Introduction
The
secessionist war fought by Eritrean rebels against the central
government of Ethiopia came to a conclusion by both military means and
political agreement in 1993 after over 20 years of fighting. But then
Eritrea had a much stronger separatist identity than the southern
Sudan. The non- Muslim south Sudan has been ruled from Khartoum since
the Egyptian conquest of the middle of the nineteenth century, under
successive Egyptian, Mahdist- Anglo- Egyptian and independent
administrations.
Eritrea, Ethiopia's coastal province along the Red Sea, has, however,
only been administered as part of Ethiopia for a short period in recent
times. Eritrea ceased to be under effective Ethiopian rule in the
seventeenth century.
Throughout the colonial period Eritrea was ruled first by Italy (1896-
1941) and then by Britain (1941-50) and the territory only became
Ethiopian in 1952. Moreover, colonial rule transformed Eritrea in ways
which accentuated its differences from the mainstream of Ethiopian
development. Italian rule dismantled the feudal structure of Eritrea,
and the British fostered democratic political activity.
Many Eritreans found it difficult in the 1950s to adjust to imperial
feudalism and dictatorship under Emperor Haile Selassie. The Muslim
majority of Eritrea had tended to favour independence and '" the
Christians had tended to support union with Ethiopia. The majority
allowed themselves to be brow-beaten into union by the British under a
United Nations plan which gave Eritrea internal self-government within
a federal Structure. However, Haile Selassie gradually eroded Eritrea's
autonomy, undermined its open political life and in 1962 reduced the
region to the status of a province.
Already in 1961 the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) had been founded,
to counter the growing threat of Ethiopian annexation. The ELF's aim
was to revive Eritrea's autonomous status. It received immediate
support from Arab states sympathetic to their co-religionists and
resentful at Israeli use of Massawa, Eritrea's main port, when the rest
of the Red Sea coast was barred to Israelis. The ELF was allowed to use
guerilla training camps in Syria and received military and financial
assistance from Iraq, the Sudan and Libya.
Haile Selassie I was the last emperor of Ethiopia. He rigged the referendum of 1960 to make Eritrea a province of Ethiopia.
The ELF was ineffective as a military organization until 1968 when its
guerilla activities sharply, increased. In 1969 it carried out daring
raids, destroying petrol tankers on the Massawa-Asmara road and
destroying or hijacking Ethiopian Airlines planes.
In 1970 the ELF attacked army posts and ambushed and killed an
Ethiopian general, and by early 1971 it was active in two-thirds of
Eritrea. The government forces responded with counter- revolutionary
warfare, such as herding rural populations into fortified villages in
to deny the guerillas food supplies. Soviet weapons kept the ELF
fighting in turn, Ethiopia also received more aid from the United
States and even Israel, which led to increased Arab assistance to the
ELF.
By 1970, with Haile Selassie totally opposed to concessions to the
Eritreans, the ELF was in favour of complete independence rather than
autonomy and had become a secessionist movement. Also by now Eritrean
Christian sentiment was being won over by the liberation movement,
whose forces were now pushing the government's troops into the towns.
However, while the ELF was gaining support in one direction it was
losing it in another.
MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM served as chairman of Ethiopia's ruling
Provisional Military Administrative Council from 1977 to 1987 and as the
country's president from 1987 to 1991. During his reign, an estimated 100,000
people were killed or disappeared for opposing the government.
In 1972 the Eritrean Popular Liberation Front (EPLF) was set up. The
EPLF was, Marxist-influenced and whilst supporting a struggle for
independence it aimed to transcend nationalism and create a socialist
society in Eritrea. From 1972 to 1974 the ELF and EPLF fought
internecine battles against each other as much as against the Ethiopian
army.
MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM served as chairman of Ethiopia's ruling
Provisional Military
Administrative Council from 1977 to 1987 and as
the country's president from 1987 to 1991. During his reign, an
estimated 100,000 people were killed or disappeared for opposing the
government.
The military coup of 1974 replaced Haile Selassie by a military
committee or Dergue which produced a forward-looking nationalities
policy, by proclaiming the equality of all ' nationalities and
cultures, by official recognition of Islam, by allowing broadcasting
and publishing in languages other than Amharic, and even by accepting
the right to any nationality within Ethiopia to 'self-determination'.
But the Dergue was unable to satisfy Eritrean aspirations, allowing a
restricted choice between local self-government and regional autonomy,
whereas the Eritrean liberation movements demanded independence in one
form or another. The Dergue, like the deposed Emperor, was not prepared
for Ethiopia to lose its Red Sea littoral and the vital port of
Massawa and Assab. Late in 1974 the ELF and the EPLF formed an alliance
against the Dergue and intensified the war of independence. By the end
of 1976 the Eritrean countryside had been cleared of government troops,
who were besieged in the towns.
The Dergue's response was a
misapplication of the principles of popular mobilization to warfare. In
the 'Peasant Marches' of 1976-7 untrained, ill-armed militia,
conscripted m southern Ethiopia, were hurled in waves at the Eritrean
defences. The result was a series of massacres and by 1978 only four
Eritrean towns remained in Ethiopian hands, the road from Massawa to
Asmara had been cut, and both these cities were under heavy siege by
the ELF and EPLF.
Ethiopia's military dictator Colonel Mengistu launched a major
offensive in Eritrea in the middle of 1978. But Cuba refused to commit
its 12 000 troops in Ethiopia to the Eritrean campaign; Castro favoured
a political not a military solution in Eritrea. Without! Cuban
participation, the offensive made little headway, and Ethiopian
casualties were heavy. Russian aid was ample, in the form of weapons,
vehicles and planes. There was heavy bombing of Eritrean positions but
little damage was done. In the first half of 1979 a new Ethiopian
offensive had considerable success.
After his victory over the Somalis in the Ogaden Mengistu sent 90 000
men and 600 tanks in Eritrea. The Ethiopians retook the towns of Keren,
Afabet and Nacfa, cleared the main roads, and relieved Asmara and
Massawa. Russian aid was more useful this time; attacks were preceded
by aerial and ground bombing, artillery fire was more precise, multiple
rocket launchers ('Stalin organs') were used to good effect, and the
overall co-ordination of scattered parts of the Ethiopian army was
markedly improved. But the Ethiopians and Russians were no more
successful in the long run than were the Saigon government and
Americans in South Vietnam- In the face of massive enemy fire-power the
Eritreans, like the Viet Cong, beat strategic retreats to their rear
bases, in their case in the mountains that form the northern spine of
Eritrea. In their rear bases the ELF and the EPLF have continued to
maintain hospitals, mobile clinics, workshops, factories, publishing
houses, and village co- operatives, and to run literacy programmes, not
least for thousands of illiterate Ethiopian prisoners.
Isaias Afwerki became president of the State of Eritrea in Africa after it seceded from Ethiopia in 1993.
At the end of 1979 and early in 1980, the EPLF made substantive
military gains, driving 20 000 government troops from Nacfa and
restoring the military equilibrium of 1978. At the same time the EPLF
has strengthened its position as against that of the ELF; in late 1980
the EPLF captured several ELF-held areas. In its counter-offensive
against Mengistu the EPLF has received indirect aid from the growing
Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a guerilla force operating
against the Dergue in Tigray province to the south of Eritrea, and from
newly emerging movements of regional guerilla resistance in various
parts of southern Ethiopia. At the time of writing Ethiopia is faced
with several civil wars on different fronts - a situation that seems
likely to continue for some time to come.
National Movements and New States in Africa