Over a 25-year period, President Isaias Afwerki has caused and used external actions and reactions to entrench his power. This is not atypical for Africa: more than half of African countries are governed by authoritarians. If you count the “hybrids”—partly authoritarian, partly power diffused– the percentage is over 70%. Opposing Isaias is not about how much power he has consolidated since the year 2000, it’s how powerless he has made the people in the process. He has stripped them of all their civil liberties and the price paid by three generations of Eritreans has been extraordinarily high. The Disappeared, The Conscripted, The Exiled, all in a setting of forever-war-footedness.
(1) The Disappeared: He has disappeared people and bragged (in an interview) that this disappearing of people without any due process will continue. “We have our own ways to deal with him and others like him. We have our own ways of dealing with that,” he once told an interviewer (paragraph 243) asking about playwright, journalist and writer Dawit Issak, disappeared since 2001. “We will not have any trial and we will not free him. We know how to handle his kind,” he added, just in case people wanted something more categorical. He has presided over an unapologetically sadistic system. In this surreal system, the guilty are guilty not per the constitution, not per Eritrean criminal code, not per its customs and traditions but because “we have our own way”, a way that maximizes autocracy and minimizes the rights of human beings.
This cruelty has been repeated over and over for 34 years, affecting 3 generations of Eritreans. That’s the price paid for the imperialization of Isaias Afwerki by three generations: the pre-armed struggle generation, the armed struggle generation, and the post-liberation generation. That encompasses human beings in their teens–sometimes, their preteens– up to Eritreans in their 90s. Patriarchs, school directors, businesspersons…. Grandparent, parent, offspring all sacrificed to imperialize Isaias Afwerki. All arbitrary. Those who avoid this punishment are exiled or conscripted. Sometimes both.
(2.a) Conscription: Those who choose to stay (or have no means to escape) are in the so-called national service. Per law, barring extraordinary national security needs, national service is supposed to last “18 month” but it routinely ends up being 2-10 years, per interviews of hundreds of asylum seekers by agencies considering their asylum applications. Their endless military assignment to remote places creates female-headed households, with the country consistently lagging behind sub-Saharan Africa population growth averages for over a decade. And the children, future transplants to Sawa, don’t benefit from a two-parent family, whatever that is worth.
In addition to destroying the lives of Eritreans, indefinite conscription is compromising their future: for what is a country without a people but a target for aggressor?
(2.b) The Exiled: The number of Eritreans exiles is staggering: 663,000 as of 2024, from in-country population of 3-4 million, per UNHCR. Their profile by gender: 52% male, 48% female. By age: 15% are underage and 2% ARE OVER 60 years old. By residence: the highest percentage, 27%, live in Ethiopia. And somewhere in the chain of their smugglers is an Eritrean officer, reported a UN monitoring agency several times.
The debate whether the cause is a “push factor”—indefinite national service is akin to forced labor, say 70–90% of Eritrean asylum seekers, per UNHCR–or a “pull factor”—90% asylum approval rates encourage other nationalities to claim to be Eritrean, 90% asylum approval rates result in chain migration, per the Eritrean government–misses the point. Either way, it is a government “failure factor.” The primary job of a government is to make its people feel safe, and the one in Eritrea makes them feel hunted.
663,000 is insidiously huge. It is huge for a country with Eritrea’s population. It is insidious because it has been a steady export of people, for over a decade, until we woke up to learn it is 15%-20% of the population. And this is just the number of Eritreans registered with UNHCR: who knows how many more when one adds the non-registered. We shrug: they are remittance-providers to their struggling families. Remittance taxed at 67% via artificially depressed exchange rate. They get you going, and they get you coming. You pay them money to smuggle you out, and you pay them money to remit your money.
If someone can point us to a single policy change the government has proposed to stop or reverse this, I would like to see it: it has been kept a state secret. Well, yeah, I know: they do tentative outreaches if they see a kernel of nationalism in you. The word is ኣይትኽሰርዎም (don’t lose them) but it is as phony and as a direct assault on reality as ኣይኸሰርናን (we didn’t lose) was. There is no genuine desire to listen But then again, this is the same government that told you that the G-15 will not be brought to trial until all their confederates are also brought to justice. It has been searching for them for 24 years. It is the one that told you it is closing the private press “temporarily” and the temporary has been 24 years. It is the same government that told you the High School in Sawa was “temporary” (22 years since that announcement) until it builds more high schools all over Eritrea. Meanwhile, Eritrea’s greatest resource, human, has been chased out, disappeared or indentured by predators. The only positive news is that wherever they are, they are a net asset to their host countries. Until we fight the host country.
(3) Forever War-footed: Normally, parents, anywhere in the world, won’t put up with a system that presents them with one option: give me your child or I will forcefully take them. When their kids turn 16-17, of 12th grade age, the government says “we are taking them to the arid West for 12th grade, and after that, into national service. For 2, 10, 20 years”, no parent will willingly say “yes, please, thank you.” They will fight like hell: its instinctive, its natural. Under normal circumstances. The solution? Create abnormality.
For 25 years now, the 18-month national service has been extended by years, sometimes decades. If you were already in the system, like some people I can’t mention lest they be dragged back to prison, you were in the service for two decades. Your entire 20s and 30s and half of your 40s is gone. Abnormality requires creating so many opponents (ተጻባእቲ!) According to Isaiasists, Eritrea is overflowing with Traitors, Betrayers, Turncoats, Backstabber, Double-crossers, Collaborators, Quislings, Deserters and Apostates requiring detentions centers, underground prisons, penitentiaries, jails, and improvised lockups, dotting the map of Eritrea. Why so many? The Eritrean government is entirely blameless, don’t you see? It’s because “our eternal enemy, TPLF, won’t vacate our land.” It is because “America and the Security Council sanctioned us unjustly” just because we ignored all its resolutions. Or, and they actually say this with a straight face: “the West sees us as a global threat because we could inspire others in the Global South to follow our model.”
Habesha, please! The UN gave Eritrea’s government more due process than it gives its own citizens. There were six (6) security council instruments (5 resolutions and 1 Secretary General statement) before the 2009 sanctions warning Eritrea that unless it changes its destructive role in Somalia and Djibouti it was going to be sanctioned. How many warnings does the Government of Eritrea give its victims before it disappears and arrests them and forgets about them? Zero (0)! The West sees Eritrea as a potential model to the rest of the world? Oh, you mean the rest of the world citizenry wants to be as poor as Eritrea, and as emptied of its people as Eritrea?
Our international relationships are never strategic but tactical and seasonal. They are as shallow as a mirage: now glittery, now gone. Now we are allying with the same TPLF that we went to war with just two years ago (casualties: unknown) in something called “ጽምዶ” (or engagement: it’s Tigrinya for መደመር), and we probably will let them keep some of the land they insisted on keeping in their 5-Point Peace Plan (2004) when they were frustrating an international arbitral ruling. Why? Because we now have to fight the man who helped Eritrea get removed from those “unjust” UN sanctions, the PP man who had signed the 5-Pillar Peace Plan (2018) disowning TPLF’s 5-Point Peace Plan, before he said “my turn!” hauling his ship to the mirage he thinks is a Sea.
Of course, a country must defend itself against an aggressor. He who wants to take something that doesn’t belong to him by force is the definition of an aggressor. Worse, it’s not just Abiy: this aggression appears to be supported by a large percentage of Ethiopian elite who never reconciled with the fact that their former northern province is a sovereign country to their north. They never even had the permission to grieve their loss, as they lived under the heavy boot of TPLF, so now the grief has morphed into something pathological. Time will tell whether their threatened warfare is limited to the current psychological, economic, and informational or whether they will add the fourth “pillar”: military. I suspect even they don’t know yet. So that malady is not an Eritrean’s fault, not even Isaias’s. But how we as a nation react to it will our choice.
We may not have been able to avoid Ethiopia’s irredentism—it’s a pathology of all empires—but there would have been more of us, more united, with better alternatives than we do now, if only Isaias Afwerki had also followed his slightly older former boss (hierarchically at least) Ramadan Mohammed Nur to Resignation Island in the 1994 PFDJ Congress. After all, there has been nothing but deterioration in his capacity since then. The Isaias chip is still the 2000 edition: whether his interviews are in Tigrinya, Arabic or English, they are the same needle stuck on a groove saying the same nonsense for 25 years.
This is the part that confuses the binary people: are you against Abiy or against Isaias or against TPLF. Here’s the answer: all aggressors, whether they are aggressing to steal your land, your sea, your harmony or your freedom must be opposed. It’s just a matter of choosing the right weapon for the aggressor type. Eritrea can no longer afford to postpone crucial reforms to win back its people. In plain language, the problem is that there is a huge power imbalance between the dictator and the people: with the former having unlimited power and the latter none.
PS: For those of you who ask me to summarize my long articles in English to Tigrinya, in this case, its’ been done by Eritrean poet Yohannes Tkabo:
ደቂ ባሕሪ ሰብ ከበሳን ቆላን
ኣይንበላዕ ብቆሊባን ብሺላን
መንገድና ዘጋጊ የብላን
ታይዶ ይጥዕም ካብ ዕረን ወለላን
እንታይ ድዩ ዝብል ዘሎ ህዝቢ ኹሉ
ከም ኢዱ ኣይረኸበን ከም ምቃሉ
ደላይ ፍትሒ ክሰምዕ ጽን ኢሉ
ዕድመ ክልተ ጎበዝ ተመንጢሉ
እንታይ ይኸውን ኣሎ ኣቃልቡሉ
ተሰዊሩ ኣይኮነን ተኸዊሉ
ትርጉም ሜላ ናይ ሰላም ቅኒተ
ዕላማና ሓንቲ ሓድነተ
ይኣኽለና’ ዚ ሞት ወዲ ሞተ
ጸላኢና ጸሊም ይቀነተ
ኣስምዑና ጥዑም መለኸተ
ኣይተሳእነን ኣሎ በረከተ
ኣቅስኑዋ ወላዲት ሓየተ
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