As I keep penetrating deeper in to the nucleus of the Eritrean society which is a compound of nine nationalities I get challenged by the reality that I cannot positively affect it without disintegrating the issues encapsulated within the nine social elements destined to live a mandatory ever-lasting coexistence. I found that the Eritrean complicated sociological fabrics will continue causing problems to the society without Eritreans facing them with completely independent state of mind. Fear, pretention, obstinacy, arrogance, hatred and vulgarity have been the causes of our demise in this challenging experience; the opposite methods of relationship should then be the order of the moment to solve the problems once and for all. Nitsemem, Keybluni, Keikuri, kurub emo nirayo; kirkeiblo; keseyilkayu, etc BS destroyed our unity so thus we should try freedom of speech without inhibition and affiliation to understand each other and live peacefully and respectfully ever after. You will never make it with pretension and attachment to your religions, ethnicities and your parents. A Moslem, a Christian or whatever you may be you cannot solve the common problem without becoming your inner self by refusing your ego, religion, and ethnicity or identify to dictate your spirituality, sense of judgment and moral integrity; I feel sorry for the people that live in fear because of confinement to their little ethnical or religious circles.

There is no extent of fear between the Eritrean elites that can be experienced better than conducting meetings with two languages, a native and a foreigner. This unique made in Eritrea style of communication that drags the society by half its life time and essence could not have originated from love, respect to each other and democracy but rather from suspicion, disrespect, fear, lack of confidence, trust and vision, hasadnet and what have you my dear people. You cannot do this willingly without deep ethnic/religion affiliated internal problems in relation to the Eritrean society and a distorted understanding of democracy. It was never practiced before and will never be practiced in other societies! That is why it is important for us to discuss it. Luckily I hope this will die out swiftly because only the countable few dictate it on us all to be so. We don’t like it. We cannot kill the society for the psychological debacle of few elite dictators.

You can deny this for image but cannot face your intelligence in privacy because you are a human being with commonsense knowing what you are doing in this regard. This opinion only applies to the adult Eritreans (from all religions) in practice of this destructive interference not to the kids that unfortunately are condemned to adopt this divisive and pretentious life style through their parents.

andinet hizbay: “one day you ll come to the conclusion that we were deceived .we died for the cause of arabs. the useful idiots ( Christian ) and the slaves of arabs,wanna be arabs brought misery to our life. we were better off when we were with ethiopia
Dear Futsum the wanna be arabs ,the elites despite their language and identity.what about u do believe that u are Tigraway or or the fake name given hizbe Tigrigna inorder to distance our self from our brothers Tegaru. First lets admit that we are Proud Tegaru then we can ask the the wanna be arabs to respect their language”

Answer: We were never deceived as long as our independence struggle was concerned. Our struggle against the Ethiopian colonialism was as just as any third world’s struggle against colonialism. No one but we decided to liberate ourselves from the Ethiopian colonizers: No Arab or whatever here, it was exclusively our decision about our condition of the time. The concept of ANDNET to me is strictly limited within the Eritreans for we have nothing to unite for with other societies and specially the Ethiopians that don’t fully respect our nationhood!! Unity is a matter of choice not obligation.

I grew up comfortably and respectfully in Makelle, a town I consider my hometown until the Eritrean independence changed my situation similar to that of all Eritreans as a society, although I was always aware of my Eritreawinet from the let go. I loved the Tigreans specially Deki Mekelle and I still love them enough to consider them my brothers. I, however, don’t believe I am Tigrawai because I am not. For what I certainly know, I am an Eritrean from the Tigrigna ethnic group. There is a fundamental difference between the two concepts of identification: Tigrawai is a Tigrigna speaker from Ethiopia and the other is a Tigrigna speaker Eritrean like me. There is no fake name given to Hizbi Tigrigna that I know of to make me distinct from the Tegaru because the Eritrean Identity is equally significant to that of the Tegaru’s. I see the two societies as people of the same origin but different in psychological makeup and territorial definition. None of them originated from the other for they were in their respective and distinct geographic locations at the same time since their existence: One of them remained Ethiopian and the other became Eritrean by circumstantial conditions beyond our control like the experience of all other African societies. The fact remains that the Eritrean Tigrigna speakers cannot be proud of being Tegaru because they are not: They should be proud if they may for being Eritreans and their original habesha roots. Let the Tegaru be proud of being Tegaru but this expression has nothing to do with any Eritrean there is. We meet at our roots level of our being equally without one having the arrogance to exclusively claim the roots. We are Eritrean habeshas and the Tegaru are Ethiopian habeshas and none of us can exclusively claim the roots.

The Tigrigna language and culture are the common elements between Tegarus and Eritrean kebessians that no one can dictate terms in this subject matter except legitimately accepting the fact that we were equally important as far as our roots was concerned. The Tegarus are indigenous to Tigrai like we were indigenous to Eritrea, still having had the same roots but we are now conditioned to live as Eritreans and Ethiopians with no alternative to accepting this and moving on forward.

Asghedom: “Andenat Hisbay  what makes un happy is hate created purposely by Arabs. You have to know the unit of Tegaru (Tigrigna speaking people from Tigray and Eritrea ) is a real force and everyone is Afraid of it.“

Answer: I disagree; and I am not afraid of it because it has nothing to do with what I am. No Arab created the Eritrean identity; circumstances did: the Eritrean identity was natural to be there like that of any other societies in the world including the Tigreans. Why do you want to scare others through you illusive unity of tegaru anyway instead of trying to live in harmony with all elements in the region? Real force against who is the most important question that I must answer here, which seems to be against the rest of the Eritreans; something impossible to accept. My strength as an Eritrean Tigrigna speaker is only achievable through unity with my fellow Eritreans and not with the Tegarus because the Eritreans, all inclusive are more important and closer to me than the Tegarus or any other Ethiopians at this juncture in the go, with all respect to the Tegarean people and the Ethiopians at large.

The term “Eritrea” may be given by the Italians but the term “Ethiopia” was also given by the Europeans (Greeks). “The name Ethiopia derived, from the Greek form, aithiopia, from the two words aitho, “I burn”, and ops, “face”. It would hence mean the colored man’s land — the land of the scorched faces. The Greeks called all peoples south of Egypt (particularly the area now known as Nubia; modern usage has transferred this name further south to the land and peoples known in the late 19th and early 20th century as Abyssinia) Ethiopians.”

We Eritreans and Ethiopians did not create our identifications by ourselves; the Europeans did it for us. The term Eritrea and Ethiopia are therefore equally foreign and significant in this regard. In so saying, “TEGARU” is a name given to Tigrigna speaking Tigreans; it doesn’t represent the Eritreans. The Tigrians and a portion of the Eritreans may be classified as Tigrigna speaking people but not as TEGARU since this term implies only to the Tigreans.

Said unity of Tegaru based on your definition is immaterial to me compared to the unity of the Eritreans. The priority now is the unity of Eritreans not the unity of your Tegarus, needless to say that Eritreans cannot be identified by the terminology that strictly implies to the Tigrean Ethiopians. Eritrean Tigrigna speakers are not Tegarus but Eritreans. There is no doubt, however, that we are brothers by blood with common roots and that we should help each other to solve our common problems: poverty and ignorance!!

Habibi: “I am a Christian born from Kebessa in the same way as the Jeberties are Moslem born from Kebessa. The only difference I see is the religion which is not brought about by our own choices. What I frankly don’t understand here is what is the social or political gain one can have in suddenly feeling like Arab or any other race? The religion doesn’t make one an Arab because there are also Christian Arabs… So why is all this nonsense being discussed here ? After all these years of struggle and martyrdom that we all have gone through together, should it not be the highest time we worked together for a common cause that would serve our co-existence as a nation ?”

Response: I agree with Habibi. We fought hard for respect and the only way we can actualize the objective is by respecting ourselves and our values. The Eritreans sacrificed everything to bring independence and they should co-exist at their fundamental natural self as Eritreans. We have rich cultures with authentic languages that we don’t need a foreign language to interfere in our lives more than ours. We have a lot to lose doing this and we should not. Our natural languages are our identity marks that we can neither change nor detach from for another identity.

Kombishtato: “Why do some elite Muslims want to burn indigenous Eritrean languages such as Tigre? Why are the the Somalis, Afars Iranians, Turkish, Khurdish, Amharas,Oromos, Pashtuns, Tigrayans, Urdus … all with significant Muslims among them very proud of their languages, but the elite Muslims of Eritrea so ashamed to burn their own languages and heritage? What is the source of this deep rooted inferiority complex in Eritrea predominantly seen among elite Muslims? “

Response: First of all we should understand that the people that tend to undermine our indigenous languages are very few in number and don’t represent their communities. The truth still remains that all Moslems of the world respect their languages and don’t mix Arabic with their identities like the very few Eritrean elites do because of the Holy Koran. We are unique in this situation and we need to rationally rectify the problem through transparent communication not through anger oriented linguistic dictatorship. Most of our people are proud of their heritage..PERIOD!

Tes: “We should be bold and confront to those diaspora Eritreans who want to impose foreign language while belittled their own language. They don’t have any valued reason to make Arabic an official language of Eritrea. It is really amusing to see so many of them here to defend Arabic language and trying to own it. I don’t see the need for referendum whether we can agree to make Arabic an official language or not. If Arabic is one of the contenders to be an official language then I would rather see Chinese to be our official language.

Response: I agree with you Tes. There is no reason and place for Arabic in the Eritrean society except living with maximum respect of the language because of the Holy Koran and our Rashaidas. Simply, it is foreign to us Eritreans except for the Rashaidas that I believe are Eritreans as well. I disagree that the Rashaidas were “our enemy no one. I don’t believe they are one of Eritreans nationalities” because they are part of us again by virtue of circumstances. Some of them may have “inflicted enough suffering on Eritreans and cannot imagine to include them into the family of Eritreans.” But I don’t think they inflicted suffering on us more than the Christians and the fanatic Moslems did. This is something we have to work on together and rectify in due time in decent and transparent Eritrea.

durbush: “Dear hhmmm; please don’t write about weyanne they don’t have time to dibate with you to divided as .We are to far from them so don’t blame weyane just blame your self. Enough is enough weyane weyane. Donkoro .”

Response: I agree that we should take responsibility for our condition and leave the Tigreans alone but I do not like the last expression in the comment.

Noor: “All Muslim Eritrea want Arbic to Eritrea national language, stop accusing Our our brother Jeberti”

Comment: This is a fabrication and nobody accused the Jeberties as people except few spoilers from that group and other Eritrean ethnic groups. Noor is a very emotional dude with strong attachment to the Arabs and specially their language. He assumes all our Moslems want Arabic for national language more than their authentic languages. This is not true and he can’t prove it statistically. He also has a problem relating things to the Jeberties and accusing people of abusing this ethnic group in this discussion instead of logically dealing with the issue minus that social group. The issue is about national language and not about Eritreans. He has to understand that there are very few Eritrean elites like him from the Jeberty community that advocate Arabic for a national language like those in few other ethnic groups including the Christians; and that we have to deal with them because this is a national issue that concerns us equally. Discussing the matter has nothing to do with abusing our Jeberties but only challenging the few confused and confusing elites like him on the merit. Please don’t relate this to the Jeberties because the issue is not about them but about whether Arabic was legitimate in Eritrea as a supreme language or not. The Jeberties come here in the process but not as the main subject of the matter. This is not about any portion of the people but about our national language/s.

Salahadin: You don’t have any idea about islam, if you know the history of Eritrean muslim they were speaking Arabic .this arbic is choiced by Allah, every muslim in eritrea should be speaking arab (luketul jenna) wich means language of the heaven.

Response: We have as good an idea as you have about Islam. To the contrary you don’t understand Islam because you would not have been related to Arabic more than any other Moslem in the world, otherwise. You are unique here and this reality tells that you don’t understand Islam the way the rest of the Moslems do. I would expect the hard core Talibans to practice what we practice but they did not buy this nonsense: Afghanistan (99% Moslems) uses Pashto and Dari Urdu as its national language. We are the only people that wrongly understand the relationship between Arabic and Islam on this planet, yet we are not better Moslems than other Moslem societies. We therefore have a problem with this unconventional self consciousness!!

Our Moslems are related to the Koran through the Arabic language and they should learn it in order to understand the Holy book at least to the extent that they can pray on it. This is their right but Arabic should stop at this point of the relationship in Eritrea. Eritrea cannot be the only nation that makes special connection to Arabic without valid explanation.

This is similar to the Christians in relation to Geez vis-à-vis the DAWIT. The Christians, however, don’t have to impose Geez on the society because of the DAWIT since they have their Tigrigna to communicate with. This should apply to our Moslems unless you are biased and unfair in this situation. Once you enforce the Arabic in our society because of the Koran, you must as well enforce the Geez in the same because of the DAWIT; yet you will be the only society that practices this weird relationship between religion and the people’s cultural values. Anything else is fanaticism, bias and inconsistent!! Why do you trap yourself in this exceptional mess and for what?

Hassan: “I strongly believe that the people who are attacking the Arabic language and the Arabes as well as the jeberty are doing it from their stand point against the muslims in general and the other ethnic groups of Eretria . It looks like they have an agenda against the unity of the Eretrians. They are seeding hate among the Eretrians . Beware!!!”

Response: This is confusion and unreal, needless to say that it is also blackmail. You are trying to captivate the Eritrean psych through guilt consciousness, a terrible and unjust means of psychological manipulation. You want to be an exceptional Moslem in the world at the expense of rationality and the entire society at large without any academic explanation. Yet, you want us to suffer the consequence without resistance through your blackmail.  Do you see what you are doing and how abusive you may be?

Don’t shade your crocodile tears here to enforce your thoughts in the society. Deal with facts and issues if you may. Arabic is illegal to be the national language of Eritrea and believing in this does not make me anti Jeberti or Moslems, therefore you should live your hallucination privately and don’t try to promote your backward mentality through guilt consciousness.

Attacking the Jeberties unconditionally is indeed against Eritrean unity but condemning the Arabs of discrimination against Africans is genuine and correct. There is no connection between the Arabs and the Eritrean unity at all and the argument is very poor in logic that a rational mind should reject. Eritrean Moslems can relate to Arabic but should not be allowed to impose it on us based on the Holy Koran. In fact, to the contrary, I see people that infatuate with Arabic beyond necessary and that go to the extent of respecting it more than our languages have a problem with the Eritrean unity. You cannot undermine the Eritrean native languages in favor of a foreign language without threatening the Eritrean unity for both are mutually inclusive. Therefore resisting Arabic has no value in the relationship between the Eritreans and the Jeberties or the Moslems nor is it a reflection of hating the two elements in the society. You are actually the one doing this through your outrageous mentality; Sir!!

bravo: “ Look, z writer told us that he doesn’t worship any religion and he argued it is his right. But i don’t agree if i use his line of reasoning he has given us in his arguement about language choice. You know what? 98% of Eritreans are religous people, half of the population is christian and z remaining half Muslim. So If i take his line of reasoning at face value, he should not be allowed to be outside this tradtional practice because to be pagan is un Eritrean as it is practised only by less than 2% Eritrean people. I am giving this reasoning in response to his arguement that Arabic is foreign langauge because it is spoken by Rashida people who are less than 2% of Eritrean population.

Answer: Religion is a private phenomenon that should be practiced in privacy. I cannot impose my belief on society and I have the right to worship anything I want although Buddhism is not paganism at all. No Christian or Moslem community has the right to take away my individual right to follow any type of spirituality unless I insist in replacing the Eritrean religions with mine. The nation is, however, common to all of us that none of us should dominate its authentic character through what we believe. Imposing Arabic on the society affects us all as people and therefore we should preserve our authenticity together by respecting our original languages only. I respect Arabic as one of our languages through the Rashida connection and can even entertain it being a national language because of this factor but no one is justified to glorify Arabic over our languages because of the Koran. It has never been done elsewhere and we should not do it. Once you allow religion to dictate the national language of Eritrea, you should as well allow the Christians to fight for Geez and me to fight for one of the far eastern languages in getting the same attention in the country because Buddhism was written with those languages. Once again, it is a matter of consistency. This issue has a lot of negative consequences in our society and we should just go with our languages instead. A Christian, a Pagan or a Buddhist Eritrean should not be forced to adopt Arabic for national language over his/her native language because of the Koran. You cannot do this without forcing the society to adopt other languages based on the same rationality: without allowing the society to adopt Hebrew and Geez because of the BIBLE and the DAWIT and Chinese or Japanese in my case because of the Buddhist linguistic format. Exclusively Justifying Arabic because of the Koran and rejecting the rest cannot take place without religious dictatorship that must be resisted without a second thought.

Let your Islam, Christianity, paganism and my Buddhism stay at home and Arabic, Hebrew or Geez and Chinese or Japanese practiced in our privacies. You can individually choose a language for yourself but you cannot impose it on a society that already has its own indigenous languages because your Holy Book’s linguistic format specially if it is foreign to the society. Why would we want to create an unheard of situation in our country about this issue? The problem with Arabic in the country is because it does not stay in the believers’ homes but rather expands outward affecting all of us in general unfairly. I have no reason learning Arabic and using it as a national language because of our Moslems (even assuming all of them want this to happen which is not true). Do you see the problem with this? You can study and adopt Arabic for yourself but cannot impose it on me and other Eritreans that already have their own native languages to develop and respect.

Kemal Omer: “The ethno-centric kebessan Tigringa do not know and do not understand that there are other Eritreans who do not speak or understand Tigrigna. So they see the translations in the Eritrea conferences between Tigrigna and Arabic as an inconvenience and they wonder why can’t the non-Tigringa just speak Tigrigna like them. Meet any one of them here in the West and when you tell him you are an Eritrean, the first question is always and invariably, “Tigrigna tifelet?”. That is where our problem is. The most amazing part of the language “argument” in Eritrea is those who oppose Arabic are those whose rights have been recognized and up held, the ethno-centric kebessan Tigrigna. Makes you remember the other Ethno-centric group from across the border the Amharas of Ethiopia of yester years.”

Answer: In fact you remind me of the Amharas that imposed their languages on us ignoring our native languages. I can understand that some of our people do not speak Tigrigna but should they use Arabic instead of their languages? How about the Eritreans that cannot understand Arabic? We don’t need a foreign language associated with religion to solve this problem when we can learn one of our languages and get it over with. To be frank with you, alternating languages in meetings is destructive and I will tell you right now that I am about to boycott meetings that do their business in this ineffective and irrational way. I cannot accept this dictatorship without being convinced of its advantage in the Eritrean society. We can do it in English if we have a problem with Tigrigna and Tigre but I am not stupid to be dictated on this by some fanatics that have a problem with their identity and that impose something unheard of in our society.
bravo: “How can one say Arab is alein language? Eritrea has many tribes n one of them is Rashaida whose mother tanque is Arabic. So how is z writer and his admirers full themselves and others to believe Arab as alien language? The other amazing thing is he and his circles presride Amharic (which is purely foreign and former coloniser and opresser) above Arabic. This byitself shows how he is so biased against Arab as language possibly developed by religous hatred. “

Comment: The Rashaidas are Arabs that speak Arabic and I accept this as one of our languages but we have a majority of people that speak other languages such as the Tigre, a language that must be respected over Arabic from self-respect and democratic points of view. Arabic because of Rashaidas cannot emasculate Tigre, a language spoken by one of the majorities in the society. What is your problem with Tigre, Saho, Kunama, etc. and why do you want Arabic over them? The problem is that our confused elites are not trying to do this in respect of the Rashaidas at all! I rather see the colonial language Amharic empowered rather than alternating meetings in Tigrigna and Arabic. This is savage and embarrassing; that is all I can say

Paradiso: “Why are the the Somalis,Afars Iranians, Turkish, Khurdish, Amharas,Oromos, Pashtuns, Tigrayans, Urdus … all with significant Muslims among them very proud of their languages, but the elite Muslims of Eritrea so ashamed to burn their own languages and heritage? What is the source of this deep rooted inferiority complex in Eritrea predominantly seen among elite Muslims?”

Answer: I dedicate this dialogue to a very bright Eritrean called Berhe who taught me something important about this issue. There is a valid reason for our people contemplating identification outside their roots. It is because we Eritreans have the tendency to make them feel foreigners: we call them Agame, tegaru and whatever without knowing the consequence of this misplaced approach. We inculcate doubts on their identity by identifying them as Ethiopians instead of embracing them as Eritreans. Check out this forum and see what I am talking about. We are too filthy and reckless to create unity between us. Ideas are not entertained as ideas in this bizarre Eritrean experience but rather stigmatized with ethnicity and religion outside our inherent sociological circumference.

You see, “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people”. To extend this relationship, minute minds personalize ideas and ridicule each other emotionally. The reason the dictator still has many followers, says Berhe, was because we hurt our unity through the tendency to identify our people as foreigners, severely hurting their Eritrean confidence. They get so insecure about their future to the point of remaining silent or supporting the regime. We chase them away when they don’t agree with our views and accept them when they do. Berhe thinks this was the fundamental problem to why many Eritreans look at the situation from distance or even contemplate of siding with the regime as an alternate choice. We insult, abuse and attack people that differ in ideas from us and we marginalize them to entertain another identity because of fear. The terms WEYANE and AGAME have been used to divide Eritreans more than anything else and yet we still use them to identify people with different ideas. We cannot do it unless we accept all Eritreans full heartedly and develop each other’s confidence through constructive engagement my dear Eritreans. You are destined to live together forever and this will not cut it for you. Please cool down and try to feel other views without bias if you may! Please stop calling each other divisive names that hurt your society and elongate the dictatorship. Unity is only achievable by listening to each other and accommodating our differences and we should do this for your people. Don’t hurt your cause by personalizing ideas and being abusive to each other; and good luck. Thank you Berhe for this articulation!