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I had quite an interesting discussion some days ago, that revolved around the current Eritrean president Isayas Afewerki. My dialog partner knew this man well enough and knew his history as much as he knew the history of Eritrea. The state came out of a 30 year war for independence, that naturally had drawn upon the population and had left a generation with nothing else than war to remember¹. The war for independence was succeeded by a war for power and out of that came a one-party rule, which is still in effect. In all that time, foreign powers from all around the world had their fingers in the pie as well.

The president though - as my partner assured me - he was an intelligent man, he was through and through a military commander, that never took off his military gear - figuratively speaking. Until this day he rules Eritrea with the expanded military power of his party - the “People’s Front for Democracy and Justice” and has made himself quite some enemies by now.

Now i always asked myself, if such a commander really wished for a state where he had to be ever afraid because nobody really liked him? Let’s put it in other words: When he took the decision to run the country, what were his motives and what were his dreams?

Ideally, one would say, that the prospect of power, wealth and status made him drunk. But isn’t that a bit too easy? Though the idea of those despots and dictators being all deeply evil people is striking and comes to mind, when one thinks about the atrocities they have committed, i have to sincerely ask myself, if i would behave otherwise, if i was in their position. In my (very theoretic) opinion most rulers (as in dictators) are rather idealistic people who truly think they are the right people to change the country they want to rule into a better place.

Not to be misunderstood: Every single one of those despots should be tried for all the things he did or administered or ordered or stood by without correcting. They have taken on a burden and didn’t deal with it correctly.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Let’s try and reconstruct: You were running a military campaign to drive some foreign power out of your country. Beginning with the first signs of weakness that foreign power shows, you look around and see many power-hungry - or so you think of them - men² who will definitely try to control the country. Say you’re a very democratically oriented person and you try to gather all the fractions of your people together.. You’d still have to deal with those who were previously in power (as in a puppet government for example) and those who were openly or in hiding helping the foreign power.

The logic demands, that you don’t invite those two groups since they obviously aren’t part of the solution. But yet again, they won’t just surrender. What’s worse: They will try and form alliances with other fractions, some of which were fighting against them only some days ago.

Generally speaking, at any stage in the conflict, new and some unbelievable alliances can and will be formed. The task of someone trying to bring those different fractions and alliances together will mainly consist in compromising and diplomacy. Diplomacy on the other hand needs security. That means you have to provide the different fractions with a space, in which they can feel safe of sabotage and assassination for them to discuss the issues at hand without guns or explosives to ‘underline’ their argument.

To make things short: it is rather hard to get the many fractions to trust each other enough to argue fairly. This is even harder since not only the heads of the organizations are by now used to the use of military power to achieve their goals but also the ’simple soldier’ in every organization has gotten to a point where he identifies very strongly with his group in contrast to the other groups around him. Throughout the war for independence the main foe was the foreign power, but now that’s gone and the only ‘negative’ identification left is the contrast to some other groups.

The organizationally ‘easier’ way presents itself: Assume power and form an interim regime and then after you’ve brought stability and peace to the country you can invite all those fractions to begin the political process. The way for an authoritarian government is now laid out before you!

1. by the way, try talking to someone who’s been to such a war and you’ll get a mixture of feelings ranging from sorrow, dispair up to joy and that glance grandmoms have when they’re talking about the old times.. [↩]
2. nearly always! [↩]