25 July 2025

Profiles in Failure: The Legacy of Isaias Afwerki’s Rule in Eritrea
Commentary by Ambassador Andebrhan Welde Giorgis

In my recent commentary on the title of Isaias Afwerki’s new book, My Struggle for Eritrea and Africa: Talks with Michel Collon, I mentioned several of Isaias’s disastrous failures, or outcomes of his malevolent policies and practices, that have regressed the Eritrean economy, degraded Eritrea’s physical, social and institutional infrastructure, immersed the people in a quagmire of extreme poverty and forced the demographic decline of the Eritrean population. Having read the book, a collection of Isaias’s interviews by Michel Collon and an Afterword by Mohamed Hassen, I will elucidate and expand the list in this commentary. 

Isaias Afwerki has indeed struggled for Eritrea and led the EPLF to a brilliant victory in the war of national liberation against great odds. Post-independence, however, the record of the objective reality prevailing in Eritrea, particularly since 2000, and the dismal human condition of the Eritrean people today demonstrate that Isaias has struggled primarily to keep himself in power and aggrandise himself at the expense of Eritrea and the Eritrean people. His legacy of failure shows that Isaias has neither a vision nor a development project for Eritrea and the Eritrean people beyond imposing a brutal dictatorship and tightening the levers of political, economic and security control to maintain his repressive rule.

Postliberation, his “valuable lessons” for Africa are starkly negative. The most notable failures of President Isaias’s “struggle for Eritrea” include: 

Deconstruction of the Eritrean state. He has banned national elections; shelved the Constitution of Eritrea; suspended the Eritrean National Assembly; emasculated the judiciary; paralysed the cabinet of ministers and autonomous government agencies; destroyed existing institutions; nipped new institutions in the bud; and grabbed absolute state power, reducing Eritrea into a dysfunctional an autocrat’s one-man-show that lacks a normal government structure!

Decapitation of the EPLF/PFDJ. He has suspended the Central Council and the Executive Committee of the Front, jailed scores of the Front’s most prominent leaders and senior and middle cadres without due process and condemned them to languish under indefinite detention without charge or trial, and frozen or forced into exile many of them.

Subversion of the rebuilding and development programme of the Eritrean economy by ditching the Macroeconomic Policy Framework that aimed to develop Eritrea into a “modern, technologically advanced and internationally competitive economy” within two decades to enhance the “standard and quality of life of the Eritrean people”. Instead, he has imposed a closed dysfunctional coupon economy under his pernicious dictat that shuns domestic and foreign direct investment, causing significant constant economic decline, mass joblessness and extreme poverty. 

Demographic regression of the Eritrean population. Harsh repression, closure of the economy and essentially unremunerated indefinite national service in violation of its 18-month legal limit have pushed generations of tens of thousands of youths, entrepreneurs and professionals into irregular migration, disrupting the nuclear family, arresting population growth and causing substantial demographic decline.  

Acute shortage of housing. The over twenty-year ban on urban and rural construction, renovation and maintenance has created an acute shortage of housing, driven real estate prices and rent sky high, scarred Eritrea’s cities and dilapidated their buildings. 

Deprivation of basic human needs and essential social services due to deficient and decaying physical, social and institutional infrastructure. The great majority of the Eritrean people suffer from lack of adequate shelter, healthcare, running water, electricity, energy supply, education, transport and communication services.

Closure of the only university and establishment of quasi-militarised colleges and technical schools that lack international academic accreditation have degraded the standard and quality of education, trivialised higher learning and undermined the building of proficient human capital essential for the political, economic, social and cultural development of the country. 

Failure to tap Eritrea’s assets, natural resources and manpower to actualise the country’s huge development potential to the benefit of the people and the country and improve human welfare. Forced mass exodus causes brain and labour drain and depletes the nation’s work force. Eritrea’s strategic ports with a potential to serve as worldclass hubs of global trade and regional commerce remain idle and undeveloped. 

Restriction of the free movement of people, goods and services within the country hinders free mobility, hampers domestic trade, obstructs domestic and foreign direct investment, income generation and wealth creation. Unreported and unknown to the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Eritrea, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues from the lucrative mining sector are unaccounted for, instead of being used to grow Eritrea’s foreign exchange and gold reserves, build its physical, social and institutional infrastructure, and improve the wellbeing and living standard of the people. 

With regards to the claims of Isaias’s struggle for Africa, it is to be recalled that Isaias Afwerki scolded the OAU and African leaders during the Cairo summit in 1993. President Mobutu is reported to have retorted at the time: “Let us give him a little time and he will be like one of us”. In fact, Isaias turned out to be one of the harshest autocrats with one of the worst records of repression and failure in modern African history. 

A brutal dictator who has ruthlessly oppressed, supressed and impoverished his own people and dragged his own country backwards can hardly be expected to struggle for Africa. Beyond Africa, his thirty-four years of autocratic rule over Eritrea have proven an abysmal failure, a dismal legacy of regression, repression and impoverishment.  

As regards President Isaias’s anti-imperialist credentials, suffice it to mention two illustrative instances. First, Isaias once commended the French military base in Djibouti and urged France to stay put as a stabilising presence in the Horn of Africa. Second, Isaias was one of only two leaders in Africa who openly supported the illegal and disastrous US invasion of Iraq and begged the US to establish a military or a naval base in Eritrea to use in its wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

What about the content of his book? Since the collection of his interviews does not have new content that differs much from the periodic monologues he constantly conducts in the name of interviews, including his latest mostly meandering two-part monologue this month, I confine my commentary to assessing two recurrent themes, namely, the so-called (1) “migration war” and (2) “media warfare” as highly illustrative instances of the character of his leadership. In his interview with Michel Collon, Isaias demonstrates persistent unwillingness and inability to take responsibility for the consequences of his policies and actions and dogged attempts to externalise or deny them. 

Regarding the “migration war”, Isaias accuses the CIA of using social networks to lure Eritrean youth into the nets of the mafias trafficking in refugees. Concerning the “media warfare”, Isaias alleges the use of all kinds of stories and fake news to demonise his government by carefully concealing the interests of Western multinationals.  

Irregular migration is generally driven by push and pull factors. The prime driver of the mass exodus of Eritrean youth, professionals and entrepreneurs is the push factor of Isaias Afwerki’s deliberate policies and practices rather than the pull factor of the so-called CIA’s use of social networks to lure them into the trafficking mafia’s nets. It is the mix of indefinite national service perpetrated without its legal limits and due compensation, harsh repression, a closed economy, extreme poverty, absence of gainful employment, lack of basic human needs and essential social services like shelter, healthcare, water, electricity, energy, education, transport and communication services that basically drives Eritreans to flee their country in droves. 

There is no question that Isaias Afwerki deliberately makes Eritrea unliveable for its people and perpetrates the plight of Eritreans at home to sustain the flight of the youth as a safety valve to mass unemployment and potential protest and resistance to his lawless authoritarian rule. Otherwise, he could easily remove the obvious domestic cause and redress the situation instead of trying to externalise what is truly an internal problem of governance.

Regarding the accusation of ‘media warfare demonising’ his government in the hidden interest of Western multinationals, it is important to note that there has been no discernible interest of Western multinationals to operate in a closed dysfunctional coupon economy that lacks the minimal regulatory framework required to undertake domestic and foreign direct investment.

We Eritreans, including the supporters of the regime, must accept and oppose the bitter truth that Isaias Afwerki rules Eritrea alone like a private fiefdom without a constitution, without a parliament, without elections, without a published budget, etc. Furthermore, we all know that he orders the arbitrary arrest and forced disappearance of ordinary citizens, journalists and senior public officials and military officers without due process and condemns them to indefinite detention without charge or trial. We must recognise and admit that these are the consequences of the absence of the rule of law and the exercise of the pernicious rule of man. No denial can hide the ugly reality of gross violations and systematic abuses of human rights prevailing in Eritrea. 

These Profiles in Failure constitute only a few examples of Isaias Afwerki’s most glaring dismal legacy of thirty-four years of unaccountable, non-transparent, repressive and devastating autocratic rule. As a result, Eritrea has become so poor, backward and broken despite its rich human, material and natural resources and enormous development potential. Eritrea under Isaias Afwerki’s watch remains oppressed, plundered, impoverished and isolated! 

It is quite unrealistic at this stage to expect an ageing dictator in his twilight years to undertake political and economic reforms or change his ways. It is way too late for that! Patriotic prodemocracy Eritreans must thus demand that Isaias Afwerki relinquishes power to pave the way for a stable transition to a new democratic dispensation in return for ironclad guarantees of immunity for himself and his family and strive to quicken it.