Eritrean government: running out of propaganda tricks

By Gemeda Humnasa
December 11, 2006

The Eritrean government has been using a lot of propaganda and supporting various rebels in an attempt to destabilize East Africa. For the sake of peace and democracy for Ethiopians, Somalis, Sudanese and Eritreans; the government might be running out of its tricks.
We know how corrupt both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments were when they got their share of the cake in the early 1990’s. Words around Ethiopia indicated that the leaders of these two countries, Isaias Afewerki and Meles Zenawi, were even in the gambling business and wasting a lot of their government’s money. This might be just a gossip but their dispute with money has been seen as the original reason of their animosity, instead of the border issue with Badme. No matter what happened before, we must focus on what is the reality today.
Currently, in an attempt to increase nationalism mood in Eritrea and to provoke Ethiopia one more time; the Eritrean government is sparking another war in southern Somalia. It is yet another war started by the young government of Eritrea which was ironically originally supported by the Ethiopian government. Anyway no one can deny that the Somalia Transitional government is weak but that is more the fault of the United Nation’s lack of support to the T.F.G. to get on its foot two years ago. When Kofi Annan gave his last address on Monday, Africans were hoping that he would accept his failure to assist the Somalia transitional government. The reality is the Union of Islamic Courts is threatening to take around 1/5th of Ethiopian land and around 1/4th of Kenyan land. And no one is putting this information in anyone’s mouth. This was publicly stated by the UIC and the jihadists many times. Eritrea claiming to help the radical Islamists to stabilize Somalia is a humorous claim that doesn’t appear funny to those serious about creating peace and democracy in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
Everybody knows Eritrea doesn’t have any independent or private media. But the world is not stressing this issue just for the sake of calling it “private.” We are stressing it because when a country has a private media, its dirt and mistakes would become public just like the dirt and mistakes of the Ethiopian government and then improvements can be made. Even more, when private media exists, most likely multi-party system will also exist and the chances of a one-party government supporting jihadists and Al-Qaeda members gets lower. Now we are not talking about chance anymore because the Eritrean government has already started supporting the terrorists and the secessionists. If an inside opposition party challenged the Eritrean government, this would have never happened. If we had all these things in Eritrea, we would have known how bad & often religious citizens are being persecuted. We would have known if there are hundreds more or thousands more that are being tortured and killed. Most of the time, we don’t know how bad things get until the persecuted leave the country secretly, some how, and reach the Ethiopian, Sudanese and other borders. The country is so closed that the whole country appears like a prison. As the result, the lone media that comes out of the nation is not about how different economic and other policies should be done in the country. It is usually propaganda news about countries that the government hates. Which are of course Ethiopia and Western nations. So it is common to hear about Eritrean news agencies talking dirt about Ethiopia, Israel, America and Great Briton. These Eritrean news sources might as well change their names to the regions they cover instead of calling themselves “Eritrean.” People might have to wait a whole year before they can hear about any Eritrean reporter discussing how to challenge the policies of the Eritrean government. For example you will never see an opposition party itself, let alone the opposition party like Ethiopia’s CUDP members shouting and criticizing the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians wonder when will they see such democratic change in Eritrea, not because they hate Eritreans, but only because they know that in order to live peacefully as neighbors we can not have a dictatorship unchallenged and the atrocities it commits concealed from the whole wide world. If this keeps going we will see the Eritrean government bombing more Ethiopian schools and financing more terrorist groups for many more decades. Ethiopia itself is not completely open, but it is a galaxy away compared to Eritrea. It is safe to say that those of us living in America will continue to see press conferences, parliament meetings, opposition member discussions and almost everything that is going on in Ethiopia.

If we want peace in East Africa, Eritrea will have to start to open up a little and stop attacking Ethiopians. When the Eritrean government laughably told the United Nations not to send foreign peacekeepers inside Somalia, the world was wondering what to call the thousands of Eritreans already training with the jihadists. Eritrean jihadists? Eritrean-jihadist-Somalis? Such hypocrisy by the Eritrean government would have never been tolerated by the Eritrean people if they were free. Last week, when we saw hundreds of Eritreans protesting in London against the Eritrean government, we did not see their political representation. We did not see their propaganda or political affiliation. What we saw was pure thirst for freedom in Eritrea.
Now the mess the Eritrean government has created in Somalia has to be cleaned out by the blood of thousands of people. Hopefully, when the war is over, Somalia would have a leadership that will be friendly with its neighbors. But not just Somalia, the secessionist rebels like OLF would have never been in such a position if they were not supported by the Eritrean government. OLF was dying. Kenya was also kicking it out. And Ethiopian Oromos were ignoring it and telling it to reform. What OLF did not understand was that the spirit of OLF for justice, freedom and equality will never die. The progressive spirit of Oromo Liberation Front will and should never die. No matter how small in number the fighters of OLF are, the membership of the progressive OLF will always be more than 25 million Ethiopians. But the membership of the backward OLF is getting smaller and smaller everyday. What OLF failed to see was that the struggle has been reformed. It has changed from armed to a peaceful struggle. The leadership of OLF failed to see that Oromos are developing and improving Oromia while peacefully dealing with discrimination. At this time, Oromos are not being persecuted for being Oromos. They are being persecuted for following the destructive & backward policies of OLF which are in fact backward enough to destabilize the whole of Ethiopia. At this time, Ethiopians do not see the current, unreformed OLF as standing for a better Ethiopia anymore. OLF now looks more like an Oromia supremacy organization. It was up to OLF to catch up with the reformation. But so far it has failed. Most importantly, compromising outlooks and reformations are usually fueled by desperation. When OLF started to lose members, its growing desperation was about to end the misery of all Ethiopians and we were going in the right direction. But all of the sudden, the Eritrean government came to the picture and by giving military aid to OLF rebels; it came to “the rescue” of the dying, backward OLF while blocking the progressive OLF.
If we want peace in East Africa, proxy wars & battles have to stop. The Ethiopian government must stop arming the Eritrean Islamists and the Eritrean government must stop arming Oromo Liberation Front, Ogaden National Liberation Front, UIC and many more alongside Libya. The Eritrean government should see that if it attempts to destabilize others, the nations around it are financially able to destabilize Eritrea back anytime they want. Particularly they are able to withstand such attempt by Eritrea because they are bigger and capable. Also, the trick Shabea uses when it says “the minority regime in Ethiopia” are an old, overused and useless method of propaganda. When Ethiopians see an article on any Internet news website and if the article’s heading starts with “minority regime,” they automatically know it is an Eritrean government’s propaganda article. It is the propaganda it has been using to fuel secessionist groups like OLF and ONLF. While the fact a minority is represented in the highest part of government should be the pride of Ethiopia, according to the Eritrean government it should be condemned. This is a sign of backwardness. When minorities like Ethiopian Afar, Gurage, Somali and Hadiyas hold high positions in Ethiopian government; this should applauded and be a sign of progress not a sign of minority regression or illegitimacy.
Various propaganda techniques used by the Eritrean government are overused and mostly comical than practical. It has randomly tried to accuse the Ethiopian government of killings. It has exploited ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia by saying they are some kind of genocide. It has tried everything in the textbook. Now it is trying to justify supporting terrorists. Instead of finding ways to provoke its neighbors and spread propaganda, it would have been helpful both for Ethiopians and Eritreans if the Eritrean government improved its country’s economy instead. When Eritreans are living in peace and when their country develops, Ethiopians will also live in peace and their country will prosper. Most of all, Eritrea would not have been forced to use millions of dollars for its military because it feels insecure. A country that has very limited fertile land and natural resources can not afford to waste so much money on military. What the Eritrean government does not know is that Eritreans will gain two things at the same time if their economy grows and their government stops provoking other nations. Because if this happens, its neighbors would also not find it necessary to stop and take over a mischievous Eritrea. The craving of opposition parties in Ethiopia to take back Eritrea would have been changed if Eritrea was not destabilizing the horn of Africa.
Maybe the last of the Eritrean government's tricks were drained out too late because, now, everyone is visiting Mogadishu and it is not to take a vacation. It is not to shop at the beautiful Bakara Market in Mogadishu. And anymore propaganda and tricks from the Eritrean government are only a burial insult to its remaining (if any) intelligence.