Ethiopians are nowadays getting used of hearing glistening battle updates from the warfront. State radio in Addis Abeba brags about ground offensives and hand-to-hand engagements and the "heroic" Ethiopian army inflicting humiliating defeats upon the Eritrean army. This, at a time when the world is watching grisly pictures of thousands of Ethiopian dead soldiers where fighting took place. By now, we know that according to Ethiopian military strategists implementing human waves, gaining some ground and capturing specific areas and thereby loosing colossal number of troops is reckoned as "victory".

War is gruesome, brutal and calamitous. Ever since the beginning of this conflict it was evident that Eritrea did not want war and did everything possible to avoid it. The Ethiopian regime, on the other hand, however, glorified it and certainly actively desired it. True Ethiopians everywhere were and are asking the same question repeatedly: "Why didn't the rulers of today's Ethiopia want to settle this devastating war peacefully?"

Conservative estimates put the number of Ethiopian casualties ever since the eruption of the Eritro-Ethiopian war in 1998 at well over 150 000. Can human beings really grasp figures beyond the reality open to physical intuition? What do these figures mean to the average outside observer?

In the TPLF we have a phenomenon which seems scarcely capable of subjection to rational analysis. A system founded on an utterly repulsive ideology of race-hatred, one of the most economically backward countries in Africa planning war and launching human-wave offensive which kill thousands of young soldiers and perpetrating atrocities against civilians of a nature and scale as to defy imagination.

At the Assab front, one captured Ethiopian soldier tells a gruesome story. According to him, as he and his fellow soldiers saw that their unit could not move forward and the number of dead and wounded companions mounted with each passing second, they decided to surrender. As they ceased shooting and were preparing to give themselves up, one of the commanders to the rear noticed the situation and threw a grenade in the middle of them, killing several and wounding others. He was lucky enough to come out of the situation loosing an eye and other minor injuries. What kind of an army are we dealing with, where front commanders kill and maim their own soldiers who show little sign of weakness?

Young soldiers of grey muttering faces, masked with fear leave their trenches to attack in human waves going over the top of already dead companions, their commanders pointing guns behind them, ready to execute any one of them by the slightest move backwards. They hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, "God please let me come out of this mess alive".

At this time of the year, the area around Assab is under a remorseless scorcher. During these dog days the thermometer lightly ascends at day-time the 50 degrees centigrade mark. It is even arduous to just sit and watch the day pass by let alone lead a battle and spring from place to place. But the Ethiopian leaders decided to launch their offensive through this particular place in order to fulfill their long-time dream of capturing Assab. The leaders sit in their luxury palaces and dispatch thousands of young men to hell in order to satisfy their heinous schemes. Throughout history Ethiopian leaders are notorious for their sloe concern of the high ranking generals and the military hardware. At the early stages of the military revolution of Ethiopia in 1974, General Belete Abebe stopped over in the Gode barracks on his way to an inspection. The next day an incredible report reached Emperor Hailesellasie: the general has been arrested by the soldiers, who are forcing him to eat what they eat. Food so obviously rotten that some fear the general will fall ill and die. The Emperor sends in the airborne unit of his guard, which liberates the general and takes him to the hospital.

Abeje Gelaw Dafr, member of the 24th Division, recounts that they were told to enter Assab by all means. In total the attacking Ethiopian army lost over 11 000 soldiers in its futile attempts to capture the port town. The wounded were left in the desert wailing with no one to provide them with rudimentary first-aid assistance. Some captured soldiers reported to have seen that only wounded Tigreans were evacuated although the majority of the soldiers were from the Oromo, Amhara and other ethnic groups, which the TPLF regime mercilessly uses as mine sweepers and cannon fodder.

In the pockets of one of a dead soldiers, probably an Oromo, a letter was found written to his mother. It seems he was certain of the faith awaiting him. The letter goes:

"Dear mother, of all people I know you are the one that will feel it most, so my very last thoughts go to you. Do not blame me or anyone else for my death, except our rulers. I do not know what to write to you, because I am facing a certain death in this remorseless part of the world. I know I am just a mere number to our army commanders. But I am lucky, I have you at least to remember me after my death. I still have father's watch with me. Once again I say good bye. Courage! Your son. Shiferaw Waktole."

Ethiopia's naked aggression towards Eritrea and its inhuman fashion of leading the battles must have been a source of deep concern to the international community and particular the OAU and the UN. Surely, if there is any lesson that must have been learned in the last two years, it is, as Eritrea was constantly reiterating, that nothing can be gained - and everything may be lost - by continued warfare. Eritrea seeks no territorial expansion. It is not our wish to fight. Yet, if provoked we must - and will - fight to safeguard the sovereignty of our country and preserve the dignity of our people. Let's hope that the TPLF ideologist come to their senses - at last.