I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (P.S.)

Very well written book that covers in great detail the Eritrean History from Italian colony through their independence. Michela presents the information in a way that makes you feel the disregard, betrayal and abuse inflicted by the various powers that used Eritrea as a means to an end. I started with no knowledge of Eritrea, and ended with an understanding and passion for the people who have endured so much and persevered for so long.

Even in a continent full of doomed revolutions and post-colonial misery, the story of the plucky Eritreans is a fascinating and tragic one. As an experienced world news correspondent on Africa, Michela Wrong has the chops to give us an informative history of this tough and self-sufficient people who endured centuries of colonial exploitation and a 30-year struggle against their Ethiopian overlords, before finally becoming independent in 1993. The author does just that throughout most of the book, starting with a strong examination of the national character and unique cultural traits of the Eritreans, then later ending the book on a melancholy but instructive note as their inspiring struggle for self-determination went sour.

The problem here though is with the middle sections of the book, which devolve into disconnected snippets and vignettes that highlight persons and events of interest but detract from the historical and political narrative. (This is the same problem that afflicts Wrong's other major book, the nearly-masterful Congo study "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz.") The worst example is a useless tangent in Chapter 10 into stories of debauchery by American servicemen in Eritrea in the 1960s. Also, Wrong has a hard time effectively separating the histories of Eritrea and Ethiopia, and while that's surely difficult with so much historical interaction between the peoples, the Eritreans are missing from large parts of this book that is supposed to be about them.

Fortunately, Michela Wrong finishes strongly with useful examinations of the historical lessons to be learned from the long and still-ongoing struggle of the Eritreans. Based on the book's title, I'm not convinced that the world betrayed Eritrea, but the world certainly ignored that small nation's unique struggle through centuries of historical ignorance and political myopia. The hard-working Eritreans deserve the tribute delivered by Wrong in this book. [~doomsdayer520~]

What a book! Shall I call it a novel? For me it read like a suspensful novel rather than an ordinary narrative about an obscure Afrcan nation.I commend the young writer for her lucid style and insightful observation The narrative for the story takes place mainly in the Sahle Mountains and the main characters are the Eritrean fighters and the other charcters- the villains are the Ethiopian Army, the Italains, the British, the Russians, The Americans, last but not least the UN.Like in a good novel, at the end the protagonists- the heroes or the winners are the Eritreans

I am from Ogaden, the Somali region still occupied by Ethiopia, and Eritrea's tortured history is pretty similar to ours.

When I bought the book, I Didn't Do It For You, and read John Le carre's powerful commendation on the cover, I took his comments with a grain of salt, thinking he was putting a good word for a colleague. However as I delved into the book, I was surprised to find every laudatory remark made by Le Carre got instant affirmation from my own mind!

This book is very informative and intensely honest. The author's tone is restrained and her style is modest. She avoids polemics because she obviously knows indulging in any propaganda variety tends to undermine one's credibility.

Michela is sympathetic to the Eritreans. However she makes it clear, in her own austere way, that, Issayas, the Eritrean leader and his dictatorial tendencies, has squandered the fruit of the Eritrean struggle, the dream of its people, and the goodwill of Eritrea's friends throughout the world, and thereby rendered the once promising young republic into just another African heartbreak!

Unlike many western authors and scholars who, when writing about the developing countries, tend to sanitize facts to protect the image of their own mother countries, Michela Wrong simply exposes the unpleasant facts for everyone to see. Of the three European countries(The French, Italians, and the British) that colonized the Horn of Africa, the British had been the worst. As a Somali, I know the British were pitifully stingy and penny pinching: for the 75 years they colonized Somaliland, for instance, they built or invested in it practically next to nothing, whereas the Italians built and invested in Eritrea all the machines, factories, and infrastructure, including state of the art railway system, and all the building blocks necessary for a modern state in the first part of the 20th century.

However one of the explosive segments in this book is the part that exposes and gives British colonialist a real black eye, not because of their stinginess and selfishness, but because of their unabashed shamelessness of looting and stealing all the factories and machines and the modern equipment, including rail way wagons and wires that the Italians invested in Eritrea! Not only that, but the British also looted almost all the factories and machines that the Italians built in Ethiopia during its brief occupation of Ethiopia. That is, Ethiopia, the very country the British were supposed to be liberating!

In light of these shocking facts about British proclivity for looting, stealing and pillaging, I was left wondering how many factories and machines and modern equipment the British forces looted from Southern Somalia when they defeated the Italians and occupied Southern Somalia in 1941?

It is the exposure of these raw, unsanitized facts about the nature, greed and the attitudes of European colonialists that sets Michela Wrong apart from many western authors and scholars!

My only wish is that she would, one day, be interested in the plight of the Somalis of Ogaden, who have been occupied, betrayed, and subjugated by none other than the very authors of Eritrea's horrendous history: the Italians, the British and the Abyssinians. Since she already extensively researched about history of both Eritrea and Ethiopia, writing about Ogaden which is still occupied by Ethiopia would be relatively easy.

Alternatively, if I may digress, she could write about the cause of the Somali people in the horn of Africa. The Somalis have the misfortune of being the only people divided and dismembered into five limbs and each limb grabbed and swallowed by a different colonial master. And the tragic consequences of that dismemberment has been the complete collapse of the Somali Republic. Contrary to the popular notion, the principal factor responsible for the collapse of the Somali Republic in 1991 was the Ogaden war of 1977 and its consequences. The dictatorial rule of former President Siyad Barre, the epidemic of Qaat, and the curse of clanism were merely contribuiting factors. Theoratically, If Somalia stayed out of Ogaden, it could have remained peaceful, relatively prosperous, and strong. But Somalia could never have stayed out of Ogaden for very long. And if it didn't invade Ogaden in 1977, it could have invaded in 1987, or 1997, or 2027! And the reason is that the limbs of the same body tend to gravitate into the same direction! And every time Somalia mastered enough strength it will do everything in her power to regain its dismembered limbs, be it NFD or Ogaden. That is why the Horn of Africa will never see peace or stability so long the dismembered limbs of the Somali nation continue crying for one another.

Certain peoples with numeric superiority such as Arabs, for instance, may withstand or whither division and dismemberment. However Somalia with a small country and smaller people cannot. As Farah Omaar, the well known Somali patriot said long ago, "My country is smaller than to be divided; my people are frailer than to be enslaved!"

Now Somalia hit rock bottom. And because of its occupation of Ogaden and invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia is going to sink into a black hole! And Kenya will be next! And the vicious cycle for peoples of the Horn of Africa will continue unabated. Therefore for those who care about world peace, the most productive and cost-effective endeavor to restoring peace into this troubled region is to work for the reunification of the dismembered limbs of the Somali nation. But so long that objective is either neglected, ignored, or overlooked, the key to peace and stability in the Horn will be very difficult to locate.

With her talent, courage, and honesty, Michela Wrong can take up this challenging issue, uncover the sad facts that the British and other western scholars have been sanitizing and glossing over for decades, and produce a groundbreaking must-read book for anyone interested in the Horn of Africa, and thereby not only make a significant contribution to enlightening people around the world, but also perhaps help finding a lasting solution for the never ending tragedy of the peoples of the Horn of Africa.

To come back to this book, I Didn't Do It For You is impressive. And it is worth every penny and every minute of one's time.

Mohamed Heebaan

This is in some ways a good and necessary book. It spotlights a nation and a set of problems that most of the world doesn't pay much attention to. But there is a problem. Michela Wrong is too close to the subject and her emotional attachment at times results in the book not being as objective or as good as it might have been. In particular, she seems to have been far too close to Eritrean rebel groups and their leaders.

Eritrea's history isn't about "betrayal". Its about the same problems that most African nations have faced. Rather than face the fact that the problems of Eritrea today are largely self-inflicted wounds, she falls back into blaming colonialism and cold-war politics in really unconvincing ways.

In her coverage of Italian colonial rule, she confuses events in Eritrea with those in Ethiopia. She is also willing to judge Italy to a far higher standard than she applies to the pre or post-independence governments of both countries. She is also more than a little unwilling to understand the role that Italy played in creating Eritrea.

The lowest point in the book is her coverage of Britain's wartime rule of Eritrea. She advances a theory that the british were racist than the italians because their rule produced fewer multiracial children. Somehow she sees superior morality in men who promoted widespread prostitution and produced children which they abandoned. It makes no sense to me. Her logic is also full of wrong assumptions about the number of British in the country and the nature of the occupation.

She also isn't very good about the details of the war. The war in East Africa and in particular the victory at Keren was not a British victory, but a victory of the British Indian Army. Somehow she misses the basic fact that much of the army that conquered and occupied East Africa was Inidian.

The British wanted out of Eritrea and got out of it seven years after the war ended (1952). As they got out, the issue of Ethiopia's historic and economic claims to Eritrea came to the surface. Wrong wishes to blame the united nations for betraying the people of Eritrea. But its not that simple. Eritrea's national identity has no particular good historical basis and arises mostly from the period of Italian rule and the money Italy spent on their colony. Furthermore, its independence results in two weak states in East Africa rather than one. Eritrea and Ethiopia need each other. Economically, independence is a disaster for both.

The war for Eritrea's independence was a pointless waste of lives for everyone involved. Wrong wishes to see it as a justified noble struggle for "freedom", but as events since independence have proved, it was anything but that.

After the overthrow of the Ethiopian government in 1976, horrible things were done in Eritrea and the author gets that part of the story right. Then she goes on to show the bright future Eritrea had before it in 1993 at independence and how everything went so terribly wrong.

But she can't bring herself to hold the right people accountable. She can't bring herself to admit that the rebels she had admired so much once in power turned to be little better than a criminal gang. A gang that destroyed the economy of the country, introduced a dictatorship and then threw the country into a disasterous war with Ethiopia. The world didn't do these things. The world's "betrayal" didn't make these decisions. It was the rebel "freedom fighters" who are responsible.

And thats the fatal flaw in the book. The author wants to give critiques of colonialism and the UN from on high. But the truth is that the country's problems are not a matter of "I didn't do it for you", they are "we did it to ourselves".

The end result of the great "struggle" for Eritrean independence has been an economic disaster for both Ethiopia and Eritrea. The political result is a government running Eritrea that is as bad (or worse) than what the author claims were the "repressive" Ethiopian governments of the 1950s and 1960s. Eritrea's government budget is wasted in preparations for more war with Ethiopia. The country is trapped in a situation where things will never get better. Its not a situation that outsiders should be credited or blamed for.

When the author says things like: "the national character traits forged during a century of colonial and superpower exploitation were about to blow up in Eritrea's face.", she in engaging in massive political self-deception. Her (dated) anti-colonial/anti-imperialism rhetoric leads her to excuse every bad decision made by an African as someone elses fault.

She also goes out of her way to make the American soldiers stationed in Ethiopia in the past look like they were exceptionally bad. Having worked and travelled in Africa, she must know how soldiers behave in most countries. Go to the area around any military base (including those on American soil) and you will find all sorts of unpleasent things going on. I'm not trying to excuse the behavior of anyone, but the selective moral outrage in the book is of little value to anyone.

I wanted to like this book and I want to see the author write more books about Africa. But she needs to put her political ideology to the side and report on Africa as it is. She did a far better job in "In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" than she did in this book.