On 28 March last month, the ICG released a report
entitled: “Eritrea: Scenarios for Future Transition”. Unfortunately, as we
illustrate below
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.
This time around, the gloves are off and the ICG
appears to have discarded all pretensions 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 UN, 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
innuendos 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 inter-ethnic and
religious strife associated with the region. Economic lifestyles, cultures,
faiths and ethnicity 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
it’s other problems, the Eritrean polity has been blessed with ethnic and
religious harmony that has 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 researchers 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.
Released By:
Eritrean Center for Strategic Studies
(ECSS)
