[REVIEW] I Didn't Do It For You, Or Eritrea's Sad Decline

Michela Wrong's I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation takes its name from an episode in 1941 during Britain's liberation of the Italian colony of Eritrea. An old woman, dressed in white, was standing by the road leading into the capital of Asmara, greeting and welcoming the soldiers as they came. one passing soldier spat at her: "I didn't do it for you, nigger," he told her.

This theme of betrayal predominates in Wrong's gripping study of Eritrea. Betrayal is most obviously demonstrated in the activites undertaken directly to harm the Eritreans (the beliefs and policies of the Italians that the Eritreans were an inferior breed doomed to extinction, and the looting of Italy's investment in its former colony by Britain from 1941 on documented by Sylvia Pankhurst) and the more forgiveable criminal neglect of Eritreans' interests. Wrong documents how, after the Second World War, Britain and the United States accepted Ethiopia's claims to rightful hegemony over the entire Ethiopian cultural area and allowed the Empire to whittle away at Eritrean self-rule. The United States didn't care so long as Addis Ababa allowed it to maintain Kagnew Station, a radio eavesdropping installation anywhere that took advantage of Eritrean topography to listen in on most of the Old World. All that the Communist revolution of 1974 changed was the identity of Ethiopia's superpower patron, as the Soviets poured massive amounts of armaments and funds into an Ethiopian war against the Eritreans that was led singularly incompetently.

Another form of betrayal that surprised me when I first encountered I Didn't Do It For You was that felt by Eritrea's foreign supporters. I shouldn't have been surprised, since even back in high school I remember reading (in the fancy new full-text article databases) glowing accounts of how Eritrea really was different. It was created by a highly effective guerrilla force that emphasized self-education, flattened hierarchies, and critical thinking. Its first president, Isaiah Afewrki, was a man who criticized the old order of post-colonial Africa, who avoided self-aggrandizement, and was praised by Clinton as a leader of the African renaissance. It had a well-educated population, a highly-motivated population, and a prosperous diaspora.

It all went downhill, of course. The country seems to have blundered into a catastrophic war with Ethiopia over a border district, described by David Hirst writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in 1999. As the Head Heeb noted last November and as Reuters Alertnet observes now, Ethiopia has been singularly reluctant to implement the various peace accords. Whether this is because of a relatively limited irredentism directed towards the port of Assab, or (as Getachew Reda argues in his article "Michela Wrong: A neo-colonialist author vents anger on African freedom") an identification of Eritrean national identity as an instance of false consciousness, seems to be irrelevant. The Ethiopian question will remain in the 21st century perhaps as significant a threat to Eritrea as it was in the 20th.

And regarding Eritrea's internal development, it's a sad coincidence that I found Wrong's book at the same time that I discovered Pike Wright's article "Freedom to be read" in the 24 February issue of the Toronto weekly eye, which describes Eritrean journalist Aaron Berhane and his efforts in Canada, exiled because of the regime's crackdown against independent journalists. Wrong suggests that a pervasive police state is developing. Oh, and the praise heaped on Afewrki, that wise man who refused the fruits of power, who was the wise father of the nation, who spoke the truth to Eritrea's enemies regardless the cost? It turns out there's more than one sort of personality cult.

robertprior pointed out, in a conversation on the topic, that the failure of promising African post-colonial regimes isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Eritrea, though, was different. It remains different, but unfortunately, not different enough.

[BRIEF NOTE] We Can Still Have A Clash of Civilizations, If We Want

From the Toronto Star:

Islamic groups are calling for an inquiry into the alleged mistreatment of a Toronto woman in a Scottish airport cell that caused her to miscarry her baby.

Marina Miraj, 30, a Canadian of Afghan descent, arrived at Glasgow International Airport Feb. 24 to visit her husband, a refugee living in Scotland.

Three months pregnant, Miraj says she was detained and questioned by immigration officials and left in a cell as she complained of pains. After more than two hours, immigration officers found she had fainted and rushed her to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in nearby Paisley.

The woman, whose two brothers and sister live in the Toronto area, was kept for observation for two days and continues to get treatment. But she isn't well enough to return home yet.

[. . .]

The brother, who spoke to Marina yesterday, said she was confused by the British immigration officials' initial questions. She told them she planned to stay in Britain, but didn't tell them that it was only for three months — the length of time her Toronto doctor had told her it was safe to stay away.

Her Canadian passport, citizenship card and belongings were confiscated. She was then questioned — and mocked — by three female immigration officials who laughed at her answers, her brother said.

"They asked her lots of questions. She said to me, `I was scared, I didn't know what they wanted,'" Ashoor Miraj said.

After Miraj collapsed in detention, "a doctor came and said her blood pressure was very high," her brother said. "They took her to hospital and checked her and told her that her baby was gone."

[. . .]

Miraj married her husband in Pakistan about a year ago and is said to be keen to live in Scotland with him.


"The last time she had visited there was no problem," Asif said.

But this time, "they were asking, `what are you doing here' and `you should not be coming because you're not able to stay with your husband.'

"Any Canadian citizen is allowed to visit Britain for six months. If they don't stop others, then why did they stop her?"

[BRIEF NOTE] Terrorism in Canada, and its Legal Consequences

Via The Globe and Mail, news that one of the accused in the Air India bombing has been found not guilty.

UPDATE (3:25 PM): Both men have been found not guilty.

[BRIEF NOTE] The Nazis and the Bomb

Fear of a Female Planet links to Klaus Wiegrefe's article (also available here) on the claims of Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch that Nazi Germany was experimenting with nuclear weapons in 1944 and 1945.

Speaking purely from the perspective of an amateur historian, Karlsch's claims do seem implausible. In the early 21st century, it's easy to develop primitive nuclear weapons, since a half-century of researches into nuclear technology has produced a widely dispersed body of knowledge that could be deployed cheaply. The only reasons preventing dozens of countries from building nuclear weapons--Poland and Romania, Chile and Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines, Egypt and South Africa, Canada and the Netherlands--are political and strategic, not technical or economic.

In the mid-20th century, The United States spent the equivalent of several percent of its GDP on the Manhattan project in the years leading up to Fat Boy and Little Man; the Soviet Union took a further four years to develop nuclear weapons, even with Stalin's unlimited resources and coercive power. Nazi Germany never made comparable investments, and the rag-tag band of scientists apparently described by Karlsch simply wouldn't have been able to make a comparable effort. Contrary to its public image, Nazi Germany was not efficient; if anything, the reverse prevailed.

A dirty bomb, comparable to that described by modern-day security analysts commenting on security threats, might well have been developed. An actual nuke? Unlikely.

[NON BLOG] The Ease of War

One thing that I've done since I've gotten home Internet access again is sign up for an online simulation game of the history of the 22nd century, as new great powers (and in some cases, hyperpowers) have formed in the non-Western world and human technology has advanced to the point of supporting interstellar colonization. I joined late and I'm playing France; I don't know of a causal connection, but who knows? For the time being, it's enough that my country's doing well at home and that it's one of the first countries active in the Alpha Centauri planetary system. Right now, there's a possible Third World War situation on Earth (briefly, an India with a blue-water navy and nuclear weapons is on the verge of a shooting war with a Brazil equipped with orbital-bombardment weapons on the issue of Indian naval deployments to Cuba). I've offered my offices as a neutral mediator and made sure that the potential combatants knew better than to attack la France d'outre-mer.

The game is a reasonably complex simulation, with a lot of variables and a lot of possible values for each variable. In its way, it compares well to my favourite simulation games. The actively pro-Brazilian bellicosity of the Netherlands, unique in 22nd century Europe, reminds me of simulation games' major flaw, that is, the tendency for ahistorical bellicosity. It's unlikely that an immensely prosperous and largely demilitarized Netherlands would risk devastation in a Third World War over matters which wouldn't be of any concern to it; it's unlikely that early 16th century France would have been able to overcome European opposition to the annexation of southern England and Europe east to the Rhine; in both cases, it's unlikely that the populations of the aggressive states would have supported these policies given their serious costs. When your life isn't on the line, gambling everything is rather easy.

[QUIZ] Stolen from schizmatic

( Mon coeur mis à nu. )