Media in the U.S. Praise Ethiopia-Eritrea Détente

Tik­sa Negeri/Reuters

Eritrea’s pres­i­dent, Isa­ias Afw­er­ki, right, and Ethiopia’s prime min­is­ter, Abiy Ahmed, in Addis Aba­ba on Saturday

After almost twen­ty years of a resent­ful stale­mate between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the recent­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, announced that the gov­ern­ment will ful­ly accept the pre­vi­ous­ly unrec­og­nized 2000 Algiers peace agreement.

Despite the bit­ter dis­pute over the bor­der town of Badme, the new Ethiopi­an admin­is­tra­tion is acknowl­edg­ing the futil­i­ty of dis­agree­ment between the two soci­eties, with Fit­sum Are­ga, the PM’s chief of staff tweet­ing “Ethiopia and Eritrea have the most unique cul­tur­al, his­tor­i­cal and blood ties.

The suf­fer­ing on both sides is unspeak­able because the peace process is deadlocked.

This must change for the sake of our com­mon good,” Ethiopia’s uni­lat­er­al deci­sion was met with a qui­et Eritrea, and after two weeks of silence, Pres­i­dent Isa­ias Afw­er­ki announced Eritrea will be send­ing a del­e­ga­tion to Addis Aba­ba for peace talks.

Fol­low­ing in the vein of Arega’s com­ment, Pres­i­dent Afw­er­ki said “The Eritre­an peo­ple, but also the Ethiopi­an peo­ple, have lost an oppor­tu­ni­ty of two gen­er­a­tions for over half a century,”

This is tru­ly a major sto­ry for the African con­ti­nent, as a func­tion­al peace agree­ment between the two coun­tries has exten­sive ram­i­fi­ca­tions: with no con­flict, Eritrea has no rea­son to con­tin­ue repres­sive mil­i­ta­riza­tion and author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of polit­i­cal lib­er­al­iza­tion. That said, Ethiopi­an res­i­dents of Badme, many of whom are com­bat vet­er­ans, are reject­ing the idea of hand­ing over the town to Eritrea, and are view­ing the move as an act of betray­al despite their sac­ri­fices- 50,000 Ethiopi­an ser­vice mem­bers are com­mem­o­rat­ed in a near­by cemetery.

Reuters reports protests in the Tigray region, which com­pli­cates polit­i­cal cohe­sion and Mr. Ahmed’s exten­sive eco­nom­ic and social ini­tia­tives. This is a marked con­trast to the inter­na­tion­al applause which Mr. Ahmed has received.

AP, Reuters, CNN, The NYT, and The Wash­ing­ton Post have all exten­sive­ly report­ed on Ahmed’s state­ments regard­ing the poten­tial peace agree­ment, as well as his com­ments regard­ing eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­iza­tion, includ­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion of var­i­ous pub­lic enter­pris­es, such as the vaunt­ed Ethiopi­an Airlines.

CNN has called his first months in office “stel­lar”, and Amer­i­can media across the board is gush­ing over the new direc­tion Addis Aba­ba appears to be taking.

If Mr. Ahmed is sin­cere in his inten­tions, and is able to assuage the fears of protest­ing Ethiopi­ans, Ethiopia may quick­ly rise to becom­ing a region­al influ­encer and mod­el for East Africa and beyond. As Africa’s sec­ond most pop­u­lous state and one of the fastest grow­ing economies, this is a sto­ry worth fol­low­ing by Amer­i­can media.