In Eritrea Old Habits Die Hard

9 August 2007
Mulugeta Alemu

The Eritrean Ministry of Information (August 8, 2007) editorial is a very interesting read. It is about The power of ideology. It came following a massive cadre training provided by the government.

No one has thought the near miraculous achievements of Eritrea would have been forgotten with such speed. Thanks mainly to the folly of the Eritrean leadership and its decadence, those stories are forgotten. Times have indeed changed. Eritrean people were inspirations for many freedom loving peoples and nations across the world. They courageously fought repression in Ethiopia for so many years. Their austere fight, camaraderie, and determination were examples for many. Then was a time where there was an ideological clarity, the fight for self-determination and justice.

Now both the party and the Government lost that ideological appeal. Dividends of independence became elusive. Thousands of Eritrean youth perished in wars their government imposed on them. Eritrea is perhaps the only country whose majority of young citizens are in military camps. Mothers are continually rounded up in operations called giffa for failing to indicate the whereabouts of their sons and daughters. Many beg their relatives in the US and Europe to send them money so that they pay Eritrean smugglers to help them flee a country their fathers fought to be independent. Eritrea remains the poorest of the poor. The only achievement Eritrea continues to be known for has become its ability to live in peace with grinding poverty and impoverishment.

The government, however, is aware of the utility of continued ideological tools. So it has created Eritrea into regional pariah. Eritrea is now against everyone, the United Nations, the US, the Somali Transitional Government, Ethiopia, Sudanese people. Ethiopia has become continued source of all the ills afflicting Eritrea. The country’s beautiful Asmara is not in the business of searching for investors. Rebels, guerrilla fighters, pirates, religious fundamentalists, dissidents, terror plotters continue to crowd a city where its residents diligently work hard to pretend not to have noticed. For the islamists, Eritrea is not an ideological centre but a periphery of convenience. Years back, Eritrean government was a number one enemy of the jihadists.

Asmara has started a long march to an ideological end game. A deeply religious country, its government routinely arrest officials of the main religious denomination. With a huge number of Muslim community within itself, it continues to take measures that has progressively alienated the same community from the long-cherished co-existence. Eritrea has continually brought closer to an international axis as its highlander population looks on with bewilderment.

Eritrea’s intellectuals and its Diaspora communities are more concerned in what is happening to Ethiopia than to their country. Those few who quietly come to Ethiopia notice how irrelevant Eritrean news has become to Ethiopia. On the other hand Eritreans are daily fed with “bad news” from Ethiopia. Many Eritrea political web blogs fervishly discuss Ethiopia ignoring their people who are subject to unbelievable pain. They bet on the future of Ethiopian CUD leaders whereas years have passed since the whereabouts of their prominent fighters and political figures is known.

Eritrea does not have a constitution. There are no opposition groups operating in Eritrea. The country does not know private and independent press. This however has not stopped the Government from jailing individuals working for state media. The story of Eritrean journalist Paulos Kidane, who died in June 2007 in an attempt to cross the border into Sudan, was cruelly telling about the state of affairs in Eritrea.

“The objective of the Eritrean people is not to stand idle after the attainment of independence” says Eritrean government’s new motto. Eritrea indeed is not idle. But its confused itinerary is victimizing the very people who had gallantly fought for its independence.