This episode is dedicated to the bereaved—to the ordinary people who pay the price for wars they neither start nor control. In the Horn of Africa, bloodshed has become a grim ritual, as predictable as the ancient sacrifices once offered to appease imagined demons. But the victims are real. The slaughter benefits no one except the warlords, who feed on conflict while ordinary families bury their dead.
Every so-called peace is merely an intermission before the next round of killing. The guns fall silent, only to roar again a year or two later. Can people truly rebuild their lives under such conditions? Can they ever feel secure when they know another cycle of violence is always around the corner?
That is the Horn of Africa’s Catch-22—a tragic cycle in which peace is temporary, war is expected, and the people are condemned to live between grief and anticipation of the next catastrophe.
Wenny is a feeling, a drive that sometimes pushes people into a hysterical state—dancing on a floor drenched in the blood of nationalism. It has become the favorite pastime of the cursed region called the Horn of Africa.
Blood sacrifice seems woven into the culture of conflict across much of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Feasts, frenzied celebrations, and the never-ending march to the battlefield have become recurring scenes, with weapons always ready for action. It is an activity many glorify. Consider, for example, the widely circulated video of a soldier dancing while carrying a Doska heavy machine gun.
Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and it was published in 1961. The novel satirizes military bureaucracy, institutional greed, and the absurdities of war, and it is widely regarded as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.
Set during World War II, between 1942 and 1944, the story follows Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the novel takes place with the fictional 256th U.S. Army Air Squadron, based on the island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean. Through Yossarian and his fellow airmen, Heller examines the absurdity of military life as soldiers struggle to preserve their sanity while meeting ever-changing service requirements that keep them from returning home.
I have lost many books over the years, and unfortunately I could not replace all of them. I once lent my copy of Catch-22 to the Ethiopian chargé d’affaires in Kuwait and never got it back. Then came 1998, casting its shadow over all of us. More urgent matters demanded my attention, and I forgot about retrieving the book—but I never forgot the book itself.
The story begins in a military hospital, where Yossarian pretends to suffer from a chronic liver condition in order to avoid flying additional combat missions. He has become deeply disillusioned with the war and distrusts his commanding officers, who display an extraordinary disregard for the lives of their men. They are willing to sacrifice soldiers to advance their own careers.
Colonel Cathcart, in particular, repeatedly raises the number of combat missions required before a soldier can go home. Just when the men think they have reached the required total, the target is raised again. Cathcart seeks promotion and recognition from his superiors, despite having flown only a single combat mission himself. After completing forty-four missions, Yossarian is traumatized by aerial combat and by witnessing the deaths of his friends. As the novel progresses, his apparent cowardice gives way to something far more admirable: moral courage. He emerges as an honest, loyal, and capable flyer driven to desperation by the selfishness and cowardice of the authorities responsible for his fate.
There are no traditional heroes in Catch-22. The novel’s underlying message is that war produces no heroes—only victims.
Yossarian eventually fears his commanding officers more than he fears the Germans trying to shoot him down. The enemy is dangerous, but his commanders are relentless. Every time he comes close to completing his required missions, Colonel Cathcart raises the quota once again. Home becomes an illusion. His greatest relief comes not from military victory but from being admitted to the hospital.
Yossarian is also portrayed as an atheist, raising many of the questions commonly asked by those wrestling with belief. At one point he asks:
“Why in the world did God ever create pain? Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us…?”
The novel contains more than fifty characters. Some dominate the story, while others appear only briefly. Yet each contributes to the rich tapestry of personalities, contradictions, and absurdities that make Catch-22 such an enduring work.
Why is Catch-22 so relevant to regions trapped in perpetual war, such as the Horn of Africa?
Paradoxically, I believe the region possesses an enormous reservoir of experience that could enrich literature, theater, and the social sciences for generations. Our tragedies provide enough material for a century of scholarship. Yet we have done remarkably little with it.
More importantly, Catch-22 encourages reflection. It challenges readers to think critically about authority, institutions, and the human cost of conflict. Our region remains painfully poor in creative writing that helps people process lived experience. We are too rigid, too militaristic, and too reluctant to acknowledge our shortcomings. Pride often blinds us to honest self-examination.
The generations born after World War II know little about that era beyond scattered facts. Serious historical research and narrative writing remain relatively new to a region that has long depended on mythology and folklore. Worse still, our attention is almost always fixed on battles, invasions, victories, and defeats, while the human dimension is largely ignored.
Despite our extraordinarily rich history—one that could contribute meaningfully to humanity’s collective understanding—only a tiny fraction has been documented, and even that focuses overwhelmingly on military events.
A few years ago, I met a young Eritrean who had escaped forced conscription. Like many of his generation, he had little to say beyond military adventures. To make a point, I mentioned Napoleon Bonaparte.
He stared at me blankly.
“Who is Napoleon?”
I was stunned.
“Do you mean you finished high school without learning about Napoleon?”
The young man apologized, clearly embarrassed. The curriculum he had studied in the Sawa military camp revolved almost entirely around the military exploits of the PFDJ.
“Anta Aya Saleh,” he replied, “they didn’t teach us anything except Operation Fenkil.”
I felt deep sorrow—not simply because of what he did not know, but because education itself had been reduced to military mythology.
Eritrea experienced far more than its share of wars and violence long before World War II—in Tripoli, Somalia, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. Yet we know remarkably little about those chapters of our history. The same pattern continues under the PFDJ. The nation knows little about the genuine history of the armed struggle. What survives has been carefully curated, selectively altered, stripped of complexity, filled with bravado, and saturated with propaganda.
This article is my appeal to writers, historians, playwrights, and researchers: break the shackles. Dig relentlessly for facts. Expose them to the light. A nation that has endured decades of sacrifice deserves something better than amateurish, emotional narration.
Catch-22 offers more than an unforgettable story. It offers a model for how history can be told—with honesty, irony, compassion, and the courage to confront the good, the bad, and the ugly. From all the chaos, we can still extract wisdom. What we cannot afford is to continue living under autocracy while refusing to examine the truths that brought us here.
Editorial Note:* Portions of the background information on Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 are adapted and summarized from encyclopedia sources for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and discussion. All interpretive analysis and opinions that follow are the author’s own.*
