The Golden and the Tin
The Greatest Generation
A year ago, or a little longer, a female Eritrean YouTube content creator interviewed Ustaz Saleh Younis, during which he disclosed his preference for the Revolution generation, calling it the greatest generation. I had to second his preference and adopt it, mainly because there is ample evidence to support its validity. When speaking of the greatness of a social entity, one metric of this greatness is the ability of this social entity to devise and build, under pressure, facilities or institutions that serve, maintain, and ease its life, and the more so when these institutions are closer to the abstract.
The Kernel
Those who lived in Khartoum, Sudan, between 1977 and 1981 witnessed one such Eritrean moment. “Sfra Unudat ስፍራ ዑኑዳት” was the name of that miraculous institution. It was not complicated, nor did it require complex planning or even much forethought by anyone. What it needed was what any civilized society should, by necessity, have to exist and stay alive: mutual trust between individuals and between the components of that entity. A perfect analogy for the role mutual trust plays in a society’s functional cohesion is the Kernel of a computer operating system. Without it, the machine cannot even start, nor can any software function.
The Kernel at work
In the same way, without trust, the entire system of human interaction collapses before it can truly begin. Trust is the lifeblood of every civil community. Without it, the bonds cementing the unity of the society under consideration, inevitably, fracture, and the very fabric of shared existence begins to unravel.
The absence of trust among the members of any civil society condemns the interactions between its individuals to fracture and death. Consequently, corruption pervades this society, and its individuals become selfish islands, while lying, theft, hypocrisy, and bribery are transformed from reprehensible flaws into unsurprising mechanisms for survival.
Hence, the emergence of the phenomenon of “sfra unudat” was a miracle at a time when the enemy believed that social bonds of communities were severed, social fabric disintegrated, and dissolved. Thousands of refugees who fled the calamities and flames of war and settled in Sudanese cities without a reliable address depended in managing their lives on relatives who had preceded them to havens in near or distant lands where they lived and worked to support their loved ones and friends.
Here we must ask: who was the founder of this great agency, and who was its keeper? The answer to both these questions is one and singular: no one! No one but that program running in the background—”the mutual trust among the members of the community”—which we described as mimicking living computer programs, without which it would be nothing but a worthless heap of metal.
How did it work?
How did this wondrous institution operate?… When someone arrived in Khartoum from nearby or distant exiles, they would come with money in their pocket, letters, and a list of names—people they might not know or might never have seen in their lives, whether in their homeland or in their exile in Sudan—to deliver that money and those letters from individuals in those exiles to loved ones waiting in Sudan. The first thing the newcomer would do is head to downtown Khartoum, where one of the city’s largest hotels, Arak Hotel, stood at that time. There, they would see the hotel entrance, with various commercial shops to its right and left, all accessible after crossing a shared veranda for the hotel and the shops. The veranda was roofed, its ceiling resting on square concrete columns. And they would see that the outer sides of two or three of these columns were covered with simple paper posters bearing handwritten lists of residents in Khartoum. At the bottom of each list was the address and the means of reaching the list’s writer, who had come from a particular country carrying money or letters from those residing in the same region of exile as their loved ones and friends in Sudan.
If you were a resident of Khartoum at that time, you would have seen Eritreans arriving in droves at this very place, where they called “ስፍራ ዑኑዳት“—meaning “The fool’s path”—a dramatic name with significant meaning, as it is an expression denoting self-pity. The person to whom the message was to reach would read the list, go to the bearer, and the bearer would hand over everything sent to them without diminishment. And if someone did not go to the headquarters of this marvelous agency for some reason—because they resided elsewhere, far away, or perhaps in another city—then inevitably, one of their acquaintances who had read the list would strive to notify them immediately. They would arrive, perhaps after a day or two, to receive what was theirs from the dear newcomer. And as you see, this was the act of trust, which in turn is the act of morality and civility. One has to say: Blessed were those days.
Now…what’s now
And now, let us see what has become of the generation that came more than forty years after the one that nurtured that miraculous agency! Let us know what has remained of those lofty ideals which established that great institution….
I have to say it loud and clear: Nothing… absolutely nothing is left! Here and now, you will find that the generation raised after that remarkable one is a generation that has produced the cowardly brute in spirit—one who kills, steals, and deceives his own people. It is a generation that has produced those who oppress women and kill wives, companions, and friends. It is a generation that has brought forth those who threaten and vow to annihilate anyone differing in religion with a consuming inferno for no reason but a difference in religious belief without being able to justify what they claim they are able to commit. It is a generation that has given us those who collude with the barbaric regime to kidnap their fellow citizens, whether for ransom or organ harvesting. It is a generation that has produced men who took Eritrea and Eritreans reputation to new heights in the world of crime and transnational criminality:
In December 24, 2025, the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service issued a statement in which it disclosed that A 41-year-old Eritrean man (Kidane Zekarias) held captive in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been extradited to the Netherlands. The Netherlands Public Prosecution Service wants to prosecute him for atrocities against migrants traveling from Libya to Europe. The Eritrean is suspected of, among other things, participating in a criminal organization involved in migrant smuggling, hostage-taking, extortion, and violence, including sexual violence. This is in addition to other six suspected of committing in tandem the same crime of which one is already standing trial and his verdict is scheduled for January 27, 2026
The liars
I cannot describe the generation that came after the revolution and independence as anything but the generation that has adopted the morals of its barbaric ruler—a ruler whose authority is built upon the mother of all vices: the lie.
Yes, this is the root of the calamity: the lie. And see what, Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology from the University of Toronto says in an interview with a famous television host (Piers Morgan), describing Eritrea even without knowing it, particularly intending it, or literally naming it. Anyone who wants to see can see Eritrea at the center of the picture, which the psychologist skillfully depicted with his words:
“You can’t have a totalitarian State unless every single person is willing to lie about everything all the time and you can think about it as top down, for the leader lies too, and they impose punishment if you don’t lie, but then you can also think about it as the totalitarian spirit is replicated at every level of the society, and so, on a truly totalitarian state husbands lie to their wives parents lie to their children the totalitarian state is, actually, the grip of the lies”
Eritrea’s post-revolution generation exists within an extensive theatre of falsehood, where deception—originating from the top—filters through and permeates all societal strata, as characterized above. In contemporary Eritrea, a culture of mutual deceit prevails. This dishonesty transcends verbal falsehoods; it is physical and embodied. The dancing, the music, and the performed emotions—whether of joy or sorrow—are themselves all artifice, manifestations of the foundational lie.
Who can be held accountable for this tragic drama? The man at the helm could not have designed and executed such a vast diabolical plan alone, nor could he have sustained it single-handedly. Totalitarianism is not the work of a single individual; an entire society must approve of it, and willingly participate. The British philosopher Thomas Carlyle captured this idea in his book “Past and Present”:
“The government cannot do, by all its signalling and commanding, what society is radically indisposed to do. In the long run, every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say: ‘Like people, like government.’ How closely this echoes the words of the Prophet Muhammad, who said, “As you are, so will your rulers be.“ Yet this similarity is no coincidence. Carlyle was a profound admirer of the Prophet, devoting a significant portion of his most excellent work, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History,” to recounting Muhammad’s life and message.
The problem in Eritrea, as it is clear, is not a problem of governance nor is it a problem of politics, it is, rather, a problem of Ethics, or the lack of it to be precise.
Forgery by twisting arms
The tragedy of this entire episode—built on a lie and perpetuated by the liar—is how it has infiltrated the conscience and shaped the thinking of the post-revolution generation’s opposition symbols. Before concluding this already lengthy essay, I will provide an example of this infiltration.
Nearly two years ago, Mr. Steve Walker, the Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. mission in Asmara, published a detailed article in the Atlantic Magazine describing Eritrea’s governance mechanisms and political environment. because of the article’s significance—coming from an official with direct access and informed insight—the Eritrean opposition satellite station ‘Erisat’ translated it into Tigrinya with commendable honesty and accuracy. However, it omitted a paragraph from the original English text. In that paragraph, the author, Mr. Walker, noted that Isaias Afwerki’s power base rests primarily with “Tigrinya-speaking Orthodox Christian highlanders.”
This abuse of facts is a form of deception known as ‘lying by omission.’ While it may seem a minor falsehood, it reveals Erisat’s actual position: one in which the sought-after change is reduced to merely the sanitizing of the PFDJ temple—removing only the figure at the helm while leaving the entire corrupt structure intact. For Erisat, that appears to be sufficient. This behavior, as reckless as it is, points to a profound betrayal of the many, including this writer, who once trusted Erisat and its staff.
One cannot help but marvel at Erisat’s arrogance. They did not merely tell their own lie; they twisted Mr. Walker’s arm, forcing him to deny his own words, placing him in the position of a liar. To those of us who for long trusted Erisat and its staff, this provokes a deep sense of disillusionment. We are left to find solace in words often attributed to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (though he did not, in fact, say them):
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
- Source the prosecution service of the Netherlands at https://www.prosecutionservice.nl/topics/migration-crime/news/2025/12/24/uae-extradites-suspected-eritrean-migrant-smuggler-to-the-netherlands
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