Category: Articles
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My Fatherly Plea to Every Eritrean in the Diaspora
My Fatherly Plea to Every Eritrean in the Diaspora Who Dreams of a Bright Future for the Eritrean People I am writing to appeal to all of you, my fellow Eritrean brothers and sisters, to support the efforts of the Registration and Election Commission, which is currently engaged in registering justice-seeking, pro-democracy Eritreans throughout the…
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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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Sarigoble, the Woven Shield of Siolidarity
What can a song teach us about belonging? Through the celebrated Saho composition Sarigoble by Ali Abdullah Ahmed, this essay explores the enduring ties that bind people to one another across landscapes, generations, and continents, revealing how music becomes a portable homeland and a living architecture of solidarity.
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Why the Eritrean Diaspora Must Belong to Its People, Not the State
Introduction When a civic association, religious institution, or cultural space fractures in the Eritrean diaspora, the formal debate almost always centers on bylaws, leadership authority, or political influence. However, in focusing so heavily on the mechanics of a split, we often overlook the true devastation left in its wake: the long-term, irreversible damage inflicted on…
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A Refugee in My Own Country
The House That Remains, Exile, Return, and the Stratified Self This article is dedicated to Eritrean veterans, both those who paid the ultimate price and those who continue carrying the memory of home across decades of exile. With special dedication to Engineer Ibrahim Mahmoud Gadam, whose recommendation of a Tigrinya song set this reflection in…
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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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The Dead Now Require Airplane Tickets
A Tigrayit song, exile, and the geography of remembrance. The song found me on an ordinary evening. Outside my apartment window, traffic moved through the city in long ribbons of light. Somewhere below, a siren sounded and disappeared. Tomorrow will be another workday. I would return to my carefully constructed routines. Nothing about the evening suggested…
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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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ተጋዳላይ ከመዓልካ (ዶ-በረኸት ሃብተስላሴ)
ተጋዳላይ ከመዓልካ ጅግና ተጋዳላይ ሰላም ዶ ክብለካ? መንፈሰይ ይሕደስ ወርትግ ክሓስበካ ናይ ሓርነት ጸዳል ዘብርህ ግንባርካ ኣኽራን ዝቐስቀሰ ሰውራዊ እምነትካ። * ጥውይዋይ ነይሩ መንገዲ ሂወትካ ድኻምን መከራን ናይ ዕለት ቀለብካ ኣቦታት ከም ዝብሉ “ክሳዕ ዝደልወካ ትነብር ናይ ግድን ዓንዴል ተሓቒፍካ” * ዓለም ከይፈለጦ ናይ ናብራኻ ኩነት ኣብ ርእስኻ ዘሎ ከቢድ ሓላፍነት ኣኽሊል እሾኽ ዳንዴር ናይ…
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Eritrea’s Ghost Bureaucracy
1. Hidden Bias Eritrean political life is often narrated through the familiar vocabulary of dictatorship, militarization, and repression, as though the visible machinery of authoritarianism alone explains the daily injustices citizens endure. Yet the lived reality of Eritreans is shaped far more intimately by a quieter and more pervasive force that rarely enters the national…
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The Anatomy of State Failure in Eritrea
I. The Origins of Authority States do not fail in a single dramatic moment. They unravel slowly, beginning in the quiet spaces where no one imagines politics is taking place. The earliest fractures appear not in ministries or parliaments but in the daily negotiations of ordinary people. A fisherman trading his morning’s catch for a…
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The Elephant in the Room
I. The Meteor We Pretend Fell From the Sky There is a comforting story circulating in Eritrean political discourse – a story repeated so often, and with such ritualistic conviction, that it has become less an argument than a reflex. It tells us that the dictatorship is an alien force, a meteor that crashed into…
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OUR NATIONAL UNITY: Why Eritrea’s Political Imagination Fails Reality
I. The Illusion We Keep Rehearsing In recent weeks, I have been reading a series of essays on awate.com – thoughtful pieces by Semere Habtemariam and Saleh Ghadi, attempting to stitch together a moral vision for Eritrea’s political future. They speak of unity, sacrifice, institutional maturity, historical awareness, and the enduring hope that principled action…
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The Normalization of Self-Censorship in Eritrea
When self-censorship becomes pervasive, a society forfeits more than the right to open dissent; it forfeits the very conditions that make common knowledge possible – the shared awareness of what others know, think, and believe. In such an atmosphere, individuals can no longer reliably gauge the convictions of their peers or distinguish private doubt from…
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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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The Golden and the Tin
The Greatest Generation A year ago, or a little longer, a female Eritrean YouTube content creator interviewed Ustaz Saleh Younis, during which he disclosed his preference for the Revolution generation, calling it the greatest generation. I had to second his preference and adopt it, mainly because there is ample evidence to support its validity. When…
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Teklay vs. Hamid Idris Awate
In a YouTube video billed as a “chat with the wise among us,” Teklay and Hamid Idris Awate engaged in an hour-long conversation. Despite Teklay’s insistence that this was not an interview but merely a chat, it followed the familiar interview format: Teklay asked; Awate answered. The themes included the honor of remaining friends with…
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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…