If one word were to be chosen as a metaphor for Eritrea in Zemene Isaias 2003, it would have to be �Gahtelai,� an enclave situated between Asmara and Massawa. Everything that happens there is proof of the government�s declared intent to concentrate on rural Eritrea; it is shorthand for efforts in action, a success at every level.

The Ministry of Agriculture can boast that it is a garden built from a desert. It grows melons, potatoes, and tomatoes. The Ministry of Finance can point to the Israeli-funded project for proof that it encourages investment. The Ministry of Tourism can point to the hot springs in Gahtelai and show plans on how it intends to attract tourists. The Ministry of Local Government (if one existed) could point to the Eritreans repatriated from Sudan who are settled there as proof that the government�s policy of integration is working. Want more? Look at the elections just held there, women have been elected to run the community courts, explains the Ministry of Information. The Minister of Public Works can point to the She�eb-Gahtelai Raod and say our 3-year plan is working. Wait, there is more.  In his New Year Address to the �esteemed Eritreans,� President Isaias Afwerki promised that the Serjega-Gahtelai road will be upgraded as well�

But there is a dark side of Gahtelai that also shows precisely what is wrong with the way the Administration of Isaias Afwerki is running Eritrea. The Egyptian Pyramids are considered one of the marvels of the world�a showcase to the ancient pharaohs. But we are sure they were nothing but misery to the slave laborers that perished building them. How proud all Eritreans would have been if the Eritrean roads were built by workers who got a living wage and enjoyed it with their families.  How sad that they are being built by the slave labor of �Warsay-yeka�alo,� a conscript army who has been held hostage now for over five years.

How proud we would have been if the roads were used to transport the fruits of the land and the products that will fill the shops. But what is the cargo that will travel on the roads?  Mostly, it is military convoys.  And prisoners:

That night, truckload upon truckload kept on coming and unloading their human cargo every half an hour or so. At about 1 a.m., the room was so packed with people that those who arrived in the last batches had no place to stretch their legs let alone lie down. They had to spend the night and part of the next day standing � some of them literally on one leg. How that night was survived is a chronicle of the human suffering that this wretched country is going through. Among the 700 or so souls packed in that room, there were those who kept coughing all the time (spending a few nights in that place lying on a bare floor without proper clothing or blankets is a sure way of catching the most horrible of ailments); those who were asthmatic and seemed on the verge of collapse; a man who was in great agony suffering under the pain of his kidney condition; one epileptic who had a sudden attack, and yes, a mentally ill young man who spent the whole night talking to himself. A whole panorama of human anguish�. Those who were not lucky enough were later sent to Metkel Abet north of Gahtelai where they were kept for several weeks in the harshest of conditions.

So wrote �Events Monitor,� an Eritrean citizen who was rounded up and held at Adi Abeito  (�Two Nights Before Gahtelai,� June 9, 2003).  Echoing a question that has been asked by many Eritreans, the writer wonders: �I couldn�t help but think all night about what makes a government do all this to its own people. To lash out with such vengeful and ruthless aggression, with such brutality against the very ordinary people whose only crime was that they submitted to every demand it had been making!�

This is the side of Gahtelai that didn�t make it to the pages of Shabait.com or to Shaebia.org.  Another Gahtelai-bound cargo that did not make it to their pages was the diseased sheep that was dumped by Australia.  Regardless of where one sides on the debate of whether the government should have accepted or rejected the reject sheep, what is undisputed is that, once again, the �esteemed Eritrean people� had absolutely no say in matters as basic as what they eat.  Surely, people who are in the business of choosing dumping sites at poor, undeveloped countries must have taken note of this fact.  So argued (convincingly, we believe) an Eritrean commentator, Burhan Ali (�By The Tail�, 11/10/03):

No one can doubt that this deal has brought Eritrea to the attention of the traders and agents of toxic waste disposal companies, and put it directely on their cross-hair. We, knowing what we know about the regime in Asmara and its romance with money, do not exclude that such agents may convince the regime to take and bury hazardous materials in exchange of cash�I am afraid and I hope I am wrong, that we are, through the Australian sheep, forced to enter a new era in Eritrea. We have taken the very first steep slide down into a new Eritrea, one that is the dump-house of suspect and toxic materials.

If, as Burhan Ali fears, the �traders and agents of toxic waste� want to unload their cargo in Eritrea, they only have to convince one man �Isaias Afwerki� why doing so is a good deal.  They wouldn�t have to worry about public opinion, opposition parties, scholars, intellectuals, and professionals because they have all been arrested or muted. The rubber stamp �National Assembly� will stamp and the �Cabinet of Ministers� will, if they are lucky, view it in charts. If such a deal is finalized in one of the many unexplained trips to Italy (where we will soon hear of "privatized" companies sold to Italians), the traders will find plenty of paved roads to transport their cargo.

The cargo that traveled on the paved roads included Eritreans who have been denied their right to worship their God in the manners they see fit.  In 1993, the government stripped the citizenship of the Jehovah's Witnesses and arrested many of them. Most Eritreans looked the other way because most Eritreans are not adherents of Jehovah's Witnesses.  In 1994, the government began arresting "fundamentalist Muslims" ("Chehamat"), most of whom are now presumed executed.  Most Eritreans looked the other way because most Eritreans don't describe themselves as "fundamentalist Muslims."  In 2002 and 2003, the government began closing the churches and arresting the adherents of Faith Mission, Mekane Yesus, LDS and Behai.  "What makes a government do all this to its own people?" is the question. It is doing so because it is betting that most Eritreans are not "Pente" and won't protest their arrest.  

When the US Department of State issued its damning report, Mr. Girma Asmerom, Eritrea's Ambassador to the United States, responded in the PFDJ-patented way: to insult the authors (State Department) and their alleged sources (disgruntled Internet writers.)  Then he invited them to visit him to be educated. But the State Department's report makes it clear that they consider the information so credible they were raised by the US Ambassador to Eritrea. If the information was incorrect, the Eritrean government had plenty of time to explain it to the US Ambassador in Eritrea but, once again, it was either incompetent or it could not defend the indefensible. 

In other nations where this kind of incremental abuse has taken place, the results have been disastrous: the anger of the persecuted is not just directed at the perpetrator (the government) but also at citizens who did not speak up when their fellow countrymen were being harassed. The biggest long-term damage the government is inflicting is not on the people's right to worship (faith is too strong to be banned and is always reinstated once the people get the right to self-government) but on the future relations on the religions which have co-existed peacefully and admirably in some cases for hundreds of years.

And how is Eritrea doing in its path towards self-government?  If you will recall, when Mr. Yemane Gebreab was explaining the unilateral cancellation of the �2001 elections,� he had presented one of the options as being �playing the game.�  In 2003, the PFDJ decided to play the game, in its own terms. There would be an election, but there is a catch. The eligibility criteria of the candidates will be defined by the PFDJ; the date, time and place of the election will be decided by the PFDJ; the ballots will be counted by the PFDJ; the winners will be declared by the PFDJ; and the event will be covered by the PFDJ media. Then, gegezakum kidu Hawi aguagudu.   

Since September 2001, all citizens were meant to learn the lesson that here is a price to be paid for dissent: the other side of Gahtelai.  But some are late-bloomers, and the lesson had to be learned again: a member of the �regional assembly�, Aisha Shaker, was hauled to jail.  For others, like Ermias Debessay and Habtesion Hadgu, the road to jail was a repeat trip.  For thousands of nameless others, it was a one-way trip that they never came back from. But the government and its supporters can take pride in knowing that the vehicles that are transporting them to the prisons are traveling on wide and paved roads.

The "late-bloomers", those who never learn their lessons, are now going to be distracted by yet another phantom, a political mirage: "dialogue with the government." They are swooning at Ali Said Abdella's conditional dialogue, yet another time-buying stunt. If reminder is needed what Isaias thinks of dialogue, they need not go back to the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. All they need to remember is that in September 2000, at the Central Committee meeting of the PFDJ, President Isaias agreed to all the terms of his colleagues.  He agreed to drafting electoral laws, party-formation laws, freeing the press, setting up a committee to assess the war. Only two days after that meeting, Isaias began the purge (by firing Saleh Kekya) and we all know how that story ended.  
    

Authoritarian governments can�t sell their record on human rights, so they try to sell their competence. How did the Eritrean government fare in terms of �competence�?  Unfortunately for Eritreans, the only comparative report their government does is with Ethiopia. The only thing that seems to matter to them is that Eritrea under Isaias is marginally better than Ethiopia under Meles; you would think Isaias is running for the office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.  Here is a more comprehensive fact, culled from http://www.nationmaster.com/. You know of the Eritrean Airlines and Gahtelai and the public works. What follows is the  part of the record that does not make it to the pages of Shabait or Shaebia and their conduit websites.  To dramatize the government's misplaced priorities, we will begin by comparison of its expenditures on education and the military.

Education

There is no country that has developed by concentrating all its efforts on military expenditures while ignoring the education sector.  The most-telling (and oft-stated) anecdote of the Eritrean government�s misplaced priorities is that President Isaias Afwerki, the �Chancellor� of the University of Asmara, has yet to attend a single UoA graduation ceremony in 12 years. But he travels to Sawa Military Academy religiously. It seems that he doesn't like to see children wear school uniforms, but military fatigues. But there is hope: now that the 12^th grade is offered exclusively at Sawa, essentially merging education with military service, the president may, for the first time, visit an actual school; the children are housed in the same compound where they will do their drills. Who knows, if he can fire all the teachers and replace them by drill sergeants, he may actually visit a real classroom. 

In the area of education, Eritrea has the second worst record in terms of teacher to student ratio (the only nation with a worse record is Nepal); it has the fifth worst �female school life expectancy� and it has the sixth worst record of �Primary School Girls Out Of School�:

Now take a look at its military expenditures.   Eritrea ranks first in the world for being the most militarized state; as a percentage of its GDP, Eritrea military expenditure ranks the third highest (after North Korea and Angola.)  We should keep this information in mind when the government, as the president did in his New Year Address, tries to tell us that it has other options besides diplomatic in settling the border issue. 

Health & Energy

In the area of health, the government has issued reports that show that it has made dramatic improvements in reducing and/or controlling malaria, TB and HIV-AIDS rates, and energy development.  If true, these are to be commended and the government is entitled to publicize them, as it does often. (But even here, there is a cautionary tale: all these diseases are known to increase with militarization.)   There are other health issues that never make it to the President�s address or press releases.  During the Isaias Administration, Eritrea recorded the fourth-worst maternal mortality rate; it had the second-worst �underweight children rate.�  Eritrea also has the second-worst record (after Chad) for using tradition fuel (wood) which is degrading the environment.

In terms of refugee repatriation and resettlement, Eritrea holds the record for the second highest �refugee outflow per capita� (after Burundi).  In terms of absolute numbers, Eritrea�s refugee outflow at 377,000 is the fifth highest.

Eritrea's GDP is the third-last in the world.  The export sector, which is supposed to drive Eritrea's economy (according to its macroeconomic policy) remains dead.  In the ranking, Eritrea export performance only outpaces countries whose economy is driven by tourism (British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, St Helena, Monaco, Samoa, etc.)  And while TV-Eri celebrates its availability to Europe and North America, it should make note of the fact that Eritrea ranks near dead last in terms of households with television.  

In short, despite the propaganda offensive by the Isaias Administration to paint a glossy image of its performance, the numbers tell a completely different and dismal story.  They only manage to impress people with so low expectations of Eritrea that they marvel at the fact that Eritrean children wear shoes! There was already a compelling case to call for the resignation of Isaias based on his abysmal record on human rights and stalling Eritrea's democratization.   Now the numbers make another strong argument. That is how 2003 began, and that is how it ended, in Zemene Isaias.

To those who doubt that a government's human rights record negatively impacts the nation's interests, there was no more dramatic evidence than Eritrea's inability to get the world to call, in unison, and then to push aggressively for, the implementation of the ruling of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC.) Imagine if the situation were reversed: imagine that Eritrea was occupying Badme, imagine that the EEBC awarded Badme to Ethiopia and imagine that Eritrea refused to withdraw from Badme. There would have been a swift and unanimous call for Eritrea to withdraw. Why is there such a difference?  Because while the law and the institutions of law (such as the UN, the AU and the EEBC) are recognizing this border dispute as a quarrel between two nations, the politicians and diplomats are recognizing this border dispute as a quarrel between Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afwerki. And, in that contest, the incompetent Isaias Afwerki is a big liability to Eritrea's case.  

The paradox is that Eritrea's case, which is reliance on the rule of law, is being advocated by a person who has repeatedly demonstrated that he has no regard for the law and even less for institutions of law.  Had one of the lawyers representing Eritrea's case been incompetent, Eritreans would rightfully have called for his dismissal.  Yet, they are being asked--in the name of "patriotism"--to stand behind an incompetent president who has assigned himself the role of chief representer of Eritrea's case.

Based on his abuse of the Eritrean people and squashing their democratic yearnings, there was already a great deal of evidence that Isaias Afwerki should be forced to resign. An equally persuasive case for his removal can be made based on the facts and figures shown above, as well as his unfitness to represent Eritrea in the important border ruling.

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