Various African nationalist experiments have come into being since the 1960s intended to mobilize the younger generation for the purposes of nation building. The Eritrean National Service (ENS) is but an extreme and more contemporary example of this trend, inviting comparison with the efforts of nations such as Nigeria and Tanzania to compel youth to provide labor for various public works projects while submitting to military-style discipline. In most such experiments, the objective is not only to construct schools or to clear roads but also to produce the kind of citizen deemed necessary for nation building—one that is disciplined, obedient, revels in hard work, and is willing to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of the collective good; one who furthermore eschews ethnic or sectarian attachments that might potentially undermine the unity of the nation. Gaim Kibreab’s study, The Eritrean National Service: Servitude for ‘the Common Good’ and the Youth Exodus, is part of a larger literature that gives serious consideration to African nationalist desires to fashion a new kind of citizen; in a time and place allegedly full of “soft” and corrupt states, in which an ethic of public service sometimes seems far from the norm, some regimes in Africa have been surprisingly avid in their pursuit of various social engineering projects, directed in particular toward the youth.
However, Kibreab does not set out to explore these larger contexts (including the fascinating question of whence African nationalists derived such ideas) so much as to assess the effectiveness of the ENS in achieving its stated goals, and its general impact on Eritrean society. The regime of Isaias Afwerki claims that a policy requiring many thousands of young people to engage in forced labor for a large chunk of their adult lives is justified in order to build the nation, protect it from Ethiopian aggression, and develop self-reliance. Yet Kibreab argues that this policy fails to meet these objectives, and instead further impoverishes Eritreans, produces scarcities of food and labor, and triggers mass flight. Anyone who has been following Africa’s recent outward refugee flows is probably aware that young Eritreans form a tragic and disproportionate component of that exodus; from 2000 to 2014 over 130,000 Eritreans sought asylum in the EU countries alone (185).
Kibreab observes that although in the early 1990s most young Eritreans initially accepted an eighteen-month period of national service as legitimate and necessary for the public good, such attitudes began to shift dramatically when in 1998 the period of service was, at least in theory, extended to nearly all males from the ages of eighteen to fifty-four and females from the ages of eighteen to forty-seven. The author notes that every year the state inducts approximately 25,000 youth into the ENS, and about half a million have served in the program since its inception (20). Only war veterans, the disabled, and some Muslim women and members of relatively remote ethnic groups have been exempt. As a result, the ENS is often regarded as a modern form of slavery—though by how many Eritreans it is impossible to say.
In addition, Kibreab asserts that while the ENS has helped to instill a sense of common nationhood among recruits, it has largely failed to inculcate a spirit of self-sacrifice anywhere close to that which pertained during the fight for independence. This is not only due to the passing of the unique historical circumstances that produced such a spirit in the first place; ENS commanders have also developed a reputation for imposing severe physical punishments as well as sexually abusing their female recruits. Their unsavory reputation extends even to using recruits as a free workforce for their own private benefit. Further undermining morale is the unfairness of a system that allows some Eritreans to escape service through bribery or personal connections. The forced recruitment of so many young people, Kibreab argues, has furthermore undermined families’ ordinary coping strategies, exacerbated poverty and undernourishment, and left aging parents bereft of their children’s support. Ironically, a policy intended to promote national self-reliance has in reality rendered Eritrean families more dependent than ever on remittances sent from the relatively few sons and daughters who have successfully fled abroad.
Kibreab deserves praise for raising awareness concerning the predicament faced by an entire generation of Eritrean youth. Yet due to negligent editing and the author’s penchant for repetition, the book’s length could have been reduced by at least a quarter without detracting from its main arguments. In addition, because the author was for obvious reasons unable to conduct research within Eritrea, he relies instead on various reports from the Eritrean government, the UN, IMF, World Bank, and independent analyses. Kibreab also makes extensive use of in-depth interviews and data gathered from surveys administered to members of the Eritrean diaspora. Yet employing random samplings of opinion among those who have already voted with their feet makes it very difficult to gauge the extent to which their critique is pervasive in Eritrean society. Kibreab frankly acknowledges such methodological limitations; he notes the survey’s findings are “indicative” rather than “conclusive” (10). Even so, his work has immense value as a much needed, albeit incomplete, study of the tragic impact of the ENS upon Eritrean society in general and on the youth of Eritrea in particular.
