My Struggle for Eritrea and Africa by Michel Collon – whitewashing Afwerki’s record

In my recent commentary on the title of Isaias Afwerki’s new book, My Struggle for Eritrea and Africa: Talks with Michel Collon, I mentioned several of Isaias’s disastrous failures—or outcomes of his malevolent policies and practices—that have regressed the Eritrean economy, degraded Eritrea’s physical, social and institutional infrastructure, plunged the people into a quagmire of extreme poverty, and triggered the demographic decline of the Eritrean population. Having now read the book—a collection of Isaias’s interviews with left-wing Belgian journalist, Michel Collon, followed by an afterword by Mohamed Hassen—I will elucidate and expand this list in the present commentary. 

Isaias Afwerki, now 79, has indeed struggled for Eritrea and led the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to a brilliant victory in the war of national liberation against great odds. Post-independence, however, the objective reality prevailing in Eritrea—particularly since 2000—and the dismal human condition of the Eritrean people today, demonstrate that Isaias has struggled primarily to retain power and aggrandise himself at the expense of Eritrea and its people. His legacy of failure reveals that he has neither a vision nor a development project for Eritrea beyond imposing a brutal dictatorship and tightening his grip on political, economic and security controls to maintain his repressive rule. 

Post-liberation, his “valuable lessons” for Africa are starkly negative.  

Destruction of the Eritrean state 

He has banned national elections; shelved the Constitution of Eritrea; suspended the Eritrean National Assembly; emasculated the judiciary; paralysed the Cabinet of Ministers and autonomous government agencies; destroyed existing institutions; stifled new institutions in the bud; and seized absolute state power, reducing Eritrea to a dysfunctional one-man autocracy that lacks a normal government structure. 

He has suspended the Central Council and the Executive Committee of the Front, jailed scores of its most prominent leaders and senior/mid-level cadres without due process, condemned them to languish in indefinite detention without charge or trial, and either frozen or forced many others into exile. 

He scrapped the Macroeconomic Policy Framework, which aimed to transform Eritrea into a “modern, technologically advanced and internationally competitive economy” within two decades to improve the “standard and quality of life of the Eritrean people”. Instead, he has imposed a closed, dysfunctional coupon economy under his pernicious diktat, which shuns both domestic and foreign direct investment—leading to ongoing economic decline, mass unemployment and extreme poverty. 

Harsh repression, a closed economy and essentially unpaid, indefinite national service—violating its legal 18-month limit—have driven tens of thousands of youths, entrepreneurs and professionals into irregular migration. This has disrupted the nuclear family, arrested population growth and caused severe demographic decline. 

The ban—spanning over two decades—on urban and rural construction, renovation and maintenance has created a critical housing shortage, driven property and rental prices sky-high, scarred Eritrea’s cities, and left buildings in a state of dilapidation. 

Due to decaying physical, social and institutional infrastructure, the vast majority of Eritreans lack adequate shelter, healthcare, running water, electricity, energy supply, education, and transport and communication services. 

The closure of Eritrea’s only university and the establishment of quasi-militarised colleges and technical schools lacking international academic accreditation have degraded educational standards, trivialised higher learning, and undermined the development of proficient human capital essential for national progress. 

Isaias has failed to utilise Eritrea’s natural resources and human potential to promote development and improve public welfare. The forced mass exodus has triggered a brain and labour drain, depleting the workforce. Eritrea’s strategic ports, with the potential to become world-class hubs for global trade and regional commerce, remain idle and underdeveloped. 

The restriction of the free movement of people, goods and services within Eritrea obstructs domestic trade, deters investment, and undermines income and wealth generation. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual mining revenues remain unreported and unaccounted for—unknown even to the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Eritrea—rather than being used to grow foreign reserves or develop infrastructure and public services. 

With regard to Isaias’s purported struggle for Africa, it is worth recalling his scolding of the OAU and African leaders at the Cairo summit in 1993. President Mobutu is said to have responded: “Let us give him a little time and he will be like one of us.” In fact, Isaias has become one of the harshest autocrats, with one of the worst records of repression and failure in modern African history. 

A brutal dictator who has ruthlessly oppressed and impoverished his own people, and dragged his country backwards, can hardly be expected to struggle for Africa. Beyond Africa, his thirty-four years of autocratic rule have produced a dismal legacy of regression, repression and impoverishment. 

As for Isaias’s so-called anti-imperialist credentials, two illustrative instances suffice. First, he once welcomed the French military base in Djibouti and urged France to maintain its presence as a stabilising force in the Horn of Africa. Second, he was one of only two African leaders to openly support the illegal and disastrous US invasion of Iraq, even lobbying for a US military or naval base in Eritrea to support its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

On the book itself 

Since the collection of interviews offers little that differs from Isaias’s routine televised monologues—such as his recent, mostly meandering two-part “interview” this month—I will confine my commentary to two recurrent themes in the book that encapsulate the nature of his leadership: the so-called (1) “migration war” and (2) “media warfare”.