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[Zmeselo]

Eritrea Versus AFRICOM: Defending Sovereignty in the Face of Imperialist Aggression

Dina M. Asfaha, Tunde Osazua

https://www.blackagendareport.com/eritr ... aggression

01 Dec 2021



The rapid expansion of AFRICOM on the African continent should be a cause for concern, as African nations are quickly surrendering their sovereignty to the US. As the only country without a relationship to AFRICOM, Eritrea bears the brunt of US vilification. We must salute, Eritrea’s ongoing project of national liberation.

The U.S. has built military-to-military relations with 53 out of the 54 African countries that include agreements to cede operational command to AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. The broad network of AFRICOM military bases, as well as those from France and other world powers, are examples of how African states are surrendering their sovereignty https://blackagendareport.com/defending-our-sovereig through neocolonial relationships with Western countries. African self-determination and national sovereignty are impossible as long as the U.S. and its European allies are allowed to use military power to control African land, labor, and resources.

A major component of AFRICOM’s activities includes the indoctrination of African security forces through military training, including through the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Program (ACOTA) https://dscu.mil/Pubs/Indexes/Vol%2030_ ... ffairs.pdf (formerly the African Crisis Response Initiative) (ACRI) https://africacenter.org/), Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) https://africacenter.org/, International Military Training and Education (IMET) https://www.dsca.mil/international-mili ... ining-imet Program, and the numerous military exercises carried out by AFRICOM forces, including African Lion https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/exer ... rican-lion, Cutlass Express https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/exer ... ss-express, Phoenix Express https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/exer ... ix-express, Obangame Express https://www.africom.mil/article/33655/o ... ad-the-way, and Flintlock https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do/exercises/flintlock, among many other exercises, which have included participation from almost every African country. As Netfa Freeman pointed out in a recent article, https://blackagendareport.com/index.php ... or-africom

an indoctrination about the inherent goodness of the U.S.-European role in Africa accompanies this military training, with blindspots about the true legacy of colonialism.

The U.S. military uses the myriad security challenges facing the African continent as an important justification for AFRICOM’s existence, and the most prominent of these justifications is the threat that the U.S.-led “war on terror” is seemingly addressing. However, these security challenges and terror threats are actually driven in large part by the presence of foreign militaries on the continent. Before September 11, 2001, Africa seemed to be free of transnational terror threats https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-fr ... in-africa/. Since then, U.S. military efforts on the continent have grown in every conceivable way, from funding and boots on the ground to missions and outposts, while at the same time the number of transnational “terror” groups has increased in linear fashion https://theintercept.com/2015/11/20/in- ... idden-war/. Despite this increase, extremist groups are active in less than 10 https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/be ... ism-africa of the 54 countries in Africa. Justifications for AFRICOM’s presence on the continent, such as the rise of terrorist groups, ignore that the Pentagon and the CIA have recruited and trained https://blackagendareport.com/content/m ... ror-africa extremists to fight as their proxies on many occasions.

It is clear, that the African heads of state with working relationships with AFRICOM are surrendering their sovereignty and inviting a destabilizing presence.

Eritrea is the only country on the African continent, without US military relations. In 1977, the last Americans at Kagnew Station, the U.S. military station in present-day Asmara, Eritrea, officially left the US’s listening post in the region. Kagnew was initially acquired through a deal with the Ethiopian government in 1943, an important geostrategic location for the US Navy during the Cold War. At the time, the Eritrean Armed Struggle for Independence against imperial Ethiopia (1961-1991) was ongoing; it was fear of heightened violence and warfare in Eritrea that led to the US’s ultimate and official withdrawal from Asmara and its closure of Kagnew in 1975.

This history is important in understanding the West’s contemporary vilification of Eritrea, as it is the only country on the African continent without a relationship with AFRICOM. We can’t and shouldn’t ignore the significance of this vilification as it relates to any African country’s sovereignty and the refusal to govern, based on directives from the United Nations (or its allied entities). Eritrea’s defense forces are not only organized, but soldiers’ military training, skills, and expertise do not come from France, the United States, or any other major Western power. This is a notable difference from other African countries. Even the African Union’s standing army, the African Standby Forces, operates according to the UN’s notion of peacekeeping. https://web.archive.org/web/20110606040 ... mmands.pdf

Today, a focal point of critique when it comes to Eritrea is its national service program, “Sawa,” which high school students complete in their final year (12th grade). In its conception in 1994, national service was supposed to be for a limited time period. However, conditions in Eritrea changed when the former political party of Ethiopia, the TPLF, an organization that initially claimed anti-imperialist aims https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/e ... f-tplf.pdf, became a client to US interests in the Horn of Africa. This led to a border conflict and warfare from 1998 - 2000, which ended the period of peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia after formal Eritrean independence in 1991. Post-war, Eritrea was in a no war-no peace situation, whereby the specter of territorial infringement was a real possibility in a TPLF-led Ethiopia that consistently preached a vision of an Abay Tigray (Tigrinya for “large Tigray”) -- a dream to expand into and occupy Eritrea, making it a Tigrinya ethno-state. For many, national service in Eritrea is ongoing.

National service is not a totally uncommon feature of modern day nation-states; countries from South Korea to Israel have national service, which include a military training component. But these countries are seldom critiqued, for requiring military service of their citizens. The origin of Eritrea’s national service program, “Sawa,” in 1994 came from a need to give youth work post-war. Decades of colonialism and war left a nascent Eritrean society with purposefully destroyed infrastructures https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aet ... /view/1478 in an effort to de-skill Eritreans both technically and militarily. We can tie this to the US’s goal of

policy [and] security interests in Eritrea

https://history.state.gov/historicaldoc ... 51v05/d701 when it sponsored the UN resolution to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952, setting off Haile Selassie’s imperial expansionist project in the Horn.

These historical-political events are germane to understanding what it means for an African country like Eritrea, whose policies largely focus on developing human capital and capacity and protecting national sovereignty, and which chooses not to have US-European military relations.

It is helpful and interesting, then, to link Max Weber’s theory of states (and sovereignty), in which he posits that one feature of a legitimate state is a standing army, with how Jemima Pierre https://www.academia.edu/8569327/Race_i ... Commentary theorizes the manifestation of white supremacy and racism in Africa. What does it mean for African people to be organized and possess the military capabilities, to defend themselves and their nation? We must eradicate the legacies of imperialism enacted through mechanisms like AFRICOM, which often manifest in unfounded accusations about terrorism https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/a ... 17_925.pdf and the levying of unjust sanctions https://undocs.org/S/RES/1907(2009). And we must salute and support, Eritrea’s project of national liberation.

Dina M. Asfaha is completing her doctorate in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on medical practices and mutual aid pioneered in the Nakfa trenches of Eritrea during Eritrea’s liberation struggle against imperial Ethiopia (1961-1991), and how these social practices continue to inform the contemporary framework of Eritrean sovereignty.

Tunde Osazua is a member of the Africa Team of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the coordinator of BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network, which is the organizing arm of the U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign.

[Zmeselo]

A Response to Congressman Brad Sherman’s Offensive statements Against Eritrea

https://shabait.com/2021/12/03/a-respon ... t-eritrea/

PRESS RELEASE



On October 10, 2021, whilst lending his support to H. Res 445, Congressman Brad Sherman argued for violent action, stating,

…The American navy could interrupt Eritrea’s commerce on the high seas at any time and it would be just to do so as long as Eritrea blockades humanitarian aid to the people of Tigray…

Again, on December 02, 2021, he repeats his appalling comments about Eritrea.

The Congressman alleges, without any shred of evidence, that

Eritrea has closed its ports to food aid.

Yet, in the same statement, he enquires why Eritrea has not been requested so far to allow food aid through its ports; adding that a formal request must be sent to Eritrea in order to elicit

a negative response

that would be useful for the record and to justify the nefarious acts he has in mind.

The Congressman’s convoluted rationale for illicit, US Navy forceful action, against Eritrea, is because it is not susceptible to economic pressures since it is not

a US-aid recipient country.

To set the record straight, Eritrea has never blocked humanitarian aid, nor has it become a hindrance to the flow of humanitarian aid into Ethiopia. The supply routes in operation, have nothing to do with Eritrea. But more pointedly and as a matter of conviction, Eritrea firmly upholds the fundamental principle on the obligation of all States to ensure the provision and facilitation of humanitarian aid to needy populations in times of natural or man-made calamities and irrespective of the prevailing political/conflict situations.

In this regard, the Congressman should be reminded that the Eritrean Government had offered in 2000, at the height of the border war, its ports of Massawa and Assab for humanitarian use destined to Ethiopia under appropriate supervision when an estimated 14 million Ethiopians were on the brink of starvation. The scheme could not be implemented, because the TPLF-dominated Ethiopian regime callously rejected the proposal.

The Congressman also denigrates Eritrea veering further into aspects of the conflict in northern Ethiopia on which he is either ill-informed or intentionally misinterprets, to advance a malicious agenda.

In the event, the Eritrean Embassy to the US expresses its indignation and deplores the vilification of the country and the illicit coercive measures that the Congressman irresponsibly advocates.


Embassy of Eritrea
02 Dec 2021


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[Abe Abraham]

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Andy punished Hunt with maturity,wisdom and humour. Well done !!

[Jaegol]

[Sabur]

The Response of the Embassy of Eritrea to congressman Brad Sherman and Andergachew Tsighe's Response to Mr. Jeremy Hunt show stark difference between the mature Fact Based content of Eritrea and Ethiopian politicians and the sabre rattling of the US and UK politicians.

Now, who is more mature calm and content; and who is more unstable and threatening?