In its latest issue of November 12, 1999, Africa Confidential waited five months to report on battles that it purports to have occurred the third week of June. Its editors were probably fine-tuning the methodology of how to present their "confidential" findings. I will next present my observations on the style and substance of what they have come up with. But keep in mind that in his June 25, 1999 article of the Independent, Patrick Gilkes had already made up his mind about who had done what when he wrote, "Last week Eritrea failed to re-take Badme,...".

I will start with an observation about AC's deceptive style. They have this little gimmick of including, usually between quotes, the nicknames of Eritrean officials. For instance, they would write Haile Weldensea "Duru'". Such little antics are in the classic tradition of the confidence gamester. A con-man (confidence man) uses elaborate tactics to first gain the trust of his victim. AC's fondness for nick-names is precisely designed to do that, to con its readers by creating the impression that they are privy to very intimate facts. Their intention is for their readers to reason: If they had gone to the trouble to accumulate such minute details, then there may be some merit to their authoritative sounding statements on matters of substance. But what we all know is that nick-naming is a prevalent EPLF tradition. And even today, there are Eritrean who would be hard put to tell you who Haile Weldensea is since the Eritrean foreign minister is known to them as Haile Duru'. But I doubt if the editors of AC know why Haile Weldensea was nicknamed Duru'. Of course, they can find this out as there is nothing confidential to it. There is no need for them, though, to rush to their closest Eritrean "sources" to find out what Duru' means in Tigrinya so that they may write in their next confidential installment on Eritrea (which is probably due anytime now as Duru' is about to be axed) Haile Weldensea "armoured". Let's see how they employ what I will call the nickname trick and other similar tricks in their latest confidence game:

Conventionally, Eritrea began with a rocket and artillery barrage, followed by infantry. The 271 Corps (one mechanised and three infantry divisions) was supported by the similar-sized 381 Corps (General Umar Hassan Teweel) and 161 Corps of three infantry divisions (General Felipos Woldeyohanness, demoted after February's failure but reinstated), plus elements from 2001 Corps (General Gabregziabher Gebremaryam "Wacho"), 491 corps (General Haile Samuel "China") and 525 Commando Division: a total of one commando, eleven infantry and two mechanised divisions. Ethiopian forces commanded by General Samora Yunis, included the 21st, 22nd and 23rd divisions and were quickly reinforced, reaching a total of seven.

Notice how generals are named, units numbered and nick-names appended. Very impressive sounding. To the con-editors of AC, this is enough to establish trust (con the reader, in other words) so that they may sneak in such probable fabrications as "demoted after February's failure but reinstated." Is it possible that a General demoted after February (say March) is reinstated three months later and allowed to participate in a major offensive? I doubt it. Note that they did not mention this demotion in their April 30, 1999 report when they claimed that other commanders were "said to be replaced, or even arrested." Their hot-link to the All-Knowing was probably down that week-end, or who knows, may be General Felipos was demoted after April 30 to be reinstated for the June 18 fighting. We had heard from the Ethiopians themselves of many generals that were demoted in March, chief among them, General Sibhat Ephrem, the Eritrean defense minister. For example, the "Monitor," a paper owned by a Tigrayan said to very close to the Weyanes, wrote on March 6, 1999, that, "Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has reportedly sacked his defence minister." The Weyanes were unable to produce any evidence of their "total victories." That is why they resorted to using the rumour-mills to create the impression that Eritrea must have suffered heavily in the Badme fighting if generals were being dismissed right and left. The Weyanes were only targeting their not well-discerning people, though. But who do the editors of AC want to fool with this scurrilous trick?

Is it a mere coincidence that General Samora Yunis seems to be invariably pitted against three or four Eritrean Generals? Here is what the Monitor wrote on March 6, 1999 about the battle of Badme:

Mr. Sibhat in person had commanded the more than 50,000 Eritrean troops during the February 23-25 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over Badme. There were also 3 Eritrean major generals in the operation. On the other hand the Ethiopian counter-offensive named "Operation Sunset" was known to have been headed by one brigadier general.

Elsewhere, it was indicated that the said brigadier general was General Samora Yunis. He is the architect of the human-wave tactics. But the Weyanes and Patrick Gilkes want you to believe that he is Rommel incarnate. Incidentally, notice how General Sibhat has become Mr. Sibhat. And why not? The Monitor, after all, had at the beginning of the report already informed its readers about his dismissal.

But to come-back to the subject of nick-names, look at the new one that General Gabregziabher Gebremaryam has acquired, "Wacho." To the editors of AC, nick-names are only syntactic-sugar (to use a phrase from the vernacular of the computer programmers) that are used to lend credibility to their reports by the mere juxtaposition next to the nicknamee's name. To an Eritrean, "Wacho" is meaningless; but they probably mean "Wuchu", a word that is not just a syntactic appendage, but one that has semantics to it as well. But they would have to go to their sources to find out what "Wuchu" means as I am not saying.

Another gimmick in their bag of con-tricks is discernible in the following sentence:

The first assault by Eritrea's 271 Corps, commanded by General Teklai Habteselassie, came at 10:00 AM on 18 June and surprised the Ethiopian forces.

Such sentences are solely designed to leave you breathless with wonder at the military precision of their "confidential" information. It is in the same genre as that nick-name trick. If they could pin-point the time of the onset of the battle to within nano-seconds, how many readers will have doubts (or would be bold enough to express them if they had any) about the veracity of whether it was the Eritreans who actually initiated the fighting, or even if a battle had taken place on June 18 at all? Now, how do the editors of AC know about what they write? It is unlikely that General Teklai told them that his forces attacked at precisely 10:00 AM. Their confidential sources can only be the Weyanes themselves. But, why should they expect the reader to believe the Weyane's version of events? The Weyanes have, after all, proven that they are unscrupulous liars who have, time and again, lied about every aspect of this conflict, and to everybody. So why do the editors of Africa Confidential expect the Weyanes to be anything but self-serving with anything they tell them? And is there any doubt about the culpability of AC when it peddles the Weyanes' story as established facts?

Yet another gimmick is evident in the following:

In Eritrea, criticism of the war is growing, though the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) insures that it's hardly heard; Eritreas 12 private newspapers exercise stringent self-censorship.

Oh ya! But AC hears about them. Pray, what are the critics saying? They would never tell you about such specifics. How can they when it is not in their confidential dossiers? The editors of AC specialize in this sort of chicanery, one where they cannot be pinned down. But how is it that they have discerned that criticism of the war to be growing in Eritrea if "Eritrea's 12 private newspapers exercise stringent self-censorship?" It must be that clairvoyance thing again and one more piece of evidence in support of my hypothesis that they may have a hot-link to the All-Knowing.

Enough with gimmickry. Let's look at some "confidential" matters of substance. Look at the subtlety of their lies by examining this sentence: "Both sides had lost 70,000 men before the June fighting; they have since lost at least 30,000 more, of which most were Eritrean." Anyone who tells you that a pauper with ten dollars to his name and a rich man with a million dollars at his disposal, between them have a million and ten dollars is only trying to lie to you, to create the impression that both have nothing to worry about. AC is doing something similar with its, "Both sides had lost 70,000 men." What did each side lose? Why are they being coy with this aspect of the balance sheet? Having come this far, what is stopping them from going the extra sentence and report that Eritrea lost XXX men while Ethiopia lost YY,YYY men? But let's pursue this matter some more.

In mid-August, 1999, President Clinton told an audience of war-veterans that 70,000 people had died in the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict. But he is only president of the United States, right? I am beginning to believe my earlier suspicions that the editors of AC may be confidants of the All-Knowing. They must have better intelligence sources than a sitting American president if they expect us to believe that Clinton forgot to include the losses of the June fighting, a whooping 30,000 lives. The Weyanes may argue that Clinton shied away from revealing the whole truth because most of the 30,000 he failed to include were Eritreans and, as everyone knows, the Americans are behind a devious conspiracy to deny Ethiopia a super-power status? Why else would they be donating hundreds of thousands of tons in food aid to the starving Ethiopians? But what is AC's excuse? Why did Clinton forgot to include the casualties of the battles of June 18? Could it be that this is so "confidential" that it is only available to AC? Or is it, as one Eritrean surmised, because the editors of AC want to somehow bring the total to 100,000, the figure that the Ethiopian lying machine has put out as the total Eritrean losses?

AC repeats Patrick Gilkes' insight about Eritrean trenches and writes:

Eritrea had seven divisions at Badme against Ethiopia's five; over-confident, it had built only a single line of trenches, which were broken by guns and tanks. At Tserona in March, Eritrean troops had dug three lines; an Ethiopian armoured brigade broke through the first two in six hours but lost more tanks than expected and withdrew when threatened by Eritrean reinforcements.

You would hardly get the impression that Tsorona was the site of a major battle, let alone a disastrous debacle, from this paragraph. It is reminiscent of the way AC dismissed the Derg losses at Afabet. There is no mention about the inhuman manner in which tens of thousands of Ethiopians were driven forward, in a deliberate military strategy designed to use living, breathing humans to clear mine-fields. Don't ever expect to read about it in the pages of Africa Confidential, but at Tsorona, the Weyanes used their much touted human-wave tactics and lost, in one 3-day battle, over 20,000 men and an unknown number of pack animals that were meant to ferry back to Tigray, wondrous treasures from occupied Eritrea. Africa Confidential will never use the phrase human-wave. It will never report about human mine-clearers. Instead, it will try to prove to you that it was only one measly armoured brigade that was involved and that it even almost broke through the Eritrean lines. And having failed to go through, it withdrew. How low can propagandists get? Patrick Gilkes expects us to conclude that the whole world must be lying and that, he and only he, is in possession of the truth, the whole truth. How pathetic! Contrast what Africa Confidential says with David Hirst's words:

The Ethiopian commanders' strategy was simple. Deploying tens of thousands of barely trained recruits along a 3-mile front, they drove forward, wave upon wave, with the sole mission of blowing themselves up on minefields until -- reaching the Eritrean front line -- they had cleared a path for better trained infantry, mechanized forces and armor. About 5,000 peasants accompanied the third or fourth wave, their mules and donkeys bearing food and ammunition for the anticipated Ethiopian breakthrough.

Over 25 news outlets have so far reported on the battle of Tsorona. None of them specializes on African affairs. Isn't it extremely odd that the one publication that has the word Africa in its title is the only one to attempt to present a sanitized version of the horrors of Tsorona? Why do the editors of Africa Confidential feel compelled to "protect" Ethiopia? Why can't they let the facts, and not their confidence bags, speak for themselves? Whatever their motives may be, take it for granted that they will never inform their readers about Tsorona. What they would rather write is:

In June, Eritrean losses were very heavy: against fixed and heavily defended positions, the first and second divisions of 291 and 381 Corps were devastated, as was 525 Commando, used several times as a strike force.

The Commando 525 unit, which by many accounts is the terror of the Weyane forces, has, according to the same Weyanes, a sorry record. It was the Eritrean force they claimed to have destroyed at the Bure fighting in June of 1998 when, according to independent reporters, it was the Weyane forces that were totally routed and driven some 30km away. Susan Rice, in her testimony to the US Congress, confirmed that Ethiopian forces were expelled from Bure in the June 1998 fightings. So, the first report about the demise of Commando 525 was only another one in the endless lies of the Weyanes. At the end of March 1999, the head of Operations and Intelligence Department of the Ethiopian Ministry of Defence, General Aba Dula, told the Walta Information Center that, "The 525 Commando Division itself that had been stationed at the Egela font was also compelled to drink of the bitter cup of defeat," the bitter cup being total annihilation. The Ethiopians had declared Eritrean losses for the month long battles from February 23 until March 26 to be, "more than 45,000 enemy troops have been killed, wounded or captured." The Weyanes had earlier denied that any major engagements occurred in March 1999 and issued their end-of-month lies after the world became aware of the carnage at Tsorona.

And in AC's latest report, 525 Commando had resurfaced only to be devastated again, this time in yet another front, the Badme front. This must be one unfit outfit if every-time it is used, the only outcome is its devastation. There are nine months from June to March. So, it is possible for Commando 525 to have recovered its losses of June 1998 to go on to fight at Tsorona in March of 1999. But how is it possible that a unit that General Aba Dula had declared to have all but been decimated as part of the 45,000 Eritreans killed in March of 1999, how is possible for this unit to fight in June 18, 1999, less than three months later? Patrick Gilkes will never tell us. But one thing is certain, Commando 525 is like the proverbial cat, it just has too many lives. And don't be surprised that if and when the Weyanes launch another offensive, you hear that Commando 525 has been annihilated yet again, only this time it may in the Zalambessa front that you'd have to look for the phantom graves.

Regarding casualties, Isaias Afwerki is now on the record as saying that 70,000 Ethiopians have died in the war and that Eritrean losses are "very small." You may say many things about Isaias, but liar is definitely not one of them. He has repeatedly compromised and has gone the extra mile to get this senseless conflict behind us. On the other hand, the Weyanes are fighting tooth and nail and throwing tons of red-herrings around in a desperate effort to delay the day of reckoning and explaining. In any case, at the end of this conflict, we will all find out whether he lied or whether Africa Confidential had become privy, yet again, to another confidential gem, so confidential that only its editors heard of it. And notice their silly insinuation that "...the PFDJ (formerly the Eritrean People's Liberation Front) refuses to announce casualties." Rest assured that Eritreans will be informed about their martyrs and will accord them and their families the highest honors and gratitude that a nation can bestow. Cry for the multitudes of the Ethiopian dead; for Ethiopia has no tradition of honoring its war dead. And those who sent human waves of tens of thousands of their men to certain death, are the last to want to be reminded of them. The unfortunate Ethiopian human mine-sweepers, who can only be a permanent reminder of the ignominy of human-wave tactics, are already a forgotten lot, as forgotten as the hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who perished in Eritrea in the 30 years of its war liberation.

There were times in the past when, hungry for attention from the world media, Eritreans would be dis-heartened by the distortions of unscrupulous AC editors. But no more. There is a revolution afoot, an information revolution. In an era of info-glut, the ACs of this world are fast becoming irrelevant. The variety of news sources and perspectives available nowadays is so immense that the days when a couple of individuals sitting in London could expect their pontifications to be taken seriously are gone for good. This fact probably explains why, five months after the purported battles of June 18, 1999, the editors of AC want to reveal their "confidential" facts. The Weyanes are reported to be spending fortunes for cosmetic PR surgery. It is not inconceivable that their need for major face-lifts and AC's need to stem its gradual slide to irrelevance have come to a point of confluence.

But the Weyanes are beyond redemption. As their agonized flip-flopping on the OAU sponsored peace deal indicates, today, they are a dis-heartened clique, mortified by thoughts of the eventual revelations of all the lies they have accumulated to their dis-credit. No amount of artistry by the master con-artists of AC will ever hope to erase the ignominy of the Weyanes' primitive military tactics. No tricks to gloss over the debacle of Tsorona will erase the stinging slap by the Americans who suspended all development aid to Ethiopia, mind you, not because the Weyanes looted and deported 60,000 Eritreans, but because of their gross inhumanity to their own soldiers. This must be the first time in history that a government is censured for its cruelty to its own soldiers. No reports of heavy Eritrean losses will forestall the day when all will be revealed. The editors of AC may expect to survive another of their fabrications as they have survived the one they perpetrated on May 29, 1998. But the Weyanes can hardly expect to emerge unscathed after their bogus maps have been revealed to be just that, after it is shown that Badme town and environs are not in the Yirga Triangle but lie to the left of that straight line, after their lies of "total victories," are shown to be total fantasies, after the true story of the oft-devastated Commando 525 is written.

I will conclude by posing the following question: Why should anyone take Africa Confidential seriously on military reports, for which there is not a single third party corroboration, when its editors could miss the disputed territories by thousands of squares of kilometers? There is no doubt that, for reasons only known to themselves, they are engaged in a deliberate policy of dis-information. Their account that mentions generals, Corps, and casualty figures could have only come from the Weyanes. And anybody who relies on the Weyanes is either desperate for news or in their pockets. But what is very telling about the editors of AC and their policy of deceptions is their attempt to cover-up the colossal Ethiopian debacle at Tsorona. They have at best committed gross journalistic negligence and at worst, outright deceit when they failed to report on the tens of thousands of Ethiopians who perished at Igri Mekhel. To para-phrase what one Eritrean wrote in another context, with their fabrications and distorted reports on Eritrea, AC's editors are not only failing their readers, but most of all, they are failing themselves. For no matter what, integrity is always its own reward and deceit its own damnation.

---

warsay