Eritrea at Year’s End: Between Endurance and Exhaustion
As another year closes—the thirty‑fourth since independence—Eritrea stands as a nation defined by contradiction. It is a country that endured colonial rule, international machinations, a short‑lived annexation disguised as a “UN‑supervised federation,” Cold War rivalries, a brutal thirty‑year liberation struggle, a devastating border war, and repeated regional upheavals, yet still struggles to define peace on its own terms. Nowhere is this contradiction starker than in the figure of Isaias Afwerki: once a charismatic young leader who embodied the promise of a new era, now an aging man who evokes pity more than admiration. In many ways, he has become a metaphor for Eritrea’s atrophy.
Eritrea inspires pride for its resilience and hard‑won, if fragile, unity, and sorrow for the opportunities lost and the lives constrained in the long shadow of mere survival.
To speak honestly about Eritrea today requires holding multiple truths at once: success and failure, hope and despair, loyalty and disillusionment. It demands resisting both propaganda and cynicism, refusing the comfort of false optimism or total pessimism. This essay is not an attempt to condemn Eritrea, nor to romanticize it. It is an attempt to reckon with it as it is—in all its paradox.
What Eritrea Has Preserved
Eritrea’s most significant achievement remains its sovereignty. In a region frequently destabilized by foreign intervention, proxy wars, and economic dependency, Eritrea has preserved political independence at an extraordinary cost. This insistence on self‑determination resonates deeply with Eritreans at home and across the diaspora. The country has maintained territorial integrity, resisted ethnic fragmentation, and refused to become a client state to external powers. That accomplishment is neither accidental nor insignificant.
Equally notable is Eritrea’s social cohesion. Despite limited resources and prolonged hardship, the country has largely avoided large‑scale internal conflict along ethnic or religious lines. The shared memory of struggle—and the deep blood ties that have long transcended faith, region, and language—continue to serve as a unifying force, even as that bond grows increasingly strained. In many respects, Eritrea has preserved the idea of nationhood more effectively than states with far greater means.
There is also the quiet achievement of endurance. Eritreans—inside the country and throughout the diaspora—continue to adapt, build, and survive under conditions that would have fractured many societies. The diaspora sustains families through remittances, maintains cultural institutions, and preserves collective memory. This persistence should not be dismissed as passive loyalty; for many, it is an act of resistance against erasure.
Where Eritrea Has Failed
President Isaias Afwerki has often insisted that what matters is the “objective reality on the ground.” Very well. That reality must be examined honestly, without slogans or evasions.
The most damaging failure of the Eritrean state is the indefinite nature of national service. What began as a temporary necessity hardened into a generational burden. Indefinite conscription has eroded trust between citizens and the state, drained the country of its youth, and normalized stagnation. It has transformed duty into despair and patriotism into fear. No nation can indefinitely immobilize its most productive population and expect renewal.
Political stagnation compounds this crisis. The absence of constitutional governance, independent institutions, and meaningful accountability has frozen Eritrea in a wartime posture long after the war has ended. This has not produced stability; it has produced silence. And silence should never be mistaken for unity.
Economically, Eritrea has failed to convert self‑reliance into opportunity. While caution toward foreign exploitation is understandable given historical experience, rigidity has come at a cost. Isolation has limited innovation, constrained private enterprise, and prevented meaningful global engagement. Survival has replaced growth as the organizing principle of economic life.
Most tragically, Eritrea has lost people—not only to migration but also to disillusionment. When citizens leave not in search of luxury, but of basic agency and dignity, something fundamental has broken. As grievances deepen and communities feel increasingly marginalized, there is a legitimate fear that repression, once lifted, could give way to the fragmentation that has haunted much of the Horn of Africa.
What Must Be Avoided
As Eritreans reflect on the year, two extremes must be resisted.
The first is uncritical nationalism.
Pride without accountability becomes denial. When every critique is labeled betrayal, the nation is weakened rather than protected. Eritrea does not need louder praise; it needs honest self‑assessment.
The second is total despair.
Reducing Eritrea to a failed-state narrative strips Eritreans of agency and obscures the historical forces that shaped the present. It also invites external prescriptions that have rarely served Eritrean interests. Any responsible Eritrean must recognize that the road to Asmera runs through the hearts and minds of the Eritrean people—not through the capital cities of our neighbors. Despair, after all, immobilizes just as effectively as repression.
Eritrea must not be turned into either a myth or a cautionary tale. It is neither—and both. Eritrea succeeded in securing national sovereignty but failed to achieve popular sovereignty. The land is liberated from foreign rule; the people are not yet liberated from fear and constraint. Recognizing the first does not diminish the urgency of the second. It clarifies it.
What Still Offers Hope
Hope, if it exists, lies not in slogans, but in possibility.
Demographically, Eritrea possesses a young, educated, globally connected diaspora fluent in technology, economics, and governance in ways previous generations could not be. This is a resource, not a threat. If meaningfully engaged rather than surveilled or dismissed, the diaspora could play a transformative role in rebuilding trust and capacity. Other nations have demonstrated this clearly: the Indian diaspora helped catalyze technological and economic growth, while the Polish diaspora played a critical role in post‑communist reconstruction through investment and knowledge transfer.
Regionally, fragile peace presents opportunity. Stability with neighbors should be leveraged not merely for security, but for trade, mobility, and economic integration. Peace must become productive rather than symbolic.
There is also hope in the simple fact that Eritreans still care. The intensity of debate, frustration, and emotional investment reflects attachment, not apathy. Nations do not collapse because people argue about their future; they collapse when people stop believing they have one.
Tapping into this force will require inclusion across political divides—those who support the regime and those who oppose it. Reconciliation is not a concession; it is the foundation of nation‑building. Eritreans have every right to mourn missed opportunities, but they also bear a responsibility to do better now, together, for a country won at enormous cost.
One of the regime’s most profound failures has been its refusal to engage Eritrean organizations and movements with historical or political differences, even while extending outreach to regional actors of varying credibility. This exclusion has deepened mistrust and hollowed out national cohesion.
Finally, hope lies in a recognition often resisted: strength does not depend on permanence. Adaptation is not surrender. A state that once reinvented itself through struggle can reinvent itself again through reform—or through a necessary reset.
A Closing Reckoning
Eritrea stands at a crossroads that cannot be postponed indefinitely. The tools that once ensured survival now constrain growth. The narratives that once unified the nation now risk trapping it in the past.
The question is no longer whether Eritrea can endure. It already has.
The question is whether it can evolve.
Moving forward requires space—for youth, for dissent, for imagination, and for a future not defined solely by sacrifice. Pride and sorrow can coexist. So can criticism and love. The challenge of the coming year is not choosing one emotion over another but learning how to hold them together without falling apart.
Final Thought
Eritrea’s story is unfinished. It is a nation of extraordinary resilience, but resilience without renewal becomes exhaustion. The coming year must be more than another cycle of survival. It must mark the beginning of transformation—where sovereignty is reinforced by legitimacy rather than isolation, unity is strengthened by trust rather than silence, and endurance finally gives way to evolution.
One people, one heart—and millions of minds.
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To Contact the Author: weriz@yahoo.com
N.B. On a personal note, many have asked me what the name in my email represents. As we enter a new year, allow me to share its meaning. As a child, I was captivated by the majestic silhouette of Weriz—the mountain of Seharti (Hamasien)—an emblem of a homeland I have always known intimately with my heart, even if not as fully with my eyes. Weriz became, for me, a symbol of belonging, memory, and the quiet pull of a place that shapes you long before you understand it. I hope to complete that circle one day, to see with my own eyes what my heart has carried for so long—when wisdom, humility, reconciliation, and peace finally prevail among us, the Eritrean people.
Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to all. Whether your roots rest in Mount Ghedem, Adal, Aylet, Koken, Emba Soyra, or Weriz, may the coming days bring you closer to the places that shaped your heart. May you see them not only with your eyes but also with the fullness of longing finally fulfilled.
Awate Forum