Giants and Lilliputians Part 3: Power, Image, and Machiavellian Survival

Emperor Haile Selassie and President Isaias Afwerki
The Formation of Isaias Afwerki’s Political Character

Isaias Afwerki’s rule embodies an ancient warning: the freed slave who, once unshackled, becomes a harsher master than the one who bound him. Before the revolution, the only model of leadership he had known was Emperor Haile Selassie—a sovereign whose imperial grandeur veiled an unforgiving autocracy. That legacy left its mark on the young student from Asmara, teaching him that command could masquerade as vision, and that fear, once institutionalized, could outlive the faith that once justified it.

His later encounter with Mao Zedong’s China gave this instinct an ideology. Dispatched by the Eritrean Liberation Front for military and political training during the Cultural Revolution, Isaias entered a world of purges, slogans, and cultic devotion. From Mao, he learned the mechanics of domination: how to transmute loyalty into worship, dissent into betrayal, and collective discipline into personal power. Charisma could be weaponized into obedience—and he absorbed the lesson completely.

What he brought home was not revolutionary enlightenment but revolutionary mimicry—a conviction that survival in politics required the perfection of control. The humility once demanded by struggle was replaced by the paranoia demanded by authority. Like Haile Selassie before him, Isaias turned leadership into theater, cloaking himself in symbols of modesty even as he centralized every lever of power.

From the court of Addis Ababa to the camps of Nanjing, one truth shadowed him: fear is easier to command than respect, and the semblance of discipline can pass for its substance. Out of this fusion of imperial rigidity and Maoist orthodoxy, the psychology of Isaias’s state was born—hierarchical to the bone, hostile to intellect, and allergic to dissent.

Fear and discipline were the twin pillars of the EPLF’s legacy. But the regime that followed—its heir in name, not in spirit—perfected the former while abandoning the latter. In Eritrea, the tragic arc became unmistakable: the freedom fighters who once marched with conviction now shuffle like ghosts, casualties not of war, but of a vision that ossified into command.

The student who once failed engineering would go on to master the engineering of obedience. His political character was not forged in conviction but in the laboratories of control—a creature of emperors and ideologues, destined to replicate their cruelties beneath his own revolutionary banner.

This experiment in control found fertile ground in the collectivist ethos of the agrarian Highland and the hierarchical priesthood of Christian tradition—where submission was sanctified, and dissent cast out as heresy. The new wine, imported from China, was poured into an old and all-too-familiar wineskin. The Highland drank deeply—so deeply they became intoxicated.

To understand this culture is to begin to understand the EPLF, and in turn, the regime of Isaias Afwerki. We must summon the courage to descend into the abyss of our cultural inheritance—for it is there, in the shadows of memory and tradition, that the seeds of our present afflictions were sown.

The Twin Pillars of a Good Society: Education and Justice

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky

Across centuries, thinkers from Dostoevsky to Victor Hugo have argued that the moral health of a nation can be measured by two things: how it treats its prisoners and how it educates its youth. A country that dignifies its inmates signals care for its people; a country that invests in education signals belief in its future.

This is not to diminish the importance of other public services, but to illustrate a deeper truth—just as Jesus taught that loving God and loving our neighbor fulfills the essence of the Ten Commandments, so too do these two acts—compassion for the vulnerable and commitment to the next generation—embody the moral core of a just society.

Within this framework, the contrast between Haile Selassie and Isaias Afwerki could not be sharper. Both exercised near-total authority, yet only one treated knowledge and justice as foundations of legitimacy rather than threats to it.

Education as National Dignity

Haile Selassie viewed education not simply as a tool of development but as the scaffolding of national dignity. He did not delegate this conviction—he embodied it. As both minister and monarch, he personally oversaw Ethiopia’s educational and judicial reforms, treating them as sacred instruments of modernization. His administration devoted roughly three percent of national GDP to schooling—a modest figure by today’s standards but notable in a low-income agrarian empire.

Haile Selassie regularly attended graduation ceremonies, delivering speeches that linked personal achievement to civic responsibility. He established the Haile Selassie I Prize Trust, a scholarship awarded to exceptional students. In 1972, a young Meles Zenawi received its gold medal upon graduating from General Wingate High School—a moment that foreshadowed his future role in Ethiopian politics. Eritrean students, too, were among the honorees, reflecting the Emperor’s vision of an inclusive, educated citizenry.

This is not to overlook the discrimination Eritreans endured, but to underscore that education remained a central pillar of Haile Selassie’s statecraft. Yet even within that framework, equity was far from guaranteed. EPLF veteran Haile Menkerios was himself a victim of the monarchy’s Amhara-dominated system—a stark reminder that inclusion in principle often faltered in practice.

Upon graduating, Haile Menkerios and fellow EPLF veteran Andebrhan Woldegiorgis—who had ranked first and second in their class, respectively—were both awarded academic scholarships. Yet Haile’s scholarship was abruptly rescinded and reassigned to an Amhara student who had placed third, justified by the discriminatory rationale that two “Tigre” students from Eritrea could not both receive such honors. The message was unmistakable: excellence from the margins would not be rewarded.

Even Mesfin Hagos, another future leader of the EPLF, traced the roots of his Eritrean nationalism to the indignities he endured while studying in Ethiopia—where being Eritrean invited insult, exclusion, and suspicion. These formative experiences did not merely shape personal convictions; they seeded a collective awakening. Eritrean identity, once dismissed, began to crystallize in the crucible of rejection.

There were Eritreans nonetheless who were recognized by Haile Selassie. One such laureate was Abraham Ghebreghiorgis, later an MIT-trained engineer remembered for his humility as much as his intellect. His story, like many others, underscores the deeper moral of the era: education, when dignified and inclusive, becomes a bridge between generations and geographies—a quiet assertion that progress and pride can coexist.

The Emperor as ‘Supreme Judge’

Haile Selassie’s investment in justice was equally personal. The revised 1955 Constitution enshrined him as Supreme Judge, placing him at the apex of executive and judicial authority. While such concentration revealed his autocratic tendencies, it also expressed a belief that law was integral to national identity.

He often heard petitions directly from citizens—land disputes, inheritance quarrels, corruption claims—transforming the palace into a symbolic courtroom. Yet the broader penal system remained harsh and opaque. Prisons such as Alem Bekagn, inside Addis Ababa’s police compound, were notorious for overcrowding and abuse. Still, the Emperor occasionally visited these facilities and granted pardons during holidays like Meskel and Timket, but not on the two Eids, although Muslims made more than 30% of the population. These gestures, though limited, reinforced his image as a ruler who understood the theater of mercy.

Here lies the paradox of Haile Selassie: an autocrat who sought modernization through personal moral authority. His justice system was paternalistic, but it rested on a genuine conviction that education and law were twin paths toward national renewal.

There is one glaring difference between Haile Selassie and Isaias Afwerki. For all his autocracy, Haile Selassie never ruled without a constitution. His first modern charter was enacted in 1931 and revised and ratified in 1955—an imperfect but symbolic gesture toward legal order.

By contrast, Isaias Afwerki has ruled Eritrea for 34 years without a constitution, without elections, and without accountability. In just seven years, he will match Haile Selassie’s reign in duration—but not in even the pretense of law. We must ensure that this does not come to pass.

Thirty-four years of shame and humiliation is already too long to bear. If left unchecked, this era will be remembered not as a triumph of liberation but as an Age of Infamy—when Eritreans, having waged an epic struggle against an autocratic monarch and his military successor, Mengistu Haile Mariam, found themselves ruled by an even worse tyrant of their own making.

Justice Without Justice: Eritrea’s Legal Architecture under Isaias

In stark contrast to the ideals of liberation, Isaias Afwerki has shown little regard for institutional integrity or legal accountability. Since 1994, one post has remained conspicuously untouched amid countless reshuffles: the Ministry of Justice, held by Fozia Hashim. Her tenure has come to symbolize a judiciary stripped of transparency, due process, and public trust—a legal façade serving political command.

Back in 1994, while I was still in college, I voiced my protest on Dehai against her appointment. A few self-styled liberals—bleeding hearts with more sentiment than discernment—condemned me as a sexist, a misogynist, a relic of a bygone era. They never paused to examine the substance of my critique, nor did they consider the consequences of entrusting justice to a loyalist with no institutional independence. And of course, they would never admit they were wrong, let alone offer the courtesy of an apology—not that I need one.

History has rendered its own verdict. The Ministry became a monument to paralysis, and the rule of law a casualty of regime preservation. What I opposed then was not gender, but the erosion of justice. And time, it seems, has proven the point.

Eritrea today is said to have more prisons than high schools, a grim inversion of moral priorities. Political detainees are denied visitation, legal counsel, and basic dignity. Cabinet ministers who show competence or independent following are swiftly reassigned—loyalty valued over merit, weakness preferred to talent. Isaias surrounds himself with the pliant and the powerless, governing through fragmentation and fear.

The comparison is devastating: Haile Selassie used personal rule to build the semblance of institutions; Isaias uses institutions to erase the substance of rule.

The Unmaking of Education: Policy, Budgets, and Control

The erosion of Eritrea’s education system mirrors the collapse of its justice institutions. From 1994 to 2007, the ministry was helmed by Osman Saleh—later appointed foreign minister—followed by Semere Russom, who managed to elevate the mantle of mediocrity even further. Both oversaw an era of stagnation, during which schools crumbled, curricula contracted, and ideology supplanted inquiry. Since 2024, the acting minister, Petros Hailemariam, has introduced few discernible reforms. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the ministry now operates under the informal oversight of General Filipos Woldeyohannes, effectively reducing education to an extension of the security apparatus.

Eritrea devotes barely two percent of its GDP to education—far below the African average of 3 to 4 percent. The consequences are stark: a generation raised in underfunded classrooms, taught to obey rather than to think. In thirty-four years of rule, Isaias Afwerki has never attended a university graduation ceremony. He does, however, appear regularly at the military parades in Sawa—a revealing index of his priorities.

Sawa: Schooling as Militarization

The Sawa Training Center is where Eritrean twelfth-graders complete their final year of high school under military supervision. What was once an educational milestone has become a crucible of indoctrination. Teenagers, stripped of parental oversight, are drilled in control, discipline and ideology rather than scholarship.

In Sawa, the state manufactures obedience by severing youth from the moral anchors of family and community. The result has been the slow unravelling of Eritrea’s social fabric: respect for traditional and family values diminished, civic trust eroded, kinship hollowed out. What once bound the country together—inter-generational trust and communal dignity—has been deliberately weakened in the name of control.

Sawa is not a school. It is an instrument. It replaces formation with conformity and imagination with fear.

The Ledger of a State: Schools Counted, Prisons Hidden

Education vs. Control

The divide between Haile Selassie and Isaias Afwerki is not administrative but philosophical. Haile Selassie treated education and justice as the architecture of nationhood; Isaias treats them as walls of containment. One built to empower citizens; the other to discipline subjects.

The Architecture of Learning

Today Eritrea counts roughly 824 schools and two principal universities: the historic University of Asmara, now defunct, and the Eritrea Institute of Technology, operating under chronic resource shortages. Technical colleges and vocational institutes exist mostly in name. The United Nations describes Eritrea’s national-service system as a form of involuntary servitude, contributing to one of the world’s most severe brain drains and refugee exodus. In effect, the country has become what human-rights monitors call “the world’s largest open-air prison.”

The Hidden Infrastructure

While educational data are public, incarceration figures are state secrets. Independent estimates suggest 200 to 360 prisons and detention centers, many unmarked on maps. With a population of 3.47 million, even a conservative estimate of 10,000 inmates yields an incarceration rate near 288 per 100,000—almost triple that of Ethiopia. In Eritrea, imprisonment has become policy, not punishment.

Fear as Policy

Detention in Eritrea is extrajudicial—and often fatal. Political prisoners vanish into compounds like Eiraeiro, where contact with the outside world ceases entirely. Classification codes—levels 1 through 5—mark the degree of presidential interest; a level 3 or higher is tantamount to a life sentence and possibly death. Titles offer no protection. Survival hinges not on rank, but on proximity to Isaias.

The aging, titular ministers—if they’re fortunate—spend their days browsing the internet, staring at the ceiling, or gazing blankly out the window. The average age of Eritrea’s so-called governing class hovers near eighty. One might be tempted to call it a gerontocracy, but that would be a misnomer—and I’ve made that mistake before.

Eritrea is not ruled by elders. It is ruled by one man: an aging autocrat whose grip tightens even as his faculties fade. What masquerades as a government is merely a stage set for his command. The state is not merely authoritarian—it is totalitarian, hollowed of institutions and sustained by obedience, not deliberation.

The Absence of Mercy

Haile Selassie, despite his absolutism, understood the political power of compassion. His public pardons and ceremonial visits to prisons projected an image of moral authority. Isaias Afwerki rejects even the performance of mercy. No record shows him visiting a prison or granting clemency. The omission is not indifference but calculation: fear, not favor, sustains his rule. He is riding the back of a tiger and cannot dismount. The ruler is trapped within the machinery he built—imprisoned by his own methods of control.

The Final Irony: A Nation Betrayed

The paradox is cruel. The man who promised liberation now presides over a country where the architecture of incarceration eclipses the architecture of education; where silence is safer than speech; where even the ruler cannot step aside without risking collapse. The revolution devoured the republic it created.

Nearing the Edge: Succession, Soft Landings, and Civic Responsibility

The Twilight of a Reign

Isaias Afwerki’s rule is approaching its natural end. Whether by death or displacement, its conclusion is inevitable. What remains uncertain is the transition—the elusive “soft landing” that might spare Eritrea the chaos of collapse and vindicate the decades of sacrifice etched into its soil. But such a landing will not be delivered by fate. It must be engineered by Eritreans themselves.

And already, the young hyena from Arat Kilo has begun to howl before nightfall—ከይ መሰየ ዝነቀወ ዝብኢ ነይሕደረኒ—refusing to leave us in peace. His strategy is as old as opportunism itself: to feed on the twilight of crisis, to fatten himself while Eritrea experiences unprecedented uncertainties—ኣብ ግዜ ውራውራ ነብስኻ ኣይተዕብራ.

But this hyena does not merely circle with calculation—he sulks with the bitter ache of a young lover spurned by an old flame. His gestures reek of wounded pride; his overtures of reconciliation are steeped in resentment. He howls not only for power, but for revenge—for the dignity he believes was stolen when Isaias, or Isu as he once had affectionately called him, chose sovereignty over submission.

From Arat Kilo he would come, not with humility, but with grievance disguised as strategy. The promised dowry—the union of two nations and the coronation of the Seventh King as prime minister of a reimagined empire—was snatched from him prematurely. What was once hailed by Haile Selassie as the crowning achievement of his reign—the annexation of Eritrea—now lies in ruins, and the heir to that imperial fantasy mourns not the loss of partnership, but the loss of dominion.

His bitterness is not born of principle, but of rejection. His ambition is not rooted in vision, but in nostalgia for a throne that was never his. And so he would prowl the twilight of Eritrea’s uncertainty, hoping to feast on its fragility, hoping that history might reverse itself and restore what sovereignty denied him.

This is the anatomy of succession in a wounded republic: not a handover, but a scramble; not a reckoning, but a repetition of old betrayals. The danger lies not only in the vacuum Isaias will leave behind, but in the vultures circling above it—those who seek to inherit the instruments of control without dismantling their architecture.

If Eritrea is to escape the curse of recycled tyranny, it must reject the logic of inheritance and embrace the discipline of rebirth. The end of Isaias’s reign must not be a mere punctuation—it must be a rupture. A reckoning. A refusal to let the future be devoured by those who learned only how to mimic his cruelty.

The question is no longer whether the regime will fall. It is whether Eritreans will rise—not as spectators of fate, but as authors of renewal.

The Arrow of Deliberation: A Council of a Thousand

An old Tigrinya proverb counsels: ሽሕ ዝመኸርዎ ሓደ ይውርውሮ—“When a thousand consult, one will cast the arrow.” The wisdom is plain: deliberation precedes action, consensus precedes change.

Eritreans—especially those in the diaspora who enjoy safety, freedom, and access to information—must become that council of a thousand: thinking carefully, debating earnestly, and agreeing on the trajectory of the arrow before it flies.

This is serious work. It demands serious and principled people—not those who flit from one organization to another as if speed dating were a strategy for liberation.

ኣብ ዓራት እምበር ኣብ መትከል ዶ ኣሎ ክንድዚ ጠንቀላዕላዕ—It is one thing to flip positions on a mattress; it is quite another to flip on principles.

Participation Over Perfection

The task ahead is not perfection, but participation. Several opposition groups already possess draft frameworks for transition; what’s needed now is synthesis—not reinvention. This work demands modest resources but immense good faith. Far better that it be financed and carried out by Eritreans themselves—with their own dime and time—as an act of moral independence.

If friends of Eritrea wish to help, their support must be anchored in transparency and accountability. The Council of a Thousand must be given ample time to deliberate—dialogue is not a detour but the path itself, essential to healing and the restoration of trust.

Dialogue is not merely a means to an end; it is an end in its own right. It carries therapeutic power, dispelling the fog of mistrust and reweaving the social fabric torn by years of suspicion and fragmentation.

Some of the most consequential conferences in history—those that shaped nations and reconfigured the world—took time. The Continental Congress, for example, convened in 1774 and lasted until 1781, with its first session spanning six weeks and its second continuing through the Revolutionary War. The Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon, took nine months between 1814 and 1815.

Practically, the Council could be organized into three to five regional conferences: one in North America, one in Europe, another in Australia, and possibly one for Africa and the Middle East. These gatherings should be held simultaneously or sequentially over several weeks—and they must be face to face, not virtual.

Each conference should bring together political actors, civil society leaders, and unaffiliated individuals committed to Eritrea’s democratic future. The goal is not to dilute our political organizations, but to strengthen them—because they will ultimately shoulder the responsibility of governance in collaboration with democratic forces inside Eritrea.

Convening the Council of a Thousand

To convene the Council of a Thousand—a foundational gathering for Eritrea’s post-Isaias transition—a preparatory committee must first be established. This body should be composed of respected intellectuals, seasoned representatives from political organizations, and trusted civil society leaders. Its members must be plenipotentiary, empowered not merely to advise but to act, ensuring that the process is not symbolic but sovereign.

The committee’s mandate would be fourfold:

• Synthesize existing transitional charters, proposals, and legal frameworks into a coherent foundation for deliberation.
• Identify key points of convergence across ideological, generational, and regional lines to foster unity without erasing difference.
• Outline the thematic architecture of the Council’s proceedings—constitutional reform, transitional justice, security sector transformation, economic recovery, and cultural restoration.
• Coordinate the practical dimensions of the conference: selecting time and venue, securing budget and funding, and managing logistics with transparency and efficiency.

This is not merely an administrative task—it is a moral and political obligation. The Council must be more than a summit; it must be a reckoning. A space where Eritreans reclaim authorship over their future, where pluralism is restored, and where the architecture of tyranny is dismantled brick by brick.

The success of this endeavor will depend not on foreign mediation or elite maneuvering, but on the courage, clarity, and coordination of Eritreans themselves. The Council of a Thousand must be built with the same spirit that once carried a liberation struggle—only this time, the enemy is not colonialism, but inertia, fragmentation, and fear.

Beyond Fear

The new architecture must rise on vision, not vengeance. Fear built the old order; trust must build the next. The liberation struggle cannot end at the flagpole—it must continue in the reconstruction of institutions, the re-education of civic conscience, and the re-establishment of rule by law rather than decree.

Conclusion — Out of Theater, Toward Stewardship

Across empires, revolutions, and republics, rulers in the Horn of Africa have mastered the theater of power—its ceremonies, uniforms, and slogans—while neglecting the ethics that sustain it. Education and justice, the twin pillars of any durable society, reveal whether authority seeks to elevate citizens or merely manage subjects. Eritrea’s present reality exposes the consequence of that neglect: a nation where prisons outnumber high schools, where fear substitutes for law, and where spectacle has displaced substance.

The way forward is not nostalgia for imperial glories or the staging of new illusions. It is stewardship—the patient work of building institutions stronger than personalities, practicing deliberation deeper than impulse, and cultivating a civic imagination worthy of those who sacrificed for independence.

Let a thousand Eritreans assemble—not in vanity but in vigilance. Let them deliberate with heightened responsibility and urgent hope. Let them chart a path toward the salvation of a land sanctified by blood and belief. Liberation was a beginning, not a conclusion. It remains incomplete until it yields freedom, peace, and justice.

Stewardship begins when a people stop performing power and start practicing responsibility. The curtain must fall on the theater. The work of rebuilding must begin.

To contact the author: weriz@yahoo.com

Tag Words: Giants and Lilliputians, Power, Image, Machiavellian Survival, Emperor Haile Selassie, President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Education, Justice, Sawa, Eritrean Liberation Front, Maoism, Autocracy, Rule of Law, Human Rights, Prisons, Schools, Civic Culture, Diaspora, Transition, Leadership, Political Legitimacy, Social Engineering, Identity, Tigrinya Proverbs, Historical Memory, Governance, Institutions, Moral Imagination.