Isaias Afewerki (
TigrinyaTigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also...
: ኢሳያስ ኣፈወርቂ;
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
: أسياس أفورقي) born 2 February 1946, is the first and current President of Eritrea, attaining that status after Eritrean independence from
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
in 1993. Prior to that, he was the leader of the
Eritrean People's Liberation FrontThe Eritrean People's Liberation Front was an armed organization that fought for the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia. It emerged in 1970 as an intellectual left-wing group that split from the Eritrean Liberation Front .-Background:...
, an armed movement determined to secure Eritrean independence. Afewerki's rule has been characterized by an emphasis on Eritrean
self-relianceSelf-Reliance is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson's repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and...
, indefinite postponement of a democratic constitution, and massive army conscription.
He joined the
Eritrean Liberation FrontThe Eritrean Liberation Front was the main independence movement in Eritrea which sought Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia during the 1960s and 1970s. In the very late 1950s unorganized political movement seeking independence was secretly active as small cells...
(ELF) in 1966 and in the following year he was sent to China to receive military training.
Isaias Afewerki (
TigrinyaTigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also...
: ኢሳያስ ኣፈወርቂ;
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
: أسياس أفورقي) born 2 February 1946, is the first and current President of Eritrea, attaining that status after Eritrean independence from
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
in 1993. Prior to that, he was the leader of the
Eritrean People's Liberation FrontThe Eritrean People's Liberation Front was an armed organization that fought for the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia. It emerged in 1970 as an intellectual left-wing group that split from the Eritrean Liberation Front .-Background:...
, an armed movement determined to secure Eritrean independence. Afewerki's rule has been characterized by an emphasis on Eritrean
self-relianceSelf-Reliance is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson's repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and...
, indefinite postponement of a democratic constitution, and massive army conscription.
Early life
He joined the
Eritrean Liberation FrontThe Eritrean Liberation Front was the main independence movement in Eritrea which sought Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia during the 1960s and 1970s. In the very late 1950s unorganized political movement seeking independence was secretly active as small cells...
(ELF) in 1966 and in the following year he was sent to China to receive military training. During which bitter power struggle erupted between Christian highlanders and Muslim low land settlers supported by the petrodollar from across the red sea Four years later he was appointed a commander. Eventually he split from ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front) and joined a small group of combatants which became known as the
Eritrean People's Liberation FrontThe Eritrean People's Liberation Front was an armed organization that fought for the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia. It emerged in 1970 as an intellectual left-wing group that split from the Eritrean Liberation Front .-Background:...
(EPLF).despite no known Eritrean blood,a controversial issue which he even declined where he hails from,then he allied himself with another two groups that had splintered from the ELF: PLF1, led by Osman Saleh Sabbe, and a group known as Obel. In 1982 he split from Sabbe after the latter signed a unity agreement with the ELF (the Khartoum Agreement).
Leader of independist movement
Isaias Afewerki was the leader of the EPLF, which eventually won Eritrea its independence from Ethiopia. In April 1993 a
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
-supervised referendum on independence was held, and the following month Eritrea was declared independent. The EPLF renamed itself the
People's Front for Democracy and JusticeThe People's Front for Democracy and Justice is the current ruling political movement in Eritrea. It is nominally and often considered African socialist and holds itself open to nationalists of any political affiliation. It is the successor to the Eritrean People's Liberation Front...
in February 1994 as part of its transformation into Eritrea's ruling political movement.The PFDJ is the only legal political entity in Eritrea. It is nominally Marxist, but is often considered African socialist and holds itself open to nationalists of any political affiliation. There is some debate as to whether PFDJ is a true
political partyA political party is a political organization that seeks to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns...
or whether it is a broad governing association in transition.
After Independence
After Eritrean independence was achieved
de factoDe facto is a Latin expression that means "by [the] fact". In law, it is meant to mean "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but without being officially established"...
in 1991 and
de jureDe jure is an expression that means "concerning law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact"....
in 1993 after a referendum, Isaias became the first
head of stateHead of state is the generic term for the individual or collective office that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state...
. During the first years of his administration the institutions of governance began to be rebuilt. This included a top to bottom restructuring of the structures of governance from providing for an elected
local judicial systemThe Community Courts of Eritrea are the foundation of the judicial system in Eritrea. The courts typically hear cases regarding minor infractions, typically involving sums of less than approximately $7,300 ....
to expanding the educational system to as many regions as possible.
The Eritrean constitution was ratified in 1997 by a constituent assembly but never fully ratified by the
National AssemblyThe National Assembly has 104 members, 64 members appointed and 40 members representing the members of the Central Committee of the People's Front for Democracy and Justice. According to the IPU parliament has 150 indirectly elected members. The National Assembly was composed in February 1992...
.
Criticism
The once-firm friendship with the new Ethiopian government however deteriorated into a fierce border and economic dispute that turned into the deadly
Eritrean-Ethiopian WarThe Eritrean-Ethiopian War took place from May 1998 to June 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, forming one of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa...
1998 - 2000. Armed conflict claimed more than 80,000 lives and ended with the signing of the
Algiers AgreementThe Algiers Agreement was an agreement between the governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia signed on December 12, 2000, at Algiers, Algeria to end the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, a border war fought by the two countries from 1998 to 2000...
on December 12, 2001. In 2002, in an effort to mitigate the effects of the prolonged stalemate with Ethiopia, the President's Administration created the
Wefri Warsay Yika'aloThe Wefri Warsay Yika'alo or Warsay Yika'alo Program of Eritrea is an ambitious project of post-war recovery. It is similar to other economic recovery programs, and is often compared to the Marshall Plan.1, 2, 3...
. It is a comprehensive, revolutionary, national economic rehabilitation and development program in the aftermath of the destructive war with Ethiopia. Due to his frustration with the stalemated peace process with Ethiopia, the President of Eritrea wrote a series of Eleven Letters to the UN Security Council and Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Despite the Algiers Agreement, tense relations with Ethiopia have continued and led to regional instability.
His government has also been condemned for allegedly arming and financing the insurgency in Somalia; the United States is considering labeling Eritrea a "State Sponsor of Terrorism," however, many experts on the topic have shied from this assertion, stating that "If there is one country where the fighting of extremists and terrorists was a priority when it mattered, it was Eritrea." This accusation has also been labeled a reckless move by others.
Under his rule, Eritrea has had one of the worst rates of press freedom in the world, and since 2007, the worst.
Afewerki ranked No. 8 on Parade Magazine's 2009 World's Worst Dictators list, behind Ayatollah Khamenei (Iran) and ahead of Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov (Turkmenistan).
Isaias quotes
- "What is a free press? There is no free press anywhere. It's not in England; it's not in the United States. We'd like to know what free press is in the first place."
- "There is no victory without its people, no development without its people, who triumphed decisively through their national unity.".
- "Democracy is very important. Democracy meaning allowing majority or population to participate in the politics of every country. That is part of the software that we need to develop. But it should not polarize society."
- "Sometimes when you have large population it becomes a liability. People speak about big populations. But they underestimate the fact that it is not numbers. It is not only the productivity of the population in one country that matters; it is also the quality of the productivity."
- "Even when we are disappointed, we have to fight this war for peace and we have no other choice of brokers. The brokers are there, whether we like them or not. Whether we are happy or disappointed with what they are doing, we have to live with that to finally give peace a chance."
See also
External links