Category: Articles

  • Is Ethiopia Doomed?

    Is Ethiopia Doomed?

    For an Eritrean, pretending to wear a 20/20 lens, you dwell on snooping around Ethiopian critiques, regardless of their successes and failures. I for example, wouldn’t expect anything neutral/good to come out of people like Monsieur Hidrat or other ELF offspring about Isaias’ government. Because I know that they have bones to pick with him.

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  • The Dilemma of Eritrean Diaspora Movements – Article review

    The Dilemma of Eritrean Diaspora Movements – Article review

    “The Eritrean Diaspora Opposition Movements: Obstacles and Challenges”, A Master thesis, Linné University, Sweden, by Berhane Kidane, spring term, 2022. “Eritrea Diaspora pro-democracy Blue Revolution movement: From where to Where”, by Aron Hagos Tesfai, published by Martin Plaut, March 21, 2024. Defining the issue The Master thesis by Berhane Kidane (2022) and the short history

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  • The Horn of Africa States Ethiopia’s  Undiplomatic Faux Pas

    The Horn of Africa States Ethiopia’s Undiplomatic Faux Pas

    It was always clear that Ethiopia’s false historical narrative would one day catch up with it. The country that was Abyssinia adopted Africa’s historical Greek name, Ethiopia, in 1932. It currently proves every sunrise and every sunset that it cannot hold the many nations it had held together by force in the past. The war

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  • The Horn of Africa States The Need Beyond the Narrow Mindset

    The Horn of Africa States The Need Beyond the Narrow Mindset

    Favoritism is a disease that causes immense damage to any organization, country, or region. It takes competency out of the equation, and if one goes back to history, one will note that any leader who used favoritism as a guide to his/her leadership by appointing friends, loyal people, and family members in key positions in

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  • Revelations of a Former Eritrean Freedom Fighter

    Revelations of a Former Eritrean Freedom Fighter

    To learn how a nation can spiral into a self-destructive vortex of paranoia, one should read Semere Solomon’s new book “Eritrea’s Hard-won Independence and Unmet Expectations,” which presents factual accounts based on his personal experiences in the battlefields of Eritrea as well as post-independence Eritrea.  This informative account is an attestation to readers not only

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  • Unsolicited Advice to Brighed N’Hamedu (BNH)

    Unsolicited Advice to Brighed N’Hamedu (BNH)

    Introduction. The birth of Brighed N’Hamedu (BNH), in Cologne, Germany, in 2022, has greatly energized justice-seeking Eritrean youth in the Diaspora. It has been one of the current encouraging developments. The BNH slogan from” Diaspora to Asmara” has given a renewed hope and breath of fresh air to all those who aspire to see regime

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  • Book Review: A Memoir of Eritrean Freedom Fighter Mesfin Hagos

    Book Review: A Memoir of Eritrean Freedom Fighter Mesfin Hagos

    Book Review An African Revolution Reclaimed: A Memoir of Eritrean Freedom Fighter Mesfin Hagos. By Mesfin Hagos with Awet Tewelde Weldemichael, 2023, Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press. I-x, pp. 434 plus appendices and index. This is a worthwhile read that provides much-needed information on the Eritrean armed struggle (named as African revolution) and on the

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  • PM Abiy & Co, bullying, belaboring, and big lies

    PM Abiy & Co, bullying, belaboring, and big lies

    “What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” (Sir. Walter Scott, 1808) Towards the end of his talk to his parliament (November 14, 2023) on the Red Sea controversy of his own creation, PM Abiy made a clarion call for the media outlets to sound the drums of “war” in a

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  • Omissions & Biases: Mesfin Hagos’s Book

    Omissions & Biases: Mesfin Hagos’s Book

    Mesfin Hagos’s English Book on Eritrea: Useful Facts Tainted by Omissions & Biases   This article about the book in English by compatriot Mesfin Hagos cannot claim to be a standard book review but is, primarily, a write-up to sincerely commend the author tohave published something, even belatedly. Secondly, the article aims to flag out

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  • A Tribute to Saleh “Gadi” Johar

    A Tribute to Saleh “Gadi” Johar

    By Dr. Daniel Araya From the onset, it’s imperative for me to state the two reasons that made me undertake this write-up. Firstly, and for transparency, I have to disclose a soft spot and admiration I have for Saleh Johar .Secondly, the constant demonization and abuse to his person, understandably makes sympathy with him .

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  • Critical Reading: a reply

    Critical Reading: a reply

    Introductory notes :For all the reductionist talk that try to depict the current crisis in narrow,  simplistic, static, dichotomized views, the turn of events are  much more fluid, characterized by inconsistencies, unpredictability, indeterminacies, ambiguities and ambivalences as actors keep on aligning and realigning themselves to gain political favorsmotivated by tactical rather than strategic interests. It

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  • Can Eritreans have A Genuine Dialogue?

    Can Eritreans have A Genuine Dialogue?

    If “epistemology deals with systems of knowing” as Delgado Bernal (2002) stipulates, to which it is not that difficult to readily concur and its “interconnected[ness] to critical discourse can’t be that far off either. It would then stand to reason that intersectionality from one methodological practice used in a field of endeavor will find an

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  • Eritrea: From NHnana Elamanan to Liberation to Ber Al-Aman

    Eritrea: From NHnana Elamanan to Liberation to Ber Al-Aman

    Eritrea: From NHnana Elamanan (1971) to Liberation (1991) to Bar Al Aman (2021) The men of philosophy and of literature from centuries past encapsulate history as an “essential struggle between two sets of forces, the forces of liberty and the forces of despotism” (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 1977) but weren’t as quick to draw cause

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  • Awate’s Critical National Service, The Public Duty To Help Sustain It

    Awate’s Critical National Service, The Public Duty To Help Sustain It

    A Funding Proposal by Bereket Habte Selassie The Reason for this proposal I have been a regular reader of Awate.com. The quality and variety of its service has been striking and commendable, making it one of the premier (if not the premier) Media among Eritrea’s Diaspora Media and community. The quality of its offerings reflects

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  • The Rise and Fall of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)

    The Rise and Fall of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)

    It was unimaginable for the Ethiopian people to accept “a blatant miscarriage of justice” – specifically over the awarding of Badme to Eritrea. Badme was symbolically important and the casus belli for the two years’ war. The decision is thus a recipe for continued instability, and even recurring wars… nothing worthwhile can, therefore, be expected

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  • Critical Discourse Analysis

    Critical Discourse Analysis

    “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

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  • Book Review: The Burden of Exile

    Book Review: The Burden of Exile

    This is a review by Bereket Habte Selassie of the recently published book, “THE BURDEN OF EXILE” by Aaron Berhane. I. The Heroic Pioneer He had been an icon, at once inspired and inspiring. His friends and former collaborators never tired of singing his praise as a dedicated fighter for democracy and freedom of the

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  • Eritrea’s Mendelai (መንደላይ), Manhood & Cobra

    Eritrea’s Mendelai (መንደላይ), Manhood & Cobra

    Author and singer Melake Abraham’s song entitled Mendelay, with close to 3 million views on YouTube, popularized the word Mendelay. Mendelai ending in “ai” will be used throughout this article for reasons the reader will understand. Based on the lyrics, and an interview of the video producer Daniel Teame, Mendelai was used in its Tigrigna

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  • Pasha René, Bezbez Kassa, Bogos, and More…

    Pasha René, Bezbez Kassa, Bogos, and More…

    Although Italian occupation of Eritrea started in Assab and its coastal areas, it was also in Bogos and its surroundings, the turmoil that culminated with the organization, colonization, and eventual independence of Eritrea, was boiling. Around the mid-1800s, all the ingredients poured onto that region. These included, change of hand from Turkey to Egypt, the

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  • Eritrean Regime’s Endless Recoiling

    Eritrean Regime’s Endless Recoiling

    Let me start by saying while we should hope Ethiopia will never be threat to Eritrea, we should not bet on Ethiopia’s tension or its disintegration for Eritrea’s solidification, which must solely depend on Eritrean’s will alone. Having said that, I understand some reservations regarding Ethiopia, as in the saying, “old habit dies hard.” As

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