ISAIAS AND THE CIA

C O N F I D E N T I A L ASMARA 000233


DEPARTMENT FOR AF/EX AND AF/E

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/17/2019
TAGS: PINR PREL ER
SUBJECT: ISAIAS AND THE CIA

Classified By: Ambassador Ronald K. McMullen for reason 1.4(d)


1. (C) SUMMARY: President Isaias Afwerki's interview with
Reuters appears to be the ramblings of a paranoiac. He
blames imagined CIA conspiracies for all of Eritrea's
manifest woes and holds himself up as a hero who has stymied
this "powerful opposition." In addition to calling into
question his lucidity, interviews such as this poison the
relationship between the United States and common Eritrean
citizens, who are fed a daily diet of this claptrap. Isaias
may also be attempting to tarnish all who oppose his
dictatorial rule as being CIA lackeys. A portion of the
Reuters May 20 interview with Isaias appeared in the
government-controlled Eritrean Profile on July 18. Excerpts
appear below in unedited form to give the reader a sense of
the tone, language, and substance of Isaias' public
statements.


2. (SBU) FAILED EFFORTS TO MISLEAD THE DIASPORA
-------------- ---

"I would not like to invite the CIA to be party in this
country. We have a very powerful opposition and that is the
CIA. They buy people and can organize and finance them and
have one million websites. They continue to fund but the
last 18 years or basically the last 10 years, they have
failed to impress upon the Diaspora."


3. (SBU) SOURCE OF OPPOSITION DISINFORMATION
--------------

"We have traitors in our history and it is a long story and
it is very natural in any community. Any outside force could
come and buy someone and there are smaller and a handful
willing to be sold in the market. You can give these people
the finance they require, give them advanced information
technology, organize websites for them and Langley would be
the headquarters for organizing all this; coming up with all
the disinformation, the news about this government,
terrorism, human rights abuse, religious problems. This is
an illusion and is probably the problem of the operatives. I
said we have a very powerful opposition called the CIA."


4. (SBU) THE DIASPORA CONTINUES ITS SUPPORT
--------------

"The Diaspora is making its contributions in this aspect and
that is one of the headaches for the CIA. At one time,
during the Clinton Administration, they wanted to control the
remittances to this country and try to harass the Diaspora to
not send any money to families here. In such a situation in
a bid to distance the Diaspora people from making
contributions a CIA agent or station chief will come and say,
'so and so who is the son of so and so is qualified engineer,
he is being neglected by the government to participate'.
Some of these people they mention were not even talented,
they don't even have any talent. They have been bought or
compromised for their own personal problems and used to give
the impression that there is an opposition. There is not
opposition outside the CIA, and it is an opposition in the
minds and the illusions of the CIA."


5. (SBU) ANTI-ERITREAN FACTORIES IN LANGLEY
--------------

"I can imagine and see all these websites and how they leak
information there, sometimes latest and current information
fabricated from the factories in Langley and leaked into
websites as if there were innocently brought in there."


6. (SBU) MISLEADING THE SECURITY COUNCIL ABOUT SOMALIA
-------------- --------------

"A station officer who has been here and moved to Djibouti,
Addis and to different cities and countries will be having
his networks and contacts organizing without him being seen
and tell people certain fabricated facts to create an aura or
environment of tension. Recently we have been discussion
about the UN Security Council Resolution. I don't know
whether they know the mechanics but the source was on CIA
operative in the region. And he would say; 'there are
reports about Eritrea supplying the Islamists in Somalia with
weapons.'"


7. (SBU) ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
--------------

"There is no freedom of expression for agents and no one can
allow them that. You can't allow for an agent recruited by
the CIA to have the freedom of speech because they have
already compromised this freedom and sold it for nothing. It
is as simple as that. There is no freedom for CIA agents in
this country and any where."


8. (SBU) ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION
--------------

"And that is what they dream; sitting anywhere in Nairobi or
elsewhere one operative of the CIA would like to see the
Christians fighting Christians; Catholics fighting
Protestants or Orthodox fighting Protestants and Christians
fighting Muslims. This is a dream for them."


9. (SBU) THEY CONTROL MANY THINGS; THEY CONTROL POWER
-------------- --------------

"I was excited about Nancy Pelosi's statement recently, these
people are hypocrites, and they have been telling the
Congress lies. They have been telling their own officials
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They have been
torturing people everywhere; they would like to see the
suffering of human being and manipulating these sufferings.
I call it sadism; it is very sick. Unfortunately they
control many things; they control power."


10. (SBU) WHO IS BEHIND HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS?
-------------- --------------

"Who are those human rights organizations in the first place?
Who pays them? Who appoints them for the job? These are
very obvious thing to who finances a certain operation or an
individual formally or informally. Who has the money
transferring to their account, invisible account some where?


11. (SBU) POWERFUL BUT INEPT OPPOSITION
--------------

"It is an open secret to me because it is not a question of
human rights or religious rights and so on but it is part of
a fight of a powerful opposition I mentioned earlier and this
powerful opposition has not succeeded in achieving anything."

MCMULLEN