by Jason Ditz, April 17, 2009
The United States has reportedly threatened to invade Eritrea
and subject it to “the same fate as
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11
attacks” for providing support to the al-Shabaab
resistance movement in Somalia, which the US has since attempted to
link with al-Qaeda. The Daily Telegraph quotes one source as saying
“There are consequences for working with al-Shabaab
when President Obama cannot afford to look weak on
terrorism.”
Situated along the Red Sea, the State of Eritrea is a
nation of under 5 million people with a long history of foreign
occupation. Bought by an Italian shipping company in 1869, the
region remained under Italian rule until 1941, when Britain took
control of them. British control was formalized under UN auspices
in 1947, and the United Nations ceded the region to Ethiopia.
What followed was a particularly bloodly 30-year long battle of secession between Ethiopia
and an Eritrean rebel faction (the Eritrean Liberation Front),
which ended in 1993 when Ethiopia finally gave in to demands for an
independence referrendum, which passed with 99.79% of the votes in favor. Eritrea has
remained on poor terms with Ethiopia since, fighting a border war
which ended with the installation of a UN commission to establish
the still tenuous border between the two.
In
2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia with American support, vowing to
crush the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement and prop up the
self-proclaimed Transitional National Government (TNG) of Somalia,
which had recently been chased from a Kenya hotel for failing to
pay their bills and was attempting to assert control over the
stateless region. Eritrea backed the ICU, and later the al-Shabaab
movement ostensibly to repay Somali support for their own
independence bid. Though the TNG remained on the verge of collapse,
Ethiopia declared “mission accomplished” in December of 2008,
withdrawing its troops and claiming it had foiled a “plan
orchestrated by Eritrea.”
The Bush Administration attempted to have Eritrea declared a “state-sponsor
of terrorism” numerous times for backing forces in opposition to
the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Eritrea publicly denounced
“foreign intervention” in Somalia and said the Ethiopian pullout had vindicated their position
that military occupation would not stabilize the nation.
Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki remains defiant, saying he
will continue to oppose the Western-backed TNG’s attempt to assert
control over the nation. “There is no government, there is not even
a naiton of Somalia existing,” the president insisted, calling for
a peace conference in which all parties, including those branded by
the US and Ethiopia as “extremists” would have a voice. “Peace is not guaranteed without a government agreed
by all Somalis.”
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/17