“It’ll Be Revealed In Due Course”

Independence Day addresses follow this formula:

(1) This is why this day is important [insert brief history of what it took for us to be independent.]

(2) This is what we have accomplished so far since independence [insert list of achievements.]

(3) These are some of the challenges which remain [insert list of challenges.]

(4) This is what my government is doing about it [list of action items] and

(5) This is why my plan will work [tie it back to Independence Day: say something hopeful and inspiring.]

That’s what most heads of governments say in their Independence Day speeches all over the world. President Isaias Afwerki followed the same formula—but not from the perspective of an Eritrean (that is so boring), but from a member of the Global Movement of Free Peoples Fighting The Most Righteous Cause Against The Domineering Monopolists (TDM aka USA.)  This is why the speech was addressed not just to Eritreans but “free peoples of the world.”  This is why, obviously, a significant portion of the speech had to be dedicated to Palestine, Russia, China, and the Gulf, with The Domineering Monopolists (TDM) always lurking around and with him, His Excellency, standing alone, fighting it long before others (including Russia and China) had. This is a legacy speech for his new beloved: Africa.

Eritrea & Palestine

The relationship between Palestinians and Eritreans goes back to 1969. That’s when Palestinians trained a special Eritrean commando unit, set up by the late Osman Saleh Sabbe, called “Al Iqab” (Punishment) whose members included, among others, Eritrea’s former foreign minister, the late Ali Said Abdella (pic). The main target of Al Iqab was Ethiopian Airlines, then as now, in the bad habit of being in the service of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. The Eritrean rebels hijacked a plane and burned it in Pakistan. This is what would be called “an act of terror” and Pakistan sentenced the unit to decades of prison, but they were saved by the pro-bono service of the Pakistan Lawyers Association who described their act not as terroristic but freedom fighting with Ethiopian Airlines (then Air Lines) a legitimate military target.

Ali Said Abdella (1978)

A few years later, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) threw its loyalty to fellow socialist Comrade Mengistu Hailemariam, then president of Ethiopia. A decade later: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat accused Isaias Afwerki of refusing to join the Arab League because his “masters” (USA, Israel) ordered him not to. Isaias is furious. PLO is no longer our ally, if it ever was. Fast forward to 1993 and the Oslo Accords: “So,” says Isaias, “Whatever happened to not dealing with the masters?” Yasser Arafat kisses Isaias on the forehead as if to say: you got me there!

Isaias considers the “two-state solution” a Trojan Horse which is all about slowly diluting the demands of Palestinians by pushing “Arab-Israel” normalization. All true. Arab countries were approached one-by-one: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, even Sudan (at the point of a gun) to normalize relations with Israel, and they did. Saudi Arabia was heading there when October 7 happened.

The part Isaias Afwerki leaves out is that he had said that the solution to the Palestinian question is for Palestinians to merge with Jordan creating Trans-Jordan and to leave Israel alone. “One option that may work is a Trans-Jordan. Israel may be left in peace and the Palestinian and Jordanian peoples are brought together and can create their own nation,” he said.  Even Israel’s Likud Party doesn’t say that. Now, President Isaias Afwerki is saying: “Their [USA] strategy was to suppress the issue of freedom and independence of the Palestinian people. But the just struggle of the Palestinian people did not relax or tire. Not only did they amaze the world with their perseverance, but they also created a broad public global partnership, taking center stage and in the process exposing the violent, hypocritical and sly character of the TDM School.”

This is conventional politicking: find a popular bandwagon, jump on it and say you were always part of it.

Eritrea & Russia

Russia, the core of the USSR Empire, was what sustained Ethiopian Derg Regime’s offensives and atrocities against Eritrean Revolution and people for 17 years. USSR’s MiGs were responsible for carpet bombing civilians; Russian pilots were captured. USSR directed its satellite state Cuba to jump all-in in the 1978 Ethiopia-Somalia war, closing one Front (Ogaden) for Ethiopia, enabling it to move North (Eritrea) resulting in our “strategic retreat”, leaving behind all the liberated lands (almost 90% of Eritrea), liberated at considerable expense.  It is not a coincidence that Eritrea’s independence in 1991 was concurrent with the disintegration of the USSR. If the USSR had disintegrated in 1981, Eritrea would have been free in 1981.

But now, the disintegration of the USSR is mourned and seen as the fault of the USA to create a unipolar world! This is like saying the disintegration of ELF is the fault of EPLF. Neither is true. USSR was an empire running obedient satellite countries whose governments it hand-selected and when they dared to deviate (Hungary, for example), USSR rolled in its tanks. In fact, the entire time its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, was in existence, it never engaged with NATO (its supposed nemesis): it was used only to compel compliance from USSR’s satellite states. This was so suffocating even Albania (communism so concentrated, it was emulated by TPLF) withdrew from the “Soviet Bloc.” Even the word “soviet” is Russian! When the USSR crumbled and the Berlin Wall came down, and the Baltic States and Eastern European states declared their independence, it was as euphoric for Europe as Independence Day is for us. In modern times, Russia is known for two things: frustrating and challenging the US and assassinating political opponents.

How is this country, then, a model or an ally? Because it has nukes and vetoes to challenge the US? Because it is the birthplace of Leninism. Some consider Mecca a holy place, some Jerusalem, some Tibet. But for some, the birthplace of Lenin, Russia, is just as holy. Marx was a nerd. Lenin was a practical man.

Eritrea & China

There is plenty of connection between Eritrea and China. Yeah, sure, the diplomatic skills of Haile Selassie were so refined he at one point convinced Chairman Mao to support a monarchy over leftist revolutionaries, but that was a brief interlude. Many of our revolutionary leaders, including Isaias Afwerki, were graduates of China’s Cadre School whose teachings they brought wholesale to Sahel and Barka. China has successfully integrated Confucianism with communism and many Africans (who describe themselves as communal not individualistic societies) find it appealing. So the closeness of Eritrea to China is organic and natural.

But there were two Chinas. There was the China that was led by Mao: a man who resurrected China from the ashes to its former dynasty with its One China identity (less the annoying Taiwanese and the Muslim minorities who have to occasionally be placed in concentration camps to Chinafy them.) Then there was the Deng Xiaoping China who said it’s great to be united but better to have something to eat and began the transformation of China from a Third World to a First World nation. Xiaoping’s school was the good ol’ USA, which he toured, memorably.  Lesson: until you get big enough to own every US Treasury bond, learn from the best when it comes to industrialization and technology: USA.

Isaias Afwerki hates Deng Xiaoping. That’s according to a circular written by US Ambassador to Eritrea after his conversation with Chinese Ambassador to Eritrea. (Wikileaks report) The circular says Isaias loves Mao, reads every book about him, and thinks that China made a big mistake following the path of Deng Xiaoping. “Isaias avidly consumes biographies of Mao and has refused offers of books on Deng and modern China,” says the writer. China Cadre School alumni and former EPLF Secretary General Ramadan Mohammed Nur was also at the party held at the Chinese embassy to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Chinese ruling party (CCP)’s ascension to power, but he was “largely ignored” as Isaias Afwerki, several Moutai’s later, was holding court. The Chinese Ambassador “…wryly commented that Isaias idolizes his relationship with China,  perhaps because we are so far away.” It reminds me of Eritrean Diaspora who far, far from the reality of Eritrea, with their children safely ensconced,  support everything, including the serfdom of children their kid’s age, unconditionally.

For a half a century, Isaias went on to import the Worst of China (censorship, collectivization, cultural revolution, Laogai, revolutionary justice) while avoiding the Best of China (entrepreneurship, scholarship, innovation.) Further, he doesn’t seem to be aware (or care) that China’s smaller neighbors are as terrified of China as US neighbors in the Caribbean and South America are of the USA.

Eritrea & USA

Eritrea is an afterthought in Isaias’s speeches. Nothing personal: it is a Big Fish Small Tank problem.  A bigger tank is needed: our neighborhood.  According to him, our neighborhood comprises of the Nile Basin (apparently?), the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and the Gulf. We will just call it “The Gulf”: the Arabs calls it the Arab Gulf and the Iranians call it the Persian Gulf and they are both our allies and there is no need to antagonize either in the latest Holy War to End All Wars and Build A Post New World Order.  But the USA is ever present in every Isaias speech whether he calls it “Washington”, “Pentagon”, “Unipolar,” “hegemon”, or “The Domineering Monopolists.”

And America, The Domineering Monopolist, has done terrible things in our neighborhood, the President told us, rehashing the same speech he has been giving since 2005, when the USA cheated in the Ethiopian elections to enable TPLF to win and his preferred Ethiopian political party, Kinjit, lost.  Worse, the USA directed TPLF to attack a nice, peaceful,  Jihad non-threatening Somalia–and IGAD and AU endorsed the invasion!   The USA just wants to create crisis and conflict so it can turn around to administer them.  Everywhere, all the time: it is the US to blame.

That, apparently, is what happened in 1998 when Isaias rolled his tanks to Badme and escalated a skirmish to war, which then allowed Ethiopia to turbo-charge it to Total War. It was the USA’s fault. The Hanish Crisis resolution of 1999 allowing Eritrea and Yemen to fish in areas declared not theirs? It was the USA’s fault: to instigate a conflict so you can manage it. Never mind the arbitration: how did Yemen and Eritrea even go to war in 1995? It was the fault of the USA. The Djibouti border skirmish of 2008? Totally fabricated by the USA. Even the prisoners of war that Qatar mediated to secure their freedom? It was all fabricated: they were crisis actors, apparently.

How did Eritrea join George W Bush’s Coalition of the Willing in his war against Iraq, a war now retroactively condemned by Eritrea?  It was the fault of the USA. Remember telling The Atlantic‘s Robert Kaplan that the USA is essential to the stabilization of the Horn of Africa although you hated sounding like a colonialist? It was all made up. Remember hiring American lobbyists at $50,000 per month to ask USA to establish a base in Massawa or Asab?  Is that also manufactured? Was it also manufactured that the USA brokered multiple Eritrea-Ethiopia reproachments, funded our referendum and was one of the first to recognize us as a nation, before Russia and China?

All of that is forgotten. What matters is that the USA as a guarantor Witness to the Algiers Agreement’s Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission ruling did nothing while Ethiopia flagrantly violated the ruling for 16 years. USA also imposed two sanctions unilaterally multilaterally, with the acquiescence of veto-holding Russia (voted: Yes, Abstain) and veto-holding China (voted: Abstain, Abstain) in 2009 and 2011. Not only did Russia and China not veto the sanctions on Eritrea; they didn’t even vote “no.” USA also encouraged TPLF to launch its “War of Insurrection” in 2020 and then when its “servant” was losing, intervened at the last minute to save it in South Africa. There is a lot more but ኣብ ካልእ ኣጋጣሚ ብሰፊሕ ዝርአ’ዩ: stay tuned for my interviews where I will explain everything, beginning with end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, and the arrogance of Fukuyama.

When you say, for 20 years, that the reason you can’t do anything is because of TPLF, then you say “Game Over” to TPLF,  and you brag incessantly that you have destroyed your enemy, the only thing to do to avoid the necessary reforms the country is crying for–constitutionalism, parliament, release of prisoners, civil liberties, limited military conscription–is to enlist Eritrea in yet another eternal war: Free Peoples vs USA.  Victory is certain. Trust me, bro.

I don’t know who the engineers of the Post New World Order are counting on as fellow-travelers for their holy war because the USA has the most number of foreign-born nationals who have pledged “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen” when they got naturalized.  It’s one Congressional vote away, of a Congress acting in fear, to enforce singular loyalty from the dual citizens.  Besides, these dual citizens sustain many African countries economies, DEFINITELY INCLUDING ERITREA, with their remittances.  Who is going to employ them if they choose to enlist in their new cause after the US decides not to look the other way as they act as agents of a foreign prince and lose their American citizenship? Russia? China? I wouldn’t count those eggs.

Eritrea & Eritrea

Now, what? Is this the part where you tell us how many Eritreans died to “stabilize Ethiopia” in 2020-2022? Was this mission accomplished: is the Game Over? What is our relationship now with the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed now that TPLF is TPLF-PP? What does that say about your judgement? All good questions but they are not part of the script. The script is that the USA, despondent over its global rejection and heavy indebtedness, will do something desperate. You only need to know two things: (1) You have seen what our soldiers can do: ቅሰን ቅሰን: be serene! (2) Whatever is happening, it will be revealed in due course. ብሰዓቱ ኪግለጽ’ዩ::  Just keep your eye focused on what America and its quislings are up to.  The rest, leave it all to me and my superb judgement.

How about Eritreans in Diaspora, particularly the West, who are literally wounding and killing each other because they don’t see eye-to-eye on what’s happening in Eritrea? Those whom he recognizes as Eritreans (the ones who are loyal to him and his party) were told “ኣገናዕ!” (well done!) in his address.   The promised ቅሳነት (tranquility) will be elusive at home and abroad.  But we all knew that: Isaias just confirmed it for the umpteenth time.