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Part 77 UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL

This principle applies to anyone, anytime, somehow and somewhere in the world.

Unity requires great and continuous efforts of good will. It requires honesty, sincerity, sense of co-operation, readiness to listen to the united and uniting forces. Unity requires the continuous application of the strategy of compromise, of give-and-take and of even sacrificing one’s own ego, when this may threaten to damage unity and cause division. Unity demands democratically-minded individuals and elements nurturing democratic principles to regulate dialogues, decision-making-and-taking processes and their actualisations. Unity-looking forces do not and cannot put up with individuals having extreme personal ambitions, showing arrogance and dictatorial attitudes. Finally, unity categorically rejects individuals affected by power-mania, aspiring and struggling only for leadership roles in their own terms.

Without going back in the remote past but basing only on the “uniting and dividing” factors presently affecting the various Eritrean political organisations, let us just consider how “united” we Eritreans are to “stand” and how “divided” we are and could be to “fall.”

Our political organisations, their leaders and supporters could be the forces of our division.

1.- Are those organisations there, trying to unite only their own members and supporters, keeping them separate from strangers, or are they there to unite all?

2.- Whom are those organisations for and why are they there for?

Surely none of those organisations and their leaders would ever deny that, they are there to unite all and that they are there for Eritrea, for its people and for uniting the country and its people. There are no questions and differences therefore on the aims of those organisations but on the principles they adopt and on the interpretations given by their leaders and the actualisations of those same principles. If this were not the basic difference, there would not be so many and varied Eritrean political organisations to talk about. Starting at the very top, the EPLF, as once an armed-struggling force and the PFDJ, as the presently ruling regime in the independent Eritrea, the principle of “nhnan elamanan” (we and our aim/principle) was very clearly defined, followed and actualised. From the very start, “Hizbawi-Gmbar” had categorically excluded any co-operation with whatever force which did not adhered to, accepted and went along with its given and interpreted socio-political principle. Up to these very days, Mr. Isayas Afwerki, his PFDJ regime and its supporters are sticking to that principle thus practically, excluding all those other Eritrean organisations, their principles, their leaders and their supporters.

Even Mr. Isayas Afwerki, his PFDJ regime and its supporters retain that they are there for Eritrea, for its people and for uniting the country and its people. Not many Eritreans, both at home and abroad, would ever admit and accept that the PFDJ regime today is really for uniting Eritrea and its people. It suffice to state that, the PFDJ regime cannot even unite its own self, vividly proven by the continuous defections of its prominent political, economic and military personnel. Not being “united,” the PFDJ regime of Mr. Isayas Afwerki is “divided” and therefore it is not to “stand” but about to “fall.”

It is only a question of time and not of principle. Its unilaterally interpreted and followed socio-political principle is very divisive and therefore very destructive too. In the Eritrean political opposition scene, identical fate could befall each and all of the various organisations if their unity were and remained only partial and parochial. The unity of Eritrea and of its people is not and cannot be brought about either only by the unity of the members of an organisation or even by the union and unity of all the opposition organisations and their leaderships unless the Eritrean people at the grass-root level is also involved. The Eritrean grass-root is not only and cannot even be primarily the Diaspora community but the Eritreans at home, in their cities, towns, countryside and villages. We believe that, the struggle each and all Eritrean political organisations are conducting is to bring and establish democratic principles primarily in the whole of Eritrea and for all Eritreans. In this regards too, the following could be the basic questions to answer, before even considering the values of those various organisations and of their either single or unified activities:

1.- what are and could be the dividing and divisive elements in the country and

2.- what are and could be the uniting and unitary elements for the Eritrean people?

We are not here to repeat thousands times that, the Eritrean is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural society, with precise geographical and administrative territories. We however repeat that we are talking about Eritrea in its geographic and demographic entirety and therefore mainly of the Eritrean rural society which makes the greater number of our population. We have experienced in our past history that, the conflicts and divisions between and within our Eritrean various ethnic-groups have always been caused by external forces acting upon and influencing them. The various ethnic-groups themselves could live peacefully within their own ethno-territorial borders or even within the neighbouring or distant territories resolving their problems peacefully. Constant conflicts, divisions, hatred and total intolerance of each other came about when, for instance, the British military administration had adopted its “divide and rule” principle. The Ethiopian Imperial Government used its “unionists” and non-unionist politics to create conflicts within the Eritrean population. The Dergue regime, in order to combat what it had defined as mainly Muslim and Arab movement, spread confusion in the minds of many Eritrean minds.

In the Eritrean Liberation Movement itself, some units of the various freedom-fighting forces (from Jebha-Al-Tahrir first and Hizbawi-Gmbar itself later) went out on killing-spree of innocent villagers, moved more by ethnic hatred than by national issues. The rural Eritrean population therefore, particularly the Kunama people, cannot forget the crimes those various “freedom-fighting” forces had committed and the present PFDJ regime itself is committing against them. They cannot therefore today blindly believe and trust those same forces which once were and still even today are their most hatred enemies. The Eritrean people have been and are being divided at the grass-root levels and therefore, unless unifying and uniting elements have been found and established at those levels to heal those deep wounds, no other principles, whether they are called “national reconciliation or national salvation conferences” can perform miracles to bring about “unity in our diversity.” Ethnicity and religion have always been the means of division and hatred. Ethnicity and religion therefore are the elements upon which the Eritrean society has to build its unity. All those Eritrean political forces, both within the PFDJ regime and within the opposition, trying to ignore, object to or reject the establishment of the ethnic and of the religious rights of the various Eritrean communities are using the identical divisive elements our previous rulers had adopted to make us hate each other. As Mr. Weldeyesus Ammar, cites in his latest article, according to - the well-known African political scientist Ali-Mazroui – “ethnicity is a more serious line of cleavage in black Africa than religion.” This statement very much applies to the Kunama society where religion is looked at as purely personal whereas ethnicity as the element constituting the Kunama identity.

We then very much wonder how the prominent personalities and politicians like Mr. Weldeyesus Ammar, who is said to be now a member of “Ganta Sium,” refusing to rejoin the ENA, unless this rescinded its two basic articles 3 & 4, which are precisely on the establishment of the “ethnic and religious ” rights of the Eritrean people, are denying those fundamental principles of the African culture. Is this not a tangible example of those fellow-Eritreans who seem to have forgotten that the Eritrean communities and the ethnic-groups they originated from are still defined as the “grass-root” and therefore still very much and primarily concerned with their ethnic, territorial and religious rather than with the purely Eritrean national issues? Whereupon would these people like to build their “unity in diversity” unless on the “religions and ethnicity” of the Eritrean various and varied societies? Is this not also a tangible example of the principle, “united we stand, divided we fall”? The ELF-RC, of which Mr. Sium Ogbamichael and Mr. Weldeyesus Ammar himself are the prominent members, is today indeed divided. We however refuse to predict its fall but the series of elements we mentioned in the introductory part of this article as being some of the components of “unity,” seem to have been failing the ELF-RC’s leadership.

The very fact that, even now, Mr. S. Ogbamichael and his new team are refusing to look for unity with their own break-away unit, which had accused them of committing an unforgivable mistake to reject those two principles, which the new RC’s fraction is ready to recognise and accept as being the fundamental elements upon which our Eritrean ”grass-root” is based, shows the arrogance of the “Ganta Sium” and their stubbornness not to recognise their mistaken position, made clear to it by the very inner circle-members of their own organisation. A leadership which is not prepared even listen to its own members, refuses any suggestion proposed and rejects to co-operate with them, thus leading and forcing them to a total split up, cannot be expected to be a good uniting element with other groups. It is in fact very preposterous of Mr. S. Ogbamichael to state, in his official speech at his Frankfurt festival, that his “organisation will remain positively disposed and continue engaging and make efforts to normalise the situation and explore ways and means of fostering working relations with the entire spectrum of the Eritrean opposition with the aim of paving the ground work for the convening of a conference of national salvation.

” We do not really know how convinced Mr. S. Ogbamichael himself is of his own statements. If the organisation he is leading has already been affected by divisions, due to his refusal to consider the faults of his own leadership-style which has caused the whole havoc, how can he hope of “fostering working relations with the entire spectrum of the Eritrean opposition”? Was is not a clear divisive sign, from Mr. Sium and his team, to call for another locality (Frankfurt) and hold another festival in that same place, at the same time, so as to disrupt and destroy the annual tradition of holding the ELF-RC’s festival in Kassel? Was it not a clear sign of unrepentant arrogance, by the ELF-RC’s present leadership, not to succumb to the legitimately entitled forces criticising its mistakes?

Who and what other organisation is likely either to join Mr. Sium or working together with him if not only perhaps those organisations and individuals already sharing his socio-political ideology of denying the Eritrean people of their ethnic and religious rights? Is, Mr Sium, not a photocopy of his own school-mate, Mr. Isayas Afwerki? What is the difference between Mr. I. Afwerki’s “nhnan elamanan” and Mr. S. Ogbamichael’s principle of “no ethnic and religious rights” for the Eritrean people? The ENA’s articles 3 & 4 state nothing more than “establishing the principles of respect for religious freedom, (ethno-) cultural and national diversities.” No even Mr. Isayas has gone so far to openly deny those rights.

We Kunama are of the opinion that, Mr. S. Ogbamichael and his group are moved more by the humiliation their ego had to suffer, following their defeat at the election to the ENA’s top-leadership post, held during the ENA’s October 2002 meeting in Addis-Ababa. The “Ganta Sium” has not yet recovered and refuses to recover from that great shock. It could not digest that, a leading opposition organisation like the ELF-RC, were not to lead the ENA. Mr. Sium and his close friends and supporters would therefore rather sacrifice even the unity of their own organisation than give-in to that very painful rejection, defeat and humiliation. According to the textual words of someone who was present at the Addis meeting: “Sium was going around telling every participant to elect him but we told him we could not elect him because he is a dictator.” If this were the real scenery, then the walk-out engineered by him and the consequent turmoil within the ELF-RC organisation ended up with the present division into two factions, was the logical development of the plans and actions of someone dictatorially-minded and charged with a pure power-mania, just like Mr. I. Afwerki himself. We Kunama would not be surprised if, one day, Mr. Sium and his “Ganta” (squadron) would be joining the EPLF-DP and together, the PFDJ regime itself. The man and his followers seem to have all the required elements and qualifications to being the up-coming “Shaabia:” The example of the ELF-RC, now led by Mr. S. Ogbamichael is a real “wake-up call” to the ENA, to its sister-organisations and to all the other Eritrean organisations that, only “united” can we “stand” but “divided” we will surely “fall.” Let us remain “united.”

The RKPHA ( August 15, 2003 ).

width full permission from Secretary General Herui Tedla. We invite our readers to send any questions, comments you may have regarding to this article to