Overview and Purpose

Once in a while, it is practical and useful to assess and monitor the state of affairs with respect to the noble struggle for democracy in Eritrea. So far, we have done a good job of articulating the impact of the leadership crisis on our people. To my knowledge, however, more work needs to be done by way of assessing the make-up and contribution of different segments of our people, even that of the contrarians at biddho and elsewhere (lam hawi welida, kaitelehso kaiendeda, kaitegedfo wuleda!). 

It should be encouraging to all peace loving and democracy advocating Eritreans to appreciate how far we have come and how much we have overcome to make the demand for democracy reverberate as a front burner issue. Not more than two years ago, however, a congruent demand by very few people was deemed to elicit anger and retribution by zealots of the PFDJ. The angry zealots have now scattered in various directions.  

To be sure, some have maintained the same mindset, still writing and singing praises for the dictatorship. Most of the x-PFDJ followers, however, are now at the forefront of the struggle for democracy. They are currently active members of democratic forums, civic organizations, or registering their contributions to the peaceful struggle as independents. If these PFDJ followers were wrong about their tactics of vilification, they were never wrong about the determination and tenacity of the spontaneously accelerating,�democrats for Eritrea� movement. 

In the mean time, one PFDJ member after another has found his or her way to the noble task of elevating the demand for democracy in Erirea. This welcome bonanza was definitely brought about by a series of reckless and repressive moves by Mr. Isaias in reaction to the demand for the implementation of genuine democracy in our country. The purpose of this posting is to understand the current state of affairs of our struggle and address relevant issues that would help us to duplicate tha staggering success of the last couple of years as we forge ahead in our peaceful struggle. 

The Concept and Practice of Triage

During the First World War, the French Army suffered heavy casualties. In fact, the wounded were so many; there was not enough medicine to go around. So the then minister of health asked his medical doctors to device a plan to dispense the limited medicine they had efficiently. The constraint being that the medicine they had was only ample enough to take care of one-third of the wounded. 

The good medical doctors got together and came up with a working plan to administer the available medicine to the ones that needed it the most. They called their plan Triage.

Let me describe how Triage worked. This plan called for the sorting of the war casualties into those requiring immediate help, those who can wait, and those who are beyond help. Thus, they divided up the wounded into three equal groups as follows: 

1.     Those who will survive only if they take the medicine.

2.     Those who will survive whether they take the medicine or not.

3.     Those who will die whether they take the medicine or not. 

The doctors ignored the wounded in Group 2 and Group 3, and administered the medicine to the patients in Group 1. In the final analysis, the soldiers in Group 1 and Group 2 survived, and all the patients in Group 3 died.  

OUR TRIAGE!

Similarly, the current noble struggle for democracy seems to aggregate individuals into three groups, as follows:

A. The Yellow Group
B. The Green group
C. The Red Group

The Yellow Group

I named this group the �Yellow Group� because they exude hope; they are not where we want them to be though. So far, however, members of this group have an oxymoron mindset. As you very well know, an oxymoron is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are combined to produce a paradoxical outcome. For example, combined terms like �democrat Isaias,� �caring Isaias,� and �God-fearing Isaias� are examples of oxymoron terms. One can understand �dictator Isaias,� but not �democrat Isaias,� for the simple reason that the term �democrat� and �Isaias� do not go together. Dictator and Isaias yes; but democrat and Isaias do not go together.  

Members of the Yellow Group wholeheartedly believe in implementing genuine democracy, the rule of law and multiparty elections in Eritrea. But, there is a catch here: they want to do it with Mr. Isaias� concurrence. In other words, they believe the shortest path to democracy in Eritrea is to negotiate with Mr. Isaias. You see, these compatriots have lost their respect for Mr. Isaias and his cronies a long time ago; however, they have not lost their fear of the dictator as yet. In their opinion, he is still invincible enough to do more damage to our people. They have a point; Eritrea under Isaias has been that unpredictable! In fact, a representative opinion of this group was posted by my friend Abraham G. Ghiorgis, under the title, �The Need for Responsible Loyal Oppositions,� October 1, 2002. However, my point here is that Isaias and his cronies are an illegal and illegitimate bunch and should be handled as such. To state this differently, it would be incumbent upon the Yellow Group to convince the rest of us that:

A) Negotiating with an illegal and illegitimate government is worth our while.

B) Knowing the track record of Mr. Isaias on negotiations, the members of the   

Yellow Group have to assure us that Mr. Isaias has made that needed  transformation  to guarantee success in holding free and fair elections.          

The Green Group

I referred to this group as the �Green Group� because this group has the potential to lay down the groundwork for the emancipation and greening of Eritrea. This group is made up of individuals who have completely lost their respect for and their fear of Isaias and his cronies. This group also understands that both the Weyane and the PFDJ have been trivialized. Thanks to the G-15, once the leadership of the PFDJ broke up into two irreconcilable camps, the PFDJ organization only continues to exist only on paper, not on the ground.  

Irrespective of political persuasions or party memberships, individuals of the Green Group are the compatriots that will eventually take the lead to dislodge the dictator. 

The Red Group

I refer to this group as the �Red Group� because all they see and smell is blood; they have proven to be disciples of violence. This group is made up of all the Internet cheguar danga (the biddho & shaebia membership), whose targets are Eritrean professionals and intellectuals. Their intent is to rape promising ideas by generating fear. Judging by their track record so far, this group is made up of half-baked Eritreans whose only purpose in the current struggle is bashing Eritreans who can read, think, and write independently.  

There is no other way to look but as half baked and a bunch of fools when they are in the business of defending the dictator at the expense of their people and their own self interest. A genuinely democratic Eritrea is consistent with the interests of our people.To them, the culture of tolerance and moderation is really alien. Consistent with the cheguar danga of the mid-1970�s, who managed to marginalize and eliminate the menkaE group, the mission of the Internet cheguar danga is to marginalize Eritrean professionals and intellectuals who express themselves freely.  

Members of this group are assigned and reassigned at the whim of the dictator. When Isaias determined Eritreans in the diaspora were becoming formidable in their determination to call for the implementation of genuine democracy in Eritrea, he understood that the biddho group was no match for the energetic democrats. That is why he swiftly withdrew these troops from asmarino and the other web-sites and reassigned them to biddho in order to line up the rest of the believers by bashing honest to goodness Eritrean democrats who posted historic papers. Individuals in the Red Group have yet to find themselves. Remember: they are posting contrary messages so that other cult followers remain in the fold. The best way to handle this misguided group is to ignore them completely. 

Concluding Remarks

I am sure we all noticed that Abraham solely blames the Weyane for the war debacle? He does not even implicate Isaias and his cronies in a very remote sense. Such an approach suffers from a fallacy of reductionism. That war was not a people�s war by any shape or form. Our people were sandwiched between two enemies! If we have to judge the planners and enforcers of that war by its consequences, it was waged jointly by the leadership of Eritrea and Ethiopia against both peoples.  

Both peoples sustained the brunt of the destruction dealt to them by both governments, while these same criminals are back to performing their old tricks again. Nothing happened to them. Take note of what is happening in Eritrea today. The Isaias dictatorship continues to collectively punish our people in a sustained manner, knowing they have withdrawn their goodwill toward the government. To add insult to injury, Eritrean fathers, mothers, siblings and friends have not even been told about their martyred loved ones four years after the fact. As a result, the legitimacy of Isaias Afewerki�s government is on the floor today. In my opinion, Abraham evaded taking Isaias to task and holding him responsible for throwing our compatriot into the most adventurous war of the recent past in the region. 

I am sure Abraham would enrich his argument by citing the South African and Soviet Union�s experiences. We had debated this very issue a while back, I remember. He would ask, �Didn�t De Klerk negotiate with Mandela and didn�t Gorbachev succumb to popular demand in the final analysis? What Abraham forgets to realize is, Mr. Isaias is not in the league of Mr. De Klerk and Mr. Gorbachev. Both personalities pertain to two individuals who are astute politicians in their own right. 

Besides, these two leaders have track records of being good communicators and negotiators, who rose up to the pinnacle of power through their respective bureaucracies. De Klerk had the experience of having been minister of multiple ministries within the South African Government under his belt before he became the head of state of that country. In the end, these two politicians proved to be so realistic as to negotiate their own exit plan. How can anybody compare a warlord who only knows how to wave his sticks and guns to beat up and eliminate his own people every now and then, with these two accomplished politicians? To my knowledge, Mr. Isaias cannot and has never handled simple interviews to the satisfaction of rational Eritreans. Appropriate comparisons to Mr. Isaias maybe Bokassa of Central African Republic, Idi Amin of Uganda, Savimbi of Angola and Taylor of Liberia. 

One thing must be absolutely clear. A new Era is about to take effect in Eritrean politics. Those who have lost respect for the regime, but continue to harbor fear have to do some soul searching. This time, Eritrea can only be saved by free individuals who have the guts to stand up to tyranny. This very fact ought to preoccupy those who believe that a diplomatic game plan with Isaias will do the trick in initiating the process of democratization in Eritrea. The incompatibilities between Isaias� arrogant and undemocratic mindset and the requirements of democracy, the rule of law, open society, and free market economy have not been washed away by Isaias� loss of the war and his subsequent loss of legitimacy among Eritreans. Can the leopard change its spots? That is why Isaias and his cronies have to surrender to the will of the people! 

Mr. Isaias has been a plain old warlord from day one. He never experienced the art of give and take, and never understood the experience of reporting to a superior. Isaias joined the Eritrean armed struggle as an irrational man and came out of that 30 years experience doubly irrational and arrogant. What is more, his parents could not shape him up, his holly father could not shape him up, his teachers could not shape him up; neither could the bitter experience of the armed struggle shape him up. Mr. Isaias is a spoiled brat in a man�s body. As Turabi of the Sudan once exclaimed, �Isaias is a corporal who thinks he can rule the whole world.�  

I believe the Yellow Group and the Green Group will end up narrowing their differences and joining hands for democratic Eritrea at a later time; I cannot tell you when. I can only tell you that the views of these two groups on implementing democracy, the rule of law and multiparty elections will converge when members of the Yellow Group totally liberate themselves from the fear of Isaias and his cronies.