The Eritrean leader's newest low
The ill-will that the leaders of Asmara harbour towards Ethiopia has been so intense that they have far too often taken up positions against Ethiopia that are nonetheless in equal measure detrimental to the interest of their own country. They have time and again sunk to the depths to do things that - though costly to them - they believed would one way or another adversely affect Ethiopia’s interests.
But what the president of Eritrea has been doing recently is particularly shameful. As we have indicated previously in A Week in the Horn, President Isaias' recent utterances on the Nile are repugnant to all riparian countries without exception. Not only are they devoid of wisdom but they are patently self-serving to an egregiously short-sighted degree.
The Eritrean president outdid himself in his recent interview with the Egyptian Daily Al Ahram. In a manner typical of him, he castigated all the signatories of the recent agreement on the Comprehensive Framework Agreement as “conflict mongers” and as being intent on sabotaging the interest of Egypt. On Ethiopia, he fumed to the point of hysteria, so that even his interviewers found it overstated – he accused Ethiopia of threatening to use the issue of the Nile to dictate terms on the lower riparian countries. Forget that the agreement would only make for a win-win outcome for all, Eritrea included. Even the people his remarks are supposed to make feel good are not by any means too happy - many Egyptian commentators have already expressed disgust at the un-statesmanlike overtures of the leader of Eritrea.
But this does not seem to bother the Eritrean leader all that much, for after all, his only political vocation now is a search for means of inflicting damage on Ethiopia and on Ethiopia’s relations with other parties. The end justifies whatever means might be available. Only in Eritrea under this particular leader can the lowest depths of infamy pass for wisdom.