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Eritrea’s Flawed Beginning in 1. How It Contributed to What it is Today(This paper was presented a year ago at a conference in Geneva entitled: “Eritrea at Silver Jubilee: Stocktaking on the Nation- Building Experience of a . Translations of same, at least in Tigrigna, will be available soon. Good reading – WA). Introduction “The beginning is the most important part of the work” – Plato (in The Republic)“The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead” – Ralph Waldo Ellison At starting to draft this article, the writer somehow mulled over the word . The approach intends to challenge the ongoing and so far dominant suggestion claiming that Eritrea went wrong only after the 1. At this silver jubilee of their independence, many Eritreans agree that their prolonged and costly struggle did not achieve most of its key promises that included national unity, peace, democracy and prosperity. And under today’s sad situation, many feel that the very survival of the hard- won sovereign entity is gravely endangered. Not having a political transition plan and not being able to address societal sensitivities through inclusion as of day one are argued here to be the most serious mistakes. Long- time friends and close observers. The belief is that their combined voices could have succeeded in putting pressure on the new authorities to allow political space and thus help avert the growth of tyranny that bedeviled life in Eritrea for the past quarter of a century. Given the good relations that existed between the then ruling fronts in Eritrea and Ethiopia, one would assume – and why not! The belief is that such an “Islamist” bogeyman was used to sow fear and stoke mistrust in the society in order to justify the exclusion of those forces that the front’s leader (or leadership) repeatedly generalized in describing as “the rotten, ethnic and confessional factions.”. These include religious, ethnic, linguistic and geographic cleavages which incontestably were and still are weighty in the daily lives of the people. The political divisions experienced during 5. Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was . They all reinforce the argument that adequately addressing the issues of inclusion and reconciliation were important for a successful start in independent Eritrea. In this regard, the article first reviews some factors that led to exclusion. Secondly, it attempts to explain how the participation of the ELF factions in 1. The third section explains the uses of any kind of a reconciliation process in post- conflict situations, while part four examines the cleavages in the society which included paramount national issues that perturbed since the long past Eritrea’s leading patriots – the like of Sheikh Ibrahim Sultan and Woldeab Woldemariam. The fifth section deals with key reactions of the organizations denied return to Eritrea, their well expressed willingness to cooperate with the new authorities, and the belated vindication of their calls for inclusion. This free acronyms and abbreviations finder is a dictionary of useful acronyms and abbreviations for training, learning, teaching, etc. Nadeem Walayat's Financial Markets Trading and Analysis Site. Dear sahay The game goes on and on,none stop from the time you were in a camp in 1976. One thing is clear and that is you will remain in the minority.Job Interview Practice Test Why Do You Want This Job? Answer this job interview question to determine if you are prepared for a successful job interview. Nadeem Walayat is the Editor of The Market Oracle; with over 25 years experience of trading derivates and portfilio management. Ontario masters fastball:league web site hosted at eteamz - Stoney Creek, Ontario, Ontario Canada. The sixth and final section makes concluding remarks briefly pointing out the lessons learned for a way forward. I. Factors that Led to a Bad Start in 1. There were multiple factors that caused Eritrea’s flawed beginning. These included 1) the character of the strong- man and the type of front he succeeded to build; 2) the excessive submission to and trust in the strong- man by his colleagues that ended with their inability to check the concentration of power in one person. This can be explained by taking into consideration his aggressively vindictive and inflexible disposition as a person; his skilful manipulation of differences between individuals/groups as well as his very subtle use of Eritrea’s social cleavages at all stages of his political life. The left ideologies of the period that encouraged small elite control also had their impact in shaping the authoritarian character of the EPLF, as was the case for many liberation movements of that era. In order to grow into an outstanding African liberation organization of its time, the EPLF successfully utilized effective mobilization capabilities; absolute commitment it succeeded to instill in its members; tight internal discipline through fear of severe punishment, and the unshakable position of Isaias and his team to the nationalist cause they championed superbly. It also succeeded to show to the outside world its good qualities – of which it had plenty. But the repressive nature of its security apparatus and the heavy- handedness of its top leadership remained little known outside the country. Not surprisingly, many of the front’s members also admit today to have been ignorant of . However, there were a few exceptions, like an American journalist, John E. Duggan, who claimed his trip was arranged for him by the front’s supporters in North America. After three and half months of stay in the EPLF liberated zone in 1. When I left the EPLF zone and got back to Port Sudan, I felt as though I had just gotten out of prison. This frustration was so great that I knew there would be no way I could honestly relate the things I had seen in the EPLF field without mentioning this all- pervasive background of controlled information. Fears of some segments of the society could also have sprung from the fact that the EPLF. From the ELF side, for instance, the EPLF was ridiculed to have become a force consisting of “one- man worshippers.” A letter, purportedly contributed by a reader and published in an ELF official organ in 1. At last and when the EPLF realized the long- awaited dream on 2. May 1. 99. 1, the first public statement. Leaders and members of the banned organizations were told that they could return home only as individuals. But these organizations and large numbers of refugee caseloads, who were their sympathizers, remained in the Sudan. Thus, the June 2. Eritrea, and denied the existence of other organizations. But the truth was that the EPLF was not alone in the 3. Their demands matched the widespread expectations, but only if reason and logic were to prevail. One could say that even the simple requirement to satisfy the psychological factor of one’s compatriots itself could have required that,no matter how respectable they are, how strong they are, how deviant they are, how badly they have behaved in the past – are included in the process. When asked as to why Eritrea was not organizing a conference like Ethiopia did in the summer of 1. There are no Eritrean organizations but the EPLF. All what I know is of countries encouraging . Consequence of Excessive Trust The other important factor that led to Eritrea’s failure to make a good start in 1. Throughout the years, there was discernible absence of sufficient control by the rest of EPLF leadership over the doings of the front’s . Researcher and close Eritrea observer, Gaim Kibreab, who met many of the leadership elements in the early years after independence, witnessed “ominous signs of vindictiveness”. He added: “Not only were the EPLF/PFDJ leaders unwilling to listen to the . And no wonder that even outsiders found it quite ironic to see Eritrea’s liberators feigning ignorance of the internal make up and history of their own society. They appeared to have strongly believed that only their front was entitled to lead and forge a successful African . This belief could have encouraged them to agree in their great majority to ignore the exigency and long- term benefits of inclusion. Their focus on realizing a developmental state required no . Thus, by accepting the exclusion of other organizations, the EPLF leadership appeared to be ready for . The social milieu that helped the strongman and his team to do whatever he/they wanted to do is also to blame. The support given to the EPLF by Eritrean diaspora communities during the days of the liberation struggle was much to be commended. However, the unqualified support given to the post- independence authorities in the past 2. In the first place, giving unqualified support was not deserved, and, in addition, it was too harmful to other compatriots who were kept at bay after liberation. A good number of Eritrea’s intellectuals remained accomplices in this sin of providing life- giving resources and propaganda support to a regime that did not merit it. They were part of the blame as stated in this quotation: The failure of the large majority of the Tigrinya- speaking Christian intellectuals in the transnational Eritrean communities to take a firm stand against the government’s appalling record of human rights, the exclusion of the opposition groups from power sharing and the relegation of the Arabic language into the background – all have led to the exclusion of the Middle East- trained Eritrean returnees from the labour market. To some intellectuals, who were supportive of the government, nothing was wrong in the country until the border war with Ethiopia because “the hopes and dreams . The initial economic growth reports were taken as indicators of a bright future as if that type of growth is not to be expected for some time in a previously devastated region starting from the scratch. Indeed, those Eritrean elite were dodging the fact that absence of inclusive political and economic institutions finally leads to state failure. No attention was given to the truism that sustainable economic growth and prosperity are organically linked to inclusive political and economic institutions, while “extractive institutions typically lead to stagnation and poverty”. But he had to lament in a recent publication, saying: Unfortunately, the EPLF leadership did not see it fit to accept the proposal, which is one of the causes of our sad predicament. There was no sign that they felt the strongman of the winner front was being further emboldened and left free to start building an absolute dictatorship. One would say in retrospect that what they could have done was to call for inclusion of other political entities and the civil society as of that critical juncture in new Eritrea.
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