Angry Planet - Caught in a draft: Where military service can last forever

Episode Date: March 17, 2016

This week on War College, we’re talking about a secretive nation where everyone serves in the military – and not just for a year or two. In fact, once you get pulled into service in Eritrea, you could be serving for a decade or more. And no one knows how much more it could be. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' news. His closest aides, his most trusted fellow fighters, and they sort of said, listen, you know, you didn't consult us, you went over our heads. And he decided that this constituted a challenge to his authority. And they've never been seen since.

This week on War College, we're talking about a secretive nation where everyone serves in the military, and not just for a year or two. Once drafted, people can be stuck there for a decade or even more. The country, Eritrea, sits on the Red Sea, and it's been called Africa's North Korea. After this week's conversation, it's not hard to see why. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here's your host, Jason Fields.

Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Reuters' opinion editor, Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt, contributing editor at War is Boring. Joining us today is Michaela Wrong. She is one of the few outsiders who can be called any kind of expert about the secret of African nation of Eritrea. Her book, I Didn't Do It for You, which was published in 2005, was focused on the Red Sea Nation. And she also is reported there for a number of outlets. So, Michaela, if you could just sort of describe what Eritrea is, its geography, its history.

Yes, it's not a place that many people have visited. Often you'll draw a complete blank when you speak to even people who travel very widely in Africa. When you mention it, it's a very small country, population of about 6 million, they say. Not really, nobody knows for sure. Very mountainous and very dry. And it's in the Horn of Africa running along the Red Sea coast. And it has a very long coastline, which is 1,300 kilometers long. And the coastline is very important because really that holds the key to its very troubled history with its neighbor to the south, Ethiopia,

which is a much larger country with a much, much bigger population. And in fact, if I understand it correctly, Eritrea at one point was part of Ethiopia? Yes, that's right. Eritrea, just to go back, it was the first Italian colony in Africa, and the Italians had to give up their colonies in Africa during World War II when they were beaten by the Allied troops. And then Britain took it over for a while, and it became federated with Ethiopia under UN arrangement that was dissolved at the urging and underprenetrable. from Haile Selassie, who was the Ethiopian emperor. And at that stage, it became the northernmost province of Ethiopia. And that was very important because it gave Haile Selassie what he wanted, which was access to the sea.

Right, because right now this left Ethiopia completely cut off, or landlock, that should say. Yes, well, they won independence. There was this first war of secession, which went on for 30 painful years. It's usually described as the struggle in Eritreya by Eritreans, and this was a war of secession by a rebel movement. There were several rebel movements, but the EPLF, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, emerged triumphant. And amazingly teamed up with an Ethiopian rebel movement, the TPLF, and they ejected Ethiopian troops who were loyal to the Marxist military regime in Ethiopia. in 1991, and that was when Eritrea became a sovereign nation, an independent nation, and has been ever since. But sadly, with liberation did not come happiness. And what kind of government

did they establish for themselves? I've read that it's as secretive as North Korea's government. Is that the case? I think you could say that now. When I was visiting in the 90s, there was a great sense of hope. It was a place that people, journalists, love to visit because there was a sense of a country that was finding its feet and very much according to its own rules, didn't want to fall into the trap of all these African governments that had sort of become mired in corruption, very dependent on Western aid. They wanted to do their own thing. The EPLF was always famous for sort of forging its own path and that was very much the message of those early years. Basically what happened in 1998 is these two governments that have been set up by rebel

movements in Eritrea and Ethiopia. And we're expecting. to get on very well because they had worked alongside one another during the years fighting the dirt. They fell out over a border dispute and the flashpoint was a tiny little village called Badmey, which both sides claimed as their own. And the war then was a very different kind of war from this 30-year war of secession. It was trenches and people dying, storming the trenches and it had a very different outcome because the EPLF, which I think had sort of come to believe that it really would win any military conflict against the Ethiopians were really trance during that experience and the conflict, the border dispute was sent off to international arbitration in the Hague.

And there's been this very uneasy stalemate. The aerotraines and Ethiopians will say it's a no war, no peace situation because the border area around Badme, for example, which a boundary Commission in the Hague said, actually, that does belong to Eritrea. We've studied the colonial maps. We've studied the administrative records that is Eritrean soil. The Ethiopians were in occupation of that area and they didn't want to give it up. And so their troops are still there all these years after that war, which ended in 2000. And that's really what this continuing military crisis in that area is rooted in because what the Eritrean government says is they say, look, part of our soil is being occupied by Ethiopian troops. And since they don't recognize our border, since they

sort of don't seem to recognize our existence, and since, you know, this is all rooted in this awareness that Eritrea was once claimed as a northern province of Ethiopia, they say, well, it's the duty of young people to come to the defense of the country. And we must be always on the alert, because at any moment, this could become a full, full-fledged conflagration again. Right, and that line of thinking has kind of caused what I would politely call a conscription problem in the countries. Would you say that's accurate? Yes, I think, I mean, I think this is what people find depressing when they visit Eritrea, and it's had massive consequences for the rest of the world, including particularly the Mediterranean region,

because young people are expected to do open-ended military service. officially national service is supposed to be 18 months and you know you are allowable to do it between the ages of 18 and 40 but what people who study the phenomenon more closely say is that it can last up to 20 years and six seven eight years is quite common and if you're a young eritrean and you've got your whole life ahead of you and you also are very aware that you want to set up your own household you know and you want to be independent your parents and you want to earn a living. The idea that you spend all these years training, there's a training camp called Sawa, which is in the middle of this, the desert, really, and you spend six months there training. After that, you are sometimes seconded to work basically

in the civil service on very, very basic wage salary, and you'll be working on health service or building bridges, building roads. And people say that they earn, $30 a month for that kind of labor. So it's not much to look forward to, and I think this is why people are so unhappy with it. So how do they go about actually enforcing this? I mean, is Eritrea sort of some kind of police state, or is there some other mechanism? Well, it's very easy to police things in Eritrea. It is a very small country, and the towns, you know, there's Asmara, the capital,

and there were a few major towns. And what you will see if you visit Eritreus, you'll see that there are patrols going around and they check people's papers. And if you're a young Eritrean and you can't show why you're sitting in a pizza joint having a pizza and you're not training or why you're not on base,

why you are where you are, you will either be sent back or you'll be punished. It's rigidly enforced. And I think that's why a lot of people decide that they can't stand it and they just they leave, they go abroad instead. Just from what you know of it, do you think that the war or the stalemate, I should say, with Ethiopia is an excuse? Or is this, it's just so fascinating that the government would have such rigid policies and it sounds very strange to, I think my ears at least, is it genuine fear? I think, I mean, there is certainly a root of genuine fear there on the part of the government and on the part of the people.

You have to sort of look at the math and see just how small Eritrea is, how big Ethiopia is. And, you know, it wouldn't take long if you had an advancing Ethiopian army to take over Eritrea if you got the upper hand in the fighting. and I think there's a real awareness of that proximity to the border. But I think there is something else going on. I mean, there have been the odd clashes on the border, and there was an occasion recently in which Ethiopian jets bombed a gold mine, for example, in Eritrea. So there have been these little skirmishes where they're fairly regular,

but no full frontal fighting since 2000. But I think there is something else going on, which is, I think the Eritrean government has sort of tried to deal with the issue that all African governments are trying to deal with, which is what do you do with a large population of young, unemployed and possibly unemployable people who are fractures, frustrated, the economy just can't soak these people up. the economy is stagnating. And we know from looking at what happened during the Arab Spring that these are people who bring governments, authoritarian governments down. And I think there's a sense that this is actually a form of crowd control. That's the way Eritrean friends describe it to me. So if you are keeping people drilling in Sawa in this training camp, or if you're then keeping them busy building bridges, building roads,

Not only are you benefiting because your infrastructure is strengthened, but also you're keeping them busy. You know, these are people who can't demonstrate. They are people who can't riot. There are people who can't express their dissatisfaction with their daily life. And so I think really there's an element of just keeping youngsters under control, keeping them obedient. Is there any kind of grassroots movement, any kind of protests, anything at all? Or is it just people get sucked into this, this, this, this, this, this, this, military world in this, you know, civilian or civil defense world and then they can't, they don't have time to do anything else. And the people who want change just leave? Is that kind of what's going on?

Yes, I think that is what's going on. I mean, you know, I'm in touch with the erotrans here and the diaspora. There's a very large diaspora in the West and they try and organize, you know, underground newspapers and quiet, sort of passive civil disobedience. Like they tell people to stay at home when they're supposed to be drilling because another thing that the government has started doing is them getting old people to drill. They've distributed basic weapons to older people who long ago stopped, you know, put their uniforms away and they're supposed to drill in the mornings. And I think, you know, they're these sort of underground, you know, people here in the opposition will phone people in Eritre and say, you know, express your dissatisfaction.

by not turning up for the drilling or pass this around. There are Samizdat newspapers. But it's very low-key. That's my impression. And I think the real way in which people demonstrate how exasperated, how frustrated they are and how unhappy is just by leaving. And there's a real copycat phenomenon that has gone on where, you know, people see that this is what every other young person they were at school with,

they were at college with, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their girlfriends are leaving. And so they pass the word around, they learn how it's done, they learn what the roots are, and they do the same thing. And so you have this extraordinary flood of people out of the country. Are you allowed to travel freely from Eritrea? Will they let you out? Or do they try to keep people in? No, they won't let you out. You have to have government permits, so it's all done illegally.

And I think that the roots are fairly well established, and people will go on. foot and they'll cross over into Sudan and Ethiopia and there are large refugee camps on the borders in Sudan and Ethiopia which are taking young Eritreans and they're supposed to be a shoot-to-kill policy at the Eritrean border but I always sort of I have a bad joke where I sort of say if it's a shoot-to-kill policy they must have very bad eyesight because what's quite clear is there's enormous amount of grassroots corruption in the army. And so these, you know, guards who are supposed to be ensuring that nobody leaves illegally are clearly being bribed to turn a blind eye at the key moments when people are crossing the border, because the numbers in which they do

are just so extraordinarily high that it can't possibly be a properly enforced, enforced policy. All right. You said that the population of Eritre is about six million, correct? Yes, about. I mean, we don't really know. The government gives a lower figure, but if you look at extrapolating the censuses, that should be whereabouts it is. And do we have any idea what percentage of that population is in the military has been conscripted? Well, there's talk of sort of 250,000 to 300,000 people being in the military. But when we say in the military, of course, some of them will just be working in the health service as civil servants or, as I said, building, building bridges. But if you think about that force of 250 to 300,000, that's enormous for a country of that size. I mean, per head proportionately, that's an enormous army. I mean, you know, Britain, which has got a population 10 times as big, has a smaller army than that.

So it's a very, you know, bloated army. All right. What about Ethiopia? Does Ethiopia conscript soldiers? No, they don't. They have call-ups when crisis hits. So when they went to war in 98 and 2000, they did issue a pull-ar. But they don't have this sort of dependence on conscripts.

And I think one of the issues that a lot of Eritrans, I know, will raise is they sort of say, you know, this is such a demoralized army, but if there were to be a real war with Ethiopia again, it really couldn't, it's unlikely to be a very effective fighting force. If you look back at the Eritrean history, the EPLF, this rebel movement that won, you know, that famously humiliated the Ethiopian army, which in the day was one of the most respected in Africa and it brought it to its knees. One of the reasons they did that was because it was a volunteer army and people were just willing to sacrifice their lives to suffer incredible hardship and had the support of the population and achieved extraordinary. military miracles against all sort of all the odds on paper. And I think there's a real sense that, and there's an awareness that the army now has got nothing like that morale,

and the numbers do not make up for that loss in morale. So was the person who's current leader, Isaiah Afeworki, was he one of the military leaders for independence? Well, very much so. He was the head of the EPLF and enormously charismatic figure. He had around him a group of fighters, as they were called fighters with a capital F, who were his co-rebels who really spearheaded and planned that whole war. And I think, you know, what was one of the saddest things is these were many of these ex-fighters. as they're known, stood up to him after the war over the border with Ethiopia in 1998, 2000. And they sort of said, listen, you know, you didn't consult us, you went over our heads. This was a war we should never have gone into. There were massive strategic mistakes made and they were made by you personally.

And this was then standing up to Isayas. And he decided that this constituted a challenge to his authority, basically a coup. and arrested his closest aides, his most trusted fellow fighters. They were known as the G-15, the group of 15. And they've never been seen since. And they've been in prison and completely incommunicado. They haven't been put on trial, but they haven't been freed. And a lot of them, well, some of them are supposed to have probably died in detention.

So it's a sort of sense of a rebel movement that was very united. had a lot of powerful figures within it that has turned into a one-man show. Is there a cult of personality built around us, IAS? Well, that's a kind of mixed, yeah, I guess my answer to that would be nuanced in that if you go to Eritrea, it's very common when you travel around Africa that you will see, you know, you go into shop in Kenya or Tanzania or Uganda, you'll see a portrait of the president behind the counter or in any office that you walk into. And I always thought that was, you know, very striking and rather depressing because it really did show that this was one-man rule.

In Eritrea, you never used to have that when I was visiting. I still think you don't have it. So it's not personalized in that very crude way. But I do think that increasingly power in the country lies with Issafe-Werki, two or three aids, and then this group of military generals are, around him. So it is a very personalized system of rule. And I think that he is held in great awe. He's still extremely popular, especially in the rural communities. He's regarded as a man who liberated Eritrea. He's the founding father in a way. And it may be feared, but he's certainly respected. And I think one of the reasons why it's been so difficult for Eritrea to move on from

that period is because this sort of, he has this charismatic aura around him. And people feel that by challenging him, they're in a way challenging their own history and the whole liberation struggle, which so many of them sacrifice members of their family too. I mean, the losses were enormous. So it's very difficult for people to turn against as high as have a working without feeling that they're rejecting their own history. That's actually a very interesting. It actually sounds a bit like North Korea, except without the giant statues. I mean, Kim Il-sung presented himself as having liberated North Korea or throwing out the Japanese. So I guess there's some similarities.

Yeah, I think the analogy with North Korea is one that has been made for several decades now. I remember when I was first visiting Eritre in the 90s, people would say, oh, it's the North Korea of Africa. And this was mostly based really on the fact that, you know, across Asmara, the beautiful capital. city and on the top of a plateau, you would see all these very bright military graffiti sort of paintings and always very, you know, infused with violence and bloodletting. And there would be pictures of fighters that are storming citadels and liberating the country. And I think the North Korea analogy was triggered by that. And I remember thinking at the time that it was really quite an unfair analogy.

This wasn't what was going on in Eritrea. there was far more buy-in. I mean, it was impossible when you first went to Eritrean in the 90s to meet Eritreans who were critical of the government. They were completely free to talk to whoever they pleased. You could wonder it will. Everyone was happy to be quoted. There was a free press.

And people just genuinely believed in what had happened in that country and had contributed to it and were, you know, rooting for the future. And I think now, sadly, the analogy does hold good. There's no free press. There's a very tightly controlled government press. Even the church and the, the, the, the, the, they're very much kept under a tight leash. And, you know, the private sector's been sort of pretty much emasculated. It hardly exists now because the government controls the economy.

There's a lot of corruption at that level on the Red Sea Trading Corporation, which sort of holds and controls so many businesses. and which was essentially a rebel, the EPLF created that business. And I think, yeah, you have a sense of a country that's being held on a very, very tight rain and where it's sort of suffocating. And I think that's really why young people leave because you sort of, there's no room to breathe. There's no room to be an individual. You have a sense when you wander around Asmara, especially if you're white,

because there are very few Westerners there, that you're, it's very easy to monitor you. It's very easy to watch you. You can't talk to people freely. They're terrified of being, you know, noticed speaking to you. And they certainly wouldn't want to be quoted. So as a journalist, it's not a great place to work. And so, yeah, I think, sadly, the North Korea analogy is now quite accurate. And there's certainly a lot of reports about human rights violations.

And I saw one, at least, that talked about how Eritrea is one of the most, one of the worst, defenders, I should say. Is that what you also hear from people? I always have mixed feelings about this human rights reports because one of the problems is the government won't allow human rights activists into the country. And there was a recent UN report that was absolutely damning. And the commissioners working for the UN were not allowed in. And I actually think if they had been allowed in, they would have produced a much more nuanced report. But if you're not allowed into the country, who can you interview? Well, you talk to people who are fleeing the country and their reports are absolutely damning, partly because many of them

are trying to apply for political asylum. I think the reports are probably present a darker picture than reality. There are many countries in Africa that have pretty poor human rights records. And I think if someone from the Eritrean government were to be speaking to you now, they would say, you know, why are we being so badly criticized? Look at what the Ethiopian government to the south of here is doing to its free press, to the NGOs, which it has successfully managed to emasculate and close down many of them, to its students. The Ethiopans do not score well on any of these counts,

and yet they are never criticized in the way that Eritrea is criticized. So I think Eritrea often comes in for quite a bad rap. The fact remains, however, that thousands of people are leaving this liberated country, and that's a real indictment of how the government that sort of is ruling now, how they are running the place. And they actually haven't had an election since they took over, is that correct? They have had no election. They had a multi-party constitution that has never been instituted. They had a huge public debate about it.

all its clauses were discussed and agreed and the president said he was in favor, but it's never been brought in. They have no opposition parties operating in the country, and they've got no free press. So, you know, these are all reasons to be unhappy with the situation there. But as I said, you know, in all fairness, you have to say Ethiopia also has some of these qualities. And that's how they measure themselves, I guess. I mean, everything is in comparison to Ethiopia.

because they were in opposition for such a long time and they still are? Yes, and I think one of the problems, there's a real issue of a kind of heritage from being a very isolated rebel movement. Famously, the EPLF didn't get the support of the West because it was a communist movement. And it also didn't win the support of Moscow during the Cold War because Moscow was busy supporting the Dirk in Ethiopia. So it was an orphan rebel movement. And this became one of its kind of ideological strengths because their argument was, well, we're just going to do this on our own and we're going to do our own thing

and we are completely self-sustaining and we don't need to learn lessons from anyone else. And there was a sense of sort of we're beleaguered, but we're right. And I think that has really carried over with members of the government, not members of the population, who no longer found that quite so convincing as they used to. But members of the government are still,

still sort of, well, you know, we don't mind being described as the pariah state of Africa. You know, we don't need to listen to you guys. You know, you guys in the West have messed up the rest of Africa. Look at your aid policies. Look at the way you condone corruption. Look at your hypocrisy on various issues. So don't give us any moral lessons. So there's a real sort of self-righteousness there and a prickliness.

And, you know, it's understandable given where they come from and how they took power. Is there anything that Ethiopia could do to ease tensions and do? would they? I think many analysts would say, and I would be one of them, but Ethiopia doesn't want to ease tensions in Eritrea because it's really quite pleased to see Eritreya's in a bit of a crisis state. The economy is stagnating. All its young people are leaving. Icya Zafeworki is increasingly unpopular in the West and beleaguered and isolated. So why would the Ethiopians want that to change? So they're quite happy to keep the situation. as it is, no war, no peace.

And, you know, if they wanted to settle the issue of the border, which lies at the root of this, they could do this any time they wanted, by agreeing to implement the boundary commission ruling and actually demarcate the border. And that's what the erotrains say they want. They want the border demarcated. And then that would put this issue to bet. So there's a lot of, you know,

you could argue that Ethiopia has benefited greatly from having Eritrea on a comment. constant war footing. Just one final question. Is there anything particularly valuable along the border? I mean, is there anything in Badme that's really worth fighting for, or is it just a matter of setting a line? No, there's no, there was speculation when the war broke out in 98, people were saying,

oh, you know, there must be hidden mineral assets there or something. And I've been there, and there really aren't. It's really a bit of a godforsaken area. I'm sure the inhabitants of Badmey wouldn't like me describing it like that, but it's really a too-donkey town. So, no, it was really about lines, lines in the map, and the sense, I think the Eritreans having fought this bitter 30-year war to exist and to have their sovereignty acknowledged and recognized for them, you know, surrendering a single inch of Eritrean soil. felt like a massive and very symbolic surrender of principle. And I think there was a feeling of if we do this here, what else will they take? You know, this is our bigger neighbour to the south.

You know, what other areas will they claim? Who else? You know, which of our other hostile neighbours will then pile in and say that this belongs to them? You know, most African countries, because of colonial history, all of their borders are often contested. and Eritrea has been in border disputes with other countries, including Yemen. So, you know, there's a sort of vulnerability there, sort of feeling of, well, you know, if you don't recognize this border, do you recognize us at all? Well, Michaela, I want to thank you very much for joining us.

It's a really fascinating subject that I think most people don't know anything about. And would you like second to plug your book? Yeah, I think I'm really interested in the issue of, how you decide where a country's border lies. And that's actually why I wrote my book, my novel, which is called borderlines, appropriately enough. And I think, you know, most people in the West have no idea that this is such a live issue in Africa.

I mean, Eritrean, Ethiopia, not the only two countries in Africa, that have a contested border and a border where international arbitration was supposed to solve things, sort things out, and where international arbitration has failed. And I think that we're going to see more and more of these kind of disputes as the years go by, because, you know, as we all know, the colonial borders drawn across Africa often don't really make sense. And in practice, they're not always recognized.

And what happens is you then get a country saying, you know, this may be de facto run by another country, this area. But on the maps, the colonially defined maps, this belongs to us. and that tends to be when you have an incident. So I think it's a really important issue, and I don't think anyone in the West has the faintest idea how these things then get resolved and also how unresolved they are because arbitration over borders just isn't working,

and what happened between Eritrea and Ethiopia was supposed to sort that out. You've seen similar issues in Sad Sudan, you've seen similar issues between Nigeria and Cameroon. Arbitration is not the way to solve these things. in Congo and I mean and it was the same people also drawing lines in the Middle East. Yeah. And see how well that worked out.

Sadly, you know, the colonial legacy is a tricky one. And I think often people say, oh, well, they should just go to arbitration and that will sort everything out. And then you get these, this is really what my novel is about this. You get these Western lawyers because these are very complex issues. You require a great level of expertise. and then it's sort of like sort of like sort of this out in the Hague and then everything will be fine. But, you know, down in the nitty gritty on the ground, then these rulings are not respected. And that causes massive problems because, you know, one government is being told to respect it, but doesn't.

And nobody does anything about it in the international community, as is the case with Ethiopia. And the other one is saying, well, hang on, you know, our area is being occupied, but nobody seems to care about that. stuff. So I think these are these are live issues that are, you know, usually disregarded and ignored in the West. Thank you again. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. We'll be back with another episode of War College in two weeks. In the meantime, check out our archives for more episodes and never miss an episode by subscribing to us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.