The Land Left Behind

Photos from Eritrea

The first Eritreans I met were students and engineers in Oakland, California. I was going to school at Berkeley and my girlfriend and I, fairly typical college students that we were, wanted to both see the world and contribute something meaningful to it. This was the early 80s, when the Eritreans were still in the midst of their decades-long struggle for independence from Ethiopia.

Under the leadership of these expat Eritreans, we became involved in a ragtag support network of misfit leftists who were trying to raise awareness and support for Eritrean national liberation. At this time, the U.S. ally Haile Selassie of Ethiopia had been overthrown by a military junta, the Dergue, which decided it was opportune to become self-avowed Marxists and ally themselves with the Soviet Union.

The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), with whom the Oakland Eritreans were affiliated, were more genuine Marxists than the Dergue but Eritrea was strategically less important than Ethiopia in the proxy geopolitical battles between the Soviet Union and the U.S., and never enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union even when it was fighting the U.S. ally Selassie.

Eritrea, a former Italian colony, fought a thirty-year war for independence without the support of any major power and against a larger country that was always supported and armed by one superpower or the other — the U.S. through the 60s and early-70s and the Soviet Union in the late-70s and 80s.

This isolation from international support led to an amazing degree of self-reliance, with underground cities established in areas controlled by the EPLF to manufacture goods and repair and re-purpose military hardware won on the battlefield, to treat sick and wounded civilians and fighters, and to teach children and adults basic literacy and indoctrinate them in the concept of national liberation. This independence and astounding resilience is what attracted me to the cause of Eritrean self-determination, and continues on in the Medebar Market in Asmara, where everything conceivable is recycled and re-purposed in dozens of workshops.

After an abortive attempt to enter Eritrea from Sudan in 1984, I was able to visit in 2011, fifty years after the struggle for independence was launched and twenty years after Eritrea at last won its independence.

The international isolation Eritrea experienced throughout its struggle for independence and which continues through today, I believe, contributes to the situation that has caused so many Eritreans to flee their country.

One Eritrean family’s story of attempting to find refuge in Europe has been documented in Matter’s ongoing Ghost Boat investigation. As I responded to the first story in the series:

I just want to add my perspective from having spent three weeks in Eritrea in 2011. While there are some points of commonality, calling Eritrea the “North Korea of Africa” is a misleading trope that doesn’t add to understanding how the once promising national independence movement turned repressive, nor in understanding why it remains so.

The long simmering conflict with Ethiopia, even as the two countries are led by former allies from the leadership of the EPLF and TPLF, provides both governments with the excuse to maintain control over the press and populace, including the terrible national conscription in Eritrea which saps the hope and energy of its youth. The human rights issues of both countries will not be resolved without resolving this conflict. This is recognized by Eritreans as I heard again and again how they hold no ill will toward Ethiopians (often with Ethiopian music playing in the background) and wish that the two countries would resolve their differences.

This is an area that the west could provide leadership but chooses not to, for its own shortsighted geopolitical reasons.

I wrote further in a subsequent response:

If you look at the pictures I linked to, you see very much normal life — except for the absence of conscripted young men and women, some of whom I saw working on road-building projects outside of Asmara. There is no cult of personality around Afwerki [the President of Eritrea] or bizarre displays of military might amid impoverishment. Food was plentiful in the cities, but clearly many people were struggling to be able to purchase the food in the marketplaces. Also, the [Ghost Boat story’s] reference to religious persecution is misleading. The EPLF and now the Eritrean government has banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Church, and it is the representatives of those groups that have raised the issue in the west. But as you can see in my photos Coptic churches co-exist with mosques. Co-existence and lack of sectarian conflict is a striking aspect of Eritrea, a country where Christians and Muslims are about equal in number.

I think Afwerki is paranoid, which explains much of the internal political and press repression, jailing his former comrades in Stalinesque purges, along with the conflict with Ethiopia. The EPLF had no superpower allies and the fact that the U.S., then Soviet Union, and now again the U.S. allied themselves with Ethiopia against Eritrea reinforces Eritrea’s isolation and Afwerki’s sense of persecution.

The West needs to broker a settlement of the dispute between the two countries. I know they’re relatively unimportant and Eritrea is no match for Ethiopia in strategic importance in the “war on terror,” but as the current refugee crisis shows, the west cannot afford to ignore these distant conflicts.

Current U.S. policy to further isolate Eritrea politically and economically is misguided and counterproductive. Ethiopians and Eritreans both suffer from political repression and circumscribed economic opportunities because of the never-ending conflict between the two countries. The Cold War between the two over territorial disputes and claims and counter-claims of instigating political opposition and sabotage flares up occasionally into military battles, killing and maiming, but throughout it wastes resources, most notably the dreams and aspirations of the countries’ youth.

If you are concerned about the human rights and refugee situation in Eritrea, pressuring the U.S. and EU to broker a settlement between Eritrea and Ethiopia is perhaps the one strategy where we can make a difference.