Bringing
Eritrea “in from the cold” needs real policy changes by Eritrea’s government
(MoFA) Jan, 2014 - Every
year or two, there’s a wave of suggestions that it might be time for the US to
try and once again engage with Eritrea. The latest such effort came in December
from former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (1989-1993), Herman
Cohen in a piece entitled: “Time to Bring Eritrea in from the Cold”. Ambassador
Cohen now heads a lobby firm but his recommendation was picked up by former US
Ambassador to Ethiopia, David Shinn and by the former US Ambassador to South
Africa, Princeton Lyman, both of whom supported the idea but argued (on the
same website) that this might not be easy. Ambassador Shinn thought the idea
was “harder than it sounds”, while Ambassador Lyman in a masterly
understatement said previous efforts by the US had proved “difficult”. They
are likely to continue to be so. Only last October, the Eritrean regime
publicly blamed the US (and later the UN) for the Lampedusa tragedy when 366
Eritreans, mainly youngsters, were drowned trying to reach Italy, having fled
from their own country. This sort of rhetoric is a commonplace of the Eritrean
regime which in the past has claimed the US created the 1998 Eritrean-Ethiopian
war, and suggested the 9/11 atrocity was carried out by the US
itself. Nevertheless, Messrs. Cohen, Shinn and Lyman seemed to think: “we
should try”.
In principle, of course,
no one would disagree. Everyone would like to see Eritrea change policies and
lose its status as a pariah state, but none of these comments by former US
diplomats, get to the heart of the problem. This lies in the nature of the
regime in Asmara and, leaving aside its highly repressive internal activities,
its external policies. Others, besides the US have tried to improve relations
with Eritrea over the years. None have been more than minimally successful. The
reasons are simple and relate largely to Eritrea and President Isaias’
insistence on ignoring all norms of international behavior and international
relations. Eritrea has repeatedly demonstrated over the past 23 years that the
fundamental principles of its external policies are force, aggression and
violence, either open or clandestine. These attitudes also characterize its
internal policies. President Isaias operates with little understanding or
interest in the wider world, which he has tended to ignore, especially when it
fails to treat him with the exaggerated respect he apparently believes he and
Eritrea deserve.
In the past neither
efforts to establish trust nor attempts to negotiate have made much progress.
It is only now as sanctions have begun to cause problems with remittances and
offer a possible threat to mining operations which provide the major source of
revenue to keep senior army officers and party leaders quiescent, that
awareness is creeping in that the regime is facing deep and real economic and
social problems. The most recent IMF estimates are that Eritrea’s per-capita
GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity will grow only around 1.7% between
2013 and 2018, a mark that will lead to the nation being ranked as the
second-poorest country in the world before the end of the decade. This is
despite the input of some quite substantial profits from mining, though there
have widespread claims that these are dependent upon what amounts to ‘slave
labor’.
At the center of the
argument of Messrs Cohen and Shinn is the issue of Eritrea’s relations with
Ethiopia. Both seem to accept the idea that President Isaias’ hostility to the
outside world, the US and everybody else, is caused by insecurity in the face
of a continued threat posed by Ethiopia, seen of course, as a US ally. The
excuses for the increasing sacrifices demanded of the population is provided by
the threat of the “evil, hostile, menace of Ethiopia,” or by the machinations
of the US and its control of the UN and indeed almost everybody else. Indeed,
to paraphrase an older US diplomat, referring to Stalin’s policies after the
Second World War: “A hostile international environment is the breath of life
for the prevailing internal system…” The “threat” of Ethiopia is the standard
official line provided by Eritrea and has provided the excuse for keeping
national conscripts mobilized since 1998, but it no longer appears to be
working. The population is hemorrhaging at a rate of 600 people a week across
the border with Ethiopia and similar numbers to the Sudan, in spite of shoot to
kill orders along the frontiers. According to the UN Special Rapporteur for
Eritrea, some of those now crossing the border are unaccompanied children as
young as five or six.
In fact, any external
danger to the concept or reality of an independent Eritrea vanished in 1991
when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took power
in Ethiopia. The EPRDF played a major role in helping the EPLF win its war for
independence. Once in power in Addis Ababa it immediately encouraged the
assumption and recognition of Eritrea’s independence. There has been no change
of policy since, despite Eritrea’s invasion of Ethiopia in May 1998.
Messrs. Cohen and Shinn
go into some detail of the 1998-2000 war, but much of their comment is
inaccurate. They also miss the central point, noted by the UN Claims Commission
–“Eritrea violated Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations
by resorting to armed force to attack and occupy Badme, then under peaceful
administration by Ethiopia as well as other territory…in an attack that began
on May 12, 1998…”. (Claims Commission’s Partial Award Jus Ad Bellum (December
19, 2005), paragraph 16). The war was the result of Eritrea sending pre-prepared
mobilized infantry and mechanized brigades across what was, at the time, the
accepted administrative border between the two countries. It was a
very clear case of aggression.
Eritrea’s defeat in June
2000 and its signing of a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, followed by the
Algiers Peace Agreement in December, produced no change in attitude. The
Algiers Agreements required the creation of a 25 kms wide Temporary Security
Zone along the border inside Eritrea, and the deployment of a United Nations
Peacekeeping Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) to monitor this and the
ceasefire. UNMEE was also given the task of providing logistical and security
assistance to the demarcation exercise which was due to follow the Decisions of
the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission, announced in April 2002.
Eritrea began its
efforts to underline the Algiers Agreements prior to 2002, and subsequently
ignored Ethiopia’s acceptance of the EEBC Decisions in November 2004. Ethiopia
had originally raised some concerns over the EEBC Decisions, but
after failing to get satisfaction for these, it made it clear it was
prepared to proceed to demarcation in conformity with international practice,
and consistent with the Algiers Agreements and their aim of bringing
about sustainable peace and the normalization of relations between
Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, as soon as Ethiopia accepted the EEBC Decisions,
Eritrea openly began to flout the Algiers Agreements, persistently violating
the TSZ and imposing restrictions on UNMEE. By 2007, the UN Secretary General
noted in a report to the Security Council that the Eritrean troops that had
illegally entered the Transitional Security Zone in October 2006, not for the
first time, had remained, and that Eritrea had also deployed additional troops
accompanied by tanks and heavy armament. He described Eritrea’s restrictions on
UNMEE as representing “a serious violation of the Agreement on Cessation of
Hostilities of 18 June 2000, the 2001 Protocol Agreement of 17 June 2001
concluded between Eritrea and UNMEE, and relevant Security Council
resolutions...". When these activities met with no more than
mild verbal criticism from the Security Council, it steadily expanded its
activities until it had taken over the whole TSZ, rendering the Algiers
Agreements, including the Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities, effectively
null and void. The Security Council did pass a number of resolutions demanding
Eritrea remove all restrictions on UNMEE, but it took any action and in
February 2008 the situation reached a point where UNMEE, humiliatingly, was
forced to withdraw.
This demonstration of UN
weakness encouraged Eritrea in its bellicosity, its aggressiveness and its
disregard for international norms, and another example followed almost
immediately. In June 2008, Eritrea invaded Djibouti and seized several
strategic locations just inside northern Djibouti, including the islands of
Doumeira and Kallida. In subsequent fighting nearly sixty Djiboutian soldiers
were killed or wounded, and a senior officer and 18 others captured. Eritrean
losses amounted to around 200 killed or captured. President Isaias denied there
had been any clashes and persisted in this despite all the evidence of
fighting. Eventually, two years later, in June 2010, following mediation
efforts by Qatar at the request of Djibouti, Eritrean troops withdrew from the
border areas, though the government still refused to admit there had been any
conflict. A Qatari observation force was deployed to monitor the border area
until a final agreement could eventually be reached, but no progress has been
made in releasing Djibouti prisoners of war or in reaching a settlement as
President Isaias still denies that anything happens. This time, the Security
Council did react and imposed sanctions. Subsequently, with no apparent change
in Eritrea’s attitudes or policy over Djibouti, extremist support or
destabilization policies in the region, the Security Council, not unreasonably,
repeated its belief that Eritrea was a threat to international peace and security,
and extended sanctions by another 16 months, to the end of 2014.
Another area of activity
by Eritrea which also led to the imposition of UN sanctions was over Eritrea’s
persistent interference in Somalia and its support for extremist and terrorist
organizations there. After the fall of the ICU in Somalia in December 2006,
Eritrea gave refuge to Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and other leaders of what
later became Hizbul Islam and supported its anti-government operations in
Somalia with planeloads of arms as well as training and funds. These
activities included support for Al-Itihaad, Hizbul Islam, and Al-Shabaab, and
the UN Monitoring Group produced detailed evidence of its
transactions. President Isaias has also repeatedly insisted that
Al-Shabaab and similar organizations must be considered Somali stakeholders,
claiming despite all evidence they are not terrorists and they should be
brought into government. Eritrea, unlike all other IGAD states, refused to
recognize either the TNG or the current Federal Government of Somalia. It even
withdrew from IGAD in anger that other IGAD states refused to follow its line,
though it has now asked to return. It hasn’t changed policy. In
2013, the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea issued two
separate reports and concluded that Eritrea had diversified its support for
extremist operations to Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Yemen in addition to
fronting a number of business operations.
This is, indeed, a
government that relies so totally on the fiction of external threats to
maintain its own internal legitimacy that whenever and wherever the fantasy
appears threadbare, it has deliberately recreated it with another outbreak of
violence or aggression. This is in the conflicts it started with
Yemen in 1996/7, Ethiopia in 1998-2000 and Djibouti in 2008. On
other occasions it has repeatedly backed opposition forces, extremists and
known terrorists, consistently attempting to destabilize Ethiopia and Somalia
and interfere in the internal affairs of Sudan and later of South Sudan. Its
foreign policy has, in fact, consistently and persistently continued to
demonstrate a pattern of aggression and hostility.
In fact, like any bully,
Eritrea rapidly backs down when faced by firm action. Indeed, it is clear from
past experience that the government in Asmara only responds to the threat of
superior strength. Nothing less will produce change. As the UN Monitoring Group
reports for both 2012 and 2013, as well as a mass of additional evidence, make
clear, Eritrea has continued its efforts at regional destabilization. There has
been no change of policy, merely some misrepresentation and verbal fiction. To
lift sanctions now would send very much the wrong signals, giving Eritrea a
green light to continue its policies of aggression and regional
destabilization.
The
lack of movement, whether in normalizing relations between Eritrea and
Ethiopia, in response to UN sanctions over regional destabilization or UN
demands over the conflict with Djibouti, is quite clearly the responsibility of
Eritrea, and Eritrea alone. It has nothing to do with Ethiopia or Eritrea’s
border “dispute” with Ethiopia. Bringing in Eritrea “from the cold” can only
come after a visible change of attitude in Eritrea, with implementation of a
fundamental shift in attitude, an end to all aggressive policies, dismantling
of training camps for extremists and terrorists, abandoning support for armed
opposition groups and all other efforts to destabilize its neighbors. This
needs to be accompanied by acknowledgement of the necessity for dialogue and
acceptance of the norms of international diplomacy and adult relationships.
Then and then only the lifting of sanctions and Eritrea’s reintegration into
regional organizations and international politics might follow.
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