When I listen to (or read) people who consider optimism akin to delusion, I really get depressed. But that would always be for a short span of time- only for the duration of the discussion, or through the time it takes to read a few pages. Then, immediately, I immerse myself in my God-given optimism. It is what I inherited from my ancestors; it is my legacy, my refuge once I am done with the born-downers.  I highly recommend it, and like most things, it is a learned behavior, and you, too, can be an optimist, if you are not one already.

This requires preparation. 

A new father, avoiding the delivery room where his expecting wife shrieks with gasps of pain, is focusing his thoughts only on the gender of the new born. He is high on the rush of adrenaline that comes before a surprise.  But he need not have been surprised: thanks to sonar detection technology, which the couple refused, he could have known in advance.

Many Eritreans are watching from across the fence. Just like the father. Interested and, yet, not curious enough or caring enough, infatuated with surprises, refusing to follow things closely. They are waiting for others to shape the outcome of their cause. That would be pathetic if it was not pitiful.

Is the news they are waiting for ‘Eritrea is no more; it went down the abyss together with its last ruler’? Or, ‘Eritrea was erased from the maps’? Or, ‘the ruler, after emptying the country of its inhabitants, now lives there alone with a small company of die-hards’?

No. A million times. Fear for that kind of news will never shape our future. Like a Phoenix, whether pretenders and cowards like it or not, we will rise.

Gangster Diplomacy

Avoid being surprised. Specially those of you who, in the absence of the rule of law, are supposed to be the muscle of the people. Those who are supposed to defend the people before territories. Those who don uniforms. Those whose backs are covered with a khaki cloth.

You will not be surprised when you watch Eritrean diplomacy (apologies, PFDJ diplomacy) at work. You will not be depressed, because their stupidity is familiarly stupid. And the ticking clock is calling you. Those who can, do. Those who can cut the damages short. Those who are able to.

The Eritrean ruler’s ambassador to the UN, whose government of destitution is proud of its record of rationing everything, a government that would ration the air if only it could, bluntly stated that refusing fuel supply to the UN forces was just a technical issue. A technical issue is something that involves, for instance, a misguided guard, one who refuses to let a vehicle pass until he gets a clear order from his superiors. One who doesn’t have the faculty of judgment, or is discouraged from using it if he had one. An issue that the UN secretary general himself cannot solve is not a technical issue. The UN Secretary General’s Special Report of March 3, 2008 is a litany of dates that he tried to get cooperation from the Eritrean rulers (I count about 12 note verbales, letters and meetings with the Commissioner and PFDJ’s Permanent Representative to the UN.) It is a stupid, irresponsible policy that only the reckless PFDJ is able to draft.

Case two: there are over 2000 Eritrean refugees in Israel. The floodgates to that country have opened, and Israel accepted the human floods fleeing an oppressive regime, a tyrant for a ruler on top of it.

Haraetz, the Israeli newspaper, has been carrying stories that certainly shocked the PFDJ and its support base, those who considered Israel within their sphere of influence. For years, they have been waving the Israel card at the Arabs of the region--until they discovered the Islamist card, which they are now waving, trying to blackmail the West. The PFDJ has entangled itself, and by extension Eritrea, in the ruthless politics of the Middle East, where all the feuding parties are either Military Elephants or Financial Tigers. If the fence sitters are expecting any bad news, they should watch how this issue will play out.

The PFDJ ambassador to Israel wants his host government to stop giving visas to Eritreans. He stated, "The fact that you issue six-month visas encourages people to come here." He wants Israel to scrap that policy so that the jail fence of his boss could stay intact. This is exactly what his boss, Isaias, said when he met Luis Michel in Europe: the problem is not that Eritreans are fleeing my prison, the problem is that you Europeans make it easy to ask for asylum.

The PFDJ tried to scare the Israeli government hinting that the refugees might be used “for carrying out terror attacks.” The Ambassador of the rogue government has a reinforcing proof for his irresponsible comments, “they are army deserters," and he is angry “about Eritrea's characterization by Israeli officials as a dictatorship.”

But if the fence sitters are expecting bad news, here is a clue: “A few weeks ago, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit cited Eritrea's "oppressive regime." The Israeli embassy in Asmara recently sent a report to Jerusalem indicating that Eritreans who were returned to their homeland "will be placed in rows and shot or thrown into torture chambers" if they are deported to Eritrea.

They couldn’t even keep Israel as a friend after using it as a scarecrow to threaten the region for years. But the Qatari foreign minister was in Asmara recently: what did he discuss? If it was about a micro-dam, you would have seen the details of the meeting in the PFDJ media. But it wasn't, so now you have to wait for more news. Clue: Qatar mediated between Beshir and Isaias.

Critical Thinking

Those who believe that God created the universe and all that occupy it understand the meaning of predetermined fate and destiny. They also understand that God cannot change what ails man until man himself changes what is within him.

Those who believe their last name is Ape certainly understand the meaning of evolution - that anything evolves: just like they evolved from apes that knows only to scratch its head, to “intellectuals” who practice what they believe is critical thinking, which most of the time turns out to be just critical, without the thinking.

There is as wide a difference between two utterances of equal content and objectives but of a dissimilar tone. Important issues require a careful choice of delivery. A simple greeting can have a different reaction from the one being greeted depending on how it is delivered.

If an objective criticism, analysis or even critical thinking aims at reforming a society, the society will not listen unless it senses a genuine respect in what it is being told to do. If something is targeted at a specific audience, the same rule applies. No one would be willing to listen to something that he feels destroys everything he stood for, even if what is said is true. Decency requires that we find a different method of delivery.

People are made of emotions, loving a country is all about emotions and cannot be explained- neither in laboratory terms nor in mathematical formulas.

For instance, I read people criticizing the founders of the struggle because they were not committed to democracy. They were not. Who said the struggle was for democracy? It was not. Who said the struggle was for anything else but justice? It was not, at least when it started. But it is true, the ideals of the struggle have morphed into something sinister, as we are witnessing now, and we are tempted to question our past, our experiences. It makes us wonder how a pristine goal in the quest of justice can be adulterated to breed injustice and tyranny.

But to my understanding, throughout my life, the struggle was (and is) about justice, fairness and equality--the basic natural requirement of human beings after food and shelter. Those who aspire for a democratic rule have to fight their own battles, now – and many are doing just that. Unlike the general goals of today, the peasants who fought in the sixties were fighting for self-defense. For their security. To be left alone to tend to their affairs, to parent in a way they saw fit; to educate their children in a place of their choice and not to be told how they should raise their children, what they should teach them and what language they should speak. They wanted to manage their life, their land and their communities freely. It was about equality. It was about asserting equal status to all citizens. It was not about democracy, per se. That struggle means a lot to those who paid for it. I think it is wrong to belittle that.

A few also allege the Eritrean revolution did not have a clear program and a clear goal. That is also a residual effect of decades of propaganda; all they have to do is embark on an honest research. The founders were not illiterate fools; they were lawyers, writers, politicians, teachers and university students- and patriots to the bone. And if anyone thinks they didn’t know what they were doing, he must be missing a lot of information. But true, the rulers of today have erased everything and have been rewriting it in a way that suits them; something that reflects the evolution of a demigod, the one ruling Eritrea.

Logical or Emotional

Those who still feel attached to Eritrea, despite their being citizens of other countries, understand what I mean. It is not logical, the attachment to Eritrea. How can we explain our love for a country that has given us nothing? Why do we worry about a country that has been ruled by one brute after another, throughout our lives? What did we gain from Eritrea apart from sufferings? Why can’t we just close our eyes, erase our memories and fully immerse ourselves in our adopted countries - just as some, who try, even refusing to speak in their mother tongues and shun anything Eritrean? Some can; those who are attached to Eritrea strongly cannot. We have suffering families and friends. We know people who died for the cause that is still not realized. Fighting tyranny and injustice was never wrong. We do not do it because we are certain we will win. We do not stop doing it because we are sure we will lose. We do it because it is right.

Our attachment to Eritrea can only be explained in terms of compassion, patriotism, loyalty and care- and these are emotions that cannot be explained logically.

Try this: the wife of the husband in the hospital alley just delivered a baby, an ugly baby. And you are visiting her, let’s say she is your relative. Go inside, carrying a bouquet of flowers (or carrying nothing), and say… what do you say? Could you say, ‘what an ugly baby’? Would you be lying if you admired the baby and said that its nose looks like your mother’s? Would any of you say ‘my mother’ or ‘my father’ is the ugliest person around? Why not. The ugly people we see around certainly have children. Has anyone of you ever said, “What an ugly baby”? And if you said, “what a beautiful baby”, would that be considered a lie?

Many choose not to say what needs to be said because they are restrained by courtesy, decency and the absence of proper venues. Some issues can only be fairly debated in a free scholarly setting, a legitimate representative parliament and an indigenous free press. Then, there is the disturbing claustrophobic view that Tigrai and Eritrea are the same- maybe for some but for others, that relation is a history of oppression, cruelty and humiliation. Those who want to dwell on similarities must own the atrocities committed for centuries, on the name of that claimed commonality, and not bombard us with claims of select parts of that common language and common heritage. Eritrea is a sum of many parts- sometimes very different to each other. We do not have a monolithic culture.

Even the well meaning could demolish ideals, maybe unintentionally. They could shatter dreams, maybe unintentionally. And to avoid falling in that trap, we need to look back and check our moral anchor. An important value is required. Humility.

Eritrea is evolving. Years from now, the experience of the nation under the local dictator will be invaluable. We have to tread the path if we are to forge a just society- maybe the price we paid doesn’t cover the post-territorial independence era and we are paying our dues. What is the price of freedom and justice anyway? What is too much, or too little? It is just an evolution, a never-ending process and it is not helpful for our morale to question our principles at every junction we arrive.

Eritrea will stay because it is based on an idea. The idea is justice. Its deep foundations are not in the boundaries the Italians defined, or the Ethiopian tried to redefine. It is based on the struggle that Ibrahim Sultan led, and it was impeccable. It was a struggle to free Eritreans from the yoke of feudal lords, to push them out of the age of serfdom to a world free of feudal oppression. Those foundations were laid with the emancipation of a big portion of our society, the elimination of the Shmagelle class, now being reinstated by the PFDJ. It was laid with the quest for freedom from warlords who raided and enslaved the people for centuries. It was laid with the quest for harmony among tribes and sects. The last struggle is phase two, or three, depending on who is doing the counting. In short, the idea of Eritrea is built around the rejection of injustice, servitude and humiliation. It is in quest of justice, freedom and dignity. Yes, dignity is an emotional thing but not many are giving it up.

The current Eritrean experience, in relation to the ruler and his regime, is a cancerous growth in the Eritrean body. Just like a victim cannot blame his parents for the cancer, the current disease, in the form of rulers, cannot be blamed on the suffering Eritreans.

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