Review:To challenge the writing of Eritrean history is neither to rubbish nor to denigrate

This paper is made up of two parts. Several colleagues who read it advised me to split it to two unless I succeed to establish a coherent link between the parts. However, I decided to keep the original format of the paper for two reasons. First, I felt that it is time to assert my identity as an Eritrean and that my views on the history of Eritrea are as good as authors such as Bereket Habte Selassie and Jordan Gebremedhin. I attempted to do this in the first part.

The second part is a critical review of Eritrea: Nationhood and Sovereignty, edited by Bereket Habte Selassie. The critical tone of the second part can, I believe, be appreciated if it is read together with the first part[1]

Part I. Challenging some of the tenets of Eritrean history

In his first review of my book Richard Reid wrote: “The achievement of Eritrean independence, according to Tekeste, was more the result of Ethiopian mistakes than of the renowned military skills of the liberation forces, which is only one final attempt by the author to rubbish both the concept and the reality of an independent Eritrea” (Reid, 2000:166-7). Again, in a long article, he wrote that I had dedicated much of my career to “the argument that Eritrea must regard itself as an integral part of Ethiopia, as well as denigrating the liberation struggle in general and the EPLF in particular” (Reid, 2001:260). A decade later Richard Reid did not mince his words. “With regard to the highlands, Tekeste´s self-appointed mission to denigrate any kind of “nationalist” achievement, and simultaneously to depict any kind of Eritrean political consciousness as essentially Ethiopian is not difficult to spot” (Reid, 2011:106). And finally in his article. “Writing Eritrea: History and representation in a bad neighborhood”, Richard Reid writes about my explanation of the origins and development of the Eritrean Liberation Fronts as “rather hostile account – hostile that is to the EPLF” (Reid, 2014:106).

The views that put me so to say on the wrong side of Richard Reid has been stated clearly in the book by David Pool, described by Richard Reid as by far the best work on Eritrea. David Pool wrote: “The liberation and independence of Eritrea was a function of a multiplicity of factors, including Ethiopian government collapse, the success of the TPLF, the end of the Cold War and the bankruptcy of the former Soviet Union. Central to the outcome was EPLF´s capacity to sustain itself and the armed struggle” (Pool, 201:195). I cannot understand why my description was judged as rubbishing when David Pool´s is not.

I am surprised that Richard Reid did not comment to one of my conclusions, namely that the EPLF that had just assumed political power through the gun rather than the ballot box would find it virtually impossible to establish an autonomous judiciary on its own and I argued that it would be wise for the EPLF to entrust the management of the offices of the chief Justice and Attorney General to foreign, preferably European experts. I wrote my remarks in 1996 when Eritrea was in the process of producing a constitution where the president would have draconian powers (Negash, 1997:173).

For a couple of decades, 1922-1941, under the firm control of Fascist Italy, Eritreans were treated as a race incapable of achieving self-government. Italian rule was the worst form of apartheid. It was only first under the British Military Administration, 1941-52, that the Eritreans were introduced to the democratic form of governance. The golden age of democracy in Eritrea was between 1952 and 1959 when the judiciary of the newly federated Eritrea was under the stewardship of chief Justice James Shearer, 1952-1959. It was on the basis of the above reading of history that I proposed an alternative path to the democratic future of Eritrea (Negash, 1997:173). Nearly thirty years later, my judgement is that Eritrea is institutionally far weaker than what it was in 1997.

The few books that I have written in the past thirty years have been extensively reviewed. There were as many reviewers who criticized me severely as those who praised the finding of my research. I have learned more from the critical reviews than from those who showered praise and admiration. Christopher Clapham, John Markakis, S.C. Saxena have all criticized the final section of the Eritrea and Ethiopia: The Federal Experience, while Harold Marcus, Bahru Zewde and Gian-Paolo Calchi Novati did not.

Richard Reid is more than capable to review my books and he has done an admirable work in his attempts to place them in a wider context. Prolific and fluent writer as he is I am not at all worried of how he distorted my findings without appearing to do so. What I object most is accusing me as a person engaged in the process of rubbishing or denigrating the history of my own people.

Indeed, I have devoted the greater part of my career in researching Eritrea and I have felt many times that the more I read the less I knew. Over the years, I have thought over how Richard Reid could judge me and my works in such manner that is unbecoming of an academician[2]. In the task of mapping the past, we historians are engaged in identifying how one policy option among several others was acted upon. Allow me to make this point clear by resorting to a piece of Eritrean history. In 1947 nobody knew about the fate of Eritrea. There were several open scenarios. Eritrea, like other African colonies could have been granted its independence; or it could have been partitioned between Ethiopia and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, or it could have been given all of it to Ethiopia, or it could have been joined to Ethiopia in a federal arrangement. By 1947 all of these four scenarios were open. By 1950, however, the UN resolved to unite Eritrea to Ethiopia within a federal arrangement, which was only federal in name. Was the decision to unite Eritrea the best policy option? Why were the other options rejected and what would have happened had one or the other scenario was followed? Such counterfactual questions and the discussion that they give rise prove that the path that a society chooses to pursue is not predetermined at all but rather that it is shaped by citizens reacting to internal and external challenges that they daily confront. The alternative would imply that history is made by some superior force beyond our control. Any piece of historical research that fails to keep in mind that the historical path that a society takes at a given time is not predetermined would not be complete. That is what historians do; they study the past the best they can, cognizant that history does not repeat itself, in order to draw some lessons from it. The lessons may prove or not prove useful. I find accusations of rubbishing/denigrating the history of my people not only repulsive but extremely discomforting, coming as they do from an established academician.

I fear that Richard Reid´s repeated outbursts have something to do with his inadequate training (during his formative years as a research student) on the basic tenets of the philosophy of history. Had Richard Reid been adequately trained he could have disagreed with me even in strongest terms without having to accuse me of denigrating or rubbishing some aspects of Eritrean/Ethiopian history. I wish to take this opportunity and draw his attention to John Lewis Gaddis´ (2002) small but extremely enlightening book on how historians map the past.

Rubbishing Eritrean history, a language and an attitude first used by Richard Reid was picked up in a large scale by two young Eritrean scholars, Simon Weldehaimanot and Semere Kesete, with an appropriate title: “Rubbishing: a wrong.  approach to Eritrea/Ethiopia Union”, published in the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) in 2012. The article that gave rise to their vehement attack is a lecture I delivered at the 4th annual conference of African historians, held in Addis Ababa in 2007 (Negash, 2008). It was in this article that I argued that the Eritrean government, the fragmented opposition and the Eritrean Diaspora all lack intellectual resources to think things through – a view that was readily picked up by the authors as clear evidence of rubbishing Eritrea and its history.

My article on the “Dilemma of Eritrean Identity and its future trajectories” (2008) was written at a period when the Eritrean-Ethiopian war of 1998-2000 was not successfully settled and there was a stalemate – of no war – no peace. The article was also a follow-up of the study that I conducted in 2000 (Negash and Tronvoll, 2000).

“According to Negash, the core of Eritrea´s political, cultural and economic identity is based on colonial premises and these three premises are false. It is possible to rebut this assertion even based on the very authorities Negash recommends as objective” (ROAPE, 39: 131, pp. 45-62).

I shall briefly mention the three premises that my critics call “false” since they do not discuss them sequentially. The framework for my paper of 2007 is that Eritrean identity is closely associated with colonialism and its ideological ramifications. Hence the first false premise of identity is that Eritrea had a more developed economy before it was forced into a union with Ethiopia and or when it was colonized by Ethiopia since 1962. The second false premise was that Eritreans were more sophisticated (politically and culturally) than their Ethiopians cousins under whom they were forced to exist. The third premise was that the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front, having defeated Sub-Saharan Africa´s largest army, was invincible.

Under the subtitle: the truthfulness of the economic argument, rather than discussing the premise, the authors diverged widely and talked about Longrigg and what he wrote about Eritrea. Longrigg left Eritrea in 1944 and during his brief stay, he noted, of course, that the economy of Eritrea was highly developed in relation to the rest of the territory inhabited by Tigrinyans. But the Eritrean economy that Longrigg observed was built by Italians and mostly for Italians. If Eritrea would continue to keep up the standard it would only do so by allowing Italy and the Italian community free reign over the economic affairs of the country.

The authors failed to deconstruct the political economy of Eritrea between the late 1940s and until the demise of the federation in 1962. Eritrea had two economies – one dominated by the Italian community and serving by and large the ca 20 000 Italians in the country. The second was what the rulers of the period called the indigenous or native economy. A very important measure of the resilience and size of the latter is the amount of tax collected every year. Total revenue of Eritrea was 25 000 Pounds sterling (equivalent to 50 million Italian lire in 1949). The Italian community ploughed in more than 70 000 Pounds Sterling (equivalent to 120 million lire) between 1949 and 1950 to boost the political parties which challenged the Unionist Party.

I described the structural features of the Italian dominated economy of Eritrea and how it might have impacted on Eritrea and its society. Between 1935 and 1941, the Italians were in majority in Asmara; the census of 1939 showed that there were 53 000 Italians and 43 000 Eritreans. The Italian community constituted 12 per cent of the population of Eritrea. Eritrea was transformed into a colony of settlement and as in most colonial cities, the Eritreans were strictly forbidden to reside at the European quarter of the city.

The authors then continue and try to make a case of why independence was the right decision. They write that since the merger of Eritrea and Tigray with the rest of Ethiopia as too grievous in terms of “the loss in progress” and the “increase in human misery” how come one has qualms with Eritrean elites of that time wanting to be a separate nation? (ROAPE, 39, p.53) They cite what I wrote: “Negash holds that Eritreans were constantly reminded (not least through primary school textbooks) that they were far better off under Italian colonialism than under the yoke of the “uncivilized Ethiopian empire”. On the basis of my own remarks, among others, they concluded: “Ordinary Eritreans certainly have some pride in the modernity Italy brought about but to say there is an identity problem is pure exaggeration” (ROAPE, 39:131, p. 53).

I believe the authors have misunderstood the central core of my argument. What I considered as a false premise is to lift up the “modernity Italy brought about in Eritrea” as a primary cause for Eritrea to fight a thirty year´s war against its incorporation with Ethiopia. A deconstruction of Eritrea and its society that Italy created would have made it abundantly clear that there were two societies living side by side; the first being the Italian society (big enough to transform Eritrea into a colony of settlement) and the second was the Eritrean society inhabited by the so called “indigenous/natives defined during the fascist period (1922-1941) as “people who will never reach the age of maturity” (Negash, 1987:111). A further deconstruction of the 1948-40 period when the fate of Eritrea was being discussed among the Four Big Powers and within the United Nations, would have shown the huge campaign that the Italian community with full support from the Ministry of Colonies in Rome carried out to create political parties that supported the independence of Eritrea. The logic behind Italian involvement is clear: it is only in an independent Eritrea that the Italian community can continue to dominate the Eritrea economy. So the Italian community created political parties and mobilized them to demonize Ethiopia, its culture and its history. I have discussed these and other matters and published them in 2004 (Negash, 2004:417-452) – a study that the authors did not consult.

I am one of the few Eritreans who have not been convinced of why Eritrea should fight a bitter war to gain its independence from Ethiopia, but I wish to stress that my personal predilection on the matter is not important. Eritreans could fight for independence of the country; what I object is to use premises (such as the modernity that Italy brought about) as one of primary causes to justify an armed resistance. As I discussed earlier one can hardly say that “the modernity Italy brought about” was sufficient enough. Accepting “the modernity that Italy brought about” without deconstructing it would entail a rather unpleasant question: is it independence that Eritreans were really seeking or rather a return of Italian rule or similar to it?

We have also to bear in mind that more than 40 per cent of the Eritrean population were against the continuation of Italian rule in any form and they pursued an effective irredentist politics where union with Ethiopia was their ultimate goal[3]. This is an aspect of Eritrean history where Eritrean nationalists of today are very reluctant to acknowledge.

In their rejoinder the authors dwell in great detail on the virtues of independence where Eritrea a small country does not have to share its resources with a country of about 80 million inhabitants. Moreover, Eritrea could not borrow money from International monetary institutions as a federated unit within Ethiopia but it could as an independent country. “So the most viable system of governance for multi-ethnic states such as Eritrea and Ethiopia is a consociational democracy” (ROAPE, 139:131, p.54).

Defending first the claims of Eritreans to seek independence and later for Eritrea´s right to gain independence, the authors argued that if former colonies like Somalia could achieve independence why not Eritrea?. This argument misses a very important component. Eritrea is not like any other African country. In Eritrea, there was an organized irredentist movement that fought against independence of Eritrea – an organization that equated union with Ethiopia as the highest form of independence. I wish the authors had consulted on how Italy manufactured political parties and assembled them in front of the United Nations (Negash, 2004). To my knowledge I am the only person so far to make use of the rich Italian archival material that was made accessible in 2000. I urge Eritrean scholars to consult the archives of the former Italian Ministry of Colonies (better known as Ministero dell´Africa Italiana (MAI) kept at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome and challenge and or contest my reading of the material.

Under the section: Eritrea is not founded on myth, the authors go through a well-trodden path and repeat once again the arguments that were used in the 1980´s when Eritrea was fighting to free itself from Ethiopia. Although, the authors belatedly admit that it was Eritrean Christians who wanted unity with Ethiopia (ROAPE, 39:131, p. 56) but they add a caveat to it: “not all of them and not all the time”.  With such reasoning, the authors concluded that there was no overwhelming support for unity.

I have never argued that there was an overwhelming support for unity. On the contrary I argued that Ethiopia got far more than what it campaigned for (Negash, 1997:68).

“According to Negash, the second (false) premise closely interlinked with the first stressed that the Eritreans are superior (in terms of cultural and political sophistication) to other Ethiopians”. (ROAPE, 39:131, p.57). The authors write that at one time this premise was not false as Longrigg has recorded.

The literal reading of Longrigg is I believe one of the major problems of writing and understanding Eritrean history. Longrigg was a military administrator of Eritrea for a period of about three years and could easily compare Eritrea, under the firm grip of Italian economic power and Ethiopia under the British as a former enemy occupied territory. Longrigg was one of those colonial officers who sympathized with continued European rule in Africa. At one point, Longrigg wrote with great conviction that Eritrea together with Tigray should form a united whole under the Ethiopian Empire and at the same time he lamented what was to come that is Eritreans, we must assume, well fed and well taken care by Italy would miss all these and have to learn to live within Ethiopia.

If the authors had read my paper on Italy and its relations with Eritrean political parties, (Negash, 2004:.417-52) they would have found many sources that would support the thesis of Eritrean superiority over other Ethiopians. But hopefully, they would have also discovered in the same paper how what I called the false premise of Eritrean superiority was produced by the former Italian Ministry of Colonies and the Italian community in Eritrea out of a strong belief that it is only an independent Eritrea that Italy and Italians could  continue to uphold their hegemonic position over Eritrea and its inhabitants.

Moving to the third false premise that emphasized “the invincibility of the EPLF”, they cite Richard Reid. As I mentioned earlier, David Pool described the emergence of independence similar to mine and earned praise for it by no other than Richard Reid.

Finally, the author´s accuse me of belittling Eritrea´s side and adoring Ethiopia´s victory in the third round of Eritrean-Ethiopian war of 2000. I did indeed write about Eritrea`s humiliating defeat but this was a conclusion derived from earlier Eritrean statements on the war. From May 1998 until May 2000, the Eritrean government and its main newspaper (Eritrea Profile) stated repeatedly that Eritrea has the power to defeat the Tigray dominated Ethiopian army. “For Eritrea to withdraw from Badme,” said president Isaias Afewerki sometime in late May 1998, “was like saying that the sun will not rise tomorrow”. The letter to the president of Eritrea written by a group of Eritrean academics and professionals (in 2000) describes the impact of the defeat in the following words: They write: “As a nation we have been devastated by the Ethiopian invasion of our sovereign land. …the Ethiopian army´s deep penetration inside Eritrea and our sudden retreats shocked every Eritrean to the core and shook our nation to its very foundations” (Berlin Manifesto, 2000)[4].

I could not have put better to illustrate the myth of the invincibility of the Eritrean forces than what is penned down in the Berlin Manifesto.

Finally, the author´s criticize me for maintaining that “the Eritrean diaspora all lack intellectual resources to think things through. There are virtually no Eritreans who could carry out a sustained analysis of Eritrea and its neighbors” (ROAPE, 39:131, p. 59). Although a decade and half has now passed since I drew such rather drastic conclusion, my subsequent reading and monitoring of Eritrean history writing has convinced me even more that the situation has become worse – an issue that I devote the second part of the paper.

Part II. Severe absence of coherent discourse

In his excellent summary of the challenges of Eritrean historiography, Bairu Tafla (1994) raised the question as to whether “Eritrea was historically an integral part of their [Ethiopian] empire” and answered it “as nothing but rhetorical” (Tafla, 1994:507). He went further and concluded that: “The fate of a country is not in the final analysis decided by a recollection of relationships of the distant past, but rather by prevailing political and military realities”. He was no doubt alluding to the widely spread belief that it was Eritrea´s military might that brought Ethiopia to its knees and created a new reality on the ground that is the independence of Eritrea. Bairu Tafla was echoing the invincible power of the Eritrean People´s Liberation Front. After noting that the writing of Eritrean history by Eritreans had just begun, he listed what he called the outstanding ones, which by the early 1994 amounted to about ten monographs including the Journal of Eritrean Studies and RICE (Research and information Center for Eritrea) (1994:506-7). Though highly supportive of the ideological content of the books written by Eritreans during the armed struggle for the liberation of Eritrea, Bairu Tafla, warned Eritrean scholars from producing inflated and unresearched history – activities that would perpetuate the persistence of ignorance (Tafla, 1994:510). “Eritrea must make efforts to develop a sound attitude towards genuine historical research based on critical evaluation of source materials. This responsibility is the pending challenge to Eritrean intellectuals, because critical studies and objective analysis can certainly serve better the interests of Eritrea “(Tafla, 1994:510).

Although I fully concur with Bairu Tafla on his call for a challenging historiography, I do not, however, share his evaluation of the historiography that was produced by Eritrean scholars prior to the independence of Eritrea. The objectives of Eritrean scholars who carried out historical studies during the war of liberation were not to untangle historical and historiographical knots but to provide historical basis for the ongoing struggle of the Eritrean people´s Liberation Front (EPLF) in its war against Ethiopia[5].  With the exception of perhaps one or two, the works that I reviewed did not fulfill the criteria of the historian´s craft, namely source criticism (Negash, 2000:1).

How did Eritrean intellectuals and or historians stand up to the historiographical challenges that Bairu Tafla sketched above? From 1993 until the outbreak of the first Eritrean Ethiopian war of 1998, there were, to my knowledge a couple of books that are of significant importance; namely the one edited by Amare Tekle (1993) and the other edited by Tesfagiorgis, Gebre Hiwet, ed., 1993. Both of these books were conceived about a year before the victory of the Eritrean forces against Ethiopia in 1991.

What was most worrying was the closure of the Journal of Eritrean Studies soon after the independence of Eritrea. Established by RICE (Research and Information Center for Eritrea) in 1986, the Journal of Eritrean Studies was engaged in what Bairu Tafla called “a liberation history parallel to the armed struggle”.

RICE, it has to be noted is an organ of the EPLF and its decision to close the Journal of Eritrean Studies signified two things. First, the EPLF did not feel the importance of critical studies of Eritrea and its society. Second, it was a clear demonstration of the power of EPLF to control Eritrean intellectuals abroad. The Journal of Eritrean Studies surfaced again but just as a special issue in 1999 in defense of Eritrea in the then ongoing war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

If the victory of the EPLF against the Ethiopian regime in 1991 created according to Bairu Tafla a new historiographical premise, that premise had indeed a very brief life. In May-June 2000, Ethiopia defeated the Eritrean People´s Army, entered deep into Eritrean territory and remained there as a guarantee against future invasion. In a paper I read at the 14^th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Negash, 2000) I wrote that the defeat would eventually lead to a shift in the way we write the history of Eritrea where no historian worth her/his salt could avoid its consequences[6].

 With the closure of the Journal of Eritrean studies, nothing of historical interest was published by Eritrean scholars from 2000 onwards. The series of articles of Richard Reid are worthy of note but his call for the sustained study of Eritrean history and society during the interwar period as well as into the 1940s and 1950s has so far not been heard. Richard Reid cited and praised the two books authored by Alemseged Tesfay (2002 and 2005) written in Tigrinya on the history of Eritrea from 1950 to 1955 and published in Asmara. Had Richard Reid been able to read Tigrinya, he would have easily seen the faulty basis on which they were built[7].

The political and military reality of Ethiopian victory against Eritrean forces in May 2000 created a historiographical vacuum. A coherent discourse on Eritrea, its history, and its culture, which was not robust even during the thirty years of the war of liberation now receded far into the background.  The internet (social media) – a medium that at one level enables everyone to have her/his voice be heard, leads at another level, to the proliferation of relativized knowledge at the cost of critical evaluation of sources, thus undermining the basis for a coherent discourse.

The arrest of a group of high officials of the Eritrean government (known as the G 15) in September 2001 and the refusal of the government to either charge or release them was the beginning of the isolation of Eritrea. Europe and the United States begun to define Eritrea as a regime that holds its citizens hostage. It was from the end of 2001 that Eritrean youth begun to leave their country in masse – a phenomenon that put Eritrea as one of the countries that produced the largest number of refugees.

There were few books produced by Eritrean historians between May 2000 and towards the end of 2022. Written by scholars who were actively engaged during the war of liberation, that is prior to 1991, all of them exhibit the historiographical weaknesses that Bairu Tafla warned about in the early 1990s, namely critical evaluation of sources. Gaim Kibreab´s exhaustive study: Eritrea: A Dream Deferred discusses in great detail how the Eritrean people and society are held hostages of their government. He cites three authors to explain what he meant by the Eritrean dream that had to be deferred or that has been betrayed by the regime of Isaias Afewerki. It is unfortunate that Gaim Kibreab simply accepted their statements without any reservations.[8] Whose dream? Out of which stuff, how and by whom was that dream created and or sustained?

One of the consequences of Ethiopian victory in May 2000 was the reluctance of the Eritrean government to seek negotiated settlement as that would imply its acceptance of defeat. The Eritrean-Ethiopian war, as Eritrea´s president Isaias reiterated, had nothing to do with border dispute. So from 2000 until 2018 Eritrea and Ethiopia chose to pursue the no war – no peace form of relationship until one of the parties admitted defeat.

Yohannes Okbazghi, who in the late 1980s wrote a distorted history of Eritrea (Okbazghi, 1991), now authored together with Kidane Mengisteab a study in which he admitted that it was the blind support that Eritreans in the diaspora gave President Isaias Afewerki that contributed to the growth of dictatorship. The conclusions of their book: Anatomy of African Tragedy, (Okbazghi and Kidane, 2005) Is indeed worth quoting: “Absence of institutions and civil society organizations, which is one of the legacies dictatorial regimes leave behind, often tend to reduce changes to a mere recycling of the elite” (2005:283). The authors did not in any way discuss how this tragic condition can be reversed.

The 2000 to 2020 decade is undoubtedly dominated by the prolific writer Bereket Habte Selassie. His autobiography, The Crown and the pen: the memoires of a lawyer turned rebel, (2007) is a highly entertaining read but of rather limited historical value. Its most significant point was the author´s admission that he kept silent (for over a quarter of a century) about the human rights violations of the EPLF. What is worse, he supported the EPLF for fear of being branded either as a traitor or as an infantile leftist[9].His second volume, Wounded Nation: How once a promising Eritrea was betrayed and its future compromised, (2011) like the work of Gaim Kibreab mentioned above, is based on highly exaggerated and or false premise. He does not specify or problematize during which period Eritrea was a promising nation? Was it during the Italian period, 1890-1941, or during the British period, 1941-52, or the era of the federation, 1952-62?

Although critical evaluation of sources is not his strong side, Bereket knew quite well the conditions prevailing when he was entrusted with the drafting of the Eritrean Constitution, 1994-1997).[10]

In 2015, Bereket published a pamphlet where he expressed his fear about Eritrea´s future. Referring to the outmigration of Eritrean youth and its impact on the Eritrean society, Bereket reflected as follows: “The vast majority of the Eritrean Diaspora…are bitter and it is anybody´s guess as to whether they can be eventually induced to recover their faith in the nation they left behind. Many seem to see their future in their adopted country of refuge, not in the nation they left behind. This is indeed one of the saddest aspects of the current Eritrean reality. It raises some serious questions with deeper implications for Eritrea´s future” (2014:25). I share Bereket´s views fully.

I have chosen to analyze the historical studies produced by Eritreans in order to assess their fault lines as well as their strengths. This choice does not in any way diminish the value of the writings of, for instance, Richard Reid, Kjetil Tronvoll, J. Venosa, Laura Ryseck, Martin Plaut , Michaela Wrong, Dan Connell, Irma Taddia, Uoldelul Chelati-Dirar, Federica Guazzini, Gianni Dore and several others. The value of such undertaking is that it serves as a benchmark on what has so far been done and on what remains to be done in terms of the production of historical knowledge. Neither Gaim Kibreab´s Dream Deferred, nor Okbazghi´s Anatomy of an African Tragedy and Bereket Habte Selassie´s, While waiting or working for change, 2015, carry out a coherent discourse on contemporary Eritrea and its future trajectories. President Isaias Afewerki who had been in power for over half a century has undoubtedly shaped Eritrea´s history. Yet it has to be kept in mind that he is both a producer and a victim of a system he and his companions created with the ideological backing of Gaim Kibreab, Bereket Habte Selassie, Yohannes Okbazghi and many others. What is equally important is that Eritrea and its inhabitants would outlive him.

Whereas the focus of Eritrean historical discourse prior to 1991 was on what Bairu Tafla called the production of “liberation history”, that of post 2000 historiography is to blame President Isaias Afewerki for the state of Eritrea which resembles a military camp rather than a normal society. It is this lopsided and rather meagre historical production that I had in mind when I wrote that Eritrea lacks the intellectual resources to think things through. However, there are two exceptions and these are Tesfatsion Medhanie who since the mid 1980s had kept a coherent discourse on Eritrea and its future[11] and Herui Tedla Bairu[12]. 

The recently published book, Eritrea: Nationhood and Sovereignty (Bereket Habte Selassie, editor, 2022) epitomizes the absence of a coherent discourse on the writing of the history of the country and its inhabitants[13]. Edited by a prolific writer whose knowledge of the history of Eritrea, unfortunately, leaves a great deal to be desired[14], the book reduces nationhood and sovereignty as attributes that are in the hands of only one person, namely the president of Eritrea. Its task, it appears is to remind the president of Eritrea that his declaration during the peace treaty with Ethiopia (July 2018) was an act of treason punishable with death (Bereket, 2022:10). The treasonous act is described by Bereket (2022:vii) as follows:

“Isaias Afewerki told a cheering crowd that henceforth there would not be a separate Eritrea and Ethiopia. “We are one people”, he was telling them, and anyone who doubts this must have his head examined, he seemed to intimate. This was music to the crowd´s ears. Here is what they [Ethiopians] thought to be the archenemy of Ethiopia – the devil incarnate – proclaiming in no uncertain terms that he was one of them – a lost child come home from the cold”.

Five years later, Eritrea is still independent and sovereign under the firm grip of President Isaias. Nothing has changed and most probably nothing would change in the foreseeable future that would impinge on the “nationhood and sovereignty of Eritrea”.

My reading of the events that Bereket described are very different. On the contrary. The declaration and the peace treaty that Isaias signed with Ethiopia in 2018 are among the few positive actions that he took since he assumed power in 1971 (Negash, 2020: 39-84).

The anthology aspires, through a book writing project to preserve the perishable properties of nationhood and sovereignty, which the traitorous Isaias has attempted [perhaps still attempting] to undermine. What is new to add to those principal properties? The issues have been answered more than 30 years ago; Eritrea had just celebrated its 32^nd independence anniversary.

The anthology is made up of eight chapters with a foreword and a conclusion by Bereket Habte Selassie, the editor. I shall first describe briefly the separate chapters and then attempt to put the anthology in the context of the writing of the history of Eritrea and its challenges.

In the chapter on “Pillars of Eritrea´s sovereign statehood”, referring to the constitution of Eritrea where he was one of the authors, Bereket stated that Eritrea is a sovereign and independent state founded on the principles of democracy, social justice and the rule of law (2022:2). This statement could have been true if the constitution that was produced in 1997 had been implemented. Eritrea ought to be a state founded on principles of law but that is another matter. So far Eritrea has no constitution. The correct description is that Eritrea is a sovereign and independent state founded on the organizational principles of the EPLF – where citizens have no rights but obligations, where people can be jailed for over 20 years without any due process of law, where the country, its people and its resources exist for the Eritrean peoples Liberation Front/ Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (EPLF/PFDJ), and where what is good for the PFDJ is good for Eritrea.

This is followed by a chapter on the “Historical basis of Eritrea´s sovereign statehood”. Written by two historians (Awet Weldemichael and Samuel Tsegai); this piece does not add anything of value to what we have read by authors such as Yohannes Okbazghi and Jordan Gebremedhin. On the contrary, it enhances the role of Italian colonialism in the creation of Eritrean identity and accuses the Ethiopian emperor of exploiting “Eritrean political inexperience and curb the pro-independence tendencies in the territory through deceit, corruption and intimidation. He fully financed and armed the Unionists and enlisted for them the backing of the Orthodox Church in Eritrea[15]. What is really the purpose of such chapter, three decades after the recognition of Eritrea as a sovereign state by the entire world? Such a chapter could be conceived and carried out, if for instance, Eritrea´s sovereignty was threatened by external forces or powers such as Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the Sudan. It is a badly executed work that fails to integrate recent research on the crucial decades of the 1930s and 1940s.

The next chapter by Bereket Habte Selassie on “The Legal Basis of Eritrea´s sovereign nationhood is as badly researched as the earlier chapter. “Eritrean nationalism”, writes Bereket Habte Selassie, “is based on the creation of the territory as an Italian colonial state. Like the rest of colonial Africa, its identity as a nation state was defined by the boundaries created after Italy declared it as a colony in January 1890” (Bereket, 2022:43). Writing thirty years after the independence of Eritrea, Bereket is not willing to concede that Eritrean nationalism was interpreted differently by different ethnic groups in Eritrea. On the contrary, he writes as if he has no academic obligation to challenge Amare Tekle (1965), Lloyd Ellingson, (1986), Erlich Haggai, (1978), Tekeste Negash (1997, 2004) who all had much more to say on the landscape of Eritrean nationalism. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Bereket writes in full disregard of views and arguments that do not suit him. I shall cite one example. In May1949, the UN sub -committee (known as sub-committee 15) voted on the Bevin-Sforza proposal where Eritrea would be partitioned; the highlands including Massawa would be joined to Ethiopia and the fate of the Western lowland to be decided later. Ethiopia and the Unionist Party accepted the proposal as viable whereas the Moslem League and those organizations supported by Italy were not in favor.

The Bevin-Sforza proposal for the disposal of Eritrea was the only one that had the chance to be accepted by the UN General Assembly, but was rejected because it was part of a package (that involved the disposal of Somaliland and Libya). The mandate of the General Assembly was to approve a disposal plan for all the three ex-Italian territories.

Bereket wrote in 1989 as well as in this present anthology that the Bevin-Sforza plan was rejected because “the Eritreans were united in their emphatic rejection of the idea of partition” and the disagreement within the UN body itself” (Bereket, 1989:51). Here it needs to be stressed that the views of the Eritrean organizations which opposed partition had no role at all either in the passing of the Bevin-Sforza proposal or in its rejection by the United Nations. Bereket Habte Selassie does not mention Amare Tekle who wrote a PhD dissertation (1965) on: The creation of the Eritrean- Ethiopian Federation, 1945-50 and Lloyd Ellingson´s PhD dissertation, (1986) Eritrea: Separatism and Irredentism, 1941-50 at all[16] . As if the glaring omission that he showed in his 1989 book has given him a license to write what he wants, his passage in this anthology is a travesty of what academic research is all about. Bereket (2022:44-5) wrote: “The partition idea, which was known as the Bevin-Sforza agreement, was defeated by the combined political forces, both Christian and Muslim, one of the few actions on which there was national unity by the emerging independence forces led by Sheikh Ibrahim Sultan Ali (a Muslim leader) and Woldeab Woldemariam (a Christian leader)”. Bereket has no empirical evidence whatsoever to draw such conclusion.

The following two chapters attempt to describe Eritrea both as a wealthy country and rich multi-ethnic society. Assefaw Tekeste, the author of the chapter “Eritrea: Poor people in a wealthy country”, informs his readers, presumably the young generation that “Eritrea carried the major economic burden of Ethiopia as a result of sound high quality, state revenue system, efficient administration inherited from the state of Eritrea and the consequent industrial and agricultural development” (Bereket, editor, 2022:60-1). Further on he writes by way of conclusion, “My generation of the 1960s failed to appreciate and draw lessons from their momentous achievements because of ideological political myopia” (Bereket, editor, 2022:69). “Eritrea had good governance and if this generation can transition from a system of a lone leader to a state governed by the will of the people, Eritrea could become a middle-income country because of its resources” (Bereket editor, 2022:60). He does not cite any source to back up his description of Eritrea and his contribution to our understanding of the political economy of Eritrea is of very limited significance.

The rather long chapter by Mohamed Keir Omar, “A Nation with a Museum of Peoples: From the Central highlands to Western and Eastern lowlands “, does not appear to have a purpose. The description of the various ethnic groups inhabiting Eritrea is carried out in stereotypical way and not linked to the second part, that is the colonial and postcolonial history. Relying on Bereket Habte Selassie and Jordan Gebremedhin, the author could first write that “Ethiopia succeeded in dividing Eritreans into two competing factions and gradually brought the Unionists under its control” and later, “all political parties in the 1940s, except the Unionist Party, sponsored by Ethiopia, had been campaigning for Eritrea´s independence” (Bereket editor, 2022:84, 99). The chapter has not in any way pushed the frontiers of our knowledge on the subject. It is quite difficult to see the relevance of both chapters in the anthology, that aspires to deal with nationhood and sovereignty.

The best and most relevant article is that by Anghesom Atsbeha and Ghirmai Negash, on:” The rise and fall of the ELF [Eritrean Liberation Front] and the formation of Eritrean nationhood”. The objectives are clearly defined as well as the method used. The central question is why the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) considering its historically significant politico-military role in Eritrean struggle for independence disintegrated with such finality? They document the first round of the civil war between the ELF, the parent organization and the Eritrean People´s Liberation Front (EPLF) between 1972 and 1974. The analysis is very well built and the chapter discusses the causes that led to the disintegration of the ELF due to multiple factors. The ELF had several internal problems, one of which was the pressure from some of its members to make peace with the EPLF. Since 1978, the ELF was suspected by some of its members that it was seeking ways to resolve the Eritrean question by reaching a negotiated agreement with the Ethiopian government. However, according to the authors of this excellent chapter, “in a new cycle of the civil war, [1980-81] the ELF met an abrupt demise after the EPLF, this time supported by the Tigrean People´s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an all-out attack against it (Bereket, editor, 2022:129). The authors draw two main conclusions: the defeat of the ELF delayed the success of the Eritrean struggle by a decade and it exacerbated the deeper divisions in Eritrean society along ethnic and religious lines, highlighting the fragility of nation-building in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society (Bereket, editor, 2022:130-31).

However, the chapter is not complete because it says very little on the formation of Eritrean nationhood. It is now over 40 years that the Eritrean field has been under the hegemonic control of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front. What are the implications of this power on the formation of nationhood? They could have assessed the implications of the heavy dominance of the Tigrinya speaking population which according to David Pool (2001:187), “Tigrinya has become the working language of the administration – a function of the proportion of Tigrinya speakers in the EPLF, the Tigrinyanization of non-Tigrinya EPLF fighters and the proportion of former members of EPLF members in government and administrative positions. For non-Tigrinya speakers government and its institutions can present an alien face in courts, at airport and offices”[17]. Let us hope that the authors would bring themselves to deal with the question they alluded in the title of their paper.

The decades of authoritarianism as challenges to Eritreanism, national identity and sovereignty, by Abdulrazig K.Osman is a long rumbling chapter that does not follow the basic rules of a researched paper. Concepts are thrown here and there and an attempt is made to join them together by a heavy reliance on Bereket Habte Selassie´s careless, distorted and false assertions. Nothing of substance is said in this chapter on either Eritrean identity or sovereignty.

In contrast to the previous chapter, Daniel Teklai sketches the political biography of Isaias Afewerki, who starting as a liberator, moving to become a dictator and finally transforming into a traitor. The virtue of this paper is that it is the first one to mention that “Isaias was synonymous with the resilience of Eritrean revolution and a hero and his contribution to the triumphant political and military success of the EPLF is undeniable” (Bereket, editor, 2022:173-74). The author is convinced that Isaias Afewerki is determined to unite Eritrea with Ethiopia and this policy is tantamount to treason, but the author adds, who is going to formally accuse him of that? (Bereket, editor, 2022:187). I think the chapter could have benefitted a great deal if it had attempted to answer the nagging question of how “Isaias the liberator” has ended up being “Isaias the traitor”?

The final chapter, “Wither Eritrea: Nationhood, dictatorship, and the struggle for a democratic change” by Ismail-Omar, Ali, is a sort of roadmap that is rather weak on identifying the necessary conditions to translate policy into action. “As the majority of the Eritrean people want the dictatorship out, dismantled and replaced with a representative democracy they should conduct a carefully calibrated series of armed and non-violent engagements” (Bereket, editor, 2022:210, 216). It is to be hoped that few would listen to such a call – which would involve huge damage to the little that is left of the social fabric and value system of the country. The author places a great deal of hope on the opposition in the diaspora, first to manage armed resistance and then to overcome the long history of hate propaganda, mutual distrust and mutual demonization that is prevalent among Eritreans of all walks of life.

The author assumes, quite readily that the opposition would win and “after taking over the reins of government, the interim government should immediately set a time frame during which it will complete all transition related tasks” (Bereket, editor, 2022:218). The author does not seem to be aware that one cannot set a time frame to transform the political culture that Isaias and the EPLF/PFDJ created during the last half a century.

In conclusion, Eritrea: nationhood and sovereignty, is a book that could have been written some forty years ago in defense of Eritrea´s struggle for nationhood. Surprisingly enough it has many similarities with those books which were produced in the late 1970s and 1980s[18]. But the difference is that Eritrea did win the war of liberation and is a sovereign state since 1991 (de facto) and 1993 de jure). The justification for writing the book is the argument that President Isaias Afewerki, the leader of the most successful liberation organizations from 1971 and who ushered Eritrea´s nationhood and sovereignty is now accused of violating Eritrea´s sovereignty. It is not Ethiopia that violated Eritrea´s sovereignty; on the contrary, the latter accepted in toto the border claims of Eritrea.  The book would have enhanced its relevance if it devoted a couple of chapters on the political evolution of Isaias and his organization from 1971 until the statement of July 2018.

I do not agree that Isaias has committed any acts of treason, but if there is some truth in what is alleged, such transition from a liberator to a traitor would require a thorough overhaul of the historical, legal, and political assumptions that were developed to justify the right of Eritrea for a separate nationhood and sovereign existence. “In the modern political history of Eritrea” wrote Mesfin Araya,” the role of the EPLF was certainly a new phenomenon; and it is not, therefore, without historical foundation when Eritrean supporters regard their leader, Isaias Afewerki, as the George Washington of Eritrea, who has delivered what had in the past seemed utterly impossible, the Eritrean nation-state”[19] “Isaias the traitor” must surely reject most of the books written by Bereket Habte Selassie, especially, those he published in 1980 and 1989.

On the contrary. On the occasion of the 32^nd anniversary of the independence of Eritrea (May, 24, 2023) President Isaias stressed the victories that Eritrea achieved to ensure its sovereign and independent status. In this speech as well as in earlier speeches, Isaias reiterated two points. The first is that it was external forces that made Eritrea and Ethiopia go to war since the 1940s and that those external forces did not cease to create antagonism between Eritrea and Ethiopia until the last war between the joint Eritrean and Ethiopian forces against the region of Tigray (August 22 until November 2, 2022). The message is clear. The Tigrayans waged the war against Eritrea and Ethiopia on the bidding of the United States of America. The second point is that Eritrea has during the last thirty years worked for regional integration as a necessity and not simply as a choice. The 32^nd anniversary was celebrated as consummation of the victory of the Eritrean forces against those of Tigray. The reception that Isaias Afewerki was given by China during his state (May 14-19, 2023) and where Xi Jinping stated that China “firmly supports Eritrea in exploring a development path suited to its national conditions, firmly supports Eritrea in safeguarding its sovereignty, security, and development interests “ (People´s Republic of China, May 15, 2023) added a flavor to the anniversary celebrations and most probably gave Isaias further reason to continue to militarize the Eritrean society.

With the exception of the chapter on the rise and fall of the Eritrean Liberation Front (E LF) all the other chapters add little to what we already know; on the contrary, the chapters by Bereket Habte Selassie (Legal basis of Eritrea´s sovereign nationhood) and by Awet Weldemichael) are of much poorer quality compared to similar articles written over thirty years ago.

Yet the anthology has a positive role; it functions as benchmark on the state of research as well as on the quality of research that is being carried out by Eritrean scholars in the diaspora.

What is being produced inside Eritrea, can be surmised but is outside the scope of this paper[20]. As the recent International Monetary Fund reported, the Eritrean government lacks capacity in data production-a vital component for the IMF to do its job. How bad is the economic condition in Eritrea? A glance, for instance at the BTI 2022 country report[21], spells it out clearly: “President Isaias has developed a command economy in which all enterprises are controlled by himself and the small ruling elite composed of high ranking PFDJ cadres and military officers that dominate all political and economic affairs” (BTI: Eritrea, 2022:6).

According to my reading of Eritrean history, the governance system that Isaias introduced and consolidated during the last thirty years, has great similarities with the Ethiopian/Abyssinian system that prevailed at the end of the 19^th century. At the top is Isaias, president for life and his small group of advisors. Under him are the military governors of the six provinces, mandated to manage their provinces the best they can. The military governors are engaged in all sorts of criminal activities including human trafficking (BTI, 2022:12) but Isaias does not interfere in their workings as long as they recruit and train soldiers for his army where he is the commanding officer. Eritrea is a warrior state as was Ethiopia at the end of the 19^th century. The central organs of the state (agriculture, health, education, industry) are poorly coordinated and constantly underfunded. Isaias Afewerki is, to my knowledge, the only leader who does not take responsibility for the performance of the various organs of his government. He would for instance say that Eritrea does not have really a functioning supply of water or electricity, year after year and move on. He behaves as if he has delegated all the power to the departments and it is up to them to fix the job – whether it is the supply of water, electricity, or food.

His governance system has served him well. The army that he built after his humiliating defeat in 2000, has finally done an effective job in the decimation of the people of Tigray[22]. In the process he has turned Eritrea into a ghost nation where everyone who can is leaving the country, probably never to return. Here it is relevant to mention a fundamental value system that has to a large extent contributed to the rise of Isaias and to the tendency for endless fragmentation among Eritrean diasporans. The Eritrean society, like any other society in the precapitalist world is built on oppression rather than on exploitation. A classical Marxist analysis would conclude that the Eritrean society is not yet captured by the capitalist ethos and system. This is too evident from the way Isaias rules his country; he is very good in oppressing his people, but he has no idea of exploiting his people so as to lead them towards development.

There is a strict correlation between exploitation and development. It is only when material and human resources are rationally exploited, and the profits reinvested, that leads to what we call development. Oppression on the other hand by stifling initiatives, breeds resistance and does nothing to either the development of the material or human resources. Yet if the history of countries like Great Britain has some relevance it would appear that societies have to go through a phase of oppression before they can be exploited both for the good of the state and its subjects[23]. The story from oppression to exploitation and the eventual triumph of the welfare system of governance emerges quite clearly when for instance Karl Marx´s The communist Manifesto and Karl Polanyi´s The Great Transformation are read together with the Michel Foucault´, the development of the disciplines

The Eritrean diaspora, owing to its size and rather close ties to the nation of origin, can play a positive role in creating and maintaining a critical capacity of intellectuals and politicians who appreciate the value of critical evaluation of sources as the major method of acquiring knowledge[24]. I shall by way of conclusion try to sketch in broad terms such a collaborative framework.

By way of conclusion: building capacity in a hostile environment

Those in Eritrea, the political opposition organizations in the diaspora and diaspora intellectuals all need to enhance their analytical capacities. Building a critical mass of citizens who value evidence-based knowledge (critical evaluation of sources) takes a lot of time, especially when carried out in a foreign environment. The future of Eritrea hangs on whether its citizens can carry out a coherent discourse. The people inside Eritrea are locked under the firm grip of a system that daily dehumanizes them, and the diasporans – easy victims of subversive actions of the Eritrean regime – appear not to be in a position to prepare themselves and their supporters for the challenges that they would face after the exit of President Isaias. Almost all Eritreans who could carry on research on Eritrea do so within academic institutions where Eritrean studies is marginalized. Moreover, many of them are forced to work outside of academia to make ends meet. Very few Eritrean intellectuals are in a position to carry research full time on Eritrea. The recent initiative to revive the Journal of Eritrean Studies is indeed commendable.

Moreover, building capacity is becoming a huge challenge, not only in Eritrea but everywhere, due to the deleterious impact of social media; the eminent threat to critical thinking and the hard work it takes to think things through. The key question is how do we create conditions for an environment of learning where critical evaluation of sources is the linchpin?

Given the above constraints, I would suggest that the scholars organized under the ERIPS (Eritrean research institute for policy and strategy) and within the Association of Eritrean Studies, explore the possibilities of establishing a University of Eritrea on line (for humanities and social sciences) in collaboration with UNESCO or other institutions recognized and supported by UNESCO.  The major task of the online university would be to teach Eritreans the basic principles of how knowledge is produced and defended and or revised[25].

It is in recognition of the great damage that President Isaias has inflicted on Eritrea and its society that Eritreans in the diaspora must begin to consider all alternatives (excluding armed resistance) that contribute to capacity building. Eritreans in the diaspora, according to my opinion, do not have the organizational and intellectual resources to launch such a project on their own. Would UNESCO ever consider such a request if it is ever made by Eritrean diasporans? Are there universities in the United States who could house a virtual University of Eritrea? There could be other solutions.

I believe that I have framed one problem – a severe absence of a coherent discourses made worse by diminishing analytical capacity. It is far beyond the scope of this paper to delve further into what needs to be done – a problem area best approached collectively in an open forum.  I do hope that the Journal of Eritrean Studies would stand up to the challenge.

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Tekeste Negash,  2010, “Armed Struggle and Better future: Dubious connections”, A review of Eritrea: A Dream Deferred, by Gaim Kibreab, 2009, London: James Currey.

Tekeste Negash, 2015, “Language, knowledge, development and the framing of a common destiny in contemporary Ethiopia”, in Stahl, Michael, editor, Looking Back, Looking ahead: Festschrift for Kjell Havnevik, Uppsala: Nordiiska Afrikainstitutet.

Tekeste Negash, 2020, “Imagining the trajectories of the 2018 Peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Unpublished.

Tekeste Negash, 2020, “Good Prospects for Peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia”, in Belete Belachew Yihun, ed, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers, pp. 39-84.

Tesfatsion Medhanie, 1994, Eritrea and Neighbours in the New World Order, Bremen: Bremen Afrika-Studien.

The Horn of Africa Bulletin, 1993 (number 3).

Tesfatsion Medhanie, 1986, Eritrea: Dynamics of a national Question, Amsterdam: B.R.Grunner.

Tesfartsion Medhanie, 2007, Towards Confederation in the Horn of Africa. Focus on Ethiopia and Eritrea, IKO: Frankfurt and London.

Tesfatsion Medhanie, 1989, Peace Dialogue on Eritrea: prospects nd Problems Today, Amsterdam: B.R. Grunner.

Trevaskis, Kennedy, Eritrea: A Colony in Transition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Yohannes Habtu, 1993, ” Regional economic cooperation and integration prospects for development in the Horn of Africa: The case of Eritrea and its immediate neighbors”, in Gebre Hiwet Tesfagiorgis, ed., Emergent Eritrea, pp.3-15.

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Autobiographical note

I was born in 1947 in the village of Ma´reba (ማዕረባ).

Both of my parents are from the same village. On my father´s side, we migrated to ማዕረባ) from Bege Medir (northwest Ethiopia) some twenty generations ago. From my mother´s side we belong to the lineage of እንዳ ጋዕቡር መፅናሕቲ መሬት (those who were there before anybody else. Ga´Bur (ጋዕቡር) is a common lineage among the Afar.

I moved to Asmara at about the age of six and did my elementary schooling at Comboni College. After one year at the then Prince Mekonnen secondary school (Martyrs School), I completed my secondary education at Jimma Agricultural and Technical School (JATS) in south of Ethiopia).

In 1967 I joined the newly established Asmara University and was the first batch to graduate in Laws in 1972. After two years of employment, in 1974 I was granted a scholarship by my Alma Mater (Asmara University) to do an MA in African History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London.

In London, I was one of the founders of the Eritreans for Liberation in Europe; got into conflict with the supporters of the EPLF due to my lenient position towards the ELF, especially since March 1976. I also interacted with the Ethiopian Students Union in Europe. I was pushed out (and I also pushed myself out) from the Eritreans for Liberation movement, especially since the latter decided to be formally affiliated to the EPLF.

Tired of both London and Rome, I moved to Uppsala in the autumn of 1977; did a PhD thesis on Italian colonialism in Eritrea, 1882-1941 in 1987 which was followed by Eritrea and Ethiopia: The Federal Experience, 1997. In the first half of 2000, I wrote, together with Kjetil Tronvoll, Brothers at war: making sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopia War. 

I am married to Berit Sahlstrom since 1978. I have three daughters, and seven grandchildren. I have spent all my adult life first doing a PhD and later working within academia. I retired as emeritus professor in 2012.  Since 2014, I am an associate fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.

I have never been back to Eritrea since I left it on the 16^th of September of 1974.Yet I still hope that one day I shall see my village again.

[1] I  wish to acknowledge the comments and feedback that I got from Shiferaw Bekele, Michael Stahl, Chefena Hailemariam, Yebio Woldemariam, Aboy Keshi Ezra Gebremedhin, Tekle Woldemikael and Tesfatsion Medhanie. Many of them are critical both to the format and the content of the article.

[2] I have been subjected to verbal abuses and physical threats from supporters of the Eritrean People´s Liberation Front, In early 1997, few weeks after the publication of Eritrea and Ethiopia, a letter bomb was sent to my address. Fortunately, the letter bomb exploded at the post office where the letter was posted. The police informed me and my family about it three weeks after the incident. A friend commented coldly that I should have expected such kind of reaction.

[3] For more discussion on irredentism, see Negash, 1997 chapter two (pp.54-59). See also Tekeste Negash, 1994.

[4] The Berlin Manifesto was only one of many statements to the same effect. On August 28,2000, Yohannes Okbazghi wrote a reflective article of why Eritrea failed to defeat the Ethiopian adversary. Okbazghi wrote, “an underequipped and ill-fed Eritrean Defense Forces, operating under obsolete military assumptions, waited like a sitting duck for a highly equipped and over-supplied Ethiopian invasion army. Another writer who described the defeat in more poignant manner is O.E.Tberh. where he described the history of an independent Eritrea as a history where the country finds itself almost destroyed by President Isaias Afewerki who has succeeded to squander the boundless trust and confidence placed on him by the Eritrean people. (See Tekeste Negash, 2000)

[5] Habte Selassie, Bereket, 1980, 1989; Okbazghi, Yohannes, 1989, Tekie, Fessehazion, Araia Tseggai, Jordan Geberemedhin, Richard Sherman, Basil Davidson, Lionel Cliffe, Roy Pateman, Dan Connell, and David Pool.

[6] Eritrea got a new opportunity to settle score with its arch-enemy, the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front  during what is described as Ethiopia´s Tigray War, fought between 2020 and 2022. In this war, Eritrea sided with the Ethiopian government and participated fully in defeating the Tigrayan forces. Eritrea succeeded to do two things at the same time. It became a military camp where virtually everybody between the age of 18 and 60 was forcefully recruited for the sole purpose of defeating the TPLF. And it succeeded (together with Ethiopian forces) to decimate the population of Tigray and to destroy the infrastructure of the region. It was, according to President Isaias a decisive settlement of the relations between Eritrea and Tigray where the latter would no longer be a threat to Eritrea´s sovereignty.

[7] Rejecting my views on the growth of nationalism in Eritrea, Alemseged Tesfay 2005 wrote that the history of the independence of Eritrea is a long process that goes back to the precolonial times. Here the author confuses the political history for an independent Eritrea with the histories of the various ethnic communities in the country.

[8] Gaim Kibreab cites the following authors. Abdul Rahman Babu , 1924-1996, (a famous social activist and writer) after two weeks in the areas controlled by the EPLF wrote that experiences with “liberated Eritreans give you confidence in the capacity of the African masses to take history in their own hands during the challenging journey from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” (Kibreab, 2009:13). The second author is Basil Davidson who wrote: “emergent Eritrea was the composite of stability and capacity for peace in the region of collapsing regions” (Kibreab,2009:14). The third author, Blaine Harden, a journalist who wrote that “Eritrean revolutionaries hold out the possibility of an efficient, self-reliant African nation, run by Africans who have had 26 years to learn from the failures of independent Africa” (kibreab:2009:14). For a review of Gaim Kibreab´s book, see Tekeste Negash, “Armed Struggle and Better Future: Dubious Connection “, Africa Book Review, March 2010.

[9] Bereket Habte Selassie, 2007:317-8.

[10] Pool, David, 2001:166-7, assessed the work of the Constitutional Commission for Eritrea (CCE) that was headed by Bereket Habte Selassie as follows: “ An informal PFDJ [People´s ´Front for Democracy and Justice] and government consensus on many issues either pre-empted or caused the CCE to anticipate an EPLF view of the constitution. In so far as the first draft of the constitution was to be discussed by the PFDJ- dominated national assembly, it would have been foolhardy for the CCE to present a draft constitution divergent from the views expressed by the leading PFDJ and government members. Dr Bereket asserted that in the discussion about the constitution in the broader executive council there was no apparent common PFDJ line. Given that the PFDJ line had already been laid down in its congress and members followed the decisions taken, the absence of ”apparent “ line makes sense only for points of detail”.

[11] His major work on the dynamics of a national question of 1986 appealed to the Eritrean progressive forces to seek a political solution conditioned by the revolutionary developments in Ethiopia (1986:297). This was followed by an elaborative essay (Peace Dialogue on Eritrea: Prospects and Problems today, 1989) where he criticized “Eritrean intellectuals abroad for not playing the creative and constructive role expected of them” (1989:36). What Tesfatsion Medhanie noted in the late 1980s is what I noted nearly two decades later; an issue I shall dwell in more detail below.  Pursuing his focus on Eritrea, Tesfatsion medhanie wrote a major piece on: Eritrea and neighbors in the New World order in 1994. His concluding assessment, based on a detailed survey of the relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia is indeed worth quoting; he wrote, “Developments since the secession of Eritrea in May 1991 confirm one basic truth. The ties binding Eritrea and Ethiopia are very deep. These two countries have all-round connections – economic, ecological, cultural, historical and even strategic. These connections are there whether Eritrea is a sovereign state or not. Close relations of cooperation between the two countries is therefore a natural state of affairs” (1994:121). And finally, nearly a decade after the first Eritrean-Ethiopian war of 1998-2000, Tesfatsion Medhanie summed up his long engagement with Eritrea in a reflective book with the fitting title: Towards Confederation in the Horn of Africa: focus on Ethiopia and Eritrea (2008)). As a political scientist who builds his analysis on what is actually taking place -a flying target and hence very difficult to get a grip on) Tesfatsion Medhanie was not so hopeful that Eritrea and Ethiopia would sit down to dialogue over the parameters of a confederal arrangement (2017:143). A confederation between Eritrea and Ethiopia could be credible and even sustainable if and when radical political changes take place in both countries (2017:150). A very enlightening study as it is its conclusion infuses pessimism greatly because it was composed when both parties, as I mentioned earlier were in a state of war. Tesfatsion Medhanie would certainly have reframed his basic conclusion had he written on the subject towards the end of 2018 when relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia had in unexpected ways normalized.

[12] Herui Tedla Bairu, 2016, Eritrea and Ethiopia: A front row look at issues of conflict and the potential for a peaceful resolution ,Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press. The analysis leaves a great deal to be desired, but it is carried out within a coherent framework.

[13] I wish to thank Kassahun Checole, the publisher of Red Sea Press who upon my request sent me a review copy.

[14] His influential book, Eritrea and the United Nations, 1989, shows a high disregard of factual evidence as well as omission of relevant sources. His first book: Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa, 1980, is also replete of errors and distortions. See Tekeste Negash, 1983.

[15] The Emperor could not in the early 1940s command such power over the Eritrean Orthodox Church and he did not have to. The most famous monastery of Debre Bizen and its properties was according to the treaty of Wichale, 1889, an integral part of the Ethiopian Empire. In other words, the monastery of Debre Bizen was an Ethiopian enclave inside Eritrea from 1889 until 1935.For some of the implications of such infringement of colonial power, see Tekeste  Negash, 1987:121-136.

[16] The chapter: Eritrea and the United Nations in the book of the same title (1989) would not make it through a graduate seminar. To write an article on such a topic without debating with Amare Tekle and Lloyd Ellingson is a serious academic offence.

[17] David Pool (2001:157) had the following to say about the composition of the EPLF in 1991. “The EPLF was not, however, a microcosm of the Eritrean population. The bulk of the fighters were highlanders, as reflected in the official statistics: 64 per cent Tigrinya, 24 per cent Tigre, 12 per cent minorities; 63 per cent Christian and 36 per cent Muslim. These figures reflect a contingent set of factors…. Rather than any drive for Tigrinya domination of nationalism”.

[18] Davidson, Basil; Cliffe, Lionel; Bereket Habte Sekassie, 1980 and 1989; Yohannes Okbazghi, 1991.

[19] Mesfin Araya, 2001, ”Nationalism as a contingent Event: Some Reflections on the Ethio-Eritrean Experience”, Western Michigan University, Scholar Works at Western Michigan University.

[20]  The PFDJJ system of governance does not allow critical evaluation of sources and source criticism; this must have huge repercussion on the conduct of research.

[21] Bertelsmann Stiftung´s Transformation Index (BTI) 2022: Eritrea.

[22] For an account of how the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces destroyed the social and economic fabric of Tigray by wholesale looting and deliberate destruction of items essential for survival, see Plaut Martin and Sara Vaugham, 2023: 344 and 359. Although the account on the role of Eritrean forces is according to me correct, the overall content of the book is heavily biased against Ethiopia.

[23] Tekeste Negash, 2015, ”Language, knowledge, development, and  the framing of a common destiny in contemporary Ethiopia: some reflections”, in Stahl, Michael, editor, Looking back, looking ahead – land, agriculture and society in East Africa. A Festschrift for Kjell Havnevik, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

[24] Freed from oppression, Eritreans in the diaspora show great reluctance to build hierarchical organizations against the regime of Isaias Afewerki.

[25] I wish to acknowledge the inspiring discussions that I regularly have with Dr Cahsai Berhane (Brussels) and Tesfatsion Medhanie (emeritus professor, Bremen) on this and other subjects on Eritrea, its society and its future. I am, however, entirely responsible for the contents of this paper.

• African resilience
• authoritarianism
• capacity building
• diaspora voices
• Eritrean history
• eritrean struggle
• hostile environment
• liberation movements
• memory and resistance
• PFDJ
• political imprisonment
• Sahel camps
• survival and identity
• tekhester negarsh
• war legacy