We have seen in part III, THE FIRST SCRAMBLE, how:

1)      The simple conflicts over land use between two competitive economic production systems, cattle herding and land tilling, a natural resource allocation and management problem common all over Africa.

2)      The miserable poverty, landlessness and the traditional land hunger of the Abyssinian Eritreans and Tigreans caused by population expansions and land use malpractices in the Plateau.

3)      The traditional Abyssinian anti-Islamic sentiments, inherited from the days of Mohamed Grang and Libnadengel, unknown to the people of NE. Sahil.

4)      The incompetence of the then adolescent, feeble and loosely organized ELF, that consisted of pastoralists and semi pastoralists who dared to challenge the mighty state of Ethiopia on their own before the hesitant half hearted urban Pete bourgeoisie with their written political programs and strategies had the courage to join it.

5)      The property right regime (State �king� ownership) over land that emanated from a monolithic solo valuation of the Abyssinian smallholder peasant mentality situated to serve the well connected �Neftenga� and feudalist landlords.

Were:
�       Politically exploited to take a dangerous dimension of the larger Eritrean Ethiopian conflict.

�       Socially escalated to a sectarian dimension that divided the nation and threatened its unity and the viability of its revolution.

�       Militarily used to a magnitude approaching what today is known as ethnic cleansing.

In a matter of fact all the actors could be considered as victims of their own incompetence, ignorance or greed. Asrate Kassa had done the job he was assigned to do and was paid for. A political science professor or war strategist field marshal would have passed him with �Excellent� marks. Ethiopia did what it should had to do as an occupation force, �Plough it to the ground� ordered their philosopher when the Romans had occupied Carthage; the settler militias were obsessed by their poverty (Allah la yewerik aljouE), land hunger, greed, ignorance and protracted Ethiopian manoeuvring and cant. Pretexts and justifications could be entertained on behalf of all the actors in that untoward episode.

Nevertheless, it was indefensible and reprehensible felony for the supposedly �reformists revolutionaries�, urban wadinis to exploit the land conflict and its complicated tragically consequences for political mobilizations and recruitments playing a segment of the society against another. The leaders of the EPLF in their early days carried out a crusade for political purposes to win over the Plateau People on their side against ELF depicting �Neftenga� settlers, collaborators, murderers and land grabbers �Banda Cherko� as helpless blameless victims �hamsa hewatna harestot taqatiloum� by �brutal Muslims�, while the real victims, those who were mercilessly murdered, their houses and cattle burgled, their land sequestered and driven out of their homeland were portrayed as bloodthirsty (hredti) anti Christian anti Kebessa Jihadists. Consciously or unconsciously the author of �Alamana� for his cheap political ambitions and motives used the competition and conflict over land, built on and inveterate the Ethiopian divisive propaganda and installed a wedge of hate and intolerance polarizing the Eritrean society. The disfigurements of the sectarian mobilization is and will pertain a long time polarizing Eritreans, that requires overriding efforts of all genuine nationalist WelWels and Sultans to make it settle and heal.           

THE SECOND SCRAMBLE

The discriminate and selective Haile Sellasie`s regime carnage in the North Eastren Sahil were replaced by all-Eritrea wide annihilation and demolitions of villages when the Eritrean revolution intensified and covered all regions during Mengistu`s terror regime. Many citizens, from the Plateau, were displaced to the areas controlled by the liberation movements. The strong hold of the liberation movements, as known to all, consisted of the North Eastren Sahil (Barka, Gash, Sahil, Senhet and Semher) pastoralist pasturelands.

After independence the influx of people from the Plateau to these regions continued unabated. These new migrants, encouraged by GoE, populated and overfilled many new and old towns and villages on the whole North Eastern Sahil. The GoE gave new settlers and investors the perception that these were empty lands for the taking and it embarked on distributing residence and agriculture land to members and sympathizers, while as the same time deliberately concocting different unfounded problems once with the UNHCR and another with the Sudan keeping the legitimate owners beyond the border. Demobilized Tegadelti were assigned land and encouraged to settle on these areas. The greater part of the Eritrean Armed Forces battalions were stationed in the area and military training stations, airfields and barracks mushroomed the once pastoralist pastures and villages. Not to suffice with these, alien armies of the SPLA led by John Garang were invited to the area and allocated large areas as their military activity zones displacing the few that managed to stay on their land.

The once flourishing cattle shacks and pastures of the Beni Amer on the Barka tributaries of Sawa, Hawashaiet, and Homib were transformed to fragmented, fenced and economically and environmentally unviable papaya fruit orchards. Places that were used to be the dean of the lions, Awate and compatriots, were malformed to villages that cultures young Hedareb boys to liquor(swa, mess) consumers in a phenomena that can be exaggerated as �resembles the fate of Red Indians�. Foreign Christian missionaries marked, as a male lion marks his territory with his odder, each and every hill overlooking the villages with churches, sometimes without worshipers, while local indigenous people made unable to erect a mosque in their villages. Raising funds from Eritrean Muslims in the Diaspora or from benevolent foreign Muslims abroad for the purpose of building or rebuilding mosques was looked at with suspicion and classified as an act of �fundamentalism� directed against the state and the unity of the Eritrean people.

Land proclamation #58/1994 vested land ownership to the state. The proclamation reflected a single-minded valuation of smallholder peasant mentality. It also replicated the �we know it all, we know what is best for the people� ignorant and arrogant Christmas graduates mentality. It was unprofessional, na�ve (if not ill-fitted) to choose the easy and hasty way of simply imitating the former socialist block methods to solve the greatly complicated multidimensional and most delicate problems of land question and the challenges of the tasks of development. The proclamation legitimised the land grabbing and legalised the de facto appropriations of the first scramble�s settlers. It also fashioned legal, licensed and protected acquisitions of more land on the on going second scramble. Under this law, no other assert is needed to keep ones pillages by the force of law and enjoys the benefits stream (if any at all) of the first and/or the second scramble than stridently pronounce �long live PIA, awet ne hafash� and point a finger to any would be legitimate owner as �hamsai mesrE� or fundamentalist. To achieve the peace of moral righteousness one also has to convince oneself and believe PIA`s words that  �borders had always been open long ago before the war. Many people of Eritrean origins had settled on the area between our borders and Khartoum. Only a few of those in the Sudan can be considered as real refugees�. Which implies they had left on their own will and for their own convenience and therefore it is morally and legally right to take the land they left behind. PIA is always right and visionary. He is as visionary as the Wello governor during the famous Wello famine of the early seventies when he stated �ye Wello hizb messeded limadu new�- displacement is a normal daily life habit of the Wello people.

To be continued������.next will be conclusion