Isaias Afwerki

Biography

Isaias Afwerki was born in Asmara in 1946, when Eritrea was under British administration, and attended Prince Makonnen High School there. In 1965 he began engineering studies at Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa but soon abandoned them, and in 1966 he travelled to Kassala in Sudan to join the Eritrean Liberation Front. In 1967 he was among ELF recruits sent to China for political commissar training.

Critical of what he saw as the ELF's sectarian treatment of Christian highlanders, he led a breakaway group from 1970 and in 1971 wrote its founding manifesto, Nihnan Elamanan. The splinter groups merged into the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, which fought both the ELF and Ethiopian government forces. Isaias became the EPLF's vice-secretary general in 1977 and its secretary-general in 1987, by which time he dominated the movement. In May 1991 the EPLF took control of Eritrea as the Derg collapsed, and he headed the provisional government until a UN-supervised referendum in April 1993 led to formal independence.

The National Assembly then elected him the first president of Eritrea, and in 1994 the EPLF became the People's Front for Democracy and Justice with Isaias as its leader. A constitution drafted in 1997 was never implemented, scheduled elections were cancelled, and in September 2001 his government closed the independent press and detained reformist officials of the G-15 group. He led Eritrea through the 1998-2000 border war with Ethiopia, which ended with the Algiers Agreement, and through years of stalemate afterwards.

In 2018 he made peace with Ethiopia's new prime minister Abiy Ahmed, restoring diplomatic and trade ties. United Nations investigators and human rights groups have accused his government of systematic abuses, including indefinite national service, mass detention and censorship; Eritrea has no functioning legislature or national elections, and Isaias has remained president since 1993.