- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
- - - -
The Progressive Response 9 September 1997 Vol. 1, No. 13
Editor: Tom Barry
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -
The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a
joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute
for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF)
briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic
mail
versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive
Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of
the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S.
foreign policy issues.
The purpose of the "Issues of Debate" and "Comments" sections of PR
is to serve as a forum to discuss issues of controversy within the
progressive community--not to express the institutional position of
either the IRC or IPS. We encourage comments to the FPIF briefs and
to opinions expressed in PR. We're working to make the Progressive
Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via
e-mail to irc1@zianet.com (that's irc, then the number one NOT the
letter L.) Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Updates & Out-Takes
Eritrea
II. Issues of Debate
Phil Robertson Replies To Cambodia Critique
III. Resources
Cross Border Links Ezine
-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - -
-
I. Updates & Out-Takes
**ERITREA**
By Dan Connell
Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia became official in May 1993,
through a United Nations-monitored referendum in which 99.8% of the
voters opted for sovereignty. The former Italian colony had been linked
to Ethiopia in 1952 when the U.S., looking for ways to strengthen its
original African ally in Addis Ababa and determined to set up military
bases in Eritrea, imposed a UN-sponsored federation. Ten years later,
Ethiopia dissolved the pact (again with U.S. backing) and forcibly
annexed the strategic Red Sea territory, prompting Eritrean nationalists
to launch an armed struggle for independence. Over the next 30 years,
Eritrea became a cold war battlefield with dizzying political
turnabouts.
Ethiopia was a linchpin of Washington's efforts to control sub-Saharan
Africa starting in the 1940s when the rest of the continent was still
under European rule. Following World War II, U.S. advisers designed
EthiopiaÕs entire infrastructure, from the Western-style parliament and
the education system to the armed forces. From 1952 to 1976, more
than of all U.S. aid to Africa went to Ethiopia, including the first
supersonic jet fighters on the continent. In exchange, Ethiopia provided
troops to U.S.-led military operations in Korea and the Congo. Ethiopia
also granted basing rights for the U.S. navy in the Eritrean port of
Massawa and for the National Security Agency in the Eritrean capital,
Asmara, to establish the largest overseas spy facility in the world.
When the Eritrea war heated up in the 1960s, the U.S. sent Special
Forces units to train Ethiopians in the latest counterinsurgency
techniques.
In 1974, an Ethiopian military committee known as the Derg overthrew
the 82-year-old, pro-Western Emperor Haile Selassie. Two years later
the Derg declared Ethiopia "socialist," broke relations with
Washington, and realigned the country with Moscow. The Soviets
promptly pumped in over $11 billion in arms, along with high-level
military advisers. The U.S. then shifted to a strategy of encirclement,
arming Ethiopia's neighbors (Somalia, Sudan, and Kenya) and
developing a new base on the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia.
Soviet aid enabled Ethiopia to reoccupy Eritrea's major towns, but the
war ground to a stalemate. It was punctuated by bloody battles in which
tens of thousands perished on both sides until 1988, when the
Eritreans, now led by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF),
regained the offensive.
In May 1991 the EPLF routed the Ethiopian army near Asmara,
winning the war with almost no outside help. Simultaneously it helped
opposition forces in Ethiopia topple the regime there. After a two-year
cooling-off period, the Eritreans voted to establish their own state.
With
the cold war over, the Horn of Africa lost much of its strategic
significance, and the U.S. largely abandoned its one-time interests
there. The war left Eritrea in ruins, however. Upon independence in
1993, the country's per capita income was less than $150, compared to
$330 for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. Since then, with minimal
foreign aid or influence, the Eritreans have been constructing the
physical and political infrastructure of a new country. In 1998, under a
newly adopted constitution, they will hold national elections and
complete the postwar transition.
The U.S., having orchestrated Eritrea's initial link to Ethiopia and
then
backing its annexation, bears major responsibility for the bitter war
that
followed. Once Moscow displaced Washington in Addis Ababa in
1977, the U.S., mistrusting the Eritrean movement's independent-left
politics, shifted to a policy of Soviet containment. This involved
arming
pro-Western states surrounding Ethiopia while ignoring the continued
heavy fighting in Eritrea--a policy described by then-Deputy Secretary
of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker as the pursuit of "negative
strategic interests."
Since Eritrea's hard-won independence, the U.S. has sent mixed
signals. As the recent product of a successful liberation struggle with
overwhelming popular support, the Eritrean government continues to
take a leading role in economic construction and all other aspects of
national life. So far there is only one political party (though it is
organizationally and financially separate from the state), the media is
government-controlled, and activities by both domestic and foreign
NGOs are restricted. These policies conflict directly with WashingtonÕs
agenda of unregulated markets and multiparty politics.
One of the first U.S. acts after Eritrea's independence was to deliver a
list of businesses and government departments to be immediately
privatized. When the Eritrean government rebuffed these demands, it
received no development assistance in 1992. Later, however, the U.S.
provided financial assistance for the constitution commission, for
demobilization of former combatants, and for expansion of the health
care system. Currently, the Pentagon provides various services to
Eritrea, including de-mining assistance and support for
professionalizing the armed forces. State Department officials,
however, voice impatience with the pace of economic and political
"liberalization." Economic development assistance--averaging less
than $10 million per year--has been extremely modest.
For its part, the Eritrean government insists it must first resuscitate
war-damaged industries in order to sell them at better-than-bargain-
basement rates. It also cites the highly participatory process under way
in villages and neighborhoods, where people are choosing leaders in
fiercely contested local elections, as evidence of a long-range
commitment to real democratization.
A New Foreign Policy Toward Eritrea
U.S. policy in the Horn of Africa was driven for decades by cold war
imperatives. As superpower allegiances shifted, billions of dollars in
heavy arms flowed to corrupt autocrats like Haile Selassie in Ethiopia,
Siad Barre in Somalia, and Jaafar el-Nimeiri in Sudan. This helped to
sink the resource-rich region into a morass of war, migration, poverty,
and horrific famine.
After decades of pouring arms into the region, future U.S. policy
toward Eritrea should be based upon a sustained commitment to
reconstruction. During their liberation struggle, the Eritreans
demonstrated the capacity to design and implement their own relief and
development programs, and the country has the potential to become a
model of efficient, self-reliant development. Washington should
facilitate Asmara's efforts through direct, bilateral government-to-
government assistance to rebuild and develop the countryÕs roads,
bridges, railroads, communications, and power-generation capacity.
The U.S. practice of channeling a high proportion of its aid through
private U.S. organizations is not appropriate in Eritrea at this time.
Instead, the U.S. should consider providing grants to key ministries
responsible for agriculture, industry, mines, and marine resources and
should support promising government initiatives in such areas as
education and public health.
The U.S. often tends to identify democracy with simply holding
multiparty elections. The recent record of such elections in African
countries is decidedly mixed, and, in any case, such processes do not
address the questions of how to avoid ethnic fragmentation and how to
foster democratic participation by rural Africans. The key challenge is
to bring nonliterate, rural majorities from diverse communities into a
national political process. Eritrea is one of several African states
experimenting with building new forms of bottom-up democracy. Its
leaders argue that the development of a national political culture
including formerly disenfranchised citizens--peasant farmers, women,
ethnic minorities--is a precondition for the creation of a stable
political
system that does not simply pit the urban leaderships of competing
ethnic factions against each other in a battle for control of the spoils
of
office.
Although there are areas of concern in Eritrea that should not be
ignored--controls the state still maintains on the media, continuing
restrictions on independent political activity, and constraints on the
establishment of nongovernmental organizations, for example--this
new nation is clearly a work-in-progress that needs time to mature. The
U.S. should back off from pressuring Eritrea to impose a pluralistic
political model drawn up in Washington and should instead support
Asmara's plan to build such a system in stages, rooted within its own
history and culture. The U.S. could, for example, provide funds for
Eritrea's remarkable multilingual education system and its homegrown
adult literacy campaign.
Today, Eritrea maintains particularly close relations with Ethiopia. The
two erstwhile enemies have open borders and are engaged in numerous
joint economic projects. Together with Uganda, they have taken the
lead in expanding the function of the Inter-Governmental Authority for
Development (IGAD) from drought relief toward resolving crises such
as that in Sudan and generating joint infrastructure projects to promote
regional integration. The U.S. should support these initiatives.
The post-independence experience of other liberation movements raises
questions as to whether the Eritrean government's highly centralized
structures and controls can assure democracy in the long run.
Nevertheless, the Eritrean government enjoys wide internal popularity,
and its commitments to economic and political self-development and
regional stabilization deserve respect and support from Washington.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -
Dan Connell is an independent research journalist and development
consultant based in Gloucester, MA. He has traveled extensively in the
Horn of Africa and has written extensively about the region. He
authored the FPIF brief on Sudan (Vol. 2, No. 41), and the above
article is excerpted from FPIF on Eritrea (Vol. 2, No 45).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -
Sources for More Information on Eritrea:
Africa Policy Information Center/Washington Office on Africa
Email: apic@igc.apc.org & woa@igc.apc.org
Website: http://www.igc.org/apic/index.html
African Rights
Email: afrights@gn.apc.org
Center of Concern
Email: coc@igc.apc.org
Grassroots International
Email: grassroots@igc.apc.org
Human Rights Watch/Africa
Email: hrwnyc@hrw.org
Africa News On-Line
http://www.africanews.org
Eritrea on the Net
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/dmulholl/eritrea/eritrea.html