I Didn't Do It for You (41 page)

During the fighting, the nation had formed a common front, the Nakfa spirit taking over as a new generation of Fighters suddenly understood what their parents had endured in the Sahel. But now that peace had come, and such a poisonous peace at that, Eritreans looked back over events with critical eyes. Although the government's inner circle would never dream of admitting it in public, where the phrase ‘strategic withdrawal' was once more being put to euphemistic use, invincible Eritrea had clearly lost the war. Had the government really explored every diplomatic avenue before sending tanks into Badme? Had that response been proportionate? Why had Eritrea's army been repeatedly caught by surprise during the war, failures of intelligence that played disastrously into Ethiopian hands? The peace deal signed in Algiers in 2000 bore a striking resemblance to the US–Rwanda plan which Eritrea had allowed to slip through its fingers. Had presidential pride cost thousands of lives?

Such questions highlighted another nagging concern: the political status quo. Even before the war's outbreak, Isaias had shown signs of cooling enthusiasm for multiparty democracy. The PFDJ still enjoyed a stranglehold on power and, through its affiliated corporations and banks, what remained of the economy. Those who have risked their lives for their country tend to nurse merciless expectations. When would the promised constitution be adopted? What about elections? Was Eritrea destined, just as the rest of the continent embraced multipartyism, to become a one-party state of the old, discredited variety?

At the centre of this swirling debate stood Isaias. Imposingly tall, fiercely intelligent, naturally austere, he had chosen his path early in life, rebelling against a father who was a committed Unionist. A ringleader amongst the bolshie Eritrean students attending Addis Ababa University, he joined the ELF
but lost faith in its capacity to liberate Eritrea. His upper arm bore a scar in the shape of an ‘E', carved at a meeting at which three disaffected young ELF members swore to create an effective revolutionary movement. Since the Struggle, in which he manoeuvred his way to the position of secretary-general with Machiavellian skill, he had enjoyed almost saint-like status in the eyes of ordinary Eritreans. When, in the early 1990s, he caught cerebral malaria and was flown to Israel in a coma, an anguished nation held his breath. His return, wasted but alive, became a triumphal procession through Asmara as residents, tears of relief in their eyes, lined Liberation Avenue. ‘We allowed ourselves to be misled by the lack of photographs on display, by the president's modest lifestyle,' a woman Fighter who fled into exile later acknowledged. ‘Looking back, it's clear that Eritrea did have a personality cult, just like any other African nation.' To a besotted public, Isaias' qualities seemed the quintessence of the Eritrean national character, he was Eritrea Plus. ‘The PFDJ is Eritrea and I am the PFDJ,' he once famously pronounced, echoing Martini's vainglorious ‘I
am
the colony'. To an outsider, the president epitomized what made Eritrea as maddening as it was magnificent. He was a leader who kept his counsel and nursed his grudges long and hard. Given a chance to ingratiate himself, he could be gruff to the point of rudeness, even at a time when Eritrea needed every friend it could get. An ambassador who delicately reminded Isaias that his country had stood by Eritrea, continuing to supply aid when others faltered, emerged from his tête-à-tête steaming. ‘I suppose I should thank you for that,' had been the graceless response. Nothing seemed to dent his belief that he knew what was best for the nation. His critics were dismissed as irritating irrelevancies: ‘The dogs bark, but the camel continues to march,' he liked to say.

His was a single-minded, driven personality perfectly fitted
to the role of running a guerrilla organization. But Isaias' closest colleagues had started wondering, well before Badme, whether, like Winston Churchill, this was a leader unsuited to the demands of peace. Nominally, a system of executive checks and balances existed. In reality, Isaias had concentrated power in his own hands, shuffling portfolios to prevent ministers forming power bases, duplicating departments until it became unclear where real authority lay. He had squeezed the Front's heavyweights off the ruling party's executive committee in 1994 on the grounds that the PFDJ needed an injection of new blood. He had set up a Special Court, which issued judgements against which there was no appeal. And when Badme erupted, Isaias had neither formed a war council, called a meeting of the party leadership nor summoned the national assembly. The collective approach to decision-making that had characterized the EPLF was abandoned. He kept all the key decisions to himself and, in retrospect, they looked like all the wrong decisions. As for the disarray in army ranks, insiders said, Isaias was to blame. He had undermined his own generals and defence minister by telephoning commanders in the field to receive briefings and issue orders direct.

Former EPLF cadres will one day have to explain why they failed to rein in Isaias when the first signs of authoritarianism made themselves manifest, why they did so little, during the 1998–2000 war, to voice their unease. One factor–however strange it may sound when talking about battle-scarred warriors–was basic physical fear. Standing well over 6 ft, Isaias, the indomitable Alpha Male, towered over his cabinet colleagues, built in the small and wiry Eritrean mould. He was a hard, dogged drinker and when he lost his temper, he became physical. ‘In the EPLF, policy would initially be batted about very informally, over a few drinks. I've seen him head-butt colleagues during those discussions because they wouldn't agree
with him,' remembers Paulos Tesfagiorgis, a veteran EPLF activist.
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The president once brought a whisky bottle crashing down on a cabinet minister's head, and the man sported a plaster for days. As any battered wife can attest, the threat of potential violence works its insidious effect, even when not put into practice. Flinching aides tend to ration their spontaneity. If Gordon Brown knew he risked a black eye when discussing monetary policy with Tony Blair, if Donald Rumsfeld occasionally emerged from George Bush's office nursing a split lip, politics in both countries might take a very different course.

During the Badme war, all had rallied round–Eritrea's survival demanded it. Now the critics put an end to their self-censorship. A group of academics and professionals met in Germany to compile what became known as the Berlin Manifesto, calling for the constitution to be implemented and democratic government restored. In May 2001, 15 high-ranking members of the PFDJ's central council–including such respected figures as Mesfin Hagos, Petros Solomon, Mahmoud Sherifo and Haile Woldensae–wrote to the president, asking him to convene the council and National Assembly to discuss the crisis. The president's response was quietly ominous. ‘This morning you sent me a letter with signatures. If it is for my information, I have seen it. In general, I only want to say that you all are making a mistake.' The Group of 15, as they became known, pressed on, publishing their concerns about the slide to one-man rule in an open letter. Asmara's cafés were abuzz; student leaders, dismissed ministers, even the Chief Justice spoke out, and Eritrea's new private press gleefully printed it all. Taciturn Eritrea had never known such openness.

It was to be the briefest of Prague Springs. In an April interview, Isaias assured me he was committed to political pluralism. ‘I've been a proponent for the last 15 years. I have lived and fought for these values all my life.' On September 18,
he made his move, ordering dawn raids on the homes of the men who had once fought by his side. Only those travelling at the time escaped the police roundup. Eritrea's private newspapers were closed, its most outspoken journalists arrested. The crackdown went virtually unnoticed in the West, its attention fixed on the rubble of the World Trade Towers. But the conclusion the media reached over 9/11–‘The world will never be the same again'–aptly described what a generation of shocked Eritreans was feeling, for very different reasons.

 

The Eritrea I visit these days is not the country I knew.

Eleven members of the G-15 languish in detention, their whereabouts unknown. Denied access to lawyers and family, the men and women who formed the EPLF's intellectual core are unlikely ever to face trial. They have already been effectively prosecuted and found guilty of passing military information to the enemy–what else could explain the Eritrean army's defeat?–and of plotting with the CIA to oust Isaias. ‘These are not politicians, these are people who betrayed their nation in difficult times,' the president told the BBC. ‘A general who betrays his country to the enemy in difficult times is a traitor, not a politician.' Whatever lies behind this hackneyed tale of conspiracies and fifth columnists, external events fuel a widespread view that Eritrea, at this moment of its history, can ill afford the luxury of dissent.

After 12 months of deliberation, in which experts in international law pored over colonial maps, a commission set up in The Hague to settle the border question came up with its decision. Badme, it announced in April 2002, lay in Eritrea, just as Asmara had always insisted. Both governments had agreed the finding would be ‘final and binding', but the surrender of this totemic village was too much for Addis to bear.
Denouncing the result as ‘unacceptable', Meles called on the Security Council to set up an ‘alternative mechanism' to decide the border, effectively demanding a second opinion. Ethiopia's forces remain in occupation of Badme and its surrounds and behind a cordon sanitaire erected by the UN, two tense armies bristle at one another in a nervy standoff which carries the constant risk of another flare-up
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.

The UN, which is spending $220m a year keeping its troops deployed in the area, is a guarantor of the peace process and theoretically obliged to enforce the Boundary Commission's findings. By remaining on Eritrean soil, the Ethiopian government is defying international law. Since Addis Ababa relies on injections of foreign aid to feed its population, in theory donor nations enjoy huge leverage over its actions. But just as in the days of Haile Selassie and the Derg, realpolitik carries the day.
¹⁰
Given the choice between championing a tiny Red Sea nation with a dodgy human rights record and prickly leader, and maintaining cordial relations with Ethiopia, a regional giant regarded as an ally in Washington's War on Terror, few foreign governments can muster much enthusiasm for the Eritrean cause. For a West applying Bush's simplistic ‘You're either for us or against us' criterion, Eritrea is no more than an irritant, just as it was during the Cold War.

Asmara finds itself in a position with horribly familiar echoes. On paper, the legal argument over Badme has been won, just as on paper, Ethiopia's 1962 abrogation of the Federation broke the law. What happens in practice is quite another matter. The limpness of the international community's attempt to persuade Ethiopia to accept the border ruling feels like the last in a long series of betrayals. ‘What we cannot understand,' a politician told me in bafflement on my last visit to Asmara, ‘is why no one wants us to survive.'

Eritrea languishes in a no-peace, no-war limbo, worst of all
possible worlds. Ethiopia seems bent on throttling the economic life out of its neighbour, even if its own Tigray province suffocates in the process. ‘The sad thing is that Ethiopia can strangle Eritrea to death without lifting a finger,' a British official told me. While Meles still maintains he has no designs on the coast, his people are less restrained. The curse of the Queen of Sheba has returned with a vengeance in Ethiopia, with opposition parties, civic groups and independent newspapers all arguing that Eritrea's duplicity has proved Ethiopia must secure its own port. ‘The arithmetic is irresistible,' argues former attorney-general Teshome Gabre Mariam, a politically-active barrister in Addis. ‘A nation of 4m cannot deny 70m people access to the sea. It is a matter of time, but another war is inevitable.' The terrible lessons of the 30-year Struggle, driven by just such a sense of Ethiopian entitlement, appear to have left little trace: a wilful, angry amnesia has set in. Two of the world's poorest nations, whose malnourished people face the constant threat of famine, are quietly restocking their armouries.

The threat from across the border gives Isaias a perfect excuse for his failure to demobilize an oversized army. The requirement to do military service–which keeps 1 in 14 Eritreans in uniform–doubles as a handy instrument of social control. Instead of gossiping in cafés, the nation's restive youth is kept busy terracing mountain slopes or laying new roads in the Danakil. Describing Isaias' hold on the country, foreign officials instinctively clench their hands into the fists of a horse rider pulling in the reins: ‘He holds this country tight, very tight.' Occasionally the army stages a raid in Asmara, loading youths who cannot prove they have done their duty onto trucks bound for the bleak training camp in Sawa. Those without military papers are barred from university, have trouble finding jobs, and are denied exit visas. ‘Eritrea has become one big land
prison,' a former Red Flower told me. The leader who freed Eritrea now holds it captive.

Despite the government's best efforts, people still manage to slip away. Soldiers drive to the border with Sudan and walk, helicopter pilots set course for Saudi Arabia, students at Western colleges extend their foreign residence permits. One group of would-be asylum seekers, being forcibly returned from Libya, became so hysterical at the thought of returning to Eritrea, they actually hijacked the plane taking them home. The shoulder-knocking Eritrean salute–tell-tale sign of a former Fighter–is increasingly to be seen on the streets of London's Camden Town and Washington DC's Adams-Morgan. ‘Eritreans have always had two ways of killing something,' an Eritrean scholar told me. ‘They never challenge things openly. Either they retire into themselves and say nothing. Or they just leave–go into exile, join the
shifta
, go to the Front. In my family there isn't a single young person who wants to stay in Eritrea, and that's tragic.' This quiet abandonment is the hardest thing for the regime to swallow. For decades, the diaspora dreamt of the day they could return to independent Eritrea. Now those trapped at home jeeringly nickname those with foreign papers ‘
beles
', or fig cactus, because like that seasonal delicacy ‘they come just once a year, and only in summer'. Eritreans are in flight again–not from the Derg, but from their own liberation movement.