Jungle Diplomacy

There is an old saying, ‘Old habits die hard’, which is loosely translated into Tigrigna as ‘Amel Mis Megnez’.   But the Tigrigna version has finality to it, i.e. one can’t change one’s habit and must take it to one’s grave.  The English saying allows for eventual reform, albeit with much difficulty.  Some may choose another saying or rather a cliché, ‘a leopard never changes its spots’.   But a leopard can’t change its spot because it is a physical characteristic and not out of habit. 

The Tigrigna saying fits PIA more than the English saying.  PIA has proven his incapacity to escape from his old habits, unable to transform himself from a freedom fighter to a statesman.   His blatant disregard for the rule-of-law has now transgressed the troubled horn region and is now taunting an international body. 

PIA’s transformation into an internationally certified belligerent dictator at a time when the world is undergoing fundamental changes away from PIA’s archaic political philosophy is not only a personal tragedy but is also a national tragedy.  It need not have been this way! 

‘Be careful of what you wish for!’ is yet another saying.  In order to escape constitutional accountability, PIA willed, or wished, the war with Ethiopia.  PIA may have temporarily shelved the constitution, but this very same war of choice has become the very same noose around his neck.  The noose is getting tighter everyday.  It need not have been this way!

This writer’s article titled ‘PIA at Crossroads’ posted a year ago (January 2007) speculated that PIA had no choice but to escalate the political friction with Ethiopia.  There are clear, unmistakable and predictable patterns.  PIA’s escalating friction with Ethiopia, US and the UN has to do more with PIA’s ever tenuous internal politics than the finalization of the border.   A confident regime – a regime with full domestic support – would have had the patience to resolve the border issue.  The border commission has handed down its decision and, as PIA himself has admitted, there is no room for negotiation that would lead to reopening the commission’s decision.  The border will be settled sooner or later, and fortunately Woyane doesn’t have the technology to move the ‘real’ Badme Town some two kilometres into its territory.  Badme will be eternally part of Eritrea. 

PIA’s desperate acts of the last year especially are clear manifestations of the regime’s growing frustration turning into suicidal acts.  Analyzing the political developments of the past year, one can easily discern the followings,

1.       PIA’s Somalia policy has become an utter failure.   US’ threat of blacklisting has reached PIA’s heavily muffed ears.  ARS is in confusion but gradually coming to realization that it must build bridges with Somalia’s transitional government.

2.       PIA’s support of every opposition group in Ethiopia has utterly failed.  Regardless of one’s views towards PM Meles, PMMZ has played his politics like Mozart on piano. 

3.       PIA’s Sudan policy has not borne any fruit, which was designed to send love letters to the US Administration.  But the US Administration’s uneasiness with PIA’s reckless domestic and international politics coupled with PM Meles’ artful politics has negated all of PIA’s efforts in Sudan. 

4.       PIA’s relation with Libya is one of servitude.   Libya has joined other members of the UNSC in passing motions condemning Eritrea over the border row with Ethiopia, and yet PIA continues to make his biweekly pilgrimage to Libya.  If one can’t count on one’s friends, who can one count on?  This must be a bitter lesson for our ‘astute’ leader.  

5.       PIA may believe that he can employ repressive domestic policies until he earns his pyrrhic victory.  Unfortunately, temporary solutions can never become permanent ones.  It is like taking Tylenol 3 [extra strength anti-pain sedative] to fight one’s pain from kidney stone.  One is better off to treat the kidney stone than live off ineffective Tylenol.  Food shortages are becoming severe, oil prices are skyrocketing through the roof and young Eritreans are fleeing the country at a rate that can only be characterized as ‘exodus’;  ‘exodus’ at a rate never seen or heard in Eritrean history.  The only prudent course of action is to pursue long-term solutions.  Min. Haile Drue is in PFDJ Dungeon because he advocated for treating the kidney stone than just prescribing an ineffective pain killer.

6.       Domestic opposition, in the form of passive resistance, along with vibrant Diaspora opposition have weakened the regime’s kedemti inside and outside Eritrea.  The powerbase around PIA is crumbling at warp speed.   The few Diaspora kedemti that remain are either psychologically imbalanced, given up their core values or are too busy embezzling ‘hizbawi mekete’ donations to care about what happens inside the country.

7.       PIA has forsaken his ‘spokespeople’ and is now forced to engage in direct public relations.  Words of his kedemti no longer suffice to convince his supporters, and must now show his face on weekly basis to invigorate his diminishing base.  At least it keeps his barber busy!  It need not have been this way! 

Praying for Divine Intervention

Remnant disciples of communist ideology and every dictator dismiss the existence of the Divine power.  Instead, they disillusion themselves into believing that the powers of the Divine are embedded in them.  They delude themselves into believing that they are the center of the universe, the eternal fountains of wisdom and the ultimate paternal figures.  They think they hold the powers of life and death over their subjects.  They impose laws on others that they themselves don’t honour.  They believe that the public can live on 1500 calories of food intake a day (a Mao belief echoed by PIA), yet they can’t live without Blue Label Johnnie Walker for a single day.  This life belongs to them, but not to others.  Others are born to serve them!  Without them, we are supposed to be a flock without a Sheppard.

However, they become mortals like us in times of insurmountable difficulties, wishing and even praying for miracles.  They insist on hanging to life until some tsunami – a natural phenomenon - turns them from political outcasts to another Pervez Musharef.    They pray for some international catastrophe or even a troublesome mosquito to bite their mortal enemies.   For all their shiny public armour, deep inside they become empty silos – showing every bit of their confusion, delusion, uncertainty and erratic behaviour to the world.   They grin but deep down they crave for that Johnnie Walker to live a moment of delusion, to be free of this world of stress – only to wake up with an even tighter noose around their necks the next morning.

The Eritrean regime keeps praying, just like mere mortals like us  – may be if a new American Administration comes in – fully aware yet refusing to accept the fact that the same people run American government regardless of who comes to power.  Who knows, they say, hoping against hope.  Only if Ethiopian-loving Secretary General Kofi Anan would leave office - only to find out that it has gotten worse under SG Ban Ki Moon.  Only if the situation gets worse in Ethiopia or Somalia or Sudan or ...  This is endless hope; hoping against hope that somehow if the sun would rise on the West instead of East; somehow if the stars would cross; somehow if there is perfect storm.   This is political wishful thinking floating from the impossible to the remotely possible.  Their self-delusion of invincibility reduced to humanly doubts – yet refusing to admit it.  They would rather sacrifice the entire nation than themselves.  A nation can’t be run on wishful thinking!  “Kab seb zitetsebey bidewu beleye.”  

Tragically, you pray for rain to grow wheat while starving to death, when in reality the Divine one has endowed you with 1,000 km of coastline and its wealth – and not to mention a nation full of bees.  We were given all, but chose to squander it.

They become erratic leaders.  They write laws with a pencil.  They insist all 11 graders descend to Sawa, only to reverse it a couple of years later, which will only and surely get reversed once again a year later.  Running a country has become a fly-by-night operation or running it with the seats of one’s pants.  Lessons of thousands years of human history, including our own, is thrown away onto the wayside.  Socio-economic policies are formulated in machine-gun approach, just keep firing and hope to hit something.   Instead, we could have run our precious country as Min. Haile Drue suggested – with consultation, with wider involvement and with prudence.   ‘Betri Haqi tiqetin ember aytisiberin’ – and Min. Haile Drue’s words are becoming the very thin stick chasing this brutal regime.

For all its security apparatus, for all its total control over every aspect of Eritrean lives, this regime should have been cruising through his dictatorship like Castro.   Finalizing the border could have waited because it doesn’t directly threaten his existence.  But the words of Min. Haile Drue and the brave acts of thousands of Eritrean political hostages are haunting PIA.  No amount of cruelty can silence the truth!  No amount of repression can pacify the brave people of Eritrea.  Our colonizers learned it the hard way.  Too bad this regime – a regime that should know better than any other – has fallen into the same pitfalls.  But again, criminals always believe that they can succeed where all others have failed, but only to meet the same fate.  The odds are overwhelmingly stacked against them and yet they become the ultimate gamblers – gambling away their savings, their wives, their homes – and eventually their country.

PIA’s sole belief in ‘Might is Right’ is now clearly visible to the world.  The only problem with this belief is that it is being applied to the wrong adversary.  If PIA has the ‘might’, he should exercise it on his adversaries like Ethiopia, the US and the UN.  In reality, PIA’s behaviour is analogous to being frustrated with one’s boss at work but unable to do anything against the boss out of fear of losing one’s job - one’s livelihood.  Instead, one is forced to come home and beat up one’s wife and kids, and kicking one’s dog and cat to release one’s frustrations.  The next day, your boss will continue to abuse you; and you continue to come home and abuse everyone in your home.

‘Might is Right’ is a totally misused philosophy.  ‘Might’ with empty stomach is exactly what happened to the ‘Mighty’ Soviet Union when it crumbled like a house of cards.  Not a single bullet was fired against it, yet it simply collapsed.  It was only question of ‘when’, never of ‘if’. 

The latest fiasco with the UN is yet another desperate attempt by PIA to gain the world’s attention.  But the world understands that the best way to hang a dictator is to deprive it of any attention – suck the oxygen out of them.  Fortunately for the world politicians, Kosovo has taken away that world attention PIA is craving.  As he used 9/11 to hide his atrocious behaviour, a confluence of certain natural phenomenon has conspired against him today to deny him that attention. 

What will he do next?  PIA has basically played out all his cards.  PIA has chosen to prove to the world that Woyane’s propaganda against him as a bully and his aversion towards the rule of law is indeed true.  It is beyond one’s comprehension to understand how one can continuously play into one’s enemies hands?    Needless to say, there are only two ways to resolve the border issue – now turned into do-or-die crisis:  legally & peacefully or through war.  War isn’t an option, thus the border can only be resolved legally and peacefully.  Anyone with an ounce of scruple, including those who should know better but choose to use their text book intellect to serve the regime, can only advocate for workable solutions.  Where a regime has lost all its scruples, the ultimate responsibility for a nation always lies in its citizens, esp. those who should know better.   Where those citizens abdicate their responsibilities and choose to capitulate to power against their basic principles, there is no longer a nation.  The sovereignty of our nation lives in our unwavering belief in the rule-of-law and in adhering to our shared values.  The sovereignty of a nation doesn’t begin with physical borders but in our compassion, respect and tolerance for each other.   As they say, what is the point of gaining the world if you have lost yourself?

It is high time that the good men of OEA and the good doctors popping up at ‘hizbawi mekete’ meetings screaming ‘af arkbu’  to realize that a nation born out of love for freedom awaits them patiently to return to their senses.   It can’t be lost with them that intangible infrastructures build physical infrastructures, never the other way around.   It takes literally seconds to destroy physical infrastructures but only a day to rebuild them.  It takes a day to destroy intangible infrastructures and a millennium to build them.   Our thousands years of tradition of respect for rule-of-law is now being threatened.  Without it, we are no longer who we are, only to become a nation of bandits and corrupts that the regime is.    That would be nation lost!

This is a dying regime that is neither able to resolve the border by force or legally.  It is a regime that is exposing its desperation, thus giving hope to its adversaries.  PIA was outplayed into igniting the Eritrea-Ethiopia war.   He is being outplayed again.  PIA is trying to play the same that Weyane played against him in 1998 into igniting the war.  Unfortunately but astutely, woyane, which is most likely trained and coached by international masters, has moved to a new game – a game which a jungle politician can’t play.  

PIA`s adversaries are calling `check`.   `Checkmate` can only be a couple of moves away!

In contrast, the opposition camp has matured especially over the last three years.  The quality and quantity of active opposition is growing exponentially.   Public concerns about fragmented opposition camp are now withering, giving renewed hopes that there are viable alternatives to this brutal regime.   If nothing else, the opposition camp has shown that it can build consensus.  That by itself is a victory that will become the bedrock foundation of our future political system. 

Rest assured that domestic multi-party politics will always be more prudent than Diaspora one.  In general, our tendency to fret over fragmented Diaspora politics is totally wrong.  We are concerned about the wrong political dynamics.  Unlike Diaspora politics, domestic politics will always lead to coalescence.  The fact that our Diaspora politics is coalescing is only an added bonus, giving us an even added hope of better things to come.

It is also worth remembering that a vibrant multi-party democracy in Eritrea will consist of thousands of PFDJ hostages in its dungeons, Diaspora politicians and every law-abiding Eritrean.  It will be about wider participation, consultation and consensus.  It will be about the respect for the rule-of-law, defending human rights and upholding all our rights and freedoms that we Eritreans bled for over four decades.

Our message to world, especially those with keen interest in horn politics, should remain that peace and stability in the horn is held hostage by one-man.  A stable and dynamic Eritrea will become the socio-economic and political stability in the entire horn region.  There is no need for world powers to pursue ineffective secondary options. 

Eritrea criticises UN over troop withdrawal

Thu 21 Feb 2008 by Louis Charbonneau

“Eritrea has maintained all along that the issue of fuel is technical, which could have been resolved quietly without politicizing it," the statement said. 

The regime could have added to its drama the following statement,

``Eritrea has maintained all along that the issue of locking up thousands of PFDJ hostages is technical, which could have been resolved quietly without politicizing it.  We just lost the keys to the PFDJ dungeons, lost the combinations to the locks, and can’t remember where we locked them up ...”   

Ya, sure!

Berhan Hagos

February 21, 2008