Eritrea: genuine overtures for peace or more of the same?
The short history of Eritrea has recorded a long list of political blunders, costly military adventures and disastrous diplomatic gambles. In a span of 15 years, it has managed to make enemies out of literally all its neighbours. But its leaders’ capacity for outdoing themselves in every one of these areas has never been exhausted. It is to be recalled that, following Eritrea’s invasion of sovereign Djibouti territory, and its destabilizing activities in Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1862 demanding that it withdraw its forces from Djiboutian territory and cease its support of extremist elements in Somalia. This was later followed by UNSC Resolution 1907 imposing targeted sanctions on Eritrean officials and institutions implicated in the acts of abetting terror.
Rather than mending its ways and abandoning its destructive moves, Eritrea nevertheless has continued to openly deny that it was responsible for all the wrongdoing it was accused of. Of course, evidence has never been in short supply as Eritrea’s leaders never tired of flaunting their ill-advised activities in public. But addressing the root cause of problems has never been the Eritrea’s leaders’ strong point. Ever since the imposition of the sanctions, the regime in Asmara has been waging a campaign to deflect attention from them, claiming that it is the underdog. The pattern of Eritrea’s behaviour has been such that it is always difficult to foresee its next move. A typical incident occurred this past week.
For a long time now, Eritrea’s leaders have been denying that there even was any crisis between Djibouti and Eritrea, refusing to assume responsibility for instigating it. As recently as two weeks ago, Eritrean officials were writing letters to the UN emphatically denying that there was a conflict between the two countries. In a letter submitted to the UN entitled “Eritrea’s Position on Relations with Djibouti”, Eritrean officials stated that “there was no good faith ‘border dispute’ between Eritrea and Djibouti” and that “the putative ‘border dispute’ was contrived by the US Administration officials in order to find new pretexts to blame and corner Eritrea.” As the Eritrean president has repeatedly stated, he only ‘learned’ of the dispute from the Emir of Qatar. But all of a sudden, there was an announcement last week that a peace agreement negotiated by the Emir of Qatar was signed between the two countries. According to the official statement following the signing of the agreement, the Eritrean government has now agreed to withdraw its forces from Ras Doumera and Qatari forces will replace the Eritrean forces. In addition to the withdrawal of its forces, the government of Eritrea has also agreed to pay compensation to the government of Djibouti, practically assuming responsibility for its act of aggression. This is a far cry from the emphatic denial just a week earlier, but not entirely surprising in the light of Eritrea’s pattern of behaviour.
This is in itself a welcome development, of course. But without too much second-guessing the merits of the agreement, one can nonetheless wonder as to the obvious lack of transparency surrounding the entire process. More importantly, most of those involved with the whole issue were kept in the dark with respect to the way in which the agreement was concluded. The AU has expressed its support to the initiative upon it being communicated by the Emir of Qatar but it still appears to have no grasp on its details. The UN is no different, and none of the relevant UN organs have been kept in the loop. In light of Eritrea’s flip-flopping tendencies, it is difficult to be enthusiastic about the signing of the agreement. After all, the leaders of Eritrea were claiming only two weeks ago that the border dispute was the fabrication of the US government. Otherwise, this is a welcome development although it remains to be seen if this will also be repeated in all other conflicts in which Eritrea is involved. As the statement by Mr. Jean Ping, Chairman of the AU Commission pointed out, it remains to be seen if this positive gesture will also be repeated in connection with Somalia and the rest of the sub-region.