Twice a year (January and May), President Isaias Afwerki delivers the equivalent of a State of the State address.  I tune in because the speeches give us a fine glimpse of the state of his state of mind or, at the very least, the state of mind he would like to project for our consumption.  

For the first time that I can remember, he was actually stumbling through some of the words in his speech.   This may be because the sentences in the speeches conform to the Shaebia rule (which says each sentence must be at least 200 words long) and it is easy to miss your train of thought when the words, end-to-end, are as long as a train.  The sentences are so long that even the red-meat phrases that would normally elicit thunderous applauses from the faithful and the frightened did not, buried as they were in mounds of other words.  It is hard to react to a speech when you are asked to be in a suspended state of commas and semi-colons and hyphens but no period or "full stop", as the Brits would say, is in sight. 

Or maybe it is because his eyesight is weakening (not unusual for a 58 year old man which, incidentally, is the same age as many of the opposition leaders who are dismissed for being "too old") and he is too vain to wear glasses.  As he glanced up from the paper to look at his audience, he had this permanent frown--a requisite uniform of dictators, especially ones with failing eyesight. 

Or maybe he now has professional speechwriters and he was reading the speech for the first time.  After all, it must be boring to deliver the same speech year after year; it is hard to be animated about a subject matter that you can recite by rote.  

The folks at Shabait.com were kind enough to provide an English translation of his speech, and you can tell where the priorities are if you do a word count (as a friend and I did to settle a pre-speech bet we had made on how many times he would mention TPLF or its variant, MaLeLit): 

In any event, the sum of this speech, as with the sum of all his speeches and, by extension, the faithful adherents of the Theology of PFDJism, is that Eritrea is making huge strides towards development and food security despite the TPLF, despite a long list of external and internal enemies, drums of war, war and inadequate rain.  This miracle requires no constitution, no justice or real democracy or bowing down to the malicious west.  

Sustaining a surreal, soothing world is easy so long as you apply the same principles you'd apply to watching a movie:  you need to be enclosed in the dark, and you need to have total silence.  Isaias' version of the Eritrean movie cannot work if it is exposed to the light (information) and there are all these distracting noises from within and without (the "internal and external enemies.�) 

In the Dark, Silent, Surreal World of Isaiasism 

In the Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute, Eritrea has received a favorable verdict, but still no justice.  Present this question to any pol-sci or history-major student and they will come up with many possible answers.   One of them maybe, "this is an open-and-shut case.  For the international community to behave the way it is, the government of the abused nation must be seen as an outlaw government."  And, dear student, what should the government of the country which has received a favorable verdict but unfavorable justice do?  It is obvious: it has failed its people and it should resign.   Now, present the exact same dilemma to, say, an Eritrean mother and she may say, "Tegaru hasadat iyom.  Eza America d'ma QebeTbeT abilatom!!"  (The Tigrayans are a spiteful lot; and America is treating them like a spoilt child.) 

Can you guess which argument President Isaias Afwerki was presenting?   

In this dark room, it is easy to believe we are making tangible progress towards our number one priority (food security), as long as you don't allow the noise of the UN's FAO to tell you that "in Eritrea, early rains have been poor" or the WFP to tell you that a third of the population is near starvation.  Stay in this dark room, it is easy to be comforted by the miraculous speed of our development, as long as you don't allow yourself to read any of the gloomy reports of the World Bank, the IMF or the CIA.  You can celebrate our "regional elections", as long as you don't care to know that the candidates were hand-picked, the contest was a choice between several shades of grey and, oh, yes, the constitution was, once again, a taboo word. 

Another Opportunity Missed

Terrorism was mentioned once...and the context was in reference to the international community who, according to Shabait's version of Isaias's speech, use it (along with religious freedom) to "divert and derail the closed case from its main direction" and to join the TPLF in a campaign to  "starve us and threaten us into submission."  What he actually accused the international community of was to using his government's insufficient contribution towards anti-terrorism as an excuse to deny Eritrea help.  If you stay in the dark room, you can dismiss as members of the  "Hasadat Club" fringe groups like the US Department of State and Amnesty International, and you can dismiss their reports about religious persecution as noisy distraction.  Stay in the dark room and you will forget that the international community, far from starving us, is actually feeding us.   

And the difference on approach to terrorism...how could this be, since Mr. Girma Asmerom was almost simultaneously giving a speech that when it comes to the war against terror, Eritrea's stand against it was "immediate, public, and bold" and that the US and Eritrea are allies?  Two things.  

First, because the government of Isaias actually believes that it is an expert in fighting terrorism, it believes it has nothing to learn from the rest of the world.  It seems to have taken literally Donald Rumsfeld's paternalism about how the US can learn from Eritrea on how to fight terrorism.  And thus, since it is an expert and not accountable to the world, it missed a deadline imposed by the UN (post 9-11) on the rest of the world, calling for progress reports on tools each nation has implemented to fight terrorism.  You know how much the PFDJ hates paperwork; remember, the Eritrean constitution, the laws, due processes are all "paperwork;" what matters is "bigibri."  �We have apprehended terrorists.  We are acting, why do we need to file reports?!�

Second, its hatred of paperwork (law) is only matched by its ineptness in playing the game of diplomacy.  Remember, Eritrea has a clear-cut, unambiguous, favorable verdict on the boundary dispute.  To snatch defeat from the jaws of this certain victory requires monumental diplomatic blunder and the PFDJites delivered: they refused to see Axeworthy.   That alone wasn't enough; it was just the straw that broke the camel's back.  This is what the United States had to say about it, as explained by Mr. Ali Said, the acting foreign minister, while disclosing a memo his government had received:

The United States has also conveyed to us a very disturbing message, which literally contradicts its public statement of 21st January last month. The Algiers Agreements were essentially drafted by the United States. But Washington has now decided to dissociate itself from any direct role in the efforts to ensure the implementation of the Agreements that is has authored in the first place. The non-paper states: �the United States, along with the other witnesses to the Algiers Agreement, fully supports the UN Special Envoy in his difficult mission�Failure by either side to engage the envoy with good will and good faith will only isolate that government from the international community.�

Ali Said made these statements in an address to the diplomatic mission of the European Union in Asmara.   What he is doing is complaining to Europeans about what the Big Bad United States is doing.  Fine, you say, many African countries do that.  But there is a problem here: only a couple of years earlier, the PFDJites had declared diplomatic war on the EU and expelled its representative.  And the EU still has many sour and open issues with the PFDJ, not least of which is the arrest of its own nationals (who hold dual citizenship) and the G-15.

A brief historical comparison: when Haileselasse was presented with an opportunity to endear himself to the United States he did so.  Remember the Korean War when the United States wanted a "coalition of the willing" and Ethiopia volunteered?  Haileselasse executed flawlessly and he reaped the benefits of this "special" relationship with the United States for decades--to the chagrin of Eritreans and Ethiopians opposed to his rule. ("inquan lageru l'ethiopia Qdst..." went the song.)  

He did so because he knew what mattered most to the United States at the time: fighting communism.   Isaias was presented the exact same opportunity, and he could have benefited from a "special" relationship with the US for decades to come.  "Anti-terrorism" has replaced "communism."  And all Isaias had to do was understand what mattered to America most now-- stable nations making real progress towards liberal democracies.   And, to the delight of those of us opposed to his rule (because the last thing we need is an Isaias-led Eritrea protected by the might of the United States) he will never understand that.

Isaias has a scary ability to underestimate threats when the facts speak otherwise.  Ethiopia's threats are, to Isaias, a joke (and to emphasize how little he thinks of it, he said it four times and in three languages: "nukta", "waza" and "joke".)  The last time he underestimated Ethiopia, Eritrea lost a third of its territory, not to mention tens of thousands killed and maimed.   Ethiopia, in turn, speaks as if Eritrea is entirely irrelevant: in one of his interviews, Meles compared the language of Eritrea's official media outlet (Shabait) with the criticism of Ethiopia's private media, then dismissed them both as inconsequential.  He said nothing of the Oromo Liberation Front, which continues to pose a huge threat to his administration.  The last time the Ethiopian government dismissed an Ethiopian liberation front that was aligned with an Eritrean one, there was a change of government, and the previous leader was exiled to Zimbabwe.

So now, once again, Ethiopia's Meles and Eritrea's Isaias are locked in a game of "me-or-you": for me to survive, you have to be destroyed.  This attitude is not that much different from 1998.  What has changed is that now Sudan�s Albashir also believes it is a case of "me-or-you" when it comes to Isaias (given Isaias' affinity for mischief).  Another thing that has changed: the US, unlike the Clinton Administration which thought Isaias is a "new breed" of African and thus worthy of America's goodwill, the Bush Administration regard Isaias as just another commonplace tyrant.  Another change: in Eritrea, a larger population of the Eritrean people (arguably a majority, but certainly more than in 1998) wants Isaias gone.  Isaias' response to all: come and get me.   Which sounds brave and manly and resolute: except that he is willing to use Eritreans as a human shield to protect his power.   

At 58, one would expect Isaias to act like a statesman to spare a young nation and give it a decent chance to grow in a peaceful and healthy environment.  But instead of acting his age, he continues to act Eritrea's age: 13.

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