Eritrea has long been stigmatized as a regional “spoiler” by Washington, and despite little evidence of wrongdoing, the country remains under Security Council sanctions for supporting terrorist groups in Somalia.

Now is the time to rethink that relationship, argues Atlantic Council Africa Center Deputy Director Bronwyn Bruton in a new issue brief entitled “Eritrea: Coming in from the Cold.“ In the brief, Bruton traces the contours of the US-Eritrean relationship since the country’s independence in 1991, before making the case that a number of recent, surprising developments in the country illustrate its determination to constructively reengage with the international community.

Bruton points out that the US insistence on perpetuating Eritrea’s isolation has not had the desired effect on the widely-criticized human rights situation in the country. Instead, she argues, continuing the policy of isolation creates a host of medium-term risks for the United States, as Eritrea pivots away from the West and deepens its relationship with China and the Gulf. Furthermore, with rising instability in Ethiopia and ongoing state failure in South Sudan and Somalia, Washington’s strategic interest in engaging with Asmara has never been stronger.

Bruton concludes the publication by making the case that it is not too late to repair the US-Eritrea relationship, and lays out recommendations for how US policymakers in the upcoming administration could begin to move the relationship onto a more constructive footing.

Introduction¹

The Horn of Africa, long recognized as one of the world’s most unstable regions, is undergoing a round of seismic shifts. Massive and sustained anti-government demonstrations in Ethiopia have laid bare the fundamental brutality and instability of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which is Washington’s major security partner in the region. Tiny Somaliland and Djibouti are on high alert, bracing for a tide of Ethiopian refugees that—particularly in the midst of drought—could easily overwhelm those territories. South Sudan, the youngest nation on earth, has become a killing field. And the Westernfunded peacekeeping coalition in Somalia, which has been fighting the al-Qaeda linked terror group al-Shabaab since 2007, is critically fatigued and losing ground. These multiple nodes of instability pose a significant and immediate threat to US interests in the region.

Eritrea has long been stigmatized as a “spoiler” by Washington and stands accused of supporting terrorism. In 2009, at Washington’s urging, Eritrea was sanctioned by the United Nations for supporting al-Shabaab and for refusing to settle a border dispute with Djibouti. However, years of scrutiny by the United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (UNSEMG) have yielded no evidence that Eritrea continues to be involved in Somalia, and the Djibouti conflict is mediated by Qatar.²

A number of surprising developments have recently occurred in Eritrea, suggesting that the country is determined to throw off isolation for positive engagement in its foreign policy since the sanctions were applied. An engaged Eritrea would be very good news for the region at a time when Washington’s status quo approaches to Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan are visibly failing.

If the United States can encourage Eritrea on a trajectory of re-engagement, it should. But to do that, Washington must drop outdated notions about the threat that Eritrea poses. At a time when the Kenyan army has annexed parts of southern Somalia and is trafficking with al-Shabaab,³ when the Ugandan army is taking sides in South Sudan,⁴ and Ethiopian forces have killed hundreds and detained tens of thousands of protestors calling for government reform,⁵ Eritrea truly ranks among the least of the United States’ security concerns.

A disordered Ethiopia will make Eritrea more important to US security interests. By virtue of its geographic position between Ethiopia and Yemen, Eritrea is bound to serve either as a bridge or a barrier to the passage of terrorists between the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa. Thus far, Eritrea has repelled jihadists and proven immune to radical ideologies. This is a role for which it has received little credit. But Washington cannot afford to take Eritrea’s implicit cooperation in its counterterror efforts for granted.

If Eritrea is overwhelmed with refugees, or otherwise sucked into the Red Sea region’s growing unrest, the United States could find itself facing instability and perhaps a terror threat on both sides of the Mandeb Strait, which is a critical chokepoint for the $700 billion dollars of trade passing annually between the European Union (EU) and Asia. Threats to this trade route have in recent years led the United States to pour millions of dollars into combating Somali piracy—an indication of the Strait’s importance to US interests.⁶

For these reasons, the United States ought to be concerned about its inability to project influence in Eritrea. This paper aims to assist the incoming US administration in securing US interests by offering a blueprint for improving relations with Asmara.

US relations with Eritrea

Historical overview

In 1991, after thirty years of trench and mountain warfare, Eritrean rebels overthrew the Communist Derg regime and won independence from Ethiopia. The tenacity and bravery of the Eritrean rebels captured the hearts and imaginations of people across the globe. The period between 1991 and 1998 were watershed years for the country: a referendum establishing Eritrea’s independence was held, a democratic constitution was written (though never enacted), and Eritrea’s economy prospered.

However, separation from Ethiopia proved impossible. By 1996, a collection of small, unavoidable disputes between the two countries (over such matters as the regulation of cross-border trade, the creation of an Eritrean currency, and the demarcation of the border) had piled up, adding tension to a more substantive disagreement between Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi over Ethiopia’s decision to pursue a model of ethnic “federalism.”⁷ In 1998, only seven years after the end of Eritrea’s thirty-year battle for independence, these many differences escalated into a full-scale war between the countries that lasted for two years and killed some 90,000 people.

The Ethiopian-Eritrean border war ended when both sides agreed to sign the Algiers Agreement, which established a cease-fire and an independent border commission in The Hague (called the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, or EEBC). The United States, the EU, the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), and the United Nations signed the Algiers Agreement as witnesses. As it was desperately attempting to broker a peace, the United States allegedly made closed-door promises to both sides that it would serve as guarantor to the EEBC’s ruling.⁸ However, when the EEBC eventually awarded most of the disputed border territory to Eritrea—including the flashpoint town of Badme—Ethiopia reneged on the agreement, and the witnesses to the treaty did nothing. Indeed, for the past fifteen years, Ethiopian troops have been permitted, by a silent international consensus, to flout the treaty and occupy Eritrean territory. In consequence, the border between the two countries is heavily militarized and skirmishes occasionally claim lives. And Eritrea has been trapped in a painful stasis known as “no peace, no war.”

Ethiopia’s refusal to comply with the firm and final ruling of the Boundary Commission is a major source of instability in East Africa. In efforts to destabilize each other’s territory, both Ethiopia and Eritrea have supported armed rebel groups, which inflame conflicts across the region. Eritrea has exhibited especially poor judgment in its choice of proxies. As noted earlier, one of the groups that it supported early on was the al-Shabaab militia group in Somalia. Eritrean support of al-Shabaab appears to have been short-lived and relatively insubstantial.⁹ There has been no evidence of Eritrean support for al-Shabaab since 2011. Eritrea has, nonetheless, remained under sanction by the United Nations (UN) Security Council since 2009.

Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in late 2006, and the Ethiopian army’s subsequent occupation of Mogadishu, by contrast, has done immeasurable harm to US security interests.¹⁰ Ethiopia’s invasion destroyed an innocuous and potentially constructive Somali grassroots governance movement called the Union of Islamic Courts. At the time, Ethiopia falsely alleged that the Union of Islamic Courts was a proxy of al-Qaeda and persuaded Washington to back this interpretation. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia and destroyed this moderate Union of Islamic Courts, it cleared the field for the rise of al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab—which before the invasion was unpopular in Somalia—was able to rise to power on a wave of public fury against the atrocities that the Ethiopian army was committing in Mogadishu.¹¹ It was the rage of the Somali people against Ethiopian and US meddling in their country that permitted alShabaab to become a national resistance movement; to seize most of southern Somalia’s territory; and to provide the long-feared sanctuary to al-Qaeda.¹² Worse still, outrage over the rapes and atrocities perpetrated by Ethiopian troops in Somalia sparked the transit of dozens of Somali-Americans from Minnesota to join al-Shabaab’s war against the Ethiopian army in Mogadishu, creating, for the first time, a problem of homegrown radicalization in the United States.¹³

Recent developments in Eritrea

Despite the profound insecurity that Eritrea faces, the government is attempting to emerge from the economic and political stasis of the post-border war period. In the past two years, Asmara has made serious efforts to improve its relations with European countries. It has formed new alliances with Arab and African partners, has sought to reenter the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and has ramped up its participation in the African Union. There are also positive indicators for those seeking access to Eritrea: approximately fifty foreign journalists have been permitted to enter and report on the country;¹⁴ the UN Office of the High Commission for Human Rights was recently permitted to tour a prison, and several foreign NGOs have been permitted to reenter Eritrea and to open programs in the country. One of these groups, Finn Church Aid, recently visited Sawa, a school and military training camp that has been off-limits to Westerners for about a decade and is thought be the epicenter of human rights abuses in the country.

Eritrea has also recently released all of the living Djiboutian prisoners of war, a major development that bodes well for regional stability. The judicial code has been revised, though the changes are not yet implemented.¹⁵ It appears that the government is raising the salaries of National Service (NS) conscripts, which it says is the first step toward normalizing the program and converting the NS posts into civil service and private sector jobs. Implementation has been slow on many of these fronts but not unexpectedly, given Eritrea’s financial and capacity problems.

Washington has determinedly overlooked these positive developments and continues to focus on human rights and exaggerated or outdated notions of Eritrean misbehavior in the region. Simultaneously, Washington has downplayed human rights violations and regional meddling by Ethiopia, presumably because of the key role that Ethiopia plays in US counterterrorism efforts in East Africa.

The asymmetry of the United States’ treatment of these two countries has created the perception among Eritrean officials that Washington is “hostile” to Eritrea and directly responsible for most aspects of the country’s suffering over the past eighteen years. As Eritrea’s senior presidential advisor recently commented: “The problem with Eritrea is not Ethiopia: It is the United States.”¹⁶

The risk to US Interests

Over the years, US rhetoric has helped to establish a fictional dichotomy between the “good” Ethiopia and the “spoiler” Eritrea. While this may seem expedient to US counterterror efforts in the short term, it actually creates a host of medium-term risks for Washington. The dichotomy is not supported by facts on the ground, and thus has a detrimental effect on US credibility¹⁷. and counter-radicalization efforts, particularly in Ethiopia, where the government has imprisoned thousands of journalists, politicians, and bloggers under the guise of counterterrorism. Washington has consistently praised Ethiopian governance despite strong evidence of government repression. (Irreversible harm was done to Washington’s credibility, for example, when President Obama visited Addis Ababa and referred to the Ethiopian government as “democratically elected,” directly after the ruling party won 100 percent of the parliamentary seats in an election.¹⁸) US political and financial support of the Ethiopian government is also widely viewed as instrumental to the regime’s continuing stranglehold on power—a perception that may assist al-Shabaab or other jihadist actors to foment a homegrown terror movement in Ethiopia amidst the general dissatisfaction and insecurity there. Al-Shabaab has flourished in Kenya, where police and military brutality, class grievances, and the estrangement of the Muslim community have proved fertile ground for jihadist recruitment efforts. Conditions in Ethiopia are not dissimilar.

If Ethiopia’s instability worsens, the United States may, within the next few years, be faced with a situation of multiple state failures in the Horn: a swath of instability that stretches from Somalia, through Ethiopia, across the water to Yemen, through Sudan, and onward to the Sahel. And, in this worst-case scenario, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somaliland will be the vital buffers between that instability and the billions of dollars of trade passing every day through the Mandeb Strait.

Furthermore, if the West does not re-engage with Eritrea, other countries will step in to fill the diplomatic void. Eritrea has already begun to form new military alliances with Gulf states and new economic partnerships with China. Prolonging the status quo does not mean that Eritrea will remain isolated, but it does mean that the United States will continue to be unable to project influence in an increasingly important region of the world. For these reasons, the United States cannot afford to continue its policy of isolating Eritrea.

Fortunately, it is not too late to repair the relationship. Despite his many concerns about US policy and the lingering bad blood between the nations, President Isaias has stated that the relationship between the United States and Eritrea is fundamentally sound,¹⁹ and that he is convinced the two countries should—and will—be friends. However, concrete steps will need to be taken by the incoming US administration to move the relationship onto a more constructive footing.

Diplomatic disputes

Friendship between the United States and Eritrea is in the interest of both countries. But the impediments to a normalization of diplomatic relations are numerous and complex. On the US side, they include the ongoing imprisonment of four former employees of the US embassy; the restriction of US embassy personnel to a perimeter of twenty kilometers around Asmara; the opening of diplomatic pouches and the recalling of Eritrea’s ambassador from the embassy in Washington; the expulsion of the US Agency for International Development (USAID); human rights abuses and the closure of participatory democratic space (including the failure to enact the constitution or convene the parliament); Eritrea’s holding of Djiboutian prisoners of war (though Eritrea claims to have released all of its Djiboutian prisoners and has withdrawn from Djiboutian territory in compliance with an international ruling and the mediation process being led by Qatar); Eritrea’s refusal to permit the UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group unfettered access to the country; and Eritrea’s continued funding of armed groups to perpetuate its proxy conflict with Ethiopia. There is also a clear and pervasive irritation among American officials over the fact that Eritrea, despite the firm and final ruling of the EEBC in its favor, has not simply accepted the current situation, given up on Badme, and moved on.²⁰

Eritrea also holds a substantial list of grievances against the United States. These include: Washington’s refusal to grant Eritrean independence following the second World War, which directly necessitated the thirty-year war that killed an uncounted number of Eritreans; Washington’s failure to enforce the Algiers Agreement and its apparent prioritization of Ethiopia’s interests over those of Eritrea; the Washington-led effort to sanction Eritrea for its actions in Somalia and around the region; Washington’s continued refusal to lift those sanctions, despite the UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group’s failure to find any evidence of Eritrean meddling in Somalia over the past four years;²¹ Washington’s travel ban and sanctions on various Eritrean officials; and finally, what is perceived as a Washington-led effort to use UN human rights instruments as a mechanism for bringing Eritrea to the International Criminal Court. (This last grievance persists, despite the fact that the United States does not appear to support the forwarding of the Commission of Inquiry’s report to the UN Security Council.) Eritrea resents the United States’ refusal to hold Ethiopia accountable for its continued military aggressions, including the assaults on the border and the bombings of Eritrean territory.

Eritrea is also stung by Washington’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Ethiopian abuses. Despite the Ethiopian regime’s role in the rise of al-Shabaab, Washington has repeatedly praised it for supporting US counterterror efforts.²² Additionally, the Ethiopian regime’s abysmal record on human rights and democracy notwithstanding, Washington has, since 2006, provided it with billions of dollars in economic, budgetary, and humanitarian assistance.²³ Despite the Ethiopian army’s long and alarming record of regional and domestic human rights abuses, the United States also provides extensive financial and military support (via the African Union) to Ethiopian troops deployed in Somalia.

Recommendations

These multiple grievances cannot be rectified overnight. However, a couple of key actions could quickly put US relations with Eritrea on a positive trajectory.

1) Lift the UN sanctions on Eritrea

President Isaias was explicitly clear during our meeting in February 2015 that he considers the lifting of the UN Security Council sanctions on Eritrea to be a precondition of any serious effort to improve relations between the two countries. These sanctions should have been lifted years ago—as noted, the UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group has found no substantial violations by Eritrea of international law. Washington should consider, too, that the arbitrary continuation of sanctions on Eritrea, in the absence of any visible wrongdoing by Asmara, will diminish the credibility of sanction regimes in general, and at a time when the impartiality of international justice mechanisms (the International Criminal Court in particular) is widely questioned in Africa.

Lifting the sanctions will, of course, require cooperation from Asmara. But numerous discussions in Asmara have suggested that a visit from the SEMG to Eritrea is not beyond the realm of possibility—provided that Washington makes clear that it is open to the possibility of lifting the sanctions. Washington’s threat to veto the removal of sanctions on Eritrea effectively precludes any attempt by other UN member states to do so.²⁴

Moreover, sanctions do not work. In this multipolar global environment, it is not possible for the United States to isolate Eritrea. Sanctions, verbal condemnations of the government, the United Nation’s Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea, and other such devices have simply compelled the government to give up on the United States and to pivot toward China and the Gulf for support. Indeed, the success of that pivot is the primary political development of the past eighteen months in Eritrea. Asmara has formed strong strategic alliances with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, providing a base for their counterterror efforts in the Red Sea basin.²⁵ It has also scaled up its relations with Egypt, deepened ties to South Africa, and secured a series of new Chinese mining investments.²⁶

2) Reject Ethiopian irredentist claims on Eritrea

The threat to Eritrea from Ethiopia is genuine; the Eritrean government does not simply use it as an excuse to crack down on dissent. The failure of the international community to appreciate the extent to which Ethiopia’s actions have destabilized Eritrea is a serious flaw in our analysis of the Horn. The military threat from Ethiopia is real and pressing. Indeed, Ethiopian aggression toward Eritrea has been steadily escalating over the past eighteen months, and the increased threat of an Ethiopian annexation of Eritrean territory is a major threat to regional stability.

In March 2015, Ethiopia bombed Eritrea twice, striking a military depot in Asmara and killing eight people, and striking the perimeter fence of the Bisha mine (causing no casualties and little damage). Ethiopia’s bombing of the Bisha site, a civilian target and a foreignowned investment, is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. However, neither Washington nor the UN Security Council so much as commented on the attack. Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has repeatedly announced—both on the floor of the parliament and in Ethiopia’s governmentcontrolled press—that Ethiopia intends to attack Eritrea.²⁷ In June 2016, Ethiopia did exactly as it had announced, initiating a major conflict on the Eritrean border (at the area known as the “Tsorona front”)²⁸ that killed hundreds of soldiers and displaced an unknown number of civilians. Despite Ethiopia’s admission that it initiated the assault, Washington merely called for “both parties” to exercise restraint.²⁹

Since 1998, Eritreans have lived with the threat of a hostile army within its borders. The presence of Ethiopian troops on Eritrean soil has created conditions of constant insecurity and a limbo in which economic and political development have proved all but impossible. The continued closure of the Ethiopia-Eritrea border has done serious damage to Eritrea’s economy: prior to the border war, the vast majority of Eritrea’s trade was with Ethiopia. Since the war, that portion of Eritrea’s gross domestic product has entirely disappeared. And the resulting effort to maintain Eritrea’s defenses has continuously consumed an inordinate amount of its budget, which in turn diminishes Eritrea’s ability to develop its schools, hospitals, and industries.³⁰ The need to maintain a large standing army remains partially responsible for the extension of Eritrea’s program of mandatory military conscription far beyond its intended duration of eighteen months. This practice of mandatory, indefinite military conscription in Eritrea (known as the “National Service”) is the primary objection from international human rights activists.

Asmara does not expect Washington to send troops to its border to enforce the Algiers Agreement. But it would be tremendously helpful for Washington to signal its continuing commitment to the “firm and final” nature of the EEBC ruling on the border and to clearly condemn Ethiopian aggressions when they occur. A Congressional resolution or a simple statement from the State Department could help to accomplish that.

3) De-personalize US policy toward Eritrea

US policy has been derailed by disapproval of President Isaias and his proxies. US officials, from the very top down, have been scalded by their interactions with the Eritrean regime. (For example, even the current US assistant secretary of State for African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, was rebuffed when she sought to extend an olive branch to Asmara at the beginning of her tenure—and many other diplomats have fared worse.) These experiences have created widespread antipathy toward President Isaias and his representatives. In interviews, US officials regularly describe the regime as “recalcitrant,” “irredeemable,” and “impossible” and insist that no engagement with Eritrea is possible as long President Isaias remains in office. Of course, 3.5 million Eritreans³¹ would benefit from a different point of view—but policymakers and analysts continue to insist that in Eritrea, l’État, c’est lui.

Change in Eritrea is clearly possible, as evidenced by its small but significant warming with Europe, Arab partners, and the increased access it has granted to international journalists and NGOs.

Given the government’s limited finances and bureaucratic capacity, progress has indeed been frustratingly slow. Nevertheless, there are positive steps. Eritrea is undertaking these measures of its own accord—not as a result of foreign pressure, nor in pursuit of foreign funding, which it has often refused. Because the changes are voluntary, they have a better chance of being sustainable.

Eritrea is an authoritarian state, and President Isaias inarguably exerts disproportionate control over national and civic affairs. However, there are factions and differences of opinion within the Eritrean regime— as there are in every government. As in Ethiopia, most of these differences of opinion are carefully contained. But the Eritrean government is not monolithic and is certainly not uniformly evil, incompetent, or intransigent.

Most important, villainizing the regime does not reflect the political realities on the ground. There is no organized opposition inside Eritrea to President Isaias or his government, and little, if any appetite for revolt. There is certainly unhappiness and unspoken dissent inside Eritrea; increasingly, that dissent is voiced aloud. Yet, Eritreans are very much aware that there is no viable alternative to the present government and that lack of alternatives has produced a tangible sense of resignation. As in Ethiopia, the lack of political alternatives is caused by the government’s imprisonment and exile of the best and brightest of the political opposition. However, it remains a fact that the Eritrean opposition is not perceived as more credible than the government, and in the case of any government collapse, a protracted and violent power struggle would likely occur.

4) Let Europe lead

Eritrea has made great progress in improving its relations with individual European nations and with the EU. Because of migration, the EU has a vested interest in Eritrea’s development. That makes Europe an inherently better partner for Eritrea, and Washington would be wise to let Brussels and other European capitals lead the way on development assistance. It would also be prudent for Washington to resist any action that may spoil EU efforts to normalize relations with Eritrea as part of a broader strategy to ease immigration concerns.

The US should be especially supportive of European efforts to support development in Eritrea, since direct development support from the United States to Eritrea would be difficult to achieve and politically problematic. In the first place, delivering US support to Eritrea would likely need to be preceded by negotiations to reestablish an office in the country for the US Agency for International Development. USAID’s preference for high-visibility projects is likely to clash with the Eritrean government’s insistence on self-reliance. (For example, Eritrean officials have frequently expressed horror at the idea of allowing a fleet of the shiny white sports-utility vehicles [SUVs] associated with foreign aid workers into the country. The SUV is a symbol that is regarded with derision across Africa, even more so in Eritrea, where they are politically toxic.) Moreover, negotiations over the form of development assistance would be likely to drag out for years. Even when Eritrea has relatively good relations with a donor—as it does with the EU, for example—the negotiation of aid packages has been a lengthy and fraught affair. In the case of the United States, discussions of aid would likely aggravate diplomatic tensions, not assuage them. However, the United States could and should make smaller gestures—such as lifting travel restrictions on Eritrean officials in the United States—that would encourage reciprocal actions from Asmara.

5) Insist on improvements in the human rights situation in Eritrea—but do not single out Eritrea for criticism

It is inappropriate and counter to US interests to single out Eritrea for criticism on human rights concerns. The situation there is not demonstrably worse than it is in the other nations of the Horn.

Though extensive human rights violations occur in Eritrea, the country is extremely stable and appears to have very low rates of crime or chronic hunger. The populations of Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan experience far higher levels of violence. In terms of repression, Eritrea is on par with two privileged US allies, Ethiopia and Djibouti.³² A recent UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea entirely failed to make the case that Eritrean human rights abuses were either systemic or the result of deliberate government policy, and the report’s allegations have not been pursued by the Human Rights Council.³³

This is not to minimize the human rights abuses that do take place in the country, but the narrative of Eritrea as singularly evil, as in the moniker, the “North Korea of Africa,” is not only too simplistic but could also mislead Washington into policy errors.

Eritreans are passionately nationalistic. Despite the virulent tribal and ethnic conflicts plaguing the rest of the region, the Eritrean government appears to have been exceptionally successful in its own nationbuilding project. Eritreans seem largely unified across tribal and religious categories. Eritreans across the world, whether or not they support the government, demonstrate a strong sense of national identity and display pride in their country.

Given this dynamic, the United States should consider the possibility that international criticism of Eritrea— reflected in the shrill condemnations of the Isaias regime, the imposition and continuation of sanctions, the failure to enforce the Algiers Agreement, and continued silence regarding the presence of Ethiopian troops on Eritrean soil—may have counterproductive effects on the ground. Many Eritreans take the insults directed at their government personally, and many are prone to blame Washington rather than Asmara for the current state of affairs in their country. Sanctions and other punitive devices may actually lend credence to government narratives that Eritrea is being persecuted by the international community. Such perceptions can easily lead to increased support for the government, both inside Eritrea and in the diaspora.

Washington must learn to be more even-handed in its response to human rights abuses in the Horn. That is certainly not to say that Washington should stop pressing for human rights reforms in Eritrea—US outrage simply needs to be spread more proportionately around the Horn (louder criticism of Ethiopia’s human rights abuses would also help). And Washington needs to do this regardless of whether it wishes to improve relations with Eritrea, in order to combat the common African perception that the United States dismisses human rights and democracy concerns whenever more important counterterror objectives are in play.

Conclusion

Washington has a strategic interest in repairing relations with Asmara, and the upcoming change in administration offers a convenient opportunity for a reset in relations. Nevertheless, Eritrea has already pivoted successfully toward new alliances in the Gulf and a new economic partnership with China, and its leaders are reluctant to invest scarce diplomatic resources in a hopeless cause. In order to improve relations, a strong signal needs to be sent from Washington to Asmara.

President Isaias and his advisers will not swivel back toward Washington unless they have good reason to do so. However, numerous conversations and meetings in Asmara lead to the conviction that President Isaias would very much like to put his relations with Washington on a more constructive footing. Given the high stakes in the Horn of Africa, and very low level of effort that would be required to set the stage for a much better relationship in the future, it is surely in Washington’s interest to try.

Bronwyn Bruton is is deputy director of the Africa Center and author of many reports, journal essays, and special reports on the Horn of Africa, including the widely-read 2010 Council on Foreign Relations special report Somalia: A New Approach and the recent New York Times op-ed “It’s Bad in Eritrea, but Not That Bad.

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Near midnight on June 12, Eritrea’s information minister released a press statement accusing Ethiopia of the attack, and stating that “the purpose and ramifications of this attack are unclear.” Privately, officials expressed concern that the skirmish could presage a return to full-scale war.

Eritrean officials suggest a review of satellite images of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, which they claim will show that Ethiopia has been building up its forces over the past two months. That would not be surprising, as Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has repeatedly and very recently warned of his intention to use “proportionate military force” against Eritrea in response to its “provocations,” though the United Nations Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) has found little evidence of destabilizing acts by Eritrea in recent years.

The United States, EU, and United Nations Security Council should act quickly to ensure that Sunday’s border skirmish does not escalate further. And for once it should point the finger of blame firmly at Ethiopia. Past aggressions by Ethiopia have failed to draw censure from the international community, but the refusal to assign blame in this latest incident would dangerously threaten stability in the Horn. The details of the current conflict may be unclear, but Ethiopia has been frank about its desire to punish Eritrea militarily. Given that, the dire escalation of the conflict on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border was utterly predictable. And the international community is complicit in this escalation, because it has consistently failed to censure Ethiopia for its past aggressions.

Who is to blame?

Ethiopia has denied that it initiated the conflict at the Tsorona front on Sunday, but only weakly. When questioned, Ethiopia’s information minister, Getachew Reda, initially claimed to know nothing about the fighting. Later, he vaguely accused Eritrea of provoking the skirmish, calling the fighting “an Eritrean initiative,” and referring to “an incident on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border” and “a provocation”—one that apparently triggered a rapid and unprecedentedly large-scale deployment of Ethiopian heavy artillery and tanks.

Gedab News has subsequently offered what seems, on its face, to be a fairly credible account of what might have occurred. The account alleges that Eritrean forces chased a group of deserters onto Ethiopian territory, where they skirmished with at least three of the Eritrean rebel groups that are being illicitly backed by Ethiopia. The article notes that neither Eritrea nor Ethiopia would want the details of such an incident to slip out, since it suggests not insubstantial misconduct by both sides. But whether or not this particular account is accurate, it’s fairly likely that some minor incident along these lines occurred on Sunday at the Tsorona front—as such incidents do, with some regularity, along the militarized border—and that Ethiopia seized the opportunity to pursue Eritrea’s forces back across the border with tanks and heavy artillery, apparently causing a substantial loss of life. The pursuit of Eritrean forces over the border (which has not been demarcated due to Ethiopia’s refusal to comply with the terms of a 2000 peace treaty and subsequent boundary determination) was predicted by Hailemariam’s ongoing threats to punish Eritrea with military force.

I cannot of course rule out the possibility that Eritrea may be single-handedly responsible for this latest border skirmish. But Ethiopia’s failure to offer any specific explanation of what Eritrea has actually done to provoke such a significant strike should be regarded as a red flag of blame, as should Getachew’s press statement in Addis Ababa on Tuesday morning, in which he argued that Eritrea simply deserved to be attacked: “We believe that the regime doesn’t have any moral ground whatsoever to complain to the international community that it has been attacked because it has all along been working to invite such an attack from any responsible country in the region.”

Getachew then referred to Eritrea’s efforts to “destabilize” the region. This is a constant Ethiopian refrain, but because he made no specific allegation, it remains unclear what Ethiopia thinks Eritrea has done to provoke an attack.

(The SEMG is charged with monitoring the arms embargoes on Somalia and Eritrea, and routinely investigates Eritrea’s activities in the region. For the past several years, it has reported that both Ethiopia and Eritrea have continued to fund rebel and opposition groups operating on each other’s territories. But it has failed to uncover any significant destabilizing acts or violations by Eritrea. And there is no doubt that the volume of funding provided to rebel groups by Ethiopia vastly exceeds that which is provided by the much smaller, and poorer, Eritrea.)

Ethiopia has recently complained about efforts by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to improve Eritrea’s ports, which they hope to use as a launching pad for assaults against Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen. But there is no evidence that the UAE cooperation will adversely affect Ethiopia’s security. Unrelatedly, Ethiopia has also recently accused Eritrea of fomenting protests by Oromos in the southern part of the country. But that claim is wholly unsubstantiated, has been denied by the Oromo protesters, and is routinely dismissed by security analysts and human rights investigators.

Earlier this year, in March, Ethiopia’s prime minister publically threatened to take military action against Eritrea in response to various alleged acts of “provocation” and “destabilization.” It is very likely that the attack on the Eritrean border is simply a fulfillment of what was, in effect, a public pledge to escalate the conflict with Eritrea at the earliest opportunity.

Previous Ethiopian assaults on Eritrea

Ethiopia has a history of attacks on Eritrea. In March 2012, Ethiopia illegally sent troops across the Eritrean border to attack three military bases that it claimed were operated by the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front. In March 2015, Ethiopia bombed two targets in Eritrea, apparently in retaliation for an EU decision to provide development funding to Eritrea. (Neither Eritrean nor Western diplomats will consent to discuss this incident on the record, but the basic facts of the incident are already in the public arena.) Eight soldiers were killed in the strike on a military depot in Asmara; and in violation of the rules of war, the other strike was directed at a civilian target, a Canadian-operated mining venture at Bisha. No-one was killed in that attack, and it appears to have been intended to undermine investor confidence in Eritrea’s security.

The United States, European nations, and the United Nations Security Council failed to censure Ethiopia for these attacks—nor have any of these bodies respond to Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s very public threats to use military force against Eritrea (for example, in speeches made in October 2015, November 2015, and March 2016). This failure to contain Ethiopia’s repeated aggression has unquestionably contributed to a sense of impunity on the part of Ethiopia, which is also considered an essential partner of US counterterror efforts in the Horn of Africa region. Because of Ethiopia’s key role in US security efforts, Washington has typically avoided criticizing Ethiopia’s regional aggressions, as well as its escalating domestic civil and human rights violations.

Who benefits from the skirmish?

Some analysts have argued that Eritrea stands to benefit from the conflict, because “it diverts attention away from the alleged crimes against humanity, and [justifies Eritrea’s] need for an enormous and compulsory conscription,” according to Charlotte King of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

That could be so – I would be the first to admit that the motivations of both the Eritrean and Ethiopian regimes are inscrutable to distant eyes. But I would assess that the Eritrean regime has little to gain from contributing to a media narrative that is already focused on its “bad behavior” at home and in the Horn. And, given the ongoing and illegal occupation of Eritrean territory by Ethiopian troops, on top of the aggressions cited above, Eritrea does not have to work that hard to prove that has significant national security concerns stemming from its border conflict with Ethiopia. If anything, media headlines about the border are likely to draw more attention to the crimes against humanity charges, by keeping Eritrea’s affairs in the news.

Giving Ethiopia an excuse to restart the border war would also be a dangerous gamble by Eritrea. In the years since the last border war ended (in 2000) Ethiopia has been flooded with development and military assistance, the latter given by the US and EU in exchange for Ethiopia’s participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia. At the same time, Eritrea has been starved of both economic investment and development support, and has lost hundreds of thousands of youth to migration. Both factors have no doubt caused a substantial decline in Eritrea’s military capabilities. If Ethiopia and Eritrea go back to war, it’s clear who would win. And it would be suicide for Eritrea to provoke such a conflict at time when the world’s opprobrium is focused on Asmara. The odds of any nation or intergovernmental body rising to Eritrea’s defense is painfully slim – as the muted response to Sunday’s fighting has shown.

If Ethiopia wants a war, on the other hand, there’s good reason to think that there will never be a better time. The US national security advisor, Susan Rice, is a committed defender of the Ethiopian regime and will remain in her office for only a few more months. With the allegations of crimes against humanity, international criticism of Eritrean has certainly plateaued. And Ethiopia is facing a worrying pile-up of domestic problems, particularly among its Muslim and Oromo populations, but also in the Gambella and Somali regions, among others. The temptation to quell domestic unrest by uniting the population against an external foe must be fairly strong, and Ethiopia’s Tigrean elite has long desired absolution for its loss of Eritrea and, in particular, the port of Asab. “A second round of full-scale war between Ethiopia and Eritrea cannot be ruled out,” Ethiopia’s information minister says. 

No pragmatic analyst of US foreign policy could demand that Washington exercise its responsibility to ensure the implementation of the Algiers Agreement, which Ethiopia has violated for the past thirteen years. No matter how just that demand, no matter how long overdue, no matter how profoundly such action would increase the stability and peacefulness of the Horn, it is simply not realistic to expect Washington to take up this burden at a time of global economic instability and ever-escalating security concerns. But there is no excuse for Washington’s silence in the face of Ethiopia’s clearly announced intention to restart hostilities against Eritrea, and in the face of its continued military aggressions. Ethiopia is testing the waters for a return to war.

For now, the Ethiopian forces have withdrawn, and it is to be hoped that Washington is exerting pressure on Addis Ababa behind closed doors. Because: If Ethiopia and Eritrea go back to war, Washington, the European Union, and in particular the UN Security Council, will have no one but themselves to blame. 

Bronwyn Bruton is deputy director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council

The post A Frightening Flare-up on the Ethiopia/Eritrea Border, and Another Resounding Silence from Washington appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A finding of crimes against humanity would be indefensible, said the Atlantic Council’s Bronwyn Bruton

A UN panel’s expected conclusion that crimes against humanity are being committed in Eritrea would be legally indefensible because of the flawed methodology in the compilation of the report and would further erode the credibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Africa, said the Atlantic Council’s Bronwyn Bruton.

The UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea (COIE) will present its findings on June 8. “Based on my interactions with the Commission, I do expect the COIE to recommend that the government of Eritrea be referred to the ICC for crimes against humanity, despite the weakness of the evidence,” said Bruton, deputy director of the Council’s Africa Center. [Update: The COIE said “widespread” human rights abuses have been committed in Eritrea and should be referred to the International Criminal Court as crimes against humanity.].

The report will likely name Isaias Afwerki, who has served as Eritrea’s president since the country won independence in 1991 after a three-decade-long war with Ethiopia, as well as generals and senior-ranking politicians in the country, she added.

The United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission in 2014 to investigate human rights abuses in Eritrea. A year later, the Commission issued a scathing report saying the Eritrean government’s systematic use of extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, indefinite national service, and forced labor may amount to crimes against humanity.

“The [People’s Front for Democracy and Justice], the ruling and only party in Eritrea, has held on to power by progressively dismantling or refraining from implementing reforms aimed at establishing democracy and rule of law in the country,” the report concluded. Public freedoms have been eroded, a rule of fear has been established, and opposition is not tolerated, it added.

Based on its findings, the COIE’s mandate was renewed for another year in July of 2015, and the team was charged with determining whether crimes against humanity have taken place in Eritrea.

Eritrea’s government, which prevented members of the Commission from visiting the country, has rejected the report and argued that the creation of the COIE violates international law by unfairly singling out Eritrea for scrutiny. From the Eritrean government’s point of view, engaging with the Commission would lend legitimacy to a process that is unlawful and politically motivated, said Bruton.

“I am critical of Eritrea for not engaging more with the Commission of Inquiry because I have visited Eritrea many times and I believe that if the Commission had been allowed into the country, they would have had a very different impression of what is happening there,” said Bruton.

The Eritrean government has cooperated with the UN’s Universal Periodic Review—a human rights review that all countries are subjected to—and has recently permitted a separate team of officials from the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Eritrea to examine the human rights conditions in the country.

A flood of refugees

The Commission has said indefinite military conscription, which it compared to slavery, was in part to blame for the state of human rights in Eritrea. Thousands of Eritreans flee the country every month. In fact, in the first six months of 2015, Eritreans were the second-largest number of migrants (after Syrians and on par with Afghans) to flee to Europe, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

“There has been a lot of talk about how Eritrea, a nation of 3.5 million people, loses 60,000 people a year to migration, which must be proof in itself that terrible human rights abuses are taking place there,” said Bruton.

“However, Puerto Rico is also a territory of 3.5 million people, and it loses around 50,000 people a year because of the economic crisis it faces. The mere fact that 60,000 people are leaving Eritrea isn’t necessarily proof of a massive human rights crisis. Puerto Rican migration is of course facilitated by access to the United States; but Eritreans have also, until extremely recently, been granted automatic asylum rights in Europe. There are push and pull factors at play.”

“The costs of migration are high; but so too are the rewards for those who can gain residence in the rich countries of Europe,” she added.

Many Eritreans who flee their homeland undertake hazardous journeys through Libya, Egypt’s tumultuous Sinai Peninsula, and across the Mediterranean in their desire to reach Europe. Many fall prey to human traffickers who imprison them, deny them food and water, subject them to torture, and demand ransoms from their families. A disproportionately large number of Eritreans have perished attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

The European Union, which is grappling with a historic influx of migrants, in March struck a controversial deal to send to Turkey Syrian migrants who fled across the Aegean Sea to Europe. The Guardian reported this week that the EU is also planning to work with the governments of Sudan and Eritrea to stem the flow of migrants from both the African nations.

“The idea of simply shoveling refugees back to Eritrea where they don’t have economic prospects and face an uncertain political future is problematic, and could in fact be destabilizing to Eritrea, which has—counter to the claims of the COIE—actively promoted migration over the years, both as a source of remittances and as a kind of pressure release valve, an alternative to those who are most frustrated with the regime,” said Bruton.

“It is far preferable for the European Union to seek to engage with Eritrea to promote development and to improve standards of living in the country,” she noted.

Bronwyn Bruton spoke in an interview with the New Atlanticist’s Ashish Kumar Sen. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Q: In 2015, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea found that the Eritrean government has committed “systemic, widespread, and gross human rights violations.” The COIE’s new report will be released on June 8. Do you expect the report to conclude that crimes against humanity have been committed?

Bruton: Based on my interactions with the Commission, I do expect the COIE to recommend that the government of Eritrea be referred to the ICC for crimes against humanity, despite the weakness of the evidence. In particular, the charges of forced labor would be very hard to substantiate and bring to trial. When you think of forced labor in Africa you tend to think of people chained underground in diamond mines, not extended military service or office work, which is typically the case in Eritrea.

I also feel deeply worried about the impact that Eritrea’s referral to the International Criminal Court would have in Africa, where there is already a backlash against Western human rights mechanisms, and in particular a strong push within the African Union—not by pariah states but by strong Western allies like Ethiopia, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya—to withdraw the continent’s nations en masse from the Rome Statute.

Q: Why is that?

Bruton: There are complaints from the African nations that the ICC has disproportionately—in fact more or less exclusively—targeted African leaders for human rights abuses while giving other continents a pass. There’s an impression that these prosecutions are politically motivated, neo-colonial, or even overtly racist. I fear that the COIE’s referral of Eritrea on charges of crimes against humanity will simply inflame tensions against the ICC, because it does appear to be politically motivated. Why, for example, is Eritrea being targeted by a Commission of Inquiry, when Ethiopia and South Sudan are guilty of similar or worse human rights abuses?

There are also a lot of problems with the Commission of Inquiry’s research methodology in producing the original report. The Commission refused to consider the academic literature on Eritrea; refused to use press reports; refused to speak with experts who’d traveled recently to the country; refused to speak to UN staff and Western diplomats inside the country; and refused to consider the testimony of many thousands of Eritreans who supported the government. They spoke only to refugees who self-identified as having suffered violations of their rights, and because Sudan and Djibouti refused (like Eritrea) to host the COIE, the team was only able to do field research in Ethiopia, which is effectively at war with Eritrea. Obviously, this is shockingly poor scholarship—if a college undergrad tried to ignore all academic scholarship and spoke only to people who agreed with him, he’d get flunked out of school. But this methodology might nevertheless send Eritrea to the ICC. And it has, not surprisingly, provoked a strong sense of outrage among many Eritreans, and I think it will add to this narrative in Africa that the ICC, and Western human rights organizations more broadly, are unjust institutions.

The COIE has spent the second year of its mandate trying to address some of its methodological flaws by speaking to a few experts and a handful of “pro-government” diaspora, but my honest sense is those efforts are too little, too late. I testified before the COIE in March 2016, and was told that the Commission was uninterested in visiting Eritrea because its conclusions were already drawn.

The primary problem with the Commission’s original report is that it failed, in my opinion, to prove that systemic human rights abuses were taking place. The COIE has produced a laundry list of human rights violations that have taken place in the twenty-five years since Eritrea’s independence—but as Western diplomats in Eritrea have privately pointed out, you could examine any country in East Africa and come up with a list of human rights abuses that is four or five or six hundred pages long. The COIE’s report didn’t indicate clearly when most of those abuses had taken place—yesterday or a decade ago?—and also didn’t convincingly demonstrate that the abuses were systemic and ordered by the government, instead of being bad behavior by individual, war-traumatized people in an impoverished country. And I don’t believe that the ICC could meet that burden either, which raises the specter of another failed prosecution, along the lines of the Kenya debacle. I don’t think that the ICC’s mandate in Africa could survive that. So, frankly, I feel strongly that human rights defenders should be wary of pushing the Human Rights Council or the ICC in that direction.

I am critical of Eritrea for not engaging more with the Commission of Inquiry because I have visited Eritrea many times and I believe that if the Commission had been allowed into the country, they would have had a very different impression of what is happening there.

I have made five trips to Eritrea in roughly the past year and have had a good opportunity to observe the country at close hand. Some veteran Horn of Africa reporters—Mary Harper of the BBC and Colette Braekman of Le Soir—have also visited Eritrea very recently and reported positively on the situation there. In particular, and in spite of the COIE’s assertion that diaspora members who return to Eritrea face arbitrary imprisonment and torture, they report that Asmara is flooded by thousands of returnees who have come back to celebrate independence. They have spoken freely, and on camera, with dozens of Eritreans about the political situation in the country, despite the COIE’s assertion that Eritreans exist in a climate of fear without the ability to speak their minds.

I do believe that terrible human rights abuses take place in Eritrea, as they occur throughout the Horn of Africa. There is an urgent need for improvement in human rights and democracy in that country, and I certainly believe that government officials have been cavalier about addressing human rights abuses in the military and in the National Service program. But I do not believe that the human rights situation described in the Commission of Inquiry’s report is reflective of the reality on the ground. The COIE’s claim that Eritrea maintains a “shoot to kill” policy on the border is an especially egregious example—I’ve never heard of any meaningful evidence that would support that claim, except perhaps in a few, highly militarized spaces along the border, where Eritrea is actively in conflict with its neighbors. But even there, the evidence seems thin.

Q: Do you expect the Commission to name names?

Bruton: Yes. Eritrea has been governed by a single person—Isaias Afwerki—since and even before independence. If there is a case to be made that crimes against humanity are occurring, and again I dispute whether that is appropriate, then I would expect the COIE to name Afwerki, and possibly a number of generals and senior-ranking politicians in the country.

Q: Why has the government been reluctant to give the Commission access?

Bruton: Eritrea has been a victim of a number of politically-motivated efforts to undermine the government. That includes sanctions that were put on Eritrea in 2010 for supporting al-Shabaab, which have dragged on for years despite an utter lack of evidence that Eritrea has continued to support the group after providing it with some early, opportunistic support. The fact that the Security Council’s sanctions have been maintained for so many years despite an utter lack of any evidence of Eritrean wrongdoing has created a (not wholly unjustified) conviction in Asmara that these UN mechanisms are created to punish Eritrea, not to independently pursue the truth. The government’s perspective is, roughly, that the Monitoring Group and the COIE are not about terrorism, or about human rights, but are out to punish Eritrea for being in a situation of no-peace-no-war with Ethiopia, which has illegally occupied Eritrean territory since 2002, and the international community is taking Ethiopia’s side because Ethiopia is larger and because it supports US counterterror concerns. So, from their point of view, engaging with the Commission would simply lend legitimacy to a process that is inherently biased against them.

Q: Did the Eritrean government take any measures to improve the human rights situation following the 2015 report?

Bruton: Eritrea has consistently cooperated with the Universal Periodic Review, which is different from the Commission of Inquiry. It is a UN body, but the difference is the Universal Periodic Review is something that all countries submit to, and since Asmara doesn’t feel unjustly targeted by the UPR’s requirements, it has largely cooperated. It is important to emphasize that because we are often given the impression that Eritrea never cooperates with human rights research or human rights groups. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has also recently visited and gained access to a prison. These are small steps in the right direction, but important to recognize, because they suggest that if human rights activists were to take a different, less combative approach, they might be able to work constructively with Asmara to improve the rights situation in the country.

Q: Has the Eritrean government been given a chance to present its side to the Commission?

Bruton: The government has not attempted to work with the COIE, for the reasons I’ve described above. But one of Asmara’s major complaints against the Commission is its refusal to allow pro-government members of the Eritrean diaspora to give testimony. I understand that there have been thousands and thousands of such requests from North America alone. Perhaps because of the volume of these requests, the Commission has not spoken to many of these people. On the other hand, they have spoken to hundreds of people who have offered testimony of human rights abuse. So the criticism of the Commission is that they have taken an entirely one-sided point of view. Again, on that point, Eritrea itself is more than partially to blame. But I also think that the COIE could and should have done much more to address these accusations of bias.

Q: Eritreans make up one of the largest groups of refugees fleeing to Europe. What are your thoughts on the EU plan to reportedly work with the governments of Sudan and Eritrea to stem the flow of these migrants?

Bruton: I believe that the key to improving the situation of human rights in Eritrea is engagement with the current regime to promote development and democratic governance. It will simply be impossible to reform Eritrea’s controversial National Service Program, which the COIE has described as forced labor, without improving the economy. Simply releasing those people to joblessness would cause insecurity, and of course the country would completely cease functioning, since National Service workers staff all of the schools and government offices.

The EU should be working with Eritrea to promote development on Eritrea’s terms. This may not be entirely palatable to European nations, but there is no alternative. There is no viable opposition in Eritrea, and continually adding stress to the current regime in Asmara, for example through sanctions and indictments, is likely to simply make Eritreans more miserable without producing any real change.

There has been a lot of talk about how Eritrea, a nation of 3.5 million people, loses 60,000 people a year to migration, which must be proof in itself that terrible human rights abuses are taking place there.

However, Puerto Rico is also a territory of 3.5 million people, and it loses 50,000 people a year because of the economic crisis it faces. The mere fact that 60,000 people are leaving Eritrea isn’t necessarily proof of a massive human rights crisis. Puerto Rican migration is of course facilitated by access to the United States; but Eritreans have also, until extremely recently, been granted automatic asylum rights in Europe. There are push and pull factors at play.

The costs of migration are high; but so too are the rewards for those who can gain residence in the rich countries of Europe.

When it comes to the treatment of Eritrean refugees in the future, my view is that repatriating them arbitrarily is problematic. It is false to say that people from the diaspora don’t regularly go back to Eritrea; they do. Thousands of wealthy diasporans were just back for the twenty-fifth independence celebrations, which I witnessed first-hand.

Nevertheless, the idea of simply shoveling refugees back to Eritrea where they don’t have economic prospects and face an uncertain political future is problematic, and could in fact be destabilizing to Eritrea, which has—counter to the claims of the COIE—actively promoted migration over the years, both as a source of remittances and as a kind of pressure release valve, an alternative to those who are most frustrated with the regime.

It is far preferable for the European Union to seek to engage with Eritrea to promote development and to improve standards of living in the country.

I am hopeful that the situation in Eritrea will improve. But I also think that a good outcome depends on more constructive efforts by the EU and the United States to improve the economy in Eritrea and to repair the country’s sense of isolation and grievance. Look, I can certainly understand that people in European and American statehouses hate the idea of making nice to President Isaias. But it’s not about him—it’s about the 3.5 million people living in Eritrea with him. They deserve better, and the naming and shaming approach simply isn’t going to help them.

Ashish Kumar Sen is deputy director, editorial, at the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @AshishSen.

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