ICG's Conjectures on Eritrea: Realistic and Probable or Wishful and
Imaginary?
(Eritrean Center for Strategic Studies, ECSS)
26/04/2013
On 28 March last month, the ICG released a report entitled: "Eritrea:
Scenarios for Future Transition". Unfortunately, as we illustrate below1 ,
ICG's primary sources are mostly the same circle of personalities and
entities that harbor a hostile agenda against Eritrea while its basic
presumptions are predicated on a superfluous predilection to project a
calamitous trend of imminent "doom and gloom". As it happened, these
skewed approaches have rendered its scenario analysis extremely flawed, and,
rather wishful and imaginary. Political forecasting is not, admittedly, an
exact science; it is a messy business indeed. Still, its critical
usefulness cannot be glossed over. The architectures of conflict
prevention and management depend on perceptive and sufficiently reliable
early warning systems for a timely prognosis of fault lines and trends in
order to avoid or mitigate crisis conditions. But this task requires, in
the first place, the existence of a potential crisis-situation as well as
objective, neutral and dispassionate appraisal of political realities and
trends on the basis of full and accurate information. The ICG report is
found wanting on all these critical parameters.
The ICG's current report is a follow-up of its last report on Eritrea
released on 21 September 2010 with the title "ERITREA: A SIEGE STATE". It
was claimed then that the report was compiled in ten years of thorough field
research that the think tank conducted inside and outside Eritrea. ICG
experts visited Eritrea for extensive interviews with senior government
officials and canvassed the opinion of various internal sources of their
choice. But even then, there was a lingering impression among most
knowledgeable observers of the Eritrean reality that the ICG was more
inclined in corroborating a certain pre-conceived narrative rather than
honestly and fairly depicting a balanced and nuanced picture.
1In both the current report and its predecessor, the ICG makes repeated
reference to individuals and entities that espouse hostile attitudes towards
Eritrea, being at the same time ardent champions of regime change. The list
includes Bereket Habteselassie, Berouk Mesfin (a senior researcher at the
Institute for Security Studies who finds it difficult to divorce from the
version of the Ethiopian government when writing on Eritrea) Dan Connell,
Gaim Kibreab, Kjetel Tronvor, Leonard Vincent (author of Les Erytheens and
cofounder of a Paris-based anti-Eritrean radio station), Martin Plaut,
Tekeste Negash who is opposed to Eritrean independence, and Yosief
Ghebrehiwet a permanent contributor of anti-regime articles in the Gedab
News, a website devoted to Eritrean division and referred to repeatedly in
ICG reports. Other entities of similar category referred to in the ICG
reports are the TPLF website aigaform.com, Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders.
2International Crisis Group, Eritrea the Siege State Africa Report No.136 31
September 2010 p.1
This time around, the gloves are off and the ICG appears to have discarded
all pretentions of objectivity and neutrality. The ICG claims that it was
denied entry to Eritrea although this remains contested by officials in
Eritrea's Foreign Ministry. Whatever the case, and although the ECSS
understands that the ICG did maintain some perfunctory communication with
the Eritrean Mission to the UN5, the current report is conspicuous for its
failure to cite official and neutral and credible sources for countervailing
opinion and/or the validation of the facts and events that are described
with authority.
Furthermore, and as we highlight below, the welter of information that the
ICG cobbled together essentially emanate from rumors and innuendos6 that are
attributed to undisclosed sources. This is rationalized by considerations
of confidentiality. Nonetheless, it casts deeper doubt on the validity of
its postulates and conjectures since these "confidential interlocutors" that
provided the baseline data may well be affiliated to fringe groups that
espouse certain political agendas. A cursory analysis of the 156 footnotes
attached to the report illustrates that 71 % fall in that category. This is
unduly large. And, as we intimated above, the remaining references are
virtually recycled data provided by the usual, Eritrea-bashing, hostile
elements and groups. These glaring shortcomings of data collection and
validation can only dent the reputation of the ICG besides carving out a
gaping puncture on the reliability, coherence and probability of the
"scenarios of transition" that it envisages.
For purposes of illustration, we cite below some of the outlandish rumors
that the ICG blindly replicates in its report without questioning their
validity.
. Isaias's disappearance from public view for several weeks in April 2012
amid rumours of his illness and death made evident the lack of a succession
plan;
. During the latter half of 2012, more rumors circulated about
disagreements inside the regime on the direction of the country, as well as
Isaias's leadership;
. In November 2012 there were rumors of a round of arrests and "freezing"
of senior military leaders including the defense minister, Sebhat Ephrem;
. There are rumors the skeptics have asked the President to step aside
and support a smooth, internal transition, so as to avoid the country's
collapse..
. The military .appears to have maintained a certain degree of autonomy,
such that it has reportedly (sic) questioned Isaias's capacity to retain
control and asked him to consider a transition at various points in the
recent past;
. The posters created for the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of
liberation. portray Isaias in the image of Jesus Christ, the shepherd of the
people, leading elders of both low and highlands;
. Isaias has been grooming his son for succession;
. The incident of 21 January 2013 is described as an event that was "not
unprecedented" but as "the most recent in a number of unreported events".
The report further states "the government reportedly negotiated with the
soldiers, and in the end, the Ministry's employees were released".
All these assertions are at variance with the true facts and represent
gullible regurgitation of wild stories that normally thrive in the grape
vine. In a nutshell, the litany of rumor-inspired, unsubstantiated, facts;
the blunders of methodological omission and commission, are too many for
ICG's prognosis and "scenarios of transition" to be taken seriously. After
all, if the diagnosis of a presumed illness is wrong in the first place, the
prescribed antidote will not only be useless but it may turn out to be
toxic.
We now revert to examine in some detail the ICG's substantive conjectures.
1. Aggravated Ethnic and Religious fault lines
The ICG report paints a curiously explosive picture in regard to potential
ethnic and religious conflicts and strife in Eritrea. To drive the point
home, it opines: "Eritrean diversity, especially the Christian-Muslim
divide", may usher in social upheavals. The ICG waxes alarmist
particularly in other sections of the report when it warns: "existing ethnic
and religious divisions may come into play in a confrontation between
military factions.leading to a disastrous civil war", (emphasis ours).
This sudden, doomsday, prognosis is not only utterly wrong, but it
contradicts the ICG's own report as spelled out in its previous report,
which was the result, by its own admissions, of ten years meticulous
research in Eritrea. This is what the ICG had to say on the same subject in
its September 2010 report:
Despite occasional conflict (sic) and the marked diversity, Eritrea has by
and large avoided the kind of serious interethnic and religious strife
associated with the region. Economic lifestyles, cultures, faiths and
ethnicities have mostly coexisted peacefully. Church and mosque have stood
side by side, occasional clashes notwithstanding.
National cohesiveness and identity in Eritrea is, indeed, robust by all
accounts; transcending parochial sentiments and allegiances to exclusive
ethnic and/or religious sectarianism. Whatever its other problems, the
Eritrean polity has been blessed with ethnic and religious harmony that have
further been reinforced in the past twenty two years of independence. The
periodic communal/tribal infightings that erupt in virtually all the
neighbouring countries and, the deep sentiments of religious/ethnic
marginalization that characterize diverse communities in our region are
literally inexistent in Eritrea. These have come about as a result of
history, the long years of armed struggle as well as judicious government
policies anchored on equality of rights and opportunities for all its
constituent parts. The ICG's new narrative of a volatile, worrisome, trend
towards "ethnic/religious civil war" is thus a malevolent chimera that
exists only in the minds of Eritrea's detractors.
2. Forceful nation building
The ICG describes, in a rather deprecating manner, Eritrea's normative
trajectory of nation building as a failed, "forceful process".
This statement provokes a host of questions both in terms of abstract
political theory as well as underlying motive. In the ICG's inexplicable
view, nation building in the Eritrean case is found to be "forceful" because
the "PFDJ has been seeking to further entrench the notion of a single
national identity as defined during the struggle" ? In the first place,
Eritrean national identity was not forged or invented during the 30 years of
liberation war. Present-day Eritrea was shaped by European colonialism as
is the case in the rest of Africa. And in any case, the post-liberation
political process could not have occurred on an artificial and centrifugal
setting of polarizing a cohesive national society along ethnic and religious
identities if that is what the ICG is alluding to. The politics of ethnic
institutionalization pursued by some countries in the region and that have
been enshrined in their Constitutions is certainly not a positive example
that must be emulated by Eritrea. These political precepts are not only
dangerous and a recipe for perpetual strife but they are not also warranted
by the Eritrean reality. In as far as ethnic/religious harmony during the
armed liberation struggle is concerned; Eritrea's positive experience had
attracted almost universal accolades from all historians and political
pundits associated with those times. ICG's concerns for that period are
thus difficult to comprehend.
3. Peace with Ethiopia
The ICG's position on this cardinal issue is difficult to decipher. The
imperative for Ethiopia to abide by its treaty obligations and to respect
international law; the enhancement of regional peace and security that this
would entail is not examined from its legal and political perspectives and
is curiously absent from its lengthy discourse. It is totally ignored in
the Executive Summary where the ICG suggests various "recommendations"
purportedly to address all the critical problems that require urgent
solution.
In the sections where it broaches the subject, its point of departure is a
presumptive acknowledgement that there are no indications "for unprecedented
opening or softening of the previous policy" on the part of Ethiopia. The
ICG then concludes, even if not in so many words, that the compromise must
emanate from Eritrea. What follows next is simply absurd. The ICG quotes
an anonymous "Eritrean analyst" to state:
". In the event of a regime change, the Generals cannot last long without
making peace with Ethiopia. Eritreans would propose negotiations on the
status of Badme; a decision the population would not contest..there is no
way for the Eritrean nation to survive as it is, if it does not make peace
with Ethiopia. It will, simply, collapse".
The ICG then proceeds to outline steps that a "transitional government"
could be expected to take . to open negotiations with Ethiopia in the
eventuality/scenario of a Peaceful Transition to Multiparty Democracy.
This analysis is too crass and simplistic to merit serious exposition.
Obviously, the ICG has no clue and is out of sync with mainstream Eritrean
political opinion. Even the inconsequential Eritrean armed groups that
Ethiopia supports for subversive reasons would not contemplate making
concessions on Badme or any other sovereign Eritrean territories.
Apparently, the ICG also suffers from an acute lapse of institutional
memory. Because this is what it had to say in its previous report:
The international community, in particular donors and the Security Council,
repeatedly failed to pressure Ethiopia to comply. Eritrea's sense of
outrage heightened, notwithstanding that the Claims Commission ruled that it
violated international law during its military operation in may 1998, in
effect, had started the war.
The key point is that the Eritreans felt Ethiopia was once again being
appeased by an international community that was tacitly or explicitly
hostile to Eritrea. The already deep-rooted sense of isolation and betrayal
was reinforced.
The international community erred seriously in 2002 in not putting greater
pressure on Ethiopia to fully implement the Boundary Commission's findings.
4. The Vulnerabilities of the Eritrean State:
Perhaps because of its sources or for reasons better known to it, the ICG's
overarching intention seems to prove not only the "extreme vulnerability of
the Eritrean Government" but even the "non-viability of the nation itself".
The "inevitable collapse of the State and the threat this poses to regional
security", as well as the "weakness and fragmentation of the opposition. and
the difficulty of reconciling the political cultures of PFDJ members and
Diaspora leaders" are invoked for greater dramatization.
And, to cap it all, the ICG quotes again, an anonymous but "long time
observer of the Eritrean reality", who states:
"Is the system reformable from within.even after Isaias' removal? .Is
Isaias's absence from the Eritrean political system the answer to all the
problems of the nation? Ultimately will Eritrea ever be viable as a nation?"
With all these hyperbole in the background, the ICG considers "six scenarios
of transition" which are all permutations of, and predicated on, the sequel
after the "prior removal of the President", by whatever means. Indeed, in
almost all the sections that follow, the ICG emphatically envisions and
calls for "the President's exit", which it describes as "if not the sole
one", but "still as the absolute sine qua non for transition". Isaias's
exit . "is about surely a precondition for anything much to change", we are
reminded time and again!
What is pushing the ICG to dwell on and forecast cataclysmic developments in
Eritrea in the times ahead? Surely, this cannot be a logical extrapolation
from the isolated incident that transpired on January 21st early this year.
As we emphasized in the first part of this article, ICG's almost singular
reliance on hostile sources may partially explain this muddled output. But
one would have expected the ICG to consult more objective diplomatic and
other sources as well as published materials. Although we do not subscribe
to the underlying concept and analytic methods employed, the annual Index of
Failed States, for instance, ranks Eritrea in the upper middle rung, i.e.
less prone to potential turmoil than Ethiopia and other countries in the
region. ICG's obsession with its conjecture is thus difficult to
comprehend.
The other intriguing element in the whole report is the obvious disconnect
between the recommendations in the Executive Summary and the rest of the
report including the "six transition scenarios". In the Executive Summary,
the recommendations have two parts: the first option dwells on proposals for
coordinated action by regional and international players in order to
"promote talks with President Isaias Afwerki and the current leadership with
a view to avert chaos and further displacement of populations". The second
option focuses on residual measures that must be taken by the "US, EU and
countries with special relations with Eritrea" in the event of "transition".
But, as explained above, the entire report then swerves into a different
discourse anchored on the agenda of imminent, inevitable and necessary
"regime change". One is led to believe that the two parts of the article
were written by two groups of researches with disparate views and
conclusions. And these were not reconciled when the end product was
published. The report thus fails even to meet minimum editorial standards.
5. External intervention
The ICG does not conceal its overriding aim of establishing a case for
external intervention. The scenarios it envisages for such an eventuality
are however puzzling. This is what it has to say in its scenario of
External Mediation or Domination.
Dragged for various reasons, Addis Ababa and Khartoum could play at their
intervention in two ways: either a political agreement on how to establish
peace (perhaps through IGAD) and setting a closely mentored government or by
splitting the country in effect into zones of influence as has happened in
south-central Somalia. Alternatively, should a regional agreement over
Eritrea not be reached, they could offer direct or material support to
competing Eritrean factions in order to satisfy their national and regional
security interests.
In the last scenario of Regime Change with Ethiopian intervention, the ICG
envisages a positive role being played by the new post-Meles leadership in
which the latter offers a transitional leadership in Asmara a fresh
diplomatic start, reopening economic ties and providing support for a
non-partisan, inclusive, political initiative.
We have never come across such a brazen and horrid apology or advocacy of
colonialism under the disguise of academic research work. In the first
place, what would be the contents of a "fresh diplomatic start" by Ethiopia
and what are the dividends to Eritrea? If the ICG is privy to any
"concessions" that Ethiopia is prepared make to respect the border rulings
of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission in the event of a "transition", it
does not spell them out in the report. And in any case, the ICG had
categorically asserted in previous sections of the same report that there
will not be any "new opening on the border problem on the part of the new
Ethiopian government" thus throwing the gauntlet to Eritrea for any progress
on that front. So what is this fresh diplomatic start? The re-opening of
economic ties is another riddle that begs more nuanced answers. Although
mutual benefits that may accrue from bilateral trade may not be discounted,
the asymmetric advantages to Eritrea are not clear particularly as the
report does not at all discuss economic issues and development strategies
and policies in Eritrea, Ethiopia or the region as a whole. Ethiopia's
potential support for a "non-partisan, inclusive, political initiative" only
underscores the authors' utter ignorance of the political dynamics in the
region. In the first place, Ethiopia - the old regime as well as its
successor - is enmeshed in the political quagmire of ethnic and highly
partisan politics in its own country. In Eritrea, Ethiopia's futile policy
of regime change has been pursued in the last ten years by mainly propping
up what it calls the "Kunama and Afar Liberation Fronts". And, in a report
where incoherent and mutually contradictory conclusions appear in successive
paragraphs, the ICG also states:
Any Ethiopian intervention would likely have a security rather than a
democratic agenda. Hawkish responses are conceivable; Ethiopia could seal
the border or seize the opportunity to support one faction in Asmara. It
might even take advantage of instability to achieve one of the longstanding
goals of hard-liners, control of the port of Assab in order to end the
country's land-locked status.
The positive role that the ICG assigns to other regional actors similarly
provokes more questions than answers. The ICG professes to be keenly aware
of grave fault lines that obtain in the region's countries in its multiple
publications. It has written extensively on the dangers posed by the
precarious leadership transition in Ethiopia (though without dwelling on the
challenges this poses, as well as the internal dynamics of instability in
the country). It has also written, in its recent reports, on what it has
termed as the "embattled situation of the ruling National Congress Party in
Sudan", as well as the "electoral unrest in Djibouti". Yet despite its
gloomy predictions on the potential consequences of these fault lines, it
argues for entrusting Eritrea's troubled neighboring States with the
responsibility of "managing change in Eritrea". This haphazard and
ill-advised advice is indeed confusing and difficult to fathom. The ICG
advocates, on the one hand, for an "urgent need for transition in Eritrea to
ensure its stability" and for the "benefit of the entire region". At the
same time, it envisages this change to come about through the intervention
of Eritrea's neighbors when each of them is embroiled in perhaps deeper
political quagmire.
>From the foregoing, it is clear that the ICG did not set out to appraise the
reality in Eritrea in good faith. It must have started its research work
from a pre-conceived conclusion. The end result is not really a
professional and objective work of situation analysis but a catalogue of
biases and suggestive conjectures.
