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ASMARA: In few countries does the Cold War cast a longer shadow than in Eritrea, deprived of nationhood by superpower rivalry at the dawn of independent Africa.
The country, which sits across the Red Sea from oil giant Saudi Arabia, is haunted by its 1950s and 60s role as host of the large US listening post at Asmara's Kagnew Station.
The spy base's forest of antennae intercepted radio, telephone and telegraph traffic around Africa and the Middle East, and also relayed Pentagon communications to US nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean and US forces in Vietnam.
Such was its importance that Washington, worried an emergent Eritrea would come under Soviet influence, arranged for it to be yoked in a federation to US client Ethiopia in 1952.
Emperor Haile Selassie annexed Eritrea in 1962, triggering a guerrilla struggle that ended in Eritrean independence in 1991. Today Africa's youngest state is determined never again to be pushed around by the big power politics that cost it the estimated 70,000 Eritrean lives lost in the war of independence.
WAR ON TERRORISM: Yet that is exactly the prospect Eritrea says it confronts in a simmering border dispute with neighbouring Ethiopia that was at the heart of a war the two countries fought in 1998-2000.
This time some officials suspect it is the war on terrorism that risks tilting Western concerns in favour of Ethiopia, which has delayed honouring the terms of a 2000 peace treaty.
Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation, is traditionally seen as the main power in the volatile Horn of Africa and a regional linchpin of Washington's war on terror.
The perceived bias rankles in Asmara, stirring bad memories. "People should not favour bigger Ethiopia over smaller Eritrea. Considerations of big power politics should not affect the maintenance of international law," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, an advisor to President Isayas Afewerki.
"When the majority of African countries were granted independence Eritrea was linked to Ethiopia against the express wishes of the people because of larger interests.
"The international community did nothing. We tell them (other nations) we cannot be wrong twice. History cannot repeat itself. This time around we have gone through the legalities and processes of diplomacy and those issues have to be respected."
Officials in Eritrea suspect concerns of real politik lie behind the West's reluctance to punish Ethiopia for its delay in complying with an international settlement of the border row.
"There is always a difference between pronouncements on the rule of international law and real politics, and there are elements of this dichotomy in this case," Ghebremeskel said.
International donors have yet to use their considerable leverage with the aid-dependent country of almost 70 million to persuade it to honour the settlement, Eritrea says.
Ethiopia gets about $2 billion in aid annually including debt relief, food, budget support and development assistance. "Eritrea is a small country and its interest lies in a peaceful neighbourhood," Ghebremeskel said.
African countries worry that tensions between the two nations could trigger a new conflict, destabilizing a volatile region that has been used a base by Al Qaeda in the past and that continues to suffer drought and famine. -Reuters
