Opinio Juris' Duncan Hollis has the goods on the payouts from the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (set up to arbitrate damage claims from the 1998-2000 conflict between the two countries) -- another topic sure to be of passionate interest to a certain subset of Dispatch readers.

You can access the damages decisions for Eritrea here, and those for Ethiopia here.  According to the AP, both sides will accept the awards, but neither is apparently thrilled with the final results.  Ethiopia ends up with more money; its final award totals $174,036,520, while Eritrea receives $161,455,000 plus an additional $2,065,865 for individual Eritrean claimants.  Ethiopia apparently feels though that the delta between the two awards was insufficient given earlier rulings had found Eritrea violated the jus ad bellum in originally resorting to force in 1998. For its part, Eritrea remains miffed that Ethiopia has resisted the Commission’s drawing of boundary lines between the two states (e.g. giving Badme to Eritrea), a point reiterated (subtly) in its acceptance of yesterday’s award.

I'm sure that Hollis is right on both of these counts: both sides think they are in the right, but the fact of the matter is that both are responsible for not implementing parts of the peace agreement, and for forcing the premature departure of a UN peacekeeping force last year.

The US State Department’s Africa Bureau (known in US government lingo as AF) took quite a beating in a recent report from State’s Office of the Inspector General. Elizabeth Dickenson on Foreign Policy's Cable blog has a review, and the full report can be found on the State Department website. On the whole, I think the OIG report is disturbingly accurate, and I am impressed that State actually published it.

I also strongly suspect that the troubles aren’t limited to Africa Bureau – they’re just the ones who were looked at. Sure, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Fraser took a lot of criticism for her handling of AF, but this report was focused on April-June 2009. They’d had five months to recover at that point.

 A few highlights from the report:

 1) Apparently it’s difficult to staff Africa postings, because of “perceptions about the poor quality of living abroad and insufficient hardship or danger pay.” That’s just depressing.

 2) “Embassy platforms are collapsing under the weight of new programs and staffing without corresponding resources to provide the services required.” That is true not just of Africa embassies, but across the globe. It’s what happens when you underfund the State Department.

 3) There is a lack of focus on long-term strategies, and the focus is on putting out fires and scoring quick victories, not broader thinking. Once again, a problem that afflicts the whole department, not just AF.

 4) Lastly, apparently Africa Bureau’s not getting along with AFRICOM. And the reasons, while depressing, make perfect sense. AFRICOM’s got all the money, State is ambivalent about the military’s role in development, and no one has received any training on how to work together.

It all began in 2000, when Eritrea and Ethiopia, exhausted from war, decided to end their bloody border dispute by submitting to international arbitration.  When the arbiters in the Hague handed down their ruling, they awarded the key disputed territory to Eritrea.  End of story, right?  Wrong.  Ethiopia simply refused to withdraw and a stalemate ensued. 

A changing international scene did not help things.  The Clinton administration was instrumental in forging the original settlement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But by the time of the arbitration ruling, September 11 had already occurred and the Bush administration was focused on leveraging the support of Ethiopia on terrorism issues in the Horn of Africa.  Accordingly, the United States was reluctant to press Ethiopia to abide by the ruling.

From an Eritrean perspective, you can see how this might be unsettling.  Asmara had agreed to binding international arbitration, but the international community was apparently unwilling to enforce the ruling.  Caught in the middle were a few thousand UN Peacekeepers along the border, acting as a buffer between the two armies. 

As Eritrea's understandable frustration with the international community grew, Asmara began to lash out in patently unhelpful ways. It kicked out UN Peacekeepers by blocking their shipments of petrol and food; made threatening statements aganst top American officials; attacked neighboring Djibouti; and supported a faction opposed to the internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. 

This latter issue is particularly troubling to the Obama administration.  Indeed,  just yesterday, Susan Rice raised the spectre of Security Council sanctions on Eritrea for their support of al Shabab, a Somali insurgent group the United States has labeled a terrorist organization.  In her congressional hearing, Rice accused Asmara of "arming, supporting, and funding" the group.  This is about as close to calling a country a state sponsor of terrorism as you can get. 

<!--break-->

Now, there are a number of Eritreans and Ethiopians living abroad--especially here in Washington and in Seattle.  Whenever we post on the Ethiopia-Eritrea-Somalia issue, a lively debate ensues.  So, in the interests of keeping things civil, let me post this item sent to me by reader Haile A of Organization of Eritrean Americans in North America. 

The Organization of Eritrean Americans (OEA) in North America vehemently rejects the recent statement by AU (African Union), calling on the UN to impose sanctions on Eritrea for allegedly “providing support to the armed groups” in the current Somalia conflict. Eritrea has repeatedly refuted any involvement in the deadly conflict in Somalia, and, on many occasions in the past, it strongly challenged the Somali Monitoring Group’s allegations and unsubstantiated charges to present irrefutable and tangible evidences, but to no avail.

OEA, once again, would like to remind the Security Council that there has not been any evidence that would warrant sanctions on Eritrea. Earlier allegations, such as the presence of “2000 Eritrean troops” inside Somalia and also the shipment of “AK-47 rifles” to the insurgents in Somalia have been proven to be pure fabrications. It should be recalled that Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, in a recent news conference stated that there had not been any evidence to prove the allegations that were made against Eritrea.

As Americans of Eritrean descent, we have a vested interest in seeing peace, stability and security in the Horn region. We believe that Eritrea’s position, which calls on the Somali people to resolve their own differences without external interference, is not only a political stand that Eritrea is entitled to have, but could also turn out to be the best option for Somalia.

We urge the UN Security Council to exercise a fair and just practice in evaluating all the facts and evidence to find a lasting peace in the region. The UN Security Council should not be swayed by certain quarters when the lives of so many are at stake. The mistakes made thus far in Somalia have resulted in the largest humanitarian crises in the history of that country.

If the Security Council chooses to use Eritrea as a scapegoat and takes punitive action based on groundless charges, not only would this not bring peace and security to Somalia but it would also further destabilize the strategic Horn of Africa region.

As Mark forecasted, The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration handed down a ruling today on Abyei, the contentious border area that could prove the tinderbox for renewed civil war in Sudan.  A bit surprisingly, the ruling effectively favored the North, shifting the borders of Abyei to award valuable oil fields to the government in Khartoum.  Even more surprising, though, is that -- for now at least -- everybody seems happy with the decision.

Mutrif Siddig, the Sudanese foreign ministry under-secretary, said that Wednesday's decision was a "step forward".

"We respect this decision. And this decision is final and binding because all the parties agreed from the beginning that the decision of the court was binding and final," he said.

Riek Machar, a representative of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which heads an autonomous regional government in the south, said that he hoped that the ruling would increase the chances for peace.

"We want peace. We think this decision is going to consolidate the peace," he said. "We came to see justice and it's a decision we will respect."

Such punctiliousness is nice and all -- particularly on the part of the South, which could be aggrieved at the ruling -- but I don't exactly share U.S. Sudan Envoy Scott Gration's robust optimism at these rhetorical promises.  It's worth remembering that a deal was reached four years ago, through an objective commission that determined fair boundaries for Abyei, and that that ruling was also supposed to be "binding and final."  Diplomatic niceties were followed up to -- and no farther than -- the point of actually implementing the agreement.

One of the authors of the previous Abyei commission report, the very knowledgeable Douglas Johnson, says that "each side can come away feeling that they have been given something from this arrangement."  If that's all it takes to get a viable resolution of the border dispute, then an oil field or two seems worth trading for peace.  Let's hope both North and South Sudan agree.

(image from UN Photo)