Eritrea, What's next

Photo of the Eritrean Presidential Palace, courtesy of Tripadvisor

It’s no secret that Eritrea is stuck in a rather untenable situation. Its former coloniser, Ethiopia, yearns for sea access to the west, Djibouti is stuffed with international military bases to the south, Sudan seems to experience never-ending turmoil to the north and Yemen, the subject of many of the world’s headlines thanks to the Houthis, threatens any attempts to do anything with its coast. What’s next for Eritrea? Can it finally catch a break?

Well, there's at least one breath of fresh air. Ethiopia’s recent deal with Somaliland eases pressure from the nation’s biggest adversary. You'd be forgiven for thinking Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki were still on good terms considering the PR stunts of just a few years ago, but relations have never been more strained. Thankfully for Eritrea, however, the immediate (and vocal) threat of invasion for the sake of sea access has been quelled by the rather controversial deal that Abiy has managed to make with the autonomous yet internationally unrecognised region of Somaliland, exchanging sea access for recognition and shares in the state airline. 

One must look at this from the perspective of the PFDJ, as if you were President Afwerki. Sure, Ethiopia is being internationally condemned for the deal, nothing new especially from the perspective of the Eritrean regime, but the pressure on Eritrea has subsided. Sure, the country is still surrounded by unstable and/or militarised neighbours, but, at the very least, the country is in a state of relative calm not seen since Isaias was taking photos laughing with his Ethiopian counterpart. Again, though, there’s one big catch; Isaias has just turned 78, and he’s not getting any younger. Sure, there might not be any immediate threats from abroad, but from within? 

It’s important to emphasise two points when it comes to Eritrean “politics”. One is that Eritrea is possibly the most repressed, secretive state in the world. Most of the world’s knowledge of the nation, like North Korea, comes from whistleblowers who have managed to escape and move abroad. When a country of somewhere around 4-6 million has a diaspora over a tenth the size of its population, no matter how much propaganda is thrown at them, someone will eventually speak up. Second is that Isaias doesn’t have a clear successor. Some say that his son is being groomed as Isaias’ direct heir to the Presidency, a post he has held since 1993 without elections or even a parliament to vote on legislation, and others say that he isn’t interested in politics in the slightest. 

If his son doesn’t take over, what happens? A paranoid, militarised and jingoistic one-man dictatorship can't survive without the man who runs it all, the face of the country. When the Tewahedo (Orthodox) church, which around 40-50% of the population adhere to, is controlled so closely by the government that its former patriarch, Abune Antonios, is forcefully deposed and put under house arrest for the rest of his life, with the church’s position of Patriarch now being vacant, who do you install as head of government? That’s a question that looms over Eritrea and its large diaspora, many of whom still have family in the country. 

Assuming that dissidents are able to, when Afwerki inevitably passes, organise and form a government of their own, Eritrea might have one last chance at avoiding becoming a truly failed state. A new constitution was drawn up and an election planned in the early years of the country, Isaias used to advocate for democracy in his youth. All hope rests on this reality being the one we live in, one where, for the sake of the starving, impoverished and oppressed nation, that they’ll be able to get a glimpse of freedom once more, that democracy will finally come to a nation run by one man since its independence. 

Whether this will happen, or whether Eritrea will devolve into anarchy like Somalia has and Ethiopia has come close to, remains to be seen.

Author prefers that their name remains unpublished