ETHIOPIA REDRAWS THE RED LINE VS. ERITREA

Transcription

1 ETHIOPIA REDRAWS THE RED LINE VS. ERITREA Ezana Sehay 7/10/2005 Having failed to deter the Isayas regime from its subversive activities, the only, rational, politically and legally acceptable option for Ethiopia is to re-establish the resolve required for a credible deterrence by demonstrating a willingness to respond to Eritrea s non-compliance. During his recent address to parliament Prime Minister Hailemariam warned the bellicose regime of Eritrea not to taste Ethiopia s patience. That by itself is not a watershed moment in this regard but it is the most explicit term, he has yet expressed. It is also a sign finally; the government has realized How do you practice deterrence when you have an enemy that values your death more than its existence? it is time for shedding the illusion about the selfappointed president of Eritrea - That he is incorrigible Following the Ethio-Eritrean war public opinion in Ethiopia was divided on the way it ended. There were those who disapproved the resolution of the war without regime change in Eritrea or at least the country s [Eritrea] Finlandization. Others were weary and sick of the war and preferred the quick conclusion so the country [Ethiopia] can turn to its main focus; fighting poverty. The reasoning behind the later bloc s viewpoint was; if Ethiopia halted its advances and avoided further punishing the Isayas regime and brought its troops back home; that, despite its military upper hand, if it did not call for further concession from the Eritrean regime there would not be another conflict in the future. That if we stop fighting the enemy, the enemy would stop fighting us. But it turned out not to have been so. The advocates of pursuing the war further who told us that the Eritrean aggression was uncalled for and was meant to inflict maximum harm to Ethiopia, therefore, must be won in totality or at any rate, they asked how will we know we have won? were not, we can now see, pessimists. They told us we had a choice otherwise we will be condemned to years of skirmishes and terrorism whether we wished it or not. The optimists, which by the way includes the EPRDF government, thought in some way, that a reset of relations with Eritrean regime would put things right. Following the armistice the Eritrean media continued and enhanced its anti-ethiopia propaganda. To the contrary Ethiopia maintained a rather policy of appeasement. The Ethiopian public 1

2 media was care full not to provoke the Eritrean regime. For a while, the government even halted or was reluctant to provide support to the Eritrean opposition groups. In the late 1980s, Ethiopia was instrumental in establishing the Inter Governmental Authority on Development [IGAD]. Ethiopian thought rightfully, that ties of mutual interest in trade and commercial integration would make war less likely in the troubled region. But that didn t prevent Eritrea prom picking a fight with each of its neighbors. Then as well, the post war Ethiopian détente policy has proven to be a false hope. It didn t take time for Isayas to go back to his old tricks of destabilizing the neighborhood esp. Ethiopia. Eventually Eritrea s transgression attracted the attention of the international community and consequently the UN deployed economic sanctions on the regime. The aim was if not to reverse its aggression through its proxies, as first hoped, then at least to deter it from further belligerence. But sanctions, when they come, were late, spotty, and grudgingly applied to be effective. Therefore Somalia has been followed by Yemen and now south Sudan as isayas s playing field. Moreover Eritrea is on war footage with Djibouti. With respect to Ethiopia; the Isayas regime is investing its meager resources in to its anti Ethiopia schemes as it keeps playing a dangerous and petulant game and avidly pursues alliance with the enemies of the EPRDF government. Ethiopia has done all it could, in short, to avoid confrontation with Eritrea. To rephrase Prime Minister Hailemariam s statement: Ethiopia retreated from conflict, but conflict is following it. The prime minister justly puts the blame entirely on the mentality of the folks running Eritrea. Isayas and company are not competent enough to understand and appreciate good will gesture by the Ethiopian government. In other words, talking peace with Isayas and Moonies is casting pearls before swine or as the Chinese saying playing the lute to a cow, actually the later idiom has a story line that is apropos. The story goes as follows Long ago, a master was playing his zither in a field when he saw a cow grazing nearby. Wondering if the cow would be touched by his music, he moved closer and proceeded to play virtuosic music. However the cow didn t seem to care at all and just kept chewing its cud. The master thought for a moment before continuing to play. This time, he played the sounds of Mosquitoes buzzing and calves mooing. The cow looked up, moved its tail, and even flicked its ears as if to shoo away mosquitoes. The master then realized that playing beautiful music to a cow was a lost cause since it simply couldn t appreciate music; only by playing sounds that appealed to the cow s own understanding could he get through to it. 2

3 Therefore playing the lute to a cow come to refer to explaining high level principles to someone who is incapable of understanding them, or trying to reason with stubborn people or talking over someone s head choosing the wrong audience, those who can t appreciate what you are saying. Evidently the moral of the tale is people like Isayas only understand the language of the stick or the specter of it. So here we are facing threats, we are learning, that cannot be placated. They must be either deterred or destroyed. There is no use pretending otherwise. The dilemma Ethiopia is facing is; how do you practice deterrence when you have an enemy that values your death more than its own existence? But of course Ethiopia is not replacing the illusion of peace with illusion of war. No two situations are alike, and the kind of threats the country faces today are not necessarily the same as it faced in the past. Furthermore the ramifications might be the same but there is a distinction between the means of aggression. There is a military power, the traditional preserve of nation states and then there is the asymmetric power of terrorist groups. At the moment Eritrea doesn t have the capacity or attributes of a state, including the ability to conduct a sustained, open-fielded military operation against Ethiopia. Its military power is so depleted it can t even fight its way out of a paper bag a wet paper bag at that. What we have is a state [Eritrea] adopting many of the tactics of asymmetric warfare, using stealth, lies, and proxies to achieve its goals in place of direct invasion like it did in This is what is confounding Ethiopians and present the government [Ethiopian] with not one but two strategic dilemmas: when to draw the line in the sand and how. To the first, the answer is: Ethiopia should draw the line around national defence. Therefore whatever promises it makes it should keep them, but it shouldn t make promises it cannot keep and it should not keep promises it hasn t made. In his address PMH, mentioned the abhorrent situation the Eritrean people are being subjected to by their government. Besides expressing empathy, he urged the international community to act to salvage what s left of the country before it sinks. Some Ethiopians and many Eritreans voice perhaps Ethiopia should have gone for regime change when it had the chance; perhaps it should yet. But until it does, it cannot credibly commit to such an agenda. To go to war for regime change, as morally imperative as it may be, would be to draw the line after the fact rather than before. Ethiopia may have a moral obligation to help the Eritrean people, but that is a fight Eritreans need to have it out. This is not to say that 3

4 Ethiopia should turn a blind eye to what is happening in Eritrea; only that it should assist them [the Eritrean people] should they ask for. Now let me address the second question. How does Ethiopia draw a line so that it is clear to everyone when it has been crossed? Deterrence depends upon the tripwires being highly visible, not only to leave any potential aggressor in no doubt as to where they are, but also to mobilize public opinion. As I mentioned earlier it is unlikely the Isayas regime will call Ethiopia bluff and conduct a full-scale incursion, of the kind we remember in 1998, with its tanks rolling across the border. But what if the line is crossed in many subtler, less visible ways; such as recruiting, training, financing terrorists and directing them to conduct acts of terror inside Ethiopia? Such terrorist acts are obviously an ominous portent. Hence the predicament that confronts Ethiopia was how to prevent and respond to such threats. Building a military force with rapid response capacity was a good start: by deploying such a force at the first sign of trouble, especially at the border areas, it drew the line a new: with our troops in harm s way, the tripwire is made visible again. But now what PMH alluded is that the red line is being redrawn inside Eritrea: the launching ground for anti-ethiopia groups. From international legal standpoint such an action would not be unprecedented. There are many countries which crossed in to other sovereign states in pursuit of terrorists. To cite a few: Turkey, Rwanda, Chad, France, US etc. The justification of such an act emanates from UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States as revised and adopted 9 Dec, 1981, Which Bars any state from interfering in another country s affairs directly or indirectly. According to the convention, any violation of this principle poses a threat to the other state s peace and security. To put it in to prospective by arming, training and financing armed groups who are actively threatening the security of the state of Ethiopia; Eritrea is violating the aforementioned charter. Furthermore, according to the convention the victim nation has the legal right to use force to end the culprit state s sponsor of armed groups. In fact, such an act of national self-defence, even preemptive self-defence is a legitimate undertaking that doesn t need UN authorization - its jus ad bellum. 4

5 5