The ICG report on Eritrea: better but not good enough
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group released its 163rd Africa Report on Tuesday this week [21st Sep]. It was entitled ‘Eritrea: The Siege State’. It was somewhat unusual as the ICG more often reports on Eritrea’s relations with its neighbours than looks at domestic politics; and equally surprising was the strong tone taken by a report which concentrated essentially on the plight of the peoples of Eritrea under the repressive rule of President Isaias rather than referring to alleged threats from neighbors.
The report details the factors, historical, political and personal, which have contributed to the degeneration of the leadership of a highly popular liberation movement into a highly authoritarian regime whose primary interest is to cling to power as long as possible. It lays bare the historical roots of the political aberration that makes up Eritrea’s politics today. Its leaders always counted on mistrust of Ethiopia and of the international community to rally support during the armed struggle without bothering to consider if these might serve as foundations for a viable state. The resort to myth to build an Eritrean identity on the basis of a common enemy had gone a long way to providing for the militarized approach the regime introduced immediately after independence.
As the report details, personalization of power around a small cabal of EPLF leaders and then in the person of President Isaias had its roots in the leadership style during the armed struggle. The result is that Eritrea today is a personal fiefdom of President Isaias and a small circle of military and security officials. The President is the fulcrum on which the entire system rests. The President keeps highly centralized control over any and all resources, making every official personally loyal to him. Eritrea’s oversized military and the emphasis on security in every aspect of life significantly affect the viability of the state, taking away any incentives to engage in constructive diplomatic exercises with neighbours or with the larger international community. As the report says, Eritrea has all along “displayed an alarming tendency to fight first and to talk later.” This has earned it the dubious honour of being the most militarized state, per capita, on the planet. It is also perhaps the only country that has gone to war with almost all of its neighbours in a span of less than ten years. Military service was allegedly introduced to initiate the new generation into the hardships of the liberation struggle, to build up strength to hold off the country’s enemies, which appear to include almost the whole world. In fact, conscription has only led to disastrous consequences for Eritrea and its people, and as the report stresses, militarization of Eritrean society is incapable of preventing its demise. Indeed, it identifies high levels of decay, desertion and corruption rampant at all levels of the army.
The report defines the leadership’s belief in self-reliance as a dangerous miscalculation incompatible with the kind of mistrust of neighbours built up as the rallying cry behind the search for a unique Eritrean identity. It was, in fact, always clear that relations with Ethiopia might prove problematic if only because the regime never showed the slightest intention to consider Ethiopia seriously as a genuine partner for mutually beneficial relations despite it being the destination of three-quarters of Eritrea’s exports. Today, as the report notes, thousands of Eritreans are voting with their feet by fleeing the country, a clear indicator of the hopeless situation that obtains in Eritrea. Indeed, the country has become, according the ICG report, “a penal state.”
As mentioned this ICG report is certainly unusually candid about the state of affairs in Eritrea. At the same time, somewhat surprisingly in these circumstances, there are still areas where the authors appear to cling to old prejudices, particularly in its treatment of Eritrea’s external relations and the problems these have caused in the region. It does acknowledge the disastrous consequences of the regime’s adventurism but still asserts that “Eritrea is not solely to blame for its increasingly difficult regional relations.” The report even suggests that President Isaias’s long-held mistrust of his neighbours, notably Ethiopia and Sudan, is legitimate and it points to the Ethio-Eritrea conflict of 1998-2000 as having “justified some of that mistrust.” It does acknowledge that Ethiopia “most obviously gave its blessing to Eritrea’s independence” but it then tries to exculpate the Eritrean government for its responsibility for the war in 1998 when it refers to “an exchange of fire at Badme and a large-scale Ethiopian armed response”, even suggesting somewhat ridiculously that “its scale may have surprised Eritrea”. As the ICG knows well, and admits elsewhere, the Claims Commission made it quite clear that Eritrea initiated hostilities and on a large scale. In what amounts to an attempt to blame Isaias’s external problems on others, it even tries to suggest that Eritrea did not lose the war.
More recently, as the report rightly observes Ethiopia now dominates Eritrea’s worldview and its external relations. It points out that President Isaias extends armed support to Ethiopian armed opposition groups such as the ONLF. It accepts that Eritrea supports extremists in Somalia even though it claims the extent “is certainly exaggerated.” Many would disagree. It acknowledges that there is a problem between Eritrea and Djibouti though the report goes no further than suggesting Eritrea is said to have “allegedly occupied” Djiboutian territory even though Eritrea itself has tacitly admitted occupying areas of Djibouti by agreeing to withdraw.
At this point the report looks at what it claims to be some justification for Eritrea’s behaviour. The aftermath of the Ethio-Eritrean war “heightened the feeling in Isaias’s circle that it was alone in the world and could trust no one, not even, it would seem, its own citizens, and it set Eritrea on a path of further confrontation.” “However”, the report continues, “there was nothing inevitable about this: the main problem arose after the Boundary Commission…reported its findings” which in the event “only Eritrea accepted”. It really shouldn’t be necessary to repeat that Ethiopia did in fact accept the decisions of the Boundary Commission very publicly and clearly six years ago, after which Eritrea continually refused to cooperate with UNMEE and the peace process. Nor should it be necessary to underline the fact that there is no such thing as “virtual demarcation.”
The ICG appears to try to argue that all the regional destabilization activities carried out by Eritrea in the last decade and a half have had to do with the Boundary Commission Decisions and that it is Ethiopia which is really to blame. This is absurd as the ICG knows well, not least because so many of the activities took place long before the Boundary Commission reported. Nevertheless the report’s conclusion appears to suggest that the fact that Eritrea is now teetering on the brink of failure is due to the unresolved border issue. Eritrea’s adventures in Yemen, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and elsewhere will vanish as soon as this is resolved. The international community should stop mistaking Eritrea’s “pride and sensitivity for hubris” and put pressure on Ethiopia to accept the Boundary Commission’s decision. As already noted it is six years out of date in this respect. The report laments that “the EPLF has had to contend with the special status Ethiopia enjoys as the region’s powerhouse, the focus of international attention and favour”.
It also wants to see the international community provide some sort of balancing act coming from what the authors call a holistic approach taking into account the “clear relationship between Eritrea’s militarized foreign policy and its brand of domestic authoritarianism.” This should recognize that “it is inadequate and unhelpful to portray Eritrea as the regional spoiler” because “it is the product of the political environment of the Horn as a whole.” In other words, we are being told Eritrea’s aberrant behaviour is the result of the environment of the Horn rather than, as most people would believe, that the current problems of the Horn are largely the responsibility of Eritrea.
In the final analysis, this assessment of Eritrea’s domestic situation suggests a situation is being created in which there is a very real danger of Eritrea becoming a failed state. The ICG therefore suggests something should be done to prevent this. No one who has the circumstances of the people of Eritrea at heart would disagree. But calling for the suspension of normal international rules to let the current authoritarian regime off the hook, or trying to suggest that what is now essentially a non-issue, the Ethio-Eritrean border dispute, is really the most important problem in the region, merely offers a lifeline to a regime that this report suggests is past its sell-by date. There are rather obvious alternatives, one of which is for the Eritrean government to take note of why it has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council and for it to respond appropriately. That would be a very clear start to a process which might then reverse the danger of Eritrea becoming a failed state and help the people of Eritrea.