4 - The Nature of the Eritrean National Service and its Effectiveness as a Fighting Force

Summary

Your question regarding whether the ENS has built Eritrea's defence and fighting capability is misplaced. The President knows very well that a well organised and institutionalised military with a robust fighting and defence capability represents an imminent threat to his tyrannical rule. Rhetoric notwithstanding the tacit, but principal aim of the ENS is to control the youth and stifle their autonomy and ability to become agents of change.

Abraham (Interview, Khartoum, 1 November 2010)

This chapter uses the perceptions of the respondents and key informants to examine the extent to which the Eritrean National Service (ENS) has contributed to the development of Eritrea's fighting and defence capability. The factors that have contributed to the failure of the ENS to build an efficient and capable defence and fighting capability are also discussed. We saw in Chapter 2 that participation in national service engenders a powerful sense of patriotism, inducing the affected not only to surrender their interests but also their lives in defence of the nation and the common good (Montesquieu 1989 [1748]; Hart 1994; Farar-Hockley cited in Board 2006). Contrary to these views, some of the respondents who served in the ENS before they fled believed that a country's military manpower and its fighting capability could not be built through coercion, blackmail and intimidation. The construction of a robust military manpower and an effective fighting capability, in their view, is a function of the readiness and wholehearted dedication of members of the armed forces or, in this case, of conscripts. The large majority said that although most of the conscripts were ready and willing to defend and die for their country, this initial powerful predisposition vanished after the ENS degenerated into forced labour. As one respondent put it succinctly, ‘The ENS cannot build Eritrea's fighting capability as long as it remains compulsory’ (R #106). Another respondent said, ‘An armed force that is kept by force against its will for ten years or more cannot build the fighting capability of the country’ (R #147). Not only are the conscripts forced to serve against their will indefinitely, but also noncompliance is punished by detention and torture. Human Rights Watch (HRW), for example, states, ‘National service keeps most young Eritreans in perpetual bondage’ and ‘[t]orture and other abuses during detention are routine.