Eyes on the Prize!

Paulos M. Natnael
Sep. 1, 1999

The newly minted Ethiopians, to borrow a phrase from one of our able dehaiers, the Weyanes and their cohorts in dishonest intellectuals such as Fekremariam Abebe, the author of the article entitled "Reoccupation of Assab: The Achilles' heel of Issayas Afewerki's", ("EEDN-- A Home away from Home" ) are beating the war drums again. The Weyane regime is trying hard to manufacture a pretext to scuttle the peace process. That is why the Amhara elite and hard line Tigrayans, such as the author of the piece mentioned above, are openly advocating the reoccupation of Assab and thereby Eritrea. They want the Weyane to conduct a war beyond the objectives of the Weyane itself, which, according to Fekremariam, "has no objective to reoccupy Assab." They want to transform the border conflict into another war of liberation or occupation of Eritrea. I don't understand why these intellectuals cannot learn from the recent past, from history, from Badme, and from Tserona. Fekremariam advocates, actually maps "a war plan" for the regime, a plan the main objective of which would be the reoccupation of Assab. In his mind that would bring a lasting solution or peace in the region. He is honest if only for once and says he is one of the supporters of "Ethiopia's natural right of access to the Red Sea." A natural right? How does Ethiopia get the right of access to the Red Sea? What right is he talking about?

This Weyane intellectual also writes that the "Eritrean identity is not cultural", whatever that means, but "it is based on military myth and ethos." And here is a jewel, "Had it been based on a cultural identity, Eritrean leaders would not have bombed the people of Tigray..." How simplistic! This, as if Ethiopia never bombed Asmara and other Eritrean towns and villages in the past year (let's leave for a moment the indiscriminate bombings by the Dergue during the war of liberation, and the threat of carpet bombing by the Weyane, their capacity notwithstanding), and as if the Weyane regime didn't start the war in February in a transparent pretext of non-existent bombing raid of Adi Grat by the Eritrean Air force!.

The Weyane intellectual is very dishonest. He should have come to his main objective early on instead of harping about "Eritrean identity" and so on. The fact is the Weyane are fearful of the Eritrean military capabilities. That explains why they have been trying to cast Eritrea as militaristic citing, falsely, Sawa Military training of the past seven (7) years, as preparation for war, blah, blah, blah. In February after the debacle in Badme - their debacle in Badme - they openly called for the need to continue the war in order to destroy this capability. It's obvious why that was needed. Because they cannot achieve their reoccupation dream and "teach Eritreans a lesson they will never forget" if the Eritrean Defense Forces remain strong and Eritrea's military is "in tact." They dwelled so much on that analysis after Badma, and we saw what transpired at Tserona. Oops!

In contrast to all this war mongering by the Ethiopians, we Eritreans are praying for the end of this bloody war and for peace to reign in the region again. We are for peace not because we are afraid what the newly minted Ethiopians are capable of doing (they have proved to be a formidable enemy particularly in the political and diplomatic fronts, ie. lying), but we are for peace because the price we paid in the past and the price we are paying now, our young Eritrean lives, is too high. On the other hand, no matter how many tens of thousands of Ethiopians die in the conflict, the Weyane clique will not care unless the war comes to threaten their own lives.

We'll keep our eyes vigilantly on the prize, folks, the prize of peace even if our enemy, the Weyane regime, has its eyes on another "prize"!

Paulos