The timing of the peace deal was sudden: within a matter of weeks, and after two decades of hostility, the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea signed an agreement, on July 9th, to restore diplomatic relations, reopen embassies in Addis Ababa and Asmara, and resume flights between the two countries. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, and the Eritrean President, Isaias Afwerki, both said they hoped for an end to a state of war that has dragged on between the two nations since Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia, after a thirty-year struggle, in 1993. More than eighty thousand people have died in the conflict, and the United Nations has imposed an arms embargo on Eritrea, citing its border disputes with neighboring countries.
The timing, for Ethiopians and Eritreans, is also bittersweet: the nations had cut off trade and communications for so long—the border separating the two nations, where there were periodic clashes, is heavily militarized—that families and friends who had been forced to live apart didn’t seem to know what to do with the dizzying news. And, around the world, Eritreans who had left their homes to escape the human-rights abuses that their government has inflicted on its people in the name of national preservation wondered: Would it now be safe to return?
The breadth of abuses by the Eritrean government is vast, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled since the mid-nineteen-nineties. In late 2015, the country’s national soccer team traveled to Botswana for a World Cup qualifying match. It lost the afternoon game. That night, the entire team defected. It was the fourth time the national team had defected in eight years. Nearly all of the players had done stints in the country’s compulsory national service—military duty that involves brutal training camps and often harsh postings in remote areas, or assigned jobs in service and civil work. All of the positions are minimally paid and indefinite.
Since the night they sought asylum from Botswana’s government, three years ago, the soccer players have been living at a refugee camp outside of a small city called Francistown. They’ve been in a perpetual state of limbo, as they wait to be resettled in a third country and follow reports of their homeland from afar. “It’s good news,” one of the players messaged me, of the agreement with Ethiopia, “but I haven’t seen anything change yet in the regime’s system. As long as that government is there, I don’t think it will be easy for the people, but let’s wait and see what this peace could bring.” He added, “Hopefully, it was for the right reason, but I do not trust the government.”
In early June, Ethiopia declared that it would finally implement the Algiers Agreement, which the two countries signed in 2000. The treaty delineated the contested border, normalized relations, and stipulated conditions for resumed trade between the neighbors. Afwerki, who has led Eritrea since independence, has seemed open to a dialogue with his longtime enemy. For decades, Afwerki has used Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the mediated border to justify his increasingly dictatorial rule. Some think his new embrace of peace is motivated by self-interest. Unrest has grown in Eritrea over the last year, and Afwerki may see peace with Ethiopia as the surest way to maintain power. Eritrean exiles question whether he has actually changed. “In his last speech, he did not mention the most awaited issue: military service,” Abraham Zere, an Eritrean journalist and the director of PEN Eritrea, told me. “Afwerki is probably buying time to make small adjustments, that might seem semblance of changes such as opening trade and allow free movement within the country, but I doubt he is ready to make any fundamental policy changes such as ending the indefinite military service or releasing all political prisoners.”
In Ethiopia, the security apparatus that monitors citizens and represses dissent has eased slightly. Ahmed, the Prime Minister, recently lifted a state of emergency, which the previous government had imposed after months of violent protests for greater economic and political rights that were started by the Oromo, a marginalized ethnic group. Some political prisoners were released early in the year. Ahmed, who was elected in April, is the first Oromo to hold that office. He has promised to enact wide-ranging reforms, including relaxing the government’s control of politics, media, and the economy. But not all Ethiopians have accepted the peace deal. The largest political group in Ethiopia’s Tigray province, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, has criticized the agreement. The province borders Eritrea, and some observers worry that infighting among Ethiopian leaders could derail the new accord. “There is still hope among Eritreans, like I have never seen before, that their children, husbands, and relatives will finally return from the front lines,” Yohannes Woldemariam, a visiting professor at the National University of Costa Rica who has followed the conflict closely, told me. “But, in effect, there are at least two governments with contrasting voices in Ethiopia. Can an Ethiopia unreconciled with itself give peace to Eritrea?”
Since the announcement, many Ethiopians and Eritreans, particularly in the diaspora, have circulated and debated rumors and snippets of news. One update suggested a possible end to Eritrea’s national service. Another said, surprisingly, that the formal border demarcation was a secondary concern for the two leaders.
Bronwyn Bruton, who leads an informal Track II diplomatic effort to improve relations between the United States and Eritrea, called for the United Nations to lift its arms embargo on Eritrea. “Any Western nation that claims to want human rights improvements in #Eritrea should be working nonstop to lift the UN sanctions,” she tweeted. Bruton is partly right: at this point, Eritrea’s government is so short on finances that it would need to completely overhaul its economy and create a thriving private sector to pay for the labor the government currently commandeers from its citizens. But, until the country’s oppressive mandatory-service system is changed, many Eritreans will ask what good is a peace deal if citizens are still held hostage?
