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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN JUNE 13, 2016

The outskirts of Asmara, the Eritrean capital, in February. Fresh border clashes between Ethiopia and Eritrea and recent talk of another border war have opened a vein of nationalism in Eritrea. Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Eritrean Embassy in Kenya sent a text message alert Monday morning: The Ethiopians had attacked. Fighting on the border. Situation unfolding.

The jagged line separating Eritrea from its former ruler, Ethiopia, has been one of Africa’s most combustible flash points. Tens of thousands of soldiers died from 1998 to 2000 in a war that had been called as pointless as two bald men fighting over a comb.

As the news of renewed clashes in the rocky, barren frontier began to spread on Monday, many Ethiopians and Eritreans feared the worst. Witnesses said both sides were rushing troops to the Tsorona border area, and heavy artillery was apparently fired from both sides. On the Eritrean side, several people were reported to have been killed. The reports of fighting and the lack of solid information raised fears that the two countries could be sliding once again toward all-out war.

But by Monday afternoon, the extent of the fighting was unclear. The Ethiopian government said Eritrea started it. Getting more information out of Eritrea is like trying to see into a pitch-dark room: The government is one of the most secretive, isolated and repressive nations in the world.

According to Meron Estefanos, a journalist and activist from Eritrea living in Sweden who maintains a large network of contacts in Africa, anger at the government is steadily rising within Eritrea, and the shelling across the border may have been started by Eritrea as a distraction.

Eritrean refugees who arrived in Cyprus in May as part of an European Union relocation program for asylum seekers. Each year, thousands of Eritreans try to flee the country, but many young people in Eritrea have said they are virtually imprisoned in a national program that requires them to serve indefinitely in the military or other branches of government. Iakovos Hatzistavrou/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“There is no reason for Ethiopia to start a war right now,” Ms. Estefanos said. “It just doesn’t add up when everything is going their way.”

“But,” she added, “if there is a war, or the rumor of a war, it could be a way for the Eritrean government to get support and divert attention.”

Eritrea is a tiny country, with about one-sixteenth the population of Ethiopia, against which it won a celebrated war of liberation in the early 1990s. Since then, the government’s isolationist policies have created dire economic conditions, with shortages of electricity, water, gas and bread. Many young people in Eritrea have said they are virtually imprisoned in a national program that requires them to serve indefinitely in the military or other branches of government.

Each year, thousands of young Eritreans try to flee to Europe; in recent months, hundreds have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, adding to the anti-government feelings, Ms. Estefanos said.

Recent talk of another border war against Ethiopia has opened a nationalistic vein.

“Here in Asmara, it’s peaceful despite #EthiopianAttacks against #Eritrea on the Tsorona front,” one Eritrean-American, using the handle Red Sea Fisher, wrote on Twitter on Monday, referring to Asmara, the Eritrean capital. “And you wonder why there’s national service?”

A ruling by an international commission, which both Eritrea and Ethiopia agreed to respect, awarded a piece of the disputed territory near the border to Eritrea. But Ethiopian troops still occupy that territory more than 10 years after the ruling was issued, and Eritrea has complained that the international community — especially the United States and Britain — has exerted little pressure to get the Ethiopians to leave.

Eritrea has used the dispute over the border to justify its war footing and the suspension of many civil liberties.

Analysts have said the discontent in Eritrea could erupt at any time.

Mutinous soldiers staged a coup attempt in 2013, which was quickly crushed. In that case, like the border clashes in the past two days, little is known about what really happened.

Source=http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/world/africa/border-clashes-between-ethiopia-and-eritrea-heighten-fears-of-war.html?_r=0

By Edith M. Lederer | AP

Africa

June 15 at 6:55 PM

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Ethiopia and Eritrea on Wednesday “to exercise maximum restraint” following clashes on their disputed border.

Eritrea accused Ethiopia of “military aggression” by attacking its positions in the Tsorona Central Front, a border area that saw one of the bloodiest battles during their 1998-2000 border war. Ethiopia’s military said its troops were provoked into launching a counter-offensive after Eritrean forces fired into Ethiopian positions on Sunday.

The U.N. chief met Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Brussels on Wednesday and Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson phoned Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed.

“They urged both Governments to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from any act or statement that could exacerbate the situation,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“They also called on both governments to resolve their differences through peaceful means, including by ensuring the full implementation of the peace agreement they signed in 2000,” he said.

Dujarric said the U.N. is available to assist in any peace efforts.

Eritrea and Ethiopia have been feuding over their border since Eritrea gained independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war.

A 1,700-strong U.N. force monitored a 15-mile (24-kilometer) wide, 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) long buffer zone between the Horn of Africa neighbors under the December 2000 peace agreement.

But tensions between the two countries remain high because of Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a boundary commission’s 2002 ruling on the border demarcation which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea. The Eritrean government progressively limited peacekeepers’ movements in response and it July 2008 the Security Council ended the peacekeeping mission.

Secretary-General Ban warned that that a new war could break out if U.N. peacekeepers withdraw.

Dujarric said the U.N. now has no way to monitor “what is actually going on along the border.”

Source=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-chief-urges-restraint-after-ethiopia-eritrea-border-clash/2016/06/15/c7f49b28-3346-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_story.html

Eritrea’s culture of fear

By Editorial Board

The Post's View

June 10 at 6:26 PM

WHEN PEOPLE risk their lives to evade armed border guards or pack rickety boats at sea, you can be sure the conditions they are fleeing are frightful. This is as true for the persecuted Rohingya Muslims of Burma who set sail on packed vessels in the Andaman Sea as for the escapees who manage to flee the horrors of North Korea’s prison camps. And it is true for people fleeing Eritrea, a country that won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and has become a human rights disaster.

Listen, for example, to a woman who fled last year. Her husband had been arrested in 2009 outside their home, she told the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea . She went to the prison to find out why. “For years, I was going once a week. I took food and some clothes. They never told me how he was doing.” After a few years, the prison refused to take the food and clothes. She lost hope. “I haven’t seen my husband in seven years and don’t know if he is alive or not. I searched for him, but the authorities finally told me just don’t bother coming back, there’s no point.”

She joined the flood tide of people leaving Eritrea and attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea on flimsy rafts and boats. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees , the global number of asylum seekers and refugees from Eritrea as of a year ago stood at 444,091, about 12 percent of the country’s official population count of 3.6 million. (Unofficial totals are 6 million to 7 million.) Eritreans accounted for 24.7 percent of all Mediterranean arrivals by sea to Italy last year, the largest number from a single country of origin.

An explanation is contained in the latest report of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry , published Wednesday, which found reasonable grounds to believe that “crimes against humanity” have been committed against the population. The report urged a referral to the International Criminal Court. The crimes include indefinite national service, arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, persecution on ethnic and religious grounds, rape and murder. They are a powerful indictment of the rule of President Isaias Afwerki, who has been in power since 1991.

The U.N. Commission, which Eritrea did not permit to visit, conducted 833 interviews from outside and documented a “general climate of fear.” Many of the abuses are centered around the military in a heavily militarized society. Soldiers are conscripted, made to serve indefinitely in abusive conditions — sometimes as forced labor in state-owned companies. Torture is extensive and methodical in civilian and military detention facilities. Rape in military training centers, in the army and in detention is committed with impunity, and soldiers are not punished for rape in society.

Source=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eritreas-culture-of-fear/2016/06/10/2ce76b4a-2e93-11e6-b5db-e9bc84a2c8e4_story.html