Many in the international community still regard Eritrea as a pariah state at odds with its neighbours.
Even in the darkest chapters of its post-1993 diplomacy, Eritrea maintained relations with 129 countries but had bilateral relations with just 17 of these nations the most important of which are the United States, Ethiopia, Italy, Mexico, Russia and Qatar.
A culture of repression hanging ominously over dissidents at home did not help the image of the Eritrean government abroad especially in nations and international institutions styled after Western pluralistic democratic traditions.
In the wake of sustained criticism from outside Eritrea about his reclusive style of leadership which gave no quarter to opposition politics, President Isaias Afwerki’s regime simply recoiled into being the most politically recidevist in the continent and hardly ever in the news for the right reasons.
Over the years, the general impression from the outside world had crystallised into the grim image of Eritrea as a country in the mould of a reclusive state, an African North Korea from where information leaks are the exception to the rule and heavy-handed state repression had kept citizens in check.
The few lucky journalists allowed into the country had to endure the ‘tacit harassment’ of being watched and monitored every step of the way including being censored for content and restricted in their tour of places of interest.
While remaining still largely off-limit to most media organisations, of late Asmara under the leadership of Isias Afwerki looks like shedding some this old unwieldy image as an international pariah.
As part of his contiguous diplomatic manoeuvre covering the whole Horn of Africa region, Afwerki has been shuttling around to normalise relations with some of his country’s formerly estranged neighbours beginning with historical enemy turned ally Ethiopia in 2018.
When Prime minister Abiy Ahmad who took charge in Ethiopia that year following the resignation of his predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn he made peace with Eritrea his first diplomatic offensive, reaching out to Asmara and even securing the backing of its military during a conflict with renegades of the Tigray People’s Libration Front which lasted almost three years. It was inconceivable eight years earlier for Ethiopian army soldiers to fight side by side with Eritrean troops who entered the conflict on the side of Ethiopian federalist forces.
Today although there still lingers a thin air of distrust of Ethiopia over the Tigray debacle, Afwerki’s relations with PM Ahmad have not suffered from this diplomatic langour between Addis Ababa and Asmara. In the words of APA correspondent Muluneh Gebre, as the geoplitical dynamics of the East African region changes, Afwerki widely regarded both locally and internationally as shrewd will have recognised the folly inherent in regional isolationism.
”Although Eritrean leaders have been careful not to formally oppose the Pretoria agreement — lest they position themselves as spoilers — they view it as generating three dynamics dangerous to Eritrean national security: the survival of the TPLF, the maintenance of a large Tigrayan militia force and closer strategic alignment between Addis Ababa, Tigray and the United States” Gebre said.
In February 2024, President Isias Afwerki visited Egypt for a 3-day sojourn at the invitation of his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattal al-Sisi with whom the strengthening of bilateral relations was top of the agenda. The Eritrean leader was at the head of a large delegation of government officials and business leaders who signed a series of cooperation agreements including economic and security deals.
Three years earlier Afwerki had even offered himself as an honest broker during a border tiff between Sudan and neighbouring Ethiopia, a situation exacerbated by a protracted row over the building on the River Nile of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) which both Khartoum and Cairo still oppose. Both nations suspicious of Addis Ababa’s designs believe that a hydroelectric dam on the Nile would compromise their historical share of water from Africa’s longest river, a claim Ethiopia repeatedly dismissed as ill-informed and therefore unfounded.
The Eritrean leader hardly known for taking trips to the region visited Khartoum and although details of the outcome of the visit are still scrappy three years on, it was clear that Afwerki had attempted to assuage the fears of Sudan that his country was not the unnamed third party siding with Ethiopia in the border dispute.
In 2019 Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir announced the opening of a ‘new page’ in relations between Eritrea and Djibouti when their two leaders met in the kingdom to promote regional peace and security.
In Afwerki’s own words the season of peace in the Horn of Africa would be all-inclusive and was here to stay.
His Djiboutian counterpart Ismail Omar Guelleh could not have been more heady with his optimism for regional stability.
The Afwerki-Guellah meeting followed two weeks after Djibouti and Asmara formally ended their 11-year border feud over the Dumeira island which both countries has been claiming.
Djibouti claimed Eritrea was encroaching on its sovereignty by occupying the area, culminating in armed conflict between their two armies in 2008.
At the relentless proddings of Somalia and Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea normalised relations and committed to resolving the border dispute through more peaceful means like dialogue and international arbitration to determine who could claim legal sovereignty over the mountainous island.
A Djiboutian petition over the island is still pending at the African Union and the United Nations which may further test the both sides’ patience to hold onto peace while the case underwent a long review by a panel of experts assembled to look into Djibouti’s claim.
Then Djiboutian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf confidently stated: “With the truthful willingness demonstrated by Eritrea and Djibouti to make peace, all other pending issues will find their way to resolution.”
Analysts at the time hailed normalised Djiboutian – Eritrean relations as constituting the final building blocks for peace to return to the Horn of Africa. The peace between the two neighbours appears to be holding long enough to allow for a steady alignment with the regional peace agenda being championed and policed by the Intergovermmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Asmara’s relations with Yemen, its neighbour across the Red Sea have gone from a war footing over a collection of outcrops in the sea known collectively as the Hanish Islands in 1995.
With the Saudis facilitating diplomatic talks Eritrea’s relations with Yemen under now slain Ali Abdallah Saleh had improved. In an interview with Yemeni media in 2010, Afwerki said his country considered its Red Sea neighbour as a ‘friend’ and would consider the indivisibility of Yemen as the cornerstone of peace and stability in the entire region.
Today a lot has changed in contemporary relations given the current civil war in Yemen where Eritrea is contributing troops to a Saudi-led military coalition against Houthi insurgents. ‘A Saudi war fought with Eritrean troops’ was how critics described Asmara’s military involvement in the conflict in Yemen.
However, Asmara believes that Yemen is of strategic importance to the Red Sea region and it is Eritrea’s role as a worthy neighbour to help international efforts aimed at returning the Arab nation to lasting peace and stability.
The rest of the region have recogised Eritrea’s strategic location in the Horn of Africa and this guarantees that its diplomacy will be pivotal to the future of a volatile region which in decades past had been rife with conflict and confrontation between neighbours.
WN/as/APA