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The Houses of Eritrea and Ethiopia have, of course, produced learned men and women who are quite capable of transforming their houses. After all, both houses have a reputation for being some of the smartest and ambitious in the neighborhood. But the learned men and women look at the decrepit, badly managed home and they provide the same diagnosis: all that ails our home is its location. If only we were not the neighbors of that greedy grouch, all would be well. What we need is a fence, a strong chain-link fence, of barbed wire, preferably electrified, with guards 24 hours on duty. Then, we will deal with the issue of whether the property manager who has appointed himself property manager is the right one. I will argue that this assessment is based on biased information, double standards and an inexplicable willingness to reject independent thinking for the seductive comfort of groupthink. I will argue that for Eritreans this is a call to atrophy. I will argue that we should resist it.
Flawed Conclusions From One-sided Information
To demonstrate the untrustworthy nature of the Ethiopian government, a compatriot who is a critic of the current calls for dialogue presented as an example the case of Ethiopian Air forces bombing of Eritrean airport (on June 5, 1998), then lying about it by stating that it was only retaliating for the bombing that was initiated by Eritrea.
Now, this is a perfectly good example of how concentrating on The Other (in this case, Ethiopia), to the exclusion of all else, including the mistakes The Self (in this case, Eritrea) is a prescription for endless enmity. It is also a good example, and a test case to concentrate on because for both Eritreans and Ethiopians the events of June 5, 1998 were used as a rallying point to prove that the war was way bigger than a border skirmish: that, in fact, it was proof that The Other has evil intent of overthrowing the government and dominating the region. It certainly was my wake up call. It is not a coincidence that even the urban legend told by both Eritreans and Ethiopians to prove the evil intent of the other is identical, with a twist: according to POWs, claims Eritrea, Ethiopians were bragging of breakfast in Mekele, lunch in Keren, dinner in Asmara. Or something like that. According to POWs, claims Ethiopia, Eritreans were bragging that they would have breakfast in Asmara, lunch in Mekele, dinner in Addis. Or something like that. Then, each side used this assertion to prove that The Other had badly miscalculated its military readiness and had, therefore, lost the war (according to Eritreans, speaking of Ethiopia) or not only lost but has been totally humiliated (according to Ethiopians, speaking of Eritrea.)
Going back to June 5, 1998, if we discount the claims of both governments, the only reason we know that Addis initiated the bombing was because Asmara-based diplomats said so. (Lets, for the purposes of our discussion here, ignore the fact that diplomats also go native and are prone to losing objectivity, particularly if they are based in Addis and fall in love every night.) So, we can say Ethiopian authorities lied about it. (If they had done the bombing in 2003, they would have borrowed a page from the US invasion of Iraq and called it a pre-emptive strike.) In any event, according to our compatriot, this is evidence that the Ethiopian government cannot be trusted.
The assumption is that, in contrast, the Eritrean government can be trusted. But lets now do something he was unwilling to do: lets now take a look at the sins of The Self of the June 5 event.
I happened to have made an effort to learn a little more about the sequence of events and the details here because a horrific incident had occurred: schoolchildren were killed in Mekele and Ethiopians were justifiably angry. Some Ethiopian writers were saying that this could not have been an accident because the pilot, Brigadier General Habtesion Hadgu (need I say it? Yes, he is also in jail without charges), knew Mekele inside out and secondly, banned weapons (cluster bombs) were used. Without mentioning names, and without trying to appear that I was privy to privileged information (I wasnt; I was just more of a nag than others were willing to be), lets just say that I spoke to people who were in a position to know. There are three things that I was told then, by way of reassuring me: (1) the pilot was not Captain Habtesion Hadgu but a young kid on his maiden voyage; (2) no cluster bombs were used; (3) in any event, President Isaias Afwerki has apologized for it.
Of course, I repeated these stories. I was serving my country, I liked to believe. After all, our government had an incurable addiction to honesty. To a fault, it was said. This is way before we knew better: this is when we thought claims of Eritrean soldiers raping Ethiopians was preposterous; this is when we thought placing people in containers in Assab was an unbelievable fiction.
Much, much later, when the PFDJ was beginning to have its internal squabbles, new information would emerge: (1) the pilot was not some kid but the veteran Captain Habtesion Hadgu; (2) the pilot had loaded up his fighter plane with anything he could find, and cluster bombs could not be ruled out; (3) there is no record of Isaias Afwerki ever apologizing for what happened.
Which event is correct? I dont know the answers to (1) and (2) above. As for item (3), if you consider this is war and bad things happen in war an apology, I guess Isaias apologized for the horror inflicted on 40+ children and their families. Nor is it likely that we will know definitively even when the OAU, which is tasked with investigating the root causes of the warand not war crimes, if anyissues its report (a report which will promptly be rejected by both governments because the report is just thata report.) The point is that now that I have a clearer understanding of the criminal nature of PFDJ, the latter explanation, which would have been unacceptable to me five years ago, is now not only probable, but very likely. It is consistent with a government which had the bad taste of explaining the bombing of children in terms of currency exchange (they killed 7 of ours; we killed 40 of theirs because that is the exchange rate, explained an Eritrean officer to Western media.)
And my point is? My point is that all the people who have been writing about the Eritrea-Ethiopia wars, including me, have been writing our stories using one source: their government. Worse, we were using a source that we idolized. And this includes the foreigners: Dan Connell was not interviewing Ethiopians when he was writing his pieces. He tells Eritreas side and then coyly mentions that Ethiopia has its side of the story. It is no better on the Ethiopian side: Ehlrich, Henze and Clapham are certainly not interviewing Eritreans: Henze is notorious for his dismissal of Eritrea and you can see what Clapham thinks of our 30-year revolution when he places quotation marks around the word struggle.
My point still: when our compatriot writes in hushed tones about the pre-war border negotiation efforts, about how Eritrea did everything right and about how Ethiopians sabotaged every effort, he is repeating what he was told by Eritrean authorities. He certainly made no effort to get the Ethiopian side of the story. Which is fine, as long as he prefaces his story by saying according to Eritrean officials I spoke with. This way, readers can determine whether the Ethiopian government is inherently untrustworthy and we shouldnt be negotiating with them (which is his conclusion) or whether there were, indeed, mistakes made by both sides during the negotiations (which would lead to a different conclusion.) If they are untrustworthy on everything, what does it tell us about our government which entered into the ultimate trust-based agreement, a Mutual Defense Agreement, which existed until the eve of the war?
Our compatriot is still using one source--the Eritrean Government--and what is worse is that he is still using an idealized version of the PFDJ, which is far different from the reality that we know.
Flawed Reaction By Applying Two Standards For The Same Crime
Eritreans were outraged when the Ethiopian government started deporting Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean ancestry. Meles Zenawi argued that his government can deport any foreigner for any reason. To drive the point home, he said the reason could be even the color of peoples eyes. This incredibly stupid statement was meant to explain that a sovereign nation has the right to deport anyone without having to explain its rationale for doing so. His Foreign Minister argued on Ethiopian TV that if Eritreans would condemn the "shabbiyah", then they would be spared deportation.
And what was Eritreasand the worldsresponse? Well, no, you cannot mistreat people, even if they are your own citizens, because that would be in violation of their human rights. He cried national security and we cried human rights. If you refer back to the statements that were issued by Eritreas MoFA, and the almost daily statements by Veronica Reinmeester (then with the Eritrean Embassy in Washington, DC), they were replete with references to the UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Let's dig out our archives: every statement we Eritreans sent to the UN, to UNESCO, to the OAU, to the EU, to the International Association of Universities, to Humanitarian and Womens Association, to International Free Trade Unions to the International Trade Secretariat; to the Geneva Conference on Human Rights; every single one of them argued that the human rights of Eritreans in Ethiopia were being violated.
And lets please not peddle the story that we were alone and the world ignored our appeals. UN Human Rights Commissioner, the United States, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, all these agencies that we have now found politically useful to demonize, reported and condemned Ethiopias deportation and it was their documents we used to appeal our cases to the US congress or anyone who would listen.
We were proud of our government that it repatriated 46 Ethiopians who were studying at the University of Asmara and appalled at the Ethiopian government that it was holding 85 Eritrean university students at its military camp, in Fiche. We were sick to our stomach when two of these students died in detention.
We were saddened when old people, including religious people who were clearly no security risk to anyone, were made to walk hundreds of miles and deported; we were proud of our government when it didn't take retaliatory measures (at least not then.)
We were saddened when Ethiopia cancelled the passports of Eritreans studying in China and we were proud when the Eritrean government made arrangements with India to help them resume their studies.
And then, the war was over. And many of us who were arguing on the basis of fundamental human rights would come to learn that, unfortunately, some of our compatriots are not appalled by the crime, but by the identity of the criminal. How else does one explain their deafening silence when horrible crimes were committed against Eritreans by their government? Not just silence, but their vows to "unconditionally support" the government? They are appalled that 85 Eritrean university students were in Fiche, Ethiopia but they had nothing to say when 2,000 Eritreans were bussed to Wia. What is the difference? Fiche was mosquito infested and WiA was unbearably hot. The explanations offered by both governments are the same: national security. Two Eritreans died in Fiche; two Eritreans were confirmed dead (I wouldnt be surprised if there were many more) in Wia. The description for Ghebrekidan Zekarias Teklemariam (who died in Fiche, Ethiopia) and Yirga Yosief (who died in WiA, Eritrea) are achingly identical. But the person who was appealing their case in front of the International Association of Universities when they were being abused by Ethiopia, was guilty of their abuse in WiA, calling them criminals.
The Ethiopian government deported very old people and explained it as driven by national security concerns. The Eritrean government has jailed very old people and explained that its actions are driven by national security concerns. The Eritrean government has even arrested some of those very people that were deported by Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian foreign minister demanded that Eritreans condemn "Shabbiyah" if they want to be spared deportation; the Eritrean government demanded that dissidents exercise self-criticism if they don't want to be arrested.
The PFDJ government that was trying to restore the status of Eritrean university students in China is now working overtime to make dissenting university students in South Africa stateless.
In short, what the past three years have been for many of us are a leveling effect: weve come to learn that many of our assumptions were wrong. We have come to learn that our government is just as bad, in fact worse, than those governments and agencies we railed against. We have also come to learn that many of our compatriots are indifferent to the fate of their citizens, that their outrage is selective and that crime is justified so long as it is ordered by an Eritrean in high authority. And so, unfortunately, because their outrage is selective, their appeals to logic, to doing the right thing, to ethics, ring very hollow. The Eritrean cause was won because people dared to dream, to envision what kind of state they wanted to establish. How many people would have given up life and limb if their vision was the current state of Eritrea? How many people would have sacrified their youth if they knew that the people they liberated would not speak up for them in their hour of need?
Why Dialogue?
Our compatriot asks those who are calling for dialogue to explain their position. The compatriots query is understandable: if one sees everything through a fence, it is natural to ask how each move impacts the placement of a fence. There are as many motivations for the dialogue as the people making them, and it is only because we have fenced ourselves up into pro-government and pro-opposition camps that we seem to be incapable of understanding them.
Let me classify them, beginning with the scariest:
* There are Eritreans, mostly very young, who have experienced the torture of the helicopter, the torture of the container, the torture of rape and other forms of casually administered cruelty who will naturally gravitate to Ethiopians who claim they were subjected to the same thing. It is like a victims support group for them. If you equate the PFDJ with the Derg, then of course you will see the TPLF as preferable to PFDJ. And these kids absolutely have no qualms about equating the PFDJ with the Derg: they are unflinching in their descriptions for them as shefatu, armien--barbarians. If a charismatic Ethiopian leader, with none of the sins of Meles and company were to emerge and advocate Eritrean union with Ethiopia, these kids would be sitting in the front row of the audience. These kids are not calling for dialogue, they are exercising it.
* There are Eritreans who believe that at the rate things are going, and by the time the fence is put up, there will be no nation left to fence up. In other words, the danger to Eritrea is more from within than from without. The fence will be put up--it is the will of the world---but, by the time the fence is put up, all we will have is a dispirited people and a barren land. What is a fence without a people and a land?
* There are Eritreans calling for dialogue because they see that, notwithstanding all the declarations, government-to-government talks are inevitable and the sooner it starts, the better off our people will be.
Of course, the Eritrean government is too lazy to make any distinction between these three groups, and they are all convenient scapegoats, to be lumped in the ever-expanding Fifth Columnist department. It is an irresponsible position, and typical of an organization that has specialized in ostracizing bigger and bigger chunks of its population, but hardly surprising.
So why dialogue? As I said, many people will give many reasons, so let me stick to mine. I believe that there should be government-to-government dialogue and, more importantly, there should be people-to-people dialogue. Let me defend both.
Reason For Government To Government Dialogue
With respect to government-to-government dialogue, all I have to say is two words: Technical Arrangements. As most of us recall, this was an un-amendable (another way of saying final and binding) agreement that both parties had agreed to in advance. In fact, the same so-called guarantors also had guaranteed that agreement. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia gave their word, in front of witnesses, that based on the Framework Agreement and the Modalities, they would accept--without an amendment--any agreement that is fashioned by the mediators. The mediators did just that. Eritrea promptly accepted it; and Ethiopia rejected it. When Ethiopia rejected that agreement, it was making the same arguments that it is making now: it is inconsistent with the previous agreements, it does not restore the status quo ante, it doesnt guarantee lasting peace, etc. So what happened when Ethiopia rejected it? Nothing. Well, yes, there was a great deal of intense shuttle diplomacy (for nine months) but in the end, it was fruitless. There were calls for restraint, and calls for flexibility on both parties, but no solutions. Allow me a moment of vanity to repeat what I wrote at Visafric (and reproduced by Africa News Service) around that time:
The Eritrean Government has a tough call to make. If it believes that the world, eventually, will take a principled stand and uphold the OAU Agreements in their entirety and hold Ethiopia accountable, it will stick to its guns and insist that the OAU stay true to the unadulterated Tech Arrangements. If it believes that all agreements are subject to amendment and after all, we are trying to make peace with Ethiopia and not the world, then it will agree, on principle, to amendments. But fairness dictates that if one party is given the opportunity to amend the agreement to its liking, the other party should be given the same opportunity. - Africa News Service, Feb 28, 2000
The world did not take a "principled stand" and will not now take a principled stand. My view is that, more and more, the diplomats will stop talking about the Boundary Commission and will revert to the Algiers Agreement. Thats what happened when the Technical Arrangement was dying; the diplomats started talking about the Framework Agreement, the OAU Agreement, the Modalities, and, finally, something that was written in Ethiopias Foreign Ministry, The Consolidated Technical Arrangement Agreement. There are many reasons for why the world will not come to Eritreas rescue, the most compelling one was put forth by the PFDJs Central Office in its Weyanes Third Offensive & The Political Campaign That Followed It discussion paper, that was issued (unsigned, of course) in January 01, while preparing the groundwork for the arrest of the G-15:
Woyane did not accept the resolutions nor did they reject them; they labored to affect changes by asking questions and raising issues. This is a peaceful struggle practiced by all. Why it didnt bring about the needed outcome for us but did for the Woyane is not because they were better at it; it is because after the Second and Third Offensive they were able to occupy territories and this was seen as military superiority, which, in the minds of the mediators, earned them the right to demand concessions. The basis of diplomacy is power; and peace processes are governed by the military situation on the ground. The above argument is even more compelling now, except to those people who believe that losing 25% of your territory is an unmitigated victory. Militarily, we have a demoralized conscripted army engaged in slave labor, who plots every waking hour of how to get the hell out of his jail. Nations that don't have the military superiority can make arguments on moral grounds. On goodwill. But we have spent three years insulting the international community--calling them spies, interventionist, arrogant and self-righteous busy bodies, as well as arresting their employees and expelling their diplomats. We have made enemies of life-long friends: today it is Dan Connell, tomorrow it will be Basil Davidson and then Thomas Keneally. Remember our primary argument against Ethiopias deportation--rule of law, "human rights?" What is our reputation in those areas? So, what do we have left? (1) To wait for the TPLF to collapse? And then negotiate with whom? With a transitional government that includes people who dont even think Asab is Eritrean? With people who think our 1993 referendum was a farce? (2) To wait for the international community to pressure Ethiopia to comply with the terms of its agreement. But this will happen only if there is a change in the human rights record of the Eritrean government or, preferably, there is a change of the Eritrean government. Those are not measures the government, and its supporters, will endorse even if it is in the interest of Eritrea's negotiation position to do so. So, dialogue it is. And the parameters of the discussion? I presume they would be in the areas of convergence on the Algiers Agreement (for the trust-building measures), and then followed by discussions about the areas of disagreement. The parameters would be: scratch my back, I will scratch yours. Our compatriot should not worry about that: both governments are experts at it. This will spare the people the language of war, but I don't expect substantial benefits from it. I fully expect the government to come up with some other rationale to maintain a 200,000 plus army because their de-facto incarceration has nothing to do with security threats from Ethiopia. As for opening of trade, I cannot see how that will improve as long as Sudan and Ethiopia maintain the same view they have of the current Eritrean government. So, at best, demarcation will be of only marginal benefit to the Eritrean people. This is why people-to-people dialogue is more promising. Reason for People-To-People Dialogue
An Eritrean will find many organizations who claim to speak on his/her behalf, but none of them was given a mandate by the people to do so. At best, they represent a fraction of the Eritrean people. Those who are members of the PFDJ or the Alliance, ELF, ELF-RC, EPLF-DP, etc are bound by their organizational rules and, if they are disciplined, they have to conform to the dictates of organizational hierarchy. But most of us Eritreans state that we are not members of these organizations. There are many reasons for this but I suspect the primary ones are that their values dont represent ours or we like to retain our independence.
That being the case, why should we wait for a green light from them to practice our right to freely associate with whomever we want? I see an outreach to Ethiopians as a dramatic enforcement of our right. I see it as breaking of the psychological shackles and liberating ourselves from the hold these organizations have had over us for decades. Not only is it good for us, but it is also a peaceful expression of defiance, a civil disobedience of sorts. For Eritreans, I see it as a way to dis-empower the PFDJ, denying it one more Hungugu from its collection of scare cards. I see it as presenting our people an alternative view, one that does not hold to the dogma that there are no moderate Ethiopians, that all of them hate us, that it is only the PFDJ that is guarding us against all these barbarians who want to crash our gates. Remember, the last time we went to war was because the only friendship was at the government level and when that collapsed, everything else did. If we can form citizen-to-citizen, civil-society to civil-society, professional-to-professional bonds, then we can present alternatives to relationships based on the whims of governments. It is our safety from the extremes among us.
Like other cross-country affiliation (trade unions, journalists association, etc), this is really re-aligning people not according to their national flags but the values they hold dear. Those of us Eritreans and Ethiopians who seek Truth, who seek moderation, who seek enlightenment, who seek rebirth, dont need permission from the authorities: we will be paired and will find avenues to make the lives of our people better. We will call right is right and wrong is wrong and we won't check what flag a crime is wrapped in before we condemn it.
And those who dont think there is such a thing as a moderate Eritrean or a moderate Ethiopian will be paired with one another: the Ethiopians can shout Zeraf, Aseb, Banda, Mussolini, Shaebia to their hearts content, and the Eritreans can shout back Agame, Weyane, Amhara Chauvinist, until they get hoarse.
And what are the parameters of our discussion? From my perspective, they are the same ones that exist between very good neighbors: good neighborliness. For neighbors who happen to be cousins, the topics are endless: raising children, worshipping God, commemorating shared holidays, mourning shared anguish, making the neighborhood a better place. In short, we want to talk about all the things that touch humanity. Contrary to the common proverb, you cannot be a good neighbor if all you talk about is the fence and how the neighbor should stay off your backyard.
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