(Hade hizbi hade libi) a myth or reality?CONCLUSION

A myth or reality, the �WILL� of the Eritrean People to live together is beyond any revisions, reconsiderations, and amendments or internal and external counterfeit threats.  It is tiled by indissoluble blood, bread and salt bonds. It is the destiny. Nevertheless, national unity and the will to live together, needs mutual perfections, indefatigable improvements, invariable upgrading, conscious enhancements and qualified expanded definitions. National unity has to be constructed on resolute practicalities, not on vacuum slogans. Eritrea to be viable as a nation, to enjoy peace, social harmony and democracy the disfigurations in the social fabric, the injustices on the material legal property rights, the erosion in the moral, ethical and traditional cultural heritage should be corrected. A sound and just solution to the land question should be instituted.

In Eritrea the type of Property Right Regime over land is multidimensional due to the Ethnic and religious composition and economic occupation diversities of the Eritrean social fabric. It has economic, social, political and environmental dimensions. Property is not an object but is rather a social relation that defines the property holder with respect to something of value, the benefit stream, against all others. Unprofessional and unjust handling of land legislations leads to conflicts and it may undermine the unity and integrity of the country. It definitely leads to conflicts of interests. Conflicts of interests may take economic, political and/or social dimensions. These dimensions may not manifest themselves as open bloody conflicts in every place where competing social groups and different economic production activities such as pastoral nomadic faces agriculture expansion. The intensity, duration and form of these dimensions vary from case to case and from area to area. Nevertheless, the sense of injustice, whatever its source is, by itself is a recipe for future open and bloody conflicts. The land issue in Eritrea is a very delicate and politically highly charged around which the sense of injustices evolve. The sense of injustice and exclusion is there, it is an open secrete to all Eritreans.

There is a wide spread opinion among people of the North Eastern Sahil that the conflict stems from the intention of the GoE, to remove them from their primary ownership of land by keeping them in the Sudanese refugee camps or driving them out to the Sudan and at the best scatter them in more marginal fragile arid areas. People think that deliberate policies of the GoE have permitted massive immigration of peasants and urban people to their land that made the number of immigrants swell beyond their numbers. When indigenous people are reduced to minorities on their own homeland then �conservation� will be the right word and democracy will mean nothing.

�Because the government has already committed the Support of the legal system to the agriculturists without a correspondent guarantee of pastoral rights, the chance that competition for land will develop into conflict or political alienation is high. Because the conflicts that are set to develop will happen in the lowland areas and not in the highland agricultural areas, the rift of conflict will run directly along the cleavages that have existed in Eritrean society throughout the political struggle for independence (Joireman: 1996).

In the last three articles I have tried to explore and trace out the background of these sense of injustice and exclusion by narrating some painful episodes that had taken place during the last three decades. The problem is not all of the GoE making but had its roots in the Ethiopian occupation tactics for keeping Eritrea and destroying its revolution. However, the GoE did nothing to remedy the grievances and contain its consequences. In the contrary it legitimized the injustices and continued building on it. Land Proclamation # 58 / 1994 legalized the �open Access� situation on the predominantly pastoral and semi pastoral lands. Property is a secure claim on a future benefit stream. There is no property in an �open access� situation; therefore there is no secured future benefit stream for the pastor lists. From his perspective, establishing tenure security means establishing the security of such Property Rights as are best suited to capture the income stream of spatially mobile economic activity, that is, non-exclusive Property Rights � Communal ownership of land.

Shall the state ownership of their grazing land was reversed and Communal Property Rights Institutions were restored and improved in the newly independent Eritrea there wouldn�t have been such a magnitude of the sense of injustices. This depends, among other factors, on the comprehension and appreciation of the policy making urban elite about pastoralism and pastoral way of life. This includes recognition of the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the traditional Communal land tenure systems existed before the Domaniale. The respect for the pastoral indigenous knowledge, traditional range management, social and economic behaviour, and above all the viability and sustainability of their economic mode of production, given the climatic conditions and limited resources of their areas.

The proclamation, apparently influenced by the outdated modernization theories, emanated from the political conviction of the EPLF on a �modern unitary and secular state�. Any thing other than that are sub-national sentiments that hamper national unity, integrity and development of the country.

Modernization theories, in general, are parturient with visions such as �Pastoralism is an early phase in the development of human society�. Therefore by induction, pastoralists are �primitive and lazy and pastoralism is unproductive occupation�. It is claimed that nomadic pastoralism should be looked upon as a development phase preceding settled agriculture and urban communities. To improve their living standards they must be �settled and adopt modern techniques of agriculture and animal husbandry�. Modernisation theories also insinuate conceptions such as pastoral nomadic lands as �abundant� for the taking of every one. It is considered to be standing idle most of the year and therefore should be used for alternative productive purposes based on the justification such as �We are interested in developing agriculture and industry, we want to attract foreign and local capital�. Nevertheless, such theories had long ago been tried and implemented all over Africa, it was total failure. It entailed mammoth economic and social nuisances. Land allocations of small plots to peasants (usufruct) on dry lands have been attempted throughout the developing world but many, perhaps most have failed to stop overuse, and in many cases may have contributed to even more rapid degradation of resources and to increased inequality to the already unequal distributions of wealth.

CONSEQUENCES OF PROCLAMATION # 58 / 1994

Previously land was communally owned and individual had access to it only as members of the community. Under this land law the people can now obtain land according to two broad categories, the right of �usufruct� and the right to �lease�. This clearly implies that the individual Pastoral nomad should obtain a license of usufruct rights to be able to get legal access to grazing land. Pastoral societies are organised as clans, tribes or communities. Pastoral production is essentially based on clan activities. Individuals of the same age and sex in the clan collectively carry out specified tasks, other age and sex groups of the same clan are assigned other complementary tasks within the same patterns of the pastoral production. Nomadic Pastoral mode of economic production, by its nature, is a collective activity. Individual usufruct rights to such vast area necessary for nomadic pastoral production are practically not operational or sound. The individualisation of pastoral Property rights over land abrogates the sound pastoral nomadic economic system and invalidates the social organisation of the pastoralists.

It is clear from the above that according to Eritrean land proclamation #58/1994 pastoralists had no rights over their grazing territory and this rendered the pastoral territory open to anyone for the taking. �The dispossession of their grazing land was not only a matter of perception. The symbolic significance of which is experienced as the loss of citizenship, or at the very least lower status than the average citizens of the country� (Gadamu: 1994).

The constituent part of the pastoral territory which are primarily and predominantly natural, such as the various types of grasses, are not found all in one and the same place. Their optimum utilisation, therefore, presupposes mobility. The management of pastoral territory is thus more inclusive than agricultural land management. Pastoralists are managers of the ecosystem rather than of individual blocks of land. Grass is greatly valued by pastoralists due to the many roles it serves. Deliberate destruction of grass, pastures, trees and bushes, by farmers, as cultivation is sometimes construed is antagonistic to pastoralism, those who cherish grass and those who destroy it to give room for something else.

The vast majority of herders, impoverished and economically deprived, find themselves with neither enough animals nor sufficient access to rangeland and water to sustain their livelihoods.

Whenever nomadic pastoralism becomes fruitless, pastoralists forced by their poverty, either move to urban suburbs as unskilled labourers or choose to settle on the land and transform themselves to farmers. Settled pastoralists CANNOT COMPETE in agricultural production with experienced peasants. One cannot expect them to do so without impairing their economic situation. Allocated the same size of farming plots (Hawashait), as other refugees, the Eritrean Beni-Amer Refugees in the Sudan, failed to manage their plots because of lack of farming knowledge and experience. Sudanese farmers for the same reasons also seldom employ them as daily labourers. The Sudanese prefer the Baria, Habash and others for agricultural labour. The latter are mostly employed for animal herding. Therefore, they are the poorest among the Eritrean refugees (COR -Sudan: 1995).

SOME FACTS IN SUMMARY: 

• Agriculture in the dry lands will lead to the fragmentation of land where in its turn leads ultimately to degradation of soil and environmental catastrophe.
• Vast areas of common grazing lands, once accessible to pastoral communities, have been fenced off and privatised by the well connected in many parts of Eritrea.
• GoE have virtually failed to provide tenure security for pastoralists and other local people in the North Eastern Sahil. They were dispossessed of the main economic input of their production and therefore a secured benefit stream of incomes. They face the risk of been rendered minorities on their own ancestors lands.
• GoE`s policies have often led to the empowerment of the Habash ethnic group on the expense of all others; breakdown of patterns of pastoralist mobility; less effective rangeland management, greater vulnerability to drought, land degradation, declining productivity, increasing poverty, the undermining of social institutions and cultures.
• There is much official ignorance about pastoralist production systems and prejudice towards them, their language, culture and faith.
• Pastoralists have suffered acutely from the consequences of the Eritrean armed struggle. After independence they are suffering more from new licensed and state sponsored encroachments on their lands and from the privatisation and fencing of common land and the alienation of pastures for non-pastoral uses.
• The pastoralists are considered as individuals in the unitary modern state, they meet their fate individually. Pastoralist societies, social organizations and cultures functions as clans not as individuals.
• Sedentarisation renders pastoralists poorer and destroys their culture and identity.
• It may probably lead to the marginalization of the already marginalized nomads and increase the relative development gap between the regions.
• Social engineering of the PFDJ is designed to Habashize and Tigringanize the Eritrean society and culture.

SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

• All the injustices inflicted over the Eritrean people during the liberation struggle should be reversed. Societies, communities and villages affected by the consequences of war should be rehabilitated, reconstructed and compensated. Justice must be done otherwise no independence; no democracy has real meaning. Justice is the corner stone for peace and democracy.
• Rehabilitation, reconstruction, compensation and RECONCILIATION commission supported by local stakeholders comities (pastoralists, settlers, religious leaders and all indigenous Ethnic groups), and professional Eritreans intellectuals and expatriates should be established to settle old conflicts over land and device a functional and just systems and institutions that allows sharing and caring with mutual respect and understanding.
• Reconstruction, compensation and rehabilitation of disadvantaged Eritreans should not necessarily cause new displacements and injustices. We afford no new tears. The Eritrean intellect and international experience should be used to fashion accommodative systems, ways and means. Alternative economic production earnings could be found for some. We do not need to exclude each other; our country is enough for all of us.
• Communal property Rights over land should be established and instituted. State ownership of land should immediately be abolished.
• Social engineering and the ill-informed, bias former Tegadelti employees of the Ministry of agriculture�s power to make decisions over land allocations and use should immediately be impeded.
• The ruling clique Urban Asmara-Massawa Wadinis should take their hands off all matters and decisions pertaining to land issues. They are ignorant about it and about all the organisation and structure of the peoples who live from and by land. I am of the convection that the stakeholders together are able to come by an institution of land tenure system that allows for peaceful coexistence and non-exclusion if and only if they left alone from the Wadinis manipulations for political purposes.
• Political, legal and social favourable conditions that makes it possible and encourages all Eritrean refugees and displaced to repatriate voluntarily should be created.

Finally, I urge brother Raphael Arefaine to revise when the slogan �hade hizbi hade libi� was raised and in what context. However, to what is cheap scheme or not and who is a real or fake politician, is a matter of strictly subjective value judgment I have chose to   ignore, with respect to Arefaine.

May Allah bless my country and people!
Wadahankum