Commentary:
Eritrean Elite Steering Away from the Road to Peace

When Eritrean President took pride late last year in securing MiG-29s and proudly announced that his goal was to strike at the heart of Ethiopia, one of Afewerki's propaganda workers, Saleh AA Younis, went euphoric over the idea of having the new weapons of mass destruction.

"I am elated we finally have MiG-29s," the Eritrean blurted, in anticipation of the MiGs sending the Ethiopian capital up in flames and subsequently the world media preoccupying themselves with prime time news of how a small nation called Eritrea has become a military superpower overnight.

But before Saleh got another chance to open up his mouth, the Ethiopian Airforce turned Eritrea's dream-come-true combat aircraft into beautiful candle lights that gave an added color to Operation Sunset.

To add insult, the Ethiopian Air Force set the MiGs ablaze while they were hovering over a little further south of the suburbs of Asmara. In the end, the candles tailed Isaias Afewerki's proverbial sun that went down over the Badme horizon.

In the tragic war Eritrea unleashed by invading Ethiopian territories, the Eritrean elite has served as a catalyst of doom and destruction. They joined their leadership's frenzy campaign for arms acquisition - as though the solution to the crisis lies in having a mountain of arsenal - and went wild when Eritrea imported shiploads of arms and ammunition - arms that were too much that Isaias Afewerki dryly told Italian journalists that his country had the capacity to arm the forces of five African nations.

As the world expressed disbelief over the breakout of such a devastating war between two seemingly friendly nations and tried to mediate peace, the Eritrean elite warned to back off and see how they will go about their own way of tearing Ethiopia apart.

Tekie Fessehazion, one of Issaias Afewerki's errand boys, traced in the footsteps of his master and lambasted peace emissaries, diplomats and international organizations that tried to help resolve the conflict before another round of carnage set in.

"The (Ethiopia-Eritrea) crisis has happened because of America's fatal decision to take sides...entrusting its diplomacy to amateurs and cowboy dimplomats," Tekie wrote (Acquiessence to Evil: Dehai), leaving readers wondering whether the Eritrean knows no civil words other than the vulgar's cited above.

"The western embassies know enough about the mindless cruelty but lack the simple decency to say to their proteges in the Ethiopian government that the horror show (deportations) must end. They don't because they don't care what Africans do to other Africans."

Though you're by now used to Tekie's crude tongue, but does he think he's the only smart guy and his accused parties do not know that deporting Ethiopians was started way back in 1991? After Afewerki's Shaebia controlled Asmara, what was the fate of those over 150,000 Ethiopians? Who depopulated the Red Sea Port of Assab that was once bustling with Ethiopian businesses and workers?

Though Ethiopia shares the blame for concealing the crimes Shaabia committed in eight years - it was understandable that what Ethiopia has been doing was to whet the grand appetite of petit Eritrea on the one hand, and help restore peace and tranquility to that beleaguered part of the world on the other.

Until Ethiopia confronted the invading army of Isaias Afewerki and dealt a humiliating blow at Badme, Eritreans lived in an ivory tower they built in their dreams for decades, and were feeling as though they hail from not a country afflicted with poverty but from a nation wallowing in commercial affluence built over a great military grandeur.

Writing in "Genesis of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Conflict," once again the dreamer Tekie slipped into a legend and said "as though Eritrean goods had not been filling the stores and boutiques of Europe and the Middle East 30 or 40 years ago, now our country has been reduced to running a few factories that are limited to producing outfits for the infantry".

Though Tekie would hasten to call him "anti-Eritrean", a British expert on the Horn of Africa had opined recently saying Eritreans have been nurturing a wrong impression about their country. Far from being indigenous technology, he said, what Eritreans take as a capitalist infrastructure was an imported set of 19th century machinery Italy had temporarily installed in Asmara to fulfill its colonial conquest against Ethiopia.

But hatching grand illusions from such archaic tools has become the occupation of the Eritrean elite that has suddenly waken up to a harsh reality that - despite the ports - Eritrea was at the mercy of Ethiopia even for the basic needs of life - only after a few months into the year-long war.

After Ethiopia felt the pain and abandoned Assab, which in 1996 alone had brought the Eritrean government $120 million in revenue, the truth started to surface that Eritrea was nothing but a parasitic state that could not stand on its own.

"If you and your leaders wish to know the mood in post-1991 Ethiopia," wrote Ethiopia's noted historian Prof. Bahru Zewde, in response to Eritrea's Dr Amare Tekle, "it is one of a deep sense of relief at the separation of Eritrea. Many Ethiopians would only be happy if Eritrea could stand on its own and live and let live in peace."

Surprised how the Eritrean life has come down to its knees in such a short time, Julia Stewart of the Associated Press warned that Eritrea was verging on an economic meltdown as the government had spent precious money to import tons of weaponry." (War Destroying Eritrean Economy: AP, 23 April 1999).

Of course, denying the truth has been ingrained in Shaebia's culture - and no wonder that Isaias Afewerki had repeatedly lied to the press that Badme was under his army - until he earned a March 1st VOA report headlined "Eritrea Is Trying To Put The Best Face On A Big Loss".

Despite the loss of Badme and over 50,000 of his conscripted army members, the Eritrean regime has continued to gamble with the fate of millions of Ethiopians and Eritreans by rejecting OAU and UN-backed resolutions that call for the unconditional withdrawal of the occupation army from Ethiopian territories.

In the meantime, the Eritrean elite has stepped up its anti-Ethiopian hate campaign so much so that even ordinary Eritreans are joining in the beatings and killings of Ethiopians who have been held as human shields in the policed state of Eritrea.

Ethiopians who barely made it home with their life after escaping from the dungeons of the Eritrean regime into the Sudan have been telling harrowing stories of tortures and summary executions of Ethiopians in Eritrea.

Had it not been for the extraordinary patience of the Ethiopian people, the world would have seen a massive human tragedy that could have dwarfed the massacres witnessed in Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

But there is a limit for everything and Ethiopia's patience may drain soon as the Eritrean elite's hate campaign has continued unabated.

While the Eritrean police are rounding up youths to beef up the battered army, the elite of Eritrea has turned a blind eye to such massive human rights violations of their fellow country people for the sake of keeping a tyrant in power. Instead, they have bent on working round-the-clock to draw foreign forces into the Ethiopia-Eritrea War and send the entire region in flames.

With those countries Eritrea had put its trust turning their back on the Isaias regime, it remains high time that the Eritrean elite at the service of the Isaias Afewerki see to it that the dangerous road they have so far traversed has resulted in the weakening of Eritrea, not to mention the deaths of thousands of human lives and the dislocation of entire communities such as Alitena of Ethiopia.

The ball is rolling on the court of Mr. Afewerki and the sooner the regime withdraws its army the better for both poor countries.

If Eritrea fails further to heed the year-long call to withdraw from the occupied Ethiopian territories, it is in the best tradition of Ethiopia to fight by the skin of her teeth until the enemy is routed and her honor restored.

The call is aimed at the Eritrean elite - which has so far been steering the wheel of death and destruction - to see to it that the solution to the crisis doesn't lie in the power of hoodwinking world public opinion nor in trying to plunge other forces into the war. The solution is there on the table for all to see, and that is to abandon occupying someone else's home.