Africa-Press – Eritrea. In his opinion column on the Horn of Africa published in the Avalanche Journal last week, Tibor Nagy resorts to his usual recipe of disparaging Eritrea to dish out biased and presumptuous conjectures that are at variance with the principal causes and trajectories of the simmering tension in the region.
This is not surprising in many respects. The former US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa indeed lacks academic and analytical credentials, and more importantly, personal integrity and honesty as his lop-sided positions and views on the Horn of Africa are often influenced by his lobbying contracts and unorthodox political networks.
His ardent lobbying these days for recognition of Somaliland; his negative positions on the situation in the Sudan are additional and illustrative cases in point.
⦁ In matters regarding Eritrea, Naggy was a pliable supporter of the Ethiopian regime’s violation of international law and continued occupation of Eritrean sovereign lands in breach of the Algiers Peace Agreement and the EEBC “final and binding” Award when he was the US Ambassador in Addis Abeba.
⦁ Indeed, while the US was one of the guarantor’s of the Algiers Agreement, which contained explicit provisions for punitive measures against the recalcitrant party, Tibor Nagy continued to defend and apologize for the Ethiopian regime’s continued illicit occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories, including Badme, for almost two decades in flagrant contravention of the Arbitral Award as well as its subsequent, pronounced, policy of “regime change” until 2018. In this perspective, the accolades he showers on the Ethiopian Prime Minister is neither accurate nor deserved as the new regime had only belatedly accepted, important as that was, to respect and adhere to its treaty obligations virtually 16 years after the Arbitral Award.
⦁ Tibor Nagy’s insinuation that Eritrea was an integral part of the 2000 years old Ethiopian Empire prior to its independence is also pathetically wrong and panders to deliberately crafted mythology that has nothing to do with the actual history of the region. Prior to the advent of Italian colonialism in the late 19th century, modern-day Eritrea passed through long historical trajectories in which the western and eastern lowlands were under various external occupiers (Ottoman Empire etc.) while independent indigenous fiefdoms presided over the rest of the country. Historical revisionism and invocation of mythologies are essentially peddled by those who wish to imbue some semblance of justification for the current regime’s expansionist ambitions. Ethiopia and Eritrea “were one” in Tibor Nagy’s terms only from 1951 until 1991 when Eritrea was forcible annexed by Ethiopia by abrogating the “Federal Act”; the latter imposed on Eritrea against its inalienable rights of decolonization. Tibor Nagy’s reference to small Eritrea – the size of Pennsylvania – etc. also falls in the same deceitful mold as sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations has no positive correlation whatsoever with geographic landmass.
⦁ Tibor Nagy’s eulogization of the Ethiopian Prime Minister as “a devout Evangelical Christian who sees himself as a Messianic leader doing God’s work on earth” is utterly false and risible, evidently concocted to appeal to certain constituencies in the US. Tibor Nagy has in fact exposed himself as the unscrupulous lobbyist that he is. His assertion that Ethiopia was the second nation in the world to adopt Christianity is cut from the same cloth and historically inaccurate as his other conjectures. This false assertion in fact obfuscates the reality that the Red Sea of Eritrea was the gateway for the introduction of Christianity and Islamic traditions into Africa. Incontrovertible historical and archeological findings illustrate that Christianity was introduced by the 4th Century A.D. into this part of the Horn with the enterprise of Frumentius, a Christian Monk from Tyre in Syria. The highlands of Eritrea were the locations for the earliest Christian communities in the Horn of Africa although the new faith also spread southwards to Ethiopia in concurrent times.
⦁ Tibor Nagy also seems to suffer from an apparently compulsive malaise of frenzied defamation of the Eritrean President. It is not clear whether this irrational hatred stems from an occupational hazard as a long-time hired lobbyist for Ethiopia; his personal/ideological loathing of independent policies espoused by Africa’s Statesmen; or the pretension of inconsequential little men who seek attention by throwing dirt on persons far beyond their pedigree and caliber.
⦁ In a nutshell, Tibory Nagy digresses to dwell on tangential and distorted narratives primarily and principally because his central objective is to divert attention from the root cause of the current problem: the Ethiopian regime’s willful and deplorable agenda of war and conflict in pursuit of what it calls “sovereign access to the sea” by invading the sovereign territory of its neighbor. This dangerous act cannot be justified and rationalized by other fallacious pretexts and narratives. Tibor Nagy is not, evidently, in a position to deliver on this account because he is under the beck and call of his financial sponsors; veritable cases, as it were, of “who pays the piper calls the tune”!
Embassy of the State of Eritrea
Washington, DC
26 Feb 2026
