President Isaias contradicts the Emir of Qatar on the Eritrea/Djibouti agreement
President Isaias Afeworki has once again provided one of his interview lectures, this time to a Qatari journalist. As usual, it offers a perspective on President Isaias’ thinking on regional and international issues, but the main focus of the interview revolves around Eritrea’s relations with Djibouti and with his government’s role in the conflict in Somalia. At times, he appears to be making a considerable effort to be circumspect, though as usual somewhat mendacious, in his views, elsewhere his position appears to be distinctly at odds with others.
His position regarding the Qatari-mediated peace agreement between Eritrea and Djibouti, for example, is far removed from those of all the other parties in the deal including the Qatari mediators. Not only does he deny the existence of any conflict between the two countries, he also contradicts what the mediators believed was his agreement to withdraw his forces from disputed territories. For President Isaias the Djibouti conflict is a mere fabrication having nothing to do with either Djibouti or Eritrea. The ‘misunderstanding’ was cooked up by others and the Djiboutian government simply took the bait. “I have no forces to withdraw from Djibouti”, the President claimed, and even suggested the question should be rather directed towards the Qatari Prime Minister for having insinuated that Eritrea had agreed to withdraw its forces when in fact, according to President Isaias, it had never sent any troops into Djibouti. According President Isaias: “HH the Prince knows there is no withdrawal from the disputed area…there is no disputed area.” Asked why in that case he agreed to Qatari mediation if in fact there was no such dispute in the first place, the President responded that he did it out of respect for the bold gesture of the Qatari Emir, “a brother and a partner for us” who was “the first human being, since the manufacturing of this misunderstanding” to initiate a dialogue “with seriousness and credibility to find a solution to the misunderstanding.” It does not appear to him that by contradicting the terms of the very agreement the Emir managed to get the two parties to sign, President Isaias is making a direct criticism of the “credibility and seriousness” of the whole mediation. Who fabricated this misunderstanding, this problem? The president is more circumspect than usual on this question, claiming that the ‘misunderstanding’ was blown out of proportion only after the US State Department made a statement about it. He said he hadn’t even been aware of the existence of such a conflict until the Emir of Qatar had called him and broken the news to him. It was a surprise, President Isaias lamented.
On Somalia, as usual, it is the whole world, not his government, which is in the wrong. He does not recognize the TFG because it is the puppet of external forces. He denies supporting extremists in Somalia because, according to him, there are no extremists in Somalia, only people who are fighting external intervention. No one is spared from his scathing criticisms, not even the UN, which President Isaias accuses of allowing itself to be used by the great powers to promote their own agenda. None of the efforts to bring about peace in Somalia are going to work President Isaias tells us. The only solution, he emphatically tells his interviewer, is for the world to leave Somalis alone. He does not, however, indicate if he is also willing to leave them alone. On past record, probably not; but then as he has made very clear, the ways of the world do not apply to Eritrea or its leaders.
During the interview, the journalist complains that Information Minister Ali Abdu kept signaling to him to wind up his interview whenever the President appeared irritated or obviously upset about his questions. At the end, President Isaias even apologized for “the discomfort created by these intervention signals” which the journalist referred to as “an embodiment of foreign intervention”.