In the fifties, Habib Bourgaiba, the flamboyant Tunisian president visited Palestine. At the time, he was known as the "Supreme Warrior," revered by his countrymen for leading the armed struggle against France and surviving a dozen years of arrest in Paris for "sedition." He was a hero to Arabs and, gradually, he won the praise and the respect of the West for his diplomatic skills and his vision in modernizing Tunisia.   In a fateful day in Palestine, in a public address, he urged the Palestinians to accept partition and move on with what was offered by the UN�which was almost fifty percent of present day Israel and Palestine combined. 

After the speech, tomatoes were thrown at him.  He was scolded, defamed, and his character assassinated for decades. The Arabs made the man public enemy number one to the extent that the "Supreme Warrior" was referred in the Arab media as Habib Ibn Zeineb. (Habib, Son of Zeineb.) Calling him by his mother's name was supposed to be demeaning in the conservative Arab societies.

Twenty years later, Habib's Tunisia hosted the PLO when it was expelled from Lebanon.  Habib was overthrown in a bloodless coup (his prime minister brought a doctor's note stating Habib was unfit to govern) and he lived in a state of house-exile, until his death in 2000. 

Another Arab, Egypt�s Sadat, followed in the footsteps of Habib and, as the rest of the Arab world was still threatening to throw Israel to the sea, visited Israel and signed a peace treaty.    Within five years, crazed people who call themselves Muslims and think people should live and die based on their insane �fetwas,� killed Sadat.   Twenty years later, the extremists who murdered Anwar Sadat are now selling books�some from within their jail cells, others from the streets-- apologizing to the family of Sadat, to Egypt, to Muslims and to the entire world for their un-Islamic deeds.  

Half a century after Bourgaiba's advice, twenty fives years after Sadat�s visit, Yasser Arafat is, between assaults to his "presidential palace," negotiating for the 2% to 3% of the land that was offered to Palestinians years ago.  Arafat looks like a broker negotiating his commissions and, no doubt, pondering over a lifetime of missed opportunities.

Eritrean Lessons: Still Not Learnt

Judging by the �misery index,� ten years after Independence, Eritreans find themselves in the unenviable position of asking themselves, �did we sacrifice so much and for so long to replace an unjust Ethiopian ruler with an unjust Eritrean ruler?  And what do we do to make sure this doesn�t happen to us again?�  There are a number of reasons for this. Lest we continue to miss opportunities, below we cite just a few root causes.

(1) Eritrea vs The World

At the risk of stating the obvious, there can be no development and no security without peace.   A corrosive and dangerous attitude that is continuously promoted by our intelligentsia is that Eritrea is the sole virtuous and noble island in a sea of evil, conspiracies and ineptitude.   This hyper nationalist worldview casts Eritrea in an eternally confrontational and draining role, with permanent enemies.  Why?  Because it is just so.   To give this paranoid view a scholarly veneer, the litany of Eritrea�s historical and current enemies are cited.

We need to reassess our myths.  It takes away nothing from the glory of Eritrea�s victorious war of liberation to admit that we had friends and accomplices who helped us achieve our long sought-after goals.  Beyond the �n�Selai b�ETQun bbretun� practice, the funds and the weapons acquired to wage the war against successive governments could not have happened without friends. We were helped by the Sudan, by Gulf States and by dozens of progressive NGOs.  Eritrea could not have waged the last decisive phases of the armed struggle without the support of the Ethiopian TPLF.  In the 1990s, Eritrea could not have been engaged in any meaningful rehabilitation effort without the active and full-throttle support of Western governments and the institutions they control as well as the donations and interest-free loans of Gulf States.

True, some do it for self-interest.  But, many of the individuals, institutions and countries who support Eritrea do it not because Eritrea is endowed with massive resources for exploitation but because they are inspired by the Eritrean story, by the Eritrean character and by the Eritrean potential.

We will not escape from the rut we are in unless we face simple facts: that we are a small, impoverished country with limited resources and an unproven ability for sustained self-governance.  Enemies are not chomping at the bits to control and occupy us because we have enough history that suggests we are too defiant to be a humble colony of any power.   We, as a people, are not a danger to anyone because we (unlike our government) have no imperial ambitions.  We are a population of three million people who have chosen to live as one people, within defined borders, governing ourselves.  Tyrants and their supporters will not let us govern ourselves because they continue to lie to us and scare us that everyone is after us and we are destined to be everyone�s target and enemy and, by promoting this worldview, fulfill their prophesies of eternal war. 

(2) Vague Goals With No Timeline

We do not believe the Eritrean struggle was waged for the sake of struggling. Freedom and democracy are not fantasies that Eritreans are supposed to just dream about; they are tangible goals that must be achieved and delivered within a timetable. Eritreans deserve better than vague promises with ever-shifting timelines.  The Opposition and the government allow problems to define their existence, which in turn hurls them into a cyclic adversity, victimhood and taking pride in the Culture of Negation.  The opposition and the government alike seem to think that the whole Eritrean case is all about them. Sadly, they think the world revolves around their partisan interests. The recent brawl between the ENA and the ELF-RC (as well as between PFDJ and the World) is a sad example of this.  For someone who is used to NO without a clear vision on when to deliver a mission, it might not make a difference; for others, it does.  To celebrate the process (and then we were deported, and then we were arrested, and then we were harassed) without registering any meaningful progress towards the goal (peace, freedom, democracy) and to confuse being inefficient with being deliberate is a cruel perversion of the Eritrean dream.  We need more choices than an organization that works on a turtle's pace and another on a snail's pace.  At some point, those who purport to leads us must deliver: only failed politicians celebrate ancient achievements. If they can't lead, there is no dishonor in them saying: "we have done a great deal for Eritrea and we are stepping down."   But they all persist, some at a snail's pace; others at a turtle�s.

(3) The Assumed Mandate.  PS: Awet nHafash!

For decades now, we as citizens were not part of the formula and were simply dragged into conflicts that were not of our making. We paid the price while the leaders, who are the main causes of our suffering in Eritrea, continue to rule unabashed.  During the armed struggle, Eritreans came to forgive this as a necessary price to pay for freedom; however, after independence, the demands on their patience are wearing thin.  We have seen repeatedly that any political activity that lacks either full or relative blessing from the public is doomed to fail no matter how ostentatious the issue is.

No sooner had Herui T Bairou been elected before he began his media blitz and began assuming a mandate he does not have. According to Herui, there are plans underway to set-up camps for �armed dissidents.�  While this is a clever label and describes, accurately, dissidents who happen to have weapons, we believe the Alliance (and for matter the EPLF-DP), need to feel the pulse of the Eritrean people with respect to their views regarding the military option within their overall strategy for bringing down the Eritrean government.  Is the military talk just a means of pressuring the incumbent? Are they planning a grass-root armed struggle? Would it ever be a war of proxy? Would it advance with a neighbor�s army in case war breaks between Eritrea and any of its neighbors? What would be the goal of the military wing? Under what circumstances would it be engaged? Is it to absorb the current Eritrean army into the opposition fold? Would it be to guarantee cohesion of an Eritrean force in case the Eritrean army is disintegrated? 

The public needs to be assured and reassured again and again. We need assurance that Eritrean sovereignty would not be compromised. And we need the opposition to speak to the people frequently and more often. Lack of communication with the public cannot be excused in this time and age.   More than talking, we hope they will listen: after all, one cannot be a leader unless one has followers.

(4) One Way Love Affair: Loyalty On Demand

Anytime their legitimacy is questioned, government operatives round up their loyalists to hold hands and declare their love to them.  The name of the get-togethers may change-- "festivals," "seminars," "town-hall meetings," "meKete."  The slogans, too, may change: "we support our government", "Hade hzbi Hade lbi."   (The latest one from PFDJ is reminiscent of the Derg's Ethiopia Tikdem (Ethiopia First) baptized as Nation First!)  But whether the decision of the party/Front is sound, fair or just, the get-togethers have one intention: a simulated top-down demand for loyalty masquerading as a bottom-up, spontaneous outpouring of love.  Laughable attempts are then made to present these relatively few number of loyalists as a microcosm of Eritrea. In reality, the whole Eritrean crowd in the West is not even as big as Wed Sheriffey, a village in the Sudan sprawled by Eritrean refugees, who have been packed to go home since Independence Day.  

It turns out this remnant of the days of the armed struggle is not the sole monopoly of the PFDJ.  At the slightest hint that the ELF-RC has done something unwise, its cadres fanned out to issue their version of "We Support Our Leadership" bulletins.   Did any of the ELF-RC cells conduct serious debates or did they, in the tradition of �democratic centralism� adopt the hierarchical edict from above?

(5) Selective Moral Indignation: Civil War

In the eyes of some Eritreans, some Eritrean blood is thicker than others.  To some Eritreans, the definition of a civil war is only one that would involve (1) an armed confrontation between the PFDJ and a relatively large force of armed opposition or (2) an armed confrontation between two factions of PFDJ.   However, if the force that is confronting PFDJ is small (like the Jihad movement), then they don�t see that as civil war although Eritrean blood is being shed and they are quite willing to dismiss it.  Worse yet, if the conflict does not involve the PFDJ and it is an armed confrontation between two other armed groups of Eritreans, it would even be encouraged.   Many of those lecturing now against civil war would cheer an armed confrontation between, say, ELF and Sagem, notwithstanding the fact that an Eritrean youth is dying and an Eritrean mother is grieving somewhere.     

If we say we abhor violence, and we say we abhor civil war, then we must condemn it unconditionally and we must make a call on all parties�specially the government�to seek other remedies besides continuous escalation of conflicts.  The cause of peaceful conflict resolution is not advanced when people turn a blind eye to some conflicts, encourage others and then, selectively, get outraged by a narrowly defined �civil war.�  For some Eritrean families, civil war is not a future probability: it is part of their past and present as their children have been in a civil war since the mid-1980s.   To refuse to call the conflict by its name or, worse, to strip the Eritreans of their citizenship, does not change the fact that it is still two Eritreans shooting at each other. 

(6) Moral Degeneracy

We do not think that it is a coincidence that all the pro-freedom and pro-justice Eritreans are God-fearing people and all the apologists for tyranny are godless moral relativists.  The supporters of the PFDJ seem to be adherents of  the Arabic proverb:  �Klmet Haq yuradu biha baTil,� which means �A Truth utilized to destroy another truth.�  If you say the Eritrean government is arresting people without charge, His Excellency Girma Asmerom will respond, �so is the United States.�  Both statements are true and, of course, both actions are wrong.  If you say, Mesfin Hagos is calling the Eritrean government unjust; someone will respond Mesfin Hagos was, until recently, part of the unjust system.  A person who has a clear understanding of right and wrong would say, �regardless of who is for it or against it, it is wrong to imprison people indefinitely, without due process.�  But if you are a moral relativist, like the supporters of tyranny, your answer is always an ambiguous �it depends! Whoever is powerful is right.� 

Ramadan Charity

As part of our Ramadan feature of saluting an Eritrean, we are featuring Dr. Mussie Misghina for recognition.  When PFDJ was biting its nails trying to decide on whether it should ignore us or confront us, Dr. Mussie was an early proponent of engagement.  The reluctant general has become that largest Swedish export since Volvo and his "hgdefawi meKete" template has been mimicked throughout PFDJ land.  He has set the standard on how to be completely devoid of any intellectual honesty or sense of ethics or morality and provides a perfect psychological profile of our opponents.  Among many of his illogical statements, he recently made the following syllogism: Meles calls Isaias a dictator.  If you call Isaias a dictator, you've been, whether you admit it or not, influenced by Meles.  He did not volunteer whether he was influenced by Meles Zenawi when he, along with the G-13, called the Eritrean government a one man show after Meles did.  Nor does he explain what to call Eritreans who used to call the Eritrean government a dictatorship long before Meles Zenawi did.

At a mini hgdefawi meKete here in San Jose, someone raised the potential of starting a petition drive to close all the �anti-Eritrean websites� (Read: Awate and Asmarino).  Here at Awate, we are very partial to people engaged in loony campaigns.  The Tigre proverb �qerimka semiE besir lgba�e� (May your opponent be capable of seeing and hearing) aptly describes our situation.  We salute the spirit of the individual who will initiate the campaign to amend the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.   Good luck, buddy.

The San Francisco Bay Area is graced with two highly competitive PFDJ base camps: San Jose and Oakland.  These two highly competitive loyalty centers�only 26 miles apart�are engaged in a constant game of one upmanship to see which one can fill the biggest suitcase to send to PFDJ, Inc.  This results in poor PFDJ delegates making the mandatory trek to appease the two constituencies. 

Usually, Oakland prevails.  In this case, the Oakland office seems to have completely missed the �hzbawi meKete� wave and is still talking about dinners and discussions.  In the vacuum, the smaller and highly competitive San Jose office stepped in with Swedish-patented resolutions.   We like the Oakland office.  Come on, Oakland, you can do better.  Get on with the program.  Organize your own hzbawi meKete.  Write resolutions! Condemn traitors!  They are trying to amend one article of the US Constitution; go for two amendments. You won�t allow the little San Jose center and its nutty advocate to upstage you, will you?   We are waiting.

But seriously, we are flattered.  It is up to us and all justice-loving Eritreans to engage the PFDJ.  The lines cannot be clearer.  It is forces aligned with the people vs forces aligned with the government. This time, it is a level playing field.  The poor Eritreans in Eritrea cannot fight the PFDJ because the PFDJ has the full resources of the State.  But here in Diaspora, we have the same weapons it does.   All civil society groups, all human rights advocates, all Eritreans who are committed to returning power to the people, the clarinet has been sounded.  Let's show them how truth triumphs over deceit, good over evil and justice over injustice.   

Thanks Dr. Mussie Misghina.  See you at our victory rally.

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