Although Eritreans rely on the Sudan for many essential imports, Eritrea's western border with the Sudan had been closed for 10 of the 15 years Eritrea has existed as an independent country. This is because the Eritrean regime views the Sudan as a staging area for any armed opposition to its power monopoly and as an escape route to Eritreans, specially the youth, who want to avoid its authoritarian rule. The October 31, 2006 re-opening of the Sudanese-Eritrean border was done after the Eritrean regime made preparations to alleviate its main concerns: youth outflow from, and opposition inflow to, Eritrea.
Restricting The Opposition's Influence
Of Sudan-based Eritrean opposition groups, the largest are the Islamists groups and the Abdella Idris-led Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The constituencies of these two groups tend to be Eritreans who reside in the Gash-Barka area bordering Sudan or in refugee camps within Sudan. There is a great deal of intermarriage, familial lineage, history shared with the natives of Eastern Sudan, particularly within the Beja and Marya tribes.
When the Eritrean regime instigated, trained and armed Sudan's Eastern Front (a united front of Beja and Rashaida) and eventually brought about a peace agreement with the "Unity" government of Sudan, it guaranteed itself economic and political influence in Eastern Sudan.
The economic advantages will be modeled after the one that used to exist in Ethiopia prior to 1998 and exists now in Southern Sudan where Mr. Hagos "Kisha" Gebrehiwet, the Director of the party-owned parastatal Red Sea Trading Corporation ("09") has established a base in Juba to found banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, and transportation agencies.
The Red Sea Trading Corporation's favorite trade is illicit trade. When the ruling party, PFDJ, was given wide latitude in Addis Abeba (91-97), it used the Eritrean embassy as a place to horde currency and gold, and then transport them via a Landcruiser to Asmara. (incidentally, on of the drivers, a certain Haleqa, has been in jail now for 4 years.) This illicit trade, coupled with its tax-free status, has enabled it to completely dominate the Eritrean market.
These economic advantages are based on its political influence. The leaders of the Eastern Front, like the Weyane of yesterday; Southern Sudanese of today; and the Darfur and Somali of in the future, (or so hopes the PFDJ) come to power with a sense of gratitude to the Eritrean regime and are happy to do its bidding. Mr. Abdella Jaber, the organizational affairs director of the PFDJ and Mr. Issa Ahmed Issa, the new ambassador to Sudan, have spent decades studying the ethnic make-up and fissures of Sudan and how to exploit them for maximum advantage. The latter was in the mass organizations of Port Sudan and has extensive knowledge of Sudanese society and how it is organized.
Within days after the normalization of the Eritrea-Sudan relationship, the Eritrean regime was given intelligence on the military bases of the armed opposition group, the Eritrean opposition activists in Eastern Sudan, particularly the refugee camps and the type of help given to the Eritrean opposition by the Sudanese government.
Since then, the political space for Eritrean opposition groups in Sudan has been getting increasingly restricted. Sudan first denied them a venue to conduct their long-scheduled congresses. A few months later, the powerful opposition radio, Al Sharq, broadcasting from Khartoum, with repeaters in Kassala, was shut down.
Restricting Outflow of Eritrean Youth
By special order of President Isaias Afwerki, the Eritrean military was given permission to "shoot on sight" any Eritrean "caught attempting to flee or helping anyone who is fleeing."
There are three escape routes from Eritrea: via Senafe, to Ethiopia; via Tessenei to Sudan and via official visits in the Middle East to Europe.
There has been no change in volume of the flow towards Ethiopia (about 250 per month); and until a week ago, about 45 people daily escaping to the Sudan. However, there has been a qualitative change with the escapees now not just limited to the youth but a broad spectrum of Eritreans including 4 doctors who escaped in early October. The regime has responded to this not only with a "shoot-on-sight" order but by frequent round-ups. On Saturday November 25th at dawn, the regime raided Segeneitti and Dekemhare and rounded up all youth, including students with ID cards.
The regime has tried to limit the air-bound flights by severely restricting the approval of exit visas to those considered trustworthy. However, the recent flight of a "trusted" employee, ERI-TV's Mr. Temesghen Debessai, , one of Isaias Afwerki's few favorite journalists, followed by the escape of a few others, as reported by Asmarino Independent, seems to have sent shockwaves in the system. Consequently, the regime has begun interviewing all employees trying to gauge who knew and who is a likely candidate to escape.
But of the three routes, the one that seems to occupy the minds of the PFDJ is the Tessenei route to Sudan, primarily due to its proximity to the military camp of Sawa. According to a report provided by the Eritrean National Salvation Front, in August of this year, the Eritrean regime shot to death eight Eritrean youth on the claim that they were trying to escape to Sudan and left their bodies for display and warning in the streets of Tessenei. The report identified three individuals: Mr. Amanuel Sulus Ogbagabriel from Habela; Mr. Adem Hassen from Haikota; and Mr. Abdella Mahmoud, from Gonge.
In late October, a substantial number of Sawa conscripts escaped to Sudan leading the Eritrean regime to conclude that this was highly organized and done with the knowledge and cooperation of middle-rank officers. Consequently, it concluded that one more demonstration was needed as a warning. This time, ten "troublemakers" were rounded up from Sawa, taken to Tessenei, lined against a wall, and shot on the back by an execution squad. The people were told that these, too, had tried to escape to the Sudan.
The tactic of shooting prisoners on the back, to make it look that they were shot while escaping from the law, was developed by scared commanders who worry that someday they might be held responsible for the lives of people they are shooting. Military commanders worry that they might be incriminated in the future when human remains might be exhumed for forensic tests as has happened in Bosnia and other places.
With the opening of the Sudanese border, the Eritrean regime expects more escape attempts and it has taken some measures to reduce this. The first order has been to demand a bail bond on all civil servants in the amount of 100,000 Nakfa (i.e. 10 years' worth of salary for a typical public servant) The civil servants now have an obligation to report not just on who has escaped but who is even thinking of escaping.
Another move that the regime has already instituted is to decentralize Sawa military camp, by creating "mini-Sawas" throughout the country, primarily in the more remote Sahel area. This move (modeled after its approach of dismantling the University of Asmara and creating several colleges throughout Eritrea) is also meant to eliminate concentration of a large group of youth in the country. The third approach is to continuously rotate and freeze senior officials. In this regard, the latest victims are the Haili Emam (Task Force) of the Northern Red Sea Zone. Mr. Humed Karikare, the chief of the Navy; General Haile Samuel "China," the Commander of the 4th command zone; and Wedi Ma'il, the desk chief, have all been frozen and have been reduced to passively uttering “this too shall pass.” It was only a few months ago that General Haile China was riding high and running roughshod all over the country and taking joy in firing the governor of Northern Red Sea Zone, Alamin Sheikh Saleh, and passing sentences on other bureacrats in the port authority.
Because the PFDJ’s economic relationship with neighboring countries is based on deceit and exploitation, it always ends badly. And there is no reason to believe that the case in Sudan will be any different. But for now, the Sudan, due to its own internal problems, has given the Eritrean regime wide latitude to share in its wealth and to hunt down the Eritrean opposition. This includes round ups: just this week, the Eritrean Defense Forces moved in with a convoy of trucks to the refugee camps of Wed Sheriffey and Lafa, in sovereign Sudanese territory, rounded up "targets" and crossed the border back to Eritrea.
