My first diary here on DailyKos called attention to the questionable diplomacy and foreign policy of the United States with respect to the unrest of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. The State Department threatened to add Eritrea to its list of state sponsors of terrorism based upon an unremarkable report of a U.N. authority monitoring the Somali arms embargo that Eritrea had been arming Islamic militants in opposition to the Ethiopia-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The decline in diplomatic relations between Eritrea and the U.S. continues. In early September Somali opposition groups met in Asmara, Eritrea's capital, in symbolic contrast with an earlier conference among TFG leaders. Eritrea has made clear its blame of the U.S. and the international community for not enforcing the decision of an independent commission demarcating the border between the two countries following their '98-'00 war. Today the border commission expires, with a whimper of international concern and consternation.
It's hard to see the looming threat of war with Ethiopia as you walk Eritrea's tree-lined boulevards or enter its Italian-style cafes.
But beneath the Eritrean capital's tranquil surface, many Eritreans say they are worried about a repeat of the 1998-2000 border war that killed some 70,000 people.
"It's so dangerous now. They say the troops are so close at some points it's like this," says a middle-aged Eritrean, holding his index fingers a few inches apart.
Reuters
To conflate the Horn's dissonance with the "global war on terror" is at once illuminating and grossly misleading. As I argued in my diary linked above- this is a regional conflict involving parties with, at best, a tenuous connection to international terrorism as we understand it today. Eritrea has no common interest with Islamists apart from regional opposition to Ethiopia and, similarly, the U.S. has chosen to back Ethiopia for no apparant cause beyond opposition to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) opposition in Somalia. The political choices of our country have been based upon strategic considerations, much as has been the case with Pakistan, Libya and Sudan... but it seems we should more readily question whether such decisions fulfill our commitment to peace, human rights and the prosperity of these regions.
They have not.
The Prime Ministers of Ethiopia and Eritrea, Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afewerki, have played a political game over the past several years. Eritrea was part of the original "coalition of the willing" supporting our military intervention in Iraq. In '02, Donald Rumsfeld visited Eritrea and met with Afewerki evaluating strategic cooperation on anti-terrorism:
Analysts suspect that one reason Eritrea is so eager to court the American military is to outflank Ethiopia, which is considered one of Washington's key allies in the region.
After his meeting with Mr. Rumsfeld today, the Eritrean president vowed to stand by the United States in its fight against terrorism. ''We are not offering anything to get anything from the United States,'' Mr. Afewerki said. ''We have very limited resources, but we are willing and prepared to use these resources in any way that is useful to combat terrorism.''
In recent weeks, Eritrea's lobbyists in Washington have sought to play up their country's importance in the region. They point out that Eritrea -- half Christian and half Muslim -- has resisted joining the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic States and would have no qualms about assisting the United States in an attack against Iraq.
NY Times
Five years later, Zenawi has played the game more effectively, lending Ethiopian military support against the ICU in Somalia and earning international indifference to Ethiopia's continuing recalicitrance regarding the border agreement and little question of its dubious human rights record, and this political game has served to intensify rather than assuage the regional rivalry of the two countries. If the end result is war, we will have accomplished the opposite of our goal in opposing international terrorism, and the long-tortured Horn of Africa will have deteriorated to a point where it once again might be considered a true source of international terror.
This administration is not going to change. We must hope that the new government of the U.S. will recognize that bush foreign policy has not simply been mistaken in the implementation of its choices, but that it has approached these sensitive issues from a perspective that has been both ignorant and self-destructive.
Incidentally, while the "Jack Kimball" of the Reuters link may be a extraordinarily distant cousin sharing a common ancestor back somewhere in western England, he otherwise bears no relationship with the diarist.