Don’t Cry for Me Asmara, just sing Other People’s Freedom

Mulugeta Alemu

9 September 2007

Africa’s hidden modernist and beautiful city of Asmara is hosting a congregation of spoilers and jihadists. As I coin down some of my reflections on what is going on in this beautiful and small city of Asmara for the last several years, I reckoned the darker side of its old buildings. They now host the largest assembly of suicide bombers, terrorists, and militant jihadists. In a way what the Eritrean rogue regime tout as Somali Congress for Liberation and Reconstitution, is just one among a series of flawed, strategically naive policy of a desperate government which has let down the freedom for which it has so courageously fought for several decades.

It is so ironic that a city, which smells the scent of old men and women abandoned by their sons and daughters, does nothing but talk of other peoples’ freedom. Asmara talks of other people’s freedom when its youth is in non-ending military camps. Its citizens are daily fleeing their country at what ever cost. The country neither has a parliament nor political parties. Eritrea never held an election. There is no single free press and the Government continues to arrest, harass and kill journalist who even worked for the state media. There is no freedom of religion and many have been thrown to jail and military camps just because they tried to exercise their right to worship. Even the arch bishop of the dominant Orthodox Church has been incarcerated. The country does not have functioning universities. Eritrean youth attend school in military camps. 

The City of Rebels

The only thing the Government seemed to master is a continuous and non-ending hospitality to rebel groups, jihadists and insurgents. Eritrean government is involved in countless problem spots across Africa in places such as Darfur, Somalia, Chad. CAR and Congo. To the surprise of many, the US Congress Foreign Relations Committee recently named Eritrea as supporting the Tamil Tigers in Siri Lanka. Some analysts listed around 13 armed groups the Eritrean government is currently financing, arming and harbouring only against Ethiopia.

Reports from the UN abound regarding the massive military support Eritrea has been providing to Islamists in Mogadishu. The UN Group of Expert monitoring Security Council’s embargo on the movement of arms to Somalia reported in mid-July that Eritrea has been providing massive small and heavy armaments to the extremists in Somalia. These weapons are used for attacking the African Union forces and innocent civilians.

The Economist (2 August 2007) reported that the Council’s permanent members are increasingly disturbed by the destabilising role of Eritrea in the sub-region. The Chicago Tribune (1 August 2007) projected a grim picture of facts on the ground in Eritrea that the government is using its external meddling to ignore.

Asmara naively defiant

Should any Ethiopian official be ballistic about Somalia’s islamist militant conference in Asmara? Hardly. The conference has shown to the world the true intent and plan of the regime in Eritrea. Look who has remerged from what appeared from what seemed like an eternal hiding, Hassan Dahir Aweys. The disgruntled and discredited jihadists are meeting in Asmara to deliberate upon what they consider to be an effective military resistance to the TFG and Ethiopian forces in Somalia. This proves what the Ethiopian government and others were trying to tell the international community-Eritrea’s Government is actively and militarily supporting the Islamists and the criminal insurgency in Somalia. Though Asmara’s overt support and armament supplies to the Somali jihadists and spoilers is a non-brainier, it is perhaps good that the Eritrean government is shedding its masks. 

New Faces of Militantism

The organisers of the Asmara conference are keen on creating the impression that the meeting participants are not just jehadists but also members of the Diaspora communities and civic society. But it is a very difficult theme to sell given the fact that what the conference managed to come up with is again only the old military and jihadist threats against the TFG and Ethiopia.

Asmara threatening the US

In his several sppeeches, interviews and loughbly silly anti-American editorials by his Minstry of Information, President Issayas has made his anger over the US very cear. His anti-amercan sentiments reminds many of those long speeches used to be made by Communist Rogues of the Banana Republics of the Americas and the Carribean penusula. Rainer Chr. Henning calls Eritrea’s approach “loony policies” where the Government continues to write Soviet-Style protest communiqués each time some one criticizes it. I have made several observation earlier that the thinking behind such public antagonism of the US and its policy in the Horn of Africa is to shore up local and Middle Eastern Support for Eritrea.

Partly, an ambelivable dose of naivite on the part of Eritea explains the incresingly detriorating relationship between the Red Sea state and the US. The Eritrean government thinks that the US can even be forced to revise the foundamentals of its foreign policy in order to appease Eritrea. Eritrean president noted on August 24, 2007 that “If the situation has to really change for the better, then the Americans must change their ways of thinking. They should stop making all manner of threats against us. They have to stop all activities aimed at harming our national interests. Regional peace is being threatened through their interference.”.

Some are dangerously trying to sale this to the the American Foreign Policy establishment. In a recent policy discussion organised by the Center for International and Strtaegic Studies on 5 September 2007, Ken Menkhaus, Professor of Political Science from Davidson College, North Carolina argued that the US should factor in Eritrean legitimate grievances and role in Somalia. Of course we have heard this several times before. It has been suggested that America’s support for Ethiopia’s stance on the Ethio-Eritrea border problem is fuelling a crisis in Somalia. The problem with this analysis is two fold. To the chagrin of Ethiopians, the US has publicly criticized Ethiopia over the border. Secondly, it attempts to absolve Eritrea from any responsibility from its illegal interventions in Somalia.

Can Eritrea afford what is continues todo

Absolutely not. The securtiy, political and financial cost of Eritrea’s adventure is prohibitively high. But it is likely that the renegade Eritrean leader will continue in his rouge policy. There are evidences in Sudan, Chad, Car, Siri Lanka and even Congo that the regime has developed an inricate underground networks of interest where it continues to gain economic benefits. Moreover, there are forces from Middle East and the diapora communities which continue to fill the Government’s coffers.

But for the old city of Asmara, the future is bleak and darker. As the lines from Don’t Cry for me Argentina lyrics  go,

So I chose freedom
Running around, trying everything new
But nothing impressed me at all
I never expected it to

But Eritrea and its people deserve the dividend of freedom- peace.