A remarkable story of Eritrea's prisoners of war

During the struggle for independence in Eritrea, the Ethiopian army was known for its brutal repression of Eritreans. The Ethiopian Army committed extrajudicial killings, murder and rape in Eritrea.  However, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) captured Ethiopian soldiers, they treated them with dignity and respect.  They fed and educated the Ethiopian soldiers with the limited resources they had.  At that time, the international community had refused to recognize both Eritrea and the prisoners of war.  At independence in 1991, Eritrea released its hundreds of thousands prisoners of war to Ethiopia.   

Watch a video of this remarkable story from the 1980's:

Kenya's unsubstantiated and malicious accusations labeled against Eritrea

Eritrea's Ministry of Information website shabait.com reports that "The Monitoring Group, in its report to the Security Council, explained that the accusation against Eritrea alleging that it sent three aircrafts carrying weapons to Somalia was unfounded and to the contrary external forces have entered Somalia uninvited and against Resolution 1725 (2006)."

The timing of Kenya's accusation was very malicious to say the least.  It was designed to thwart Eritrea's successful attempt to set the record straight that it had no interest in supporting extremists anywhere let alone in its neighborhood.   The Kenyan government knows full well that the allegations about Eritrea's support for al Shabaab was peddled by Ethiopia to divert attention from its illegal occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories in violation of a final and binding international arbitration.

Kenya's accusation came in November of 2011, a month after President Isaias afworki's successful visit to Uganda and a planned visit to Kenya.  During the Uganda visit President Museveni said "The bombing here was done by al Shabaab but the issue here is that al Shabaab is not supported by Eritrea, that's what Isaias told me and I accept it because he's an honorable comrade, he's not somebody who has walked out of the slums."  Eritrea's repeated request to meet with President Kibaki of Kenya were not answered.  Kenya's answer instead was an unfounded lie.  This put the expected strengthening of bilateral relation with Kenya on hold.

Ethiopia treats IGAD as an extension of its foreign ministry and uses IGAD to advance its agenda.  Eritrea in 2011 was meeting with IGAD member states to strengthen bilateral relations.  Eritrea was instrumental in the peace accord between Sudan and South Sudan and as such has excellent relations with both.  With the successful visit to Uganda and planned visit to Kenya, Eritrea was on a path to neutralize Ethiopia's unfair influence in IGAD when it comes to Eritrean issues.  The accusation therefore appears to have been designed to put a stop to this effort.  This poisoned the environment and created a conducive platform for what came next.  In December of 2011 IGAD's support was used as excuse to implement resolution 2023.  A resolution based on a lie.

It is easy to see that the people and government of Kenya do not benefit by damaging the relationship between the two friendly nations with a lie.  Those who do quickly capitalized on the opportunity.  The question now is, what will the government of Kenya do to rectify this injustice?

Yemane Abselom

Ethiopia has the largest Muslim Population in the Horn of Africa

Successive of its leaders have sold Ethiopia as “a Christian nation in the strategically important Red Sea region dominated by nations that are hostile to the interests of Israel and the United States.”  As such, Ethiopia has received enormous financial and military support from the United States. The current minority government in Ethiopia has gone even further by painting  the horn of Africa region as a hot bed of extremists and it has labeled itself as the front to the war on terror. This cannot be any further from the truth. 

The fact is that Ethiopia's population of 80 million is evenly split between followers of Islam and Orthodox  Christianity.  That puts the Muslim population in Ethiopia around 40 million.  That is larger than the Muslim population of Eritrea (2.5 Million), Djibouti (880,000), Somalia (10 Million), Kenya (4.5 Million) and Uganda (4 Million).  The Muslim population of Ethiopia is even larger than of Sudan estimated at 30 million. 

However, the Muslims in the horn of Africa region practice a moderate form of Islam and are by and large law abiding citizens. The Christian and Islamic communities in the horn of Africa have a long tradition of religious tolerance.  Christian and Muslim communities are intermingled and have a harmonious co-existence.  Most attend the same schools and attend each others social events. This is not to say extremists do not exist in the region. The U.S. embassy bombings in the capitals of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998 are a stark reminders that extremists do exist in the region and that the United States must stay vigilant. However, the United States war on terror in the Horn of Africa lacks an honest partner when it comes to Ethiopia. 

The Ethiopian government has exploited its support for the war on terrorism on many fronts, including but not limited to silencing critics within the United States government of its gross repression of democratic forces in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has gotten United States support in the Security Council to sanction Eritrea as a supporter of extremists in Somalia when the fact is Eritrea has a stellar record of fighting extremists since its independence in 1991. On the other hand Ethiopia continues to invade Somalia under the false pretense of fighting terrorists when in fact it has done more to create them and has no interest in getting rid of them. If Somalia becomes stable, the government of Ethiopia knows full well it will loose the blank check it has been getting from the United States. It is time for the United States to re-evaluates its relationship with Ethiopia and its goals and objectives in the horn of Africa.

Yemane Abselom