I thank the EGS family for inviting me to its latest social activity in the US. As a result, I attended the Eritrean Global Solidarity(EGS) for Human Right, Justice and Democracy Symposium followed by a panel discussion on March 8, 2014 in metro Washington DC on the general theme of: Exploring Possible Scenarios for Eritrean Transition to Democracy. I apologize ahead for possible distortion of facts in this presentation but I am delivering my observation with the best quality of my recollection.

There might have been about seven Professors (with four of them as Panelists) so you can see how packed the place was by PhDs, Professors and educated audience in different academic fields and experiences and few international activists directly dealing with our refugees here in the US. The environment was promising; it appeared as if we were packing for some sort of intellectual confrontation with the rest of the world. It felt like a caravan aiming at something intellectually special on Eritrea and indeed we collectively had the power to produce something tangible from the symposium.

It started with about 50 people and grew up to probably 80 people in the progression. It was very interesting and educational needless to mention the pleasant opinion exchanges in the hall under the chairmanship of Brother Seyoum Tesfai.

The panelists gave their perspective analysis on the generic scope of transiting a society to democracy. There probably were about three theories concerning the issues from that many Panelists and I found their presentation detail oriented and empirically substantiated on the Eritrean reality.

I think what we see here is the effect of Afwerki’s policy of dictating through the power of ignorance. It was forecasted to produce the current static effect on the society (uneducated and confused generation/s) and worked very well 23 years into the meticulous plot against the people. The youth is not educated enough to independently realize other alternatives. The fear installed in their mind is another negative psychological effect to the crisis. The Diaspora community is also too weakly organized to substitute as alternative psychic spot if not as that of financial for the desperate refugees arriving here in big numbers.

Survival is the immediate priority of these refugees but we are not even organized enough to guide and assist them in this area. They depend on friends or family members for help and socialize in the only place available for them, EPFJ’s “community centers”. They see no other alternative to help their situation and thus decide to stick it out with the regime whatever may it be for.

This is why the situation needs help from people who were not directly affected by the problem; those who had the chance to be educated like us and did not go through Afwerki’s psychological warfare against the society (fear, trauma). In short the desperate youth needs organizers to mobilize it strongly. I regret admitting the fact that we intellectuals failed our society in the past through unconditional obedience to the EPLF and have so far failed it again through quietism and ineffective cumulative input.

I don’t think this would serve as fair evaluation of the Eritrean situation for the following reasons:

Independent/Dictatorship Experience: Egypt achieved full independence from the British in 1922, becoming a kingdom under the rule of Muhammad Ali’s dynasty until 1952 and continued under Gamal Abdel Nasser from 1954 to 1970, by Anwar Sadat from 1971 to 1981, and by Hosni Mubarak from 1981 until his resignation in the face of the2011 Egyptian revolution. This is close to 100 years of independence under the four consecutive oppressors. A hundred years of dictatorship was too much for the Egyptians to upgrade their awareness enough for implosion, meaning that Egyptians were ready to revolt in favor of democracy and they did.

The processes of the Tunisian Independence occurred from 1952 to 1956 between France and a movement for independence under Habib Bourguiba, who became the first President of the new nation. The people were under dictatorship until the recent North African revolution changed the status quo immaterial the quality of the result. Again, we are talking about close to 60 years of dictatorship, long enough an experience for society to make change through mass unrest.

On 21 November 1949, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before 1 January 1952. Idris represented Libya in the subsequent UN negotiations. On the 24^th of December 1951, Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya, a constitutional and hereditary monarchy under KingIdris, Libya’s only monarch. This accounts to over 60 years of dictatorship in Libya for the people to go for change. Can you believe that Kadaffi ruled 42 of these years after successfully overthrowing Idris’ government at age 28 while Afwerki has surpassed that number since the struggle?

Education: Knowledge is power and the Egyptians with 34 private and 28 State funded universities, the Tunisians with 13 and the Libyans with 10 universities, all of them having a fairly educated youth should have respectively produced thousands of highly educated people through the years that eventually intensified the momentum of changing their political situations by academically guided mass revolutions from within. Our society in contrast was denied education under this regime that has the gut to close the only university that stayed intact since Italian colonization till the time of independence and a little beyond. You learn where you are going and how to maneuver successful mass disobedience in any society through the power of education like the Ethiopian Students’ movement in the country (mainly in AA University) and abroad caused the fall of Emperor Hailesselassie through organized mass revolt in 1974.

To summarize, I believe the two factors play major roles in successfully mobilizing people for change in a given society. In our case, a new country with down beat population and the first home breaded dictatorship may collectively be a little too premature for bringing change from within specially considering the level of ignorance in the equation.

Besides, the president’s unbelievable cult developed through years of intrigues, the insecurity inculcated into the Eritrean psychology vis-à-vis Ethiopia, and the deep emotional attachment of the people to their independence were important factors that contributed to the mobilization crisis at hand. It took this long for us all including the intellectuals to declare freedom from the chain of Afwerkism. The people were conditioned to be repulsive against intellectualism for our educated people’s ineffectiveness in the Diaspora mobilization process but their unreasonable fear of the government and opportunism also delayed the process to this point of impotence.

A very important point to mention here is that the organized youth groups were left alone to waste valuable resources and time dividing and focusing only on demonstrations that were ill-programmed to hardly address the most important issue because of incapacity and the intellectual quietism that failed to interfere and reconfigure said focus towards the priority of the resistance, unconditional unity

The signs indicate in favor of this postulate. The defection of the pilots, the four national soccer teams, politicians, journalists, the intolerable youth exodus at the rate of 1500 per month, the economic and infrastructural crisis (business, construction, energy, water), etc clearly tell that our people were ready for change but cannot do it by themselves (because of the reasons discussed above) without assistance from the Diaspora. One of the Panelist brothers who recently came from Eritrea answered this affirmatively. I think he said that we need to concentrate on something we can control, which is unifying and strengthening the resistance in Diaspora and I fully agree. I stand willing to be corrected but I also think he said that we should unite challenging the root causes of our fragmentation in order to have the capacity of alienating the spoilers in the resistance. Great points, but this is only possible by solid intellectual input towards producing a tangible guide line for transiting the Eritrean society to democracy.

Clearly, our people at home can hardly revolt against the government with a massive Army comprising young people from the countryside in the absence of leadership from the educated citizens (very few and -controlled by the regime). The manpower (urbanized youth) necessary for change in any society has been deserting the country at the highest rate per capita and the remaining condemned to slavery and ignorance. The government may of course collapse by the pressure of its own weight or micro through coup d’état as apossible scenario. This does not, however, mean people causing the change but rather the circumstance doing it for them: the speculation remains that there may be a void that can only be filled by organized groups in that situation. The intellectual community must quickly design a formula before this happens. We must start the frame work that allows us to influence the gap through effective groupthink as soon as possible to save the society from another disaster. We cannot afford facing the immediate future of the society empty handed for our selfish groups to blunder!

The crisis after independence might have been a surprising derivative of our innocence and trust but the immediate future of Eritrea without concrete transitional formula is not: because we already know what may happen in post Afwerki Eritrea in the resistance’s current condition. We should then be ready to plead guilty without explanation for whatever may take place in the motherland should we continue at this rate of fruitless relationship. It is a time sensitive issue that we must do something about and if we cannot do this with the intellectual might I saw in the occasion I regret saying that we cannot do anything beyond our individual theoretical knowhow.

I will continue alternating this subject matter (EGS symposium) with my on-going work of examining the opposition forces and I remind my leaders to do maximum contribution here in respectful and academic manner. See you soon!