There comes a time when you come across a word that means nothing and everything at the same.

Dayard is one of them.  Even Microsoft Word underlines it with red and sounds like a collectable item.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines it as: a person armed with a self-confidence of ignorance.

Isn’t that a beauty?

I had to say it loud again and again to swallow the gravity of the underlying meaning until I heard myself saying ‘diehard.’

I am not making this up… the word ‘dayard’ exists.

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I had the rare opportunity to come across an Eritrean website baptized as eritrea.co.uk.  I had no idea it existed. 

After surfing 45 minutes of my precious life, I felt born again and saw, for the first time, that being part of Eritrea’s PFDJ (People’s Front for Democracy and Justice) doctrine is not really different from belonging to some sort of a fundamentalist group under the name of Eritrea.  All you have to do is replace the word ‘God’ for ‘Eritrea’.

Poor Eritrea!  And all in the name of martyrs and territorial integrity!

The two elements (perhaps three) that seem to stand out in their tireless endeavour to serve a government (and not to protect the rights or the interest of the people) are: sovereignty (downgraded to a border conflict) and the sacrifice Eritreans paid to secure that over the last… well, 45 years. 

Those who are relatively well off are grooming themselves in the dense space that occupies the buried and the top soil while others are slowly and literally dying while breathing and walking.

The diehards have built a community around these two simplistic justifications to promote a government that is killing, exiling, imprisoning, maltreating Eritreans with cruelties yet to be heard at home and abroad while creating or raising a generation incapable of standing for anything worth living. 

How can a people who literally wasted their lives and fought against one of the most tyrannical regimes in Africa in the name of freedom and justice fall on its knees for a much worse regime in its own courtyard?

It is much easier to explain it away within the confines and language of domestic violence than giving it the profile of national dimensions. 

“…Until the border conflict is resolved and…” they say, as if to offer a promotion to a permanent state of instability in the minds of their listeners or followers.

The key phrase is actually simpler than that.  We say, ‘inflicting fear is the most effective way to maintain stability’.  It’s true but how far can it go and what will it breed?

The second aspect is the chasing of any issue that goes against that grain and incessantly accuse the Ethiopian Government over its inability to feed its people (as if Eritrea can) and any international institution and individual that had the courage or means to question and shake the ground upon which the Government of Eritrea stands.

They, the new brand of nationalists, have created a community of believers that have lost the capacity to question their own premise.

The weird kind of mission or glue that binds them together is sending books to Eritrea and writing letters to British MPs on the ever dormant Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict, the Algiers Agreement of 2000 and EEBC ruling.  BC is for Border Commission.  Not that it is a bad idea, it is just irritating while so much else is going on inside Eritrea… which, incidentally, has nothing to do with that border conflict anymore.

The last but not least… this is much more subtle than you can imagine.  Most of those who are defending the Government of Eritrea live in the Western world and claim to help (they could be telling the truth) and provide support for newly arrived Eritrean asylum seekers or refugees. 

Where do they think these new arrivals are coming from and why?

It’s not a very complicated question, you know?

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that most of them have somehow managed to ‘import’ their own brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter or relative under the guise of family reunion.  The logic is simple: it is my right and the host State will provide.

Think again!

No guilt, no conscience, no reflection and no questions asked.  According to them, it’s all legal and within their rights and paid for… and the State will take care… benefit for all.  I would call that a misplaced priority of national interest or a kind of a twisted national correctness of a diehard monologue all the way through and not yet upgraded to a political or social dialogue.

A few years back, a friend told me what an elderly and respectable looking Eritrean woman living in London said after being told about Eritrean refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Why do they have to leave their country in the first place?  Who will be there to defend the country… they deserve it!”

In hindsight, it makes you think deeper and question the slow and deadly days of the 30-year Eritrean liberation struggle.  It’s a kind of a double-edged sword and you can’t win them all… and all for want of a nail!

Is it not?

PS.  With thanks to Ammon Shea