American writer and security analyst Paul B Henze, who served in the Carter administration as a deputy to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, once made a very astute observation about Eritrea’s current president, Isaias Afwerki.In his 2007 book, Ethiopia in Mengistu’s Final Years: Until the Last Bullet, he noted “Isaias impressed me as remarkably similar in temperament and attitudes to Mengistu [Haile Mariam, Eritrea’s former dictator who has overseen the killings of tens of thousands of opposition figures and civilians]. He has many of the same mannerisms, a rather bulldoggish seriousness, a defensiveness behind a facade of feigned reasonableness that is not really convincing. One senses a stubborn, fundamentally authoritarian personality.”
The similarities Henze saw between Mengistu and Isaias have proven correct and highly consequential over the last three decades.
After declaring victory against the Mengsitu regime in 1991, Isaias was able to oversee the emergence of an independent, sovereign Eritrea. For a brief moment, Eritreans were full of hope. They assumed independence would bring more freedom and better economic prospects. There was talk of turning Eritrea into Africa’s Singapore. Advertisement
However, the euphoria of independence was short-lived. The dream of transforming Eritrea into a prosperous liberal democracy did not appeal to Isaias. He wanted his country to resemble not Singapore, but Sparta. He rejected the democratic constitut …
