EritreaEritrea.com: Eritrea, there were!

From: Berhane Habtemariam <Berhane.Habtemariam_at_gmx.de_at_dehai.org>
Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 18:12:28 +0200
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fulvio Grimaldi from Mondo cane Controblog - Back in Italy after a couple of weeks traveling around Eritrea is like plunging from a walk in the fresh air in the woods at dawn, between bird songs and burgeonings of blooms, nell'apnea inside one rotting pond. Everything from clear and transparent, it becomes cloudy and opaque, in words and images. We return to Mordor, the dark empire of lies and injustice. Still gigaballe of Regeni and Al Sisi, even the ugly deceptions of Aleppo, still Isis who either accept a crypto Nazi regime, or it blows up everyone, even the charlatans in the corridors of power .... 
With Guerrillas armed struggle for liberation
It was there already, in Eritrea, several times. As always not-nonviolent. The first, just chose to do the freelance war correspondent, having covered the Six-Day War in Palestine for Paese Sera. My elective areas were those where it still was not over the struggle for liberation from colonialism, non-nonviolent and therefore victorious: Palestine, Northern Ireland and, indeed, Eritrea. Eritrea that he would give life to the long struggle for liberation of the whole decolonization: 1961-1991. 
The classic David, all alone, against Goliath Ethiopian behind him, first, all the imperialist West and, then, the whole ' East "socialist" and that he had already suffered, since 1890, the offense of Italian colonialism, that of the "Italians good people", brutal, racist and predator, then, from 1941, the British and finally the annexation to ' empire of a genocidal villain, but dear to the West, Haile Selassie, King of kings. By someone, motivated by neo-colonial appetites, crowned "father of Africa."
May 1971 on the field 
I had walked in the spring of 1971, with the fighters of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which later, after bloody conflicts, would have given way to the Popular Front (EPLF) more net revolutionary inspiration. We set off from Kassala, Sudan, and during a mesata we walked on foot, avoiding the deans and the patrols of the Ethiopian occupiers, but also scorpions, screaming baboons, lions dozing, half thousand kilometers, between going and return. We crossed, dried up by the sun and blinded by sandstorms, the desert and semi-desert of the western lowlands, rincuorandoci in the coolness of the Gash Barka and rivers. 
We climbed the steep and sharp mountains that we raised to the plateau from the rich plantations in the hands of Italian landowners, Denadai, the Jar, which offered us orange cover from sharp-eyed helicopters and fighter in Addis Ababa. We passed the wounded fighters, with bloody bandages, veterans of the battles. We stopped the dry and monotonous diet of tough (a cereal), made ​​scathing dall'incandescente berberè, thanks to a poor dik-dik centered by Kalashnikov, or a goat offered to us by the village head in solidarity with the revolution. 
We skirted Tesseney, Barentu, Agordat, Keren, rebuilt the city in the '30s, especially as the beautiful Asmara and Massawa, in the sign of the happy Italian rationalist style, also called "Fascist". Works of our leading architects and urban planners, one of the few legacies of which we should not be ashamed, even though, of course, is for small and pompous colonial bourgeoisie who were preparing residences and public buildings, not for the "natives", relegated in ' apartheid, beyond the walls of the beautiful houses. 
1977 Danakil under Soviet bombs of Ethiopia 
The second time was in 1977, with a small boat crossing the Red Sea from Yemen, dribbling night warships stationed in sight of the Ethiopian Danakil freed by the Front. We landed at Barasole, just above the port of Assab, access to the sea area from Addis Ababa. It was not finished the ceremonial reception set by the village elders, who arrived the bombs of the new colonialist tyrant, the "red Negus", Mengistu Hailemariam, head of the Derg, the group of officers who had overthrown the old emperor leech and after some occhieggiamento with Washington, he was placed in the arms of Brezhnev. 
And Fidel. Who, mistaking for obfuscation third-internationalist and repenting then belatedly, he sent 15 thousand Cubans to crush a national liberation struggle conducted under the banner of Marx, Fanon, Cabral, Malcolm X, in short, the best on the square. Barasole incinerated with huts, buildings, livestock, people. We, with women and children, rescued in the lava caves behind the village. Then all of a journey to the endless, empty beaches, Dream tourism, and, among the high volcanic rock where the guerrillas hid its infrastructure: hospitals, factories, schools, crops., Between peaks and ravines where Russian pilots tried there and they not pecked us more. 
In 1978, I returned with the guerrillas in the valley on the border with Sudan. This time the city Tesseny, Barentu, Agordat, not passed off, crawling between acacia trees and orchards. We entered triumphantly had been released and already prospered revolutionary, clinical schools, social care centers, community organization. I tried to get to the victorious army in 1989 in its major offensive, down from Nakfa to Asmara, sweeping away the last Ethiopian resistance. But logistics and strategic regulations not allowed and I had to follow the release of our first colony, the victory of a revolution at a time when others were preparing to go out, on the radio, on TV, in the newspapers. 
What then were all full of admiration and sympathy. Red Negus, it is true, there was more and therefore also the "left" could revise their blunders by alignment with Moscow (I even did the Havana, but only in 1989, in games played) and get excited about the win this extreme battle against colonialism, this time the Inter, but with major sponsors to the attacker's shoulders. 
Free Eritrea = rogue state 
And we are here to today. Admiration and sympathy are contorted into their opposite. Algeria Africa, Zimbabwe and Egypt besieged by colonial revanchism, Libya and Somalia disintegrated, South Africa in full betrayal of all its premises, the three Central African puppets that act as fifth columnists for the imperialist reconquest of the Continent . Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, and all the other more or less shackled to Africom regimes, Eritrea has become for all, united in perverse maieutica NATO and neoliberal, the little big black beast. 
The layout is classic, so easy, stereotyped and unpolished, how well accepted the anxiety right-humanist of useful idiots and friends of the jaguar: ruthless dictatorship, one-party autocratic, hard labor, chained and tortured political prisoners, executions of those who FIATA, a youth scorched by perpetual militarization, hordes of desperate people fleeing at risk of a whitewash in the Sahara or drown in the Mediterranean. All stuff already hammered on brains that were then to assist, catatonic or complacent, the destruction of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and its genocide, in the name of recovery of human rights and democracy building. 
Spy or rapporteur of human rights:
A scullery maid (kitchen maid) of such operations is such Sheila Keetaruth, former head dell'arnese CIA in Africa Amnesty International, charged by the UN to find a way to set the scene for the aggression on Eritrea to the Geneva conference of rights Commission human (chaired by the Saudis) next June. 
She never set foot in Eritrea and has collected evidence of Eritrean real and fake raked in Ethiopia in productive collaboration with officials of a country which for nearly seventy years trying, by force of bombs and massacres, with full support and at the instigation of the US , biting the former Italian colony. The credibility laid is based on this background, as the gullibility or complicity of the media and all of Western political forces. That is that of the "judges" of the International Court of Justice (the one that incriminates only those of black skin), or Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (the one who kills the cell is not able to prove guilty). 
Imperialist demonization, truth Eritrean
Given the results of the multiparty system as adopted by the comprador classes of neocolonialism (without even talking about the one in use by us, where all diversity is homologous in broad agreements), Eritrea has organized the State and the participation of the population in the people's Front for Democracy and Justice (FPDG), direct heir of the guerrilla Front (EPLF), which led the country to freedom and independence. Isaias Afeworki, true father of the country and an expression of unity and common destiny of a people composed of nine ethnic groups and three religions, commander of the EPLF since its creation, is its secretary. In the imagination of the people corresponds to Fidel, Chavez, Gaddafi. 
Of Isaias (in Eritrea all turn to each other with the first name, the second being that of the father) in the streets, in shop windows and offices there is no picture so much so that i had to go on google and see what today's man differed from that, very young, i saw in Khartoum in 1978. Nor are seen - let the side step - for large boulevards dell'Asmara or Keren , groups of young people from the evening stroll, or in little groups of seniors to countless cafes "Empire", "Three Stars", "Maria", in the queues for the film "Roma", "Green", "Empire", the flat faces who we have lost and lost in the world techno-deficient concoctions of smartphones. The phone mobile have it and sometimes phone.
But mostly they look, feel and speak. Nor are they stumbled, at bus stops, in public buildings, around ministers and political leaders, in the alleys that wind through the villages of tukul, among the sycamores in the lowlands, in whose shadow you gather the assemblies of the country, in markets dazzling colors -formicai nor the military with machine gun shouldering, or bodyguards, police in Robocop, we passed to the security guards and effective tool of intimidation. 
Clinic of the Front in Danakil
To find a policeman - disarmed - I had running on arrival in Asmara, the Cycling Tour of Eritrea (with participation of Tuscan team "Love and Life"), under the stands that Colonel Mengistu had assembled to watch the parade of its armed and that, clubbed and kicked the red Negus, now engulf the mob into a frenzy for his fellow cyclists, the first eight on arrival at the standings of the eight participating nations. In the stands three ministers I interviewed: Information, Agriculture, Health. Even the shadow of a body guard. He runs well for the country also Isaias. I wonder if it's because it does not give a fuck him to perform with a personal army, or because quiggiù no notable risk throwing objects, or insults. I met several students, peasants, merchants, barmaids, engineers, scientists. And ministers and leaders of the Front. From one to the other there was no continuity of human solution. I came away, in any case, with the feeling of having met good people, authentic, taken from what they do, they believe. And if I think of the faces and the ways of our rulers is how to move from a novel by Calvino Island of the Famous. 
A light in the Horn of Africa 
The country is poor, but standing. In 2009, the UN has decreed sanctions and renewed in 2011 and gradually, China and Russia abstained piratescamente. Quell'ONU, fig leaf of all the atrocities the US and EU, which have always Eritrea wanted badly. In the '50s, parties Italians and then the British, they wanted her federate to Ethiopia and then did not say anything when the bloodiest and dull monarch of the entire continent if it is built. It favored dreamed of providing solidarity and support, at least politically, to a liberation struggle cost the Eritrean tens of thousands of victims, between civilians and combatants and endless destruction. 
Fight of the poor, in sandals made ​​from tires, against tanks, the Mig, the Phantom, provided to Ethiopian lackeys by the superpowers. Maybe at the UN, which still is inexorably ear of the White House, a presentiment that quell'Eritrea with a waterproof Front at all external influences, Arabic, African or Western it was, it would not be finished as with India , or South Africa, immediately returned, through the Commonwealth, the capitalist orbit. Won, the Eritreans, arming with weapons captured from the enemy. Those of the enemy destroyed still line the large road between east and west, north and south, on the edge of the capital, have made ​​a hill is a memorial and a warning. 
Watchword ever: Resilience 
And today they win thanks to the same criterion : resilience and self-sufficiency, without having to say thank you to anyone, nor bowing. And it works. In the struggle they have learned to get busy on their own, inventing everything from plates of trucks transformed into rocket launchers, the sandals of the guerrillas, precisely, from recycled tires. A suburb of the capital is all an immense recycling workshop. And 'one of the shows of transformation and recovery of what we will throw the most impressive I've ever seen.
There is no metal waste, plastic, wood, paper, cloth, which does not come back to life in the hands of this huge industry spontaneous and artisan. After all that Eritrea is a true ecological obsession. Bandits safaris that, in other states, approaching extinction of all native species. Baboons greet us from the edge of the roads, ostriches compete with off-road, gazelles, elephants and lions are returning on the banks of the Gash and Barka, where the fighting and the bombs had dismissed them. The whole Eritrea is a nature reserve. And so the Red Sea, its corals, its marine life and its endless white beaches and islands. 
The mining industry is discovering profitable - gold, silver, copper, zinc, potassium - and is spreading with the intervention of foreign companies in a consortium with domestic ones. A Bisha, in the extreme south-west of the country, where they extract copper and zinc, the head of environmental health and safety has put us an hour to elencarci rules and measures dictated by the legislature to prevent the strafacciano as investors in Romania or Peru. (beginning to there be many, in spite of sanctions and threats of the State Department, attracted by a mixed economy and resources that make it acceptable stringent state regulations). The large amount of water required for the extraction is recycled to 80%. 
And the problem of water scarcity, the torrential rivers and only seasonal, is being addressed by the construction of dams that collect rainwater. And thanks to these that the recurrent droughts have affected Ethiopia and other countries with vast arid extensions, but they could be overcome in Eritrea. Where green fervor meets at every bend of the streets "imperial", between zero on the Massawa sea level to 2,400 of Asmara, built by settlers between 1890 and 1941, and now well maintained and sustained. 
Along one of these there Dogali, where a lieutenant colonel imbecile in 1987 he sacrificed to his inexperience and spawning colonialist De Pretis 500 young farmers and Italian workers. Shortly after there is the shrine of Adwa, where nine years later, more poor conscripts were cut to pieces by the Abyssinians. From parts of Keren is the Italian cemetery. The keeper, with a miserable pittance of Rome, unknown to my shame written on entry: "HEROES" and then the sight of a cemetery divided into two. On the one hand hundreds of headstones with names, surnames, dates and levels of the Italian fallen. And many flowering plants of Bouganville. On the other, as many tombstones, dry, with one each written: "Ascaro unknown." 
"Ascaro unknown." 
Tiered Mountains, with terraces that are multiplying on every slope, curb erosion and reforest. The afforestation is perhaps the main ecological commitment to the state and the population. They engage local communities, with all adult members. It reinforces the military employed in the civil service. Already, those soldiers on which rages the cliché of a conscription without end, vexatious, which erases opportunities and freedom. Not to mention that since Eritrea gained independence day remains under slap those who use the Ethiopians to bring the rebellious country obedience Imperial. 
In the following decade had to suffer and win two wars of aggression. In spite of the Algiers agreements of 2000 have determined the boundary lines, the rest faithful to ancient tracks, Addis Ababa continues to occupy Eritrean territory unpunished. Without the UN raise an eyelash. And it is still these days the umpteenth threat of Eritrea wars launched by Hailemariam Desalegn, the successor of the despot Meles Zenawi. 
That this has deprived a nation of less than 5 million people a disproportionate defense effort should seem natural. Today, however, military service is limited to 18 months, mostly engaged precisely in service to the community. Worse Israel, where, after two years of compulsory service, you are called back up to 50 years and the commitment is all for the extermination of Palestinians, large or small. But no one talks.
The irrigation fall, rain, channeled, expands continuously cultivated land. There are dedicated integrated farms which pursues territorial self-sufficiency through breeding, cattle, sheep, poultry, and crops of cereals, legumes, vegetables. Large complex of 14 thousand chickens, goats and hundreds of thousands of dairy cows across the country, and are a model for family farming, where a couple of cows, chickens, goats, vegetable gardens, an orchard, it covers their own needs and aspires to a 20% for sale local market, either directly or through cooperatives. 
Eritrea is a beautiful country, between the tropical and alpine. A dream of ecological and cultural tourism. Fascinating geological configurations and different even as the galactic fiction has been able to imagine. The blackest black Africa and then the modern rationalist urban and community life that reconciles Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics, with all their grand cathedrals and mosques. May have some resentment, these children and grandchildren of a colonization that has robbed and humiliated them, as well as making fight and die grandparents, from Ascari, in the wars of genocide in Libya fascists and Ethiopia. 
I think while walking in Asmara, for Viale della Liberazione, including girls-twig in leggings and ladies in wide skirts with large white shawl and hair still in braids on the nape. This avenue was then called "fenced field" and divided the city in two. On the one hand the settlers gentlemen with palaces and villas, cinemas and clubs, on the other hand the natives and their shacks. From here the other party would not work, except to make the daily: waiters, dishwashers, cleaners, sweepers. 
They would have any reason to resent you cross these our white faces with Sony puntategli cameras on him. In fact, they avoid them, but for a healthy suspicion to act as folklore, as it looked for a time gentlemen curious exoticism. But as soon as greetings, smile, has suffered an endless whiteness of teeth on a dark background. 
And I think I feel a breath of former times, lost, when you were little and all the things you were still together when there was the ' every man for himself, faster, stronger, more fregone, more sunk into the bottomless his mobile. Here smile all, you're wrapped in warmth vapors, there is a kind of wave of understanding that we are all human enveloping, calms, comforts, make merriment. Once you say your name and all call you every time we meet you. It becomes part of a collective memory, and if you stop, a collective life. 
Other than dictatorship. Before I talk about Eritrea here in the West, and especially in Italy, we will stop. Is covering the political havoc, moral and cultural factors that we parted from inflict a succession of scoundrels bands, open a history book and note who we have on the shoulders, if not on the collective consciousness, the marshals Graziani of the thousand hanged between Addis Ababa and Assab, Marshal Badoglio of extermination with gas. And then it is silent. 
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Received on Mon May 16 2016 - 12:12:30 EDT

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