Imperative of Paradigm Shift for Enduring Regional Peace and Stability

By Dr. Weldu Ghebreselassie

Taken from Shabait

Since Ethiopia set foot in Eritrea in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War – under the mantle of a bogus “Federal Arrangement” and later through outright annexation – the Horn of Africa has known little peace. 

Ethiopia’s historical disposition for regional destabilization is closely intertwined with its  intermittent  obsession with acquiring “sovereign access to the Red Sea”, often couched in the rhetoric of “reunification”;  its proclivity to serve as a pliable proxy for external patrons; and, its deeply flawed domestic  governance  anchored on perennial ethnic polarization and strife.

Ethiopia’s enduring fixation on maritime access dates back to the early 20^th century. Indeed, in the late 1920s, the fledgling Ethiopian empire attempted to annex Zeila, in present-day Somalia. Failure to achieve  this ambition prompted the Haile Selassie regime to pivot and focus on Eritrea; illegal and absurd as these claims were. The result was the 1952 imposed “Federation” of Eritrea with Ethiopia, followed by annexation in 1962, which ignited the 30-year Eritrean war of independence. Ethiopia’s insatiable ambitions of sovereign access to the sea also nudged the Haile Selassie Regime to push unsuccessful claims on, and incorporation of, Djibouti in 1967, prior to its independence.

Even after independence and as Eritrea continued to exert, in good faith, unreserved efforts to cultivate and consolidate strong ties of friendship and cooperation with the new government in Ethiopia, the “sovereign sea access” agenda seems to have been pursued by the latter; although this time round, the approach was  in a rather stealth and discreet manner.  

Indeed, when the EPRDF regime declared war through its Parliament in early May 1998 under the pretext of a “border dispute regarding the small town of Badme and its environs”, the underlying maximalist agenda was in fact invasion and occupation of the Eritrean port of Assab.  In the early weeks of the war, the then Deputy Foreign Minister of Ethiopia – who was also a senior official at the Foreign Ministry in the Menghistu  years – publicly divulged to a gathering of Ethiopian community in Washington, DC that “capturing Assab was one of the central objectives of the war”. 

During the 3rd Offensive that the Ethiopian regime launched in May 2000, the round of US-EU  simultaneous negotiations that were being conducted in Algiers were interrupted by the regime as its army launched a massive military assault on Assab on 11 June 2000.  Ethiopia signed the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement on 18 June 2000 only after, and because of, this military debacle.  

Furthermore, even as early as 1996, and when the ties between Eritrea and the new EPRDF government were close, General Tsadkan’s thesis in his long-distance law degree centered, as he later confessed,  on legal and academic justification for severing the Port of Assab for “incorporation into Ethiopia”.  

In a nutshell, Ethiopia’s territorial and maritime wars of ambition before and after Eritrea’s independence  were key factors of perennial destabilization in the Horn of Africa; causing massive and avoidable human and humanitarian devastation.

The machinations of the Ethiopian regime went further to drive a wedge and embroil Eritrea in some conflict with Djibouti.  A Cable released by WikiLeaks on 14 September 2008 revealed that the putative Eritrea–Djibouti border dispute that flared up in June 2008 was in fact deliberately concocted by Ethiopia and its patrons in Washington as a sinister pretext for Djibouti to cut ties with Eritrea for purposes of negative  portrayal and diplomatic isolation of Eritrea.  As it happened, Susan Rice, the then US Ambassador to the UN, tabled a resolution against Eritrea at the UNSC. This maneuver exposed how a relatively non-existent border issue was manufactured to justify broader geopolitical agendas of Ethiopia and its external patrons. 

In the same vein, the Ethiopian regime invaded Somalia in 2006 under the pretext of combatting Al-Shebaab  extremism, primarily in order to curry favour with Washington.  The misguided policy was premised on the tenuous portrayal of Somalia by the Obama Administration as the “new epicenter of fundamental Islamic terrorism with organic links to Al-Qaeda”. 

The intervention however proved counterproductive: it destabilized Somalia further, energized Somali resistance, reignited irredentist sentiments, and served Ethiopia’s long-standing aim of weakening Somalia. 

The Obama and Biden Administration’s vitriolic portrayal of Eritrea as an obstacle to regional stability, especially regarding Somalia, contributed to the imposition of U.S. and UN sanctions on Eritrea.  And in characteristic fashion, the Ethiopian regime played its surrogate role in the whole charade. 

Through UNSC Resolution 1907 (2009) of December 23, 2009 and Resolution 2023 (2011) of December 5, 2011, Eritrea faced an arms embargo, travel ban, and asset freeze based on spurious allegations of its  support to al-Shabaab. Eritrea vehemently  rejected the politically motivated sanctions.   Nonetheless, in forums where controversies are not adjudicated on the basis of legality and fairness but on overriding political horse-trading and other narrow interests, its protests were not heeded for almost a full decade. Ultimately, however, even the Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group admitted it found no evidence of Eritrean support for al-Shabaab. And as it happened,  the UN Security Council belatedly lifted the  sanctions on 14 November 2018, marking what many viewed as the beginning of a new era for regional cooperation in the Horn.

In spite of this backdrop of external adversity, Eritrea has, from the outset and consistently, upheld the principle that conflicts should be resolved through local and regional mechanisms. It assisted in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between Sudan and South Sudan.  Eritrea further played a crucial role in the crystallization of the 2006 Asmara Peace Accord between the Sudanese Government and opposition  groups in Eastern Sudan; contributed to reconciliation between Chad and Sudan; and, supported efforts to address the Darfur conflict.  These significant endeavours highlight Eritrea’s longstanding commitment to regional stability and constructive cooperation.

​The second half of 2018 was, by all standards, a watershed moment in the turbulent history between Eritrea and Ethiopia.  The new government that came to power in Ethiopia publicly announced its desire for peace and readiness to respect its international obligations and implement the EEBC Award of 13 April 2002.  This gesture paved the way for reconciliation and the signature in Asmara, on 9 July 2018, of the Five-point Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship between the two countries.  

Unfortunately, and in spite of the euphoria and optimism that the new reality had engendered in both countries and the wider Horn of Africa region, the Prosperity Party (aka Potemkin Party) resorted, in 2023, to the old agenda of its predecessors to instigate unwarranted tension and conflict with its neighbor.  In flagrant breach of the cardinal spirit of Article I of the Joint Declaration, which heralded that “the state of war between Ethiopia and Eritrea has come to an end; a new era of peace and friendship has been opened”, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister announced to his Parliament and a perplexed international community that his regime will pursue “sovereign access to the sea, through peaceful means if possible, and force if necessary”.   

This toxic position was announced barely five years after the Peace Agreement and soon after the end of the war in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.

As it became public knowledge later, the Prosperity Party’s covetous attitude towards Eritrea’s maritime sovereignty had emerged even during the Tigray war. At a secret meeting between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the TPLF, facilitated by the Biden Administration in Seychelles in March 2021, the PP entertained the intentions to woo the other side for a joint offensive against Eritrea. The ultimate objective was the resuscitation, in a new format, of the defunct “regime change” agenda against Eritrea that previous Ethiopian regimes had pursued in collusion with their external patrons. 

The Potemkin Party’s agenda of regional destabilization was not confined to Eritrea.  In January 2024, the regime signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland, whose full contents were never divulged although it was known that the scheme involved trading “sea access” with Ethiopia’s recognition of Somaliland as an independent State.  

These brazen acts were in flagrant breach of international law; the UN Charter, the AU Constitutive Act, as well as IGAD’s key tenets and principles. And as such, Similarly, it was widely condemned as an act of aggression against Somalia’s sovereignty with negative ramifications to regional peace and stability.

A growing body of research corroborate that external interventions have invariably prolonged and exacerbated simmering conflicts in the Hornof Africa. The region’s strategic position along the southern Red Sea and Arabian Sea, its proximity to the oil-rich Gulf, and its closeness to the turbulent Middle East make it a magnet for foreign interference. UAE’s interventions these days is a case in point. The UAE, under the guise of investment in ports, oil services, and telecommunications, has advanced military agendas across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan, contributing to deadly conflicts, political fragmentation, and economic devastation. 

Furthermore, the bleak reality in Ethiopia under the Potemkin Party sharply contradicts the regime’s embellished official rhetoric.  The party’s governance failures – marked by ethnic polarization, economic mismanagement (including soaring inflation, rising foreign debt, and widespread joblessness), spiraling conflicts, and grave atrocities, have deepened Ethiopia’s internal crises and eroded the Potemkin Party’slegitimacy. These failures expose the party’s political incompetence and its inability to build a platform for integration, economic self-sufficiency, and respect for human dignity.

In conclusion, the Potemkin Party lacks the moral or political standing to project its own destabilizing behavior onto Eritrea. Rather than externalizing its domestic failures and stoking regional tensions, the PP should confront the root causes of Ethiopia’s internal and regional crises. Reliance on external actors while sidelining proven local and regional mechanisms only deepens divisions and imperils regional peace. Indeed, durable peace in the Horn requires mobilizing internal resources, strengthening regional cooperation, and minimizing foreign interference. The African proverb: “He who is carried on another person’s back does not know how far the journey is”, underscores the visceral pitfalls of structural dependency on external patrons.