This is an English translation from Arabic as it appeared on AlWatan, a Saudi Arabian newspaper. It is translated by the Awate Team. For the original Arabic, please click here
Conflict Over Influence: New alliances As A result of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea
Assab Port, A Cause of Serious Dispute between America and Iran
Jeddah: Yasser BaAmer (AlWatan-Saudi Arabian Newspaper)
With the beginning of the year 2010, the Eritrean-Ethiopia war has reached its twelfth year. These were years whose manifestation were enough to change the features of Horn of Africa as a whole—especially in regards to the international and regional developments and how the balances of power are played in the region. In the Sudan, the possibility of the South seceding and establishing a state is a possibility that is more likely to happen than not. Darfur is found in a turbulent developmental and humanitarian situation, a problem the shaky peace deals failed to resolve. In Somalia, there is a failed state, occupation, and Islamic opponents who only meet on bloodshed. And Ethiopia has become a hotbed of tens of armed movements beginning with Ogaden and ending with Oromo. Eritrea, in turn, have its entire populations living in other lands as refugees. Rebels in Djibouti are waiting over the border. Even “Happy Yemen” lost its happiness and did not escape from the manifestations coming from across the seas—there is a serious warning of the [possibility] of "Somaliazation," and "sectarianism". The Eritrean-Ethiopian war alone is the common denominator in all of these transformations, and the spearhead of that is the helpless Horn of Africa—since it began in 1998, the security knot of the Horn of Africa has been gradually undone dragging with it scourge to the peoples of the region.
The Mazes of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war
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The outbreak of fighting between the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies came as a shock to the peoples of the two countries, especially that most of them did not know what was going on in the mazes of the relationship between their two countries; the few who knew were torn apart with mixed feelings. Therefore, all of them saw the crisis as a transient summer cloud—no one thought it would lurk and rain tears, bullets and blood between those who left early, and those who were alert and stood behind the door.
The war confirmed to observers that Eritrea has rushed in imposing itself on its giant neighbor Ethiopia—it was not long after its independence that its relations with countries which supported it worsened, mainly Sudan and Yemen. It became the fledgling state in the Horn of Africa whose relations were established with the legacy of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (the ruling party in Ethiopia), until it was able to stand at the gates of the capital, Asmara, in the twenty-fourth of May 1991. After two years of transition, it became the 153rd member of the United Nations. But Addis Ababa was not spared by the nascent state and joined the list of enemies after years of a silent war which none of the two parties dared to announce—Ethiopia was standing on a shifting ground, politically and ethnically—that did not allow it to enter into serious confrontations, while Eritrea has been waiting to settle issues related to the nascent state, something that made it imperative to look at the relationship with open eyes.
Declaration of war and the end of the honeymoon
The temporary lull between the two countries ended, its last walls fell down, and a statement from the Ethiopian Parliament was issued in May 1998 declaring war on Eritrea, a thunderbolt against Asmara. Also, Ethiopia decided to take revenge by itself, not through someone else, if the Eritrean forces did not pull out from the Badme area—the zone of conflict. The Eritrean reaction came out the next day with incredulity on the tongue of the Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki who said: "To get out of Badme means that the sun will not rise again." A nascent country that intersections of geography and history imposed on it the bearing arms for a period of three decades, [Eritrea] had to translate those words into deeds—specially because [the statement] was issued by the President who, until that time, enjoyed a popular support and a leadership charisma that enabled him to control the reins of the state, [and who] is not bothered by others describing [Eritrea] as a dictatorship! But the engagement of both Eritrea and Ethiopia in the war cost them, and the region, a lot. The countries of the Horn of Africa became countries of polar attraction between two camps; and the Asmara government pursued very harsh policies on its neighbors in line with the saying of former U.S. President George W. Bush: "Whoever is not with us is against us."— and all of the Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Yemen tasted the bitterness of this acute polarization.
Asmara Playing on the strings of the opposition
The war represented a big shift in the journey of [Eritrea] whose territories became the headquarters and camps of anyone interested in the work of opposition, beginning with the rebel movements of the Sudan, through Ethiopian movements opposed to the its government, such movements as "Tigray" and "Amahra" and "Ogaden", through Somali and Djibouti organizations, followed by the Houthi Group—according to statements by the Eritrean opposition. During that period, the government in Asmara perfected the art of spite against others—it supported the Sudanese opposition because Khartoum stood in the Ethiopian camp, forcing Khartoum to become neutral to ward off the evils of Asmara. Then [the Eritrean Government] supported the Somali Mujahideen—while it is the enemy of the Eritrean Mujahidin—in spite of Ethiopia, in a scene in which history replayed itself, Asmara having already exaggerated in strengthening its relationship with Tel Aviv, in spite of the Arabs for their siding with Yemen in the Hanish conflict.
Defying Washington
The tensions that arose between the United States and Eritrea made the latter to search for a country that would be a consistent negative with Washington; it was Iran that became the desired choice; the relations between Tehran and Asmara strengthened. And that led to shifts in the Eritrean positions towards many issues—there appeared a critical tone in regards to Israel, and [Eritrea] began to stand by the side of the Palestinian people, in particular, clearly with the Hamas movement; and in following that, the national television began to periodically air scenes from the Israeli massacres, which had previously been a taboo, and the talking about fundamentalist groups began to change, Isaias Afewerki became a progressive man, a champion of Muslims and the Mujahideen in Mogadishu!
Iran's warm Bosom
Iran considers Eritrea’s relations with Iran as a gain that is added to the resources that Asmara owns due to its peculiar geographical situation in the port of Assab from which it can play a bigger political role through the facilities that it will get from Iran. Under the cooperation between the two, namely, the development of the refinery in the port of Assab and the construction of Iranian fuel depots for export. But Tehran’s interest is represented by its benefits of threatening U.S. and Western interests by strengthening its presence in the Bab Al-Mandab and the Red Sea basin. Washington sees in the relations between Asmara and Tehran an event of reversal of the successes [that were achieved] in the Horn of Africa, and the limitation of U.S. influence towards the Central African region.
An Eritrean opposition website, Awate, stated in an information it published, that the Eritrean Defense Minister Gen. Sebhat Ephrem left Eritrea without a formal announcement regarding his destination on November 12, 2009 accompanied by a group of military personnel. The website notes, according to its own sources, that the minister was on the Yemeni Coast—that [news] prompted some analysts to link the [minister’s] visit to the outbreak of fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi army on November 19. [That] stresses that the security of the Red Sea, and the stability of Somalia, and an end to maritime piracy, and the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, are all rings linked to each other and represent the most prominent manifestations of the Eritrean-Ethiopian war.
The director of the Gulf Center for Horn of Africa Research and Information, Mohamed Taha Tewekel, revealed a grant [given to Eritrea] estimated at 35 million euros from Tehran: 20 million of which is an Iranian investments in fishing and 15 million as a contribution from the Iranian government in recognition of its distinguished relations with Eritrea. In an interview with Al Watan, Tewekel felt that "Tehran distracted Arabs with the events in Afghanistan and Iraq and devoted itself to building strong relations with the countries of the Horn of Africa and East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan), and aggressively competed against China as a significant observer in the African Union." He added, "this Iranian influence in the Horn of Africa came after a twenty-years absence of Arabs, [and their] lack of attention in activating the relations with the countries of the Horn of Africa despite the international and regional competition on it, but the Iranians understood that very well and entered through the gates of economic investment."
Tewekel’s statements goes in line with what Olivier Roges, the journalist from Radio France, published and in which he claimed the arrival of units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in December 2008 to Eritrea. According to Western sources, warships and a submarine had docked in the strategic Eritrean port of Asseb which overlooks the Red Sea, a few kilometers from the Bab al-Mandab and the entrance to the Gulf of Aden through which a quarter of the world's oil and 10% of world maritime trade passes. Therefore, “the Iranians did not choose the port of Assab in vain.” Roges adds, "If the conflict with the West on the nuclear issue erupts, Iran could wage a maritime Jihad, and the control of sea lanes is on top of the priorities of the Iranian regime." He adds: "The Iranians, for their part, want to expand their policy of general deterrence."
Bashir Ishaq, the external relations Officer of the Eritrean opposition alliance talked about "the existence of a training camp for the members of Al-Houthi, with Iranian support and supervision, in the Dongollo region east of the town of Ghindae in central Eritrea,"—this is an information that AlWatan was not able to validate from a neutral source.
These Iranian movements was also monitored by a symposium held at the premises of the International Center for Political Studies of the future in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on October 21, 2009, under the title, "Iranian movements in East Africa and the Horn of Africa." It found that the expansion of Iranian influence in the areas of the Red Sea will affect Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Gulf states. And that this would pose a challenge to Egypt and the countries of the region.
