A Corporal Warned Eritrea!
In 2021, Negarit 147, I raised the issue of SFO Safer, an oil tanker that was stranded across the Hodeida, a Yemeni port on the Red Sea since 2015. At the time, it carried over a million barrels of oil. SFO Safer used as a storage tank for Yemeni oil that was piped from the oil field. It was decaying and had serious engine and electrical problems in addition to its rusting hulk.
It posed an ecological crisis since its cargo would spill to the shores of Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Not many were interested in the topic; it seems they needed more topics: the regional wars, not the looming environmental disaster. A spark could set it on fire, and a spill would be uncontrollable, and it would sink and make matters worse.
When Houthi forces started to attack ships in the Red Sea, the world paid attention. They planned to empty the cargo, valued at about $20 million, then the tanker would be cleaned of residual chemicals and finally tow it away to be sold as scrap metal.
In 2019, the UNDP got involved, and by the end of 2023, most of the vessel’s cargo was emptied and the risks were averted.
TO Eritrea, the risks posed by SFO Safer on the Red Sea were averted, and it had to deal with another menace: Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and other mercurial rulers in the region.
Lij Abiy, The Seventh King
I remembered an Ethiopian ruler-praise poem in secondary school. One wished extraordinary longevity for King Tedros, who killed himself to avoid capture by General Napier, who invaded Abyssinia to free hostages. Incidentally, that was the first invasion with a goal to free hostages in modern history.
May you live long like Methuselah, and like Abraham
May God grant you eternal longevity.
As a people, Eritreans lived in anxiety for centuries. If you take me as a sample, I have not experienced a break from wars and cruelty but wars and destruction. And people do not live that long like biblical personalities who, we are told, lived for centuries. That is why I believe most people in the beleaguered region of the Horn of Africa are inflicted with PTSD.
Ethiopia has been involved in every violence I witnessed all my life. I believe there are many reasons for that, but mainly greed; it’s the hegemonic tendencies and habitual warmongering.
Last week I was watching a video at Feta TV where they narrated a brief Eritrean history, the lazy, unbaked type. Many Eritreans are aware of that.
Sometimes I try to fit in their shoes, adopt the mentality of the elite to understand how they think. I try to agree with them by changing my convictions and denying what I saw. Believe me, it’s hard—not only hard, but it’s also impossible! However, I enjoy some of their cartoonish depiction of the Eritrean struggle. For instance, last week they said that the founders of the armed struggle formed the first organization in Cairo while eating oranges! If you were wondering, there is the history: Eritreans are the first people to launch a 30-year bloody struggle while peeling oranges in Cairo! And somehow, there is a convenient detour; all narrations, arguments, and reasoning end up claiming the Red Sea!
Drinking Water for Wayfarers
In Sudan, like many countries with hot climates, there is a tradition of putting water pots with a cup dangling on the side for the use of wayfarers. No one is supposed to suffer from thirst for more than a few blocks away; the water pots are all over the place. It’s shameful (even sinful) if someone complains they couldn’t find water in a neighborhood.
If travelers or passersby are thirsty, they drink from the port and leave it alone for the next traveler. If one purposely breaks the pot, or damages it in anyway, the person who puts a pot for charity or the people around would certainly act. But Abiy Ahmed thinks he is somehow entitled to own the pot, the cup, and the plot where the pots stand. Why? Because he is an emperor, and an emperor owns things, they don’t borrow, lease, or rent what they need.
That’s why Abiy Ahmed thinks beyond drinking from the pot; he wants to own all and hoist a flag of the spot, claiming it part of the territory that “god” assigned to him to rule.
Unfortunately, I always talk about the Ethiopian obsession with the Red Sea. I can’t help it since it is the most overused and most abused political-agitation tool the Ethiopian elite ever invented.
After the independence of Eritrea in 1991, the region went through a relatively peaceful hiatus from war for a while. However, in the last few years, Aby reignited the war cry. He can’t resist walking in the footsteps of his predecessors: Haile Selassie and Mengistu, to rally support for his evil intentions.
Abiy is an opportunistic agitator-leader who is bloodthirsty. They are incapable of proposing peaceful, reasonable, and practical solutions on how to benefit from the Red Sea. They have an arsenal of foolish arguments dating centuries before Ethiopia was established. Mythologies and superstitions are abundant around him.
He has an ample supply of nagging and temper tantrums to justify his violation of the tenth commandment: You shall not covet!
Sometimes his excuse is that we are landlocked, as if he has a divine right to snatch other territories. Sometimes he claims our economy is hurting, but until his time, Ethiopia was doing great and experiencing double-digit growth with no port. And many are telling him the Ethiopian economy is in shatters because of his extravagant projects, his lavish urban-cantered boulevards and parks catering for a fraction of the population while the rest suffer from utter poverty. And oftentimes, the excuse is the size of the population!
Making the population size, “we are 120 or 130 million” to Eritreans sounds bewildering. He sounds as if we caused him to bear 130million children and abandoned him. He seems he is asking ALIMONY from us!
Abiy started the Red Sea gag when he was militarily encircled and failed to silence his internal adversaries. He consulted the notes from the previous emperors and viola, he found the effective Red Sea bug. That’s why he is using the tired, savage, cruel, and irrational, but effective diversion tactic that the Ethiopian elite ever invented.
I will conclude with popular lines of grieving for emperor Tedros.
A thousand horses on the rear and a thousand horses ahead of him
Alas, his mother died without witnessing the scene.
Similarly, I dedicate the following to Abiy:
A thousand tanks on the rear and a thousand tanks ahead of him,
He added many drones, armies and aircraft
Yet, he wasted his ruling days crying for the water pot.
Anyone who agitates for war, bloodshed and destitution must check his head. Can the warmongers promote peace instead? The efforts and wasted energy are the same, but peace is rewarding.
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