sarcasm wrote: ↑24 Apr 2013, 17:12
Eventually peace will prevail between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Hopefully soon, otherwise definitely in 10 to 15 years when the personal animosities between weyane and shaebia officials diminish their relevance following their gradual removal from office. But, this waiting game hurting Eritrea in the long term?
Ethiopians seem to moving on gradually with their strategic long term economic partnership in the construction of Lamu Port and Lamu Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) in Kenya and Tadjourah port in Djibouti. The Lamu port project is the biggest African project of an oil pipeline, railway and motorway linking Lamu to South Sudan and Ethiopia. Lamu port will be five times larger than Kenya's only other Indian Ocean port, Mombasa. I am talking about long term economic competitiveness of Massawa and Assab in the next 2 – 3 decades. All this new ports will be of 21st century standard and competitively cheaper and more efficient.
When the constraction of Tadjourah port and related rail and road networks connecting Djibouti to Tirgay and Addis Ababa are completed, would they make Eritrean ports expensive and uneconomical to be used by Ethiopia in peace times? Please read the Chatham House report on Djibouti below.
The Eritrean strategic architects of the 80s have established strategic relationships with weyane which has resulted independence and brilliant peaceful coexistence in the early 90. What are these strategic thinkers and long term policy architects doing now? What are their long term strategic achievements in the recent past? What is Eritrea’s strategic position going to be in next 2,3,4 decades? Has tiny Djibouti outsmarted Eritrean strategic heads and positioned itself as a regional maritime hub for the foreseeable future?
What's Eritrea's strategic response to these strategic economic positioning in its back yard?
Some excripts from the Chatham House report entitled “Djibouti: Changing Influence in the Horn's Strategic Hub”
By 2006 Dubai Ports World (DPW) had overhauled the management of an expanded Djibouti Free Zones and Port Authority (DFZPA), modelled on and managed by Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone. The company then announced a three-year, $400 million programme to build a container terminal with a capacity of 1.2 million TEU9 adjacent to the new oil terminal at Doraleh. This is run as a joint venture between DPW and the state owned port authority, which retains a 66 per cent stake.
Opened in 2009,
Doraleh became the sole deepwater port in the region able to handle contemporary 15,000 tonne-plus container vessels. Doraleh’s overall potential capacity for handling containers far outstrips the current combined Ethiopian and Djiboutian domestic demand. From the outset the aim was to establish Djibouti as a nodal hub in DPW’s global network of container transshipment centres, offering customers from the Far East with vessels en route to European markets a way of avoiding a costly detour to Dubai’s Jebel Ali. In 2006, Dubai’s Nakheel corporation cemented the emirate’s economic and political ties with Djibouti by inaugurating the city’s first five-star hotel, the Kempinski Djibouti Palace Hotel. This provides the government with a sumptuous venue for regional conferences as well as luxury accommodation for the growing number of military and trade delegations transiting through the city……………………………….
Hydro-electric power is just one piece of a far larger Ethiopian infrastructure jigsaw that has long-term implications for Djibouti. In June 2012 Ethiopia announced a series of major contracts for a new 5,000 kilometre national rail network. Scheduled to be completed in eight phases, it is planned to eventually link the northern Ethiopian highlands with Addis Ababa and the west. The plan is exceedingly ambitious in terms of engineering and finance. The value of the two contracts announced in June 2012 alone totalled $3.2 billion.13 While Chinese companies have dominated recent Ethiopian road and rail tenders, in June 2012 a Turkish consortium was awarded the contract to construct a rail branch eastward to the Djiboutian border.14 The network envisages connecting the northern highlands and Tigray to Djibouti via a branch-line to Elidar. This would then provide a rail link to Djibouti’s Tadjourah port via the Djiboutian border town of Balho. If completed, this would restore the cheaper and more direct link to the sea that Ethiopia lost with the severing of ties with Assab in 1998. It would also facilitate potash exports from the nearby Danakil depression, the subject of significant exploration and investment in recent years………………
Change in Djibouti’s economic and strategic options has been driven by four factors:
• the Ethiopian–Eritrean war of 1998–2000, the impact of Ethiopia's economic transformation and growth upon trade; shifts in US strategy since 9/11, and the upsurge in piracy along the Gulf of Aden and Somali coasts.
• With the expansion of the US AFRICOM base, the reconfiguration of France's military presence and the establishment of Japanese and other military facilities, Djibouti has become an international maritime and military laboratory where new forms of cooperation are being developed.
• Djibouti has accelerated plans for regional economic integration. Building on close ties with Ethiopia, existing port upgrades and electricity grid integration will be enhanced by the development of the northern port of Tadjourah.
• These strategic and economic shifts have yet to be matched by internal political reforms, and growth needs to be linked to strategies for job creation and a renewal of domestic political legitimacy.
Off course, Eritrea is the home of the two major religions, namely Islam and Christianity. He goes after that too. He is the enemy of the Eritrean people. He champions amhara interest. At least, he gives that perception. BTW, you are not a friendly to Eritreans either. You used to post Asab this Asab that. Becaureful, Eritreans do not forget.