Open Letter to President Issayas Afewerk and President Debretsion Gebremichael

Gebreselema Hailemichael 01-26-20

Dear Mr. Presidents,

I am writing this letter to appeal to you a generational appeal. This is an appeal to you that request you to do something different that will benefit the coming and future generation.  I am someone who grew up in war zone. I have lost relatives in the war waged by both Shabia and Woyanes against the DERG.  I was born into the war, I grew up in it all my formative ages.  This means I knew no peace in my formative age. I remember sleeping inside caves, under trees, between stones to escape from DERG.  I have survived from aerial bombardment of DERG many times.  When I was very young I always asked myself why war?  There was no answer for my questions.  I have been asking this question all my life.  I will  explain why I am appealing and I will  lay out why  I am requesting  both of you to do soul search and to  do  radical change that will bring  eternal healing of all the wounds of  our past miscarriages and open the way for  a bright future for the coming and  future generation of the people.

I have relatives who died, fought for Woyanes and Shabia against DERG.  Half of my families have lived in Tigrai and half of them in Eritrea.  I also grew up on both sides.  I never knew differences in my entire childhood.  I can dare say everything is the same among Tigrignea speakers on both sides, the language, the culture, the faith, I dare say almost everything is the same. I have learnt now by reading history that half Tigrai land, and half the Tigreans were sold to Italy by Emperor Menelick for political expediency for him to stay on power and to weaken the Tigrignea speakers   from vying for power.  It is  recorded in the Italian Archives, Emperor Menelick  received  one million Italian Lira and about 289000 guns and more was  promised to be delivered continuously in exchange for the land, sea and the people which ended up half of our people, land, and sea to be colonised by Italian.  Before Italians landed in Tigrai, today Eritrea, and before the Ethio-Italian war, Menelick was begging Italians to come to colonize Tigrai.

Emperor Menelick wrote many letters asking Italians to come to Tigrai to occupy it and promising them to join them in the fight against Tigrai. To realise that Menelick sent Ethopian aka Amharas to be trained as mercenaries.  Italian came by Menelick’s invitation to invade Tigrai, but they were defeated by Emperor Yohanes. Since that did not work, Menelick invited Mehadists to invade Gonder and Gojam so that Yohanes can move from Tigrai to Gondere and Gojam to drive out the invaders who were setting on fire Gondere and Gojam.  Emperor Yohanes did move as planned by Menelick and he died.  Then Yohanes made a will to be succeeded by his son, but within two weeks, Menelick usurped power taking power vacuum in Tigrai.  Then Italians did not have problem not only to invade Tigrai, but also the entire Ethiopia despite Menelick expected them to stay occupying Tigrai..  This brought the Ethio-Italian war and the final Adwa war.

Since Menelick believed neither the land nor the people are his own, he sold half of the land and the people to Italy for money and gun.  This selfish action of one man put us into a vicious cycle of misery which is still making us bleed to death.  Menelick divided our people into two and subjected to all these war, famine, backwardness, darkness misery.   He did this to fulfil his personal greed.   While Menelick did this for personal again, I do not understand why Woyanes and Shabia spent decades waging bloody war to reimplement or promote Menelick’s agenda?

Woyanes and Shabia ,  aka TPLF, and EPLF must have been called  Axumite Liberation front  instead of  TPLF and EPLF.  Both of you wasted one generation, time, energy, thought, lives, resources to recycle Menelick’s agenda.  To make it worse, you fought each other because you both never had vision because you were not guided by reason, science, and the interest of the people.  And you immersed the people into another bloody war that the people did not deserve after all that protracted long bloody war.  You went back to war because both of you were myopic and vision-less and they were competing for power.   This has put our people into more misery.  Instead of making up for  time lost during the 30 years’ war,  you wasted another 27 years  trying to get rid each other by driven by revenge and to score points  at each other’s  death. These has denied our people peace, security, development,trade,investment, mobility,progress.  To make it worse, you guys are still continue the same path of destruction.  There is an English saying, it says when two bulls fight, and it is the grass that get hurt, not the two bulls who enjoy fighting. I am writing as neutral. I am not taking side because I believe both of you are at fault. I do not see the war, from the beginning you did not have an honest relationship.  Mr. President , we craving for peace. I live outside, I wanted to go back to live in peace and to invest in Asmara, and Mekele, Axum.  You guys you have burnt  generation of time, resources, energy, lives,…and now give a chance to this generation to  rediscover ourselves and restore our Axumite Empire.  Allying with foreigners will change dent on the lives our people and neither America not Saudi are for us?

Saudis wanted to Islamize the world, Americans wanted to Americanize the world. Their agenda is not our agenda.  Holding our people hostage and working with Islamic and American imperialist will not help our people.

For the sake of the coming and future generation, I kindly request you to do radical change in a way that unite the Tigrignea speaker for the sake of their future existence.  Mr.President, your cuddling with Abiy will not benefit our people.  By cuddling with a dubious Abiy you are putting our people in dangerous situation.  I am sure you are following up what is happening in Ethiopia now.  It is a matter of time only, if you both Woyanes and Shabia do not do soul searching, swallow your  pride, arrogance, ignorance, you are putting our people in danger.  The fate of the Tigrignea speakers is the same from whatever direction you can see it.  Unity is power. Peace is progress, development, security.  Please make a new history and leave legacy that can be recorded as Axumite renaissance.  The Persians   reclaiming the empire, the Ottoman are reclaiming their empire, we must do it too.