Dueling Dictators

By 1998, a series of economic and political disputes led to a rapid deterioration in relations, and Eritrea launched a surprise attack near the disputed town of Badme. Two years of World War I-style trench warfare followed. By the time a U.S.-backed peace agreement was reached in Algiers in 2000, Ethiopian troops had retaken Badme and pushed into Eritrean territory.

As part of the peace deal, the two sides agreed to set up the boundary commission that would demarcate their border based on three pre-World War I treaties between Italy (Eritrea's one-time colonial master) and Ethiopia. Both sides lawyered up, hiring high-powered American attorneys to argue a border dispute that would turn on maps drawn by hand a century ago.

The commission dealt Ethiopia a nasty surprise in 2002, when it awarded Badme to Eritrea. The ruling was hard for Zenawi to swallow, particularly since Ethiopia ended the war with the upper hand militarily, and the prime minister did not fully accept the ruling until earlier this year. However, Ethiopia has continued to thwart its implementation by blocking the commission from demarcating the border on the ground. Ethiopian troops continue to occupy Badme.

That sort of intransigence would normally trigger heavy criticism from Western powers. But fortunately for Zenawi, Afwerki played a clumsy diplomatic hand. After the September 11 attacks, Zenawi became a key Washington ally, allowing the U.S. to interrogate terror suspects in secret prisons and invading Somalia to oust an Islamist government last year. Ethiopia receives about a half billion dollars in official U.S. assistance annually, and Washington offered only muted criticism when Zenawi's government jailed opposition leaders, silenced journalists and killed 193 demonstrators following disputed elections in 2005. Washington has also given short shrift to numerous reports of atrocities committed by the Ethiopian Army in the country's rebellious Ogaden region and in Somalia.

Meanwhile an increasingly defiant Afwerki was busy alienating potential allies and making his nation—once a favorite of the West—a pariah. Eritrea harassed U.N. peacekeeping teams sent to monitor the border, expelled foreign aid agencies, and arrested those working for foreign embassies in Asmara.

It cracked down on religious minorities and political dissidents and gave succor not only to Ethiopian rebels but those from neighboring Somalia and Sudan, as well. Eritrea's coziness with Somali Islamists linked to Al Qaeda led the U.S. earlier this year to threaten to place the country on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.