Reuters reports on a mysterious government document seeming to confirm that sanctions will be lifted on Eritrea.
On May 5th, Reuters reported that the US will lift sanctions on Eritrea, one of the most unilaterally US-sanctioned nations in the world. Since 2021, the US has even managed to exclude Eritrea from the SWIFT system for conducting international financial transactions, along with only two other nations, Russia and North Korea. Eritreans have suffered great hardship because of the sanctions, and like all heavily sanctioned populations, they’re eager for sanctions relief.
However, if the sanctions are actually lifted, what will be the cost? This is of course, as Reuters, the Washington Post, and others have reported, about Eritrea’s 700 miles of Red Sea coast across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, aka the Houthis. It’s about the southernmost tip of Eritrean territory, which sits right on the mouth of the Bab el Mandeb Strait, the chokepoint between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.
It’s obviously about the US/Israeli War on Iran holding up maritime traffic, including 20 to 25% of the world’s oil, in the Straits of Hormuz. The Red Sea is the alternate maritime trade route, typically accommodating another 13% of the world’s daily oil traffic.
Has the US asked Eritrea, in exchange for sanctions relief, to allow the US and Israel to use its coastal waters to combat Iran and their ally, the Houthis, who now threaten to again block maritime traffic in the Red Sea?
Have they asked Eritrea to otherwise collaborate with the US/Israel/UAE axis?
Or has the US simply asked for safe passage in Eritrean coastal waters?
Has it asked for assurance that Eritrea will not collaborate with Iran and the Houthis? That it will not join the Axis of Resistance if asked?
Have Iran, the Houthis, or China reached out to Eritrea as the US and Israel expand their West Asian wars?
The Eritrean people and government have always expressed support for Palestine, but up to now they have not been involved in the US-Israeli wars. They are a nation of roughly four million people who won a 30–year war of independence, from 1961 to 1991, and have fiercely defended their sovereignty since. They are the only African nation that has refused to collaborate with AFRICOM or submit to debt enslavement by the IMF.
The conflicts between their immediate neighbors in the Horn of Africa, and especially their own tension with Ethiopia have been about all that they can handle. They have essentially kept their head down as the US-Israeli Wars expanded, but no nation with 700 miles of Red Sea coast could expect to escape attention indefinitely.
So again, what has the US actually asked for and what has Eritrea agreed to, if anything? It has never been a nation to surrender its sovereignty but the pressure is no doubt growing as the US-Israeli wars advance in its direction.
Reuters sole source was “an internal government document seen by Reuters.” It said the document was a note sent by the U.S. State Department to several countries, which said that, “on or around May 4th, the U.S. would rescind an executive order, signed by Biden, imposing the sanctions in 2021.”
A note sent to “several countries”? What countries and why inform those several countries in advance? Does Reuters know what several countries it was sent to, for what purpose? Is Reuters holding that back, leaving us to wonder whether it’s Egypt, the UAE, Israel, or Iran? Or the other nations of the Horn, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan? Why is Reuters leaving us to wonder about several mysterious countries?
It was not clear, Reuters reported, when the lifting of the sanctions would be announced. Not much else is clear either.
Neither the State nor Treasury Departments had responded to requests for comment at the time of Reuters’ publication. Neither had Eritrea's Minister of Information, Yemane Gebremeskel, nor the Ethiopian prime minister's press secretary, Billene Seyoum.
The meaning of Reuters sole source, the note sent to several countries, was left to a gaggle of unnamed “analysts” spouting the obvious.
“US aims to improve ties with Red Sea state Eritrea,” analysts say.
Analysts say the decision to lift sanctions “is linked to the African state's strategic location on the Red Sea shipping route.”
“The U.S. move is aimed at improving ties with Eritrea, which has a long Red Sea coastline opposite Saudi Arabia, while also sending a message to neighbouring Ethiopia not to go to war with its longtime Horn of Africa foe, analysts said.”
Reuters has a few more words about landlocked Ethiopia’s demand that Eritrea hand over some of its Red Sea coast, also suggesting that this is not good news for Ethiopia, which is true if any of this is true.
For now, it seems best not to jump to conclusions.
Reuters and whoever shared “the internal government document seen by Reuters” obviously wanted to twist heads and stir emotions, inspire suspicion and speculation of one sort or another, for purposes not yet clear.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann@anngarrison.com. You can help support her work on Patreon.
Ajamu Baraka is a Black Agenda Report contributing editor and Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Right
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