Eritrea proxy wars on Ethiopia – Revenge of the Imp
By Kumsa Aba Gerba*
June 25, 2006 — There had been an on and off military grandstanding along Ethio-Eritrean border since the April 13th 2002 ruling of the Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The longstanding quiet of gunfire along the border was due to the presence of UNMEE forces as well as the probability of a mutually beneficial settlement of the conflict. Gradually as the stalemate persisted, outburst of frustration started to be exhibited from the Eritrean side.
Since 2004, there has been some movement of forces and a posture of war footing along the border. On the diplomatic side there was an Eritrean lobbying attempt for HR2760 at the US congress in an attempt to impose sanctions against Ethiopia. There was also the 5PPP a ‘give and take’ proposal presented by Ethiopia but rejected by Eritrea. Lately there has been ban on UN helicopter flights by the Eritrean government that has forced international peacekeepers to abandon a number of monitoring posts on the border.
Ethiopian Election and Eritrea’s Angst
The 2005 Ethiopian election came and elapsed with a mixture of hope, aspiration, despair and anxiety. The trial and tribulation of a highly contested election for a country with no prior taste of democracy was enthralling for all friends and foes of Ethiopia.
With all the ill wishes of the Eritrean government and some sabotage by proxy warriors, the country someway survived its first real political contention with some bruises and dents, albeit the loss of lives, the destruction of property and the incarceration of many.
If one followed Eritrean Websites and EriTV, their fixation on the election related events in Ethiopia and their drooling over any sign of bloodshed and chaos was disturbing. Eritrea has been wishing the disintegration or weakening of Ethiopia not only to regain its claim on the border territories but also to be the kingmaker of fragmented parts of Ethiopia.
Now, a year after the Ethiopian election, Eritrea is retooling its stratagem. This subterfuge is driven by a sense of extreme anxiety because of the gradual delay and decay of the border issue from the international stage. The disquiet has made Eritrea’s political and economic structure in frenzy. With a feeble economy, a ramshackle military and a disgruntled populace, Eritrea does not have the stamina or the strength to wage war against Ethiopia on its own. Thus, a revenge victuals against Ethiopia is being cooked to be served on a cold platter, by creating havoc in what ever means necessary and with who ever is willing to be proxy warriors.
Eritrea and Proxy Liberation Fronts
The OLF became a major political force as a result of the insistence of Herman Cohen the draftsman of the transitional government at the May 2001 London Conference, right before the fall of the Derg. Until then, the OLF did not have any cozy relationship with the EPLF. It was not until the Ethio-Eritrean border conflict that the OLF became a foster child of the Asmara regime, way later and after it boycotted the transitional government.
The Asmara based OLF headed by Dawud Ibsa has been an apparatus for Eritrean designs of havocs, bombings and all sorts of terrorist acts on Ethiopian soil. The other OLF boss, Galassa Dilbo has been operating from lawless Somalia in collaboration with ONLF and Al Itihad Al Islamia.
The ONLF and Al Itihad Al Islamia on the eastern side of Ethiopia that are based in the failed state and lawless Somalia, are linked with Al Qaeda and have had a long standing working relationship with the Eritrean regime.
The Gambella front, along with the OLF, was another proxy front that the Eritrean regime time and again smuggled in a band of combatants to the western part of Ethiopia. The conflict in the Gambella region has been inflamed time and again, at the will and whim of the Asmara regime, especially during the contentious election period.
There was no any multi-ethnic Ethiopian organization in the military or political menu that was to be served to Ethiopia as an Eritrean proxy. However, various ‘Patriotic Fronts’ have popped up in Eritrea during and after the contentious election period with no political program or any meaningful national cause.
Eritrea has been using the same pool of captive Ethiopians for various ‘Patriotic Fronts’ it harbors in the Gash-Setit arid lands. Depending on which chieftain is in and out of favor with the leaders in Asmara, enumeration of the same force and renaming of a new kind of ‘patriotic’ front emerges with a cushy mandate to sneak in as a ‘Foco’ in the Wolkait and Armachiho regions of Northern Ethiopia.
The participation of CUDP-Diaspora in the cooking of ‘Alliance for Democracy’ by Eritrea, along with OLF and ONLF has created shock and awe among many rational observers. For the CUDP-Diaspora that had accused the incumbent party of ‘treason’ for allowing Eritrea to secede and for making Ethiopia a land locked country, the facade of joining hips with Eritrean baked ‘alliance’ is its own unbecoming. At the same time for the Eritrean regime to coarse OLF and ONLF that had accused CUDP-Diaspora as a chauvinist and neo-colonialist is astounding. Either way the Eritrean regime seems to be busy with its alchemy, brewing anything that sticks to detonate and blow away Ethiopia.
Somalia and its Islamic Courts
Among the leadership of the Islamic Courts Union, a group that has recently managed to oust Mogadishu’s warlords is Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys. Sheik Aweys along with another, Adan Hashi Ayro, initiated the Al-Itihad Al-Islamia fundamentalist organization which is believed to have links with al-Qaeda.
Chris Tomlinson of Associated Press (AP) reported that hundreds of non-Somali militia – including non-Africans – are fighting alongside the Islamic forces. At least 600 Ethiopian rebels, aided by Eritrea, from the predominantly Muslim Oromo [sic] National Liberation Front, have been seen manning checkpoints in Mogadishu.
The Oromo “share the Muslim faith with Somalis and if someone convinced them that this revolution in Somalia will eventually become an Islamic state across the whole region, including the Oromo region of Ethiopia, they will think it is worth fighting for,” said Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn.
The UN Security Council report reveals that Eritrea has provided military support to insurgents such as ONLF and OLF who are being harbored in Somalia and working collaboratively with Al-Itihad. Some fingers have been pointed towards Saudi Arabia and others to wealthy foreign supporters of Islamic militancy using Eritrea as a conduit.
Suleiman Baldo, the head of International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank’s Africa Programme, said on Aljazeera.net “This is also a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrea supports the Islamic Courts while Ethiopia cooperates with Washington.”
Sudan and its Eastern Rebels
The sudden willingness of Eritrea to force the surrender of Beja and Rashaida community proxy warriors in the Sudanese eastern frontier is alarming. All of a sudden Sudan and Eritrea have agreed to begin normalizing relations, after a meeting between the two leaders in Khartoum.
What is more alarming is that the Sudanese government also welcomed Eritrea’s offer to help mediate a political settlement with rebels in eastern Sudan. How did Eritrea manage to be the mediator for the problem it created to begin with?
An adviser to Sudan’s information minister, Rabie Abdul Atti, tells VOA that the rebellion was a bone of contention between the two countries for a long time because of what he says was Eritrea’s support for the Eastern Front rebels in Sudan, a situation he says has changed. Now the sixty four thousand dollar questions why it changed abruptly.
Sudan had multiple problems on all sides of its borders. The Darfur conflict is still scorching while the Southern Sudanese issue is beginning to nurse primordial wounds. The motivation for the Sudanese government to mend its squabble with Eritrea’s proxy Eastern Front is understandable, practical and incisive.
The Eritrean menu however seems to be very dubious. For a long time, Eritrea has been trying to smuggle its proxy fighters across Sudanese territory to the Wollega, Gambella and the Gondar regions of Ethiopia. For a long while, Sudan had tried to clamp the gates of its borders with Eritrea. This ploy of Eritrea surrendering the Eastern Fronts to Sudan might be to entice Sudan to look the other way while it uses Sudanese territory to transplant its proxy war and destabilize Ethiopia.
The US and the War on Terror in Horn
The recent statement of Herman Cohen about the assault of Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, is quite telling about the man’s intent. He said “There are friends in the region, like the Ethiopians, who probably are feeding false intelligence about terrorists being hidden and that sort of thing, because the Ethiopians are deadly afraid of Moslem control and also they have their own Moslem problem among the Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia.”
Unless ‘Hank’ Cohen is insulting the intelligence of US National Security Agencies, how can he say Ethiopia is lying to bamboozle US mission war terrorism? Besides Cohen sounds like something that often spews directly from Asmara or via its proxies.
It is hardly a secret that CUDP-Diaspora has hired the law firm of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani as a lobbyist. Giuliani’s firm is clueless about Ethiopian politics, albeit CUDP-Diaspora can not clearly articulate its intent. Thus Cohen has approached Giuliani’s firm to bid his expertise and lobby against the Ethiopian government. Some sources say he got the subcontract and some say he is still marketing himself.
Eritrea has been thumbing its nose on the international community and particularly on USA for a long while. Recently the Eritrean government asked the USAID to cease its operations and leave the country.
There has not been any discussion between United States and Eritrean officials for a long while. Recently Secretary Yamamoto said “We went to Eritrea, the president did not see us, nor did other senior government officials. We’ve made repeated requests to talk with President Isayas and he ignored us at every step.”
There are Islamic extremist elements in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Eritrea, all watching what is happening in Somalia and how the United States reacts. “We won the fight against the enemy of Islam. Mogadishu is under control of its people,” Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Court Union, said in a radio broadcast in a veiled reference to the United States.
Ethiopia’s record in fighting terrorism is not bad. It has contained terrorist acts of proxy fronts to rare instances. Ethiopia can sufficiently manage to curb terrorists but it may be pushed to deal with Eritrea once and for all, to rid the real source of its malady.
Terrorism in Horn of Africa could be devastating due to rogue and failed states in the region that have a history of aiding and abetting terrorists. The stability of the region is precarious. The US will have to confer with regional powers and device a cogent strategy to stop reckless behavior of revenge by proxies, rather than haphazard covert operations.
* The author is an Ethiopian born; he is a graduate student of International Relations in USA. He can be reached at [email protected].