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Al-Nahda
The flaw with all the Security Council resolutions, the one Big White Elephant that the Security Council refuses to acknowledge is this: the stated policy of both Here Come The "Comprehensive Exams" If the last seven years are a guide, there is one certainty in how the governments of Of course, heads of states have the right and the duty to continuously ask for questions and clarifications to bring about a solution that is most favorable to their nations. But there are two problems with the way Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki conduct them. First, it is very obvious from the letters that there is no policy formulation body in either nation: the letters are not the result of analysis, or cabinet meetings: they just express the fleeting thoughts of their authors. In that regard, they are nothing more than the "Comrade Isaias" and "Comrade Meles" letters that Isaias and Meles wrote each other in 1997-1998 as the two nations obliviously marched to war. The only difference is that they are written in English and they are addressed to somebody else. (This is a digression, but have you noticed that in all the letters of The second problem is that the letters are not an attempt to get clarifications, but to eliminate all risks completely so that the facilitator provides them absolute assurance of what will happen at the scheduled meetings--an impossible request for a facilitator. Partners To War Treaties can take many forms. They can be between a victor and vanquished: the victor dictates the terms, the vanquished reaches out, in the words of Khomeini, for the poison drink. A treaty can be between senior and juniors: the donor nations and their loan terms, for example. It can be between protectors and their satellites (the Warsaw Pact, for example.) It can be between nations that share values (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for example.) In peace treaties that work, each side accepts their status, eagerly or reluctantly. There is no such environment in The language and outlook of international diplomats and journalists contributes to the standstill. They admire Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and fear the latent chaos of his people; and when it comes to The Algiers Agreement has formulas for standstill: the witnesses are guarantors of the peace agreement whose implementation is ultimately the responsibility of the two parties. I am not finding flaws with the language of the agreement: it is tightly constructed and is a model of clarity. But its imperfections are only evident in retrospect: it was naiveté to expect that such legal document would be completely independent from the politics of the day: does anybody seriously expect that the The various rulings of the EEBC and the EECC contributed to the standstill: Both governments may take turns sensing that the other government is just a shove away from disintegrating and those beliefs are deep seated, hard-coded and widely-held within the opinion-shaping elite of the two nations, i.e., Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki. Meles Zenawi has publicly stated that the next war will be the last war and if war is initiated, he won't stop until he marches to Even after discounting the usual hyperbole, one has to concede that such views don't invite peace treaties, particularly when one considers a disturbing set of facts: the two are not bluffing. Isaias Afwerki has demonstrated, repeatedly, that he has a knack for creating and/or nurturing groups that can slay dragons (the TPLF, the Southern Sudanese rebels.) Those who dismiss his rearing efforts now with Gone are the days when each side could claim that war was forced on them: now they are both incentivized to pursue it. For Isaias Afwerki, it is the conviction that Meles Zenawi has never been politically weaker and sees in A formula for standstill… The Politics of Law It never made any sense to me why Meles Zenawi refused to have face-to-face discussions in 1998-2000 (reducing the exchanges to comprehensive exams, proxy talks and proximity talks) and it never makes sense to me why Isaias Afwerki refuses to have face-to-face talks 2002-present. Well, of course, there were very legal sounding arguments for not talking as many Ethiopians used to remind me in 1998-2000 and as many Eritreans remind me now: for Meles, talking then would have meant "rewarding aggression" and for Isaias, talking now would mean "rewarding belligerence" but all these are self-fulfilling prophesies. If a nation routinely crosses borders in "hot pursuit" of this "bandit" or the other, as Ethiopia did and does in Somalia and Kenya, it strains credulity to speak of aggression; if a nation routinely breaks all international norms and pokes its fingers in everybody's eye, as Isaias's Eritrea does, that too tells us of the hues of pots and kettles. The Truth & The Law Despite our unique history which should have taught us that there is a clear difference between "the truth" and "the law", we Eritreans always confuse the two. The truth can exist suspended, it is eternal and it sustained people in the caves of There is always room for deliberate ambiguity. You call it Asmera, I will call it Diplomacy, one can argue, is all about breaking down the stark choices of the law and the jungle or, at the very least, creating third options (call it the "jaw"). Let's bring it home: let's pretend for a second that we were a nation where public opinion actually mattered and the public were to tell its politicians "find a solution to this problem without declaring war." What, then, would have been the choice? And would that have meant that the people are choosing the jungle over the law? Whether it is called "dialog", "consultation," "discussion", "talk", "round", at the end of the day, that is the alternative to the jungle. To state that the only option to law is the jungle is a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy, particularly when one has very little influence in enforcing the law and constantly alienates those who are in a position to enforce the law. And that is the flaw with OUR thinking...one more explanation for the stalemate.
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