At face value, the international community might think that the fate of Badme is the bottleneck for finding a lasting solution between the two neighboring countries. However, Eritreans know better and the main source of the recurring war and misery between the two countries is the insatiable appetite of successive Ethiopian rulers to illegally occupy Eritrea or in the current rulers case is to create a failed state that can facilitate their agenda of annexing a large swath of Eritrean territory and possibly one of its ports to the so called greater Tigray. Badme, time and again, has been exploited as a window dressing for the wider agenda. It is now becoming as clear as a day light that the ruling party in Ethiopia had accepted the much talked Algiers' deal only as a tactical maneuver aimed at buying more time and extorting more green leaves from donor nations. It accepted the peace proposal only because its third offensive train ran out of steam and it needed enough time to rearm itself to wage another war of aggression against Eritrea.

As General Sebhat, Eritrea's Ministry of defense, in the aftermath of the third offensive said, the rulers in Ethiopia had a clear picture of the cost of acquiring every inch of Eritrean soil. However, Meles & Co. seem to not learn from their past experience and they are continuing to gauge the Eritrean political and military barometer through a distorted prism. Ethiopian rulers think that their mercenaries, who are busying themselves by burying fresh mines along the soon to be demarcated border to frustrate the whole peace process, will lead them to their grander ambition. It is sad that Meles & Co. still dwelling in such line of thinking as they had ample opportunity to witness the role of those failed forces during Eritrea's struggle for its independence. These bankrupt forces didn't help Mengistu to squash the indomitable Eritrean spirit for independence and they are not going to help the dying MLLT regime in realizing its pipedream of reversing the hard won Eritrean independence either. On the contrary, such actions from the Eritrean mercenaries will galvanize the will of Eritreans to rally behind their sole guarantor of the peace process-- the gallant Eritrean defense forces.

Now for Meles & Co. the time for confusing the international community is totally exhausted and what the peace loving Eritreans expect from the international community is not to talk the talk but to walk the walk and tell Ethiopia in a language it understands, i.e., to stop violating international laws and norms or face tangible consequences. It is nice to hear UNSG, Kofie Anan, advising the international community not to be complacent and act now before it is too late. It is very true, because past complacent attitudes exhibited by Anthony Lake and Suzan Rice had encouraged Meles and Co. to continue a horrible war of aggression that resulted the death of hundreds of thousands souls. It would be nice if Anthony Lake and Suzan Rice could retroactively inspect their role in the mediating effort and tell the world now that who was following the law of the jungle and playing with their minds! It would be also nice if Suzan rise could revisit her Ouagadougou stand and see the facts that after all Badme was only a pretext to Meles' & Co. wider agenda to reverse Eritrea's hard won independence.

Now it is up to the guarantors of the peace process to act and save the two countries from carnage of war or face the harsh judgment of history for their inaction and appeasing the aggressor party. As for Eritreans, history has thought us time and again that our only guarantors of peace and security of the country are none but our gallant defense forces who stayed put to brought Meles & Co. lies and deceptions for the whole world to see.

*Acknowledgement: the Badme picture above was acquired from IRIN files.