This is the 2nd land

The deceptions of mingling “land-sharing” with “land-grabbing”: The VKP/KAM: (October 10, 2009).

According to the PFDJ regime's and of its support-base's principles and strategies, “all Eritreans” have equal rights in sharing the Eritrean land, equally. Added to this, with the motto, “all Eritreans have the right to live anywhere in Eritrea”, they have finally reached the point of mingling with and exchanging the “land-sharing” for “land-grabbing”.

In a nation-states, where there exist no ethnic, culturo-linguistic and territorial diversities, but only a single social conglomerate, like in many European countries, the “principle of land sharing” and their motto of their “citizens having” and enjoying their freedom and “right to live anywhere they like, in their nation-state”, is a normally allowed, accepted and, at times, even an encouraged praxis. Even then, not all do take that freedom, right and encouragement to move about and settle anywhere, unless compelled by employment and other social opportunities. Mobility is not always positive.

In Eritrea and in many African, Asian and in Latin American nation-states where land is identified with ethnicity, such free mobilisations of citizens are often motives of resentments, conflicts and event of violent confrontations.

Though, within a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation/state too, such mobility would theoretically, be promoting social contacts and social integrations, this is not always the case, particularly if and when, ulterior motives and aims are perceived or indeed discovered to be behind those mobilisations of citizens.

Eritrean being a multi-ethnic and a multi-culturo-linguistic nation/state, with ethnic and folk-groups, still very much and traditionally confined within the geographical borders of their own native and ancestral lands, the free mobilities of their fellow-Eritrean citizens are already looked at with caution and tolerated with suspicion. If, and when such mobilities are being encouraged and coordinated by the regime itself, as it is the Eritrean case at present, those cautious suspicions turn into legitimate worries and fears, among those populations towards whose homelands, those social mobilities are being made. Such worries and fears would equally be felt if, and when those social mobilities were made in reverse order that, those same populations whose homelands have been settled in by strangers were to move to the homelands of the settlers. However those mobilities may equate, the worries, the fears, frustrations and resentments would equally affect both populations, for they would still feel unease, being in other populations homelands.

Interpreted in practical terms, there will never happen that the Kunama and the other western and eastern Eritrean lowland populations would either voluntarily move to or forcibly be relocated in the highland and central regions of Eritrea, assuming that the present PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki would never even dream of and contemplate such constellation. Our questions therefore are:

how do or would we understand the democratic principle of “all Eritreans” having an equal right to “share the Eritrean land” and the underlying motto, “all Eritrean citizens have the right to live anywhere they like?”

The, by now, well-known, “Mengs TM”, who, in his latest “Kabbages and Kings: Why the Sea is Boiling Hot (V), Awate – Featured Articles, Oct o4, 2009”, had tried to impart us all, lessons on sociology, psychology, religion and morality, concluded that he “cannot put it any better than Omar Jabir - …. there are no insiders and outsiders; we are all immigrants who either came through the sea or through the valleys or through the mountains … even the Kunama whom we consider the oldest settlers have migrated from the Nile Basin. Nobody can overbid another and (no one) owns and inch more than the other”.

No one contests that, all we Eritreans, are earlier, later and latest immigrants to the land we today call “ Eritrea ”, but no one should contest that today, we all, (excepted those who are claiming more than we do), do occupy a geographically and ethnically well defined “lands and territories” we call and claim as our own native and ancestral homelands. It is not therefore the question of who was the earlier, the later and the latest immigrant in Eritrea, but who, (which Eritrean ethnic-group), had, has been and is living where and how long for, and therefore can legitimately claim to have the right to be the prime inhabitant and consequently, has also the prime right to benefit from the land products and other resources of those own native homelands. Strictly speaking, those who are the latest immigrants to Eritrea and found the whole of the Eritrean land already taken and inhabited by the earlier and later immigrants, should have to respect the principle of “first come first served” and not base on simple and common “immigration argument” and assumptions to claim for their rights to equal land distribution and ownership. Crudely speaking however, if we were to start expelling the latest, the later and the earlier immigrants to Eritrea , in their time's order, the people like “Omer Jabir” and “Mengs TM” himself would be the first and the second ones and the “Kunama” the third one in order, to go. On the other hand, “Omer Jabir's” claim that the “Kunama have migrated from the Nile Basin ”, is only one of the many theories, upon which not all anthropologists and historians do agree and therefore it is not even a proven fact he can safely base his argument on. These are the elements we retain to be the “charlatans”, on the Eritrean land, ethnic, cultures, social, political and other related issues. Presently, the land issue in Eritrea, is based on the claim whether, though given the diversity of the Eritrean nationalities and their settlements in those defined “lands and territories”, they call as their own “native and ancestral homelands”, the members of all those different nationalities may and should freely move about and share the lands of each other, without causing resentments, conflicts and confrontations. All pieces of evidence do prove that those resentments, though presently, restrained and constrained by political powers and forces, do exist and future conflicts and confrontations too are being equally well-perceived, but very deliberately underestimated and underplayed by the present regime. However, the members of those Eritrean nationalities who, in the past, had always wished to “settle anywhere they like in Eritrea” and had genuinely sought to “share the land of the native inhabitants”, and did do so, never caused any kind of resentments, among the local populations, for, those were real “land-sharing” moves, but today, those activities which are being forcefully and arrogantly conducted and yet very deceitfully defined as “land-sharing”, are indeed real and proper “land-grabbing” drives, favoured, supported and sustained by that regime which the actors call their own and therefore what it had proclaimed as the “state land” has practically become their own land. Those evil forces, are creating, not only obvious resentments, but also sowing very explosive seeds of hatred, conflicts and violent confrontations, among the native populations and putting their own innocent ethnic-members, into dangerous situations of possible retaliations. In short, they have practically mingled “land-sharing” with and exchanged it for “land-grabbing”, thus exacerbating the wrath of the local populations. All the arguments, being provided today, by the regime, by its support-base Eritrean-Tigrian-intellectual top-brass and by anyone flirting with the idea of “sharing the Eritrean land”, as if it were a common commodity likely to equally satisfy all, are principally aimed at achieving their own group and personal interests. Even the agricultural, farming and other apparent developmental projects are all based on group and personal interests. The farming lands, being provided and promised, by the regime, to the settlers themselves, are made, primarily in view of its own short and long-term interests of building and securing a strong support-base in the “lands and territories” of those populations which it has always suspected, suspects and believes to oppose and hate it and its rule.

Our argument on the regime's deliberate resettlement of its own kinds, in the western Eritrean lowlands, in order to strengthen its own support-base, is sustained by the already taking place facts and examples of those more than four-thousand (4000) demobilised soldiers, who had been resettled there and provided with fire-arms and are very fiercely defending the farm-lands they had been allotted to. Neutral sources are reporting that those Eritrean-Tigrian “militias” have become so strong and powerful to challenge even the regime's military forces, whenever these are called in, by the native populations, to look into the injustices they are suffering at the hands of those militias. No one knows where such unjust and evil activities are leading to, not only the western Eritrean lowland populations, but also the entire Eritrean nation and society. The deceptions of “land-sharing” for “land-grabbing” are not only perceived of and talked about, but indeed taking place and being experienced on daily bases, specifically by the Kunama rural and urban populations in their own native and ancestral land. If therefore, the legitimately worried fellow-Eritreans like Ali Salim and others, continuously raising the alarm, they are not at all alone, but together with us Kunama and others, concerned with the sad history of our own ethnic and regional lowland populations whose sufferings have never had and have no time-limit, be it before, after the “30-and-more-years” of the Eritrean liberation struggle, right now and, presumably, for years to come. More than half of the western Eritrean lowland populations is estimated to be still suffering as refugee in Ethiopia , in The Sudan, in the Middle-East, in America , in Australia and in Europe . The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is determined to let them stay where they are and suffer, thus allowing him build up his support. The longer they stay there the stronger the build-up of the regime's support bases in Eritrea . No unsympathetic and no opposing forces are to be tolerated, as long as the PFDJ's regime is ruling.

Those objective fellow-Eritreans who are frequently visiting Eritrea, are reporting that in the towns and market places of Tessenei, (Sinai), Barentu (Biara), Agordat and Keren, no native Kunama, no native Baria/Nara, no native Beni-Amer and no native Bilen populations are to be seen, but only the Eritrean-Tigrians. Has Eritrea then been turned, for good, into only an Eritrean-Tigrian nation/state? The present facts seem to be widely proving it.

Our perceptions are that, so long as all those western Eritrean lowland populations are not officially allowed to return home, from all their places of refuge and settled in their own and respective native homelands, and the deceptions of “land-sharing” for “land-grabbing” activities are not stopped and the Eritrean nation/state does not start “recognising and protecting the land and territorial rights of those Eritrean indigenous peoples”, as the “United Nations” and other “international laws, statues and declarations” are prescribing, Eritrea is and remains a failed nation/state and our populations destined to be permanent refugees and their status continuing to be of endless sufferings and the arguments of the Eritrean national unity and security do remain a real “crap”, as they are factually dividing and leading us to catastrophe, rather than to a genuine unity.

The VKP/KAM: (October 10, 2009).