Author: Dr. Filmon Wolde
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The Priced Alternative
What Another Eritrea Is Worth, and Who Pays for It This essay asks that Eritrean political change be examined not only as a moral demand but as a decision taken under uncertainty, of the kind that can be broken into its parts and considered one part at a time. The single demand around which our…
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The Opposition Must Also Be Opposed
The Pledged Public and the Problem of Power Before Transition In my previous essays on the Pledged Public, I have been trying to think about Eritrea’s political problem from the position of the public rather than from the organizations seeking political power. Much of our opposition politics understandably begins with the government: how it can…
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The Citizen Before the Bloc: A Critique of Younis Omer’s Politics of Equilibrium
I come to this discussion with humility. I am still a newcomer to the Awate forum, and I know that many conversations here have histories, references, and relationships that long-time participants understand better than I do. Still, after reading Younis Omer’s essay and the discussion around it, I felt compelled to engage it seriously, not…
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The Extraction of Heroic Capital in Eritrea
Abstract: This essay examines how the Eritrean state converted the moral authority of the armed struggle into a durable political resource. It argues that the category of tegadalay (fighter) flattened unequal wartime experiences into a single claim of equal sacrifice, allowing ruling elites to extract legitimacy from the suffering of ordinary fighters. By separating fighters,…
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The Covert Civic Vulgarity Beneath Our Nationalist Songs
I recently came across a song by Meron Estifanos, freshly uploaded to YouTube and already making its way through Eritrean diaspora timelines with the usual warm momentum. A few thousand views. Comments full of pride. People tagging each other. I watched it the way one watches something familiar, half-present, until the chorus stopped me. ኣይበል…
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How the Pledged Public Works
A Second Explanation for Readers Who Want the Mechanism, Not Just the Idea The public is not the audience of politics. It is the author of the conditions under which politics becomes legitimate.— From The Pledged Public I. Why Another Explanation Is Needed Since the publication of “The Pledged Public,” I have received a consistent…
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The Pledged Public: Toward an answer to “The Grammar of Promise”
“The problem is not to find the best ruler. The problem is to make it impossible for a ruler, however well-intentioned, to do unlimited harm.” — Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Summary This essay continues the argument of “The Grammar of Promise,” which showed that Eritrean political culture organizes legitimacy around sacrifice…
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The Grammar of Promise: How Eritrean Political Thought Became Trapped Inside Its Own Logic
“The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.” – Alexis de Tocqueville Summary Eritrean political life, spanning both the ruling party and the opposition, is organized around a shared underlying logic: that sacrifice generates the right to govern, and that those who fail to honor that sacrifice must be…
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The Three-Nakfa Gaze: When Poverty Is Put on Display
“Once deprivation is renamed ‘culture,’ it becomes protected from criticism. What appears as heritage can quietly function as camouflage, transforming material constraint into identity and turning urgency for change into an act that looks like disrespect. When citizens encounter one another primarily as curated displays, the relationship shifts from shared political belonging to observation, and…
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Whose Face Is on the Wall?
Author’s note: In this piece, I’m more interested in the subtle visual habits that quietly reorganize authority and erase local presence without making a spectacle of it. Sometimes the most revealing thing isn’t the portrait you find, but the absence it creates around everything else. Consider this a small observation about walls that points to…
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The Cycle of Blame: Why Tigray Can’t Learn from the War
Author’s Note This essay examines a recurring pattern in Tigray’s post-war political culture: the public’s tendency to celebrate leaders during moments of triumph and condemn them during moments of failure, while rarely acknowledging its own role in shaping those outcomes. Using the popular Tigrinya-language sitcom Gere Emun (“Gere the Trustworthy”) as an entry point, it…
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A Critique of Bereket Habtemariam’s Proposal on Sea Access and Sovereignty
Author’s Note: This essay is written in response to a document recently shared by Bereket Habtemariam on his Facebook (also known as Biko Steph). His contribution to the debate over Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea is imaginative and provocative. Importantly, Bereket has been open that his intention is not to prescribe a final solution,…
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The Religion of Eritreanism in Exile
Author’s Note: This essay is not a tactical critique of government or opposition, but an attempt to reframe how we think about Eritreanism itself. I argue that in exile, Eritrean identity has taken on the qualities of a religion (sustained by longing, ritual, and taboo), which creates a pseudo-reality that confuses expression with political participation.…
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The Unspoken Debt: Sacrifice, Power, and Consent in Eritrea
Author’s Note: This short essay is written as a reflection on Eritrea’s independence narrative and the moral contradictions embedded in many armed liberation movements. Having grown up in Eritrea and internalized these national stories, I later came to examine them through a more critical lens. With Eritrean Martyrs’ Day approaching, I hope this piece invites…
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The Debt-Free Illusion: Rethinking Eritrea’s Economic Self-Reliance
“The myth of Eritrean self-reliance… has helped justify authoritarianism, isolation, and indefinite national service.”