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Eritrea’s President
‘Talks of
The Future But Lives in
the Past’
By
Nharnet Team
(Summary of a research paper by a S. African Professor)
One of the paradoxes about the Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, is
that he usually talks the opposite of what he does. And no wonder that
Eritreans and others have found him to be the exact opposite of what
they first assumed he was. For example, Isaias repeatedly accuses
opponents of “living in the past” while he in reality loved leaking old
wounds, and his mindset remained fossilized in its 1960’s-70’s mould.
Even old time devoted promoters of his reckless ways - including
several repentant Dan Connells – see how much Isaias was a
backward-looking commander who should have been denied access to the
mantle of state power at least a day before 20 June 1991.
A lot of material written in the past few years attested the truth that
Isaias Afwerki is a man with bitter grudges who could not move forward.
“Caught in the Headlights of History: Eritrea, the EPLF and the
Post-War Nation-State” is another revealing material that appeared a
year ago in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Vol. 43:3,
2005). The author is Richard Reid, a history professor at Durham
University of South African. His lengthy article in the journal is based
on long years of observing Eritrea and talking with its victimized youth
in the past few years. Nharnet Team is pleased to review the
article and present to readers a few excerpts of what Professor Reid had
to say about the realities of Eritrea under Isaias and his PFDJ
sycophants. All emphasis added in the text below are by Nharnet Team.
Good reading.)
***
Introduction
The writer says that the first decade of Eritrea’s independence has
been dominated by three themes: economic development; the quest for a
political system, and relationship with its neighbours. All these
themes called for making a new start. But, “far from being able to
embrace a ‘new beginning’ between the military victory in 1991 and the
UN-monitored independence referendum in 1993”, Professor Reid said
Eritrea failed “to come to terms” with its old past; thus it has become
“clear that the optimism of the early 1990s has not been present in the
early 2000s.”
“[Eritrea] has to date been unable to escape its own past in two
significant ways, both ‘real’ and ‘imagined’. Firstly, [it] finds itself
haunted by the traditions of violent hegemony and domination… Secondly,
the [PFDJ] is frozen by its own perception and interpretation of the
past. [The nation-state] is governed by the notion of ‘destiny’…
increasingly couched in militaristic terms, and by a potent sense of
isolation which rests on the belief that Eritrea can trust no-one..”
The meaning of ‘Eritrean’, and its history
Under this sub-heading, the author wrote about those who were
disappointed because of Eritrea’s failure after independence to realize
“democracy, development and [other] fruits of martyrdom”; and about
those who felt vindicated because they foresaw ‘inevitable’ doom.
“A devastating war with Ethiopian between 1998 and 2000, attendant
economic collapse and widespread political oppression have engendered
this profound disenchantment… The refrain ‘where did it all go
wrong?’ is to be heard among those who ‘believed’ in Eritrea’s future in
the 1990.
“After a little over a decade of independence, Eritrea is in trouble…
Here a basic paradox in the socio-psychological make-up of the EPLF must
be noted. On the one hand, EPLF rhetoric preached a rejection of the
past, in the best possible sense of the phrase, and exhorted Eritreans
and Ethiopians alike to ‘move on’…The past was to be forgotten, and in
this atmosphere of collective amnesia nothing more would be said that
would jeopardize the good official relations between [Eritrea and
Ethiopia in the 1990s]…Internally, the willingness of the EPLF to
‘move on’ and ‘forget’ was not quite so powerful, and this would become
more apparent as time went on.”
Professor Reid presents in detail how much the Isaias regime boasted of
its ‘uniqueness’ and promised to create a ‘model state’ for Africa to
emulate. But nothing was realized, in fact nothing was realizable. Worse
than the boastful postures of the new Eritrean leader was the sordid
language he used against the African organization (OAU) and other
regional and international bodies.
“In his first speech to the OAU as Eritrean president, Isaias declared
that ‘to mince our words now and applaud the OAU would neither serve the
desired purpose of learning lessons from our past, nor reflect
positively on our honesty and integrity’. This statement, in fact,
was an indication of just how much the EPLF dwelt on the past, and how
the past would always have its uses… When Isaias talked about the
past, he often took on the appearance of a man waving a gun dangerously
around, preaching aggressively about how he has given up violence…The
EPLF was actually obsessed with the past, and necessarily so, as it was
also driven in large part by the notion of destiny. History
was everything; and in particular, Eritrea was to be governed by a
series of what we can call ‘liberation legacies’… From this perspective,
there is no ‘renewal or ‘fresh beginning’. Thus, for example, many
former members of the ELF had no part in this victory. From the outset,
moreover, human rights watchers were concerned by the alacrity with
which the EPLF imprisoned political and social undesirables.
Liberation through violence involved multiple legacies and inheritances…
Most obviously, the visitor to Eritrea today is made painfully aware of
the traditions of – and developed around – violent domination rather
than plurality in the state-formation process.”
Changing society
The writer dwelt on a number of frustrating experiences in the society,
and all are direct outcomes of the wrong policies of the regime...
Richard Reied wrote:
“[In particular], a sense of general malaise has haunted young, urban
educated Eritreans since the war with Ethiopia ended; they are the
so-called ‘next generation’ who feel that they have been robbed of their
inheritance. A recurrent topic of conversation centres around
‘escape’ and ‘getting out’; and while some may wonder what it is their
compatriots are escaping to – life on the run in Ethiopia, Sudan or
further a field is one of chronic uncertainty – there is nonetheless a
regular human leakage, driven by pure desperation… Younger people are
quietly angry, and one returnee Eritrean, declaring to the author his
weariness of hearing people constantly complaining, wondered why it was
‘that we thought we were any different, any better than the rest of
Africa?’”
The Nakfa syndrome
After a lengthy narration about the situation in the abandoned remote
parts of the country, Professor Reid exposed in an eloquent way how the
regime has been effectively busy in brainwashing an entire generation
that became its captive since 1991. Everything in the brainstorming
package starts with the old ‘virtues ‘of Nakfa (i.e. EPLF) and ends with
Sawa (i.e. PFDJ). He says: “Sawa has achieved iconic status among the
nation’s youth…[today] it symbolizes the control exercised by the state
over the lives of the young, and the thought of ‘doing Sawa’ has been
enough to induce considerable dread.”
The writer shows Eritrea’s big loss of time and resources with the
regime’s damaging and wasteful campaigns, and summarizes it as follows
to show how much Eritrea is a loser because of Sawa alone: “if even
a portion of the attention and investment given to Sawa had been awarded
to the University of Asmara, the nation’s sole institution if higher
education, for example, Eritrea would be a very different country today:
but [for Isaias and PFDJ] Sawa is more important than that. It is the
bastion of Nakfa principles, the military heart of the country, and the
place where the bastion of the struggle and defence of hard-won Eritrean
sovereignty is militarily – though by no means politically – passed on
to a new generation”.
The brainwashing process is accomplished partly through the state
controlled media. Live spectacles of cultural shows are beamed from
Sawa. Professor Reid then continues: “The overall impression… [is] of
a nation now utterly caught in its own time-warp. The militaristic
nature of the Eritrean polity and society more broadly reflects the fact
that the government is frozen by its own image of the past; this is
manifest in the belief in the necessity, and rectitude, of arms [and]
the principles and ethos of the armed struggle of the EPLF (and the EPLF
alone)… Sacrifice, struggle, hardship are the key concepts in the
government’s ideological armoury.”
“While in the 1990s it appeared that that history might propel the young
nation forwards into a rather better state, by contrast it is holding it
back.
“The current socio-political stagnation, and the extent to which the
government appears to have run out of strategies, is in no small way
linked to the supposed imminence of war hanging over the country.
Whether real or imagined, and in a sense this is irrelevant…, the notion
of imminent war is a powerful political tool, and a heavy chain around
the necks of the youth.
“The very thought of another round of fighting fills people with dread
and deep depression, and younger people can increasingly be heard to
mutter that nothing justifies further killing… But the struggle
generation is more likely to hold the conviction that further combat
with Ethiopia is necessary… [They say they know] that the international
community will betray them, so they know that Ethiopia was the enemy,
then, now and for always…. This is the
absolute siege mentality: the
enemy of the past remains an enemy today, a dark presence squatting on
the Eritrean national horizon.”
“Yet there is now vulnerability in the militaristic pose: it is clear
that another round of fighting will be extremely damaging. With a little
time elapsed, some look back with almost a sense of disbelief that
Eritrea survived at all.” But the history professor believes that the
Nakfa syndrome was reinforced among the old guard, on top of who is the
Eritrean president. In their militaristic diehard attitude, the old war
horses with their outdated causes, believe that the recent war was
necessary as a lesson for the new generation to inherit the legacies of
the liberation struggle. He writes: “This is precisely why the president
himself had made a speech [in 2004] at Sawa festival in which he
declared to the assembled youth that Eritrea was now theirs, that they
had inherited it. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the
truth, and it was wholly disingenuous. But it was only at Sawa that
Isaias could think of saying such a thing.”
From ‘feisty’ to bellicose’: the post-war
state in the world
“Eritrea’s problematic international relations at various stages since
the achievement of independence also need to be understood in the
context of the Nakfa syndrome. Isaias’ uncompromising remarks at the OAU
have been noted, and this refusal to engage in diplomatic niceties … is
reflected in other spheres of Eritrea’s foreign relations. Within a
decade of achieving independence, Eritrea had quarreled or fought wars
with its neighbours [Yemen, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Sudan]. It had
tousled with, and eventually alienated, the donor community and aid
organizations alike, its stubbornness and uncompromising ‘go-it-alone’
attitude becoming proverbial and increasingly resented, where once they
had been roundly admired. It fought with the European Union, its largest
benefactor, and had expelled most foreign NGOs by 1997… [And, ironically
at the present] the Eritrean government condemns the ‘international
community’ for failing to act more decisively against Ethiopia…
“It is clear that [Eritrea’s] approaches to diplomacy, just as in the
context of internal governance, have their origins in the liberation
struggle. Eritrea does not ‘trust’ anyone; and the powerful concept of
‘historic betrayal permeates the nation’s image of itself. In the EPLF
mind … Eritrea is always at the receiving end of international
hostility… The [PFDJ] government has institutionalized this sense of
isolation: the concept of ‘Eritrea alone against the world’,
misunderstood and abused, now forms a core component of the moral code
with which Eritrea deals with close neighbours and the ‘international
community’ alike.
“Eritrea’s future seems uncertain, probably more so now than at any
time since 1991… The intelligentsia of the post-World War II Eritrea had
given their lives in the struggle, and that Eritrea’s finest were
already dead, martyrdom preventing them from either guiding the
revolution or enjoying the fruits of liberation. Moreover, a generation
was incarcerated in various forms of military and national service, the
old surviving diasphoric intellectuals had been marginalised and even
humiliated, and the cream of the movement’s political and military
leadership were either in prison or in exile.
“The government remains fixated on its own ghosts, and remains isolated,
increasingly criticized for its human rights violations and at
loggerheads with its neighbours… On so many levels, the field of foreign
policy for the Eritrean government is merely an extension of its
domestic agenda, and indeed a reflection of grievances nursed in the
armed struggle.
“It is clear that the bullish and at times, with hindsight at least,
markedly romantic and naïve optimism of the early 1990s was misplaced,
and has now evaporated… It is also clear that Eritreans are sadder and
wiser – remarkably for a people who have been both for a long time-
than they were a decade ago. They are more skeptical and less
trusting, more politically aware but weary of politics, just as stoical
in many ways in their daily lives but more nervous of the future. If
the mark of a troubled people is that its future is more frightening
than its violent past, then this may be regarded as a troubled people.” |
