PART II

By Sally Healy

Sally Healy (OBE) is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was formerly a specialist in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with over twenty years’ experience providing research and analysis of African politics and development, with a particular focus on the countries of the Horn and East Africa.

 She is Convenor of the Horn of Africa Group, a collaborative study of conflict in the Horn of Africa undertaken at Chatham House over the past two years, and is the author, with Martin Plaut, of the Chatham House Briefing Paper: Ethiopia and Eritrea: Allergic to Persuasion (2007). Her report, "Lost Opportunities in the Horn of Africa: How Conflicts Connect and Peace Agreements Unravel" is a study of three peace processes in the Horn of Africa, a region of Africa distinguished by the prevalence and persistence of armed conflict. It deals with the Algiers Agreement of December 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Somalia National Peace and Reconciliation Process concluded in October 2004 and the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005. In this issue we present the part which deals with the Ethio-Eritrea conflict and the process of peace agreement.

A diplomatic quagmire

Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the boundary ruling posed a significant problem for the UN. Demarcation was the completion point of the UNMEE mission, without which it had no exit strategy. In late 2003, the UN Secretary General appointed a Special Representative to try to resolve the stalled peace process. But Eritrea rejected this as an attempt to smuggle in the ‘alternative mechanism’ for solving the border issue that Ethiopia sought. In the same vein, Eritrea rejected a Five Point Peace Plan announced by Ethiopia in November 2004. This declared Ethiopia’s acceptance ‘in principle’ of the Delimitation Decision and proposed to ‘start dialogue immediately with the view to implementing the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission’s decision in a manner consistent with the promotion of sustainable peace and brotherly ties between the two peoples’.22 Eritrea refused any sort of dialogue until demarcation had taken place.

The Eritreans wanted to break the impasse. The Boundary Commission decision was in their favour and they wanted it implemented. Furthermore, the state of no war and no peace was hurting them much more than Ethiopia. Eritrea’s government took the view that the un-demarcated border required it to remain on a war footing. The country was paying a terrible social and economic price as a result of having some 10 per cent of its population tied up in unendingmilitary service. It was also becoming obvious that Eritrean demands that the international community compel Ethiopia to comply with its legal obligations were not gaining any traction.

Eritrea’s chosen strategy was to apply direct pressure on UNMEE. In October 2005 the government placed restrictions on road travel and a ban on helicopter flights, which directly impinged on UNMEE’s ability to fulfill its mission. The government also demanded that all European and North American staff be withdrawn from UNMEE. Eritrea correctly calculated that these actions would gain attention – albeit negative attention. In November 2005 the Security Council passed Resolution 1640 threatening economic sanctions against Eritrea unless it lifted its restrictions on UNMEE. It also demanded that Ethiopia allow the demarcation of the border, without further delay. Neither side complied.

In 2006 the US spearheaded a fresh round of diplomatic activity. Although it appeared to be in Eritrea’s interests to get the process moving again, President Issayas spurned contact with American government representatives. In January 2006 US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer wanted to lead a high-level team to the two capitals,

Asmara and Addis Ababa, and to see the border situation. Eritrea refused to allow her to visit the border, and that leg of the mission was cancelled. Frazer went instead to Ethiopia where she held talks with Meles and visited the disputed frontier. Her remarks there about the difficulties of demarcation and the splitting of communities were interpreted as pro-Ethiopia. Eritrea’s tone thereafter became increasingly hostile towards the US.

The US initiated a meeting of the Witnesses to the Algiers Agreement – the US, EU, AU and Algeria – in February 2006 and asked the Boundary Commission to call a meeting, introducing the idea of a neutral facilitator to assist with the process of demarcation. The Boundary Commission held two meetings in the first half of 2006, with both sides in attendance. (This represented a small breakthrough since Ethiopia had not attended any meetings of the Commission since 2003.) Eritrea had registered in advance its suspicions about the addition of any technical experts to the process and soon lost patience. It  refused to attend a third meeting of the Boundary Commission in June 2006 and denounced the whole US initiative as ‘pro-Ethiopian’. President Issayas charged the US with putting pressure on the Boundary Commission and trying to wrest the case from its jurisdiction. He concluded that the US administration was vouching for Ethiopia’s defiance of international law.

Termination of the Boundary Commission

The Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission could go no further. It had fulfilled the first part of its terms of reference – to provide a valid legal deposition on the boundary. It could not proceed to the second part, namely demarcation of the boundary, without the cooperation of the two parties. Such cooperation was clearly not forthcoming. Yet the Commission could not remain in existence indefinitely. With avenues to progress once more blocked, the Boundary Commission gave notice on 27 November 2006 of a new approach: using ‘modern techniques of image processing and terrain modeling’, it had identified the location for the emplacement of boundary pillars in accordance with the 2002 Delimitation Decision. It gave the parties a list of the locations of the pillars and 45maps illustrating the boundary points. It invited them, once more, to reach agreement on the emplacement of the boundary pillars on the ground. It gave notice, however, that if in one year’s time Ethiopia and Eritrea had still failed to agree or to enable the Commission to resume its demarcation activities, the boundary described on the maps would automatically stand as demarcated and the mandate of the Commission would be regarded as fulfilled.

The Boundary Commission made a last-ditch attempt to bring the two sides together in September 2007. Ethiopia insisted that any progress on demarcation required the prior departure of Eritrean forces from the TSZ and the meeting ended without any progress.

Concluding that the two sides were unable to create the conditions required for physical demarcation to take place, the Boundary Commission announced on 30 November 2007 that it had fulfilled its mandate. In place of demarcation, the Commission officially presented maps to all the concerned parties, including the UN Cartographic Unit, showing a complete set of coordinates for the emplacement of boundary pillars representing the 2002 Delimitation Decision.

Eritrea has acknowledged as final and valid the coordinates specified by the EEBC. It appears ready to settle for virtual demarcation and to accept border demarcation on the map as the final step in reinforcing the EEBC ruling of April 2002. President Issayas was reported as saying that the border issue in its legal, political and technical aspects had concluded, thus marking the culmination of the Algiers Agreement, and that the sole remaining task was the unconditional withdrawal of the invading TPLF regime’s forces from sovereign Eritrean territory.

Ethiopia, on the other hand, has stated that it regards the demarcation coordinates as invalid as they are not the product of a demarcation process recognized by international law. It has described virtual demarcation as a ‘legal nonsense’ and maintains that border demarcation cannot be recognized unless the pillars are positioned on the ground. Since 2007 Ethiopia has stated with growing emphasis that it has accepted the Boundary Commission Delimitation Decision, and that what was now necessary was for Ethiopia and Eritrea to sit down together and discuss exactly how to demarcate the border. In short, the process of physical demarcation must be worked out – sooner or later – through dialogue.

The UNMEE dilemma

Throughout 2006 and 2007 UNMEE faced increasingly severe restrictions placed on it by Eritrea. The Eritrean authorities dismissed the protests of the UN Security Council over these restrictions as ‘secondary issues’ – compared with the primary issue of compelling Ethiopia to accept the boundary decision – and refused to comply with a succession of Security Council resolutions demanding that they be lifted. In recognition of the constraints on UNMEE’s ability to fulfil its mandate, force levels were progressively reduced – to 2,300 in mid-2006 and to 1,700 in April 2007. The operation limped along to end of the year but a fuel ban introduced in December made its position increasingly untenable.

Alongside the restrictions on UNMEE, Eritrea has deployed troops and heavy equipment into the Transitional Security Zone. Ethiopia has seized upon this to turn the legal argument about compliance on its head. Ethiopia now cites Eritrea’s violation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement of June 2000 to explain its own noncompliance with demarcation of the boundary. Ethiopia has now seemingly satisfied the Boundary Commission that it has accepted the Delimitation Decision without precondition. Public statements are somewhat more nuanced. Meles has told parliament that Ethiopia thought the border ruling was wrong, but accepted it, and that Ethiopia was ready and willing to discuss implementation of the ruling. Ethiopia now argues that the integrity of the TSZ is necessary for the work of demarcation to proceed. Eritrea’s violation of the TSZ and its restrictions on UNMEE had rendered demarcation practically impossible. Ethiopia therefore claimed that Eritrea’s actions were in breach of the Algiers Agreement.

At the end of 2007 Ethiopia and Eritrea were engaged in increasingly tense exchanges, while both denied any intention of going to war. In late November, as the Boundary Commission notice expired, Meles declared: ‘Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again.’ Having accepted the virtual boundary as final, Eritrea has adopted the line of argument that it is entitled to UN Security Council support in establishing its sovereignty over the territory awarded to it. The UN Security Council decided to renew UNMEE’s mandate for six months in January 2008. But UNMEE’s formal exit strategy – to depart on completion of the border demarcation – had effectively been closed down by the termination of the Boundary Commission’s work.

Moreover, the operation itself was grinding to a halt under the impact of Eritrea’s fuel restrictions. This reached crisis point during February 2008, whereupon UNMEE’s operations were suspended and the bulk of the force left Eritrea to return to their home countries. Although the UN Secretary General has described this state of affairs as a ‘temporary relocation’, and a rear party of 164 military personnel remain in Asmara, Eritrea shows no inclination to restore UNMEE’s presence that it characterizes – since the virtual border demarcation – as ‘prolonging the occupation by Ethiopia of territory awarded to Eritrea’. Seven years after signature there are no discernible signs that the Algiers Agreement can provide the framework for Eritrea and Ethiopia to reach a permanent, peaceful settlement. This is despite consistent and fairly concerted efforts on the part of the international community. The two nations had at their disposal the services of some of the world's most respected international legal authorities and a professional UN peacekeeping operation, operating at a budgeted cost of $1.5bn since its inception. But their efforts seem to have been in vain: the two sides remain completely un-reconciled.

The consequences are not confined to the two protagonists but have served to inflame regional insecurity. The dispute dominates all aspects of Eritrea’s life – economic, political, social and military – and has legitimized the establishment of a highly militaristic and authoritarian state. Far from providing the economic interdependence with Ethiopia that was expected, the seaports that should be its key economic assets lie idle. Eritrea’s fear of Ethiopian domination is very real (and historically well founded). The refusal to implement the boundary ruling plays on these fears and perpetuates the sense that Eritrea is standing alone against a powerful adversary. This underpins the twin pillars of its foreign policy – isolationism combined with opportunistic support for any armed insurgents opposed to Ethiopia. In this fashion, the failure to solve the Ethiopia–Eritrea dispute has contributed directly to the conflict in Somalia, as it has to the conflict in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

As the larger and stronger country, Ethiopia appears to cope better with the consequences of ‘no war, no peace’. Its remarkably high growth figures suggest that its economy has been able to absorb the costs of developing alternative trade routes to Djibouti and even further a field to Kenya and Sudan. But the inability to re-establish a working relationship with Eritrea forces Ethiopia not only to confront its situation as a land-locked country (the most populous land-locked country in the world) but also to face the fact that it was this government that agreed to Eritrea’s separation. This vulnerability inevitably impacts on Ethiopia’s foreign policy, encouraging hegemonic conduct in the region. Eritrea’s policy of roving intervention raises the stakes for Ethiopia to find reliable alliances in Somalia. It also amplifies the threat from political adversaries inside the country and the neighborhood, fuelling insecurity.

Opinions about the Algiers Peace Agreement

With such wide security consequences flowing from the failure to resolve the conflict, the question arises whether there were weaknesses or structural flaws in the Algiers Agreement that made it unworkable. Were the causes of the conflict sufficiently understood when the ‘peaceful solution’ was framed? Might a different type of agreement have produced a more constructive outcome? Have history and the respective leaderships conspired to make a peace between the two countries impossible? These questions were addressed to a selection of diplomats, officials and analysts during a visit to the region in February 2008. The following sections present a summary of typical responses.

There is no peace agreement – they are still at war

Some analysts consider that the reason Algiers has failed is that neither Ethiopia nor Eritrea had any serious intention of making peace. Algiers simply marked the end of the hot war (1998–2000) and deserves credit for successfully ended the fighting on the border. At the time, the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement provided a useful framework for managing troop withdrawal (mainly of victorious Ethiopian forces) and establishing a TSZ that, with some UN supervision, has largely served its purpose. Thereafter the two sides simply shifted from hot war to cold war. To the palpable despair of the diplomats, they have taken up hostile and antagonistic positions in every conceivable forum – with the Boundary Commission, in the UN Security Council, within the councils of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD). They have also seized any opportunity to engage in mutual subversion. The most harmful aspects of their continuing hostility, however, were played out in a proxy war in Somalia.

Meles and Issayas can never make peace

Many commentators see the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea as a private battle between President Issayas and Prime Minister Meles. Personal history, translated to personal hatred, is frequently offered as an explanation for the intractable nature of the conflict. This is said to explain their inability to re-establish a working relationship even though this would plainly benefit both countries (e.g. in economic terms). Compounding the problem is the fact that both men share a common political culture in which compromise is equated with capitulation. This mentality has been deepened by years of guerrilla struggle in which victory is understood to have been achieved through sheer obduracy and hard struggle. At the same time, each believes the other to be on the brink of collapse. This reduces their incentives to work for a final settlement.

The conflict serves domestic purposes

It is also argued that maintaining the conflict serves important political purposes for the leadership of the two countries. Issayas and Meles both faced serious criticism from their close inner circle in the aftermath of the war. Meles cannot quite shake off the blame for ‘giving up Eritrea’ in 1993 in the belief this would provide the foundations for an enduring peace. If he cannot forgive Issayas for proving him so spectacularly wrong, he also cannot, for his public standing, allow any suspicion of accommodating Eritrean interests at Ethiopian expense. In Ethiopian official circles it is believed that Issayas’ key motive for demanding the implementation of the boundary decision is that he knows it is impossible for Meles to accede to it. For Eritrea, the conflict provides the authorities with the pretext for increasingly totalitarian control. Constitutional and political development has been completely arrested since 1998 in the name of war preparedness. Eritreans who recognize the need for democratization and reform are stifled by the argument that the grave threat that Ethiopia poses to Eritrea’s existence means all the fruits of freedom must be put on hold.

The war was not about the border, so settling the border is not a solution

There is a view that the Algiers Agreement was mistaken in putting so much emphasis on border delimitation as the primary mechanism for establishing peaceful relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This argument is creeping into Ethiopian orthodoxy, with deliberate attempts to downplay the territorial challenge that triggered the war. In August 2007 Meles was reported as saying that Badme was no more than a pretext for the Eritrean invasion in 1998; the real reasons were economic and political. Therefore demarcation would not solve the crisis between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and political and economic solutions had to be found.This argument is gaining currency in Addis Ababa, where mention of Ethiopia’s ‘right of access to the sea’ is also becoming more frequent. According to an astute regional observer, the Ethiopian military establishment sees a strategic case for securing guaranteed use of a seaport and is formulating ideas around a long-term leasehold arrangement in Assab.

For Eritrea, however, the conflict was (and still is) about the border. Eritrea has an existential problem: its identity and claim to sovereignty hinges on its existence as an Italian colony, defined by colonial treaties. From this perspective the territorial  boundaries that define the homeland matter rather more to Eritrea than they do to Ethiopia. A need to assert and defend territorial identity has been a hallmark of Eritrea’s regional policy and had already brought it into conflict with Yemen and into dispute with Djibouti before 1998. But much as Eritrea wants the territory awarded to it by the Boundary Commission, the lesson of the 1998–2000 war was that it does not have the military might to hold on to it. The odds are even more heavily stacked against Eritrea as it has become progressively more impoverished and isolated.

Too much scope for the Boundary Commission

The central importance given to border delimitation is often identified as a core weakness of the Algiers Agreement. The insistence on putting border delimitation at the heart of the process appears to have been a hangover from earlier (unsuccessful) diplomatic initiatives predicated on defining the border in order to avoid the war. The approach was not sufficiently reconsidered or redesigned to take account of the different circumstances that obtained once the war had been fought. It is argued (mainly in Ethiopia) that the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission should have been drawn more tightly, for example requiring its members to visit the area. Some analysts in the region now question why Meles was willing to put border delimitation into the hands of an external arbiter rather than ‘dictating terms’ as the victor in the war. Some Ethiopian critics go further, to argue that Eritrea does not ‘deserve’ to have a border agreement in view of its unwarranted aggression in 1998. From these perspectives, settlement is perceived as doing a favour to Eritrea rather than reaching a mutually acceptable solution to enable the two countries to live on good terms.

Diplomats who have wrestled with trying to break the impasse that arose through the Algiers process note that the ‘final and binding’ clause gave no leeway for external mediation or negotiation and propelled the two sides back towards a zero-sum contest. Others see nothing technically wrong with the Algiers Agreement; it was simply that both sides started to maneuver over implementation. Ethiopia’s verbal acrobatics over compliance and noncompliance are generally accepted as seductive but fundamentally indefensible. On the other hand, Eritrea seems insistent on shooting itself in the foot through consistently offending other members of the international community, great and small.

A framework for relations

Despite the fact that the two key instruments of the AlgiersnAgreement – the EEBC andUNMEE – appear to have run out of steam, the agreement itself has not yet been abrogated. Ethiopia’s official position is that the Algiers Agreement still stands and generally serves the interests of both parties. Colonial treaties are the correct basis for settling the boundary. Ethiopia has accepted the border decision (unambiguously since March 2006) and now seeks a mechanism for translating the decision on the ground. If Eritrea would only entertain dialogue, it would be possible to achieve not only demarcation but also normalization of relations. According to this view, the Algiers Agreement continues to provide the framework within which Ethiopia and Eritrea should manage their relationship. It commits both parties to use peaceful and legal means to resolve their disputes, to reject the use of force and to abide by international norms. It gives them both recourse to the UN Security Council for help with ‘anger management’.

Eritrea appears no less committed to the Algiers Agreement and continues to affirm its desire to uphold the integrity of the Agreement. The problem as it sees it is Ethiopia’s failure to honor its undertakings over the final and binding border decision and demarcation. Eritrea’s position is that it entered into the Agreement in good faith and agreed to submit its territorial claims to arbitration – as it had done in a territorial dispute with Yemen. It expected support from the international community to see the decision implemented. Now that the Boundary Commission has completed its work, Eritrea considers that Ethiopia’s presence in territories awarded to Eritrea is a violation of the Algiers Agreement.

The Algiers Agreement now exists in a state of arrested implementation. Neither the Boundary Commission nor UNMEE is any longer in a position to influence events. It remains to be seen whether the text alone will be sufficient to prevent a return to war. Both leaders repeat that they have no intention of starting a war and it is not inconceivable that the peace will hold simply because neither man wants to give the other the satisfaction of starting the fight. Meanwhile, the Algiers Agreement upholds the important principle of the two countries coexisting as separate and sovereign states – which remains the condition to which they aspire.

Regional matters

Whether Ethiopia and Eritrea manage to achieve peaceful coexistence or not might depend more on events taking place in the wider region than in the borderlands themselves. It is here, after all, that the Ethiopia–Eritrea conflict is actually being played out. Within Ethiopia some analysts now question whether peaceful coexistence as sovereign states is a practical option. Proxy conflict, notably in Somalia, is putting great strain on the stability of the region. Ethiopia is discomfited by Eritrea’s hosting of the Somali opposition and is keen to decry Eritrea as a state sponsor of terrorism. Meanwhile, as Sudan heads towards the possible separation of Southern Sudan, there is very little sign that lessons have been learned from the Ethiopia–Eritrea experience. The circumstances in which the two countries reached the point of possible separation are quite different. But future problem areas such as boundaries, citizenship and belonging already have some echoes in Sudan.