By PI Demoz and David Yeh
Introduction
There is a quiet rule in the modern international order that is rarely stated but rigorously enforced: independence is tolerated, but only within limits. Step outside those limits, refuse alignment, resist pressure, insist on sovereignty in substance rather than in name, and the response is swift. It may not come as open confrontation, but as something far more systematic: isolation dressed as diplomacy, sanctions framed as law, pressure packaged as “international consensus.”
Eritrea crossed that line.
Eritrea did not violate international law, nor did it destabilize the region. The accusations used to justify the scale of the punishment imposed on it lack a credible basis, especially when compared to those who faced no consequences despite clear violations of international law. Its real offense was more fundamental: it refused to be managed. It rejected the client-state model. It declined to be drawn into cycles of dependency, internal fragmentation, and externally mediated “stability.” It chose, instead, a path of self-reliance, nonalignment, and internal cohesion, an approach that made it difficult to predict, harder to influence, and nearly impossible to control.
And in a system that rewards compliance over independence, that choice was enough.
What followed, sanctions regimes, financial exclusion, narrative framing, was not a reaction to a specific violation, but the enforcement of an unwritten boundary. Eritrea was not being corrected; it was being contained.
It is within this broader context that Eritrea’s post-independence experience must be understood, not as a series of isolated events, but as part of a sustained confrontation between sovereignty and external constraint.
The Unbreakable Spirit: Endurance Against Illegal Sanctions and Global Hegemony
On this 35th anniversary of Eritrea’s independence, the nation’s resilience stands not simply as a story of survival, but as a deliberate assertion of independence in the face of sustained external pressure. Over decades, Eritrea has endured harsh, illegal, and politically driven sanctions that sought to constrain its development and weaken its resolve. From the Eritrean perspective, these measures were not imposed because the country violated international law or acted as a source of instability, but because it chose not to align itself with external agendas. Instead, Eritrea pursued an independent path, much like during its armed struggle, seeking to remain genuinely nonaligned and resistant to external direction.
This choice carried consequences. In a global system where smaller states are often expected to conform, to depend, or to fit within predefined geopolitical roles, Eritrea did not follow the script. It did not position itself as a client state, nor did it accept a model in which nations are treated as recipients of aid rather than partners in development. It rejected the patterns of governance that leave countries mired in ethnic and religious fragmentation, or vulnerable to corruption that allows resources to be extracted with little accountability. In doing so, it became a difficult actor to manage, one that could not be easily influenced, directed, or absorbed into existing power structures.
To fully understand why this posture provoked such a response, one must look back to its origins, because Eritrea’s insistence on independence did not emerge in isolation; it was forged through history.
From Unconquered to Unmanageable: The Origins of Containment
The roots of this posture lie in a long and layered history: first in two decades of peaceful appeals for justice and the right to decolonization, and then in the 30-year war for independence (1961–1991), fought against successive regimes backed initially by the United States and later by the Soviet Union. Eritrean sovereignty was not granted; it was earned at immense cost. When independence was affirmed in 1993 through a UN-supervised referendum, in which 99.8% voted in favor, it marked not only the birth of a state but the emergence of a political culture deeply committed to self-reliance. The past 35 years of an independent foreign policy are a direct continuation of that experience. In this context, policies that prioritize independence are not ideological abstractions; they are grounded in a historical reality in which external guarantees repeatedly proved unreliable.
This historical experience did not end with independence; it carried forward into the post-1993 period, shaping how external powers interpreted Eritrea’s actions and, ultimately, how they responded to them.
The architecture of pressure that later manifested as sanctions did not begin in 2009 with UN Security Council Resolutions 1907 and 2023. It had been forming much earlier; arguably as far back as 1994, and certainly by 1998. As Richard Reid observed,
“The US preferred Ethiopia. It preferred Ethiopia for all sorts of reasons. Eritrea was seen as a bunker state; they were less easy to control. Ethiopia had a more reliable military perhaps. Their policy was more directable and perhaps predictable. Whereas Eritrea, from the mid-1990s, it was clearly seen as unpredictable and couldn’t be relied upon to do certain things that Washington might have wanted to do.”– Richard Reid: Eritrea’s External Relations, Wilson Center, January 2010 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/eritreas-external-relations).
Eritrea was viewed as unpredictable and difficult to control, unlike states like Ethiopia whose policies were considered more “directable.” This perception shaped how western powers engaged with Eritrea, and it helps explain why the country faced a different standard of treatment.
By 2005, when Eritrea expelled UNMEE (United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea) personnel from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Russia, an unprecedented move in Africa, it had already signaled that it would not be easily controlled. By 2008, following the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission’s November 2007 final and binding demarcation decision, Eritrea declared the UNMEE mandate concluded and instructed the mission to withdraw. Again something no country had done before. That moment became a convenient pretext for the preparation of what would later emerge as U.S.-engineered sanctions. A March 1, 2008 U.S. Mission to the UN cable spelled out the options in explicit terms: assessing targeted sanctions, imposing travel bans on key Eritrean officials, freezing assets, restricting trade and investment, particularly in mining, and enforcing an arms embargo. Subsequent cables reinforced this trajectory. A November 18, 2009 US cable from Berlin noted that the German government had decided to freeze its support for the Bisha mining project, a move expected to paralyze it.
What these mean is even before sanctions were formalized under UN cover at the end of 2009, and using Somalia as a fabricated excuse, the policy framework had already been laid out. What later appeared as multilateral UN sanctions was, in essence, the codification of a policy direction already defined. The 2009 sanctions did not emerge in a vacuum; they had been articulated in substance, almost verbatim, well in advance in the USUN communications to the State Department mentioned above.
From Eritrea’s perspective, the allegations linking it to destabilization in Somalia were unfounded. In fact a 2008 UN report itself indicated that approximately 80% of the weapons in Somalia originated from Ethiopia or the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia supported by Ethiopia. The African Union peacekeeping forces were also into this business.
“20. According to arms traders operating at the Somali Arms Markets, the largest suppliers of ammunition to the Somali Arms Markets are Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government commanders. Persons closely associated with arms transactions estimate that up to 80 per cent of ammunition supplies to the Somali Arms Market originate from Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopian stockpiles.”–Dumisani S. Kumalo, Chairman, S/2008/274. Letter concerning Somalia addressed to the President of the Security Council. 24 April 2008 https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Somalia%20S2008274.pdf
So the 2009 and 2011 UN sanctions were actually US and allies sanctions presented by another name. If Uganda served as the principal African sponsor and chief table-setter for UN Security Council Resolution 1907 (2009), the sanctions imposed on Eritrea were hardly the product of an impartial African consensus. Uganda drove the initiative as the key sponsor, while Burkina Faso helped steer the proceedings alongside it. The push was reinforced by IGAD member states, including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
But the broader orchestration is even more revealing. The WikiLeaks cables make clear that Susan Rice acted as the conductor of the entire anti-Eritrea ensemble, cueing each government on its role, while Tekeda Alemu functioned as her dutiful water carrier. Even France, despite its pretensions of independent judgment, was bent into line in support of the resolution.
To Libya’s credit, however, it stood apart. As both chair of the African Union and a member of the Security Council at the time, Libya was the one African state that openly and forcefully resisted the resolution. Everybody knows what happened to Libya.
Even after UN measures were lifted, the transition to unilateral sanctions in 2021 reinforced the same pattern. From Eritrea’s perspective, these actions were not rooted in legal violations but in an effort to exert economic and political pressure on a state that refused to conform. The effects were often indirect: international banks, wary of secondary sanctions, chose to avoid transactions, creating obstacles that were less about formal exclusion and more about over-compliance. Yet Eritrea adapted. In many cases, the cost of disengagement fell on external actors, Canada’s withdrawal from mining opened space for other partners, Boeing lost aircraft sales, and Caterpillar forfeited equipment contracts. Economic activity did not stop; it shifted.
However, economic pressure alone does not explain the full scope of containment. It is reinforced, and sustained, by parallel efforts in narrative framing, policy extension, and selective enforcement.
Sanctions, Narratives, and the Management of a Non-Compliant State
Similarly, measures targeting the diaspora’s 2% Rehabilitation and Development Tax in countries such as Canada and Germany stem from the legacy of earlier sanctions frameworks. Eritrea maintains that this contribution is voluntary and central to its model of self-reliant development. Efforts to restrict it are seen as attempts to weaken that model. Despite these pressures, Eritrea has recorded notable gains in health and education, even as unresolved issues, such as the prolonged occupation of sovereign territories like Badme, persisted despite binding legal rulings.
The broader issue, as seen from the Eritrean perspective, is the inconsistency in how international norms are applied. While Eritrea faced sanctions over allegations of regional interference, other actors accused of similar or greater involvement were not subjected to the same level of scrutiny. This asymmetry reflects not only geopolitical interests but also a deeper discomfort with states that do not conform to established patterns of dependence or alignment.
In response, Eritrea has sought to navigate a shifting global landscape by diversifying partnerships and engaging with a more multipolar world. This is not presented as a preference, but as a necessity when traditional avenues of engagement are constrained. The country’s endurance under these conditions reflects a national character shaped by struggle and sustained by a commitment to sovereignty.
The narrative that accompanies sanctions has also been part of the pressure. Eritrea is often portrayed through a narrow lens that emphasizes conflict while overlooking efforts to maintain internal cohesion and stability. This framing helps sustain external policies, even as it simplifies a more complex reality.
Taken together, these elements, economic pressure, selective enforcement, and narrative framing, reveal that what appears as isolated policy decisions is, in fact, part of a longer continuum.
Ultimately, to view sanctions on Eritrea as isolated events beginning in 2009 is to miss the broader continuum. The pattern stretches back decades, rooted in earlier decisions that constrained Eritrea’s path to decolonization and continued through successive phases of pressure, informal, multilateral, and unilateral. Critics argue that many of these measures were built on contested claims rather than verifiable evidence, serving broader geopolitical aims rather than legal necessity.
In this light, Eritrea’s experience becomes a case study in the tension between sovereignty and external control. It is a story of a country that refused to “toe the line,” that declined to adopt the roles often assigned to smaller states, and that sought instead to define its own trajectory. Whether through resilience in the face of sanctions, the mobilization of its diaspora, or the pursuit of alternative partnerships, Eritrea has demonstrated a consistent commitment to that path.
The central argument remains unchanged: Eritrea was not sanctioned because it destabilized the region or violated international law, but because it insisted on acting independently. And in doing so, it exposed the limits of a system that often rewards compliance more than sovereignty.
Conclusion: The Myth of Rules, The Reality of Power
The case of Eritrea strips away the comforting illusion that the international system operates on neutral principles applied evenly to all. What it reveals instead is far less noble: a hierarchy of power in which rules are invoked selectively, law is subordinated to interest, and sovereignty is often conditional on obedience. In such a system, when a nation complies, it is called a partner; when it resists, it is labeled a problem.
Sanctions, in this context, cease to be instruments of justice. They become tools of discipline—mechanisms designed not to enforce law, but to enforce alignment. The language of human rights, stability, and security is deployed not as an objective standard, but as a flexible justification, invoked when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. The result is a system that claims universality but practices selectivity, that speaks of order while operating through imbalance.
Eritrea’s experience is not an anomaly; it is a revelation. It exposes that what is often presented as a rules-based order is, in practice, a managed order—one in which independence is acceptable only so long as it does not challenge the preferences of those who set the rules. The so-called “international community” reveals itself less as a collective of equals and more as a structure of influence, where some act and others are expected to follow.
Yet, despite decades of unjust, undeserved, and wholly uncalled-for unilateral coercive measures, Eritrea has not only endured—it has advanced. These sanctions, imposed outside genuine multilateral consensus and often echoed by states that align reflexively, asking “how high” before they are even told to jump, expose the imbalance at the heart of the system. They demonstrate how power dictates policy, and how compliance is too often mistaken for principle.
Eritrea, however, has refused to bend.
It has chosen to move forward on its own terms—adapting, recalibrating, and continuing to build despite constraints designed to slow it down. Its trajectory has never been defined by external approval, nor has its progress depended on it. What has sustained it is something far more enduring: a discipline forged in struggle and a commitment to self-reliance rooted in history.
History, in fact, offers the clearest verdict. A nation that secured its independence against overwhelming odds cannot be coerced into submission by economic pressure. Eritrea has prevailed before, it is prevailing now, and it will continue to prevail—not because the challenges are small, but because its resolve is greater.
That is the uncomfortable truth.
Because once a nation proves it cannot be bent, the question is no longer whether it will survive, but what that survival says about the system that tried to break it.
And in that question lies the real indictment.
Discover more from Red Sea Beacon
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
