Oct 8, 2026
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Eritrea was born from a promise. After one of Africa’s longest liberation struggles, independence arrived in 1993 carrying the hopes of a people. But the country that emerged from war did not become the open, constitutional republic many had imagined. More than three decades later, President Isaias Afwerki remains in power. Eritrea has held no national elections, its constitution has never been implemented, independent media are absent, and national service can stretch on indefinitely.
Human Rights Watch describes the country as a one-man dictatorship marked by severe restrictions on civil and political liberties, arbitrary detention and indefinite conscription. That is the first contradiction of Eritrea’s post-independence story: a nation liberated in the name of freedom became one of the world’s most closed political systems.
The second contradiction lies beyond its borders. A state whose founding cause was sovereignty has repeatedly become entangled in territorial disputes, military confrontations and regional proxy politics. In Eritrea, insecurity has not simply been a challenge to overcome. At times, it has seemed to become part of the way the country is governed.
Eritrea developed a highly centralized political system in which authority rests overwhelmingly with Isaias Afwerki and the institutions around him offer few effective checks. The culture of wartime command survived the war itself. Political life remained narrow, public dissent dangerous and national priorities shaped by a leadership that treated mobilization not as an emergency measure, but as a permanent condition.
Research on authoritarianism offers one way to understand the risks. Political scientists Jeff Colgan and Jessica Weeks have argued that revolutionary regimes can become especially vulnerable to international conflict when they evolve into personalist dictatorships systems where institutions are too weak to restrain leaders and foreign-policy decisions are concentrated in a small circle. Mark Peceny and Christopher Butler likewise found that personalist dictatorships were more likely than some other authoritarian systems to initiate militarized disputes and to become targets of them.
The Isaias government is consumed by an intense obsession with provocation. There is not a single neighboring country it has left untouched. From Yemen to Djibouti and Ethiopia, it launched cross-border invasions before the nation had even found its footing.
Only two years after independence, the regime in Eritrea was drawn into a confrontation with Yemen over the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea. In December 1995, Eritrean forces seized Greater Hanish. Fighting followed, and Yemen complained to the United Nations, describing the action as an attack on its territory and calling for a peaceful resolution. The dispute ultimately went to international arbitration. In 1998, the tribunal issued its first-stage award, helping bring a dangerous confrontation into a legal framework. The place was handed over to Yemen.
The episode did not become a permanent war. But it revealed a recurring tension in Eritrea’s foreign policy: disputes over territory and strategic interests could first be met with military pressure, then contained through diplomacy, arbitration or international mediation. The Hanish confrontation showed how quickly the defense of sovereignty could become a justification for force. Yet, it was only the beginning.
In 1998, five years after Eritrea’s independence, the Eritrean regime invaded Ethiopia’s Badme. The consequences reached deep into Eritrean society. The International Crisis Group documented how the war’s losses contributed to harsher repression, the imprisonment of senior officials who criticized the conduct of the conflict, and the entrenchment of prolonged national service. The battlefield and the political system became intertwined. External danger gave the government a language of national survival. Permanent mobilization, in turn, gave the state a means of tightening its hold on society. This is the logic of permanent war which, a government invokes threats to justify emergency rule, then uses emergency rule to keep the population mobilized and political life under control.
The pattern continued. In June 2008, the regime in Eritrean again clashed with Djiboutian forces around Ras Doumeira and Doumeira Island. The UN Security Council condemned Eritrea’s military action and demanded that Eritrean forces and equipment withdraw from the disputed area. Djibouti is a small neighbour, but its location is anything but marginal. It sits beside some of the world’s most important maritime routes, where the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden connect Africa with the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Instability in this region can affect shipping, trade, migration and international security. A border clash may begin over a small piece of land. Its consequences need not remain local.
Eritrea’s regional role became more controversial through Somalia. UN monitoring mechanisms documented facts that Eritrea supported armed groups notably the terrorist Al-Shebab in the region. In 2011, the Security Council tightened sanctions against Eritrea and subsequent monitoring reports examined Eritrea’s alleged support for terrorist groups in Somalia.
These distractive acts became part of international security deliberations, not simply newspaper commentary. At a time when the Horn needed stronger collective security, Eritrea was deeply entangled in the region’s proxy politics.
The government of Eritrea tells citizens that the country is surrounded by enemies. Those enemies justify military preparedness. Preparedness justifies indefinite service. Indefinite service helps maintain social control. And political closure makes it harder for citizens to question the original claims of danger. The point is not that every confrontation is deliberately manufactured to distract the public from domestic problems. The evidence does not support such a simple explanation. The point is that when a leader faces few institutional restraints, the costs of miscalculation are enormous and the public has few peaceful ways to challenge the decisions that produce them.
The Isaias regime's long-standing obsession with fabricating fear has spilled beyond Eritrea, plunging the entire region into turmoil. The delusional calculation that a weak Ethiopia is essential for Eritrea’s survival has robbed the Horn of peace while subjecting Eritreans to decades of poverty and suffering. To execute this reckless policy, Isaias collaborates with Egyptian leaders—historically adversaries of Ethiopia—and, lacking power of his own, has been forced into the role of their compliant proxy. Yet this path is unsustainable, for Isaias is ultimately fighting against an unyielding reality—against nature itself. The Eritrean people are growing weary; with the youth driven into exile, the nation is being emptied out.
Ethiopia’s size and location give it enormous influence over the future of the Horn. With a population of over 130 million, it is Africa’s second-most populous country and one of the region’s largest economies. The World Bank reported GDP growth of 9.2 percent in fiscal year 2024/25.
Ethiopia sits at the centre of the Horn, bordering Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan. Addis Ababa hosts the African Union headquarters, and Ethiopia is deeply involved in continental diplomacy. The country also has a long history of peacekeeping: the United Nations records Ethiopian participation in UN-authorized operations dating back to the Korean War. At the end of July 2025, Ethiopia had 1,543 uniformed personnel serving in UN peacekeeping missions.
That history points to another idea of regional power. Power can mean mediation. It can mean connecting markets, building infrastructure, supporting regional institutions and making economic interdependence a reason to preserve peace. But Ethiopia cannot play that role while consumed by war.
The Horn of Africa need not be understood only through armies, trenches and disputed borders. It can also be understood through roads, railways, electricity grids, ports, telecommunications, industrial corridors and regional markets.
Ethiopia’s population, agricultural potential, hydropower resources, manufacturing ambitions and growing digital economy could help drive regional integration. Its location gives it a strong interest in reliable transport routes connecting the African interior with Red Sea and Gulf markets. None of this can happen without peace.
Ethiopia needs stable neighbours to secure trade routes. Eritrea needs peaceful relations with Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti and Yemen if it is to develop its economy. Djibouti depends on Ethiopia’s vast hinterland market. Somalia needs its neighbours to support security and recovery. Sudan needs a peaceful region as it struggles through devastating war. These interests are not fundamentally incompatible. The tragedy is that political mistrust, in particular from Eritrea, so often overwhelms them.
Isaias Afwerki’s Eritrea is a warning about what happens when permanent mobilization becomes a substitute for political life. A liberation narrative cannot indefinitely replace constitutional government. Sovereignty cannot be reduced to the survival of one leader. Military discipline cannot replace opportunity. And external enemies cannot forever stand in for accountable institutions.
Ethiopia faces its own test. Its size gives it influence, but influence brings responsibility. Its ambitions for economic development, connectivity and maritime access are pursued through diplomacy, international law and arrangements that benefit its neighbours not coercion. It is not who can keep a nation permanently mobilized. It is who can build a state secure enough that it no longer needs war to prove its strength.
The post-independence trajectory of Eritrea stands as a stark testament to a liberation struggle betrayed from within. Under Isaias Afwerki, the state has been stripped of constitutional rule, civil liberties, and fundamental human rights, operating instead through indefinite conscription, arbitrary detention, and systemic repression. Yet the threat posed by this regime extends far beyond domestic tyranny. Driven by an institutionalized obsession with conflict, the government in Asmara has consistently acted as a engine of regional instability—initiating border clashes, engaging in proxy warfare, and repeatedly violating international law.
By aligning with destabilizing actors and harboring elements that threaten global security, the regime has demonstrated that its survival relies on perpetual crisis.
A state governed by an unrestrained, anti-peace dictatorship is not merely an internal tragedy for the Eritrean people, nor just a regional hazard in the Horn of Africa—it is an active threat to international law and global order. As the nation empties of its youth and its neighbors endure constant provocation, one conclusion becomes undeniable: true peace, stability, and human dignity cannot coexist with the current system. For the sake of the Eritrean people, regional security, and the rule of international law, the dismantling of this autocratic regime and a transition to accountable governance are urgent imperatives.
