By all measures, says Abdulkader Hamdan, the government of Eritrea and the Eritrean opposition have failed.
He says this in his channel HoA TV (link below) He attributes the failure of both due to something very Eritrean: the strive for Oneness, the strive for Conformity, the strive of Exclusive Representation of the Eritrean people. This goal is so sacred, it demands an obsessive drive to protect the movement from itself; it demands a “vanguard”, which results in secret political parties doing secret things, hidden from the public. When the secret party assumes power (as EPLF’s did), the secret party is officially dissolved by the secret party. Many, including Hamdan who have been part of the Armed Struggle for decades, didn’t even know the secretive People’s Party had existed for 20 years until Baduri’s book, which was about his reminiscences of Ghedli, was published. But no need to worry, the secret party recruited new secret members to the new secret party which is so secret it has no name. The Secret Party with no name has become the Deep State, with unknown people running things in the background; with powerless ministers fronting the Front, and the much-desired diversity and representation (Oneness) remains a pipe dream. All towards a failed state. The way out? Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Elections based on the 1997 Constitution which was crafted by the People.
The Ghedli Years
1966-1971 was a testing period for the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which was in its infancy. Organized after the Algerian model, with four semi-autonomous command zones, ELF was faced with a new challenge: accommodating new recruits from the Eritrean highlands who did not feel represented by the existing command zones. ELF’s solution was to create a 5th command zone to accommodate them. Rather than fixing the situation, this made things worse. And the battle cry at the time was “Islah” (Arabic for reform), resulting in the creation of Qiada Al-Amma (Arabic for “General Command.”) Many Eritreans were introduced to ELF via the moniker–“Amma“–whose meaning they don’t know other than it was something Muslimy, Araby, ominous and vaguely unmanly. For god’s sake, they even used lotion, as a popular EPLF song had it! ተጋዳላይ ዓማ: ተወልዋላይ ዘይቲ: ሒና ተሪፉዎ ክኸውን ሰበይቲ (“The Amma combatant, using lotion, is just Henna short of being a woman”) was the “progressive” EPLF’s hit song (Wedi Tkul) in the 1970s. ELF countered with its own adjectives: anti-revolutionary, ምዳዳ, etc.
Along with now-president Isaias Afwerki, Abdulkader Hamdan was elected to the General Command (Qiada Al-Amma) leadership and then…. arrested. Meanwhile 200-300 individuals (largely in exile: Sudan, Syria, etc), all (or almost all) of whom were from the Red Sea area, had formed the People’s Liberation Forces (ህዝባዊ ሓይልታት) under the leadership of Ramadan Mohammed Nur, Osman Saleh Sabbe and Alamin M. Seid, introducing the word Shaebia (Arabic for “popular”) for the first time to the Eritrean field. PLF sent a delegation (including Alamin M. Seid) to inquire on the fate of the arrested (“Eritrea: Arresting Each Other Since 1961!”) but they, too, were directed to disarm. ኣርደን! ELF would eventually decide on a “military solution” to all splinters, except for Isaias’s Selfi-Natsnet (Party of Freedom) because then that would have sectarian tones. But killing PLF, Obel, ELM? That was all Halal and pursued with ferocity.
Isaias was not a member of Shaebia: he and his typewriter were in Ala (midpoint between Nefasit and Dekemhare) railing against Amma (of which he was a member) and writing ንሕናን ዕላማናን (“We & Our Objective”) where he helpfully told us that the “we” in the title is “mostly or all Christian highlanders.”
Let me step away from Hamdan to General Abrahaley Kifle, briefly, as what he had to say about a persistent subject is very illuminating. In this season of confessions and re-narrations (and I welcome all of it), we are learning new things! This was one of the stories Abrahaley told us in his 18-part interview with Hordata.:”If your grouping is made up entirely of people from one locality, one faith, one ethnicity then, by definition, you are not a nationalist organization.” General Abrahaley Kifle, then representing ELF, used to make this argument when he had debates with people like PLF veteran Baduri (RIP). The rebuttal from Selfi-Natsnet and PLF was: “If you are targeting me for my identity, if you are giving yourself preferential treatment due to your identity, how can you then blame me if my membership is made up of your victims, people who share my identity? ” The People’s Forces had many grievances against Qiada Al-Amma led ELF and, of course, they immediately replicated one of them by creating their own Secret Party (People’s Party) to mimic ELF’s Labor Party. Isaias Afwerki, who was not even a member of People’s Forces (later People’s Front, now People’s Front for Democracy & Justice) was appointed to the Secret Party.
We will come back to this debate, later, because it is the gist of this article. And to give it all context, remember all of the people having these differences of opinion were almost all men in their 20s.
The Opposition/Supporter Years
I first heard of Hamdan in 1995: I had a new magazine, Eritrean Exponent, in English published in the US: (distribution: 50 people) and he had an established magazine, Sout Eritrea, in Arabic, published in Germany: (distribution much much larger.) Back then, I wrote about my fears of a hypothetical dictatorship that is looming in Eritrea because Eritrea is after all in Africa; he wrote about the dictatorship already in place. In 1998-2000 we both focused on writing about the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war and left the government alone.
Shortly after that, I went on my rebellious ways and Abdulkader Hamdan was appointed as deputy ambassador to the Eritrean embassy in Germany by the President himself, he tells us waving a piece of paper. For 20 years, he was to engage in diplomatic and informational wars to protect Eritrea from all its enemies, foreign and domestic (including us at awate.com.) Sadly, this meant propagating, in Arabic, the annual theme (something something something ትሕቲ ዝብል ቴማ) at the annual Festivals. These were the መኸተ (challenge!) years when it was Eritrea vs The World Led By Monopolist Hegemon America Starring Weyane (1998-2020). Nowadays, it is Eritrea, Russia, China & All Free Peoples vs Special Interests Led By Monopolist Hegemon America Starring Probably Abiy.
So we won?
Deep-Faking Deep State
No, says Abdulkader Hamdan. Eritrea is a failed State. Its government is a “fait accompli government” (well, it’s there) run by a Deep State, composed of people we don’t know. How does he know this? Remember the diplomatic part of his job–lobbying, hosting conferences, outreach to Germany and EU governments? That was a job for somebody else, a member of the Deep State. He is asked to name them, but Hamdan defers: he is in his forgive-and-forget mode.
He then confirms what we always knew: when Hamdan had the government’s media and diplomatic portfolio, his job entailed recruiting the participation of people who share his identity (Muslims) in the annual Festivals. He says that year after year, for 20-30 years, he tried and failed: he could get no more than 10 Muslims, a matter that used to perplex Abdalla Jaber, the former head of PFDJ Organizational Affairs (disappeared for 14 years.)
What is the solution to this? The Deep State is also a Deep Fake: just have Tigrinya-speakers wear the clothes of the other ethnicities. The Expo (Festival) celebrations are broadcast in Eritrean national TV to give the perception that the ruling party enjoys the support of all Eritreans. Look at all those ethnic (ብሄራት) costumes! One People One Heart! This is folkloric, says Hamdan. Then, why did Hamdan participate for 20 years in the campaign of deception? He is not asked that question but we know the answer. Because, like Rwanda’s ruling party, PFDJ has made any discussion of ethnic or religious representation, diversity or equity a crime punishable by its usually extreme measures. To complain that there is no representation for your group is worse than having no representation for your group.
What Hamdan said reminded me of something that happened 24 years ago. In 2000, Mahmud Sherifo (G-15, disappeared in 2001) was booked for an interview with Eri-TV to discuss two laws his Committee had drafted but, at the last minute, it was cancelled because Isaias said, “I have something to say about it before it is distributed.” (Source: Mahmud Sherifo interview with a now-banned private press, and now disappeared for 23 years journalist.) An executive telling the legislature that he has something to say about a draft law? Why? Refer to article 6.5(a) of the “Draft Proclamation on the Formation of Political Parties and Organizations” – (Choose the “Documents” menu and scroll down) Using those standards of inclusion and diversity, if PFDJ was trying to register as a political organization, would it pass the test? No. Perhaps that’s why the president had “something to say about it” and the draft law was placed in the same drawer where the “dead” constitution is buried.
Where We Are & The Way Out
Where we are, says Hamdan, is power being treated as hereditary: The children of Eritrea’s military officers and elite are all over Africa with their properties. They are over-represented in the Festivals. And if push comes to shove, just like Mengistu Hailemariam bought land and property before his move to Zimbabwe, they have bought land and property all over Africa and their salvation is one plane ride away.
And the way out, says Hamdan, is the 1997 constitution and elections. Let’s talk, he says, lest we become Somalia, Sudan or Ethiopia. Let’s! I don’t know why everybody is not losing sleep wondering: what is the transition plan in Eritrea when the face of the ruling class is men in their late 70s, and the real ruling class (Deep State) are unknown?
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