Amnesia Hits US State Department--Again!

Eritrea occupies a spot near and quite undear to the Geek's heart. The Geek was forced to spend entirely too much time about thirty years ago eye deep in the bloody swamp of the war between the Eritrean Liberation Front and the Government of Ethiopia. As a consequence he has followed affairs in the former province of Ethiopia since independence fourteen years ago.

This past week an academic conflab was held in Kalamazoo, Michigan regarding the Horn of Africa, which includes not only the well known cesspool of violence, Somalia, but the less well known but equally unpleasant country of Eritrea. One James Swan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was present and gave a radio interview.

I missed the conference which is not surprising since I'm loath to leave my canyon except virtually, but I read a transcript of the interview. If Mr Swan, whose biographical note shows to be a career Foreign Service Officer with experience in Africa, believes what he states about Eritrea, the Geek can only conclude that he has been in a coma during his African years.

If he doesn't believe what he said, and is merely being a mouthpiece for the Great God, Policy, then the State Department has an historical awareness of reality in Eritrea easily surpassed by any rock.

His reading of current Eritrean internal policy is that the authoritarian regime is "fabricating a national mythology demonizing neighboring Ethiopia."

What the Hey!?

In Swan's (or the State Department's) fantasy universe, the twenty plus years of bloodletting, which involved not only the Communist leaning military government of Ethiopia, but Cuban troops imported for the job, killing a very, very large, but never accurately determined number of Eritreans never happened. Most of those killed were not combatants as is typically the case in defensive insurgencies.

The Geek would like to know from the State Department--or Mr Swan personally, just how can the Eritreans "demonize" a nation-state from which they had gained independence only after a prolonged and exceptionally bloody war?

Unless there is an accurate understanding of the history of a region, particularly a new and highly unstable, desperately impoverished country, it is impossible to craft effective policy. Mr Swan, his bosses up to and including SecState Rice may cordially detest the corrupt, inefficient and repressive regime in Eritrea. (The Geek does as well.)

Now get a grip on this: Mere detestation of an obnoxious regime along with something called the Diplomacy of Transformation will not make for effective policy.

Neither will placing Eritrea on the list of terrorist sponsors.

Eritrea may or may not be granting some form of sanctuary or cooperation to al-Qaeda. Eritrea may or may not be mucking about in Somalia. (The Geek has to wonder how one might notice the presence of a sinister Eritrean presence in and among the Somali gangs, death squads, militias, guns-for-hire, and the Ethiopian troops, who are no naifs when it comes to shooting, looting, and raising general hell.)

The necessary starting point for effective policy is the history of Eritrea focusing on the nature of the long war as well as its adjuncts including the Ogaden War between our client Somalia and the Soviet client, Ethiopia. Only then can we form a policy which might have some slight chance of settling the festering border (dang! the Geek has gotten tired of that word) issue between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Only from a historical platform can an American policy have some slight chance of improving the lot of the long-suffering Eritrean nation and influencing the government to change at least the most irritating of its behaviors.

One immediate lesson of Eritrean history is relevant and the Geek offers it without charge to Mr Swan and Dr Rice. Coercion is wasted on the Eritreans.

After what they went through during their generation of war, there ain't a darn thing we could do, including dropping bombs that would faze them in the least.