When someone finally sets to chronicling this period of Eritrea’s history accurately, those who read will wonder why we were dead set in masochistically doubling every single one of our troubles the minute we discovered them. It seems that post independence history of Eritrea is littered with examples of where whoever was tasked with halving our predicament has at least doubled it and in the case of PIA he seems to have multiplied it umpteenth times and is still looking elsewhere for the blame… just pick any episode…and do not even investigate it… just cast a cursory gaze over it, in fact get a 10 year old to do the gazing and you will soon watch them shaking their little heads wondering …’but why?’…from the treatment of disabled veterans to the treatment of politicians, religious communities, the private sector, the media, civil society, political opposition any thing that walked talked or breathed, wherever there was a whiff of challenge that needed attention PIA comes wielding his mighty sledgehammer smashing things into minion little pieces and then wondering why the noise of discontent is amplified…

This smashing of issues into numerous pieces in an attempt to cut them to size applies to foreign relations too… and yes it started on day one there too; remember IA’s first speech at the then OAU…? well many years on he still wonders why they simply don’t want to stand by him, and from a potential of having many allies and a handful of problems he has now successfully gained a single ally (of questionable sanity) and fifty odd opponents who are dead set to cut him to size and unlike him they would use internationally sanctioned tools that make them look like states men and women and him the baboon! Last Friday he issued a statement (another sledge hammer) forbidding them against mentioning him in his absence and trying to dictate the agenda of a meeting that he had no intentions of attending, with people that are well aware of how little he thinks of them and having done nothing to gain their confidence or respect even since they made it clear what they think of him recently. They responded by calling for a swift implementation of the sanctions against him!

Anyone with any human skills would know that now would have been ideal for IA to start to take a break from visiting micro dams and begin to build bridges that matter… now would be the time to try to convince his fellow African leaders of his vision regarding peace building in the Horn of Africa and highlight the role he says he has played in Sudan, Somalia etc…. but no PIA’s tried and tested method of smashing things into pieces and doubling (trebling…. Zilliopling…)  his predicament isn’t a habit that will be replaced by any coherent strategy anytime soon… he is dead set in his way….This whole saga started when he kindly decided to deal with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in a similar manner back when he told us about the sun never rising without his say so… he decided to cut PMMZ down to size at the cost of a  hundred thousand young soul, who were used to oil his sledge hammer… PMMZ doubled in size beyond recognition (atleast PIA’s recognition) and now IA thinks everything that dances in his sightline is PMMZ’s shadow and he is going to use Eritrea as his sledgehammer to beat about MZ and the cause of MZ (i.e. CIA according to PIA…) and the squelch of the nation in the voice of the young people who flee the country facing every odd that could possibly be stacked against any human being… bullets, barbed wires, sand storms, high winds, heartless prison guards and senseless policies… he considers part of the parcel… (his copy of the file with their plight annotated is probably titled; ‘gone picnicking!’

There is a group of people who are not going  to be used as sledgehammers though… Diaspora Eritreans who support the regime… they have somehow managed to carve out a bespoke super Eritreaness that seems to always enable them to wriggle themselves out of being used as the sledge that actually does the beating…(and the squelching)… they are not even the handle of the sledgehammer… they define and redefine themselves endlessly to find a role that somehow locates them as far away from the sledge hammering,  and stay far enough away to damage assess the impact before going anywhere near the crime scene ready to celebrate the act…

This is precisely how the latest catastrophe to befall PIA- the SANCTION-  is going to be played… IA and his assorted mouthpieces have told us that they are not going to try and influence the processes by diplomatically manoeuvring the situation and trying to convince the world including the Somalis and the rest of humanity in the Horn of Africa that they too want peace… no they are going to bash about everyone else and throw every last ditch attempt to help rescue the situation… and so they gathered the only constituency in the whole wide world they have left… (all 500 of them here in London alone!) and ordered them to think NAKFA!... and they did!…in typical Diaspora style they redefined their bespoke nationality and are gearing up to a virtual NAKFA via Geneva as far away from Nakfa the moor and mountain as possible… they have ordered their weather proofs… they have collected provisions and made arrangements for creature comforts for their long march to NAKFA in their luxury coaches… all because they are true Eritreans… albeit bespoke Eritreans… as usual PIA is going to use other Eritreans to bash about the latest challenge multiplying the problem for us all and they; the bespoke Eritreans will dance away in their NAKFA as far away from the impact point as possible… I must give it to them for once again wriggling out of taking responsibility for the actions of the system they support… but I also know that this time round they will come face to face with the revulsion of the rest of humanity… including the Eritrean young people fleeing their country tired of being used as a sledgehammer in IA’s hands… there is little appetite for their brand of opportunism in our world today!

However sadly for us the doubling of problems that could easily be halved, syndrome seems to be a semi universal infliction of Eritreans… in the morn of the eve that heralded the sanction against Eritrea for its role in the destabilisation of the horn of plenty misery, Eritrean opposition organisations told us they were going to mount military attacks and sure enough they did… these are organisations that have been fighting for peace, democracy and justice in Eritrea and the very entity that has been a problem to them is about to be cut in half and the mechanism used for that process is located right underneath their very noses in Addis –the AU… do they put on their sharpest suits and sharpen their pencils and bombard AU officials with their fresh analysis and their briefings and their insight? Do they try and use the media convergence in Addis to highlight their achievements and their plans and make themselves part of the solution… no that would be too conventional…too un Eritrean! They take off to the mountains (their version of NAKFA)… shoot at other Eritreans and comeback to tell the world that given a few guns and even fewer young people they too could play a role in setting the Horn alight! They even kindly listed every little detail of their booty… down to the last water canister they ‘captured’… the celebrations of that fete were done here in the Diaspora by another set of citizens whose war is fought from a safe distance over the world wide web; the digital citizens of cyber Eritrea…like their bespoke counterparts, my digital colleagues influence and celebrate Eritrean politics in the opposition, from a safe distance via their keyboards… and for their dedicated following they get invited to consult EDA over National reconciliation and other such important matters…no one else in today’s Eritrea would celebrate war! Big or small… least of all the young people who are fed up of being used at the sharp end of IA’s sledgehammer… and they’d be damned if they were to be re-used by another lot of sledgehammer wielding old men!  

Now is an opportune time for Eritreans to make an impact in the policy and diplomatic spheres… the world is desperate for peace and stability in the horn of Africa and for people my age and younger this has never been a reality but a distant figment… we deserve to realise a dream to become stakeholders of stability… we do not need another set of politicians handing us rusty Kalashnikovs the minuet we are big enough to be carrying one… there must be an alternative and the world is ripe for that and hence we should demand that our politicians rise up to the challenge of peace and stability…

It is with this in mind that I thank my colleagues at the various civic organisations for taking the initiative to lead the way of peace and cooperation, my special thanks to all those who took part in the anti deportation from Libya initiative…that initiative probably did more damage to PFDJ’s nasty plans, than anything the new year skirmishes ever did. With the same token my appreciations to the Eritrean Law Society (ELS) for taking the initiative to offer their coordinated professional input… I guess the next time we write letters to UNHCR or draft our resolutions etc we will know what to say…and how to say it professionally!

Finally to all those who wrote to me annoyed at the fact that I dared to criticise EDA last time , here is what I have to say, at the risk of repeating the mistake  I made the time I told my children to ‘grow up and realise that the tooth fairy and Santa do not really exist!’ (they were about five it was way too soon!): if the big boys of EDA are not sensible enough to grow up to shouldering the responsibility placed on them by the Eritrean public (not just us digital citizens) they risk the fragmentation of their fragile umbrella, and this time they will not just double their problems but treble them (at the very least)! If current trends persist the tattered umbrella would divide into three parts and not along the lines of the predicted… ideological configurations, but along the lines of who wants to do what to the umbrella…

There is a group of people who want to go back to the drawing board and design an umbrella (or a batch of them) that fits ideologically based groupings… Then there is a group of people who do not see the current set up as a problem but are really fed up of the ineptness of the people in Addis who do not see the need to do anything but try engage a cohort of digital citizens of their choosing whilst if possible choreographing a series of inconsequential fire exchanges… and of course the latter form the third group who want things kept exactly the same… and their strategy seems to be to keep everyone else as polarised as possible recreating the very context that brought them to power in the first place! Remember EDA: block 1 – block 2…and the compromise a year later? This many years on, surely the slapdash compromise should be revisited.