News this week that the Trump administration has been in secret talks with the Eritrean government to remove existing U.S. sanctions on the country is, on its surface, a head-scratcher. The removal of sanctions would normally signal the end of a path of marked reforms, such as when U.S. President Donald Trump lifted terrorism sanctions on Sudan in 2020, or acknowledge a wholescale change of regime necessitating a fresh start, as was the case in Syria last year. Eritrea has achieved neither of these benchmarks.
In fact, the internal political and human rights situation in the country remains much as it has been since President Isaias Afwerki came to power in 1993. In his more than 30 years at the head of this militarized dictatorship, Isaias has never stood for election and continues to wield absolute power absent a constitution. The national legislature has not met since 2010, and Isaias’s People’s Front for Democracy and Justice remains the only legally allowed political party, guaranteeing no formal checks on his unlimited power.
News this week that the Trump administration has been in secret talks with the Eritrean government to remove existing U.S. sanctions on the country is, on its surface, a head-scratcher. The removal of sanctions would normally signal the end of a path of marked reforms, such as when U.S. President Donald Trump lifted terrorism sanctions on Sudan in 2020, or acknowledge a wholescale change of regime necessitating a fresh start, as was the case in Syria last year. Eritrea has achieved neither of these benchmarks.
In fact, the internal political and human rights situation in the country remains much as it has been since President Isaias Afwerki came to power in 1993. In his more than 30 years at the head of this militarized dictatorship, Isaias has never stood for election and continues to wield absolute power absent a constitution. The national legislature has not met since 2010, and Isaias’s People’s Front for Democracy and Justice remains the only legally allowed political party, guaranteeing no formal checks on his unlimited power.
Isaias himself maintains what Human Rights Watch calls an “iron grip” over his people. Forced military conscription, coupled with a gulag system of thousands of political prisoners, has meant that as much as 1-2 percent of Eritrea’s 3.5 million people exit the country each year seeking formal asylum abroad, though even these figures underreport the true scale of the exodus. Perhaps most inexplicable, Eritrea remains one of the worst countries in the world for religious freedom and the persecution of Christians in particular, ranking fifth worst in Open Doors’ most recent World Watch List, with an outright ban on evangelical, Pentecostal, Baptist, and Adventist churches.
Since there has been no change in the fundamental nature of the Eritrean regime, one might normally imagine that a decision to provide sanctions relief comes because the justification for imposing the sanctions—Eritrea’s involvement and gross human rights abuses in the 2020-22 Tigray conflict in neighboring Ethiopia—has been addressed. But this could not be further from the truth. Four years post-conflict, Ethiopia and Eritrea are on the verge of a new catastrophic outbreak of violence. Eritrea was itself never a party to the 2022 Pretoria Agreement that ended the conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray region. That war cost more than 600,000 lives by some estimates. Not bound by the terms of the peace deal, Eritrea has been fueling Ethiopian division for the past several years, in a bid to destabilize its larger and more powerful neighbor while also trying to undercut Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s aggressive pursuit of Red Sea access through the Eritrean port of Assab. The region is today a tinderbox that could reignite and recommence the kinds of atrocity crimes that landed Eritrea on Washington’s sanctions list in the first place.
In recent policy pronouncements, Trump appointees at the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs have made clear their belief that engagement is a tool, “not an endorsement” of how governments came to power, and that the United States should engage governments “as they are, and not as Washington wishes them to be,” with diplomacy that “respects sovereignty” and avoids “lectures” on democracy and human rights. But to what end?
For sure, the Red Sea region has emerged in recent years as a new theater for geopolitical competition, one where Washington has a strategic interest in increasing its presence and influence. A normalized relationship with Eritrea may, on its face, create such an opportunity. But this also ignores the fundamental nature of its new partner in Eritrea and how Isaias has succeeded in maintaining his grip on the country while suffering very few real consequences.
Isaias has demonstrated his facility in managing competing external influences and adeptly switching alliances and allegiances as it suits his own strategic agenda. Washington should proceed with its eyes wide open about how it is choosing to advance its Red Sea interests.
In that context, the Trump administration has articulated no strategy for the Red Sea or the Horn of Africa, despite being engaged across multiple issues in the region. How would the decision to lift sanctions on Eritrea impact efforts to mediate a peace agreement in neighboring Sudan? The regime in Eritrea has allied itself closely to Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in its war against the Emirati-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Normalization with Asmara now would be viewed in that context as a sign of support for Sudan’s army, along with Egypt’s position on the inviolable nature of Sudan’s unity and the SAF’s position as Sudan’s last functioning state institution.
Cairo, which is reported to have brokered the rapprochement between Washington and Asmara, has its own strategy for the region and may have activated Trump as a sort of “useful idiot” in its effort to both preserve the Sudanese state under the SAF and construct a coalition to pressure Ethiopia to restart negotiations on the use and continued filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Cairo had previously convinced Trump to use his position to restart GERD talks that Ethiopia has been deeply resisting and Egypt remains desperately in search of. How does recognition of Ethiopia’s mortal enemy in neighboring Eritrea, with which Ethiopia is locked in a sort of cold war that could quickly turn hot, entice Ethiopia to join Trump’s initiative on the Nile?
Similarly, what message would a breakthrough with Eritrea send to other Gulf states active in the region? Saudi Arabia will likely interpret Washington’s move as an effort to help mitigate future conflict in the Red Sea region. But this might be misleading, given that Washington has previously shown itself to be a reluctant actor in the arena.
The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, perhaps the most active external actor in the Horn of Africa region, will likely interpret Washington’s move as threatening to its actions in both Ethiopia and Sudan. The UAE has emerged as the largest investor and principal backer of Abiy and is using him, along with other regional leaders, to increase support to the RSF in Sudan in their bid to defeat Sudan’s army and fundamentally remake the Sudanese state. Washington has previously been accused of being too close to the Emirati position in Sudan, though this move would seem to undermine that.
In a bygone era, barely two years ago, the United States might have drawn a lesson from its current travails in the Strait of Hormuz and sought to get ahead of another global maritime shutdown by convening a diplomatic coalition of Red Sea states. This might entail drafting a declaration on Red Sea cooperation and creating technical groups on maritime security, tourism, fisheries, and more, identifying the points of common interest and building institutions and processes, based on shared interests, to help manage the growing rivalries and competing agendas that could lead to another geopolitical shock.
No more.
Instead, Washington is today just one of a dozen actors to have thrown its hat in the ring of competitive interests in the Red Sea with seemingly little care or concern for the strategic ripple effects that might emerge. If such a normalization of relations with Eritrea is to occur, Washington needs to prepare itself now for the second- and third-order effects it will have set in motion and be prepared to manage them, lest this diplomatic thaw add new, unforeseen complications in a region already beset with challenges.
