Ethiopia Says Eritrea “Violating The Territorial Integrity Of Ethiopia” 

Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister says  “Eritrean troops are in control of several local administration units” in the Northern part of the country

Borkena

Toronto – Ethiopia is making serious allegations against Eritrea.  It was  the Minister for Foreign Affairs Gedion Timothewos  who said this in a speech at the Foreign Policy Forum on “Developments in the Horn of Africa” which was organized at Addis Ababa University. 

The event was attended by members of the diplomatic community in Addis Ababa, among other notable bodies. 

Gedion spoke at length regarding the current state of tension between the two countries attempting to locate the root cause from the archival material in a sort of revisionist narrative. 

One of the issues he emphasized is that the current tension between the two countries is not about “Assab or Ethiopia’s pursuit of access to the sea.” 

He stated  ” These days, just like those who erroneously assumed that a border dispute about the town of Badme was the cause of the conflict in the 1990s, some think that the Assab port is the bone of contention and the locus of the tension between the two countries today.”

He went on to assert that ” Such an assumption would be, to make an understatement, a gross oversimplification, which would hamper a proper understanding of reality.” He referenced Tekeste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll to support his assertion that these two researchers have argued that “superficial analysis of the causes of the conflict [the 1998-2000] made efforts to contain the outbreak of the war ineffectual.”  The minister cited that they located the cause within a framework of a combination of economic, historical, and cultural factors.

Gedion came up with five factors for the conflict between the two countries. The full content of his speech is available here (https://shorturl.at/okOoB) 

(Video MFAE)

The Foreign Minister argued that the creation of Eritrea itself during the colonial era was primarily for proxy purposes  to suffocate Ethiopia and as a spring board to launch full scale attack. He added that that proxy role tradition continued before and after  Eritrea’s Independence. 

Gedion included the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s provisional government as part of the material for his revisionist narrative for the role it played to facilitate the Eritrean secession including by suppressing questions about Ethiopia’s access to the sea.  He said : 

“….This is the belief prevalent among a considerable portion of politically conscious Ethiopians that Eritrean independence was something that the Ethiopian state consented to in a manner that fundamentally compromised Ethiopia’s national interest. Some critiques of the way the transitional government of Ethiopia handled Eritrea’s secession question the legitimacy of a transitional government with no popular mandate to make such a consequential and lasting decision on the territorial integrity of the Ethiopian state. In its extreme form, you could find a few outlier voices questioning the status of Eritrea as a sovereign and independent state. “

Gedion also painted an image of his government’s effort for cooperation between the two countries. He blamed the failure on Eritrea saying the interest was not “shared” by the government of Eritrea. 

While hailing the Eritrean people as brotherly, he accused Eritrean leadership of having a “guerilla warrior mentality” borrowing the phrase “Nakfa Syndrome.” 

He also talked about  “Isayas doctrine” which he explained as an unwritten policy of the Eritrean government. He traced its origin to actors who had interest to use Eritrea as a tool against Ethiopia.   He elaborated it in detail. 

“…This doctrine assumes that Eritrea’s continued statehood as a sovereign country is contingent upon Ethiopia’s insecurity, fragmentation and instability. As such the doctrine predicates Eritrea’s security on Ethiopia’s insecurity. This is not an original doctrine crafted by the Eritrean leadership. It is a doctrine that originates from a faithful emulation of those who want to instrumentalize Eritrea as a proxy against Ethiopia. It is also a doctrine that emanates from a deep fear and insecurity about the commitment of subsequent generations of Eritreans for continued Eritrean statehood,” he said. 

Regarding the state of the current tension,  Gedion made a series of allegations painting an image that the Eritrean government has been violating the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ethiopia.  

He claimed,  “At the moment, Eritrean troops are in control of several local administration units in northern Ethiopia, areas that fall squarely within Ethiopian sovereign territory.” Furthermore, he accused the Eritrean government of “interference” in the internal affairs of Ethiopia. The alliance with Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the alleged “support” to other armed groups in Ethiopia including Fano is mentioned apparently to substantiate claims of “interference in the internal affairs” of Ethiopia. 

He stated that there is a legitimate ground for Ethiopia to exercise “self-defense” but the choice on the part of Ethiopia has been restraint. 

“This restraint should not and cannot be taken as being indefinite and unconditional. But it is a policy that we would pursue as long as we can,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister said. 

Finally, he spoke about what he thinks is a way forward to resolve the tension along the line of economic cooperation and integration for shared prosperity. 

His final remark drew a view from neoliberal conception of sovereignty and border which calls for “flexibility.” he stated “Rigid, uncompromising, outdated, and manichean conceptions of sovereignty should give way to a more collaborative and integrated economic future from which all of us will benefit.”

He thinks that “Economic integration could address the security concerns of both states towards one another. Institutionalized economic cooperation provides the basis for long-term trust and cooperation in the security realm as well. It could also be the closest thing Ethiopia could offer by way of a decaffeinated coffee.”

Earlier in his speech Gedion used a decaffeinated coffee as one example to characterize the state character of Eritrea.  He was talking about  coffee lovers who “want to avoid the effects of caffeine by having decaffeinated coffee” saying “…the Eritrean government wants to enjoy the status of a sovereign state without the consequences and responsibilities such a status entails.”

Ethiopia and Eritrea ended two decades of state of enmity in  2018 when Abiy Ahmed initiated a rapprochement policy for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize only for the two parties to find themselves to prepare for war again a few years later. 

When the TPLF forces attacked the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force in November 2020, Eritrea not only provided support for retreating Ethiopian forces who survived the unsuspecting attack but also it was deeply involved in it fighting alongside the Ethiopian government as there was a policy alignment towards  the TPLF at the time.  Not long after the Pretoria agreement which ended the bloody two years war, at least it appeared that way at the time, the alliance shifted fast. 

As a consequence of the war, the TPLF collapsed and one big faction under the leadership of Debretsion Gebremichaek  formed an alliance with Eritrea while a section of TPLF forces rebelled against the alliance and opted to collaborate with the Federal government.. The schism manifested itself both at the level of the political class and the armed combatants. 

At the time of this writing, the Eritrean government has not remarked on the latest allegations from Ethiopia.

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