Misgun Goitom

During our tour of Indonesia, we also visited the Tahura Ngurah Rai Mangrove Forest in #Bali, an impressive example of environmental restoration, coastal protection and climate resilience. These water forests act as a natural defense shield against coastal erosion, storm surges, and rising sea levels. Indonesia's experience highlights the considerable economic potential of mangrove ecosystems beyond conservation. Through innovative community-based enterprises, mangrove resources and associated species are being transformed into a variety of products, including juices, syrups, jams, honey, tea, natural dyes, vinegar and even distilled spirits from nipa palm sap. From the fresh water dam used to irrigate the fields, to the solar powered nurseries, the mangrove forest showcases Indonesia’s commitment to climate resiliency. Visiting such innovative sites offer interesting possibilities for #Eritrea in developing sustainable mangrove-based value chains, food processing, fisheries, beekeeping, ecotourism and community enterprises, small and medium enterprises, particularly benefiting #women and #youth. Indonesia's experience in mangrove-based enterprise could enhance #Eritrea|s longstanding efforts in coastal restoration, help connect environmental protection with livelihoods, food security and a broader blue economy. #Eritrea has a significant history of mangrove conservation and coastal restoration, extending from the liberation struggle into the post-independence period. During the liberation struggle, #Eritrea began mangrove cultivation along its #Red Sea coast. I remember the work of the late Dr. Gordon H. Sato, a Japanese-American biologist and humanitarian whose pioneering work linked environmental restoration with food security and community self-reliance. Today, mangrove planting is part of the national students' summer work programme in the Southern Red Sea Region, including activities on Fatma Island. Mangrove ecosystems are powerhouses for carbon sequestration, storing significantly more carbon than typical tropical rainforests. Wherever I travel, I make a conscious effort to discover the common threads that connect countries and peoples, often across vast geographical and cultural distances and I am continually struck by how seemingly small similarities, shared histories, experiences, values, aspirations, or approaches to development, can create an unexpected sense of familiarity and affinity among people from distant parts of the world. I am of the opinion that diplomacy is not only about managing differences between nations. It is equally about discovering what brings us together. Sometimes, the smallest commonalities reveal the greatest opportunities for #friendship, #solidarity and #cooperation. Will build on this experience to enhance #Eritrea #Indonesia relations.

xitter.gq/_PoliticsAddict/status… Apparently, Washington's missing strategy for the Horn begins with giving Ethiopia a bigger chair and arranging the region around it. This is a rather ludicrous proposition, particularly coming from a desperate PP leadership whose regional ambitions are increasingly exposed and whose once carefully cultivated Ethiopian halo is rapidly fading. External powers have too often mistaken #Ethiopia's manufactured "geopolitical indispensability" for a legitimate mandate to exercise regional primacy... The #Horn of #Africa is not #Ethiopia|s backyard, nor does it need a designated hegemon. It needs sovereign equality, mutual respect and adherence to international law. The Horn of Africa does not suffer from the absence of an Ethiopia-centered American strategy. It suffers from a longstanding tendency among external powers to mistake Ethiopia's demographic weight, geographic size and perceived geopolitical importance for a regional mandate. This persistent miscalculation has reinforced a political culture of exceptionalism in which #Ethiopia's aspirations are too often elevated above the sovereign rights and legitimate interests of its neighbors. #Ethiopia is neither the proprietor of the #Horn of #Africa nor the arbiter of its political, economic and security architecture. Its size does not confer primacy, nor does not establish entitlement; and its national interests cannot acquire precedence over the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states simply because external powers consider it indispensable to their own geopolitical calculations. History has repeatedly demonstrated the folly of elevating Ethiopia's perceived strategic indispensability above the sovereignty and legitimate interests of its neighbors. For decades, successive Ethiopian regimes benefited from a degree of international indulgence rooted in their perceived strategic utility, particularly in the calculations of Western powers. Yet this privileged treatment did not produce a more peaceful or stable neighborhood. On the contrary, the persistent failure to hold #Ethiopian governments to the same standards of international law and responsible state conduct expected of others has contributed to recurring regional insecurity. The current discourse surrounding Ethiopia's quest for #RedSea access illustrates the danger particularly well. Ethiopia's landlocked status is a geographical reality, and its interest in reliable, negotiated commercial access to maritime routes is entirely legitimate. But geography does not create sovereign rights over another country's coastline, ports, islands or territorial waters. Nor can economic aspirations, however important, justify coercion, threats of force or attempts to revise established territorial arrangements. Commercial access is negotiable; sovereignty is not. #Washington should therefore be wary of a policy framework that conflates Ethiopia's national aspirations with the broader strategic interests of the Horn of Africa. Such an approach risks converting a bilateral relationship into an instrument for legitimizing regional hierarchy, while inadvertently rewarding the very conduct that undermines regional stability. It would also send a troubling message to smaller states: that sovereignty and territorial integrity are inviolable in principle, but potentially negotiable when weighed against the strategic preferences of a powerful partner. A credible #American strategy must resist this logic. It should recognize the agency of every state in the region, engage them on the basis of sovereign equality, and reject the notion that regional stability requires a designated hegemon. Ethiopia can be engaged as a regional stakeholder, not elevated into a position of presumed regional entitlement. #Eritrea, #Djibouti, #Somalia, #Sudan and #SouthSudan are not peripheral considerations in an #Ethiopian-centered geopolitical equation; they are sovereign countries whose interests and security are integral to the regional order. Ultimately, #Horn’s stability cannot be engineered through external patronage, geopolitical favoritism or the accommodation of unilateral ambitions. It must rest on respect for internationally recognized borders, non-interference in the internal affairs of states, peaceful settlement of disputes, reciprocal obligations and the unequivocal rejection of the threat or use of force. These are not obstacles to American strategic interests; they are the indispensable foundations of a durable regional order. Washington's missing strategy should therefore begin not with Ethiopia, but with first principles. The question is not how to organize the #Horn around Ethiopia, but how to ensure that Ethiopia, like every other state, operates within an order governed by #sovereignequality, #internationallaw and mutual respect. The #Horn needs partners, not patrons; cooperation, not hierarchy; and a regional order founded on law, not on the presumed entitlement of the strongest...

Visited the Asia-Africa Conference Museum in #Bandung, Indonesia, the site of the historic 1955 Bandung Conference, which produced the Ten Principles of Bandung and laid the ideological groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). As an #Eritrean, the historical irony is profound. In 1952, #Eritrea was federated with #Ethiopia under UN General Assembly Resolution 390 A (V), resolution was engineered by its patrons. Three years later, #Ethiopia attended Bandung, championing sovereign equality, self-determination, and the liberation of colonized peoples. Yet, even as European colonial rule was receding, Ethiopia dismantled #Eritrea’s federal status and annexed the country. #Ethiopia championed freedom abroad while denying it to the Eritrean people. The international community’s acquiescence exposed, and continues to expose, the chasm between professed principles and political practice. Decades of strategic indulgence emboldened successive Ethiopian regimes, fostering the belief that geopolitical importance confers immunity from accountability. External powers cultivated Ethiopia’s image as an “indispensable regional anchor”, too useful to challenge, too important to scrutinize. That halo is fading, and the Prosperity Party (PP) leadership has accelerated its demise. A government that deploys heavy artillery, missiles, tanks, and drones against its own people cannot credibly posture as a guarantor of regional peace while threatening the sovereignty of its neighbours. No state stands above the @UN Charter or acquires rights over another nation’s territory. The international community must also confront its own complicity. Years of appeasement have sustained Ethiopia’s manufactured exceptionalism and shielded its leaders from scrutiny. But strategic flattery cannot indefinitely conceal militarism, repression, or unresolved nation-building challenges. Ethiopia’s painful reckoning is no longer on the horizon; it is unfolding before our eyes. The #HornOfAfrica needs principled diplomacy, accountability, and respect for international law, not strategic indulgence and impunity. #Eritrea’s position remains unequivocal: there can be no meaningful dialogue on future relations without an unequivocal renunciation of the threat or use of force and full respect for #Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Bandung’s principles cannot be celebrated abroad while being denied when they constrain one’s ambitions. No geopolitical halo lasts forever. No strategic patronage can erase historical contradictions. And no state can build a durable future by denying others the rights it claims for itself. And, in one final irony…the narcissistic PP leader reportedly travelled to #Russia carrying his book Medemer, his self-styled philosophy of “synergy,” as though Russia’s formidable intellectual tradition needed instruction from Addis Ababa. What does Medemer offer #Russia, and what has it delivered to Ethiopia beyond conflict, repression, and regional belligerence? Perhaps Prime Minister Abiy should explain the gulf between a philosophy of togetherness and a governing practice defined by coercion at home and confrontation abroad.