The tragedy of this decision comes at a time when the political campaign of the thousands of imprisoned Eritrean prisoners, the campaign of the various internet and radio media, and human rights advocacy groups is tightening the noose around the regime.  The regime is isolated politically and suffering severely.  Naturally, it is the ordinary Eritreans that suffer.  But the armed campaign will not bring any more relief to the ordinary Eritreans than the political campaign does.   The function of the opposition camp, esp. in Diaspora, should be to exploit the powers of the various foreign governments who are angry at regime to take more effective actions.  The latest increasing international pressures include, and this writer had stated in couple of articles, the US actions against the Eritrean government for violating religious freedoms and various international labor organizations which have submitted their complaints to International Labor Organization (ILO).  Our job should be to suffocate and to isolate the regime.  It is unfortunate that EDA has failed to understand how effective the current campaign, and that the regime finds itself in a corner hoping to pick a fight.  EDA might just oblige with disastrous effect.

The top echelon of EDA is made of those who still propound an old propaganda that EPLF won independence through the support of Israel, thus falsely giving credit to foreign power and dismissing the role of Eritreans who were solely responsible for the victory.  Instead of discussing issues in 2005 and beyond, these are men stuck in discredited propaganda of three decades ago, and whom we expect us to lead to the future.  This is delusional!  We have other leaders who openly admit that instead of relying on rule-of-law, that they chose to conduct ‘risky-experiment’.  Is the ‘armed wing’ a ‘risky-experiment’ too?  Yet other top leaders have been so hidden in the shadows that one wonders if they do exist.  This is from an opposition organization that swears and pledges for democracy, transparency, and accountability.

Instead EDA should have learned from its rich experience of the past  three to four decades.  What Eritrea lacks is effective, coordinated, highly systematic organizations that give us hope of the future of Eritrea.  Tomorrow’s democratic institutions are built on today’s transparent, accountable, systematic, and learning organizations.  EDA continues to show to us that it doesn’t have the competence, nor the will, nor the capability to build transparent and effective democratic institution.  It is made of up ‘democratic forces’ who will use their powers to muffle other opposition groups by refusing them entry into the Sudan, and then successfully muzzle victims of organizational shuffles.  The irony is that it is the victims that are apologizing for the predator.  

As I will explain in the is article, endorsing any form of struggle, which encompasses armed struggle as stated in section 2 of the communiqué, creates a weak but yet dangerous form of struggle wile weakening the much needed political campaign.  The inclusion of ‘dialogue’ vs. ‘armed’ in the communiqué designed to send ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ message to the regime will fall on deaf ears.  Even if this message is targeted at the other PFDJ entourage, it will have little effect.  Instead, this type of ill-conceived and ill-debated issue only weaken ordinary Eritreans.  These ordinary Eritreans will only say, ‘they [PFDJ and opposition groups] are all the same’.   Had EDA chosen to conduct a sophisticated game of establishing transparent, accountable, systematic, and learning political organization, it would have differentiated itself from the regime.  But now, EDA has formalized itself as a shade of PFDJ.   EDA failed on all the defining issues of the past six months, including on Eritrean Congress Party [Mr. Hirui’s organization].  It is not a question of EDA made the right or wrong decision, but the decision-making process remains secretive and unsystematic.  The next logical question becomes, can an organization of a shade of PFDJ bring about a just and democratic Eritrea?   

The danger of endorsing of ‘armed campaign’, aside from the issue of principle, is that it sends the wrong message to the people of Eritrea, including those in servicemen, that some opposition camp’s ‘armed wing’ will come to save them.  Instead of the Eritrean people, and including the servicemen, taking matters into their own hands in popular uprising or any other grassroots movement that originates from within Eritrea, they are now wrongly led to believe that they should expect their ‘liberation’ from the oppressive regime by an ‘armed wing’ led by opposition ‘alliance’ in Diaspora.   This is delusional!

The latest EDA statement raises many questions,

1.      Is EDA endorsing ‘armed campaign’ as a form of a threat against the regime in the hope of rattling it, rather than actually carrying out armed conflict?  But PFDJ is well aware of EDA’s capabilities, thus it is unlikely  that PFDJ will take EDA’s threats seriously.  This is a regime itching for a fight, thus any threats has little, if any, effect on it.

2.      Are some members of EDA hoping to re-fight a war they lost some 25 years ago?  As Eritreans, vindication is the ultimate form of gratification.  It is a form of restoring our lost honor.  Could this be their motivation?

3.      Could this be just a futile political decision which hopes to create a parallel ‘armed wing’ that could counter any non-EDA government in post-PFDJ Eritrea.  EDA may feel that any popular uprising within Eritrea doesn’t serve its political aspirations as it may be left out of the next government. 

4.      Could EDA be looking for tangible ‘victories’ to attach to its pathetic periodic and semi-annual communiqués?  But announcing armed conflicts and killings can’t be a ‘victory’ or ‘making progress’.  ‘Victory’ is measured against certain clearly and publicly defined strategy.  Even if EDA declares certain ‘armed victories’, it is only a hollow victory without certain measuring yardstick of ‘victory’.  If EDA expects the rest of the opposition camp to simply clap whenever it declared ‘undefined victories’, then it has become as delusional as PIA.

5.      Is EDA advocating for ‘the right to bear arms’ as our yet undeclared constitutional right?  EDA is creating a precedence.  Who says and what constitutes government violation that allows opposition to bear arms?  For instance, during a rocky transitional democracy, which the opposition may feel has been hijacked by the government, if government shoots and kills opposition demonstrators, refuses people’s inherent rights to assemble or conduct peaceful marches, would that give the opposition the right to bear arms?  If certain, say ethnic, groups in Eritrea feel frustrated over their particular aspirations, would that give them the right to bear arms?   I am sure my wise colleagues will argue, but these are different situations.  But that is the whole point, who says and what measuring yardstick do we use to say that under such circumstances one can engage in ‘armed struggle’ but can’t under different circumstances.  In the end, by endorsing ‘armed campaign’, EDA has lost the moral authority to condemn others from using such methods against it in the future. 

6.       EDA is presenting the core leadership as the ‘political’ wing and ‘armed’ wing as another component of the opposition struggle.  If we examine, for instance, Sinn Fein/IRA or PLO/Fatah, the political arms of these organizations are recognized by the antagonists, and thus the armed wing is simply the bargaining chip.  The center of power remains within the political wing.  However, in the absence of a recognized, organized, and effective political wing, the center of political gravity will inevitably shift to the armed wing.  In addition, the supposed ‘armed wing’ will be made up of younger generation, which will have significantly different views from the older generation politicians.

7.      EDA has shown its utter incompetence in managing and resolving organizational issues.  But EDA is not the first Eritrean organization to suffer such organizational challenges.  One can safely say that each of our previous Eritrean political organizations have suffered similar organizational challenges.  Thus if Eritrea is to evolve and achieve its ultimate goal of creating a just and democratic nation, our biggest challenge remains crossing the bridge from the armed mentality of yesteryear and to highly effective and learning organizations of today.  EDA and its predecessors have totally bungled in resolving various defining issues.  It has failed in engaging in transparent manner.  If there is one lesson we have learned from EDA it is that the future Eritrea faces an uphill battle to build solid foundations for creating democratic society.   Instead of building effective and transparent opposition organization, EDA has chosen to revert to one method of struggle that it feels comfortable with – gun and stick method.  This doesn’t bode well for future of Eritrea led by these EDA men.  One can’t differentiate this mentality from PIA.  To many of us, PIA and EDA talk the same, and continue to engage in backroom dealings as opposed to developing transparent decision making process and public campaigns.   It is a tragedy for all us that EDA has chosen to chart into dangerous waters, instead of learning from our past mistakes and to engage in the critical task of building effective organizations.

8.      It is also a tragedy that EDA and many learned and experienced fellow Eritreans have chosen to advocate for the ‘armed’ campaign.  Many advocate for ‘armed’ campaign as a pretext to cover political weakness.  Their reasoning is that the political campaign has failed, thus let us experiment with the ‘armed’ campaign, as if we are experimenting with guinea pigs.  If ‘armed’ campaign fails, well, we are far enough from it that we will not be affected from it.  Our collective thoughts and efforts should be to understand that the regime is desperate at this time, and that our function is to tighten the noose further through continued public and peaceful campaigns.  The increased desperate acts of the regime is only a sign of its fast approaching downfall.  EDA and advocates of ‘armed struggle’ are only reacting to the symptoms of PFDJ’s illness, rather than to understand the illness itself.

9.      Endorsing ‘armed struggle’ is tantamount to admitting that the EDA leadership can’t engage in political campaign.  In order to escape from the call to implement Constitution, transparency, and accountability in running the Eritrean government, PFDJ continuously invokes ‘threats to national sovereignty’.  Somehow invoking military activities and threats gives justification for secrecy.  EDA’s latest endorsement of ‘armed struggle’ is tantamount to the same act as PFDJ.  This resolution allows EDA to claim ‘confidentiality’, ‘sensitive issues, to justify its secrecy.  If EDA had remained as only ‘political’ organization engaged in political campaign, then it would have no justification for secrecy.  Thus this resolution can only be regarded as a futile attempt to escape from ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ than any real effort to remove or even to threaten the regime.

10.  In my last article, I suggested that PIA and company might be held liable under ICC for crimes against humanity and other related crimes.  For instance, if renegade organizations with dangerous political agenda such as Islah conducts a campaign against civilians, even one instance of massacre, the entire opposition [EDA] political leadership might be held liable for crimes against humanity under ICC and Eritrean laws.  Be forewarned that the opposition political leadership will not escape responsibility by claiming that the ‘armed wing’ that carried out the crime did so without the political leadership approval.  By endorsing and supporting ‘armed wing’, the political leadership  is responsible 100% for the mistakes and atrocities of its ‘armed wing’.