The Stateless People

The following chit-chat would not have been uncommon up to as recently as nine years ago.
A couple of friends talk about their cars over coffee as their vehicles are being washed. One is having trouble finding a good mechanic for a problematic fuel pump. He is not going to take his precious car to some incompetent mechanic and asks his friend to suggest a qualified person.
“Asgedom is your man. He spots the problem even before you tell him!”
“Are you sure?” asks friend one, anxiously seeking affirmation. “Of course, he’s Eritrean, you know” – and they give each other that, ‘No wonder he’s good’ look.
It is undeniable that when Eritreans used to be part of this nation they left so recklessly, many of them were appreciated for their strong work ethics, innovation and technical excellence. Of course, this is not to categorically say that Eritreans had a monopoly on expertise but they did at one time hold a qualitative edge in technical matters and products – a position today they can only dream of as Ethiopia has moved rapidly forward.
Following the disastrous miscalculation of 1998, which spelt the death knell of a once vibrantly hopeful state, Eritreans today are a shell shocked people, stunned into enslaving submission by a regime of sorts that in a sense, has equally declared war on its people, let alone on those of its neighbors.
Eritrea is virtually a bone dry country with little to provide for its population of about 7 million. It can never hope to attain food sufficiency, even with the most ambitious of irrigation schemes. Its rulers are its owners and have not displayed a propensity for meaningful development projects, preferring to expend meager resources on a large conscript army – and a bloated, ineffective ‘civil’ service that toes the party line or else.
Eritrea is far bleaker than the upbeat image Eri-Tv transmits. The station operates, it seems, for the benefit of the now exasperated Eritrean diaspora and also for certain disaffected sections of the Ethiopian population. The reality is that the brand new country of bright hope, full of many talented and dynamic people has been undone by a state mechanism that began to unravel too soon after its birth in 1991.
The rulers in Asmara have made their countless foreign admirers choke on their words. These media people aid workers, diplomats and the typical tourist were all spell bound by ‘the spirit of the people of Eritrea’ – ‘their dedication to self-sufficiency’ and other positive attributes of a people that once had thought they had become free at last.
Today, the Eritrean masses can only look on with envy at the wide ranging autonomy Ethiopia’s constituent regions enjoy. Absurd as it may sound, Eritrea had once been likened to an embryonic Singapore. That ambition was sown in the giddy days of ‘independence’ when Isayas Afeworki’s true colors were concealed under the guise of liberation hero.
Today also Eritrea is still compared to another Asian country this time by a world community that will be tricked no longer. This poor East African country has the dubious distinction of being the most repressive nation in Africa and the continent’s North Korea. Like that Asian disaster story, Eritreans are hungry and with no tangible prospect of a better life as their paranoid rulers instigate quarrels left right and center.