History of Er Struggle

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</div> <div> Self-reliant nation has </div> <div> austere rulers </div> <div> October 15, 1998, Thursday, Final Edition </div> <div> BYLINE: David Hirst; THE WASHINGTON TIMES </div> <div> DATELINE: ASMARA, ERITREA </div> <div> BODY: ASMARA, Eritrea - Eritreans are rebuilding pre-World War II Italian </div> <div> locomotives under their own financial steam, evidence of a people determined to </div> <div> stand on their own on a continent awash in corruption and Western handouts. </div> <div> They even pay their taxes and spurn foreign aid. </div> <div> Eritrean Railways once was a triumph of Italian engineering when Eritrea was the </div> <div> jewel in the crown of Italy's African possessions. Begun in 1887, it had taken 24 </div> <div> years to complete. In less than 30 miles, it rises 7,500 feet from the sweltering </div> <div> Red Sea port of Masawa to the blessed cool of the highland capital, Asmara. </div> <div> The spectacular railway, in which ancient Italian steam locomotives have been </div> <div> brought back to life, is a symbol of the no-nonsense, can-do attitude of the </div> <div> Eritreans, a proud people free of corruption. Last year, they rejected an $80 </div> <div> million offer from the European Union to beautify Asmara. </div> <div> The Eritreans will not accept anything that smacks of "aid dependency" - the </div> <div> crippling indebtedness of so many African countries. The government took food </div> <div> distribution out of the hands of foreign donors and sought to shift the country </div> <div> by swift, perhaps avoidably harsh, stages from an internationally relief-based </div> <div> economy to a locally productive one. </div> <div> The railroad is a picturesque metaphor for this African country that is so </div> <div> different from almost any other - so much at variance with the familiar Western </div> <div> perceptions of a continent sunk in calamities, natural and man-made, hunger, </div> <div> debt, civil war and an ever-growing gap between itself and the rest of the world. </div> <div> ONE OF THE POOREST </div> <div> With Eritrea's fall to the British in 1941 and, a decade later, its absorption </div> <div> into Ethiopia, the railway kept going until, in the 1970s,it appeared doomed </div> <div> forever. It was then that, in the war between Ethiopia and its rebellious </div> <div> province, both sides ripped up every rail and metal tie in the land for use in </div> <div> trenches and fortifications. After victory in 1991, the newborn Eritrean State </div> <div> received foreign offers for rebuilding the railway. </div> <div> "It would have cost us at least $200 million," said railway chief Amanuel </div> <div> Selassie. </div> <div> Once one of the more advanced African countries, Eritrea was by then one of the </div> <div> poorest, its infrastructure, industry and agriculture an almost total ruin. Per </div> <div> capita income was around $75 to $150 compared with about $330 for other </div> <div> sub-Saharan countries. Eighty percent of its people lived off foreign aid. </div> <div> "It was just too damned expensive," Mr. Selassie said, "so we decided to do it </div> <div> for ourselves." </div> <div> There can be few relics of the steam era outside of railway museums like the </div> <div> 49-ton Giovanni Ansaldo, Genoa, 1937; or the 30-ton Ernesto Breda, Milan, 1927. </div> <div> Surely none is being restored - not for fairgrounds or theme parks but to become, </div> <div> once more, an integral part of a country's transport system. </div> <div> Eritrean Railways boasts about 20 of these quaint behemoth steam locomotives. All </div> <div> pipes, pistons, cylinders and pepper-pot funnels, they all have a curious cone </div> <div> above the furnace; it turns out to be the container that discharges a steady </div> <div> trickle of sand down to the wheels, providing the grip they need to negotiate </div> <div> their way around innumerable bends, up those last dizzy heights to Asmara. </div> <div> Some of these steam engines are still in a state of seemingly total decrepitude. </div> <div> Others gleam proudly in a freshly painted livery of red and black. The men who </div> <div> wrought this transformation are older than the locomotives themselves. </div> <div> Some nearer 80 than 70, all Italian-speaking, they alone possessed the steam-era </div> <div> skills now being passed on to others. Meanwhile, younger generations have been </div> <div> scouring former battlefields for rails and ties, then laying them anew in their </div> <div> place of origin. </div> <div> It will cost Eritrea nothing in foreign expertise and a few million dollars for a </div> <div> track-laying machine and a special, indispensable type of nuts and bolts. </div> <div> NO BEGGARS, NO CRIME </div> <div> Statistically, Eritrea remains one of the world's poorest countries, ranked 168th </div> <div> by the Human Development Index, only two places ahead of its giant neighbor and </div> <div> current military adversary, Ethiopia. </div> <div> In the countryside, no tractors are to be seen, and farmers still work their </div> <div> rugged little highland plots with yoked oxen and primitive wooden plow. It is </div> <div> harder in the towns. </div> <div> It is not necessary to arrive in an Asmara at war, its airport under attack, from </div> <div> the anarchy of supposedly more sophisticated capitals like Cairo or Beirut to </div> <div> wonder at the order and cleanliness of the place, its well-kept public gardens, </div> <div> at the mere existence, let alone functioning, of such services, virtually unknown </div> <div> in the Middle East, as public telephone booths, at the few, unarmed policemen </div> <div> directing a well-disciplined traffic that hardly requires them. </div> <div> And there are virtually no beggars or crimes. </div> <div> In much of Africa or the Middle East, observers often find themselves searching </div> <div> for something positive, something - anything - to relieve the gloom. It is the </div> <div> opposite in Eritrea. </div> <div> "I scratch my fingers in the dirt," said a Western ambassador, but I've worn them </div> <div> to the bone and found nothing." </div> <div> What may be most troubling is the well-known case of an Eritrean journalist, Ruth </div> <div> Simon, former fighter and ambassador's wife. She wrote a story for Agence </div> <div> France-Presse that, citing President Isaias Afewerki, said Eritreans were </div> <div> fighting alongside the Sudanese opposition inside Sudan. A year later, she </div> <div> remains under house arrest without trial. It is an inexplicable, seemingly </div> <div> gratuitous blemish on an otherwise good human rights record. </div> <div> The most common complaint among foreigners is a certain inflexible, we-know-best, </div> <div> we-are-always-right attitude on the part of officials. But that, they concede, is </div> <div> but the defect of this country's vastly superior virtue; it barely stems the flow </div> <div> of superlatives like "extraordinary," "exceptional" and "unique" they routinely </div> <div> bestow on it. </div> <div> What is Eritrea's secret? </div> <div> It seems rooted in that Eritrea was both the last African state to win </div> <div> independence and the first to do so from another African state, and that it did </div> <div> so in one of the most remarkable "people's wars" ever waged. </div> <div> In that crucible of formidable challenge and ultimate triumph were forged the </div> <div> qualities that continue, in large measure, to animate the newborn state. </div> <div> "Doing it ourselves" - as the railway chief said - sums it up: self-reliance, </div> <div> ingrained, passionate, stubborn, at times to the point of masochism, lies at the </div> <div> heart of the "ethics of the bush." </div> <div> FIERCELY INDEPENDENT </div> <div> It was inculcated, above all, by the sheer loneliness of that 30-year war. Until </div> <div> the end, the Eritreans endured the indifference or outright hostility of most of </div> <div> the world, and not least an Africa for which the prospect of Eritrean secession </div> <div> was an intolerable threat to the sacrosanct principle of the inviolability of </div> <div> colonial frontiers. </div> <div> Other virtues they learned in those heroic years were self-denial, solidarity, </div> <div> patience, a high sense of national purpose that nonetheless accommodated </div> <div> pragmatism and adaptability. </div> <div> Eritreans remain deeply anchored in themselves and their own experience. So it's </div> <div> almost a fetish of their leadership that, while open to the world, it doesn't </div> <div> accept "models" or formulas of any kind. If anything, in fact, post-colonial </div> <div> Africa has served as a model of how not to proceed with the construction of its </div> <div> own latecomer state. The country has yet to ratify a constitution. </div> <div> It is typical that the leadership should have taken so long to draw up a </div> <div> constitution and has brought the entire people into a great debate about it. </div> <div> "They sometimes study things to excess here," said a Western banker, "but it pays </div> <div> off. President Afewerki rightly says that Eritrea is like the tortoise that gets </div> <div> there in the end." </div> <div> In their debate, the people were urged to consider the consequences, throughout </div> <div> Africa, of the "blind transfer" of foreign models, "regimes that appeared to be </div> <div> strong, but were actually weak, deriving their existence from the repression of </div> <div> the people, the plunder of natural resources and subservience to others." </div> <div> The Eritrean solution is clearly not a fully-fledged, functioning democracy by </div> <div> the standard criteria of multiparty pluralism, independent media, sturdy civil </div> <div> society. It might be on the way - the draft constitution largely provides for </div> <div> such things - but it's not there yet. </div> <div> "We think all Eritreans should have the right to establish parties," said Yemani </div> <div> Gebreab, a presidential adviser. "But we also think that having parties for its </div> <div> own sake is meaningless. More important is to ensure the continuous engagement of </div> <div> the population in political life. If there are no other parties at the moment, </div> <div> that's because no one feels the need for them." </div> <div> Almost anywhere else such discourse would be the deeply suspect, special pleading </div> <div> of a proponent and beneficiary of the existing order, in this case the </div> <div> unchallenged ascendancy of the single party, now called the Popular Front for </div> <div> Democracy and Justice, which led the liberation struggle. But here it is not. For </div> <div> here, for starters, the speaker in question leads the most tellingly frugal of </div> <div> personal lives. </div> <div> OPEN PRESIDENCY </div> <div> All the former guerilla fighters worked for nothing until 1995 and then took </div> <div> salaries of which the highest - the president's - is about $800. </div> <div> "Most African leaders are emperors," said a Sudanese opposition leader, marveling </div> <div> at the modesty of Eritrea's ruling class. For example, a government minister </div> <div> makes an appointment to see someone in the simplest of lean-to coffee shops </div> <div> outside his ministry. There are no perks, no official cars and, even in new </div> <div> buildings, no elevator to a fourth-floor minister's office. </div> <div> People can walk virtually unchecked into the presidency itself or chance upon the </div> <div> incumbent in any bar or restaurant, where he insists on paying the bill himself. </div> <div> Such a lifestyle is one reason why the government, if not yet a true democracy, </div> <div> is highly popular and respected. The trust it, and especially Mr. Afewerki, </div> <div> inspires is palpable, almost excessive, breeding as it does a mentality of "leave </div> <div> it to him." </div> <div> So seemingly pure itself, it can demand high standards from others. Mr. Afewerki </div> <div> has said Africa's curse is not this or that objective, but the corruption of </div> <div> regimes that embody them. </div> <div> Another African, Martyn Ngwenya, head of the U.N. Development Program in Asmara, </div> <div> bears lyrical witnesses to the "corruption-free development environment" which </div> <div> Eritrea has achieved. "Here," he said, "they fight corruption better even than </div> <div> Canada or the U.S. The convergence between what they say and what they actually </div> <div> do is almost complete." </div> <div> GRAPHIC: Photos, A) The Giovanni Ansaldo, a 49-ton locomotive built in Genoa, </div> <div> Italy, in 1937, is being rebuilt for use in Eritrea.; B) A railroad man with </div> <div> steam-age experience in Asmara, Eritrea, repairs the Ernesto Breda, a 30-ton </div> <div> locomotive built in Milan, Italy, in 1927.; C) Eritreans are putting trains from </div> <div> its colonial-era master Italy back into rail service. The extremely self-reliant </div> <div> nation is doing all the work without outside help in part to save money., All By </div> <div> David Hirst/The Washington Times; Map, UNDER THEIR OWN STEAM: Eritreans are </div> <div> rebuilding Italian locomotives that are 60 to 70 years old, illustrating the </div> <div> determination of a people to stand on their own feet. </div> <div> The railroad chugs up into the mountains from the coastal city of Massawa to the </div> <div> capital, Asmara. </div> <div> By The Washington Times </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>