“When the Protector Becomes Predator” by Dr. Bereket H Selassie (Awate, Jun 23, 2009) in which he defines “The Critical Challenge Facing Eritreans Today” was an article that I read more than three times (with a coffee break and an anger management session in between each). Don’t get me wrong! Dr. Bereket does deserve the pride of every Eritrean for his personal achievements and their appreciation for staying involved and being there for them through the long years of the ups and downs of our sad history. What I write below, therefore, should not be taken as disrespect for a national icon so high and an elder so dignified as to walk the miles of one public protest after another with his fellow countrymen and women for freedom. Please, read with Ali Burhan’s definition of optimism (written by someone as detached from the dirt of our politics as an Angel watching the whole picture from high up) in the back of your mind.
I first read the lines of Dr. Berekhet’s article; then between the lines; and then within each line to sniff any signs of good hope and declare Eureka … Eureka … at the idea of one Tigrigna intellectual who broke away from the pack of silent conspiracy. Here is what I read. What the Doctor Said Dr. Berekhet calls for an urgent national salvation (midHan hager) in a manner similar to Mengistu’s (Ex-Ethiopian dictator) slogan of hulum neger wede Tor ginbar (everything to the battlefront!) or Shaebia’s kulu diHri hager (everything after the nation!). Text inside quotes (excluding brackets) are Dr. Berekhet’s words rearranged (by me) to convey my understanding of what he said. He discusses “… the role of the Diaspora opposition … against the outrage being committed … (by) a cruel and irresponsible cabal (that) has been practicing a politics of domination to the exclusion of all other worthy citizens”. He calls for an “effective united opposition … (to rally around the) implementation of a ratified constitution … (to overcome the) huge constraints under which the opposition political parties operate … (against a regime that employs) naked force utterly devoid of legitimacy”.
He singles out two unfortunate realities for the root causes of the problems we face today: (1) we are “stuck with a national army controlled by a cabal of corrupt officers”; (2) we are “stuck with its (Eritrea’s) preeminent political legacy of disparate groups united in one nation sate”. The underlying appeal (as I understood) is: the first, we have to fight; the second we have to live with. The article (speech) concludes by a call for responsible action for change reminding that “the reason why Isaias is not willing to change the policy of forced military service is that he will face thousands of unemployed youth in Asmara demanding change. Let us remember that these are young people who have been trained to use arms”; and realistic expectation of the probable consequences by asking “Can you imagine these unlucky ones who remain in the wilderness putting up a last ditch fight in case the country is invaded?” and answering “The only conclusion we can reach in such a scenario is that there will be no free country to speak about – no more independent Eritrea.
Imagine! “The Jigsaw.” Here are the footnotes that, I believe, Dr. Berekhet forgot to include in his speech. There was no mention (in the speech) of the core rallying slogans (of haimanotawin awrajawin stuff) of the PFDJ stooges who campaigned against the DC demonstrations and symposium itself (I am assuming it was included in “the outrage being committed”). The concept of “Diaspora opposition” is no invention of Dr. Berekhet and it is a realistic representation of the opposition landscape signifying that we are not alone and that a parallel and presumably larger and more effective under-world exists within the ranks of the armed forces. This is a concept that is rapidly gaining momentum among those groups of the Eritrean Diaspora (EDP in particular) who view the recent vertical polarization in the Eritrean opposition as a risk to their definition of “national unity” (the one we have today; the one that licenses the PFDJ to move thousands to other people’s land) and pray (like all other Eritreans) that something better comes from within the nation.
The use of “Diaspora opposition” in a speech addressing the critical challenges of the whole nation was unwarranted, a bit arrogant and a systematic way of disowning the recent developments that so many Lowlanders are celebrating. The underlying subliminal message of the phrase is for Eritreans to unite the way the opposition inside the country is “united” (to bring about measured change that preserves their “national unity”). “Cruel and irresponsible cabal” is another piece of the same jigsaw also used in another part of the speech as “national army controlled by a cabal of corrupt officers”. “A cabal is a number of people united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests” (Wikipedia). This expression promotes the bad-boy picture that every PFDJ official has been trying to paint for themselves and their boss ever since independence.
As the bad-boy became worse by the day, the idea of a one-man-show and a dictatorship like all others worked itself into a complete camouflaging consensus among highlanders (becoming the code word for the hidden agenda of their nationalists) and gained a reluctant acceptance among the bulk of lowlander apologists who dared not to offend “the common sense”. Here is what Dr. Berekhet is trying to say: Isaias and his men represent nobody but themselves; they are a bunch of selfish corrupt pigs; and feel free to take them down; but before you think about changing what the regime as a whole stands for (rules of the game), let us have some constitutional chit-chat.
This same idea of a bad boy running around with an indiscriminate stick on everybody’s back has long been promoted by the regime itself as an effective public relations cover for a systematic pattern of ethnic cleansing. In 1994 when the news of hundreds of lowlanders disappearing (from mosques, schools and marketplaces) with no trace at all started to leak; the Jehovah’s Witness became the first sacrificial lamb to serve as a Mexican hat to neutralize the heat of resentment and to deny lowlanders the argument to make a case against an organized band of Neo-Nazis. The sad news of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ barbaric treatment by the regime was immediately “leaked” into the media with pictures of the actual containers where many innocent Jehovah’s were fried to death; and the bad-boys went on a media rampage of unwarranted self-condemnation for torturing Christians (the same bad-boys who denied any knowledge of Muslims disappearing).
The Jehovah, the Menfes (Pentecostal), and other innocent Christian and highland groups and individuals were sacrificed to enable Dr. Bereket and others to comfortably evade calling the regime a gang of Tigrigna Neo-Nazis (hopefully with no mandate) and to tell us today even long after the regime itself abandoned the need for cover and started playing in the open, that Isaias is nothing more than a lost boy with neutral intentions and the company of “corrupt officers … practicing a politics of domination to the exclusion of all other worthy citizens”. Every clear minded Eritrean knows that Shaebia occupies the end of the line of corrupt governments in Africa and there hasn’t been proof to the contrary. Why would “corrupt officers” and “a politics of domination” be sufficient reason for Eritreans to overthrow their government when it has never been enough to blow a feather in Nigeria?
No Doctor! We expect a little more intellectual honesty and personal integrity from an elder who should pick up from where Weldeab Weldemariam left. Pick up your pen right now and draw a big Red Cross on the speech posted on awate and write the following for your next speech: Given the consistent systematic torture and killing and disappearance that Muslims and Lowlanders have been targeted to by the regime long before the war-related (probably justifiable) outrage was unleashed on everybody; in honor of the hundreds of Lowlanders who were lost and never found and the numerous who were flown down apartment buildings and those who “committed suicide” screaming for their right to equal citizenship; and taking note of the 1300 occupying Teraro (land grabbers) that Shabait.com reported finally made it to the promised land; I, Dr. Berekhet H Selassie, hereby declare myself a NEW BORN ERITREAN along with the growing number of Eritreans (including Ali Salim) who promise to share the country as equal citizens in truth (not mischief) and honesty. I declare the regime a gang of Tigrigna Neo-Nazi expansionists, whose ideology I neither condone nor believe serves any interest to the Tigrignas themselves. I promise to use my genius in designing a straightforward simple demand & supply market mechanism to resolve the Highlanders’ scarcity of land in a way that is cheaper to implement, mutually consensual and beneficial to all Eritreans. I call upon all good-hearted Tigrigna intellectuals like myself to accept the bitter truth that Might is not always Right. Thank you!
I know you (the reader) might have jumped on your seat at the idea of someone calling the horrors that our young men and women are living today “probably justifiable”. But remember these are just proposed footnotes for Dr. Berekhet’s speech and are therefore inspired by the same twisted logic that “the reason why Isaias is not willing to change the policy of forced military service is that he will face thousands of unemployed youths in Asmara demanding change. Let us remember that these are young people who have been trained to use arms”. Would you like to see Asmara turned into Mogadishu by thousands of jobless trained ex-combatants desperate to survive and feed their families? Or let me ask you Dr. Berekhet’s own question: “Can you imagine these unlucky ones who remain in the wilderness (after their comrades made it to the Sudan or Ethiopia) putting up a last-ditch fight in case the country is invaded?” I bet you will arrive at “the only conclusion” that Dr. Berekhet reached: “that there will be no free country … no more independent Eritrea”. If you agree with this reasoning and its conclusion, then you should agree with the conclusion that any measures taken to keep the “unlucky ones” as many as possible as long as the non-verifiable shadow of invasion is imminently looming overhead to make sure an “independent Eritrea” lives forever is justifiable. If that is in fact true, then there is no reason why you along with PFDJ should not be on Dr. Berekhet’s midHan hager campaign (and good luck from Haw’khum Berakhi!).
The feeling that we are “stuck with … the political legacy of disparate groups united in one nation sate” is the spirit that underlies the “ratified constitution” that the EDP and the ideologues are promoting. Why would an elder as wise as the father of an Eritrean Constitution portray such a depressing picture of our diversity? It would be unfair to twist his speech more than I did and let us assume he meant to say: we are blessed with the legacy of unity in diversity. What did unity in unity bring Somalia other than a mess? It was, however, Dr. Berekhet’s constitution that set the moral and legal framework for today’s land grabbing expansionists by declaring “all land … belongs to the State” with no working strings attached.
Here is some homework from a fellow NEW BORN ERITREAN for you Dr. Berekhet: write a new constitution that views our diversity as an asset that should be freed and not a liability that should be constrained; one that gives our nationalities the same right to self-determination that justified our struggle against a less-than-perfect union with Amhara nationalists the exact way that Lowlanders are refusing to bow to today’s Tigrigna nationalists.
I challenge you (the reader) to get me an article, a poem, a wedding invitation, a physics exam, a driving license, a doctor’s prescription, or a message in an answering machine that an opposition Tigrigna brother or sister handled without using the phrase “National Unity” somehow. The message enclosed is: if you want to use Arabic, exercise Islam (the way it is exercised in Afghanistan), claim ownership of your own land and identity, and wash up five times at a time that we are showering once a week (water conservation not hygiene concerns), we are going back to the PFDJ (because they know what it stands for); and you know what might happen if we do that. This is the fact that Dr. Berekhet and other wise highlanders are refusing to admit: there has never been the lack of sufficient national unity to keep a nation together in Eritrea; and there has never been a single incident of pure hate crime in Eritrea; not even in a criminal setting among street thugs (with the exception of the Andinet and PFDJ Shiftas). Those few incidents that might be read in history books or narrated by a grandma revolved around the competition for resources and followed one specific pattern: Tigrigna nationalists organizing mobsters to bully other ethnic groups out of their property and others counter-organized in a similar pattern in self-defense or retaliation.
The unfortunate situation of the highlands, with its overcrowded Rocky Mountains, has never been the envy of Lowlanders, who are blessed with abundant access to graceful farmlands, while it has always been a fixation of highland politicians and an indispensable component of the independence dream. How many Highlanders would have joined the independence struggle if they were told it was just a long ride on a ring road that would bring them back to square one? And how many Lowlanders would have answered Awate’s call if they were told they would be asked to vacate their farmlands for a chance to claim a piece of land on top of a rocky cliff? This is the reason why Dr. Bereket’s constitution designed to hand over land ownership to “the state of Neo-Nazi fanatics” is a deliberate mischievous scheme of shameless blunder and a one-way license for the flow of highland expansionists and land grabbers.
The roadmap
Eritrean Highlanders are more united in substance today (under the PFDJ or its ghosts) than they were in the 1950s when the whole Eritrean existence was at stake. It is unimaginable that the people who united under a unanimous consensus to sell their own dignity and national identity to cheap Amharan and Tigrayan masters in the 1950s should be expected to stand up today for the dignity and national pride of others. Do not be fooled by the “demonstrations and symposiums” attended by less people than you would expect in an average funeral procession; and there is no greater proof than the complete consensus of Tigrigna intellectuals in favor of the despicable misfortunes befalling the eight other ethnic groups; where not even a drunk or a crack-head or someone out of his mind would open his or her mouth to say a word to deviate from the sick playbook of their Neo-Nazi masters in Asmara.
Today is like no other day. Lowlanders are threatened with their very existence and very soon they will be roaming Gypsies with no place to call home and there is no time to weigh the options. In the absence of wise highlanders who are ready to stand up to the challenge, it is a historical responsibility for all Lowlanders to unite against the common enemy of ethnic fascists.