Category: Articles
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The Emperor’s Daughter and her Namesakes
ወለት ሓጸይ, ጓል ሃጸይ, the emperor’s daughter, la fille du Negus, la figlia del Re, la figlia dell’Imperatore or la Principessa are names coined by the locals and foreigners to the legendary figure located in the middle of the Gheleb basin (Eritrea). She fascinated the poetic people of Mensa’e (መንሳዕ) and attracted the curiosity of…
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The Eritrean keyboard Master: Abdalla Abubakar
Abdalla Abubakar’s towering contribution towards the development of the Eritrean music had not received its due acknowledgement until late. Thanks to the efforts made by Habtom Debessay, there is a documentary released recounting the 50 years of musical life of the legendary Abdallah Abubakar. The war of liberation was raging and came closer to the…
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So Long Dear Friend
[This memory is the memory of Ibrahim Negash, translated from Tigrinya into English by his younger brother Beyan Negash.] No matter how inevitable. No matter how old. No matter how young. No matter how or when it arrives. The passing of an individual hits hard. When it is the passing of a childhood friend, two doors…
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Book Review: The History of Bilen (by Dr. Jamil Idris)
Book Title:The History of Bilen, past and present Pages. : 245 Publisher: Dar Alma’arif, Aljeria, 2018 Language : Arabic (تأريخ البلين ـ الماضي والحاضر ) Author. : Dr. Jamil Idris Reviewer : Ismael Ibrahim Al-Mukhtar Diversity is a social treasure with immense power to enrich, enlighten and broaden social perspectives. Reversely, it could be a social poison…
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The Curse of Perpetual Civil Wars
The ghost of the ongoing civil war in our region will be a curse that will haunt us for generations to come. Historical figures are invoked bereft of their historical contexts by those who think they are the only heirs to these historical figures; little do they realize be it the region’s historical figures or…
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Welcome Home Trilogy
A Trilogy Project – that ended up as perpetual work in progress only to be recovered fortuitously after almost seven years from archives saved on an old pen drive! Introduction With the proverbial ‘other’ within the socio-political divide along the national context in my mind, some time last March, 2016 I began writing the verses…
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Global Initiative to Empower Eritrean Grassroots Movement (GI)
Proposal for forming legitimately elected representative of Diaspora Eritreans Global Initiative to Empower Eritrean Grassroots Movement (GI) December 5, 2021 Content Introduction The need for legitimately elected representatives of Eritreans in Diaspora –the Eritrean National Congress (ENC) The Role of the ENC C1. Facilitating democratic change C1.1Winning the hearts and minds of the Eritrean security/intelligence…
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National Integrative Council of Eritrea-USA
This essay is written to help alleviate the current unifying discourses of Eritreans. My previous, rough draft piece, “GiE-Eritrean Integrative Discourse “ Government in Exile , published @Awate, had tried to suggest that Salih Younis’s “GiE” initiative has not only been an Eritrean unifying discourse, but a reference to the other initiatives including reviving one from…
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Hafeez Saaddin Mohamed Badlay: a tribute
Grief struck the Eritrean community in Melbourne following the sudden death of Hafeez Saaddin Mohamed Badlay, one of its most esteemed members. Hafeez Saaddin passed away on the 4th of November 2021, and his body was laid to rest two days later amid a somber mood and due solidarity with the bereaved family. The burial…
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Brief Eulogy to Osman Mohammed Ismail
Yesterday, early morning of the 4th of November 2021, Eritrea and its people have once again lost one of their national liberation armed struggle heroes. Osman Mohamnmed Ismail had passed away in Cairo, Egypt, after fighting illness for months. Osman had joined in 1965 the ranks of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) at quite an…
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Of Guerilla Diplomacy and Granary Courtship
Of Guerrilla Diplomacy and Granary Courtship (ኩሽማን ደርሆ ኣብ ኣፍ ቆፎ) on Eritrean American mask-less diplomacy, with satirical flair (ዋዛ ምስ ቁምነገር)… The “je t’aime, moi non plus” (I love you, me neither) tic-tac exchange between the Eritrean Tweet and the American Facebook (in Eritrea) has of course nothing to do with Jane Birkin’s &…
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The Story of Eritrean Liberation Front’s Book of Martyrs
“I wonder if anyone knows or remembers Tedros Tesfai Tedla” Degiga revealed his inner thoughts. “He was an ELF freedom fighter, a personal friend of mine, who blew himself up with a grenade in the Gash area to avoid capture in 1973. Tedros and I joined the front on the same day; we were trained…
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Sovereign Borders Within Which Children Disappear!
[Translated from Arabic by awatestaff] How I wished that my son Ahmed would not wake up with the awareness that in his ancestral homeland there is a butcher named Isaias Afwerki Abraham among the Eritrean people… I hoped was that would be imprinted in the depths of memory, when he is in a far place,…
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Rude Awakening
Emperor Humayun was the ruler of the Moghul empire in the 16th century in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, North India, and Bangladesh. One day in 1556, Humayun carried some books from his library, stepped on his robe and tripped on the stairs and injured himself, and died a few days later. Emperor Haile Selassie…
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Eritrean Leader’s Sandcastle Play
Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki recently ventured out of his hideout at Adi Halo near Asmara to travel to the port city of Massawa for some reflective moments at the beach. [Adi Halo is, of course, the leader’s infamous rural outpost which doubles as his makeshift “presidential office.” The place has an even more bizarre history…
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The Lost Words of Yohannes IV and Abiy Ahmed!
In December 1888, Yohannes IV, the emperor of Abyssinia wrote an unusual letter to his Mahdist rivals in Sudan. Along with the Italians, the Mahdist were his arch enemies and major challengers. In his lengthy letter, Yohannes IV, called on Abu-Anja, a Mahdist leader, to end their rivalry and establish peace between them. His letter…
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Yosief’s Messages From the Underground
It is only a narrow-minded or embittered man who can harbor evil thoughts about ordinary people because they are not heroes. From the novella “A dreary story” by A. Chekhov A philosopher is born If there is a merit for Eritrea and Eritreans in the war in Tigray, it is that it has blown-up covers…
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Undercurrents of the Eritrean-Tigrai Relation
The contemporary sociopolitical history of Ethiopia, Tigray, and Eritrea is informed by two undercurrents that appear to impact these tripartite entities devastatingly as each attempt to outmaneuver the other in that elusive race toward political hegemonic prominence. Chose to use a recent Tigrinya song that captures the foolishness of the war(s), interspersing it within the…
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Eritrea’s Bittersweet Memory of A 30-Year Struggle
Eritrea has bittersweet memory of a 30-year struggle that was eked out by the botched 30-years of Governance. In 1935, little did Italy know that its decision to invade Ethiopia would lead to a World War II. Little did Italy know, too, that the Eritrean Askaris it hired to do the invasion of Ethiopia would also abandon…
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Eritrea: It is left to us!
Seasonal river In words worth describing the on/off modes of our Eritrean opposition activities in its quest for justice, the narrator of the short story “The Great Wall of China” by the 20th-century novelist Franz Kafka says describing his times: “Consider rather the river in spring. It rises until it grows mightier and nourishes more…