Mekelle፡Telaviv, Nairobi, Pretoria, London, (Tigray Herald).
ጺምዶ(TSIMDO) failed in Dankalia
Afwerki, the destabilizer-in-chief, calls for the “Afar Card” to be played in Dankalia
Eritrea’s tyrant, Isaias Afwerki, has employed his preferred public diplomacy messenger, a loose mouth named Awal Said, to unveil Eritrea’s latest destabilizing tactic: manipulating Afar sentiment for people-to-people reconnection. Eritreans permitted a rare Afar convention, an Afar assembly, to convene in a village outside Assab, a location formerly used to host Somali refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war after 1991.
Eritrea has not been a friend to the Afar people by any measure. The United Nations has accused Eritrea of crimes against humanity and ethnic persecution against Afar. Eritrea has systematically displaced over 200,000 Afar from their traditional homeland in Dankalia, employing policies of ethnic cleansing, violence, destruction of their traditional economy (such as fishing), and deliberate confiscation of Afar properties and strategic coastal lands with the intent of removing the Afar from their traditional territories in Eritrea.
It is worth noting that following the 2018 peace agreement with Ethiopia—an Ethiopian-led initiative that briefly opened borders after 20 years of hostilities between the two neighbors—the border connecting Afar communities in Ethiopia and Eritrea was briefly opened for people-to-people relations, but it was quickly closed by the Eritrean side. Instead of capitalizing on Ethiopia’s peace overture, Eritrea chose to destabilize Ethiopia, fueling inter-Ethiopian conflict, particularly in the Tigray and Afar regions. Eritrea has been accused of committing war crimes.
Compared to Ethiopia, which recognizes Afar self-determination and whose constitution acknowledges an Afar state as part of the Ethiopian federation, granting the Afar regional state political, cultural, and economic autonomy and self-rule, Eritrea offers no such recognition. Eritrea does not acknowledge the Afar as a distinct nation deserving of self-determination rights and prohibits any form of autonomy for the Afar people. It has systematically dismantled Afar traditional and customary laws that historically governed indigenous Afar rights to cultural, political, or economic aspirations.
Eritrea is not only the Afar people’s worst enemy but also continues to destabilize Ethiopia by hosting and arming at least four different Ethiopian opposition groups. Eritrea has publicly denounced the Ethiopian constitutional model, favoring instead an excessively centralized authoritarian rule by a lifetime president, operating without a constitution or rule of law in Eritrea since its independence.
The recent fanfare Eritrea promotes as Afar people-to-people relations is merely a ploy to use the “Afar Card” for inciting hostilities in Afar region of Ethiopia, rather than genuinely supporting the indigenous Afar people’s rights to political, cultural, and socioeconomic union.
Source፡Eritrean Afar National Congress
