The Eritrean Opposition: The Fallacies of Its Democracy Project

The Eritrean Opposition: the Fallacies of Its Democracy Project

Yosief Ghebrehiwet

(I) Introduction

Self-reliant resistance adherents of the Eritrean opposition happen to believe that unless regime change is followed up with democracy, then it is not worth the trouble. One of the main reasons they are opposing military pressure from outside is that it doesn’t guarantee democracy in its aftermath. Although their concern is genuine, it comes from having a wrong understanding of the nature of the Isaias regime. They believe it is the run-of-the-mill kind of dictatorship, similar to that of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, etc. Starting with such a faulty premise, one can perfectly understand their worries: why undergo so much sacrifice in order to swap one dictator for another? But if one believes that what makes the regime a menace to its people and to the neighborhood is its abnormal totalitarian nature (abnormal among authoritarian nations), then what one should aim at is normalization, and not democratization, as its primary goal. The central question should be: how do we return normalcy to the life of the people? Although democracy rights necessarily include normalcy rights, in most instances the other way round doesn’t hold true. So what is needed is a regime that normalizes relations both with its neighbors and its subjects, and it is not a coincidence that both of these missions happen to be intimately linked to one another. But such a regime may come short of the democratic credentials that many in the opposition are demanding. If so, the critical question is: is it worth all the trouble?

Below, in part II, I am reposting an abridged version of an article which appeared under the title What Has Democracy Got to Do with It? on January 2010 to show the bankruptcy of the “democracy project” as practiced by the opposition, but not with the self-reliant resistance adherents in mind. The military option to usher regime change in Eritrea as a topic of discussion was not raised then. Yet, much of what was written then is applicable to them too. In part III, I will go over six fallacies of their democracy project. And in Part IV, we will see what Isaias dreads most: not normalizing relations with Ethiopia, but with his own subjects. By doing the above, I am hoping to set the necessary background for my forthcoming article that argues that even in the absence of democratic guarantee, regime change through outside pressure – be it economic or military, or both – is worth it.


(II) What Has Democracy Got to Do with It? [an abridged version] (written on 01/25/10)

Among the opposition’s doing, the most harmful thing to Eritrea has been having its current predicament identified as a political rather than existential crisis. Once misdiagnosed as a political crisis, all try to find a political solution that invariably bypasses urgent issues of survival that has little to do with politics. The reason why most Eritreans in the opposition put undue focus on the “democracy project” – creating political parties, pushing for “unity” among parties, flirting with government-in-exile, discussing on what type of democratic government is suitable to Eritrea, rallying around the constitution or amending it or condemning it, strengthening democratic institutions in Diaspora, instilling democratic culture among youth organizations, advocating for free media and other democratic rights, conducting conferences and symposiums promoting democracy, writing endless papers on the virtue of democracy, etc – for providing a solution to the current crisis of existence primarily comes from this flawed understanding.

Both the regime’s supporters and most of its detractors have this “patriotic” tendency to criminally bypass the people’s existential predicament in order to achieve some higher “national” goal; all said and done, of course, in the name of the masses. The supporters of the regime are infamously known for prioritizing land over people. All their incessant cries for “security of the nation first” have nothing to do with providing security to the people. If anything, Eritreans are more insecure now than ever – both from inside and outside. In a similar fashion, much of the opposition has been prioritizing democracy over people. The democracy proponents’ credo says it all: “The only change worth having is that of democracy” Notice the exhaustive either/or logic under which they have been working: either a regime change that ushers democracy or no regime change at all, thereby implicitly settling for the current regime to occupy the default position until they come up with a democratic solution. Given that a tailor-made change exact to their democratic specifications cannot be guaranteed ahead of time, their suicidal go-slow approach is only understandable. In both cases, however disparate they may seem in the “higher” goals they want to achieve, it is the same nationalistic drive that prioritizes ghedli-conceived “Eritrea” over the masses that explains their respective stands. In the latter case, the snail-paced, incremental pressure on the regime that they advocate is meant to assure no unexpected eventualities that may jeopardize that dream. In the meantime, both are willing to let the masses take all the beating they could, if that is what it takes to preserve the fragile “Eritrea” they harbor in their heads.

The here-and-now and the hereafter

I have labeled what the opposition of the peaceful type are doing as “democracy project” simply because almost everything they do revolves around democracy and democratization, to the neglect of the existential predicament that the nation finds itself now. The pervasiveness of the democracy project is inescapable. You see it dominating in almost any meeting, conference or symposium organized to tackle the Eritrean crisis, be it done by political or civic organizations. Even though many of these adherents of democracy are well-meaning though misguided in their prioritization of democracy, many others do it for dubious reasons – as seen in many of Shaebia- and Jebha-oriented opposition groups.

Disparate as these groups may seem, what is important to us is their commonality: all are so obsessed with the hereafter – with life after Isaias – that they pay little attention to the here and now – how to get rid of the regime and deliver the people from the existential threat they are living under. They are so preoccupied with preparations for the takeover that the task of regime change is relegated to the bottom of their wish list.

The existential crisis

The Eritrean condition requires immediate, emergency rescue that gives us no luxury time to entertain possible scenarios. In No Sense of Urgency among the Opposition , I said the following regarding the existential predicament of Eritrea, pointing at the multiple places it is profusely bleeding internally:

“The horrendous damage inflicted by the Isaias regime, which in the near future may turn out to be irreversible, is now being witnessed in every aspect of the nation’s already tattered economic, social, humanitarian and political fabric: in the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of youth, leaving behind them ghost villages, towns and cities across the nation; in the hundreds of thousands of adults indefinitely stranded in the wilderness under that misleading name of ‘national service’, deliberately made to toil in Sisyphean tasks solely designed for purposes of absolute control; in the tens of thousands of prisoners languishing in the ever-proliferating prisons and concentration camps all over Eritrea; in the killings and massacres at border crossings, underground dungeons, hard labor camps and other killing fields; in the systematic dismantling of the educational system, especially of higher learning; in the melting down of the economy, with the merchant and business class totally wiped out; in the hollowing out of the army, with its most seasoned and most educated part stampeding en mass for exit; in the utter failure of Shaebia’s ‘self-reliance’ policy and, consequently, in the severe famine it has now ushered to the country; in the government’s ‘food policy’, where food is rationed, land expropriated, peasants’ food storages looted and traditional markets rendered off limits to peasants; in the newly accelerated ‘resettlement policy’, where whole regions are to be dislodged and relocated in an agrarian design with huge social ramifications; in the remaking of the nation in Shaebia’s image, with the rule of law, culture and religion gutted out by a nihilist ‘ideology’; and, overall, in the ever-tightening totalitarian grip over the masses that has left no elbow room to breathe, let alone protest.”

If we add the regime’s terrorist excursions throughout the region that have put the nation into a permanent war footing with all its neighbors to the myriad of internal problems mentioned above, then we can see the nation’s downward spiral that would surely end in a total meltdown if left to complete its natural course. The nation is being hollowed out at such a rapid rate that unless the Isaias regime is made to collapse at the earliest time possible, soon there will be little left of Eritrea worth saving.

If the above depicted characterization of what is going on in the nation is true, then the nation’s crisis is primarily existential, and only secondarily political. None of the problems mentioned above came as a result of lack of democracy, and none necessarily require democratization to resolve them. A realistic dictator or nondemocratic leader could have easily avoided all these existential trappings that Shaebia has easily fallen into. And any government that comes after the collapse of the Isaias regime – be it non-democratic, nominally democratic, dictatorship or democratic – would be able to resolve all these problems of existence at one go. All it has to do is make peace with Ethiopia, resolve the border issue, demobilize the army, drop its “self-reliance policy”, reinstitute the educational system, let the people practice whatever religion they want, let farmers and pastoralists own their land, stop interfering in the economy of the country, stop sponsoring terrorism and reverse all other draconian policies that disrupted normal life that the Asmara regime has imposed after the border crisis.

Normalization vs democratization

If the people’s crisis has primarily to do with issues of survival and not with lack of democracy, what is it that the masses actually want at this point in time? All they want is for this horror of insanity, the likes of which they have never seen before, to stop: no more famine, no more adventures, no more indefinite service, no more mass exodus, no more “disappearances”, no more land expropriation, no more market regulation, no more movement restraint, no more religious persecution, no more Sawa, etc. In short: a return to a world of normalcy. That is all.

If there is a word that describes the people’s wish aptly, it would be “normalization”. They want everything to return to normal: Parents want to see their children grow up in a normal environment where they could go to school without getting swallowed up by the military machine. Peasants want to tend the land without the fear of their farmlands being confiscated or their food products looted. Merchants want to trade in free markets without all kinds of interference from the government and the fear of being bankrupted by PFDJ’s economic arm. Parishioners want to worship their God whichever way they want without the fear of being persecuted or disenfranchised. Grown up adults want to work in a normal job, marry while they are young and raise a family. And so on. … Everyone wants to lead a normal life; period. “Normalization” is the default position where both totalitarianism and democracy take off, the former to wipe it out and the latter to enrich it. But you wouldn’t know that from the democracy project proponents that equate normalization with democracy only. For these proponents of democracy, if there is a way of getting normalization without democratization, they would have none of it, even it is meant to save the people from imminent existential threat!

[For the full article, look at: Eritrea: What Has Democracy Got to Do with It? (The Democracy Project)]

(III) Six Causal Fallacies of the Democracy Project

Towards the end of the above article (What Has Democracy Got to Do with It?) I mentioned thirteen fallacies of the democracy project, with two main goals in mind: to show the superfluous nature of the democracy project, in that it never does what it sets out to do when it comes to the task of regime change given its causal impotency; and its obstructive nature, in that it has prevented well-meaning Eritreans from seeking alternative ways of finishing off the Isaias regime. But so far, only one of those fallacies has been discussed in a different article, The Abnormal Nature of the Eritrean Regime. Below, I will briefly go over six of them that I have found applicable to the self-reliant resistance adherents. These fallacies are not mutually exclusive of one another, but they would help us understand the utter bankruptcy of the democracy project if taken one by one.

(a) The “absence of democracy” fallacy

The first fallacy that many in the opposition deploy to justify their democracy project goes as follows:

• “It is the lack of democracy (or the non-implementation of the constitution) that has brought the current humanitarian crisis in Eritrea.”

This is like arguing that if someone died of starvation, he died because of lack of gourmet food. Even though it is true that had he been able to get gourmet food he wouldn’t have died, it is wrong to conclude that he died of lack thereof. He died because he didn’t have anything to eat; and by “anything”, we mean the barest minimum that could have kept him hanging onto his life. We can imagine him surviving in a world devoid of gourmet food, but we cannot imagine him surviving in a world devoid of any kind of food. Similarly, even if we assume that the presence of democracy would have avoided the horrors under which the Eritrean masses are currently living, it doesn’t mean that its absence is the cause for these horrors. We need to look at the “barest minimum” denied to our people to see the cause for all the horrors we witness in Eritrea. As in the example, we can imagine these horrors disappearing in a world without democracy. All that we have to do is look at many nondemocratic nations – even dictatorships – that have successfully avoided the existential predicament in which Eritrea finds itself today. All we need is compare Eritrea with Tunisia and Egypt before the uprisings. Even though the latter two nations were under dictatorship, many of what people take for normal in their daily lives were not denied to them.

If the above is true, focusing on the undemocratic nature of Shaebia won’t do the job, for that is something that it shares with all nondemocratic entities. Instead, what we have to examine is the nature of the irrational extra or overkill measures that Shaebia deploys in whatever it does to get what it wants.

It is very important to realize that the essential subtraction we do to find out the real culprit for all the existential crisis in Eritrea is not to be found in the difference between the current tragic state of the nation under the Isaias regime and what a democratic system would have ushered instead, but at the difference between what the present regime does and what other typical dictatorships or nondemocratic states would do under similar circumstances. So what we ought to ask is: what is it that Shaebia does above and over what other typical dictatorships or non-democratic states do to bring a myriad of draconian disasters upon its people and itself? Or, to put it in the language of “normalization versus democratization”: what is it abnormal about the nature of the Isaias regime – that is, abnormal among nondemocratic governments – that prevents the Eritrean people from leading a normal life?

The democracy project as promoted by most of the opposition says nothing about the unique or exceptional or abnormal nature (again, unique among nondemocratic regimes) of the Isaias regime that puts it in the same exclusive club with the North Korean regime, Khmer Rouge, Tamil Tigers and Taliban. In all of them, there is a persistent irrational streak that cannot be explained even under their own interests, let alone under the interests of the respective peoples they claim to represent.

[For an extensive discussion on the first fallacy, look at my article The Abnormal Nature of the Eritrean Regime (The Democracy Project) from which this (a) section has been taken]

(b) As a necessary solution to the existential crisis

The second fallacy goes as follows:

• “Democracy is necessarily needed to solve Eritrea’s existential problems.”

Let’s assume the worst case scenario and imagine a dictator coming after the collapse of the Isaias regime. The dictator doesn’t have to go democratic or “implement the constitution” to address almost all of humanitarian/existential problems that is haunting the nation now. All that he has to do is reverse all the draconian policies that Shaebia has imposed on the masses – mostly after the border crisis – without costing him too much in his power for the nation’s existential crisis to be resolved:

• Ethiopia policy: Without normalizing relations with Ethiopia, it would be impossible for the new comer to deal with the myriad internal problems that would surely crop up as a result of regime change. So, by definition, a leader that doesn’t make his peace with Ethiopia is inconceivable, for he wouldn’t last long.
• Border policy: At minimum, he would have to renounce violence as a means of resolving the border issue. At maximum, he would have to demarcate the border after dialog with Ethiopia, immaterial of where Badme lands up.
• National service policy: After the resolution of the border issue, he would have no reason at all to delay the demobilization of the army. With this one stroke, he would resolve all the problems associated with the national service.
• Prison policy: He would release almost all prisoners. Almost the entire prison population could be released without any political cost to the dictator since only a tiny fraction of the prisoners are political; most of the prisoners are directly or indirectly related to the national service.
• Self reliance policy: He would renounce this policy which has been at the root cause for much of the failure in many sectors, and especially in regard to the economic sector.
• Market policy: He would stop interfering with the markets within the nation and open them to trade with neighboring countries. With that move, the dream of making Massawa and Assab commercial hub centers in the Red Sea (such as duty-free ports), may be realized.
• Monopoly policy: He would overturn the monopolization policy and allow private ownership and businesses to flourish in every sector – land, business, factories, market, etc. PFDJ’s ownership of the nation would come to an end.
• Religion policy: He would reinstitute all banned religions, and the structural tampering of the main religions would be made to stop.
• Education policy: He would reinstitute the educational system. He would close Sawa, open the university and kick out the colonels out of collages; that is, he would purge the militarization out of education.
• Terrorism policy: He would stop sponsoring terrorism, and with one stroke mend his relationship with all the neighboring countries and the West.

Please do not fail to observe two important facts: First, not a single of the existential problems mentioned above – problems that have to do with the very survival and welfare of the people – necessarily require democratization to solve them. And, second, the normalization of relations with Ethiopia happens to be the road to the returning of normalcy in the lives of the Eritrean masses, the key being the demobilization of the army and all the dividends that follow it up.

(c) A sufficient causal role for regime change

The third fallacy goes as follows:

• “The ‘democracy project’ is capable of ushering regime change in Eritrea.”

Another sad result that has emerged as a result of the false causal connection made to hold between “democracy” and “regime change” is that a whole enterprise around “democracy” has been flourishing among the Diaspora opposition to the exclusion of almost everything else: rallying around the constitution or its alternative, flirting with government-in-exile, strengthening democratic institutions, creating a plethora of opposition parties, various parties coming under one umbrella, merging of like-minded parties, splitting into different parties, emphasizing equal representation, advocating free media, conducting endless seminars on promoting democracy, etc. But among all this “democratic” commotion, no one seems to ask: what has all this got to do with bringing change in Eritrea? This virtual democratization process taking place among Diaspora opposition, as a cause, has zero impact on regime change in Eritrea; it happens to be as epiphenomenal as my shadow when I push a car. When I bend to push the car, the shadow too does the same thing, but that doesn’t mean it is helping me push the car. So is it with all this democratic shebedbed. Then why is the opposition involved in this futile task, to the exclusion of almost everything else? Precisely because they are confusing the existential predicament of Eritrea for a political one.

Take a simple example: rallying around the constitution. Even if the whole Eritrean Diaspora population were to rally around the constitution, how is that supposed to causally affect whatever is going on in Eritrea, let alone regime change? Dr Bereket Habteselassie talks about “Midhan Eritrea” (“Saving Eritrea”), which is indeed a noble project, but soon after he goes on dragging his quam into the “midhan project”, as if rallying around it would magically save Eritrea.

How on earth is this “democracy” magic wand supposed to work from a distance? Even if, per impossible, we succeed in making the whole Diaspora population certified democrats, what does that have to do with bringing change in Eritrea? There is this absurd belief that democratization among Diaspora (I have absolutely no idea what that really means or whether there is any means of verifying it) would instantly translate into something tangible inside Eritrea – something that could only happen outside the realm of cause and effect.

(d) Facilitating democratization inside Eritrea

The fourth fallacy goes as follows:

• The democracy project from outside facilitates the democratization process inside Eritrea.

Call it the parallel democratization mission. The democracy proponents are saying that before the two lines are made to meet at a converging point of regime change or its aftermath, work needs to be done on both sides; and, in the meantime, the outside work will facilitate the inside job.

First of all, if there are any organized democratic forces inside Eritrea, we have yet to hear about them. But more importantly, we have yet to hear any of their work. Let alone for meaningful sabotage, there are not even pamphlet distributing elements that one would expect in such oppressive climates. The apathy in the land is complete. So the allusion that some democratic elements from outside are working hand in hand with democratic elements inside is misleading, at best.

The ironic part is that as these democracy voices from diaspora ask for more resources and time to work on their democratic credentials before they go “fully democratic” and facilitate the democratization process inside Eritrea, all the factors that would make Eritrea democratic in the future are disappearing fast from the internal scene: First, the most educated citizens are fleeing the nation in mass exodus. Already, hundreds of thousands have left the country, and if the trend continues in years to come, almost the whole educated class will have totally abandoned this sinking ship. Second, the educational system has been drastically overhauled to produce robotic individuals that would be made to fit into Shaebia’s totalitarian system; so much so, that they may not be easily amenable to a culture of democracy in the future. And third, the radicalization of various sectors of the population is going unabated – a negative factor that would easily counter any progress on the democratic front from outside. The irony then comes in this: Diaspora Eritreans of the opposition sort want to take all their time to build a shining democratic space ship that, once the Isaias regime is gone, will triumphantly land on Titanic Eritrea.

If the above is true, it can be said without exaggeration that the democracy project from outside is inversely related to the democracy project from inside: as the democratization process intensifies in Diaspora, the prospects of a democratic Eritrea in the future are getting dimmer and dimmer by the day.

(e) Democracy project has identifiable parameters

The fifth fallacy goes as follows:

• “One would be able to tell when the democracy project is ready”

One of the main themes we hear in various conferences has been the need to provide resources for strengthening the democratization process in Diaspora. It is clear that such a process would take time before it is declared ready to take over. What is inherently wrong with this advice even if we buy into it? We will never be able to know when that time arrives.

How will we ever know when this democratization forces from the outside are ready? Is it when they say they are ready? And who are “they” by the way? And how does the democratization process go? Do we send the old guards to a crash course on Democracy 101 and then give them exam to see whether they can pass it? And how do we know the multiparty system is complete, when they reach 27? Or is it when every Eritrean rallies around the constitution? Or is it when accredited democracy experts conduct workshops in democracy at every town and city where Eritreans in diaspora reside? For me, all of this is as bogus as blood-testing someone to find out whether he turns positive on democracy.

The absurdity of this proposal rests on the assumption that one can tell how democracy works absent its context, absent its application; democracy doesn’t work in simulation. There are many tasks in this world that can be studied prior to application. The whole idea of the educational system is based on that. One studies years before one becomes an engineer or doctor. But democratic credentials don’t come that way; like any other virtue, they don’t exist outside their applicability. The whole insanity of this project of “preparation from outside” is that, in absence of democracy in practice itself, there is neither a way of preparing or teaching it nor a way of measuring its success. Absent such a context, everyone will pretend to be a democrat, and soon we will have a number of Al Chalabis in our hand. A professor, with a PhD in political science and 20 books on constitution and constitutionality under his belt, could turn out to be the worst autocrat imaginable.

What we can see from the above is that the idea of “preparation” from outside for takeover is a bogus enterprise, its only purpose – be it deliberate or inadvertent – is that of delaying the removal of the Isaias regime.

(f) Trivializing the humanitarian plight

The sixth fallacy goes as follows:

• “The democracy project is the only way (and does a terrific job for that) of bringing the humanitarian crisis in Eritrea to the attention of the world.”

If a conference with the aim of promoting democracy in Cambodia was to be held during the Khmer Rouge’s four years of reign, both the promoters and presenters would have been taken as totally detached from the realty on the ground. For instance, someone who would make a priority on the state of the freedom of press in Cambodia then could only do so by trivializing the tragic humanitarian horror under which the people were living under the Khmer Rouge rule. Similarly, someone who would object to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia at a time when the Khmer Rouge were conducting a genocide against their own people simply because the Vietnamese were incapable of bringing democratic change to the country wouldn’t do so without trivializing the horror under which the Cambodians were living. So is it with the case of Eritrea. One cannot take the democracy project with the seriousness, exclusivity and intensity the opposition has been doing without trivializing the elemental horrors the masses are undergoing now. In both instances, “Democracy over the People!” would be a befitting slogan.

The gap between Eritrea’s immense humanitarian crisis that has driven the nation into the edge of existential meltdown, one that calls for an immediate resolution, and the democracy project that is predicated on so many unknown variables, and hence one that calls for an extended time to materialize, is so huge that no group could make the latter its main focus now without trivializing the former. The humanitarian condition in the country has gotten so bad that one cannot talk about the state of democracy in Eritrea without presupposing a better condition on the humanitarian front than what actually exists on the ground. To point to just one example, if we take a careful look at overwhelming majority of the prison population in Eritrea, politics has absolutely nothing to do with it. In Sealing off Eritrea: Domestic Terrorism I wrote:

“To date, there are tens of thousands of prisoners languishing in these notorious Shaebia’s chambers of horror under the pretext of ‘national security’.  Even though most of the opposition’s focus has been on recognizable names such as higher officials (ex: G-15) and journalists, actually the overwhelming number of these prisoners are directly related to the national service. If we categorize the prisoners related to the national service by types, they would be: (a) army deserters, (b) draft dodgers, (c) the parents of escapees, (d) dissenters while in national service, (e) conscientious objectors (f) those accused of “insubordination” (g) those who refuse to serve in the army for religious reasons (ex: Jehovah Witnesses), (h) those practicing their religion while in national service (ex: Evangelical Christians reading the Bible), (i) and other reasons – for having misspoken, overstayed one’s leave, refused an officer’s sexual overtures, shown no zeal, etc.”

We can add to this list from the civilian population – those attempting to escape to neighboring countries, peasants suspected to be unhappy about the land, food and market policies that affect them directly, various religious “dissidents”, etc. If so, only a tiny fraction of all the prisoners in Eritrea would count as genuinely political.

But by the disproportionate focus that has been given to political dissidents (G-15, journalists, etc) in the opposition, it makes it seem that Eritrea’s problem is primarily political and not humanitarian. And if these political dissidents don’t even make a tiny fraction of the entire humanitarian prisoners, one cannot put undue focus on the former without trivializing the latter. It is in the nature of totalitarian systems’ scorched earth approach that it takes by far less than a political dissent to end up in their dungeons. And that is exactly what distinguishes a totalitarian system from the normal type of dictatorship – it attempts to kill the normalcy in people’s lives. And that information is exactly what we ought to convey to the world. Yet, by the undue focus on democratization, we are sending the opposite message to the world: that the crisis in Eritrea is of the normal dictatorship type; that is, its only fault is that it failed to democratize itself. And this, in turn, sends another wrong message: that a tempered measure is all that is needed to resolve Eritrea’s problems.

(IV) What Isaias dreads most: Normalizing relations with his subjects

The question has always been: why is it that Isaias has been harping on the Badme thing while he could have easily made peace with the Ethiopian government by negotiating with it, or even giving in to its demands? After all, the idea that Eritreans would protest such a dénouement for the Badme crisis is a joke; they would more than welcome it if it could only return normalcy to their lives. In fact, his followers who have been invoking the Badme issue as a threat to Eritrean sovereignty ad nausea would see the wisdom of his decision overnight. And to think that Isaias gives a damn about Badme would be another joke. So the riddle remains, if it had been all along so easy for him to make up with Meles, why didn’t he do it? No one can discount his hubris: the idea that, after such an agreement, he will forever remain a junior partner to Meles is not an easy thing to swallow for a man who has never accepted second position in his life. But I doubt if that is the main reason.

I believe the main reason has been an internal one: the Eritrean youth. The regime does not dread normalizing relations with Ethiopia for itself, but for the normalcy in the daily lives of Eritreans it would bring. So the regime’s greatest fear is normalizing relations with its own subjects. With the return of normalcy, the regime will loose the main tool it has been wielding to keep the adult population under its iron grip. For instance, with the border crisis peacefully resolved, there would be no reason for the tyrant to keep hundreds of thousands of conscripts cordoned off in the trenches and military camps – away from the urban centers where they may cause unrest.

The problem lies in what would follow up demobilization. First, the immediate result would be the return of the urban youth that have been cordoned off in the wilderness for years to the cities. Second, if there is any lesson from ghedli history regarding demobilization, it is that even those peasants and pastoralists that have been serving for years in the National Service are less likely to return to their villages; most of them would follow the rest to the cities. Third, the mass exodus would drastically slow down for two reasons: first, with indefinite national service eliminated, their biggest threat to lead a normal life would be removed; and, second, the fact that their asylum cases will be no more accepted anywhere they go would be the greatest disincentive to leave the country. Fourth, all those teenagers in high schools all over the country would soon join the adult population already crowding the cities. It is this sudden and huge congregation of youth in the cities and towns across Eritrea, in general, and Asmara, in particular, that Shaebia dreads most.

The regime is unprepared for aftermath of the no peace no war default position it made of: First, it would have been next to impossible to find jobs for all those hundreds of thousands of youth, the overwhelming majority of which are unskilled, that have been trapped in the National Service for so long. And, second, this population group would demand, besides jobs, all the other minimum requirements that would return normalcy to their lives. That would mean, among other things, students going to normal schools, colleges running without illiterate colonels as their heads, reopening Asmara University; people going to their choice of churches, without any interference from the government; parents taking back the control over their children that they have lost to Shaebia; people congregating in whatever numbers they want, be it in mahber, celebrations, festivities and other gatherings; swapping information (interpreted in the 21st century, that would be the young quickly joining the information age in droves – the internet, the cell phone, satellite dish, etc). If you think that these are democratic rights, think again. These are the normal things that people would assume as given in their lives in any normal society – be it monarchy, dictatorship or democracy; like oxygen, no society could exist for long without these essentials. If so, normalcy rights would be found at a lower level than democratic rights. Correspondingly, whereas dictatorship is mainly characterized by the absence of democratic rights, totalitarianism is mainly characterized by the absence of normalcy rights in the people’s daily lives.

If the above makes sense, then the one critical point to understand the Eritrean situation is: the Isaias regime would feel secure only in an abnormal world of its own making. And the only way it knows how to sustain this abnormal world is by emptying the cities of its youth – by putting the youth at a safe distance. This is simple, brutal yet effective method; but what makes it impossible to let go is that there is absolutely no backup mechanism to fall to. Therefore, anything that threatens to jeopardize this “balance” is to be totally avoided – hence, Shaebia’s reluctance to normalize relations with Ethiopia. The Achilles' heel of Shaebia is the return of normalcy in the people’s lives. Normalcy to Shaebia is like the sunlight to a vampire: both wither quickly under them. If so, what the opposition should aim at is at what Shaebia dreads most: at the return of normalcy, and not at the superfluous demands of democracy. Once normalcy sets in, democracy is made within reach.


(V) Conclusion

In a subject matter that emphasizes the virtue of normalization both in its national and regional sense, we shouldn’t miss that there is a different kind of negative normalization that is deployed to prevent just that: the normalizing aspect of the abnormal behavior of Shaebia conducted by none other than the opposition of the self-reliant types. After having normalized Shaebia’s crimes into the run-of-the-mill dictatorship types, there would be no surprise if they come up with a tempered solution that takes all its time to materialize.

The regime supporters’ rosy picture of the Eritrean condition fools nobody, and hence doesn’t count as obstructionism. What I believe to be the worst kind of obstructionism is the normalizing of the abnormal behavior of the regime conducted by the opposition of the self-reliant type, as can be clearly seen from their democracy project. They have to cut Shaebia’s horrendous crimes against humanity into normal size of the authoritarian type so as to fit their tempered measures. But an acute illness cannot be downsized to fit the medicine that one already has in mind; it is the medicine that has to fit the illness. But if one nevertheless does the former, it is because curing the patient is not his priority.

Having set the background, in a forthcoming article I will argue: (a) that regime change in Eritrea through outside pressure – be it economic or military, or both – is worth it even if it doesn’t guarantee democracy in its aftermath; and (b) that the democracy project, aside from being obstructive to regime change, is most damaging to democratic prospects in Eritrea itself – that is, that it has turned out to be a self-defeating mission. I will try to link these two by arguing that the best road to democratization is through normalization.

Yosief Ghebrehiwet

04/06/2011