Misfortune of Eritrea’s Proxy Wars

By

Kumsa Aba Gerba

Eritrea’s inundation into the Somali conflict, by aiding and abetting the UIC including and up to sending combat troops, was a fact repeatedly reported by the UN Monitoring Group. Eritrea does not have a probable cause to militarily get involved in Somalia. It does not have a contiguous border, nor does it have any cultural, trade or ideological tie with Somalia. As has been written by this author about six months ago, Eritrea’s lunge into the Somali crises was a much-deliberated strategy of a Proxy War against Ethiopia that many observers of the Horn of Africa did not quite grasp.

The Prelude: Lobbying USA

As an overture to the Somali conflict, there was an anti Ethiopia lobbying scheme that was highly visible right after the November US mid term election. Various fronts were lined up, right after the election in a concert of many lobbying efforts.

The Eritrean Embassy was out with full force visiting staffers in Congress in an attempt to reeducate them about the gentle and US-friendly side of Eritrea. Ceasing this opportunity, the Eritrean Embassy was bringing the border issue to the forefront by releasing press statements. The lobby was fusing the Somali crisis with the Ethio-Eritrean border impasse and portraying Ethiopia as a flagrant neighbor in the Horn.

The Eritrean lobby was coming out with some good talking points. An Eritrean-American Republican candidate for Congress from Minnesota, who lost the election to Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), was actively lobbying on behalf of Eritrea. After his lose he came out openly and said, “Eritrea is a country of half Muslims and half Christians, with a secular government.  Why in the world would it get cozy with an Islamist government?” This argument was read aloud to the Eritrean Diaspora all over Washington and was being used as a come back line.

The OLF lobby in Washington also became active and emphatically claimed that OLF is not being sponsored by the Union of Islamic Courts. The lobby argued that the last time OLF was in Somalia was in 1999 and they are not operating armed struggle from Somali bases. They also wanted USA to know that the Islamic agenda was not in parity with the objectives of OLF because they said they are an organization of Muslims and Christian.

At the same time, in an attempt to resurrect the inert bill HR5860, some groups affiliated with CUDP-Diaspora carried out petition campaigns and lobbying efforts. Mixing the bill with the Somali crisis, this group typified Ethiopia’s military readiness as an attempt to divert attention from their cause. Some CUDP-Diaspora affiliated weblogs were on the record that Ethiopia should not fight the immergence of the UIC, even after the UIC declared Jihad on Ethiopia. All sorts of political gurus, anesthesiologists turn pundits and attorneys turn political activists went on a ferocious campaign against Ethiopian Government’s position against the UIC.

The Coalition of Odium

Since its inception the UIC was being armed and trained by the Eritrean military and financed by many Arab countries. This was planned, albeit not quite carefully, to submerge Ethiopia in a lengthy and bloody conflict in Somalia, while instigating internal ethnic and political civil war, towards an eventual disintegration of Ethiopia.

Coincidentally or not, the time of creation of AFD, sponsored by the Eritrean regime, as an amalgam of OLF, ONLF, CUDP-Diaspora and EPPF, overlaps with the emergence of the UIC as a political force in Somalia. The plan by Eritrea to engross the CUDP-Diaspora in the AFD mix was nothing but to perpetuate the election related urban unrest in tandem with the military plans of OLF, ONF and EPPF. If all went well, conflict in Somalia, ethnic and liberation war with OLF, ONLF and EPPF election related urban unrest with CUDP supporters, would have heaved Ethiopia into chaos.

The CUDP-Diaspora that got snug with the various ethnic liberation fronts was none other than a small entity with no organizational, social or political structure with in Ethiopia. Before a practical strategy to employ CUDP-Diaspora as a partner in the proxy war was drawn by Eritrea, CUDP-Diaspora [un] fortunately got into an internal turmoil due to financial impropriety of money collected from many people in America.

The Military Misfortune

A pro EPLF writer once upon a time wrote, “The road to peace in the Horn of Africa goes through Asmara.” This writer has a point, in a way. With the whim of the regime in Asmara, there may always be trouble in the Horn. Eritrea will always try sponsor-armed insurgents against all its neighbors and beyond.

The overall Proxy War strategy of Eritrea was quite startling, except the Ethiopian military had a lethal and a surprise military plan. All along, Eritrea was planning to move into the disputed border zone by taking advantage of Ethiopia’s distraction with the conflict in Somalia.

About ten days before the Ethiopian forces engaged in combat against the UIC, in the middle of the night, a continuous gunfire broke near Tsorona on the Central Mereb front of Ethio-Eritrean border. The gunfire however was only from the Eritrean side without any response from Ethiopia and subsided by daybreak. Military observers, aware of the all night gunfire, were probably worried that a new battlefront was about to open on the north.

The Eritrean regime also dispatched about two companies of a ragtag band of “Kefagn” (composed of dissidents from Wolkait) across the Tekeze River in the Humera area of northern Ethiopia.

On a different front, a battalion of OLF fighters were deployed, half of them through Western Ethiopia’s Gambella Region and half of them through Kenya’s border of Southern Ethiopia to the Borena Region.

Military observers say that the various guerrilla forces dispatched in the north, west and south were all “contained” (for lack of a better word) before they coordinated attacks in concert with the war in Somalia.

The ONLF however had already been in action ten days before Ethiopian forces resumed actual combat with the UIC. Armed confrontations and some ambushes were carried out in the Ogaden region. These incidents were openly reported by the ONLF press releases and web sites. These operations of the ONLF were broadcasted on EriTV on daily basis.

Notwithstanding the presence of Ethiopian soldiers along side the TFG, the UN Monitoring Group and the Somali Contact Group have time and again ascertained the presence of Eritrean soldiers alongside the Somali Islamists. However, there are some think tanks and analysts who refuse to believe that Eritrea had combat troops in Somalia. This [dis] belief has more to do with the analysts’ sympathy to Eritrea’s border row with Ethiopia, than the current Somali crisis. In a bemused logic, Sally Healy of the British-based think-tank Chatham House wrote, “the fact there wasn't any sort of confrontation seems to support Eritrea's case. There might not have been the Eritrean presence (in Somalia) that was alleged".

Other analysts say a new Ethiopian-Eritrean flare-up may still break out if the Islamists can muster a powerful insurgency in Somalia like that seen in Iraq, and internal dissent inside Ethiopia increases. This is a plausible conjecture, but one should not base any analysis solely on inputs from Eritrea or by drawing conclusions from United States experience in Iraq. It would be prudent and highly intellectual to study the whole situation in Somalia including clan, religious and political base of the contending parties. At the same time it would help to enlighten oneself about the historical, military, political and strategic plinth of the Ethiopia.

The presence of foreign forces, Eritrean army, OLF, ONLF fighters and Al-Qaeda elements in Somalia, is an undisputed fact. Journalists and independent observers in the war front have confirmed this reality. Yemen and Kenya have apprehended many of these foreign fighters. After the swift route of the UIC from most of Somalia, survivors of the foreign forces are cornered in the southern tip of Somalia. US helicopters and airplanes, in a hunt for the Al-Qaeda elements, are bombing these forces. Logic would dictate that USA is in overt combat with the foreign forces (Eritrean army, OLF, ONLF and Al-Qaeda) and by extension who ever is in alliance with them. We will probably know soon, whom the USA will categorize in the terrorist and enemy combatant list.

One anonymous analyst from Asmara said Eritrea's posture was not as aggressive as many believed, "I don't see the Eritreans making an offensive maneuver unless there's opposition-backed disintegration of Ethiopia.  They'd only get involved if they thought it needed a push." This analyst is on the mark about the motives of the maneuver but not about the futile combats waged by Eritrea, because it indeed engaged in both direct as well as proxy wars.

Eritrea’s maneuver of proxy wars against Ethiopia has been an ongoing obsession. It is not because Eritrea does not maneuver for a military push all the time, but it is rather because it always faces failures and misfortunes. This time, it was because the Ethiopian strike was dramatic and with a lightening speed, that broke the backbone of the UIC, that mortified Eritrea’s plan and more over that stunned the whole world. The aggressive posture of Eritrea is always eminent, but it failed to execute this time and once again. As a Western diplomat in Nairobi said: "It was the dog that didn't bite - for now."

The author is an Ethiopian born; he is a graduate student of International Relations in USA. He can be reached at abagerba@yahoo.com