Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s dictator who has ruled the country since its 1993 independence, is almost 80 years old and rumors continue to abound about his increasingly frequent health crises.
Under his tenure, Eritrea squandered its potential. Much of the economy relies on mandatory and indefinite conscription, basically state-sanctioned slavery. China is Eritrea’s only meaningful trade partner. Isaias has played a crucial role in destabilizing the region. What began as a friendly relationship with Ethiopia ended in a war over the border region near Badme. Up to 100,000 people died in the 1998-2000 war that locals derided as “two bald men fighting over a comb,” due to Badme’s isolation and economic irrelevance. More recently, Isaias involved himself in the Ethiopian civil war, sending troops (and Somali conscripts ostensibly in Eritrea for training) into Ethiopia to help crush the country’s ethnic Tigray, a conflict that killed upwards of a quarter-million people. This latest intervention also earned Eritrea enhanced U.S. sanctions.
Isaias is not the only cause of Eritrea’s destabilizing role. Eritrea has a ruling class that governs the country not as a nation-state with defined national interests, but as an ideological cause defined by constant war footing, leader deification, and paranoia.
Eritrea’s population, though, has had enough. While Eritrea does not report its financial data to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the United Nations estimates its per capita income at less than $700 per year. The per-capita income of neighboring Djibouti, in contrast, is almost five times as much, even though Djibouti has only a fraction of Eritrea’s natural resources. The chief difference between the two is that Djibouti, as corrupt as it may be, allows a basic economy and seeks to leverage its strategic location into business for its port. Even unrecognized Somaliland has a per-capita income almost twice as high. To keep its economy afloat, Isaias and his ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice turn a blind eye to its people’s plight abroad so that they can tax or receive remittances from those who survive to reach Europe, the United States, or the Persian Gulf oil states. Today, up to one-third of Eritreans live outside their country.
As inevitable transition looms, many Eritreans both inside and outside the country are organizing for change. The United States, Israel, and other countries interested in a pro-Western outlook and peaceful Red Sea region should support this.
Today, the Red Sea is an epicenter of instability. Yemen remains under Houthi control and the Houthis continue to target shipping in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and international waterways.
Al-Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate, is gaining ground in Somalia as the Mogadishu government fails to restore security or meaningful government services. Despite international attention on Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, Sudan remains the world’s bloodiest ongoing conflict by far. Djibouti, meanwhile, is increasingly under China’s sway.
In such a region, a pro-Western Eritrea could be a game-changer. This is not a far-fetched aspiration. Eritrea was a cosmopolitan center for trade for centuries; it allied with the Roman Empire against the Persians, the Portuguese empire against the Ottomans, and sided with the British against the Mahdi’s uprising in 19th-century Sudan. Between 1950-1970, it hosted an American military base and quietly supported Israeli intelligence and logistics. In the broad sweep of Eritrea’s history, Isaias’ isolation and anti-Western orientation is the exception rather than the rule.
To support Eritrean regime-change diplomatically—led and conducted by Eritreans upon Isaias’ death and absent any foreign military action or support—would be to return Eritrea to the Western sphere. All Eritrea would need in return would be open access to Western markets, finance, and trade; free transfer of technology; and diplomatic support.
For Eritrea to flourish, it needs to repopulate its Red Sea coast through industrialization, urbanization, and digitalization. This cannot happen without integrating into the security architecture and civilization of the West. At the same time, denying space for the establishment of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and Turkish naval bases would benefit both the West and Eritrea itself as the presence of rival bases would diminish Eritrea’s historical and strategic role, relevance, and leverage.
Eritrea also will only shed its dominant anti-West narrative when Eritrea, already the de facto nation-state of the Tigrinya people, becomes an official one. The population of Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions can also prosper by resettling en masse on Eritrea’s coast. It is impossible for them to be economically competitive and to escape poverty while living 7,500 feet above sea level.
Easing Eritrea’s transition requires adroit diplomacy. First, the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states should reintegrate Eritrea into the global economy. Arab states should recognize any support for Isaias in his twilight years is counterproductive and unsustainable. Instead, the West, Israel, and the moderate Arab and African camps should begin cultivating Eritrean groups that support pluralism. Those seeking a stable and secure Red Sea can catalyze change with additional secondary sanctions on Eritrean mining operations that, in practice, benefit only Isaias and China. Lastly, it is crucial to reach out to the people now by supporting a 24-hour satellite television and radio network that promotes Tigrigna nationalism, economic prosperity, direct democracy, and anti-corruption.
Eritrea can be as much a force for stability in the future as it is a force for instability now. A little planning and investment now could pay huge strategic dividends.
