Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Foreign Minister of Ethiopia.
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.
This response was first published on the website of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry.
Princeton
Lyman is a diplomat and former United States Ambassador to Nigeria and
South Africa. The below is a response to Hank Cohen’s blog for African
Arguments ‘Time to Bring Eritrea in from the Cold’
