"Dreams Don't Come True in Eritrea": Anomie and Family

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Abstract

This article analyzes contemporary Eritrea’s acute crisis within the framework of the theory of anomie. It is based on the hypothesis that militarization, forced labor, mass exodus, and family disintegration can be interpreted as the consequences of two incompatible norm and value systems: the collectivist, nationalistic, and militaristic worldview of the former liberation front and ruling party People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and the traditional cultural system of Eritrea’s society. In 2002 the regime introduced an unlimited “development campaign,” thereby forcing large parts of the society to live as conscripts and perform unpaid labor. This has caused a mass exodus of young people and a rapid process of family disintegration. The article is based on empirical fieldwork and evaluates the ongoing developments, which have led to rapid economic decline and the destabilization of the entire fabric of society.


“Dreams Don’t Come True in Eritrea”: Anomie and Family Disintegration due to the Structural Militarization of Society

By Nicole Hirt

 [A] Excerpts from the subtitle:

Introduction

When a correspondent from the Financial Times visited Eritrea in summer 2009, a young woman told him, “When I was younger, I had hopes and dreams here. Now I don’t expect anything. I take things as they come. Dreams don’t come true in Eritrea.” “When I was younger” refers to the time prior to the introduction of the Warsay‐Yikealo Development Campaign (WYDC) in 2002, which was implemented two years after the end of a devastating war with Ethiopia (1998–2000). The youth of the country aspired to finally live life in peace, to complete their educations, to have families, and to enjoy life together with their loved ones. Most of them were ready to fulfill their “national duty,” 18 months of military training and reconstruction service, but then they expected to return to a civilian lifestyle.

[B] Excerpts from the subtitle:

The Concept of Anomie in the Eritrean Context

At first glance, there seems to have been no increase in deviant behavior if the term is reduced to criminality. Criminal acts have always been rare in Eritrea and still are. However, empirical research shows which forms of deviance occur frequently:

Rebellion: In a strongly authoritarian or totalitarian system like Eritrea’s, open rebellion is virtually impossible; those who rebel face arrest and severe punishment. One form of rebellion exercised has been the massive movement of the population towards the Evangelical churches since the end of the Ethio-Eritrean War, something which is an indicator of alienation from both traditional values and the political values of the EPLF and a turn towards the alternative normative system provided by these religious communities. The same pattern applies to Muslims who have shifted towards the Wahabite ideology, which rejects the old traditions of Sufism. …

Conformity: According to Merton, a society can only be stable as long as conformity is the predominant form of behavior within it. In Eritrea it is most probable that the number of “conformists” is steadily declining: Those who have built their lives according to the cultural goals of the traditional society are no longer able to achieve these goals, as the means for reaching them have been destroyed by the structural militarization of the society. Those who have internalized EPLF norms, are convinced of the government’s policy, and still believe that the goals of self-reliant development and social justice can be realized within the present system must turn a blind eye to the reality in the country, where the economy is on a steady course of decline and the number of beggars in the streets is rising on a daily basis. Generally, it is more likely that conformity of behavior can be identified among diaspora members who still believe that their government is on the right track as they are not directly exposed to its policies, yet are influenced by the regime’s media propaganda.

[C] Excerpts from the subtitle:

The Impact of War, Militarization and National Service on Families and the Social System

The war with Ethiopia and its aftermath brought a “second chance” for the PFDJ cadres to impose their rules on the entire society. The government introduced the national service in 1994, not only as military training and a development service but also as a tool for imposing the EPLF’s values on the younger generation, especially in regard to overcoming “subnational” orientations—meaning loyalty to ethnic, regional and religious networks—and developing a culture of nationalism and self‐sacrifice. The introduction of the WYDC in 2002 can be seen as an attempt to perpetuate the revolutionary wartime ideology and thus win a late victory over traditional values and sentiments. The name warsay-yikealo indicates that the younger generation, the inheritors, must live and work according to the advice of the older (and wiser) generation, but in a sense that excludes the civilian elders and defines the fighter generation as those who have all wisdom at their disposal. Even though they live in relative peace, the members of the younger generation are supposed to live in an enduring war simulating situation. In an imitation of the situation in the field during the struggle, all civilian activities are subordinated to a militarized lifestyle. Individualism is bedeviled, and all personal interests must be negated.

It is, however, an obvious fact that this second attempt to impose the EPLF value system is about to fail and is leading to an ever greater state of social anomie, which is most clearly visible in the mass exodus of the younger generation. … It is an obvious fact that the promised rewards, such as the rapid development of the economy, food security, and national self‐reliance, are an illusion; the actual outcome of the campaign has been, on the contrary, a rapid decline in economic performance and the living standards of the population.

[D] Excerpts from the subtitle:

Anomie Caused by the Warsay‐Yikealo Development Campaign and Possible Coping

Innovation by Draft Dodging: Many young Eritreans try to avoid being conscripted into thearmy. They do not register for military service as they are required to do when they reach the age of 18; they hide from the security agents who are roaming the streets in search of civilians without exemption certificates; they do not report back to their military unit after their annual holiday has passed; they voluntarily fail in school exams in order to repeat a school year instead of going to Sawa11 for their twelfth school year. Girls marry at an early age and become pregnant—sometimes even without being married—in order to avoid the service. Thus, the government’s military security employs a large number of secret agents whose sole task is to search for draft dodgers in streets, in bars, and by collecting information from draft dodgers’ neighbors and acquaintances (cf. Treiber 2005). …

Ritualism: Ritualistic behavior means that cultural goals are abandoned while conformity is maintained. It can be described as the overconformist behavior sometimes practiced by employees in the lower bureaucracy. In the Eritrean administration, there are numerous individuals who have been “frozen” (medeskal) by the government, which means they receive their salary but do not have any meaningful tasks as they have lost the confidence of their superiors. Nevertheless, they appear at their office every day, as they are deprived of alternatives. This pattern of behavior also applies to those national service recruits who accept their fate and never attempt to flee or overstretch their holidays. They either do not marry or neglect their families. Many of them suffer from psychological problems caused by delusion. Even many elementary and secondary school students refuse to attend school or study only halfheartedly be cause they want to avoid being recruited into the military and having to work for the national service for an unlimited number of year once they have finished the twelfth grade.

Retreatism in Cases of Psychological Trauma: Many young people have suffered psychological trauma and/or suffer from a mental disorder. A great deal of those who fought in the Ethio-Eritrean War were traumatized and did not receive adequate professional support to address this trauma (cf. Fleischhauer 2008). Equally traumatized were those women who suffered sexual assaults and rape. It is an open secret that involuntary relationships and rape occur in the military, but our respondents, thereby representing the attitude of the general public, were reluctant to report cases of sexual harassment because they are a social taboo and there is no chance that such assaults will be brought before a court. Young women who join the national service have to suffer this violence silently. If it becomes known that a woman has been a victim of rape, she is stigmatized and will have great difficulty finding a husband. Asia Abdulkadir, an Eritrean scholar who interviewed refugees in Sudan, has discovered that incidents of sexual violence in the military are frequent but that the women affected are reluctant to report them and completely unwilling to talk about their personal experiences.

Retreatism in the form of suicide is the last resort for many of those trapped in the military. During the period from August 2008 to August 2009, we learned of 12 cases of suicide in different neighborhoods of Asmara, a number which indicates the prevalence of suicide. While young men often shoot or hang themselves, young women reportedly swallow liquid poison or burn themselves after pouring kerosene on their body and their clothes. The parents are not supposed to talk about how their children died, as the government wants to maintain the picture of the heroic youth serving their country with enthusiasm.

[E] Excerpts from the subtitle:

A Form of Forced Retreatism: The Increasing Number of Beggars as a Consequence of Anomie

The beggars sitting at street corners waiting for handouts are typically elderly women and young mothers with small children. The elderly women have fallen through the cracks of the social networks as their children have died in the war with Ethiopia, have left the country, are imprisoned, or have been kept in the national service and are unable to send money. The number of young mothers begging with their children has significantly increased over the past couple of years—even as recently as 2007 these women usually had only one very young three weeks on the boat child, indicating that the pregnancy had occurred outside a regular relationship and that they may have been rejected by their family and the father of the child. Recently more and more young mothers with several children, from babies up to five or six year olds, have become beggars. The fact that they have two or three children is an indicator that these women are married, and that their husband is no longer able or willing to feed and house his family. He may be trapped in the national service, be serving a prison sentence for draft dodging, or be stranded in Sudan or another neighboring country without being able to remit money. Some male “dropouts” from the system are now hanging around in the streets in ragged clothes and showing signs of psychological illness, alcohol addiction and often aggressiveness. …

In the summer of 2009 a large number of impoverished peasants from the countryside came to the city. They walked through the streets, sat around religious buildings, and knocked at private houses asking for food. These persons had been affected by the poor harvest of 2008, which was caused by drought but aggravated by land confiscation, the transformation of private subsistence agricultural fields into military-owned cash-crop plantations, and the absence of family members, who had been conscripted, from their own land, which they were supposed to till. In late 2008 staple foods were confiscated from the producers by the military in order to divert them to the market. In other cases, the Ministry of Agriculture seized the land of subsistence farmers under its policy of rationalizing agricultural production; it claimed that it would work the land using conscripts and pay the peasants compensation, something which did not occur. While the so-called community shops in Asmara distribute subsidized food to citizens, there are no such services in the countryside, where the producers depend on their own harvest to make a living and sell surplus grain in order to be able to buy nonfood items and coffee, cooking oil, etc. The national service has disrupted the entire Subsistence-farming and pastoral-production system, as all able-bodied men are serving in the army while women and elderly people are trying to keep up production. The result is an influx of destitute people into the cities, the likes of which has been unknown since Eritrea’s independence.

[F] Excerpts from the subtitle:

Conclusion

… There is no longer any “normality” of life: one can no longer live up to the general norms and values without breaking the laws of the government. As Eritrean society has always lived under stress, it has developed a remarkable capacity to survive under adverse conditions. This time, however, people do not feel that they are fighting against an occupying enemy force and for the improvement of their lives; rather, it is their own government, the former liberator, which has made their lives miserable. The only plausible justification for the ruling elite of the country to continue turning a blind eye to the rapid downward spiral they have initiated is their desire to force the values of the liberation struggle upon the younger generation and to thereby gain control over each and every individual who poses a potential threat to the ruling group. The negative consequences of this strategy are affecting the economy, the educational sector, and the core of societal organization. They will be felt for years to come if no immediate policy changes are introduced, an action which is unlikely under the present leadership.

Again, the link to the full article is: “Dreams Don't Come True in Eritrea”: Anomie and Family