Mohammed Ismail Abdu
: 1937-2008
Awate - The Fertile Womb
By Awate Team - Oct 13, 2008
On the 2nd of October 2008, Mohammed Ismail Abdu died in Khartoum shortly after being discharged from a hospital where he was admitted and stayed in intensive care. He was suffering from heart problems. He is survived by his wife and six children.
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Mohammed Ismail was born In Senafe in the thirties. He finished elementary and middle school in Eritrea. Since there was no Arabic education beyond elementary school in Senafe, Mohammed Ismail went to Keren and briefly attended high school there before going to Egypt to continue his education. Like many of his peers who couldn't find higher education in Eritrea, he travelled on foot through Halfa in the Sudan and Aswan in Egypt arriving in Cairo in the late fifties. He enrolled in the AlAzhar university from where he graduated with a business degree.
Born to a religious family in nationalist environment, he acquired the love for his country from an early age and he dedicated his life to Eritrea until the moment he passed away.
Mohammed Ismail’s committment to the national cause started when he was a teenager in the 1940s. While studying in Egypt, he joined the Eritrean Liberation Movement (Haraka) and was an active member from 1958 to 1961.
Upon graduation, he returned to Eritrea and started to teach at the Jalia School in Asmara. From 1962 to 1964, he organized secret cells among urbanite Eritreans for the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF.) He was jailed and tortured several times by the Ethiopian security forces, until he left Asmara to join the Eritrean field.
Beginning in October 1964, he served in ELF's nine-member Revolutionary Command. In 1965, upon the formation of the military regions of Eritrea, he became secretary of the Revolutionary Command which was in charge of the military activities in Eritrea and the civic organization in the Sudan.
After the Adobha Congress of 1969, where the General Command was formed, Mohammed Ismail strived with other combatants to achieve the goal of convening the First National Congress of the ELF.
In 1971, at the 1st National Congress of the ELF, he was elected to the sixteen-member Revolutionary Council (RC), the legislative arm of the ELF, and became the secretary and coordinator between the different offices of the RC. Later, he was appointed judge at the Supreme Court of the ELF.
In May 1975, at the 2nd National Congress of the ELF, he was elected to the forty-one member RC and served in several positions.
He was bold in his criticism of the ELF whenever he thought it was endangering the unity of the people and the organization.
In 1979, he along with his colleagues who formed a movement called the reformation group within the ELF, was arrested by his leftist colleagues of the Revolutionary Council who were in charge of the ELF. His religious leanings and criticism of the RC were the main reasons for his rift with his colleagues who accused him of being Yemeen (”Right Winger”). He stayed in jail until the joint attack of the EPLF/TPLF (both now ruling parties in Eritrea and Ethiopia) on the ELF dislocated the front and Mohammed Ismail entered Sudan.
In Sudan, Mohammed Ismail and his comrades sought a means to balance what they considered the secular extremism of the Eritrean fronts and formed the Eritrean Muslim Pioneers. He served as its president from 1981 to 1988. The Pioneers were a precursor to the Islamists groups in the Eritrean Diaspora and Mohammed eventually participated in the formation of the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement. In explaining the rationale for EIJM, Mohammed Ismail explained that it was a shield against the secular onslaught by the leftists on the religious sectors of Eritrea. He served EIJM as director of its foreign office from 1989 to 1994 and as its deputy chair from 1994 to 1998.
The EIJM was not spared the fate of its secular organizations—it split into factions. One of them was the Eritrean Islamic Salvation Front (subsequently renamed the Eritrean Islamic Party for Justice and Development) where Mohammed Ismail served as president of its Shura Council from 1998 until his death in 2008.
In a eulogy, his friend described Mohammed Ismail as, "a man of wisdom, and religious man who taught people charity by being an example himself. He was a just man who spread justice and fairness and worked for security and prosperity among the people."
Mohammed Ismail talked to power and said No to tyranny and taught people that ”taking initiatives doesn’t shorten life and being indifferent and playing it safe doesn’t elongate age.”
Despite his meagre resources, his home was always open to the needy. All the struggle and the difficult life didn’t prevent Mohammed Ismail from providing first-rate education to his son and five daughters. Nawal and Mawaheb are both doctors; Zeinab has a degree in economics; Hana in literature; Abdurahaman in business administration; Huda, the youngest, is still in high school.
Mohammed Ismail has recorded his memoirs in a 17-part series under the heading, ”The Eritrean Revolution and Its Result of Thirty Years” which was published in the AlRebat publicaction of the EIPJD.
Mohammed Ismail was a calm, respectable person whose civilized discourse and his honesty earned him the resepect of his comrades in the long struggle for the idependence of Eritrea. Gifted with patience and a forgiving attitude, he was a man known for his moderation and rejection of extremism whatever its political and ideological origin. Many of his comrades testify to his selfless dedication in the struggle for the independence of Eritrea.
It is sad that Mohammed Abdu was not buried in his country for which he struggled all his life. He has joined the many heroes of the Eritrean struggle who didn’t get a chance to be buried in Eritrea including Ibrahim Sultan, Idris Mohammed Adem, and Osman Saleh Sabbe.
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