Category: Negarit
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Hamid Mahmoud: Another Hero Buried In Exile
The following post contains my personal notes as well as quotes taken from the Arabic obituary that was issued by the Eritrean Liberation Front on the death of one of the prominent leaders of the Eritrean Liberation Army. In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. “Among the believers are men true…
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Ona: Nine-Meter Shroud
As we push towards reconciliation, we have to expose the wounds of the past that always pop-up to hinder the journey. Real reconciliation should not be considered for the sake of political expedience alone. The festering wounds need to be recognized and healed to reach a meaningful and lasting peace. Reconciliation requires a holistic approach.…
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Bridge Over Mereb and Other Rivers
[This article is being republished on awate.com with the consent of the Editorial Team of Discourse Magazine to which it was contributed. The maiden edition of the magazine which is published by The Ethiopian Foreign Relations Strategic Studies Institute appeared on Thursday, 19 January 2017. In a 2010 interview, I asked the late PM Meles Zenawi if Eritrean ports…
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An Envious Eritrean Congratulating Ethiopia
Americans do not declare something over, “until the fat lady sings”. It’s a colloquial language referring to a fat lady who apparently used to sing before the end of Operas. For the last six-weeks, everybody was waiting for the Ethiopian Parliament to sing and officially declare a prime minister. It did, and as many expected,…
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Mahmoud Kannoni: Rest In Peace My Great Teacher
A bright educator has passed away. A great teacher who left his marks on our personalities has passed away. Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Ali has died. May he rest in peace. Almost sixteen years had passed when I visited Ustaz Mahmoud in his house in Abu Dhabi together with my late friend Sheikheddin Yassin. He didn’t…
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Beware Of Warmongers
(Due to the never-ending bickering concerning the Nile River (more accurately, the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam), today we decided to republish this archive content from June 17, 2013) If you notice, most fires of war are fueled by those who would not be burned by it. To them, it is just like a movie, you cheer one…
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Abdurahman Younis: My Proud Friend Moves On
A famous commercial tagline goes, “Never let them see you sweat.” And there was a man who never let them see him sweat. A free-spirited man who faced adversity, jail, and deprivation, but never capitulated. How could he? How could he when he was blessed with a free, stubborn soul that refused to depart except…
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What Ethiopian-Eritrean “Friendship” ?
(This is a speech delivered on Saturday, March 26, 2011, at a conference organized by the Eritrean Ethiopian Friendship Forum in San Jose, California: “Ethiopia & Eritrea: Healing Past Wounds and Building Strong People-To-People Relationships.” March 27, 2017) One night a man came upon a child who was searching under a street lamp for a coin he…
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The Smashed Eritrean Wristwatch
[this was first published in May of 2015 in objection to an attempt by some hacks to revive old partisan rivalry, and their obsession with partisan politics. Yet, they are the ones who insist on national unity and on focusing to achieve change [justice] in Eritrea. The current debates in some circles make me stick to my…
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Berekhet Mengisteab on the Answering Machine
This was first posted on Dehai twenty-years ago (Sun, 3 Aug 1997). I was going over some old files when I accidently stumbled upon it-–I don’t remember the occasion or the inspiration that made me write it, but with minor editing, I thought it serves as an entertainment and easy reading for the weekend. ______________________________________________________________…
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Ahl Al-Kahaf: The Sleepers of Ephesus
Let me begin by wishing success and fruitful discussions for the organizers and attendants of the Sheffield Meeting, planed for tomorrow, Saturday, July 22, at 2pm. The two honorable men in the picture are Shiekh Mohammed Juma Abu Rashid, and Abba Shenoda Haile. The “Eritrean Justice Camp” knows both men who are visible in demonstrations…
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Eritrean Prisoners: Judge Mranet as a Sample
The 14th of April is when the Prisoners’ Day is commemorated. It’s a day that Eritreans remember their prisoners to spread awareness of the plight of their loved ones, and they remember so many of them. Some who grew old in the dungeons of the cruel Eritrean regime, others rumored to have died in captivity,…
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The New Wave of Muslim Preachers
The last decade or so has been difficult for Muslims in many countries, but Muslims are still suffering the most in their own countries due to bad governance, low literacy rates, and poverty. If many non-Muslims are anxiety stricken by the savage actions of some bloodthirsty fanatic Muslims, it is helpful to remember the victims are…
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The Village Of Wehni-Ber (Chapter 2)
The following is chapter 2 of the historical novel, “Of Kings And Bandits” ________________________________________________________________ Mokria, a young Ethiopian boy, glanced at the Wehni Mountain whose top was covered in thick fog that made it invisible. He felt the cold bite his skin through the blanket he had slept on, which was now wrapped around his…
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Eritrean Refugees In Sudan: 50 Years And Counting
This year, 2017, the first wave of Eritrean refugees who fled en-masse to the Sudan, have been living in refugee camps for fifty years, and they’re still counting. Since 1967, the numbers of the first wave of refugees, including the second and third generation refugees born in the camps, has surged to the hundreds of thousands,…
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The Malignant Cancer of Eritrea
A million years ago, when I first said I do not know of an Eritrean ethnic group known as Tigrinya, quite a few people went bonkers. A thousand years ago, in the 1990s, a few people became touchy-feely whenever Andenet was mentioned, forgetting it was not about people, but a destructive mental state. Now it…
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God Doesn’t Kill, The PFDJ Does
If you think the title is blasphemous, not too fast. It is not, and I am hoping you would think beyond our habitual reaction to killing, our mechanical reaction of always dropping the responsibility of all murders and killings (not death) on God. I believe it is wrong. Today I will grieve in my own…
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Language and Religion In Eritrean Politics
(The following article (first published on June 29, 2011) was presented at a panel discussion under the theme “Eritrea’s Path towards Democracy: Dialogue on Constitutional Issues”. The event was held at the Universities at Shady Grove, Rockville, Maryland, on June 25, 2011; the organizers of the event assigned the topic to the presenter.) I didn’t choose…
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From The Archives: Avoid The Downers
This was first published on August 30, 2004. I decided to repost it again, 12 years later, because I feel the same cycle of negativity is overwhelming the justice seeker’s camp. It is my modest advise to encourage them (particularly the self-respecting youth) to shun all negativity and all the cheap talk that denigrate the Eritrean…
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Democracy: May Your Heart’s Wish Come True
On September 24, 2016, I was at the University of San Francisco to attend a discussion that was organized by the energetic Meron Samadar (Lead Eritrea). The following is the speech that I prepared but as usual, I delivered its condensed version from memory without reading it. Therefore, though I expressed the gist of the…