From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Aug 04 2009 - 14:11:12 EDT
Eritrea ridicules western efforts in Somalia
By Barney Jopson in Asmara
Published: August 4 2009 16:38 | Last updated: August 4 2009 16:38
Isaias Afewerki, the Eritrean president accused of supporting Islamist
rebels in Somalia, has ridiculed the fragile Somali government and
criticised the international community for its frantic efforts to prop it
up.
Mr Isaias, an abrasive former guerrilla who helped win independence for his
tiny country on Africa’s Red Sea coast in 1993, told the Financial Times:
“There doesn’t exist any government. There is a vacuum.”
He pointed out that the western-backed transitional government has failed to
establish control beyond a small portion of the Somali capital and said:
“Why are we trying to impose something that does not exist in reality? That
is creating a reaction.”
Critics say Eritrea’s alleged supply of weapons and money to Islamist
insurgents trying to topple the government has been decisive in condemning
civilians to an unending cycle of shoot-outs and bomb attacks, death and
displacement.
The African Union has thrown its weight behind accusations of Eritrean
support and helped convince the United Nations Security Council this month
to warn Eritrea that it would consider sanctions against anyone undermining
peace in Somalia.
Mr Isaias, head of a prickly regime with few allies, said the allegations
were false and likened them to the content of a Hollywood film. “It’s very
funny,” he said.
Eritrea was concerned with the best interests of the Somali people, who had
suffered from numerous “misguided” interventions by other foreign powers,
including the US, he said.
..The administration of Barack Obama has admitted sending 40 tonnes of arms
and munitions to the current interim government as the west scrambles to
prevent it being overthrown by Islamist extremists, notably the al-Shabaab
militia, with links to al-Qaeda.
On Wednesday Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN’s special representative for
Somalia, told the Security Council the government had made progress in
organising its security forces but “still requires immediate support,
political and financial, to improve the situation”.
After nearly two decades of conflict Mr Isaias said Somalia needed a
“comprehensive” new political process that would involve all Somalis,
including the breakaway region of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous region
of Puntland, where pirates are thriving.
Over a dozen such processes have been launched since Somalia’s last
functioning central government collapsed in 1991 and none have delivered
peace.
Eritrea’s critics say it wants to destabilise the Horn of Africa and
particularly Ethiopia, its giant neighbour and a bitter enemy since a
1998-2000 border war. “They want to threaten Ethiopia and an unstable
Somalia threatens Ethiopia,” said an AU official.
Mr Isaias enjoyed considerable goodwill after his guerrilla army helped
overthrow an Ethiopian dictator in 1991 and secure a referendum that led to
Eritrean independence two years later. He was even cited as a role model for
an African renaissance.
But he has always been renowned for bullheadedness and his international
standing plunged as he slowly turned Eritrea into a one-party dictatorship
whose pariah status today elicits comparisons with North Korea.
Mr Isaias’s geopolitical views are defined by a distrust of outsiders and an
insistence on Eritrea’s self-reliance, rooted in a three-decade liberation
struggle that was largely ignored by the rest of the world – until it
succeeded against the odds.
His quasi-communist regime does not share an ideology with Somali Islamists,
but Eritrea has used them to fight a proxy war with Ethiopia, analysts say.
Mr Isaias said the threat of extremism had been exaggerated, noting that the
current Somali president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, and one of the extremist
leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, were joint heads of an Islamist alliance
that took control of Mogadishu in 2006.
Eritrea gave both of them refuge after the alliance was ousted by Ethiopia,
but they later split as the west sought to marginalise hardliners.
“What brought about this division is the idea of imposing government from
outside and trying to find moderates versus extremists … trying to
complicate the situation by dividing and dividing and dividing,” Mr Isaias
said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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Isaias calls on Washington to improve relations
For Isaias Afewerki, the US is one of Eritrea’s most dangerous enemies.
Washington is the most vocal western critic of Eritrea’s alleged support for
Islamists in Somalia and the spectre of US “plotting” against his country is
used by his regime to justify its iron rule.
Asked if he wanted to improve Eritrea’s relations with Washington, Mr Isaias
said: “The US will have to improve its relations with us. We have done
nothing wrong.
“They have to correct their wrongs and then we can make friends. We don’t go
and ask for their favour.”
Susan Rice, US ambassador to the United Nations, last week said Eritrea had
only a short time to stop undermining security in Somalia or face possible
UN sanctions.
The US was “deeply concerned and very frustrated” with Eritrea's behaviour,
she told a congressional committee.
“There is a very short window for Eritrea to signal through its actions that
it wishes a better relationship with the US and indeed the wider
international community,” she said.
On her first trip to Africa as US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is due
to meet Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the embattled president of the Somali interim
government that Mr Isaias opposes on Wednesday.