritrea, they call you a martyr.  That is all the honour you get amongst the living dead.  What the martyr gave his/her life for is not up for debate.  Even when former members of the armed struggle for the liberation of Eritrea die due to natural causes, their passing is announced as the ‘martyred’ so and so with glorified biographies. 

Does it not confirm that the dedication, hope and suffering of the past is being re-lived or re-enacted in the here and now while the future of the young is held on the balance?  It is the young who don’t have a country now and the elite and older government officials in the newly baptized nation state who want it all for themselves.  

Take Egypt, Tunisia and the tsunami that is brewing in the Arab region.  There is a massive lesson to learn.  However, countries like Eritrea have done their homework long ago.  They kept the hope alive and gradually sucked the air out. 

Some people talk about non-violent resistance or no intervention from outside while squabbling among themselves.  If Anton Chigurh was real, he would ask the same question, “Why do they keep on saying the same thing?”  The motive is unclear.  All they say is: we don’t have to do this.  It is bungled or wrapped up in a variety of personal, ethnic, religious or cultural sentiments and traumatic experiences so difficult to disentangle.  The name Eritrea happens to be the most convenient receptacle to contain it all and whatever is said can be justified under that name.  See!  I don’t have to do anymore thinking now kind of attitude reigns supreme.  The gap between the wish and what is really happening or can happen anytime is not correlated.  

Why do you think Eritrean government officials in Eritrea and abroad behave the way they do?  They don’t have to think!  It's that simple. All they need to do is use the mask of the nation state that is bound by international law while the country of complex communities is left to rot from within and with no hope of recovery.  Unless something happens from within or from the outside, the rotting, like everything else, will take its natural course. 

Asked about the current state of Eritrea and on his first and recent visit to Europe, a well-seasoned resident of Asmara says that the people have lost capacity to revolt… we live in fear and have no gut left.  He doesn’t even want to talk about it at all and sounds like he is lost for words.  

The few officials in power who, with their subversive network of security personnel, have managed to turn themselves to business men and women and secure their own future in Eritrea and abroad.  They are accountable to no one (except to their kind, may be) and probably believe they are doing the right thing and such is the reality on the ground in Eritrea or other nation states that have gone beyond salvation. For lack of open media, credible rumours and gossip has it that Eritrean military conduct a clandestine operation in smuggling young Eritreans, or any Eritrean of any age for that matter, to the Sudan or Ethiopia for a fee - in local or foreign currency.  How incredible is that?  The irony is that those who fled Eritrea under the protection of the Eritrean military itself won't speak up.  They just don't have the courage or, perhaps,the interest to engage in that sort of thing.  It says a lot about the state of affairs in Eritrea. 

In an age where speed, content and delivery of information is becoming part of our daily bread, how would you rate or map a country with no independent media or with a kind of media that seems to be in full gear trying to blank out reality and avoid debate on basic issues of existence?. 

A recent report by Gedab News at Awate.com reads:

As the people’s rage moves from Tunisia to Egypt and possibly to Yemen, the Eritrean regime is in a state of panic and is trying to engineer a total news blackout in Eritrea… Eritrea’s national security office contacted the ministry of information demanding that they “plug off” the satellite television transmission, just like Egypt was able to “plug off” the Internet and mobile phone service.  The ministry of information replied that there is “no switch” to block airwaves coming through space.

We are looking at a mirage that is not there and wasting our time as if we are in real space.  Eritrea is not a country for young men or women and the debate on how to resolve such a conundrum, peacefully or violently, is losing its luster fast.  One thing is for sure though.  When the national media is under the full and brutal control of the government and the young generation is fleeing the country in their thousands or left to rot in the trenches, uprising or change from within is highly improbable.  As Angesom writes in one his comments to a recent article: 

ወይ ሰብ ደቀይ! እምበርዶ እዚ ህዝቢ አበስኡ ሕጽብ ኢሉ ክኸደሉ ትደልዩ ኢኹም? ኣይመስልንን። ኩሉ ይትረፍ ደሓን ምስ አብ ዓዲ ዘለዉ ቤተሰብካ ኮነ መሓዙትካ ርክብ ዶ አሎካ? ርግጸኛ እየ እንታይ ከም ዝብሉኻ ነዚኣቶም ዝጸራርግ ኢትዮጵያውያን ኣሕዋትና አይኮኑን ወሸለ ሰይጣን እውን እንተመጺኡ ዓይንና ኣይንሓስን።  

If Eritrea needs help, it will have to come from anywhere.  .  

More on that some other time.