by M. Mikael, May 17, 2000

It sure seems it is a curse to be born an “Eritrean”. Not only is one born into a “nation” built on artificiality and images, but one is also forced to live a terrible lie trying to maintain that image. One needs to only see the total silence of the Eritrean leadership on the famine situation in Eritrea (maintaining the image) and the recently publicised figures by UN agencies of over a million famine-stricken Eritreans (facts on the ground). This is being progressively evident even to outside observers as the sad drama of a war unleashed by the head-in-the-air leaders of Eritrea unfolds to its dreadful end.

“The situation [in the current battle front] is ‘horrendous’”, exclaims an Eritrean government communiqué, “It is a massacre”. The hallucinatory Eritrean leaders obviously are proclaiming that the “massacre” being inflicted is on the army of Ethiopia. The Eritrean Army RETREATED in full disarray, (the hallucination continues), after engaging in a turkey shoot against the Ethiopians. Apparently, European traits and sensibilities rubbed-off during the Italian COLONIZATION have been rudely assaulted—so much so, that they refuse to the slaughter of soldiers in “human wave” attacks and FLEE from this terrible ordeal!

Well, unfortunately for an already unfortunate people and for the shameless drum-beaters of Issayas, all the facts point out that it is the Human Wall defence their leaders have chosen that is truly the element of massacre—that it is the Human Chain defence (no doubt copied from the Italians) that has created the “horrendous” situation. Ill-trained conscripts—more often than not forcibly rounded up from every nook and corner of the country—are being mercilessly stocked into the fires of Ethiopian cannon and tanks. Everybody can now see that it is Eritrean youth that are dying COWERING in terror in the trenches. It is Eritrean elders dying from exhaustion, as they are force-marched in “orderly” retreat. It is Eritrean soldiers that are running pell-mell and falling all over the way to the Sudan.

What a terrible and sickening fate! And to think that your “own” people are the cause of all these carnage?! What was a foolhardy act of uncalled for aggression towards an unsuspecting Ethiopia, what could have been a simple case of withdrawing from areas occupied in arrogance (totally deflated now), has since transmogrified to become the death knell of the image masquerading as a country—Eritrea. Who will mourn the Human Wall that fell?