Category: Articles
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Eritrea: How President Isaias Afwerki took everyone, including the Veteran Freedom Fighters, for a Ride
I aim to demonstrate not only how the former freedom fighters were misled, lied to, and exploited by the regime after independence, but also how their non-interventionist approach betrayed the very people they fought so hard to liberate from Ethiopian rule. One of the most fascinating but confusing stories that ever unfolded in Eritrea is…
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The Fiddle and the Fiddler:
The Fiddle and the Fiddler: How the Arabs and TPLF Undermined the Eritrean Revolution The story goes: when Haile Selassie dissolved the federation and annexed Eritrea, the Eritrean people erupted in rebellion, and thus the revolution was born. The war lasted thirty years, and ultimately, the Eritreans triumphed. A compelling story. Many Eritreans dismiss the…
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Review:To challenge the writing of Eritrean history is neither to rubbish nor to denigrate
A reflective piece on personal memories of imprisonment and exile, exploring the resilience of identity under barbed boundaries. Through one man’s eyes, we revisit a time where fences divided more than land—they divided Eritrean souls.
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Schooling and Social Capital Among Eritrean Refugees
Revolutionary Schooling and Social Capital Among Eritrean Refugees in Sudan A remarkable educational experiment took root in the arid borderlands of Kassala, Sudan, in the shadow of Eritrea’s long and bitter struggle for independence. In 1977, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Sudanese…
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Memory, Martyrdom, and the Eritrean Struggle
In Echoes of Bravery: Martyr Mahmoud Ibrahim’s Enduring Legacy, Amer Hagos (2025) constructs an impassioned, meticulously researched biography that is as much a personal tribute as it is a national archive. The text is a powerful act of recovery, of memory, of dignity, and of justice, situating Mahmoud Ibrahim, affectionately known as Cicchini, within the…
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The Last Matriarch Passing the Torch of Family Tradition
Life is just a pilgrimage from the womb to the tomb.— Cornel West In the cycle of life, we move from one milestone to the next seemingly purposefully. How life might select and favor some for longevity over others is one of the mysteries of our existence in this world. The average life expectancy…
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Reviewing Negarit 320: A Letter of Truth and Reconciliation
In Negarit 320 published April the 10th, 2025, Saleh Gadi Johar, henceforth referred to as The Writer. The latter because this article relied solely on the written text that was published at awate.com on April the 11th, 2025. The Speakers starts the speech with a noble wish how he would’ve loved to feel pride and approbation…
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Between Approbation and Anathema Justice Suffers
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.” Faulkner, W. (1955), “Requiem for a Nun” This is a reflection on the insightful conversation between Daniel Teklai and Saleh “Gadi”…
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Weaponizing Silence, Vulgarizing Languages
(Editor’s note: this article was first published on July 26, 2023; it’s being republished as a reference.) When one’s faith in humanity was beginning to wane with the seemingly endless streams of vitriols from social media, intelligently thought-out discussion in a podcast restores that faith quite a bit*. Prior to the podcast, too, Negarit 28,29,…
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Thanks to Dr. MK Omar, Inputs Enriching the Eritrean Library
Many Eritreans are for sure not well aware of how much poor the Eritrean library still is. Records of the colonial period were themselves scanty on top of being mostly distorted or written by less informed authors. But nothing can be done about that except regretting that it was so. Eritreans of the first two…
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Azien Yasin, the Famous Freedom Fighter I never knew
Azien Yasin was a brilliant freedom fighter who had great influence on the Eritrean Liberation Front. He was present on the battlefields of Eritrea when the armed struggle called for incredible feats of bravery. He was there among the distinguished fighters who went above and beyond the call of duty during that intense period of…
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History is Watching us
[This article is dedicated to a group of Eritrea’s Prisoners of Conscience who were arrested in 2001 after criticising President Isaias Afwerki’s rule, and have never been seen or heard from since. The prisoners, rather selflessly, led the way to meet the challenges head-on while their fellow ex-freedom-fighters failed to follow suit .] This piece…
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The myth of the “pure Eritrean.”
Eritrea, given its strategic location on the Red Sea, has been a gate to Africa and a destination for various migrants and seekers of better opportunities. Eritrea’s association with migration goes deep in history and the Eritrean ethnic composition was formulated over centuries of migrations, intermarriages, and resettlements. Beginning with the indigenous communities who mingled…
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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 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
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
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
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)
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 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…