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Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Alemseged Tesfai, who until 1997 was the Actin Head of the Eritrean Land commission, writes on the history of Eritrea and the Eritrean People's Liberation Army. He was Head of the Cultural Division of the EPLF and the Cultural Centre of the Department of National Guidance in the Provisional Government of Eritrea. A writer and playwright, Alemseged has produced a collection of short stories, plays, essays and a novel about the Eritrean Liberation War. His play The Other War was produced in the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, UK, in September 1997.

Martin Doornbos is Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands, and was associated with the War-torn societies Project from 1995 to 1998. He has written on political transitions in the Horn and East African region generally. Doornbos was a member of the International Advisory Board for the Constitutional commission of Eritrea. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Excerpted from Post-Conflict Eritrea : Prospects for Reconstruction and Development by Alemseged Tesfai, Martin Doornbos and Alemseged Tesfai. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 1: Martin Doornbos: When a country emerges from a liberation struggle, prolonged civil war, or other similarly profound conflict, what are the first steps it needs to take? Numerous tasks in rehabilitation and reconstruction are waiting to be taken up, each calling for urgent attention, each constituting a priority concern to both the political leadership and the people at large. But how do such tasks relate to each another, and how should they be prioritized? One of the first tasks must be to inventory what needs doing, for example to identify the most critical challenges in post-conflict rebuilding and take preliminary stock of the available tools. In line with overall strategies, the key challenge becomes that of determining which policy instruments should be developed to launch the long and arduous process of post-conflict reconstruction and development. There are crucial research tasks to be fulfilled in this connection, focusing specifically on the identification of policy options and requirements. Equally important is the need to devise mechanisms which can help generate clarity and understanding of the interconnections between various policies and actions in the areas of rebuilding and development.

This volume addresses key areas and issues of post-war reconstruction in a country that is emerging from prolonged and profound conflict: Eritrea. The book comprises the core of the research carried out by the War-torn Societies Project (WSP) in Eritrea, launched in July 1995 to contribute to the clarification and discussion of policy priorities in Eritrean development. It presents the findings of the main themes researched in the course of this project, all of which were focused on broad priority areas in post-conflict rehabilitation, rebuilding and development; the challenge of social reintegration, infrastructure development, food security, human resource development, and basic questions of governance. Each of these themes has been the subject of extensive discussion and debate by Working Groups established as part of the project. In these Working Groups, researchers and other actors with a direct interest in the topic met regularly to discuss preliminary research results, deliberate on additional questions to be asked, and reflect on the relevance of the research for the role and agenda of various agencies on the Eritrean development front. Thus, the results of this work can be largely seen as a collective product. As these research findings are expected to be of interest and relevance to much wider circles concerned with Eritrean reconstruction and development, both within and outside the country, they are now brought together in this revised format.

Chapter 7: Issues of governance in the Eritrean context - Alemseged Tesfai - The concept of governance came to the fore of the development debate toward the end of the 1980's, when the World Bank identified the "crisis of governance" as "underlying the litany of Africa's development problems". The Bank's 1989 publication Sub-Sahara Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, went on to list defects of African leadership authority and legitimacy such as "the absence of balance of power, the lack of official accountability, the control of information and a failure to respect the rule of law". The Bank recommended "independence of the judiciary, scrupulous respect for the law and human rights at every level of government, transparent accountability of public monies, and independent public auditors responsible to a representative legislative, not to an executive".

The call for accountability, openness and adherence to the rule of law was not new. What was new was that the World bank, and thus the donor community, was adding its voice to the debate and making its recommendations prerequisites for aid and loans to African states. However, many found fault with the Bank's suggestion that sustainability, equity and participation were required for economic growth and that they be tied to the "imperatives of accumulation and order" (Moore, 1995:16).

Equity, for example, is seen by the Bank as essential for long-term political stability, without which growth is impossible. However, equity is conceived by the Bank not as "state or socially regulated distribution", but rather as encouraged by "improving the access of the poor to productive assets and to releasing the energies of ordinary people by enabling them to take charge of their lives". This would be accomplished by "giving the poor access to assets promoting this productivity" (Moore, 1995:16).

But who improves and gives such access to the poor? If the state is considered incapable of such an act, will the cut and thrust world of the fee market allow it? The implication is that the Bank, or international capital, "would control the local state's withdrawal from the economy. Resources must (then) be taken away from the state and placed in the 'market' where all citizens will supposedly have equal access to them" (Moore, 1995:9).

In this line of thinking, the state would be relieved of its traditional role as a "buffer protecting the national economy from disruptive external forces" and as the "focal point for the organization and maintenance of domestic employment and welfare". Instead, "its role will be that of tailoring discrete geographical and social spaces to the whims of the world economic tsars and fashioning a civil society, made up of those with interests congruent with the 'global market places'" (Moore, 1995:19). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.