On October 29, 2009, Awate’s Gedab broke the news about a US-EU conference (organized by a European External Policy Advisory (EEPA), a Belgian NGO) on Eritrea to be attended by a number of honorable Eritrean (Tigrigna or Tigrigna-satellite) politicians and civil society activists with an esteemed spokesperson, Mr. Abdulrahman Alsaid. Mr. Spokesman in turn confirmed the news in his website…

Those who like to conclude matters before they even begin, those who like to have the final say before most have even spoken have declared dead the debates surrounding the Lowland-Highland or Muslim-Christian dichotomy. I must admit that we have yet to initiate or provoke real communication on the issues that matter most between “Us” and “Them” as the other…

I apologize for delays in continuing the “Road Map” series that I started earlier. I have decided to wait and see if Abune Aregawi reaches into the celebrations of the “Uniting Group” and proves us wrong by inciting a spell against the Land Grabbing Settlers once their marathon merger actually takes place, now that they have a good idea of…

I am not one who believes in the Carrot-plus-Stick theory as the only explanation for effectively manipulating stimulus and response in politics because there are situations where the stick alone is more than enough to get people going and there are situations where the carrot should never be mixed with the stick. Tigrigna supremacists have tried the stick on us for…

The New Year might be a good occasion for each one of us to wonder why magic always seems to single out and evade our Eritrea and why our best efforts never seem to payoff. We need to challenge ourselves with one logical question: How was it that a semi-illiterate Somali cleric heading a militia government squashed in a bachelor…

I will keep it short here and will do so the lazy way. In an interview with a VoA journalist on September 27, 2011, President Isaias Afwerki responded to why he would keep doing this to helpless Eritreans at a time when human rights organizations are appealing for the release of those who are already in jail. He explained a…

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the newly initiated Eritrean Law Society (ELS) for managing to call into the arena the much needed sector of our politics: “lawyers, professionals and academicians”. The validity of the information, seriousness of the initiative and sincerity of the intentions remains to be seen. My first impression of the statement posted on…

‘Not Too Bad!’ is what anyone familiar with the frustratingly slow pace of developments (towards a better day) in Eritrea during the last 20 years would describe the speed at which change is taking hold of the nation today. And ‘What a Pity!’ is how anyone familiar with the fact that the traditional Eritrean opposition contributed ZERO towards the change…

There are things that we wish we would never know about because knowing can sometimes be the worst enemy of hope. How would a sailor in the middle of the ocean feel if he found out that, that tiny piece of ice heading towards his ship in a head-on collision is actually the tip of an iceberg? That hidden iceberg…

On an unrelated sidenote or headnote: With all due respect to Brother Woldeyesus Ammar for his beautifully written emotional “Draft Obituary-cum-Eulogy” (the one where he rephrases “Haile Deru’e’s biggest worry after liberation was how to contain “Tigrigna chauvinism in the EPLF” to mean “it is not the fault of any membership”), I would like to take this opportunity to call upon…