FAILED PROMISE OF PEACE
Ethiopia is going down Eritrea’s dark path
Posted on Friday, 5 March 2021
The 2018 peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia meant a breath of new life for Eritreans.
Published in partnership with Ethiopia Insight.
It was not an ordinary peace where two adversaries agreed to settle their differences. It had much deeper significance for Eritreans. Eritreans had been at war for the previous six decades.
Generations were born in war, lived in war and breathed war. When the Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared peace in April 2018 and came to Eritrea to deliver peace in person, they received him like a hero of a son they had been waiting on for too long. Tears were flowing down the cheeks of so many. Peace had finally arrived!
For the Eritrean people, this was a new beginning; a period of planning their lives as a normal society. It brought hope and a strong desire to see an end to their children being snatched from them at a tender age.
For the youth, the peace gave hope that they can look forward to a normal life where they can aspire for a career; make a family, live a stable life, heralding a life of no flight from their country; an end to living in inhospitable refugee camps; and dying in the Sahara and Sinai deserts and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
People in Eritrea anticipated this peace to bring respite from the endless wars and suffering that President Isaias Afwerki had put them through. They hoped for change at home and for their country to integrate back into the region as a strong voice for peace, security and stability.
In September 2018, as part of the declaration of peace between the two leaders, the border with Ethiopia was opened. Eritreans felt even more hopeful as they started to travel to Ethiopia, mainly to neighbouring Tigray. What they found astounded them. They saw development, they saw structures and construction rising up, factories working, universities functioning, wealth generating, etc.
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