Since the advent of the Cold War, the foreign policy of the United States has been defined not by the stated ideals the United States is committed to (freedom, democracy, human rights), but by real politic and choosing of “lesser evil.” This had resulted in the United States allying itself with undemocratic and autocratic regimes in Africa, Asia and Latin America who were considered reliable in checkmating the Soviet Union. In a bold move, President George W. Bush is now calling this 60-year US policy of appeasing tyrants a mistake and calling on his nation to base future relationships on objective evaluation of the governments. This is a radical and long-overdue correction that we, (and we believe all people ruled by oppressive governments) welcome wholeheartedly.
On November 6, in a prepared speech addressing the National Endowment for Democracy, Mr. Bush had a compelling response to those who always make cases for exceptionalism: that this country, or this culture, is not ready for democracy:
Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are "ready" for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches cooperation, the free exchange of ideas, and the peaceful resolution of differences. As men and women are showing, from Bangladesh to Botswana, to Mongolia, it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path.
President Bush reminded his audience that in 1945, a “so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would never work;’" and that, similarly, 74 years ago, the “Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be ‘illiterates not caring a fig for politics.’" As for those who are now making the claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, President Bush said, “More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of the individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government.”
But the highlight of the speech, and the one that has gotten the most coverage, is President Bush's candid admission that tyrants and dictators in the Middle East had been emboldened by the flawed foreign policy of the United States:
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.
Was the president’s criticism of his predecessors' “excusing and accommodating” tyrants directed only at Middle eastern tyrants? From the context of his speech, it is clear that the president was talking about tyrants everywhere. From his chronicle of states that are taking steps towards democratization, it is also clear that Bush has not been fooled by the $50,000/month PR machinery of Isaias Afwerki.
President Bush has presented a broad outline of US foreign policy going forward; it will now be up to his policy makers to design a mechanism and an infrastructure to implement the vision. As the sole superpower, the United States casts a huge presence in the world and, in this arena, there will be many tyrannical governments who have been competing to demonstrate how deeply anti-terrorist they are, who will now present themselves as democratic and respectful of their people’s human rights. The government of Eritrea is one of them. It is up to us to show that they are not; it is up to us to demonstrate that the government of Eritrea is fundamentally opposed to democracy, liberty and human rights.
No “Me Too” Here
On September 17, 2001, the Pencil stated:
Fanatic views and extremist opinions are most likely to breed under totalitarian governments and dictatorships. These types of systems, common in practically every Arab country and sub-Saharan Africa, are chocking the citizens who have no outlets for their grievances which occasionally burst out in the form of coup-d’etats and violence….
Terror is hatched under dictatorships and mushrooms in the dark absence of democracy. As we have repeatedly said, we call for dumping “real politic” into the ashbin of history and establish relationships based on a nation’s commitment to empowering its citizens…. Free and democratic nations should have nothing to do with dictatorships and totalitarian governments….The free world should not befriend, trade and exchange diplomats with governments that are breeding grounds for ignorance, intolerance, and subjugation of their citizens. In the name of wrongly defined “national interests”, so many dictatorships were nurtured….The leaders of the Free World should know, by now, that totalitarian states build terrorists and if, as President Bush says, the world is waging war against terror, then those who create the environment for terror must be removed. – Tyrants and Terrorists, The Pencil, September 17, 2001
Our views, which we believe are shared by most Eritreans, are perfectly aligned with the sentiments that were recently expressed by President George W. Bush. The PFDJ clique, whose supply of luck far exceeds its competence, has been using the events of 9-11 as well as the war in Iraq to transform Eritrea into an absolute dictatorship, while presenting itself as a “stable” ally to the United States and its war on terrorism. The PFDJ has had a limited success in this area, for three major reasons:
(1) Reservoir of goodwill: In the 1990s, the expectation for African states was so exceedingly low that an African nation that was not mired in civil wars, did not make the headlines for famine, HIV-AIDS, child prostitution, crime, and corruption was considered a success, regardless of its type of governance. Thus, in the eyes of the west, by 2001, the PFDJ had, thanks to fawning journalists, enjoyed an entire decade of good press for supposedly running a clean and uncorrupt government. The West which had invested so much in seeing an “African success” was willing to overlook many troubling signs related to violation of civil liberties. Since September 18, 2001, both the magnitude of PFDJ clique’s oppression of its citizen, and the Eritrean citizens vocal defiance against the oppression were such that they could no longer be ignored by the West. And the goodwill had dried up fast and the PFDJ clique surely would have faced Western condemnation had it not been for…
(2) Nine-One-One: The PFDJ sprang quickly to capitalize on the 9-11 tragedy and to ally itself against terrorism. It calculated (correctly) that world geo-politics had changed and, as in the Cold War, the United States would need allies to combat terrorism and concluded (incorrectly) that the US would choose allies not on the basis of their governance but on the basis of their hostility to Islam. The PFDJ clique instructed all its cadres to describe all groups opposed to it as “Jihadist” with direct links to Osama Bin Laden and its lobbyists to present the government as a force of stability against Islamists in the region. Three examples can be cited here:
a. On July 26, 2002, the “Eritrean Defense & Development Committee” of Washington, DC (which actually is just an extension of the Eritrean Embassy in Washington), issued a press release entitled “Eritrean Community To Rally Against Jihadists and Enemy Agents.” The press release, which was issued to explain the group’s rationale for its counter-demonstration against Eritreans opposed to the PFDJ clique, stated that the “primary purpose of the rally” was “to express its strong support for Eritrea's fight against terrorists, both homegrown Jihadists as well as foreign agents who masquerade as Eritreans.” Every other word in the press release was “terrorist”, “jihadist” or “Bin Laden.” How low would they go to incriminate their own citizens in horrific crimes? Writing for the ruling party’s website, a spokesperson for the “Eritrean Defense & Development Committee” referred to the flag that anti-PFDJ demonstrators were holding (the green-on-blue flag that was the official Eritrean flag until 1993; the same flag that was waving in the town halls, military forts and ports of every ELF/EPLF liberated land, the same flag that symbolized Eritrean defiance against Ethiopian aggression for decades,) as a “strange blue flag that looked like the one spotted at Tora Bora, Afghanistan.”
b. On September 21, 2002, the UN representative of the military junta, Ahmed Baduri, addressed the UN General Assembly. His address included the following: “Terrorism is not a new phenomenon to my country. The State of Eritrea has lived it since its formal independence in 1993 as the youngest country in Africa. The Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement and the so-called Eritrean Popular Islamic Conference who have been created and sponsored by Al-Qaeda and other regional and international Islamic groups to perpetrate subversive acts in Eritrea for the last ten years.” While we have every nation on earth testifying to minimize its ties with Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, here we have a representative exaggerating and lying about his nationals’ ties to them. The PFDJ views Eritreans as a rug whose sole purpose is to polish the PFDJ.
c. Because it is hell-bent on protecting its power, even if in the process Eritrea’s image is totally destroyed, it convinced Attorney General Ashcroft that Eritrea is awash with Jihadists who have direct links to Osama Bin Laden. The United States placed Eritrea on the list of nations who harbor terrorists, which, among other things, limits the US government’s immigration policy towards Eritrea. Ironically, the so-called “Organization of Eritrean Americans” (another of PFDJ's trojan horses), an organization which shares the burden for placing Eritrea on this undesirable list (read their July 29, 2002 letter to the Department of State), sent a letter of protest to Attorney General John Ashcroft to shed crocodile tears for Eritrea's placement on the list of suspect nations. Their letter of protest (January 24, 2003) included the following nugget: “The makeup of the Eritrean population is about 50% Christian and 50% Muslim. Neither group is said to dominate the other, though charges have been heard that Christians tend to dominate because the top leadership the last half-century has been largely from that side.”
Wink, wink. If these were the statements that were made publicly, you can imagine what the PFDJ and its flunkies state privately. We can more than imagine; we know. We know because members of the Awate Foundation who speak to Western government agencies and NGOs have to spend a great deal of time and energy to "unteach" them many of the fabrications, exaggerations and straight-out lies that the PFDJ operatives feed them. What is most disheartening is that this campaign of misinformation--the attempt to present all Eritrean Muslims as Islamists or potential Islamists--is practiced not just by the PFDJ but also forces who claim to be enlightened members of the opposition. It should be noted here that the PFDJ has no special affinity for Christians (when it is not arresting Muslims, it is only because it is busy arresting Christians.) The bigger point is that in its effort to maintain power, the PFDJ does not consider anything as sacred or untouchable and is willing to destroy Eritrea's sense of unity and harmony if it will ensure its chokehold on power.
(3) Joining The “Coalition of the Willing”: When the US was looking for partners to invade Iraq, the PFDJ saw that as one more opportunity to endear itself to the US. The PFDJ was hoping for “Kagnew Station 2” strategy. At the advent of the Cold War, Haile Selasse I had provided a listening post to the United States in Asmara; in exchange for this listening post (“Kagnew Station”), Haile Selasse calculated (correctly) that the United States would be sympathetic to his requests for federating (and eventually annexing) Eritrea. Similarly, the PFDJ was betting that if it could only talk the United States into establishing a base in Massawa and/or Asseb, the US would look the other way as the PFDJ consolidated its power and liquidated its enemies. The PFDJ has not been subtle about this: its ambassador has been practically begging for it at every turn. It has employed a lobbyist (at $50,000/month) whose sole task is to convince the United States to do just that.
The Work Ahead
Although President George Bush’s statements are very encouraging, it should be noted that, at present, it is no more than a vision and will require some time to implement. In the meantime, those of us who believe that the United States government should be on the side of the Eritrean people, and not on the side of the regime that is enslaving them, must work harder to lobby our case to the policymakers.
So far, the most convincing arguments against stronger US-PFDJ relationship have been the work of Isaias Afwerki and his agents. For example, while the so-called "Organization of Eritrean Americans" was describing the PFDJ as a force that will make Eritrea a “bastion of justice and democracy”, the person addressed in the letter, Secretary of State Colin Powell, was protesting, through his spokesperson, the arrest of his embassy employees in Eritrea. Another thing we have going for us is that our adversaries, including the “Organization of Eritrean Americans,” are Americans in name only: they celebrate none of the values that make America great.
There are Eritrean Americans whose goal is to make Eritrea more like America; then there are Eritrean-Americans whose goal is to make America more like Eritrea.
Those who aspire to make Eritrea more like America cherish its values of free press, freedom of assembly, of worship, freedom to choose your own government. They celebrate Jefferson, the statue of liberty and the freedom of information act. Those who aspire to make America more like Eritrea detest the free press, abhor elections and are apologists for human rights violations. They celebrate Guantanemo Bay, the Anti-Sedition Act, incarcerating detainees indefinitely, placing restriction on the free press.
And because they don't celebrate American values, they don't (and cannot) understand the American system. The simplest example we can give in this regard is the following: many of the PFDJ supporters actually thought that if they would just repeat "jihad", "terrorist", "bin Laden", and "Eritrea" often, the United States will actually pick up all Muslim Eritreans for deportation to Eritrea where they would be sifted, and given their appropriate punishment by the PFDJ. This is how ignorant (and evil) the PFDJ and its agents are.
But we cannot count on the weakness of our opponents to win this very important case. What if, for example, the PFDJ were to release the two US embassy employees it is holding? Would that be the end of US reservation on the PFDJ? We must lobby harder, work smarter and be relentless in our efforts not just to combat the misinformation of the PFDJ, but in providing factual information to the policy makers that there is an alternative to the PFDJ. That the PFDJ can never be a reliable ally in the war against terror, because it practices state terrorism on its own citizens—and we can expose this by providing information from third parties. The PFDJ is not a reliable ally in the “coalition of the willing” because it is composed of members who view the United States as an imperial and unjust state—and we can expose this by the published works of its intellectuals. The reservoir of goodwill to the PFDJ should be totally depleted—and we can do this by exposing the evil of its regime.
Our message is: "Mr. Bush, Eritrea, too, is ready for democracy. The forces for democracy are being enslaved by the PFDJ clique. The forces for democracy have spokespersons, and it is not Isaias Afwerki and his henchmen. Mr. President, stay true to your word and do not accommodate and excuse tyrants like Isaias Afwerki and his supporters." That is our message and we will continue to provide you with updates on the progress of our work…
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