The Ignored Dictatorship: Isaias Afewerki’s Eritrea and the Forgotten Dictatorships of Africa
Dictatorial regimes are often easy to name and find throughout the world over. Nearly every day, something new happens and makes headlines in the United States and the West with Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. The same is said with Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, and Maduro’s Venezuela, all of which are totalitarian dictatorships with enigmatic and interesting world leaders who have engaged in corrupt and criminal activities within and outside of their respective nations.
However, many forget a dictatorship just as abhorrent and totalitarian, in some cases even more, as these geopolitical powerhouses. The country of Eritrea run by Isaias Afewerki.
Eritrea is a small country along the Horn of Africa, nestled above Ethiopia and in-between Sudan and Djibouti with a long coast along the Red Sea. While other nations in the same region, like Ethiopia or Somalia, are given a somewhat large amount of media and global attention, Eritrea never seems to garner much outside attention. Why is this the case?
The History of Eritrea
Eritrea has a long and rich history, with a varying set of recognized languages and ethnic groups residing within the 45,000 square mile nation.
While the region was controlled by various early kingdoms, in the late 1800s during the conquest of Africa by European powers, Italy eventually controlled the region and ruled the region in a way similar to other European powers. The best land was given to Italian farmers, schools were never provided on a large scale to Eritrean children, the Italians forced Eritreans to conscript into the Italian military, and the Italians instituted a strict racial hierarchy.
After the Second World War, Eritrea came under British control; in 1952, the United Nations (UN) gave control of Eritrea to the Ethiopian Empire which, in 1962, annexed Eritrea following military conflicts between Eritreans desiring their independence.
For thirty years, the nation of Eritrea was involved in constant military conflicts with the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), eventually becoming the main insurgent force against the Ethiopian Empire. In 1991, with the claiming of Eritrea’s capital Addis Ababa, Eritrea became an independent and sovereign African nation with global recognition.
Enter Isaias Afewerki
In 1993, with the independence of Eritrea, Isaias Afewerki was “elected president of Eritrea by the National Assembly as well as chairman of the aforementioned body, giving him control of both the executive and legislative branches of government”. A college dropout, Afewerki joined the revolution against the Ethiopians in the mid-1960s and was named the General Secretary of the EPLF in 1987. In Isaias’ rise to power within the revolutionary forces, he established a secret organization “to ruthlessly crush his rivals, both on the left and on the right” which has continued into his own rule as President.
Following his election, Afewerki immediately consolidated his power, naming himself chairman of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the sole political party of Eritrea. He additionally proclaimed himself the commander-in-chief of the nations’ Armed Forces. Since 1991, Eritrean politics has been solely dominated by Afewerki and, rather quickly, it has become apparent that Eritrea is one of the harshest dictatorships in the world.
Eritrea in the New Millennium
Since 1993, Eritrea has never held a presidential election, the sole leader having been Isaias Afewerki and “rules without reference to a constitution or parliament, and without an independent judiciary” while also “[surrounding] himself with a small coterie of military and party officials who do his bidding”.
Not only has Afewerki never seemed inclined to allow elections, he has vocally supported no elections and, in 2008, declared that “that elections would be postponed for "three or four decades" or longer” given they “polarize society” in his words.
According to the NGO Human Rights Watch, Eritrea has developed steadily into a despotic territory. They write, “…the government closed all independent newspapers, arrested their journalists, and arrested government officials and others critical of President Isaias Afewerki… Eritrea remains closed to human rights organizations, including every United Nations Special Rapporteur who has applied for a visa”. They further note that every citizen is subject to a certain period of national service in the Armed Forces and that those military personnel are “frequently subject to inhuman and degrading punishment, including torture, without recourse” while noting that there is no official justice system, instead completely being based upon the whims of Afewerki and his inner circle.
While this type of practice is not uncommon for a dictatorship, there is one stark difference between Eritrea and other similar nations. In an interview for The Global Post, Martin Plaut, a researcher with the University of London’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Plaut describes how different Eritrea is, saying:
“Most other governments at least make a pretense of having a constitution and having a parliament, even if it’s manipulated, and allowing a semblance of a free press…[they] have a constitution. They have a parliament which meets and the parties function… None of these apply in somewhere like Eritrea. There is no constitution that’s been ratified. The parliament has been prorogued. It hasn’t met for years now. Even the ruling party hasn’t had a Congress for many, many years. There are no other parties that are allowed to operate in Eritrea. There is no independent media. Even organizations like Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters are not allowed to have journalists permanently stationed there”
Eritrea currently ranks “179th out of 180 countries” in terms of freedom of the press with Afewerki’s government having “used imprisonment and torture of opponents, harsh crackdowns on independent journalists, and arbitrary arrests” with even state-run news reporters fearing arrest or violence on the part of the government.
It is not only non-governmental organizations or journalistic agencies that hold this view or are aware of these issues. In 2010, included in the release of diplomatic cables by the document disclosure website WikiLeaks, the U.S. Ambassador to Eritrea from 2007-10, Ronald McMullen described how he viewed Afewerki. Ambassador McMullen writes, “Young Eritreans are fleeing their country in droves… Eritrea's prisons are overflowing, and the country's unhinged dictator remains cruel and defiant… The Isaias regime is very good at controlling nearly all aspects of Eritrean society” while consistently providing the view that, Afewerki’s grip upon the nation is destructive and not conducive to the Eritrean people.
More recently, in 2020, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor released a country report on Eritrea, stating:
“Eritrea is a highly centralized, authoritarian regime under the control of President Isaias Afwerki… Police are responsible for maintaining internal security, and the armed forces are responsible for external security, but the government sometimes used the armed forces, reserves, demobilized soldiers, or civilian militia to meet domestic as well as external security requirements. Agents of the national security service, a separate agency which reports to the Office of the President, are responsible for detaining persons suspected of threatening national security. The armed forces have authority to arrest and detain civilians… here are credible reports of Eritrean soldiers engaging in unlawful and arbitrary killings in Tigray. There are also reports of Eritrean soldiers engaging in forced disappearance and forced repatriation of Eritrean refugees from Tigray... Significant human rights issues included: unlawful and arbitrary killings, forced disappearance; torture; and arbitrary detention, all committed by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention center conditions; political prisoners; serious problems with judicial independence; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; the worst forms of restrictions on free expression and the press, including censorship and the existence of criminal libel laws; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions on religious freedom; widespread restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; restrictions on political participation; trafficking in persons; criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual conduct; and the worst forms of child labor”
It is very clear that the United States detests Isaias Afewerki and dislikes the form of governance within Eritrea. They clearly see them to be violating many human rights, in a view similar to the 2016 final report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
However, in spite of all this information, far too many are still unaware of the immense terrors and abuses occurring in the country. In fact, it seems that even when Eritrea does enter the public eye, it is when celebrities (a prime example being Tiffany Haddish) applaud the Eritrean government and Afewerki while ignoring the reality of those living in Eritrea.
While there is much discussion behind the scenes of Eritrea, it seems on the international scale, there is little being done by international legal organizations or individual nations to try and solve this crisis. This, in my view, is one aspect of a much larger problem; the neglect of the African continent.
The Neglect of Africa
In the past twenty years, of the largest geopolitical events that remain in the public’s consciousness (the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Ukrainian Crisis, the Syrian Civil War), only one major event (the 2011 liberal intervention in Libya) occurred in Africa. The rest and most significant events occurred primarily in the Middle East, with most of the media’s attention turning to them as well.
Only marginally has attention been paid to Africa. The international community has provided intelligence estimates, country reports, and provided aid in the form of food and public statements, yet has seemingly done little else publicly to bring attention to Africa or make a difference in the continent. Given the extensive abuses being committed by individual African governments and the massive destabilization that has been committed throughout the continent, it is rather reprehensible that the United Nations has not tried to make a stronger effort at deterring dictatorships, encouraging democracy, and working to better failed states within the continent.
However, the entire African continent’s security issues seem to have been forgotten by the international community, the majority of the world’s superpowers, and the media itself except for when nations desire to utilize the land to their own geopolitical machinations. This type of behavior is truly disrespectful and quite undemocratic. To see persons and whole countries suffering while the international community instead focuses on areas which are determined to be more attractive to the public’s eye (like Afghanistan or Ukraine for instance) is disappointing and reflects poorly upon the international organizations aimed at halting political division and strife.
This is not to say that the issues in Africa outweigh those elsewhere in the globe, there is no comparison between military or human rights travesties, but there is an inordinate amount of attention paid to these other matters and little attention given to Africa. However, this seems to be changing with the United States’ activity in regards to African policy.
In the Biden administration, there has been some headway with Eritrea and in the rest of African policy. With Africa as a whole, Biden “as sought to reset Washington’s relationship with the continent, providing more than 50 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to 43 African countries and announcing a variety of financial investments in health, education and climate adaptation projects in Africa” while also announcing that Biden would be convening “leaders from across the African continent for the second U.S. – Africa Leaders Summit next year [in an effort] to strengthen ties with African partners based on principles of mutual respect and shared interests and values”. However, some of this has been damaged by the administration’s travel restrictions on eight South African nations, which some characterized as “travel apartheid”.
In November of last year, the U.S. took strong action against Eritrea. The administration “sanctioned Eritrea's military and its sole political party for their involvement in the ongoing crisis in northern Ethiopia” coming after Biden signed an executive order aimed at targeting “those responsible for perpetrating the year-long conflict…In addition to designating the Eritrean Defense Force (EDF) and People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), the Biden administration also sanctioned two individuals and two entities with ties to the EDF and PFDJ”. This type of action is exactly the kind that should be taken upon the state of Eritrea, not just by the United States, but by the entire international community.
Sanctions would surely help in trying to force Afewerki to abide by international law, however, they would need to applied swiftly and steadily. Furthermore, work must be done to try and solve the Tigray crisis, though this is easier said than done as efforts have been tried before, but failed. Since 2019 as well, Eritrea has been facing a water crisis, with only half of the nation having access to water of any kind, not simply clean water. These are issues that still plague the daily Eritrean and need solved. It is clear that Afewerki has no interest in solving these problems, yet, if the U.S., the UN, and other geopolitical powers worked to legally and non-militarily force Afewerki into making concessions, then the needs of the daily Eritrean would improve and perhaps a more democratic passing of power could eventually occur. A tactic similar to what has been suggested the U.S. should do in North Korea could potentially work in Eritrea.
If a more legal process (sanctions, official condemnations, negotiations) are to fail, then a more militaristic process would need considered by the international community. An intervention operation conducted in similarity to United Nations Operation in Somalia I and II (UNSOM I/II) or the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) would work to some form of success in Eritrea. While both missions sustained international criticism for the way they were designed or conducted by the UN (the Libya mission itself has been a success or failure in the minds of more recent observers), the UN and the U.S. could learn from the failures of these operations.
While many are apprehensive about military operations in solving humanitarian crises and dictatorships abroad, it could potentially solve the problems within Eritrea. It would certainly be costly, yet could result in a positive solution for the Eritrean people and the Horn of Africa region as a whole.
