Happy New Year 2022 to the besieged nation of Eritrea and its people.
May the New Year 2022 finally release the nation of Eritrea and Eritreans from the 30-year
tight yoke of Isayas Afeworki, the deadliest dictator of the century. Goodbye to the year 2021
and hello and cheers to the year 2022.
The nation of Eritrea cheerfully gained its independence after an arduous and costly armed
struggle of 30 years against an occupying army of Ethiopia, in 1991. Right after the country
became independent, an iron-fisted, self-proclaimed president for life, called Isayas Afeworki,
along with a handful of collaborators, defiantly seized power, by betraying the Trust of and
the promise to their martyred colleagues.
In the 30 years of governing, they destroyed the country beyond repair, socio-economically,
politically, and diplomatically. Even after the Eritrean people ratified their independence,
through a referendum of 99.98% vote, in 1993, the dictator terrorized the whole country by
denying the people all their democratic rights. He denied them the basic freedom of speech,
free movement, free press, parliament, and no national constitution. The country was left
without any functioning governmental framework, whatsoever, with no economic budget,
public health; medical services; adequate educational programs, and national defense forces,
who protect and defend the country, not the defunct presidency. Eritreans, who showed any
signs of opposition, were either mercilessly killed or thrown to prisons, without any chance of
appearing before any court of law, to determine their guilt or innocence, because there is no
judiciary system in the country.
In order to continually stay in power without any opposition for life, Isayas cynically
instituted an exploitative system of slavery for Eritrean students under the guise of the
Eritrean national military service program. The program started in 1994, but most of the
recruits are still serving, and nobody knows when it will end. The program involves students
ages 16 years and older, and for 18 months term, but in practical terms, it ended up being a
non ending service program.
The country does not provide any kind of government-funded public service programs, for its
citizens. Hence, the so-called national military service program should not be applicable to
the unfortunate Eritrean students. When a recruit, who has fulfilled the mandated 18 months
service term submits an application to be released even after 25 years of service, and the
application gets approved, at all, the leaving certificate provided, deceptively shows 18
months of service, instead of his/her actual number of years of service.
On the students’ military service program, the recruits are being used as slaves to provide
free service for the army brass’s personal business interests, or for government-run
businesses. For the females, it is double jeopardy. They are being used as free labor and sex
slaves. The unwanted sex exploitation, especially perpetrated by the army brass, some of
whom are married ones is highly disturbing and toxic, and such national disgrace and other
merciless crimes committed by the army echelon are tacitly endorsed by Isayas, and
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surprisingly to the point that even the general public has taken them, as business as usual.
Some of the generals and colonels are also heavily involved in human trafficking and selling
organs from displaced Eritrean youth.
Since the country is ruled solely by the imbecile dictator’s intuitive decrees only, the country
had become and still is a living hell for its people. A substantial percentage of the Eritrean
people are living in extremely crowded and filthy prisons and underground silos, under the
most extreme and horrifying living conditions. On the basis of such unbearable living
conditions in the country, the general public, young and seasoned, are left with no
alternative, but to continuously flee the country to wherever their feet led them. But, many
of them have been perishing in the Mediterranean Sea, on their way to the Western
democracies, in search of political asylum, and others also face similar obstacles and deaths in
the Sinai desert, on their way to Israel.
Eritrean professionals, entrepreneurs, businessmen, and women, who have been barred from
providing their services to their people, have also been compelled to escape the country to
other African countries and elsewhere, in order to sell their professional skills and
experiences. That being a small fraction of the internal socio-economic and political
manifestations of the Eritrean landscape, the foreign relations of Eritrea, especially with its
neighboring countries was that as soon as Isayas Afeworki proclaimed president for life, he
openly started bad-mouthing and undermining African leaders collectively. He also initiated
unnecessary wars against almost all of his neighboring East African countries, such as
Djibouti, Yemen, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
He has also been secretly sending Eritrean soldiers, as paid mercenaries, to many neighboring
African countries that had sporadic wars against their neighbors, such as the Congo Republic,
Rwanda, Burundi, and South Yemen. On the contrary, he has been an ally and supporter of
most of the regional revolutionary movements, such as Al Qaeda, Al Shebab, and other
similar revolutionary movements that were viewed as anti-Western Capitalism and Israeli
Zionism. While so doing, it was not because he believed in their political ideologies and/or
causes, but simply due to his being a disturbed psychopath, who continuously enjoys
watching human blood being spilled, anywhere and everywhere.
Human life is the most sacred and precious value that every human being owns in this world.
But, to the cardinal of sin in Eritrea, destroying human lives, in the thousands or even in the
millions, is his pleasure and fantasy. That’s why he can’t live without instigating skirmishes
and wars wherever he can. He never had any friends in his whole life, and once he quarrels
with an individual, groups or national leaders, he holds deep grudges against them forever,
and he stays sleepless until he vengefully gets rid of them. That being his true nature, he was
at one time, a close friend and an ally of the Tigrayan Peoples Front (TPLF), HEWAHAT, and
when his actions changed that friendship into adversity, he instigated war against them in
1998 thru 2000, under the unfounded pretext of a border dispute. Since he didn’t win that
war, he harbored a grudge against them, until he could find an opportunity for waging
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another war and get even with them. When Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia,
who, similarly, had a wild and impractical dream of becoming the 7th King of Ethiopia, at this
time in age, he convinced himself that he can learn all the necessary tricks to succeed on his
impractical and hallucinated dream of becoming a king only from Isayas Afeworki, who had
managed to maintain power in Eritrea, for the last 30 years. With that kind of conspiracy
theory in mind, Abiy approached Isayas to become his mentor on his war plan, and
conveniently, his war plan coincided with that of Isayas’s, and they deceptively started their
dramatic planning, to militarily destroy HEWAHAT, about two years before they started the
war in Tigray, on November 4, 2020.
On the conspiracy planning of both, Isayas and Abiy Ahmed, to attack Tigray, Isayas was the
main architect of every aspect of the war planning and execution. They naively projected to
decisively decimate the Tigrayan stronger army in just two weeks, which was a wrong
calculation to undermine an adversary with excellent military skills, and exceptional discipline
of the HEWAHAT leadership, and also the devoutly determined, war-hardened, and faithful,
Tigrayan people.
Isayas joined the Eritrean war of independence in 1965, as an American CIA agent and
Ethiopian government’s stooge, with the intent to disrupt and divide the Eritrean Liberation
Front, from within. When the Eritrean people were aggressively engaged militarily, against
the Ethiopian army of occupation and enjoying early military successes on the ground, Isayas,
the arch-enemy of Eritreans, was secretly and skillfully liquidating the cream of the crop of
the Eritrean cadres and war strategists. He never worked as a military fighter, nor did he ever
fire a single bullet against the Ethiopian army, during the Eritrean war of independence.
Therefore, Isayas has no military skills or experience to share with the Ethiopian army in their
quest to militarily defeat HEWAHAT. The only things that Isayas is good at are: Skillfully
blackmailing innocent people, misleading, and polarizing people against each other, creating
Hollywood type of dramas, mass killings, creating dramatic terrors and lawlessness. He has no
clear stand on anything unless he believes that it will enhance his main objective of staying in
power, as the supreme leader, for his whole life.
Isayas and Abiy Ahmed have the same goals and aspirations. Both of them are adamantly
committed to becoming supreme leaders for life, at any cost. In addition, both of them have
the following, similar traits: Both of them are bigots with extreme cruelty in mind and
faithless, who defiantly adhere to their intuitive plans, irrespective of whether or not facts on
the ground, logic, common sense and world opinions support their plans and ideas. Above all,
both of them are pathological liars, with zero credibility.
As the president of Eritrea, Isayas has been a close friend and confidante of the Middle East
Arab Monarchs, and so was he with the state of Somalia, which is a close neighbor to
Ethiopia. Those countries have been historical enemies of Ethiopia. Ironically, those countries
are now allowed by Isayas to directly meddle in the internal affairs of Ethiopia, which is a
charade. That being the background information, Isayas deceptively misguided Abiy Ahmed
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to militarily involve Turki, China, Russia, Israel, and Eritrea, in order to collectively and
collaboratively attack Tigray, the Northern province of Ethiopia, militarily and also hasten its
demise. While Somalia and Eritrea sent their military forces, the rest of the conspiring outside
countries sent all kinds of drones, airplanes, and other logistics. Such intrusion amounts to
Abiy Ahmed naively committing treason against his own country by giving higher priority to
his personal power ego, over the national interests. Logic and common sense can tell us that
those countries that had historical adversity with Ethiopia, can most probably, have their own
hidden agendas, to implement during Ethiopia’s socio-economically and militarily weakest
moments.
Such unfortunate chaos arising from Ethiopia’s self-inflicting internal wars offered a great
opportunity for the adventurous Eritrean dictator to invade the Tigray province with all his
military might, by sending his army battalions supported by heavy artilleries and armors,
from three different border fronts. He also coordinated his troops’ efforts with that of the
Ethiopian defense forces, the Amhara, Afar, and Oromo militia forces along with about 5000
Somali troops. In addition to the well-coordinated military carnage, the Tigrayan people have
also suffered from intentional deprivation of food supplies, medicine, medical services and
other human vital needs. Abiy’s forces caused in wanton disregard, the deaths of thousands
of lives in Tigray, including infants, children and the elderly, which is an outright crime against
humanity.
The state of Eritrea doesn’t have any internet, independent newspapers, and other media
outlets. Plus, people cannot even congregate in any number of more than three people, and
also by design, there are no sustaining water supplies or electric services, most of the time.
The scope and nature of the crimes that Isayas Afeworki has inflicted upon the Eritrean
people since the early 1970th can speak volumes, but due to the limited size and scope of this
piece, cannot be adequately enumerated.
As an extension of all the crimes against Humanity that the Eritrean security and military
forces had committed against the undeserving Eritrean people for over 30 years, the same
perpetrators are now repeating the same indescribable crimes against the Tigrayan people
for over a year now. They have indiscriminately, tortured and killed many innocent Tigrayan
civilians, and also by blocking almost everything that the needy could use for immediate
survival. They intentionally destroyed buildings, factories, crops, food items, Schools;
Churches, Mosques, and all kinds of other treasures belonging to civilians, as well. They raped
young girls, women, and mothers, with extreme cruelty. Those horror stories are totally
mind-boggling to the vast majority of Eritreans.
The irony is that Isayas’s and Abiy’s gross crimes committed in Tigray and the Southern parts
of Ethiopia, do not materially or politically benefit Ethiopia, nor to the majority of the Amhara
ethnic group that Isayas pretends are his allies. The truth is Isayas has always been a vocal
enemy of the Amhara ethnic group in Ethiopia. He once said in the open “in order to defeat
the Amharas is to divide the country into different ethnic groups.” He is now doing
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exactly that. ” Again, after Eritrea’s independence, he officially banned playing the Amharic
music in Eritrea, and he enforced his decree. The present alliance we are are witnessing
between Eritrean soldiers and the Ethiopians is only a matter of “marriage of convenience,”
between the duo dictators. In reality, Isayas has never been a friend of the Amharas and he
will never be. The majority of the innocent Ethiopian people are being misinformed,
deceived, and brainwashed by a few, drumbeating, right-wing zealots, among the Amhara
ethnic group, who are obsessively blinded by the extreme bigotry and hate they harbored,
against the Tigrayan and Eritrean people. If we objectively look back in retrospect, in order to
micro fetch why the Ethiopian internal war was initiated in the first place, and who the true
perpetrators were, it is quite possible that the conclusion will come out to be totally different
from most of the Ethiopian national media outlets have been propagating. The unfortunate
all military crimes have cost hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions of lives, most of
whom are Tigrayans.
Isayas’s meddling and interfering in Ethiopia’s internal affairs did not stop in Tigray only. He
has also been secretly sending his army battalions to the Southern provinces of Ethiopia, and
particularly to the Oromo province in order to fight the Oromo Liberation Front forces. Except
that there hasn’t been enough media coverage, Abiy and Isayas have been decimating the
Oromo people, especially around the Wolega region for about a year and a half. The Eritrean
military forces, most of whom are very young soldiers who have very little military training,
and no experience. According to unconfirmed news sources, those Eritrean soldiers who
went to the Oromo areas, mostly around Wolega, and most probably, will again, send his
mercenary soldiers to Somalia, for the presidential election to take place, soon. Literally
speaking, wars consume people’s lives, and under most instances, wars do not solve any
problem. The only beneficiary from Ethiopia’s internal wars is the heinous, Isayas Afeworki.
In this unfortunate war, Isayas and Abiy Ahmed have defiantly caused the loss of hundreds of
thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans and the displacement of millions of families and
innocent civilians. According to reputable, independent Western media outlets, there was
vividly clear ethnic cleansing that has been repeatedly committed inside the province of
Tigray by the Eritrean and Ethiopian military forces, which is an outright Crime Against
Humanity. But the whole world has surprisingly been idly watching from the sidelines. Maybe
violations of international laws of that magnitude, taking place in Africa may not mean very
much for those who could make the difference, unless the victims of circumstance are whites.
It is quite a shame that the whole world could not stop this horrible carnage, leading to
regional human extinction.
Nevertheless, there have been voices of reason and human decency from some Western
countries, headed by president Biden of America’s collaborative recommendation for Abiy to
follow the right path of cessation of hostilities and push for a negotiated settlement by all
Ethiopian Ethnic groups, including HEWAHAT, instead of pursuing his present course of
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hawkish warmongering. This is a bold and moral imperative proposal that should be globally
hailed, except that it is lacking decisive action, which is the only language that both, Abiy and
Isayas can understand. The major problem is the political and military meddling of Isayas
Afeworki and the presence of his troops and criminal security teams everywhere, is an
impediment to regional peace.
More alarming is, that despite the global threats from the fast spread of the deadliest Covid
19 pandemic, that even the most economically powerful countries of the world couldn’t
control, the president of Eritrea, by defying science and abdicating his legal and moral
responsibilities, has refused to accept vaccination in Eritrea, which is the only country to do
so, globally. He only cares about deceptively getting American dollars, without caring for the
health safety of the Eritrean and peoples of the rest of the world. He is now amazingly
overcharging every incoming airline passenger to his country, at the airport, $100.00 dollars
for Covid- 19 testing, and those who tested positive are also quarantined for about 10 days,
by paying substantial dollars on a daily basis. This is one way of making millions of dollars for
him to make, annually. Abiy and Isayas have been secretly shuttling thousands of soldiers
using commercial night flights, back and forth between Ethiopian and Eritrean commercial
airports, for more than a year, in violation of international aviation laws and also without
paying any attention to the needs of the Covid 19 vaccination. Plus, without any concern for
the dangers, that they are posing to the thousands of global people who are coming and
going at those international airports. After this pandemic started in Wuhan, China, in
November 2019, it didn’t take much time to rampantly and swiftly spread to the whole world.
It is a known fact that after President Biden got elected and responsibly and swiftly
implemented the much-needed vaccinations, the death toll in America from the Covid 19
pandemic dwindled considerably from the highest in the world mark to a level that earned
him considerable admiration by the majority of his constituents. The positive effects of the
vaccination have been scientifically proven, and the need for global vaccination should be
moral and legal imperative, without any exception. The state of Eritrea, in addition, has,
unfortunately, about 365 highly crowded prisons and underground silos, in which, according
to some of the released prisoners, about 20 to 25 prisoners are being housed in a 10 by
12foot room, under extremely harsh conditions. During the nighttime (sleeping), there is zero
distance between each other. And in most cases, there is hardly a shower, except in some
areas, they get an occasional bucket of cold water in about 15 days. There is not enough food
or medical services in those extremely filthy cells. According to scientific reports on the
nature and behavior of the Corona Virus, all the environmental conditions in the Eritrean
prison system can instantly fuel the fast spread of the Coronavirus.
The iron-fisted dictator is in total control of all Eritreans inside Eritrea, and in the Diaspora.
He has unleashed his paid spies and assassins in all parts of Eritrea, and the Diaspora. He has
also illegally enforced his mandate of charging every Eritrean inside the country and in the
Diaspora a 2% Tax, and he gets millions of dollars in foreign exchange from it, annually. The
Eritrean people are completely terrorized by this evil dictator, and most of them are living in
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a sort of psychosis. If it were not for fear for their own lives, of their families, and for some
selfish economic interests, virtually, no one would support Isayas. Actually, he is now running
out of his mantra of dramatizing newer tricks of continuous deceptions and falsifications.
Isayas has never had any friends in his whole life, since his childhood and now, he is totally
isolated, with nowhere to go and no place to hide.
The lingering unity problem in the Eritrean global opposition camps is now showing some
progress, in part because, the concept of the Yiakl Mass Movement, which starts at every city
level, globally, spearheaded by Task Force members, termed “The Movement of the People,
by the People and for the People is the real hope. ” This visionary Movement is now getting
wide traction, and the majority of its members are young men and women, which is the most
vibrant demography is, highly receptive to qualitative change. A lesson we can learn from
world democracies is that governments that enjoy Grassroots support of their own people
have a much better chance of getting sustaining future political stability.
Conclusion
The insane war in Ethiopia is, unfortunately, spiraling out of control, and it has to be stopped,
by all means possible, before it endangers the lives of billions of human lives in Africa and
beyond. This war is a single man’s war, exclusively designed and executed by a single man
called Isayas Afeworki of Eritrea. Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, is only a titular
head in this most deadly war of extinction. Isayas has single-handedly ruled the state of
Eritrea with brute force for over 30 years. During all those years of his rule, all his actions
were conducted with very high secrecy, terror, and collaborative ethnic cleansing in Tigray,
Ethiopia. He has been ruling Eritrea by his own caprice, without a national constitution, no
parliament, or courts of justice. Every part of his rule is highly unconventional, that he,
himself, is called, the COVID pandemic 1991. Hence, one wonders whether this man is even
human. The fact that he was able to survive in power for all those over 30 years, probably
supports his belief that he is invincible.
At this time, however, his actions are not only endangering the lives of his constituents and
that of black Africans, but also the lives of the people of the rest of the whole world, which
will have far-reaching implications and ramifications. Lastly, the power makers and shakers of
the world must get fired up, and unequivocally remove the Eritrean dictator from his power
out of concern for the lives of the billions of humans the world over. Upon which, Isayas and
Abiy should be brought before the international court of law, in order to stand trial for all the
crimes against humanity, that both of them have defiantly committed, which will indirectly
mean freeing Eritreans from the total control of the most brutal dictator of the century,
which, in effect, will truly become a Happy New Year 2022 wish, for Eritrea and Eritreans.
Berhe Desta / USA
