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A guide to the latest war front between Eritrea and Djbouti.

 Washington,Dc ( Editorial : galbeed.com) The recent conflict flaring up in Horn of Africa is truly a bad taste in the mouth of any true African, and leaves one wondering what the future holds for a continent still struggling to get a hold on the realities of technological advancement and to mitigate the food crisis in the world.

The tiny Eritrea has had a war with all its neighboring countries; Djibouti, a democratic and stable country, was the last one that has been bitten by la bete noire of Horn of Africa, Eritrea. The war with Djibouti has many dimensions and it could only be explained in the context of geopolitics of Horn of Africa; we will attempt to tackle the root causes of the recent skirmishes along the border of Djibouti and Eritrea in this paper.

First, the causal factor is the megalomaniac dictator Isayas Afrerwoki that has been ruling Eritrea in an iron fist. We have heard reports of Human rights of at least thousands have been slaughtered in towns in Eritrea, slaughtered by people they had lived with for years, people they had come to call their brothers and sisters all these years of Eritrean struggle for independence. In Eritrean language, they are called Hagdif, special police forces aka old securities killer men in the period of cold war. In the beginning of 2008, ninety five thousands Eritrean have fled the country and went to Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. Many youths, who were afraid to be forcefully recruited in the army, have perished in the desert or executed if they were caught by the Eritrean soldiers.

But another form of repression and massacre is however being perpetuated on the innocent Eritrean in Eritrea by the same Eritrean armies whom they thought liberating them from Ethiopia, and yet the international communities still fold their hands and watch like the zombies that we have been taught to be all along. The same horror story in the days of Idi Amin, and Mengestu is unfolding in front of our eyes.

Eritrea has been thought to usher in the democratic path in 1993 when they got their independence from Ethiopia; however, the mad man of Eritrea, Isayas Aferwoki, has dashed the hope and aspirations of Eritrean poor people. He has imposed a system of one man rule and rounded up and put in jail his own comrades in the heyday of Eritrean liberation front. For example, the highest eleven Eritrean People Liberation Front political bureau members were arrested and nobody knew where they ended up. Recently, Nur , a veteran and well respected founding father of Eritrean liberation front, had died in a jail without accessing medical assistance. The list will go on and on.

Moreover, ninety-seven per cent of Eritrean live in poverty and this trend will continue under the current system; therefore, the peace loving people of the world should reconsider whether interfering at this stage is best for the people of Eritrea. As one Eritrean professor Kedane told to PressTV, “He thinks Eritrea’s problem with democracy is not a lack of good ideas or how to govern; rather it is a problem of lack of rule of law, lack of respect for other human persons, a system where everyone that has godfather survives and the rest go to hell.” A system where the poor gets poorer and no one cares; a system where all the past cadres of Isayas accolades have a lion share in the corruption machine and most of them have never been to school nor have an idea of Eritrea’s geographical location, economic, and social condition; a system where a former speaker of the house allocated or used about 625 million nagfa to furnish his home.

The second factor that has exacerbated the situation is the proxies war and geopolitical interest of Western world. Somalia is the bone of contention among Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia is supported by US and on the other hand, Eritrea has a tacit endorsement by Iran.

As one expert of Horn of Africa put it, though 98% of Somalis are Muslim and long without a functioning government, southern Somalia has not, so far, ripened into the fully fledged terrorist threat that many have feared it would. This year, however, as Ethiopia engaged Islamist Somali militiamen, invaded Somalia. She became the site of a nascent regional war. The primary combatants are Somalia’s secular Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which is internationally recognized and politically supported by the U.S., and the Islamist “Islamic Courts Union” that holds sway on the ground. They are backed militarily by two fierce rivals, Ethiopia and Eritrea, respectively. The military balance appears indeterminate. Ethiopia has deployed 15,000 to 20,000 troops in Somalia. Eritrea has provided arms to the Islamic Courts militias and sent only about 2,000 troops to support them; but the Islamic Courts hold more territory than the TFG and have greater indigenous assets and popular support. Even if Somalia does not become a terrorist redoubt, it could become a potent fount of regional geopolitical instability and perhaps the next “field of proxies’ war” unless diplomatic attention is rallied to rescue the situation.

Ethiopia has a politically dominant Christian tradition and is vigorously opposed to Islamism. Ogaden National Liberation Front, a Somali ethnic group aligned with the Islamic Courts, has sought to force the secession of Ethiopia’s heavily ethnic Somali Ogaden region, and Ethiopian troops were responsible for eliminating several training camps run by rebels in the late 1990s. Although about half Muslim and half Christian, Eritrea’s support for the Islamic Courts rests on its strategic enmity toward Ethiopia. The Islamic Courts are also politically and financially backed by several Muslim states, including Egypt, Djibouti, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya and Sudan. Ethiopia’s preventive intervention against the Islamic Courts –tacitly approved by the U.S.–prompted them to declare war against Ethiopia in November. Meanwhile, on Dec. 7 the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted U.S.-sponsored Resolution 1725, authorizing the deployment of an African force in Somalia to protect the TFG and partially lifting a weapons embargo to Somali factions, which stands to strengthen the TFG and secular militias. The resolution spurred the Islamic Courts to declare war against any U.N.-sanctioned force, and the Eritrean government branded it “an attack on the Somali people.” Foreign groups are reported to be infiltrating Somali territory already.

The volatile situation in Somalia presents the West with a thorny and immediate problem. To quell geopolitical tensions created by Ethiopia and Eritrea’s intervention, a U.N.-sanctioned force would have to be led by a major power. Yet even if such a power could afford the troops and materiel, the insertion of a significant number of Western-led foreign troops would run the risk of attracting (as in Iraq) still more foreign fighters to Somalia.

The U.N. and the African Union (AU) support the TFG, and the former has authorized peacekeeping troops. In hopes of minimizing regional tensions, the Security Council resolution bars the participation of neighboring nations Kenya and Djibouti as well as Ethiopia in any peacekeeping contingent, and limits the notional outside force to physically protecting the TFG in and near Baidoa, and to training TFG security forces. But there is little manpower available for any serious effort. The resolution also does not deal with foreign forces already in Somalia. While the resolution is nobly intended to promote political negotiations between the TFG and the Islamic Courts Union, coupled with Ethiopia’s substantial military commitment to the TFG it may have had the effect of providing the TFG with enough political cover to defer dialogue. Furthermore, only Uganda has offered troops, and has done so ambivalently and against domestic public opinion. In any case, though trained by the French and the British, Ugandan troops would probably be both numerically and professionally inadequate.

Although Washington would probably provide logistical support and some funding for a Uganda-led force, it has essentially charged Uganda and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)–most of whose members (Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and, less rigidly, Kenya) oppose intervention–with executing Resolution 1725. Accordingly, the military mission, in any case of dubious political value, is unlikely to gather momentum. Meanwhile, rough military parity allows the two Somali factions to procrastinate diplomatically.

While at times disingenuously denying that it has deployed troops in Somalia, Ethiopia has indicated that any troops are intended as a deterrent and that it is not eager to engage in a long war. The Islamic Courts, for their part, have demonstrated a degree of caution. Fatalities still probably number only dozens rather than hundreds. Thus far, the major powers have tacitly allowed Ethiopia and Eritrea to keep assets deployed in Somalia while pressuring both to refrain from escalating to all-out war. But these weak constraints cannot produce operational equilibrium between the TFG and the Islamic Courts Union for long enough to allow effective major-power attention to gravitate to Somalia before war arises. However, this month, the political climate has changed in the favor of Somalis and Djibouti has masterminded a fruitful conference. This has made nervous Eritrean to lose her grip on the Islamic Court and decided to send her troops to the border of Djibouti and Eritrea. Islamic Court has splintered in two camps; one is based in Eritrea and the other is in Djibouti led by the most prominent and moderated Islamic leader, Sheik Sharif Ahmed.

The United Nations (UN) Security Council has begun to push Somalia’s fragile government toward direct peace talks with the opposition, holding separate meetings with both sides in neighbouring Djibouti. The Associated Press (AP) reported that the fact that the talks could not take place in Somalia because of the lack of security, reflected the enormous challenge in trying to reconcile the government and its Islamic opponents.

 

 The transitional government has been lobbying for UN peacekeepers to replace a 2,600-strong African Union force now in Somalia. In early May, the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution saying it will consider deploying UN peacekeepers “at an appropriate time,” subject to progress in improving political reconciliation and security conditions on the ground.

However, a top official in the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, based in Eritrea, was pessimistic before the meetings began. The official, Zakariye Haji Mohamoud, called the Djibouti talks “part of a clear, ongoing conspiracy against Somalia pushed by the UN special representative for Somalia.” “It’s aim is only to derail or break the backbone of the insurgency against the Ethiopian occupiers and their stooges,” he said. This was the last attempt of Eritrean regime to stop the conference in Djibouti, but she did not manage to do so.

At the end, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and a faction of an Eritrea-based opposition alliance who have been holding talks in Djibouti, have signed an agreement on the cessation of hostilities, with all sides expressing optimism about the outcome.

“This is a very crucial first step toward lasting peace and reconciliation in our country,” Ahmed Abdisalam, the deputy prime minister and leader of the government delegation, told IRIN. The agreement, he added, marked the beginning of the end to Somalia’s long suffering. “Last night we initialed an agreement that we can build on,” he said. Abdirahman Abdishakuur, the leader of the delegation for the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, better known as “The Alliance”, said the success of the agreement would depend “on the commitment, not only of the parties but also of the support and commitment of the international community”.

He called for the deployment of international forces. “If the international community puts pressure on Ethiopians [soldiers deployed in Somalia] to leave and deploy an acceptable international force then we will have a successful agreement,” Abdishakuur said.

 

Last week, Eritrean regime has exhausted her last tactics to derail the conference and acknowledged the peace deal was imminent; then she decided to invade Djibouti as result of many of its soldiers crossing the border to Djibouti and UN has condemned the act of Eritrea rogue regime.

With the EU’s diplomatic sponsorship and residual U.S. support, such an effort might enforce a pause and bring the four principals–the TFG, the Islamic Courts, Ethiopia and Eritrea–to the table. Otherwise, only further escalation is likely to bring decisive major-power attention to the Horn of Africa.

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