Negarit 306: Saving or Shooting?

Negarit 306 is the final episode for 2024; Happy New Year.

As we welcome 2025 though the security situation in the Horn of Africa is as worrying as ever: Eritrea is still in the middle of a precarious situation. And nothing can improve unless the single ruling party and its leader change their attitudes and take responsibility for what ails the country. That includes the failed 35-year-old development efforts that cost the nation lost opportunities, immense resources, and physical and emotional damage.

For instance, Isaias and his propaganda machines speak endlessly about rehabilitation of the dilapidated Italian-era railway system. That goal remains in the development agendas of the ruling party but was never accomplished. In short, it was one of the main development goals since the independence of Eritrea.

Maybe the president forgets, but the citizens cannot forget that he killed an Italian proposal to rehabilitate the railway system. As usual, the PFDJ boasted, “We will build it with our own fingernails!”

In the early 1990s, I saw a study that estimated the cost of rebuilding and rehabilitating one kilometer of the railway at about $1.25 million. The proposal was killed; I still what was wrong if the Italians rehabilitated the railway system and managed it for, say, 20 or 30 years? I believe by now, the project’s debts would have been paid, and it would have been running productively but the PFDJ is infatuated by its fingernails, it can do anything with it!

Eritrea didn’t have the needed capital investment, the know-how, the technology, and the management skills. It didn’t go through. If it did, by now we would have created thousands of jobs, workers to administrators and technicians. The project would have contributed to the economy by increasing local and international trade, generating huge income for the nation. Eritrea has squandered three decades, and since then, many parts of the rail system was eroded, and a big portion was stripped, naked of any steel. It’s dilapidated.

Today, the old estimates are too low; maybe it would cost two or three folds of the old estimates. Worse, the country lost opportunities; and the senseless decision resulted in a transportation infrastructure tragedy. As for the fingernails, I wonder how many times the president has clipped his fingernails since then? If he clipped them once a week, in the last thirty years, he has clipped them around 1500 times. Can you guess the total length of the clipped fingernails? Around 150 meters thrown away.

It would be nice if the leader of the PFDJ and his followers realized that their ill governance is the cause of the Eritrean miseries. They failed to protect the country from the never-ending involvement in foreign squabbles and didn’t work to find a remedy for it.

It is of paramount importance that they accept the responsibility—that would be a good start to embark on a journey of meaningful existence. Only taking responsibility for the ills afflicting Eritrea would help in finding a real solution, including the development efforts.

The Eritrean Economy

Since a long time ago, Eritreans have gained experience in forming businesses, be it share companies or factories, with little resources they had Yet, the nation doesn’t have an efficient and effective transportation system. For instance, there were several transportation companies, be it private, family owned, or share companies. The Haregot Bus Company was an efficient intercity transportation company running a high-quality Asmara-Massawa line. SATAEO, SANA SEABO, merged under Sataeo and served the whole nation. It connected Eritrea with Addis Ababa, a three-day journey due to the ancient roads. There was Hajji Hassen, Haji Abdu, and Gonafer, and Aberra busesthat had an impressive fleet. They were so successful that Asmara boasted of two or three bus manufacturing outfits to meet the deman. They imported only engines, transmissions, and other parts that they couldn’t manufacture at the time.

In the old days, people would walk by the Uqbe Abraha gas station and tall building and admire its owner—it motivated children to be like Uqbe Abraha. They saw real estate and aspired to own some once they grew up. Private entrepreneurship flourished despite the poor resources, the poor skill sets, and the suffocation of the Ethiopian occupation.

Today, Eritreans are more educated; they have excellent and marketable skills, a wider network, and a higher net worth. But the government is still bound by socialist ideological paranoia and suspects the successful and the wealthy, though it knows the capacity of Eritreans. However, it focused on the Diaspora because it knows their yield is higher after they are serenaded to later be milked dry. It’s like cattle owners’ praise and pet their cows before they start milking them. That’s the tactic the PFDJ uses on the diaspora.

The PFDJ doesn’t want Eritreans to return to their country and participate in the business activities— monopolies do not like competition.

Who would invest in a country like Eritrea that has poor amenities, doesn’t have rule of law, no investment insurance, and controls what depositors withdraw from their own bank accounts? Worse, the ruling party completely monopolizes the Eritrean economy through its arm, the Red Sea Corporation, and many others? A big chunk of the so-called non-PFDJ business is owned in collaboration with PFDJ loyalists or through nepotism, the only people the banks finance with a wink from a bigwigs.

If not for such injustice and corruption, Eritreans are resourceful enough without money, let alone when they have enough to embark on developing their country. The PFDJ forgets that nations cannot be developed only by exploited manpower.

Isais doesn’t like free enterprise; if he did, many successful business owners residing all over the world would do marvels to the national economy provided the ruling regime loosens its grip.

Eritrean businesses flourish outside Eritrea because they enjoy facilities and security that they cannot find in their own country. Ironically, the PFDJ is making a killing elsewhere, around the world, through façade owners of the businesses. Lately the Eritrean ambassador to South Sudan boasted about the impressive Eritrean investments in the country; his peers elsewhere are so timid to mention similar successes, let alone admit their failures.

The PFDJ is good at setting high goals; they are bad at executing them. They are control freaks, and that is not good for business.

Eritrea has been on a circular journey since 1991; nothing improved; no problem was remedied or ameliorated. The PFDJ is used to nagging, murmuring, and complaining endlessly. That’s how they have been managing anxiety, insecurity, oppression, and poverty. But that was not why Eritreans struggled for decades, it was to stop what the PFDJ is perpetuating.

Eritreans have a dilemma: they know they must be organized;unfortunately they are not. The few who are organized are ineffective; those who are not insist on putting the cart ahead of the horse. Until that is remedied, Eritreans should do their part, however small, be seriously organized, gather their resources, and stay focused. And they must remember that no regime lasts forever; everything has a limit. And observing what is going on in the immediate neighborhood of Eritrea and the Middle East, the situation is untenable, and it will certainly come to an end.