Interviews with US Diplomatic Officials Who Served in Kenya 1944 - 2000 on Their work There and Their Impressions About The Country
Thanks to Ahmed Robleh for sharing
Thursday 29 February 2024
Interviews with US Diplomatic Officers Who Served in Ethiopia 1947 - 2002
Interviews with US Diplomatic Officers Who Served in Ethiopia 1947 - 2002
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Thanks to Ahmed Robleh for sharing
Interviews with US Diplomatic Officials Who Served in Somalia from 1955 - 2002
Interviews with US Diplomatic Officials Who Served in Somalia from 1955 - 2002
Thanks Ahmed Robleh for sharing
Wednesday 28 February 2024
Interviews with US Diplomatic officers who served in Eritrea in the 1950s
Interviews with US Diplomatic officers who served in Eritrea in the 1950s
EDWARD W. MULCAHY, Vice Consul Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia (1950) Consular Officer, Asmara (1950-1952)
Edward Mulcahy was born in Massachusetts in 1921. He graduated from Tufts University in 1943, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1947, and served as a first Lieutenant overseas from 1943 to 1946 in the U.S. Marine Corps. His postings abroad included Mombasa, Munich, Addis Ababa, Athens, Southern, Tunisia, Lagos, and Chad. Mr. Mulcahy was interviewed in 1989 by Charles Stuart Kennedy.
While I was in Kenya I learned a great deal about Asmara, about Eritrea and the ex-Italian colonies from some of my British friends who had been in the military service up there in the campaign against the Italians in East Africa. I knew what a delightful city Asmara was. On the map it looks dreadful, only this far away on the map from Massawa which is one of the hell holes of the world climatically at least. But Asmara is up at 7,600 feet and that's perpetual springtime there, about the same altitude as Mexico City. So I jumped at the chance of going there. This was in December of 1949. By the middle of January, I had my orders transferring me to Addis Ababa. We'd closed up our post at Amberg on January 10 and I was back in Munich.
Q:
Was that part of Ethiopia at that time?
Q:
That was Kagnew Station.
The northern Moslems spoke a language called Tigre, but they also spoke five other languages, mutually unintelligible one to the other, for the most part. They were Semitic languages in the northern half of the territory. Along the coast there were islands of barely related Hamitic languages. But they spoke Arabic among themselves, fairly good quality of Arabic, as a lingua franca.
While I was there, I learned Italian, which I needed every day. Everybody needed Italian. That was the real lingua franca of the country. After I had a good grip on that, I went on to Arabic. It was the colloquial Arabic of the Red Sea area and a very useful form of Arabic, close to the classical. Those two languages would get you just about all over the country and nearby parts of Ethiopia. There was a great deal of Italian still spoken in Ethiopia in those days.
My record shows an assignment at Addis Ababa. Quite true. I had to be assigned someplace until I had a consulate open in Asmara, so I was attached to the embassy at Addis Ababa, where I spent a couple of weeks in early February of 1950 and where I called on the emperor in top hat and morning clothes, borrowed; I didn't own those myself. Ambassador George Merrill (and later Rives Childs) at Addis Ababa and their staff were very generous in their support most of the time that I was in Asmara running it as a two-man post with one Foreign Service female clerk in carrying the administrative load for me.
Q: How did it work? Were you under our
embassy in Addis Ababa?
MULCAHY: They were quite loyal. They used to have people over there from time to time and they had been doing what reporting there was on Eritrea available in the Department's files. But I think they were probably sympathetic to the emperor’s view that there ought to be a connection with Ethiopia. I think also they thought it would be a leavening and possibly a good example for Ethiopia to deal with a democratically elected, autonomous, internally autonomous, Eritrea. I, frankly, thought that, too. I firmly believed that that would have been exactly the best thing for Ethiopia and that the empire, which it indeed is, could thrive if run as a series of autonomous regions under a federal constitution, for example.
Q: Did you feel that you had any role in developing any policy towards this? The federation came. Did it come without our pushing or pulling or objections?
MULCAHY: I had regular consultations with the United Nations High Commissioner who eventually was sent out there, Don Eduardo Anze Matienzo, a distinguished former foreign minister of Bolivia, a very fine, erudite, cultured gentleman. Anze Matienzo was a good friend. We had a good personal relationship. I also had a close relationship with his Principal Secretary who was an Austrian, an old employee of the League of Nations, Ranshoven-Wertheimer, and with all the key members of his staff whom I saw frequently. Asmara was a city of only all told 50,000 or 60,000 people, about 15,000 Italians and 1,200 British, I suppose, counting dependents, and not counting a 2,000- man British battalions and a very, very small American community. We had a few American missionaries there besides that, three missionary establishments.
We had a very close-knit community and good relations among the different communities both internationally and ethnically. I was always being approached by the leaders of 16 different political factions when I went there. Some of them amalgamated with others after December 1950 when the General Assembly decreed in favour of federation of Eritrea with Ethiopia. They went down to about eight. To round up a good cross-section of Eritrean opinion on any subject, I would take my time over a three-day period to seek out the eight leaders of these factions. Sometimes I wouldn't need to go to all eight of them, but maybe five or six of them and have a chat with them. You could do that by sitting at a certain coffee shop near the cathedral on the main street in Asmara. If you were there, many people would see you and they'd want to get their word in with you or they'd come around to the Consulate to deliver their points of view.
Q: You did find yourself sort of captured by the American military community or by the British military community or by the Italian community.
MULCAHY:
No, definitely not.
Q: How were relations with what we would call--I don't want to use the pejorative sense--the natives, the actual Eritreans?
MULCAHY: Very, very good. The Coptic Eritreans who were in the majority in the highlands around Asmara had favoured outright annexation by Ethiopia. They were supporting what was called a shifta army, several guerrilla bands, always much less numerous than you'd ever believe. They were indistinguishable from the Tigrinya-speaking Ethiopian citizens who came in from across the border. But most of the Eritrean nobility--and they continued even under the Italians to have their stratification of society into azmatches, dejazmatches, caghazmatches, etc. similar to counts, earls, barons, dukes and what have you, old Ethiopian titles. A lot of them fielded little guerrilla bands of their own in order to show their loyalty to the Emperor. In the northern Moslem areas there were also guerrilla bands, who tended to favor a partition of Eritrea. They wanted to go with the Sudan with which they identified ethnically and religiously. That was their outlook. Now, the Moslems were divided in the country as a whole. Most of them in the cities and coastal areas favoured the status of republic. But after the General Assembly voted in favour of federation and we and the British supported it when we saw that partition was a non-starter. After India, after Cyprus, after Palestine you couldn't talk partitions.
Q:
After seeing the fighting that took place and the animosity, we just were not
inclined to support
partitions.
MULCAHY: That's right. Everybody came around, to believe that, if this federation concept could be well and fairly hammered out, it would be a good thing. In my office staff, I had an Italian who had been an active member of a party that favoured an Eritrean republic. He had been a former member of the Italian Colonial Service but had resigned in 1938, resigned from the Fascist party, resigned his reserve commission in the army. I wouldn't call him a great democrat, but philosophically he was rooted there. He'd been there for almost 30 years and spoke flawless Arabic, was often consulted by the Mufti and the Qadi of Asmara on fine points in Koranic law, and used to lecture to the Moslem law students. I got him a job teaching Arabic at the little University of Maryland extension program we had at Asmara, which is where I also learned Arabic. I learned my Italian from him, largely on the job. I had him, a Christian Eritrean, a Moslem Eritrean, and an Armenian female. The Armenian Community were quite influential in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Social relations among the communities were really quite good in Eritrea. I divided my time pretty equally between the British, the United Nations and the Italian communities. The Moslem and Christian communities were not very much engaged in social affairs by our standards-cocktail parties and dinner parties--but they were continually inviting you to their weddings, to he mosque for feast days, to the Coptic cathedral for all their feast days. You were very often in touch with them. I also visited the political leaders when I went traveling, which I did a great deal of. A lot of visiting I tied in with hunting trips. Hunting was fabulous there because the British had taken guns away from all the Italians and didn't even let them have shotguns. There had been something like nine years of uninhibited growth of the wildlife population there. For birds and for four-legged animals it was a paradise for hunters.
Q: Was the continuation of our communications base in Asmara a major imperative as far as how we wanted to see Eritrea go?
MULCAHY: Whatever way Eritrea went, we wanted to be able to maintain the communications base there. At that time that little base was handling all of our military and diplomatic correspondence from the Middle East and nearby parts of Africa and boosting it to Washington-to a base near Washington, shall we say. I don't know whether that's still classified, so we'll just say near Washington--by high-speed telex so that it sounded like just a screech and was almost un-monitorable. I gather it was monitorable at the receiving end but it would be considered fairly primitive by today's methods. All diplomatic and military communications went there from a large part of the world. The beauty of Asmara at the edge of the Ethiopian plateau with sheer cliffs all around was that it had almost trouble-free radio communications except in times of sunspots. No black-outs or two days of black-outs, say, in the normal year where Frankfurt and Manila, the other comparable bases in the world, and Panama, were blacked out for as long as a month during the whole year. Often Asmara would get all of the traffic of Europe to relay to Washington.
Q:
Did this have any effect on how we voted for federation?
==================================================================================
EDWARD W. CLARK Consular Officer Asmara (1953-1956)
Edward W. Clark was born in New York and graduated from Princeton University and Cornell Law School. His postings abroad have included Panama, Asmara, Lima, and Buenos Aires. Mr. Clark was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1992.
Q: Then you got yourself out of Central America for a while and went to Asmara from 1953-56. What were you doing there?
CLARK: I was consul there.
Q:
What was the situation at that time in Eritrea?
CLARK: One of my jobs was to keep track of how this federation was proceeding, whether it was being respected by the Ethiopians. The Eritreans and the Ethiopians had always been at odds. The Ethiopians over the centuries would every once in a while, come down and beat up on the Eritreans and take back a bunch of their wives and make them pay them tribute and then they would go back. This went on for centuries. They didn't like each other. And the Eritreans had obviously good reasons for not liking the Ethiopians.
Q:
Kagnew Station. Had Kagnew been established by that time?
CLARK: Kagnew Station was originally an Italian naval communications centre. When the British took over from the Italians in 1942, they gave us that naval station, and we used it as a naval station at first. Then it expanded pretty quickly and was used as a station that could monitor nuclear explosions in the Soviet Union plus, because of its location, it was a good relay station for the military system across the world.
So by the time I got there, about 11 years later, it was a substantial station run by the Army with a smaller naval communications unit. It was our major interest and our major problem because there were some 2,000 people there and they were getting into trouble. We had the usual PXs there and people would buy there and sell outside and the merchants would complain, etc. They had the need for expansion and during the time I was there, there was negotiated a new agreement which provided for a new facility to house all the stations plus some receiving and sending antenna fields. Interestingly that was all negotiated in Asmara instead of Ethiopia, so that we, the American consul and the Commander of the post there were very, very much involved in the negotiations. It was very interesting. I know of no other time when an agreement like that was negotiated.
Q:
With whom were you negotiating with?
CLARK: We were negotiating with the local Ethiopian Federal Government. The emperor’s representative there in Asmara. The details were all worked out over a period of a year. When that was finally agreed to then we all went up to Addis and with the Ethiopian Government and the Embassy finally signed the agreement.
Q:
The Ambassador in Addis Ababa was Joseph Simonson who was not a career officer.
How did he operate?
CLARK: He was a minister of the church in Minneapolis and a Republican supporter. I think he had said the prayers at several Republican conventions. He really didn't know what he was doing.
Q:
That was probably one reason why the negotiations were held at Asmara.
CLARK: No, I think it was because the details couldn't have been negotiated without being in Asmara and actually going out to the sites, etc. He was not involved in it. He was unfortunate. Remember Nixon made a trip around Africa as Vice President?
Q:
Yes, I interviewed somebody not long ago who accompanied him on that trip,
Jules Walker.
Q:
But from what I gather he wasn't doing anything.
CLARK: No, he was unfortunate. He was a nice guy but shouldn't have been in that position. There are lots of other ambassadors I know, political and otherwise, who shouldn't have been there either.
Q:
Did this affect your work at all or was he over the hill and far away?
CLARK:
We were able to report directly to Washington. I would send copies to the
Embassy but they didn't have to go to the Embassy. So we were fairly
independent. We handled all their mail for them because it came in through the
APO. The military would turn it over to us and we would put the Embassy mail on
the local Ethiopian airline planes. They were always calling us asking for
their mail. At one point they accused us of holding it up, if you can imagine
that, for Christmas.
CLARK: The Eritrean people didn't like the Ethiopians so they didn't like the Emperor. He came there several times while I was there. They had a big reception up at the Emperor's representative's palace. But he didn't spend much time down there. But no, Eritrean people didn't like the Ethiopians, period. And they still don't.
CLARK: The Italians did. The Ethiopian policy towards the Italians was very well thought out. They advised their people to treat them properly. They wanted them to stay because they were the ones who could build the roads, fix the electricity, do all the things that the Ethiopians didn't know how to do to keep things going. So there was a substantial populous of Italians of that level there. Plus some fairly well-to-do Italians. They had the beer plant there, a textile plant, they had a large dairy producing farm and a number of other things. So the Italians were very much in the ballpark there, very influential. I would say that the Italian Consul General was much more influential than any of us were at the time. Apart from that, no...
CLARK: No, no Soviets.
Q:
Israeli?
CLARK: Well, the Israelis had a kosher meat packing plant there. Eritrea became a central place for produce for ARAMCO. They had an agent there who bought and they would send a plane over once or twice a week to take fresh produce back.
Q:
I was in Dhahran from 1958-60 and I ate that food.
CLARK: They used to come over and take their R&R there too.
Q: Did you ever do that? : No, I never got over.
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Thanks to Ahmed Robleh for sharing
A Collection of Interviews with US Diplomatic Officers who served in Sudan 1957-1997
Sudan Country Reader:
A Collection of Interviews with US Diplomatic Officers who served in Sudan 1957-1997
مجموعة مقابلات مع دبلوماسيين أمريكيين خدموا في السودان بين ١٩٥٧ و١٩٩٧
السفير
فرانسوا إم. ديكمان، أول مستشار اقتصادي وتجاري أمريكي في السودان في عام 1957
بعد
وصولي بقليل، كانت إحدى التحديات الأولية التي أتذكرها هي قرار واشنطن في عام ١٩٥٧
بالتخلص من مخزونات القطن طويل التيلة من عهد الحرب العالمية الثانية. تم دمج هذه
الخطوة مع تدابير حماية جديدة لأقل من ١٠٠٠ مزارع للقطن طويل التيلة في الولايات
المتحدة. النتيجة كانت انخفاض حاد في أسعار القطن السوداني طويل التيلة. كان هذا
القرار مدفوعًا بشكل أساسي بدوافع سياسية، بهدف إرضاء منتجي القطن المحليين في
الولايات المتحدة. ومع ذلك، أعتقد أيضًا أنه كان يستهدف الرئيس المصري ناصر. بما
أن القطن طويل التيلة كان من أهم صادرات كل من السودان ومصر، فقد كان لهذا الإجراء
تأثير كبير على اقتصاداتهما الهشة.
Ambassador François M. Dickman, the first US Economic and Commercial Advisor in Sudan in 1957
“Shortly after arriving, one of the first issues that came
up that I recall was Washington’s decision in 1957 to dispose of the stockpiles
of long staple cotton that had been accumulated during World War II. This was
coupled with new protectionist measures for the less than 1,000 growers of long
staple cotton in the United States. The result was to cause the price of
Sudanese long staple to plummet. The decision was a purely political one that
was intended to respond to domestic pressures from U.S. cotton growers. But I
also suspect that it was directed at Egypt’s President Nasser. Since long
staple cotton was the Sudan’s main export, and it was Egypt’s as well, it was
certainly a blow to its already weak economy.”
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Thanks to Ahmed Robleh for sharing
Friday 2 February 2024
A 2012 Awate.com document on He and His Objectives (Nehnan Elamanan)
http://awate.com/he-and-his-objectives/
Posted on February 13, 2012 by Awate Team
The first decade of the Eritrean
struggle for independence that started on Sep 1, 1961 was a time of growing
pains. But in the late sixties, the military setbacks and draining of
all regional support from the Arab region after the Six-day war, combined with
the extensive and effective Ethiopian propaganda, resulted in serious internal
crisis. Many combatants were determined to reform the organization and they
formed Harakat Al-Islah (the Reform Movement.) Unfortunately the problems
were deeper than what the Islah Movement could reform. By 1969, the crisis had
deteriorated and resulted in sectarian rivalry.
In 1971, there appeared Nehnan
Elamanan (We And Our Objectives), a document that Isaias
Afwerki and his friends authored to justify their sectarian split from the
Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which they considered a “Jihadist”
organization. They embarked on establishing an organization to mobilize
Eritrean Christian Highlanders. Today, many believe that Nehnan
Elamanan is the cause for all the fragmentation and polarization that
Eritreans still suffer from.
Nehnan Elamanan came with allegations of grisly murders
committed by what it called the “Jihadist” ELF against Christians; and after
more than forty years, the allegations still circulate as truth among Isaias’
supporters. With time, the unsubstantiated allegation became urban legend,
elevated to a myth, and further deepened the mistrust among Eritreans and to
this day continues to divide Eritreans. In fact, it is difficult to understand
the cultural disharmony, the sectarian mistrust, and the regional frustration
that Eritrea suffers from without scrutinizing Nehnan Elamanan.
Unfortunately, save for some loner pens here and there, not many have
challenged the allegations made in the document. On the contrary,
a number of so-called Eritrean scholars have been repeating the
contents of the manifesto as divine truth. But those who read the
polished English translation cannot be blamed for the translators
themselves are certainly influenced by the message. It suffices
to show that the title of the manifesto, Nehnan Elamanan, was
translated as ‘Our Struggle and Its Goals’ whereas the correct translation is
We And Our Objectives. The manifesto is all about
“WE”—its authors identify themselves “most if not all of us are
Christian highlanders”—which carried so many subliminal messages directed to a
focused audience: Christian Highlanders. It was not (as the translated version
tried to make it appear) about the STRUGGLE which, in the Eritrean psyche,
means something of a national nature, with an all encompassing Eritrean scope,
not a sectarian clarion call.
The manifesto still cries to be
researched and analyzed; and we encourage qualified scholars to do just that.
On our part, this article is our modest attempt to shed some light on
it. We will challenge and explain the evolution of the manifesto because we
believe that knowing the details of Isaias’ destructive designs in the past
will help us better understand him and be better equipped to fight his tyranny.
Nehnan Elamanan is widely believed to be a creation of
Isaias, his master plan. Therefore, we think a more fitting title for it would
be ‘He And His Objectives.’ The manifesto is the seed of Isaias’ tyranny of
today, and it is the reason why we have him at the helm of power in Eritrea.
In this article, we will first
present an introduction to Nehnan Elamanan followed by an
insight into how it came into existence and how it hastened Isaias’ sectarian
split before he joined two other splinter groups with whom he formed
EPLF, which he soon controlled, and which, after the liberation of Eritrea, became
today’s PFDJ. Finally, we will explain how Isaias and his clique exploited the
killing of Kidane Kiflu and Welday Ghidey, the only two names
of casualties that appeared in Nehnan Elamanan and which it
treated sensationally.
Nehnan Elamanan: The Eritrean Mein Kompf
Nehnan Elamanan was an attempt by Isaias to rewrite history
to fit his grand plans for Eritrea. From the outset, he identified his
constituency and focused on mobilizing the Christian population of the Eritrean
Highlands, by addressing their baser instincts, cleverly using their fears and
suspicions, spreading out any feeling of collective guilt (over
Eritreans dealing with the Haile Selassie regime) and calling on them
to rally behind him against what he portrayed as the dangerous other.
The dangerous other is “Qiada
Al’Amma” (the General Command—the leadership of the Eritrean Liberation
Front of the time—derisively, thereafter, referred to as “Amma.”). The
General Command is described as a people who had no clear political principles,
no military strategy (tebenja hizka m’kkublal…zttakhosu zneberu:
roaming around and firing off guns haphazardly); who opted to use religion
instead of nationalism as an organizing principle and therefore defined Haile
Selasse as “Kaffr” and the Eritrean struggle as “jihad fi sebilli Allah”
[struggling in the path of God]; whose favorite activity was looting Christian
properties. It accused them of looting 10,000 cows belonging to Christian
highlanders and, with the spoils, it explained, the General Command bought
houses in Sudan, they got drunk, “the single among them got married
and the married among them got remarried.” When they were not looting the
properties of Christians, getting drunk and marrying and re-marrying, they were
slaughtering Christians by the hundreds (“karatatom ksiHlu…nkrstyan kHardu”
sharpening their knives to butcher Christians.)
With the “other” clearly defined
as corrupt, bigoted, thieving and murderous thugs who used religion as an
organizing principle, the document went on flattering the “we”—always defined
as Christian highlanders. It told them that if they are suffering any guilt for
the role of their forefathers in the 1940s, they shouldn’t because “The
Eritrean people—after 1940—were divided into two political fortresses. When the
majority of Christians were calling for union with Ethiopia, the majority of
Muslims were calling for union with Sudan.” (never mind that this is not what
the UN Commission reported at the time.) It told them that they should
feel empowered because the last census which was done in 1957 showed the “we”
are 55.7% of the population and “aslam hzbna” are 44.3%. It told them
that the Christian highlander was just as nationalist, just as willing to fight
for Eritrean independence in 1961—had it not been for the restrictions of
geography.
It also claimed that the
consensus which was reached in the 1950s to have dual official languages was
forced by the UN because the UN saw everything through a religious
prism. The idea of the ELF to divide Eritrea into 4 operational
sectors [copied from Algerians in their fight against colonialist France] was
based on the ethnic differences of the ELF leadership and it was right for the
Christian highlanders to ask, “why is a Muslim/Saho leading us?” And even when
he was replaced by a Christian highlander, it was not good enough because he
was “Hade se’Abi’om zkhone kristanay Haleqa”[a Christian chieftain who
was one of them.] And there was nothing wrong for the Christian highlander to
make these demands because “natka yeHmmeka” [what is yours is what
concerns you], it argued. All attempts for reforming the ELF failed because “wedi
dmu ney gedf nay e’mu [bad habits die hard--but the expression
describes "bad habits as hereditary] explained the document. And so,
since the only two choices are to (a) surrender to the enemy [Ethiopia] or (b)
be butchered by the ELF leadership, we don’t have the luxury of sitting
on a razor blade and that’s why we are splitting.
The document played up every
stereotype of the Muslim Eritrean: disorganized, barbaric, murderous,
sectarian. It was 28 pages of “Aslamay entenegese yHarrd e’mber neyferrd”
(put a Muslim in a position of authority and he is severe.) And it did
its job: to this day, 40 years later, Eritreans who know nothing about
Eritrean history know one thing: the ELF ["Amma"] was led by
sectarian butchers. Not just Eritreans: even foreign “revolutionaries”
internalized its message and called the ELF a “Muslim organization”. How did
this document come about?
The Birth Of The Mysterious
Document
For a long time before Nehnan
Elamanan was openly distributed, Isaias and his group were
clandestinely circulating parts of it, and messages with similar content to it.
Apparently the originals of the messages were kept in Kessala [Eastern Sudan]
and many of those who were part of the planning, writing or disseminating the
propaganda of Nehnan Elamanan have repeatedly, and vaguely,
mentioned them just as “documents”. They all stated that Kidane and Welday were
in possession of some “important documents” in Kessela, Sudan.
An interview conducted by Isaias
Tesfamarian [an Eritrean librarian who resides in California and works at
Stanford University (?)] with several EPLF (the precursor of the PFDJ) party
officials is very revealing. They state that at one time after Kidane and
Welday were killed, Ghirmay Mehari (now Brig. General in Eritrea) and
Wolderufael Sebhatu (martyred in Nackfa) were sent to retrieve the documents
from Kassala. [i]
Brig. General Ghirmay states: “they
were very important documents…. Wolderufael knew the whereabouts and the
importance of the documents because he used to work with them [Kidane and
Welday] …Once we got to Kassala we got some of the documents but not all.”[ii]
Woldenkiel Gebremariam, a
current minister of the PFDJ says: “the documents were very important.
Kidane Kiflu was in Kassala and Kassala was the coordinating point with the
field. He used to follow up the situations in the field and record them. They
were very important historical documents. Some of the documents (letters) were
sent to the field. With the situation that we went through in the field, it is
hard to say where they are. Some documents were taken by Tekue Yhidego and etc.
to Aden from Kassala. We used to have them with our Hafash Wudubat (Mass
Organizations). After we went to the field we did not know the situation of the
documents.”[iii]
And Naizghi Kiflu, an
ex-Minister of the PFDJ and its one time security director, who had been
critically ill for some years, and died on Feb. 6, 2012 in the UK said: “The
documents were very important. They used to describe the situations in the
field. Who did what? Who got killed by whom …etc. are the sort of things that
were in the documents. We left some of the documents with our Hafash Wudubat
(Mass Organizations) in Aden, Yemen. Later, we heard that the documents were
stolen.”
Mesfin Hagos, in a recent
interview (we translated the relevant part of it to English) also mentions some
documents: “…At the end of 1969… I was told that I was appointed to the
engineering department, but shortly after…I went to the Sudan. There were some
books in Sudan that I brought along with me from China, and that would help us
in my appointed position [military engineering ]… [iv]
In a testimonial booklet,
Gebremedhin Zerezghi, a veteran combatants who lived the events says: “Members
of Srryet Addis[v] started to communicate and correspond
through letters. When there was an attempt to read letters that were
intercepted, it was impossible [to read them]. Some were in secret codes, some
were in numbers, some were [written] in alphabets that seemed like Russian.”[vi]
We believe that those messages,
and the repeatedly mentioned documents [referred to as “books from China” in
Mesfin Hagos’ case], or some of them, are in the possession of the PFDJ, and
once released they would surely clear a lot of grey information. But until such
a time, the available information is enough to deduce what the documents were
about: perhaps the seeds of Nehnan Elamanan.
At a time when there was rampant
political conflict within the Eritrean liberation forces, and obviously Isaias
and his group were weaving conspiracies, and the heavy-handed manner with which
the ELF leadership tried to resolve the problems, one side would naturally want
to defeat the other, at least in the propaganda war—that partially explains the
motive behind Nehnan Elamanan. Also, in many instances, the ELF
leadership proved to be seriously inept in solving some problems and resorted
to extreme solutions. It is difficult to understand, let alone justify, some of
its damaging actions—for instance, its decision to jail six-members of the
General Command, all hailing from the Semhar region. This cannot be explained
except in terms of regional bias even if they had committed subversion, a
not-convincing explanation given by the General Command. It was amid this
political turmoil, mass surrender and spying cases, and internal
maladministration that Kidane and Welday were killed. They could have been
innocent; but even then one doesn’t expect the revolutionaries of the day to
set up courts for them and deliberate meticulously before passing a
sentence—within the ELF, a serious attempt to establish a proper court system
only started in 1975. And though Nehnan Elamanan alleges that
hundreds of Christians were killed within the ELF, it didn’t mention any names
save two: Welday Ghide and Kidane Kiflu.
In that environment of wild
“revolutionary justice,” many innocent people—not just Christian
highlanders—were killed, and many who fought against a more powerful entity
were defeated. But it doesn’t follow that the defeated are always innocent who
should be treated as helpless victims; had they been the victors in the power
struggle, it is almost certain the role would have be reversed. In short, the
price of revolutions is high, and liberation struggle it not peaceful either,
nor is it a slow evolution. And everywhere and anytime, revolutionaries
are led by zealots and it is the nature of revolutions to divide people into
enemies and allies, nothing in between. It is because of such complexities that
it is important for Eritreans to know the nature and content of the documents
that were kept in Kassala. And why they were so important that Isaias and his
group badly wanted to retrieve them from Kidane and Welday’s house.
It is not far-fetched to
consider the “books from China” that Mesfin Hagos mentioned in his interview is
a reference to the same documents that Ghirmay Mehari (now Brig. General ) and
Wolderufael Sebhatu (martyred in Nackfa), were trying to retrieve from
Kassala. It is very possible that they are the same documents that Naizghi
Kiflu and Weldenkiel Haile mentioned. And it is very possible that the
clandestine letters, that Gebremedhin Zerezghi mentioned in his testimony, were
circulating among the combatants were the cause for the killing of Kidane and
Welday, whose names automatically appeared on Nehnan Elamanan.
A serious question has been
asked for decades regarding the allegation of Nehnan Elamanan: If
the ELF was into the “slaughtering” business as alleged, why were “Christians
combatants” like Mesfin Hagos, Isaias and many, many, others spared?
Theories: Why Kidane And Welday
Were Killed
The ELF never formally denied or
admitted killing Welday and Kidane though many who lived the era confirm
privately that it did. They explain the killing differently, and in general
terms. As Nehnan Elamaman, and many senior members of the EPLF
testify, in the days when the two were killed, the ELF witnessed mass surrender
by combatants from the highlands to Ethiopian garrisons and the Ethiopian
consulate in Sudan. Given the politically polarized society, perhaps the events
of the time threw a shadow of suspicion and mistrust on the Christian
combatants. The polarization was definitely sharpened by the political
situations that prevailed at the time, for example:
1.
A
relentless and heavy Ethiopian propaganda that labeled the Eritrean revolution
as a Muslim project and encouraged Christians to surrender by taking advantage
of the blanket amnesty offered by the Ethiopian king. Many did.
2.
The
onslaught on the Muslim population, wiping their villages, mass arrests,
robbing of cattle and other properties carried out by the Ethiopian forces,
particularly the commandos forces, who were composed of predominantly Christian
highlanders.
3.
The
general treatment of Muslims as second-class citizens as Ethiopia declared
Orthodox Christianity as the official religion of the state.
4.
The
military setback of the ELF after the Halhal debacle where the ELF was weakened
and appeared un-salvageable.
5.
The
Israel-Arab war that drained supply lines from the Arab countries and weakened
the ELF.
6.
The
emergence of ideological (Marxists influence from Yemen and Sudan) philosophies
in the ranks of the ELF and the struggle that ensued between urban (who were
more accepting of Marxist ideas) and rural (conservative) members of the
organization.
The above could have been some
of the reasons that made the doubtful combatants surrender in droves. But for
other patriotic Christian combatants who remained behind and were totally
against the surrender, it must have been painful to be categorized with those
who surrendered when they chose to fight on. Such frustration would
understandably trigger in them the urge to develop a counter narrative to
vindicate themselves or at least ward off the suspicion. For Isaias, this must
have been a grand opportunity to exploit and revive his old bigotry and
prejudice as some of his schoolmates attest. The cause of the “hundreds” killed
and of “Srryat Addis wiped out,” could only be a natural human reaction, a
defensive mechanism by the injured to fight against the labeling and to defend
themselves from being stereotypically perceived in a negative light. For
Isaias, though, it meant a golden chance, an energy that would propel his
sectarian split, a successful attempt to turn the tables on those he perceived
as the other. And he cleverly used the incidents to mobilize Christians from
the Highlands whom he considered his constituency.
Nehnan Elamanan: The Mother Of
The PFDJ
In 1970, according to a number
of veteran combatants, handwritten copies of some of the documents somehow
ended in the hands of ELF security officers of the time. They contained
allegations and language similar to what come out later on Nehnan
Elamanan. The sectarian allegations were spreading wildly, and the security
officers of the ELF began a surveillance task to check who was behind it.
Kidane and Welday were implicated in the propaganda war (documents) as the
statements of the above-mentioned veteran combatants indicate. Around the same
time, a Sudanese officer tipped the ELF security personnel that Kidane, Welday
and others were communicating with the Ethiopian consulate in Kassala—the
consulate was aggressively luring the doubtful to surrender and it
facilitated the surrender of scores of ELF combatants. It was in such
circumstances that Welday and Kidane were killed and their bodies found around
a place called Hafera, near the town of Kassala in Sudan.
No one claimed responsibility
for the killing but fingers began to point towards some zealous officers of the
ELF. Veterans of the revolutionary justice environment of the Eritrean Struggle
are very secretive and do not allow themselves to be quoted publicly, but many
of them recall versions of rumors that spread at the time: Kidane and Welday
were accused of subversion against the ELF and treason for causing the
surrender of combatants. The zealous security officers might have thought the
killing would serve as a warning for others; or they might have been
trying to contain and hide the damaging sectarian allegations that exposed the
struggle to grave risks.
Others claim that after the
leadership of the ELF became aware of the killing and wanted to punish them,
the killers leaked some of the documents to gain sympathy from the public who
would not condone but be angry at the combatants who were surrendering to the
Ethiopians. But the leak and the wide spread of the documents had another
unintended result: it hastened the split of Isaias. If not for the embarrassing
situation the leadership found itself in after Welday and Kidane were killed,
and if it didn’t panic and properly contained the damage, it would have
certainly continued the surveillance calmly and reached a conclusive result.
But the exposure of the documents and the panicky move of the leadership placed
Isaias, the mastermind of the whole propaganda onslaught, in a precarious
situation. He in turn panicked and began to devise an escape strategy.
At about the same time, the
General Command assigned Isaias Afwerki and Saleh Fekak (both members of the
General Command) to organize the people of the Highlands. They left the ELF
bases accompanied by nine-combatants and they carried along typewriters, duplicators
and other resources that would help them set up a local information unit. Once
the group reached a place around the village of Fgret, Isaias excused himself
for a few hours to visit his relatives in the area—he selected the three
Christian combatants in the group to accompany him. Hours went by and Isaias
didn’t return. Saleh Fekak and the six-combatants waited for another day and he
didn’t show up. On the third day, Saleh Fekak sent three combatants to look for
Isaias and his three companions; they failed in tracing his path in any of the
villages in the area. Saleh Fekak abandoned the mission and returned to the ELF
bases and reported that Isaias has disappeared with three combatants. Weeks
later, Isaias met other scout forces in the Merrara area and told them that he
could not work with Qiyadda AlAmma (General Command) and that
is why he abandoned his colleagues in Fgret—that was the beginning of his
split. It was then that Isaias edited Nehnan Elamanan and
publicly disseminated it after adding the names of Kidane Kiflu and Welday
Gidey to it.
In 1991, members of what was
known as United Organization (UO), a conglomerate of parts of many struggle era
groups, entered Asmara. They had hoped to be recognized as a political party to
compete in Eritrean politics; but Isaias’ PFDJ had another idea. The UO members
were told that they were just individuals and should stop dreaming of
continuing as a political party. A small number of them, the helpless, were
absorbed in the public sector, the rest either went into exile anew or were
left to wander in Asmara in confusion. Shortly thereafter, many were silently
snatched by the PFDJ’s security apparatus and disappeared. One of those who
disappeared a few years later from his hotel room in Asmara was Mohammed Osman
Dayer, a veteran who was the security chief of the ELF when Kidane and Welday
were killed. In a short time, the PFDJ successfully blocked any future
testimony or impartial investigation into the case that propelled the tip of
Isaias propaganda spear.
The ambition of Isaias to have
his own organization goes back to 1969 when weeks before the convening of the
Adobha conference, he approached the late Mohammed Ahmed Abdu to agree with him
“to establish and lead a military division composed purely of Christians
from the Eritrean highlands.”[vii] Woldeyesus
Ammar laments, “History has attested that Isayas Afeworki, a born loner, was
not able to heed to that important advice from his senior commander, Mohammed
Ahmed Abdu. Isayas carries on that absolutely negative trait to this day.
“ [viii]
To achieve his goal, Isaias has
perpetuated the mistrust among Eritreans for over forty years and to this day
continues to do so. From the outset, his attitude and views foretold what he
was planning: destroying the Eritrean Liberation Front from within, a goal he
made clear on his first day he arrived to Kassala via Tessenei in Western
Eritrea. He said, “The first day I arrived in Kassala, I was
frustrated, people telling me about the ugly nature of the ELF. It was a
nightmare. For some reason that no one explained, we were ostracized.” [ix]
Isaias’ statement comes
regardless of the fact that he had just joined, and he couldn’t have observed
anything about the ELF on his first day of joining. Why then such a serious
allegation on his first day? As many who know him testify, his statement exposes
his bias and prejudice that he carried along with him from his past. Today,
Eritrea is under the mercy of Isaias because he was not challenged since a long
time ago when he was paving a path for his current tyrannical rule. He
consistently perpetuated a strategy of victim mentality until he achieved the
goal of creating an organization molded in his shape: the PFDJ.
Conclusions
The November 1971 document
entitled “Nehnan Elamanan” [literally translated to “We And Our
Objectives” (but in its English translation “Our Struggle And Its Goals”)] most
likely started out as a document written by reformers but was eventually
changed into a Clarion Call of us (Christian highlanders) vs them (Muslims) by
Isaias Afwerki. It appeals to the baser instincts of Christian highlanders and
it flat out lies and exaggerates and, when necessary, omits the motives and
magnitude of the persecution of Eritreans by the ELF leadership. However,
because it was interlaced with revolutionary rhetoric, it was presented as a
respectable document to a selectively targeted group of influential Eritreans
and fellow-travelers in the socialist camp.
In the late 1960s and early
1970s, as in now, the Eritrean people could not forgive two infractions: (a)
surrendering to the enemy and (b) splitting and weakening their liberation
organization. In trying to justify the former, and trying to prepare the Eritrean
people to accept the latter, the author of the final version of Nehnan
Elamanan (Isaias Afwerki) wildly exaggerates the number of Christian
highlanders that were killed by the ELF leadership (the document claims that
300 Christian highlanders were killed over a two year period but gives the name
of only two) and it uses specific language to suggest how they were killed:
knives slit with throats. However, despite all the inflammatory language,
in the mid 1970s, when Christian highlanders were given the opportunity to join
the field, a large percentage of them still joined the ELF—either because they
didn’t believe the accusations or because they hadn’t heard them
yet. The EPLF (precursor to the PFDJ) intensified its campaign of
painting the ELF as a “Muslim organization bent on slaughtering Christians” (“Amma
Haradit“) non-stop, until the organization collapsed in 1981 eaten within,
and assaulted without by the combined efforts of the Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF.)
Note: next, in an article
entitled: “Srryet Addis: Blatant Lie?”, we will shed some light on the
allegation of what came to be known as Srryet Addis, the most sensational
allegation of Nehnan Elamanan. Subsequently, we will publish Gebremedhin Zerezghi’s
testimonial, available in Tigrinya booklet, which we translated to English. In
due time, we will also present to you the English translation of Nehnan
Elamanan after we thoroughly check its accuracy compared to the original
Tigrniya version.
Recommended Reading:
1.
An
Eyewitness In The History of The Eritrean Revolution, Gebremedhin Zerezghi, May
1997. (Will be published soon and this will be replaced by a link to it)
2.
Woldeyesus
Ammar, “From The Mystries Of “Siriyet Addis.” April 25, 2004, (This article
first appeared on awate.com, on a column called Spotlight. Weldeyesus Ammara
was a high school classmate and a university colleague of Isaias Afwerki in the
1960s.
_____________________________
[i] Isaias Tesfamariam
(California) interview http://www.ehrea.org/kidank.php (accessed Feb 6, 2012)
[ii] ibid http://www.ehrea.org/kidank.php
[iii] ibid http://www.ehrea.org/kidank.php
[iv] Mesfin
Hagos in an interview with Radio Erina Dec. 1, 2011
[v] A
group of Christian Highlander recruits from Addis Ababa who were allegedly
killed by the ELF according to Nehnan Elamanan
[vi] Gebremedhin
Zerzghi, An Eyewitness In The History Of The Eritrean Revolution (originally a
Tigrinya booklet translated to English by the Awate Team)
[vii] Woldeyesus
Ammar, a high school and university colleague of Isaias Afwerki: http://web.archive.org/web/20070505031415/http://www.awate.com/portal/content/view/3076/8/
[viii] More
on this by Woldeyesus Ammar: “….Isayas opined that the 5th division to which
he belonged would be more effective if it is let to be “a pure Christian
and Kebessan force”. Mohammed Ahmed Abdu did not agree, and literally begged
Isayas not to pursue that idea. Mohammed Ahmed Abdu reminded Isayas that even
the ill-conceived division of ELA into regional commands required at least one
third of fighters to be from outside each regional command. http://web.archive.org/web/20070505031415/http://www.awate.com/portal/content/view/3076/8/
[ix] Dan
Connell, Conversation with Eritrean Political Prisoners.
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