Those of you Bush-haters rubbing your hands eagerly awaiting the fall of the American Empire because you are tired of its moral smugness just got a glimpse of who is America’s replacement: an amoral Europe and an immoral China.  The Europeans and the Chinese will deal with anybody, talk to anybody, bargain with anybody—even with people who don’t believe in talking, dealing or bargaining.  China only demands that you accept its dominion over Taiwan—if you do, you can be a slave-trader and a child-abductor and it will do business with you. And Europe?  There was a time when Europeans lived the dictum of Frederick the Great that “diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”  Now they have infinite faith in their ability to mime music: everybody can be reasoned with, according to Europeans, even the unreasonable. Europe is now full of small men, none smaller than Louis Michel, the EU’s co-ordinator for development who was honored to be in the presence of one of Africa’s most brutish dictators, Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki.

Certainly, Isaias Afwerki knows that Europe is full of small men. Diplomacy is a three legged stool: persuasion, compromise, threats.  And Europe has long given up on threats and, consequently, it has not achieved a single diplomatic victory since World War II.  Go ahead, name one.  Meanwhile, Isaias' diplomacy stool has only one leg: threats.  Not for him, persuasion and compromise.  The threat of bringing up total chaos in Sudan brought the Sudanese around to accepting his terms.  Now he is threatening to bring up total chaos in Somalia—and there is Europe, on bended knees again, suing for an illusive peace.   

The G-15, the journalists, the university students and all the voices of freedom primarily relied on their principles and the decency and courage of the Eritrean people to stand with them. But at the margins, they also had every reason to rely on the Bandinis of the world. What has the feeble continent done to stand up for its declared values of freedom and liberty?  When was the last time Europe even spoke on behalf of its own citizens—Eritrean-Europeans, who are rotting in jail? As if to demonstrate to them that they have just struck a deal with an irrational man, Isaias Afwerki provided them more exhibits standing in their soil.

The Irrationality of Isaias Afwerki

Let’s say you, gentle reader, are in Sweden and a journalist is doing a man-on-the street interview and he picks on you at random, because you have that man-on-the-street look about you?  Let’s say that the journalist asks you a question regarding (a) absence of human rights in Eritrea and (b) the whereabouts of Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak.  In response to these questions, let’s say you responded by (a) expressing concerns for the shanty-town dwellers of South Africa and (b) questioning the wisdom of Swedish immigration laws which confer citizenship on immigrants, including Eritreans. 

How would we assess you? 

If you have a limo and bodyguards, we would call you eccentric.  Or, we would think that you are so wise and communicating at such a lofty level, it is our fault for not understanding you.  But if you are just a tera Yosief (ordinary Joe), we would either think you are deaf or we would be laughing at you and your strangeness.  We would say: “al-wed ma’biya’gema’esh.” Lesson: if a rich person is talking to himself and throwing rocks at his neighbors, he is eccentric.  If a poor person is whispering to himself and throwing pebbles at his neighbors, he is a lunatic.  

Is Isaias an eccentric or a loon? To answer that question, let’s assume for a minute that he doesn’t have the title of president, didn’t have body guards and didn’t have the authority of the state behind him.  Asked about human rights in Eritrea, he responded about slums in South Africa.  Asked about a jailed Eritrean, he commented about the immigration policy of Sweden. At what point do you cross the eccentric-loon Rubicon when it comes to this man?

Those who think he is a “blunt” and “candid” man probably howled at the dig on South Africa because, ha, ha, ha, what the Lion of Nakfa was saying, excuse me while I slap my knee, was that South Africa which claims to have elections and democracy, oh, he is killing me, still has a large percentage of its population living in slums.  Unlike us Eritreans, who live in pristine Asmara with its tree-lined boulevards and art deco buildings.

Allow me to interject with a rude interruption. Shanty towns are slums and, according to the UN, slum is defined as temporary residence that has no access to water or sanitation and, I hate to be the one breaking the bad news to our Faustian brothers, but these kinds of statistics—how many slums are in a country? What percentage of the citizens live in slums--are actually measured.  Not only are they measured, but are part of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG), and classified as Target 11:

And here’s the bad news: 

Beyond that, why would Isaias Afwerki criticize the policies of a country that has not shown any hostilities to him? If you were the leader of a country which has (a) percentage wise, one of the highest slum residing populations and (b) not improved its percentage in 10 years, would it make sense to attack, unprovoked, another country which is making improvements?

And if he has to attack—because he can’t help it—why would he not talk about things that his administration has relative advantages over compared to South Africa? Like its crime rate (38% of population victimized by crime) and people living with HIV-AIDS (18.8%)?

Now this “response” by Isaias Afwerki was to make the larger point that human rights, free press, democracy are, far from being universal concepts, unique to each country and its culture.  Again two questions: if he believes rights are not universal, why did he sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights which makes the exact opposite point that some rights—including our right to fire him—are universal? 

Secondly, let us assume for a second that rights are not universal and Eritrea just signed on to the UN’s Declaration as a matter of routine—a price of admission to the UN club. If each state, subject to its culture and history, gets to decide what rights to grant and withhold to its citizens and its government, it would stand to reason that the state would deny its citizens some rights granted by other nations but it would also grant rights not offered in other nations.

For example, in South Africa, the government has declared that access to clean water is a fundamental human right—expanding rights to citizens—and obligating the government to observe this right—limiting the rights of the government.  Now look at Eritrea: isn’t it strange that in every single case of customization of rights, it is always the government that gets more rights and the citizens that get fewer rights? With the support of “our government is on the right track” crowd, the government has even given itself the right to imprison citizens indefinitely without trial--a right that even the Derg and the Haile Selasse regime did not grant themselves. 

One such prisoner is the journalist Dawit Isaac whose whereabouts was asked prompting the non-sequiter about Swedish immigration policy.  I guess we should be grateful that Isaias did not say, as he did with Joshua in another interview: “I don’t know him.  If I don’t know who he is, how can I know where he is?” Joshua, it is reported, died after he had his fingernails pulled out by a sadist following the orders of Isaias Afwerki.  Now you know why Eritrea is not a signatory to the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment.

Not only is the regime of Isaias a brutish thuggery, it is also pathetically petty.  Recall that the dictator and his regime had  released Dawit Isaac from jail, giving his family including his very young children (benefiting from Sweden’s immigration policy) two full days of false hope, and when the human rights advocates celebrated and appeared to take some credit for his release, turned around to jail him. There, that should teach them a lesson.   And apparently, it has taught the small men of Europe the lesson.

The Faustian Bargain

It is not that Isaias’ diehard fans do not know this.  It is that they have negotiated themselves a Faustian bargain: arrest whomever you wish, kill whomever, insult whomever, act as strangely as you’d like, banish, exile Eritreans if you deem it in the interest of the country as long as you are defending the nation’s sovereignty.  We will be doubly impressed if you are improving Eritreans quality of life. 

And Isaias is happy to feed them pabulum at least twice a year: on New Year’s Day and Independence Day. This year, he did not give his customary New Year address because he was in a foul mood following the collapse of the UIC in Zoba 7 (Somalia.)  But on May 24^th, he should be in good enough mood to chastise the world about elections stolen in Ethiopia (2005) and countries occupied (Iraq, 2003 and Zoba 7 in 2006).  Along with the chastisements, there will be self-congratulations on roads asphalted, microdams constructed, and peace treaties signed in Zoba 8 (Sudan.) 

He might even brag about the 2% GDP growth. In his visit to the United Arab Emirates, he had briefed the Dubai businessmen about investment opportunities in Eritrea and told them that Eritrea was registering a GDP growth of 2%.  2% GDP growth is the kind of growth you apologize for—it is the sort you preface by saying “unfortunately, due to our no-peace no-war…”  But the folks at Shabait.com were not aware of that.  2% is a good enough tax rate so it must be a good enough rate for GDP growth— you tend to get confused about the economy when you dismiss a man with a PhD in economics from an American university for not knowing enough about economics.  In any event, some other economist—someone who didn’t attend an American University—must have told them to remove it so it is gone now.

2% GDP growth last year? 2%!  That is the payoff?  That is the Faustian bargain? Wait, it is even worse: Eritrea’s average growth rate for the period of 1990-2004 is 0.6%.  0.6%!  Could you not take any Eritrean at random and get those results? The entire sub-Saharan Africa, the basket case of the world, is recording 6%+ growth and Eritrea is averaging 0.6%?  So where is the bargain?  What are the supporters of tyranny getting in exchange for turning a blind eye to the outrage against their own compatriots?  And for how long?   

At $-476.22 per $1,000 GDP, Eritrea is ranked dead last (154 out of 154 nations) in current account balance per GDP.  At $0.02 per $1 GDP, Eritrea is also ranked dead last in exports per GDP which is quite an eye-opener for a nation whose macroeconomic policy envisioned an export driven economy as recently as 1997.  It tops the charts for all the wrong reasons: undernourishment, immigration/capita, armed forces personnel/capita, conventional arms imports/GDP and so on.       

Now anytime I mention Eritrea’s dismal economy, our Faustian disciples accuse me of being unfair and selecting the wrong report card.  Do they want me to pick the State Departments report on human rights? No.  Should I pick CPJ’s annual report on press freedom? No.  How about Transparency International? How about Freedom House? No, no.  How about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch? No.  Well, yes and no: no when it comes to Eritrea, definitely yes when they are reporting about Ethiopia.

It is in our power to change all of this.  But we have to make two fundamental changes in the way we think.  First, we must judge the behavior of Isaias Afwerki by the same measure we would judge any person.  Then we will see him for the irrational and reckless man that he is.  We will no longer say he is eccentric; we will say he is irrational--and even a poor, young and small country like ours deserves a rational leader.  Secondly, we must judge the behavior of the opposition leaders not by their contribution in the 1960s and 1970s, but by their deeds over the last five years.  This will lead us to conclude the obvious: we do not have opposition leaders worthy of leading us. 

The combination of these two facts will panic us and bring out a primordial scream.  But this is a necessary phase, an alternative to the lullaby songs that have kept us asleep and adrift for so long.  As well as it should: because we would be reclaiming what it means to be independent: to think and act for ourselves.  To be no longer dependent on people with a persistent record of failure. Then, awake and alert, we will have no choice but to mobilize and organize and from our organic movement, a movement that will be watered by nothing but the fountain of bitter truth, to groom leaders—rational, young, forward looking and deeply in love with Eritrea and Eritreans. This Independence Day, and henceforth, let us be independent. 

Happy Independence Day

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