It has become customary for the Isaias’ regime to invoke mekhte whenever it seeks to mobilize Eritreans in defense of national sovereignty. Time and again, Eritreans have responded. They have done so not because they love the regime, but because they love their country. Eritreans have always demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice for the nation. During the liberation struggle, fighters carried the burden on the battlefield while countless others contributed financially, diplomatically, politically, and intellectually. The secret of Eritrea’s success was never military prowess alone. It was the unity of purpose that bound Eritreans together around a common objective.
Today, as clouds of war once again gather over the region, the regime is returning to its familiar language of national defense. Before answering yet another call to sacrifice, however, Eritreans would do well to pause and ask a fundamental question: Where is the greatest threat to Eritrea’s sovereignty really coming from?
The answer is uncomfortable but unavoidable.
The unity that animated the liberation struggle was steadily undermined after independence. Rather than embracing all Eritreans in the nation-building process regardless of political affiliation, history, or ideology, the new state increasingly became the preserve of a single organization and eventually a single man. The exclusion of non-EPLF Eritreans was followed by the exclusion of EPLF veterans themselves. Reformers became prisoners. Critics became exiles. Independent institutions never took root. The constitution was shelved. The rule of law gave way to the rule of one man.
As is often the case under authoritarian systems, militarism became a substitute for statecraft. Within a few years of independence, Eritrea had engaged in military or diplomatic confrontations with Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, intervened militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and became involved in Somalia’s proxy wars. For a nation born from a thirty-year struggle for self-determination, it was a remarkable pattern of regional entanglement that carried profound political, economic, and human costs. At some point, Eritreans must ask a simple question: Why does every road seem to lead to another conflict?
The answer cannot be separated from the judgment of the man who has dominated Eritrean politics for more than three decades.
The pattern was visible from the very beginning. In 1993, Eritreans overwhelmingly endorsed independence in the UN-supervised referendum. Yet the leadership neglected the urgent task of final boundary demarcation. When some enlightened voices within the EPLF warned that independence without clearly demarcated borders could create future disputes, they were mocked as “educated fools” who had failed to grasp the spirit of the new era. At the very moment when Eritrea should have been consolidating its hard-won sovereignty, confederation became the regime’s anthem and regional integration its obsession. It was not drived by national interest but by the megalominiac ambition of Isaias. The nationalism that had mobilized Eritreans through three decades of sacrifice was suddenly subordinated to vague dreams of political union and regional realignment. Instead of securing the foundations of the new state, the regime dismissed legitimate concerns and treated strategic caution as narrow-mindedness. Time would prove otherwise. Prudence was sacrificed to arrogance. Dissent was silenced rather than debated.
The consequences soon followed.
When the dispute with Yemen over the Hanish Islands emerged, mediation efforts reportedly produced a compromise that would have allowed Eritrea to retain substantial gains. Instead of accepting a negotiated settlement, Isaias rejected the proposal and pursued an all-or-nothing approach. Eritrea ultimately emerged with far less than what had been available through diplomacy.
Nor was Yemen the last time Eritrea’s strategic assets would be placed at the service of conflicts that had little to do with defending Eritrean sovereignty. More than two decades later, Isaias allowed the United Arab Emirates to use the port and airfield at Assab as a military hub for its intervention in Yemen. As with so many consequential decisions affecting the nation, the arrangement was concluded without public debate, parliamentary oversight, or transparency. Eritreans were never informed of the precise terms of the agreement, the obligations undertaken in their name, the benefits promised to the country, or the reasons for its abrupt termination. A government genuinely committed to national sovereignty treats strategic national assets as a public trust. Under Isaias, they have too often been treated as instruments of personal diplomacy, deployed without consultation and withdrawn without explanation.
The same pattern reappeared in the conflict with Ethiopia. After refusing to implement the ratified constitution in 1997, the regime escalated a border dispute into a devastating conventional war one year later. Emboldened by early military successes, it rejected mediation efforts sponsored by the United States and Rwanda. What might have been contained became a catastrophe that cost tens of thousands of lives and inflicted enormous damage on both countries. By the time the Algiers Agreement was signed, Eritrea had paid a tremendous price.
To be sure, Ethiopia’s refusal to implement the subsequent border ruling was unjustifiable. Yet it is equally true that Eritrea’s options had been narrowed by years of poor strategic judgment, diplomatic isolation, and the concentration of decision-making in the hands of one individual.
Then came 2018.
When Abiy Ahmed extended a hand of peace, Eritreans hoped normalization would finally lead to the implementation of the border ruling and allow Eritrea to focus on rebuilding its institutions and healing its wounds. Instead, Isaias appeared increasingly invested in Ethiopia’s internal affairs. Rather than making the implementation of the ruling his primary objective, he seemed preoccupied with Ethiopia’s unity and political stability.
His public rhetoric reflected a startling departure from the very principles upon which Eritrean independence had been achieved. Eritreans fought a thirty-year war because they believed they constituted a distinct people entitled to political self-determination. Yet Isaias openly dismissed that fundamental premise, declaring that those who viewed Eritreans and Ethiopians as two distinct peoples did not understand reality and proclaiming, “We are no longer people of two countries. We are one.”
No statement could more profoundly undermine the historical narrative upon which Eritrean independence rests. To this day, the Eritrean people remain unaware of the full details of the agreements reached between Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki. According to accounts shared by individuals with knowledge of the regime’s inner workings, the terms of the arrangements involving Abiy, Isaias, and the United Arab Emirates regarding the use of Assab have never been disclosed to the public. Some insiders contend that, were these details to become known, the public reaction would be swift and explosive. Whether or not such predictions are accurate, the very existence of secret agreements touching upon matters of national sovereignty has deepened public distrust and intensified concerns about governance, transparency, and accountability under Isaias Afwerki’s rule.
The contradiction became even more apparent during the Tigray war. Eritrean forces entered a conflict in which Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity were not under direct threat. Tens of thousands of Eritreans reportedly paid the ultimate price in a war justified not as an act of national defense, but as a matter of regional security and political necessity.
In one of the great ironies of contemporary Horn of Africa politics, the regime now finds itself maneuvering among forces it once denounced as existential enemies. Alliances have proven fluid. Narratives have shifted. Yesterday’s adversaries became today’s partners, only to become adversaries once again. Ethiopia and Sudan offer recent examples of how rapidly political loyalties can be rearranged when circumstances demand it.
Yet one constant remains. While governments negotiate, leaders recalibrate, and political narratives evolve, ordinary Eritreans continue to bear the burden. Their sons and daughters fill the ranks of armies. Their families absorb the loss. Their future is mortgaged to conflicts over which they have little influence and for which they are seldom consulted.
The result is a profound sense of disillusionment. A generation raised on the language of sovereignty, self-reliance, and national sacrifice increasingly finds itself asking a difficult question: if Eritrea’s hard-won independence was meant to secure the freedom and dignity of its people, why do Eritrean lives continue to be expended in service of objectives that remain unclear, undisclosed, or beyond their control?
If this is strategic vision, it is difficult to recognize.
None of this changes the reality that recent rhetoric from Abiy Ahmed regarding access to the Red Sea and Assab has alarmed Eritreans. Any threat to Eritrea’s territorial integrity must be taken seriously, and no self-respecting Eritrean would tolerate aggression against the country’s sovereignty. Yet it is equally important to recognize that Isaias Afwerki has helped create this dangerous situation through his support for and alliance with the Tsemdo forces, now fighting Abiy under the Alliance for Survival. Having repeatedly inserted Eritrea into the internal conflicts of its neighbors, he can hardly claim innocence when those conflicts begin to spill across borders.
But the past three decades have also revealed a truth that many Eritreans have long understood: national sovereignty cannot be separated from popular sovereignty. A nation is strongest when its citizens are empowered, invested, and united. Military preparedness alone cannot compensate for institutional decay. A state that has imprisoned reformers, dispersed its youth across the globe, dismantled constitutional governance, and silenced independent voices cannot achieve its full national resilience.
It is often said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The current crisis should serve as a wake-up call, particularly for the opposition. For too long, opposition forces have remained fragmented, reactive, and unable to articulate a coherent national vision capable of inspiring confidence among Eritreans inside the country, in the diaspora, and within the armed forces.
This moment demands something different.
The opposition must speak with one voice and make an unequivocal case to the Eritrean people and the Eritrean military: the greatest threat facing Eritrea today is not merely an external adversary but a regime that has systematically weakened the nation from within. It must simultaneously reassure Eritreans that defending Eritrea’s sovereignty and opposing the regime are not contradictory positions. On the contrary, they have become inseparable.
The opposition must make clear that it stands firmly for the defense of Eritrea’s independence, territorial integrity, and national sovereignty. It must demonstrate that it is prepared to assume its share of responsibility in safeguarding the nation. Most importantly, it must articulate a truth that has become increasingly evident over the past three decades: the first step toward reclaiming Eritrea is to remove the system that has held it hostage.
If Eritreans are called upon to defend the country, they must first ask why they have repeatedly been placed in situations where war appears inevitable. They must ask why so many national crises seem to flow from the decisions of one unelected ruler whose record is marked by miscalculation, adventurism, and the suppression of alternative voices.
The greatest threat to Eritrea today is not merely the possibility of aggression from abroad. It is the continued concentration of power in the hands of a leader who has repeatedly demonstrated poor judgment while systematically eroding the political, institutional, and historical foundations of the state he claims to defend.
The challenge before the nation is therefore clear. Before Eritrea can successfully confront dangers beyond its borders, it must confront the crisis at its center. Before it can effectively defend its sovereignty, it must restore the principles that give that sovereignty meaning: constitutional government, accountable institutions, citizenship, and national unity.
For thirty-five years, Eritreans have been told that every crisis originates elsewhere. Perhaps it is finally time to recognize that the country’s gravest danger lies much closer to home.
No Eritrean should be asked to die in another war under the leadership of a man whose record is defined by strategic blunders and squandered opportunities. Eritrea has never been Isaias Afwerki’s highest priority. The preservation of his power has been. It is time for Eritreans to reverse that equation. The nation’s most urgent task is not another mobilization campaign, another regional adventure, or another call to sacrifice. It is the removal of the system that has brought Eritrea to this precipice.
Only then can Eritreans reclaim their state, rebuild their institutions, restore national cohesion, and face external threats from a position of strength. Only then can they honor the sacrifices that secured Eritrea’s independence and ensure that future generations inherit a country worthy of those sacrifices.
To Contact the author: weriz@yahoo.com
