For years, conventional wisdom argued that a nation cannot prosper unless it had a free people and a free market.  Then, when the United States befriended Asian, South American and African tyrants, this formula was revised to: "the people need not be free, and the leader can be authoritarian, but not a communist.  As long as there is a free market, progress shall come." See Exhibit A: Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Chile to validate this formula.  Then came stubborn China: "I don�t have to give up political communism; I only have to give up economic communism."  Well, that was a head-scratcher and the political scientists started coming up with exotic explanations like: it is the Confucian ethic of China that is responsible for this anomaly.  Of course, nobody has a Hindu explanation for the democracy I am rooting for: India, which is also growing now at Chinese rates.  But Africa is smitten by China�and by Africa, I of course mean African tyrants and the elite who run things in their nations.  This is because the Chinese formula is self-serving: it actually legitimizes and celebrates our special breed of rulers-for-life.

Did you know that the Chinese characters for Africa translate to �wrong continent�?  So says The Economist, anyway. �Wrong continent�, �resource-rich continent��it is probably a few strokes of difference.   We know what Africa wants from China; but what does China want from Africa (besides its resources)?  I once asked our �man in China� this question: �you know the West has a whole set of preconditions for partnership�elections, political pluralism, market economy.  What is China�s requirement?�  That is very simple, he answered, �it is the one-china policy: as long as you believe in the one-ness of China, you are a Chinese ally.� 

You could have a policy that includes slave trade or ethnic cleansing: as long as you don�t recognize Taiwan, you are a Chinese ally.  Those who are rooting for the decline of the USA and emergence of China should take note that China's foreign policy is as amoral as its economic policy; i.e., capitalism.  In the great words of Walter Sobchack (from the movie The Big Lebowski), who finds it easier to understand the Nazis than the Nihilists:  �say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, Dude, at least it is an ethos.�  Say what you will about liberal democracy, but at least it believes in something.

But we know what price was paid to get China to crash the gates of the Superpowers club.  How would the average Chinese citizen answer this question, �If you had a chance, would you reverse the excesses of Mao�s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Foreward, if the reversal meant that you would not enjoy your current standard of living?  What if it meant your uncle, your father, your grandfather would not perish?� And the answer to that question gives us clues to the political philosophy of the PFDJ. 

A Template for Africa (Eritrea included)

My biggest grudge against the Front is that it seems to have a bottomless toolkit from which it retrieves its sharp and blunt objects to subject our people to its innovations in misery.  I sometimes imagine it goes something like this:

Hardliner General (HG):  The people are too spoiled! We have to make them wait in line for a loaf of bread for hours�

Even Worse General (EWG):  But that won�t make them miserable.  Just frustrated.  How about if we were to send our MPs to round up people while they are waiting in line?

HG:  That won�t make them miserable.  Just angry.   How about we round them up, stack them up in a flat bed of a truck while it is raining? Wouldn�t that be miserable?

EWG:  But that won�t humiliate them.  How about we beat their mothers while we are rounding them up?

HG:  But that just doesn�t break some of the people, specially the ones who just keeping mumbling GOD.  Why don�t we ban their holy books?

EWG:  They won�t have time to think of God if they are busy agonizing in pain.  How about we throw them in containers, in the middle of the desert�

HG:  Now you are on to something.  But what if they have children?

EWG:  We should arrest the children too!

Most people know this happens; they also know that it is wrong.  Why do they tolerate and even fund it?  Many theories abound: from the �they-hate-Eritreans� explanations (mostly espoused by our genealogy politicians and writers) to self-interest (mostly expressed by our Marxist cadres who think money explains everything.)  I have a different view: I think they tolerate it not because they are sadistic or enjoy the suffering of their people but in the same way that an American woman who will inconsolably cry at the sight of a starving African on her TV screen will justify the torture of a Muslim in Guantanemo Bay.  They just see it as a necessary and unavoidable measure to �secure the nation.�

But for how long? A decade, two, three? Will we use the Chinese model where only Mao could assess his disastrous Great Leap Forward to call it a disaster, so we can be licensed to put the right label on our disasters? And how will we know if we are making any progress in the meantime.  I mean if we want a source different from Eri-TV and Shabait?  The Misery Index? The IMF?

I will use a report card from the people who give us report cards, the IMF.   And because this article deals entirely with Eritrea, I will of course include data about Ethiopia: there is a certain percentage of our population, God bless them, whose political alignment is with the PFDJ, and whose only source of happiness is what the Germans called schedenfraude: the pain of others, particularly Ethiopia.  Assuming you are still reading, I don�t expect that this report will make a single impression on you, but I will write it nonetheless. Why? In the spirit of the China-Africa summit, I will use a Chinese proverb   �A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.�  Chirp, chirp.

The IMF

The government media may show wall-to-wall reporting of our new messiahs of �big leap forward� buildings, (big) micro-dams, roads, bridges, (nationalized) agricultural endeavors, (defective) airlines, (imaginary) cruise ships, (overpriced) housing projects, (poorly researched) shrimp farms and colleges (masquerading as universities.)  They consider this propagation so crucial they are losing huge amounts of money to broadcast Eri-TV (amount of loss: state secret) to the world.  But does this list of activities aggregate to something meaningful?  That is where the IMF comes in, giving us a whole bunch of numbers, useful in absolute and relative terms.

You will recall from your macroeconomic class that you weren�t paying much attention to, that GDP is the sum of the value of final goods and services (private, business, government) and the net difference between exports and imports.

GDP has many of its critics; one argument, for example, is that GDP does not measure the output of volunteers and unpaid laborers.  A classic argument would be: Eritrea�s GDP is distorted because the contribution of the �volunteer� work of Warsay-Yekalo is not counted.

So alternatives were proposed:  those who wanted to find the answers to questions like �are the Warsay-Yekealo really volunteers?� came up with Freedom House�s freedom index and said volunteerism requires choice and choice requires Freedom and your country is ranked dead last in the freedom index and therefore, they are not volunteers.  You and your fancy report cards, said the Sultan of Bhutan, and came up with his Gross National Happiness.  As a critic mentioned once, I don�t know if that was before or after Bhutan ethnic-cleansed 100,000 people but, presumably, those who were doing the cleansing were happy with what they did.   I don�t discount the importance of happiness and how, in many cases, there is little relationship between happiness and development; I only question a government�s self-serving criteria to call its people happy.  

The most viable alternative is one also used by the UN: the Human Development Index (HDI.)   Developed by Pakistani economist (who probably got fed up with the annual GDP reports showing his country consistently falling behind India), the HDI measures the availability of healthcare, clean water, educational facilities, mortality rates, etc.  I�ve never seen a single report issued by the government of Eritrea, even when we had a macroeconomic policy�except one: a summary (highlights) of the HDI measures that reflected some positive numbers for some indices of Eritrea.  If I remember correctly, the same space was committed to describing how Ethiopia�s numbers are worsening as was used to describe how Eritrea�s is getting better.

The 2006 HDI report is supposed to be issued in a couple of weeks in South Africa.  My guess is that it will probably include similar language as the one reported in the 2005 report:

In some cases�for example Burundi and Eritrea�countries allocate a much higher share to military expenditure than to education and health combined. 

Meanwhile, the IMF issued its �World Economic Outlook� in September 2006.  What�s that French expression? The more things change, the more they remain the same.

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei Darussalam, Eritrea, Iraq, Liberia, Serbia, Somalia and Timor-Leste, Cuba, the Democratic People�s Republic of Korea and Montenegro are examples of countries that are not IMF members.  

But the IMF still has a way of finding out info on �non-members�. 

Recall that to get Africa of its trap of poverty, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) require a 7-8% rate of growth, annually, in a sustainable way.   For most African countries, 4% growth simply means standing still�because that is also the rate of their population growth. (Eritrea averaged an annual of 3.7% population increase over a 5-year period.) 

What this report does not tell us (probably because Eritrea is not a member of the IMF) is the various components of Eritrea�s GDP; i.e., what percentage of the growth or decline was from ordinary people shopping; what percentage came from private businesses investing and what percentage from government spending.  But we can guess.

GDP is such a distant concept for many�so let�s look at another measure with a significant impact on our families in Eritrea: Consumer Prices.  This is the rate of inflation, measured annually:

You don�t have to be an economist to understand what it means to live in this inflationary market, when there is absolutely no salary adjustment�or even a way of drawing a salary.  The government�s policy seems to be based on: everybody has somebody in Diaspora; let them deal with it.   Our economy is run by the same policy of hypernationalism, which has had such a disastrous result everywhere else it has been tried.   The latest darling of every �anti-colonialism� revolution, Zimbabwe, had nearly a 237% inflation rate and is projected to have 4,278% for 2007.

A Fake Sophie�s Choice

If nothing else, these numbers are reproduced to get people to re-evaluate their Sophie�s Choice�that the development of Eritrea, for which they are so willing to sacrifice so many people for, including the very essence of Eritreanism, is not coming any time soon and, if it is, it is coming despite PFDJ policies.   You can�t declare war on your own people and then expect productivity from them.

The reason they are trapped into this fake Sophie�s choice is that they have made (or have allowed the government to make) two decisions: exaggerate the threat posed by �the enemy� and to exaggerate the progress that is being made.  When you are governed by fear, you don�t make the most rational decisions.

What we need are simple steps to remove the fear.  So you don�t want to have elections?  Fine, then at least set a goal for when you will do so.  You don�t want to release the political prisoners?  Well then at least acknowledge there are political prisoners and how many and bring them to a court of law. You don�t want to bring them to court?  Then at least give them family visitation rights.   You think that is too much?  Then at least give news to their families. You think prison is necessary? Then at least get rid of the inhumane "containers" and the helicopter tortures.

This would be a beginning; of course, by no means, the entirety of the demand of free citizens.  Those who support the government can also tell us what is it that they find frightening about the opposition.  Most people are rational and they are not whipped into a frenzy of fear unless there is a grain of truth to their fear.  What these baby steps would do is allow the apolitical to focus on their lives and leave the political bickering to the political class.  We will still harangue the PFDJ for its crimes; we will still demand that they hold elections; we will still demand accountability for the police state it has created; we will still demand that people�s right to free assembly, speech and association and worship be safeguarded; we will still insist on constitutionalism.   And the PFDJ can still accuse its opponents of being sell-outs and fiends and emphasize the importance of stability over freedom.  Let the people exercise their choice as to which vision they find more appealing: China or India.  But it is not everything or nothing: let go of your fears first.  And do it now.  Because, again in the spirit of the Africa-China summit, this time quoting an African (Angelique Kidjo): �A bird doesn�t wait till it dies to fly.�

The Passing of A Star

I really thought Abraham Afewerki was going to do for Eritrean music what Khaled did for Algerian (Rai), Oliver Mtukudezi for Zimbabwean, what Habib Kote did for Mali or what Teddy Afro will certainly do for Ethiopian music within a few years: internationalize it; get our songs played at college concerts and Starbucks.  (Hopefully, we will be spared the dentist office and the hotel lobby.)  Abraham had the talent and, crucially, a knack for marketing and, rare for Eritrean musicians, his songs were love songs�you would have to search hard to find the derEmom, Hredom, Hamotom afse�som in his song collection.  He was a prophet of love and peace.  Literally days before he died, Ben from Ethiopiafirst.com (a man I am proud to call wendmye) had an audio editorial where he expressed his dreams of seeing a Teddy Afro-Abraham Afwerki join tour.  

A star has passed, but we still have many more.  To appreciate them while living, when was the last time you listened to Wedi Tukabo?  A friend once told us that when Yemane Barya died, Wedi Tukabo just would not leave the das�he was lingering around for days and maybe weeks.  Just absorbing the legend�s aura.  Well, the osmosis is complete.  No disrespect to Yemane, but I think Johnny Tukabo has more talent�as youtube is my witness.  If Abraham had the potential to make the world love Eritrean music, Wedi Tukabo has an even more ambitious goal�to make Eritreans remain in love with Eritrea.  Despite the brutes who rule it.  

Speaking of stars, when was the last time you told the organizers and attendants of the October 30 demonstration, �Great work and thank you!�  I was particularly pleased by the attendants of our youth, the natural leaders of our resistance movement.  Speaking on behalf of a member of the kicking-and-screaming but aging generation, I say, it�s all yours, take it now, don�t wait for the invitation cards from the aging generation because they are not coming.

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