@merzi.edf: They did not wake up hating Americans. They woke up under Ethiopia, watching America arm the army on our neck. Kagnew is that deal. 1943 the U.S. takes Mussolini’s radio site in Asmara. 22 May 1953 two papers: America gets a 25-year lease on our highland. Ethiopia gets guns and training. They name the base after an Ethiopian battalion. That is not friendship. That is paying the occupier to keep Eritrea. ELF / Jebha starts the war in 1961. For years the line is discipline: we are not at war with the American people. We want Washington off Ethiopia’s side. Hands off. 1965 a mapping helicopter is burned and the crew walks out alive. Point made. No feud with Americans. By 1969 Jebha says it in public. Kagnew is a spy ear on occupied land while U.S. weapons feed the killer. Roads, power, the Massawa highway get hit. 1971 an American courier is shot on that road. The quiet base is now inside the war it helped fund. Then the Front splits. Hailtat — People’s Liberation Forces — become Ginbar in 1977. That is EPLF / Shabia. Jebha and Shabia fight each other later. On Kagnew both want the same thing: close the station, cut the arms, stop helping Ethiopia colonise us. What they actually did. March 1974 Jebha takes the Tenneco oil team. Americans and Canadians held for months, then released after payment. 27 May 1974 Jebha raids Ghinda hospital looking for a doctor. Dutch nurse Anna Strikwerda is shot when she cannot run. American nurse Debbie Dortzbach, pregnant, is held 26 days and let go. Jebha calls Anna’s death a mistake and writes an apology. Ugly. Not a policy of killing Americans. 14 July 1975 Shabia / PLF takes two Kagnew contractors off the transmitter road: Steve Campbell and Jim Harrell. Marched into the field. Demand is political: shut the espionage base, stop U.S. munitions on Eritreans, help the wounded, free prisoners. 23 August two other American contractors hit a landmine on a supply road and die. Not hostages executed. A mine in a war zone. 12 September 1975 Jebha overruns a Kagnew tract. Power plant, fuel, generators. Nine dead, 23 wounded, mostly Ethiopian staff. Two more Americans taken: Thomas Bowidowicz and David Strickland. Jebha’s list: evacuate Kagnew, stop aid to the junta, pay, help refugees. Washington says we don’t negotiate. The men still come home. 9 January 1976 Sudan hands Bowidowicz and Strickland over. Alive. 3 May 1976 Campbell and Harrell walk free in Port Sudan after Campbell’s father and journalists reach the fighters. Alive. Another contractor taken in December 1975 also comes out. The five taken off Kagnew live. April 1977 Mengistu kicks the last Americans out. 29 April they leave. The 1953 alliance dies on its own. The mountain goes quiet. 1991 Shabia enters Asmara. 1993 independence. So remember it straight. Jebha hit the symbol and took men off the mountain. Shabia took men off the mountain too. Both used them as leverage, not a slaughter. They asked America to stop feeding our killer. They did not declare hate on the American people. #ENA1Eritrea #eritrea #Kagnew #usa #ethiopia

Dr. Merzi🧪EDF📘

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Monday 28 September 2026 18:52:08 GMT