By Ayasham Gelagay, May 28, 2000

Given their ongoing defeat and humiliation, let us hope Eritreans would have the courage to confront the reality this time. In the past the "thirty-year war" myth has inflated Eritrea's ego. As someone has recently pointed out rightly, the history of the seven-year-old nation is a reminder of the frog-ox fable. Hoping to turn into an ox, the ambitious frog swelled and swelled until it could not swell anymore and finally burst into pieces.

Void of past history and a common emblem, Eritreans have constructed a pseudo-national identity based on the "thirty-year war" myth. The "thirty-year war" mantra has also cast a magical spell on racist conservatives and disgruntled leftists in the West who have held a grudge with Ethiopia for one reason or another.

One negative consequence of colonialism, which is clearly evident in the Eritreans' national psyche, is their self-hate and self denigration. In a major African studies conference, a veteran Eritrean scholar was challenged to identify some of the cultural differences between the Tigreans of Eritrea and the Tigreans of Ethiopia. "In Eritrea we count the hours of the day like the Europeans starting from midnight, and in Tigray they count like Ethiopians," was his answer. When further pressed, the same professor mumbled something about Asmara's "beautiful Mediterranean weather' and its "palm trees" as incontrovertible evidence that Eritrea had always been "an independent historical entity." Only when reminded that the palm tree was a legacy from the colonial past did the professor resort to his last ammunition: the "thirty-year war" mumbo jumbo, in order to justify Eritrea's independence.

The 1991 collapse of the Ethiopian government was no doubt attributable in part to the EPLF arms struggle. But is EPLF's rise to power after so many years in the bush uniquely spectacular? The Vietnamese won the war against the US, a country obviously much mightier than Ethiopia, in fifteen years. Algeria's FLN, Angola's MPLA or Mozambique's FRELIMO all took lesser time to achieve their national independence against much more formidable foes.

Even if one accepts EPLF's portrait of Eritrea as Africa's last colony, then obviously the Eritreans took a much longer period to achieve what other guerilla movement were able to attain in a shorter time. In other words, the so-called Eritrean military prowess has proven absolutely nothing in the regions military annals. To the contrary, without the support given to EPLF by Ethiopian opposition groups, Eritrea would have either remained Ethiopia's fourteenth province or settled for a negotiated independence minus the Assab port.

Unfortunately, failure to appreciate such humbling facts has left Eritreans with a distorted image of themselves. More particularly, the "thirty-year war" rhetoric has produced an acute sense of arrogance and empty bravado for which the Eritreans are now paying dearly. If there is anything of value that Asmara has gained from its two-year conflict with Ethiopia is that its only commodity of export, refugees, has grown by thousands fold. As hundred thousands of their citizens flee to Sudan, EPLF officials are already beginning to recalculate their country's next year budget, assuming they would still be around by then. Yes, as a result of the last weeks' mass exodus, the number of Eritrean domestics in the Middle East will rise by several fold. This means more remittance into the EPLF coffers, which in turn means more arms and more war and more mayham and more displacement of civilians.

Eritrean national psyche has indeed been hexed by the "thirty-year war" hocus pocus. Mussolini had once said that "war puts a stamp of nobility upon those who have the courage to bear it." Nowhere is this fascist motto truer than in Eritrea. In the last seven years Eritrea has invaded all of its neighbors including Ethiopia, but in no instances has its military engagements produced positive result. If anything, Eritrean invincibility has finally proven its invisibility as has been attested by the last two weeks' route that left half of the country a no-man's land.

For the good of the innocent Eritrean masses, one therefore hopes that the ongoing war with Ethiopia would teach the EPLF's drunken leadership a practical lesson. This war should exorcise the "thirty-year war" demon out of their sickened heads and deflate their oversized ego. For its own good Eritrea should learn to act and behave like the country that it is, a poor nation of four million. Or else, like in the story of the frog, illusion and hubris would only lead to Asmara's disintegration and back to the march to Nakfa.