Eritreans: The Ball is in Your Court

Aynalem Sebhatu 07-09-21

Isaias Afewerki’s army was charioted into Tigray. The chariot of genocidal war is driven by two political horses: the Amhara elites and Abiy Ahmed. Once in Tigray, the army immediately steels itself for a genocidal war against the people of Tigray.

The Isaias army has attacked, bombed, raped, looted, killed, and harassed innocent civilians wherever they were found. These unspeakable atrocities have been tested out on Eritreans for the last 30 years as a pilot program supported by the security and military apparatus of the country.  The Eritrean and the Amhara furies against Tigrayans is very intense and beyond rational human explanation. We all, including well-meaning Eritreans and Amhara, are struggling to explain the unexplainable deeds committed by the Eritrean and the Amhara forces on so many levels.

Looking from the moral, humanistic point of view and the sovereignty of the country, a Tigrayan is left in a very deep shock if not showing a categorical anger and hate towards Ethiopians and Eritreans in general.  The dark forces have dropped enough poison by injecting into the veins of Tigrayans, no one is quite sure what the future relations hold for the peoples of Tigray, Eritrea, Amhara, Oromo and the Horn of Africa in general.

If there is one winner from the ongoing devastating genocidal war, it has to be the Eritrean dictator. He settled his personal vendetta against the people of Tigray in a very evil way. He is also the one who is managing the dismantling of Tigray as well as the disintegration of Ethiopia as we know it. Isaias diligently designed and planned the war effort for two years and he was executing it with the iron-clad discipline of his murderous army.  The Isaias army is waging a war of savages while the Abiy army and the Amhara elites are cheering while the people of Ethiopia are choosing to bury their heads in the sand at best.

Isaias’ lists of violations of human rights are abundant, so I shall not attempt an instance-by-instance description here. The military and the security apparatus of the country are the foundations of Isaias’ dictatorship, the fountainhead for the suffering of the Eritrean people for three decades and the basis for the most unspeakable evil things committed on the people of Tigray.  Therefore, these high pillars of inhumanity must be dismantled, defeated and buried in order to bring real peace to the region. This means that Eritreans should play a leading role and organize themselves to advance a new democratic political reality in the country, to thwart what most Eritreans see as threats to humanity, and to encourage all Eritreans to renew their dreams and aspirations again of building a new Eritrea.

With all the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Eritrean army rearing its head for the entire world to see, it is immoral and inhumane to support the system in any political form or position. It is with painful disbelief that one has to conclude, after wading through considerable time watching and carefully listening, that the Eritrean debates have given rise to clear divisions among the diaspora Eritreans. It is morally and politically essential for Eritreans to stop demonizing and attributing the worst possible motives to each other.  I hope you snap out of it and make your resolution clear to fight the Isaias regime instead of making even halfhearted attempts to fight the system.

It is disgusting (in light of the genocide in Tigray and the suffering of the people of Eritrea) almost beyond words that some Eritreans render judgement on matters of sovereignty and create a lame excuse to defend the Eritrean army or Eritrean sovereignty. Their explanation is a great perversion of what a country’s sovereignty means. The argument is not going to preserve the integrity of the country’s borders, but it is a guarantee that Isaias Afewerki’s definition of sovereignty would prevail. Understand that violating another country’s sovereignty means eventually violating your own. The fact that the Isaias army penetrated deep into Tigray is offensive enough, allowing the Isaias army to freely kill, loot and rape with the tacit agreement of Abiy Ahmed make their view of sovereignty even more absurd.  In order to defend their argument, they make a habit of minimizing the atrocities committed to the people of Tigray. The oversimplifications of the genocidal war in Tigray make not only for dangerous rhetoric, but also for pitiful logic. Only someone with tunnel-visioned knowledge of the concept of sovereignty and looking to wrap themselves in a quick cloak of self-righteousness, can call for the reconciliation or make peace with Isaias Afewerki or with the Eritrean army.

Ironically, that is exactly what Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki’s arguments are all about. For these two fascists, sovereignty means non-interference no matter what they do to their citizens. Not surprisingly, the conception of non-indifference under the umbrella of sovereignty is foreign to them. Especially when genocide is committed and actively in progress in Tigray, the non-indifference should take front and center. It is not about Tigrayans anymore, it is also about Eritreans as human beings, and it is about humanity in general. Therefore, liberation of Eritrea from the tyranny of the Isaias regime means liberation of all of us from inhumanity.

Eritreans may do as their own sense of Eritrean responsibility dictates, but I will stay the course of encouraging all the opposition groups to empower the people of Eritrea with resoluteness, aspiration and self-confidence they need to defeat the most brutal dictatorship in the region. For now, the focus should be on how to remove the Isaias regime once and for all. After that we all should focus on finding a formula that allows the peoples of Eritrea and Tigray to live together as peaceful neighbors.

Tigray is prevailing!

Eternal glory to our martyrs!