"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on" Reads the US Embassy Web Page in Asmara

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on" reads the US Embassy Webpage in Asmara, Eritrea. Those were encouraging words of Franklin D. Roosevelt often quoted during difficult times. The relationship between the US and Eritrea is truly in tatters. The American embassy’s website is full of reports on Eritrea which accuse the Government of Eritrea systematically violating religious and press freedoms. It also prominently displays the briefing given by America’s top diplomat on African affairs who pointedly said that Eritrea “is creating a lot of problem for Africa.”

President Isaias Afeworki of the little red-sea state of Eritrea has finally reacted. Pro-government websites and blogs had earlier announced his much awaited briefing. His press briefing follows Jendayi Frazer’s in which she had threatened Eritrea over its unlawful support to terrorists and insurgents in Somalia. President Isaias`s scathing criticism of the US dumps expectation that the Eritrean leader may play the ball carefully.

His two hours interview, which comes within the context of a fast deteriorating bilateral relation between the two countries, manipulates a high pitched anti-American sentiment aimed at shoring up his new image as the tough little African prince saying no to a superpower.

President Isaias accused the US of fuelling conflicts in the Horn of Africa and attempting to promote “a strategy of dominance and monopoly.” He also charged that the Bush administration is weaving conspiracy to undermine Eritrea’s national interests. The current stalemate between the two countries is a result of situation in Somalia and the resistance of the Eritrean people, he further stated.

Eritrea’s handling or mishandling of the crisis with the US is indicative of the characters of the regime. Some commentators are even amused by Eritrea’s rather crude and naïve reactions. Rainer Chr. Henning calls it “loony policies” where the Government continues to write Soviet-Style protest communiqués each time some one criticizes it. Its Ministry of Information even tried to publish a sort of human rights report on the US. In its editorial on 4 August 2007, it said,

The US Government as a result of its misguided policy is unable to have the trust even of its own subjects. The government is denying its people the right to privacy by bugging every house with sophisticated transmitters and listening to every telephone and other electronic communications between individuals and even between spouses. Hence, the Administration has dragged the American people into an abominable life full of frustration and uncertainty.

Every one, save the Human Rights Watch ironically, has publicly spoken against Eritrean intervention in Somalia. Eritrea’s continued and massive provision of military support to extremists and terrorist groups in Somalia was identified in the July 2007 report of the UN Independent Monitoring Experts on Arms Embargo in Somali. Eritrean armed groups are daily terrorising innocent civilians and are attacking government officials and institutions.

Eritrea is also mishandling the outstanding border issue with Ethiopia. The 18 July 2007 report of the UN Secretary General made it abundantly clear that Eritrea has massively violated the Temporary Security Zone established as a buffer zone between the two countries following the 1998-2000 war which Eritrea sacrificed the lives of so many of its youth to lose. Ethiopia’s authorities can hardly be happy with Jendayi Frazer’s view that both Eritrea and Ethiopia violated their commitments. As the resport of the Secretary General clearly attests, it was Eritrea which violated its commitments. But the Eritrean president still castigates the US for its “blind support” for Ethiopia’s stand on the border. So the reason for his angst should be sought somewhere else.

Eritrea’s current emotional volcano is a carefully crafted policy of demonising the US and its perceived allies in the region in order to shore up the regime’s fast decreasing support base from within and abroad. It is a means of manipulating the Eritrean population with fear. It is simply a foreign policy based on manipulation of fear. It is designed to project to Eritrean that the great superpower is conspiring with Ethiopia to undermine their country’s territorial integrity and its regional influence. This belies the assumption of the Government that it is only when Eritreans are continuously controlled in fear of the fabricated designs of Ethiopia, and when Eritrea’s new middle Easter allies are reassured that a new anti-American establishment is on the making can the increasingly beleaguered regime’s survival is guaranteed.