Beyond the siege state – tracing hybridity during a recent visit to Eritrea

Abstract

This article offers an alternative reading of the current situation in Eritrea that goes beyond the narrative of dictatorship and oppression. Based on recent fieldwork in Eritrea and among Eritrean refugees in Tel Aviv, it offers a hybrid interpretation of developments within Eritrea. The article argues that a transition process instigated by the current leadership is still possible. At the same time rising inequalities and other dynamics may ultimately jeopardise any such transition. More generally important sections of the population have become suspicious of grand political projects, but rather focus on the microcosms of potentially intangible transformations from within.

[Au de-là de l’état de siège – retracer le contexte pragmatique tel constaté lors d'une récente visite en Érythrée.] Cet article propose une lecture alternative de la situation actuelle en Érythrée qui va au-delà du récit de la dictature et de l'oppression. Basé sur des travaux récents en Érythrée et parmi les réfugiés érythréens à Tel Aviv, il offre une interprétation mitigée des développements au sein de l’Érythrée. L'article fait valoir que le processus de transition initié par la direction actuelle est encore possible. Dans le même temps, les inégalités croissantes et d'autres dynamiques peuvent même menacer une telle transition. Plus généralement, d'importants groupements d'individus au sein de la population deviennent méfiants à l’égard des grands projets politiques, et se concentrent plutôt sur les microcosmes de transformations potentiellement incorprels de l'intérieur.

Mots-clés: Érythrée; état de siège; hybridité

Keywords:

• Eritrea
• siege state
• hybridity

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all Eritrean research participants, many of whom have given me their time generously over many years. I also wish to thank the reviewers for their encouraging and insightful comments.

Notes

The last time I presented research in an Eritrean Studies panel was in London in 2006, where I was attacked personally by a fellow academic with no analytical argument, causing the panel convenor to intervene to put the debate back on an academic footing. I have since decided to present my work in thematic rather than geography-based panels, a decision that has been vindicated by subsequent Eritrean panels I attended as an observer. Since I dedicated one of my books to an Eritrean friend who is among the officials who disappeared into incommunicado detention in 2001, obtaining a visa was always in doubt. Before my visit in 2011 the embassy made it very clear that I was only being given a tourist visa and would not be allowed to do any work. Once in Eritrea, however, I did not face any restrictions apart from having to follow general rules on the movement of foreign tourists which determine that only certain specified cities outside Asmara can be visited (Keren, Massawa, Dekemhare and Mendefera).

I spent 10 days with the Eritrean community in Tel Aviv in June 2010 and 4 weeks in March/April 2011. In the course of those visits I conducted 20 in-depth life history interviews, 12 informal interviews, six key-informant interviews and spent social time with different groups of Eritrean refugees. Due to their vulnerable status within Israel, interviewees need to remain anonymous.

Sawa is the military training camp for compulsory national service. Since the academic year 2002/2003, students need to transfer to Sawa for the last grade of secondary schooling, and part of the academic year consists of military training. Countrywide matriculation examinations are also held in Sawa.

One person known to me had recently commenced a government-sponsored PhD at Khartoum University, a second was about to go to Cape Town, South Africa. Others were in the process of applying for scholarships with outside bodies and had been given assurances they would be allowed to leave if successful.

This implies that those on ERN145 per month will be paid ERN800, and those on ERN500 will be paid ERN900 (ERN900 is currently around GBP40 at the official exchange rate).

http://www.nevsun.com, accessed 10 December 2011.

Measures include an arms embargo on Eritrea, travel bans, and the freezing of assets of senior political and military officials. In relation to revenues from the mining sector the council urged vigilance by those involved in the sector to ensure income would not be used for political destabilisation of the region (Security Council SC/10471, adopted 5 December 2011).

The July 2011 report by the UN Security Council, the Report of the monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to Security Council resolution 1916 (2010) traces in detail those dynamics and how they are rooted in the 1998–2000 war.

It is notoriously difficult to get a comprehensive picture of agricultural production. Maps showing rainfall levels are kept as government secrets (I19), and reports by the international media are often based on speculation (see for example Plaut 2011). I have seen full markets everywhere I travelled and former drought-affected areas around Keren were fertile. FAO (2012) has – based on satellite monitoring – reported good rainfall in the northern Red Sea region, one of the regions most vulnerable to drought. That markets are full does of course not imply that everybody has access to food, and in particular in rural areas where entitlements to subsidised food do not exist, hunger might prevail. A 2011 FAO assessment thus records vulnerability to food insecurity due to economic constraints, and high international food and fuel prices for Eritrea. Overall, however, the food situation has certainly been very different from dynamics reported by Hirt (2010) for previous years.

Eritreans residing overseas are generally ‘obliged’ to pay 2% of their income to their nearest Eritrean embassy. This payment entitles them to consular services but also to property and other rights within Eritrea, rights that are commonly denied to those who refuse to pay this levy.