Ethiopia and Eritrea: Border War Sandra F

University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Political Science Faculty Publications Political Science 2000 Ethiopia and Eritrea: Border War Sandra F. Joireman University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/polisci-faculty-publications Part of the African Studies Commons, and the International Relations Commons Recommended Citation Joireman, Sandra F. "Ethiopia and Eritrea: Border War." In History Behind the Headlines: The Origins of Conflicts Worldwide, edited by Sonia G. Benson, Nancy Matuszak, and Meghan Appel O'Meara, 1-11. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ethiopia and Eritrea: Border War History Behind the Headlines, 2001 The Conflict The war between Ethiopia and Eritrea—two of the poorest countries in the world— began in 1998. Eritrea was once part of the Ethiopian empire, but it was colonized by Italy from 1869 to 1941. Following Italy's defeat in World War II, the United Nations determined that Eritrea would become part of Ethiopia, though Eritrea would maintain a great deal of autonomy. In 1961 Ethiopia removed Eritrea's independence, and Eritrea became just another Ethiopian province. In 1991 following a revolution in Ethiopia, Eritrea gained its independence. However, the borders between Ethiopia and Eritrea had never been clearly marked. Following arguments and skirmishes, Eritrea invaded the area of Ethiopia it viewed as its own. Trench warfare—and the deaths of many soldiers and civilians—has continued since then. Territorial Eritrea believes that Ethiopia has moved border markers to infringe on Eritrean territory. Economic Ethiopia believes that Eritrea charges an exorbitant fee to export Ethiopian coffee through the Eritrean port. There is conflict regarding use of the U.S. dollar for transactions, instead of local currency. Over two hundred thousand troops are massed at the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, waiting for the next outbreak of violence in a war that has been fought off and on since 1998. Ethiopia and Eritrea are two of the poorest countries in the world. Yet poverty has not prevented a war that appears to be more about sovereignty and national pride than about the few square miles of land around which fighting has been concentrated. Ostensibly at issue is which country controls approximately two hundred square miles of territory along the border of the two states. The land that is disputed is not of great value; it is scrubland, where farmers have traditionally raised a few hardy crops and grazed their goats. For Eritrea, this scrubland represents their claim to sovereignty and the victory they won in a thirty-year civil war against Ethiopia. To the Ethiopian government the issue is one of defending against this and any possible future Eritrean incursions into their territory. Few people outside of those living in the Horn of Africa, an eastern outcropping on the continent of Africa including the countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, and a few academic experts understand why these countries are fighting, but the whole world has remarked upon the particular brutality of this war. The Ethiopian-Eritrean border war has attracted international attention for the tactics used by each side. After taking a few miles of Ethiopian territory, the Eritrean army dug in and began to use trench warfare to defend their territorial acquisitions. In response the Ethiopian army used the time-honored method for combating trench warfare—rushing the trenches in human waves in order to capture the enemy. This method of fighting has led to a large and mounting death toll on both sides. Though the numbers are disputed, it is estimated that seventy thousand soldiers from both sides have died. The rest of the world has been stunned by methods of fighting that have not been used for such an extended period of time since World War I. In addition to the staggering death toll, this war has also been characterized by the use of land mines against both combatants and civilians. When the Eritrean army retreated from the territory it had captured initially, it left fields and scrubland filled with landmines, making farming impossible and a re-establishment of the Ethiopian administration difficult. Ecologically, the effects of this war will be felt for years, both because of the presence of so many landmines and due to the effect that the fighting has had on the fragile, semi-arid ecosystem, now polluted with shell casings, wrecked military equipment and the refuse of two armies. Prior to the war, relations between the two countries had been friendly enough that many Eritreans lived in Ethiopia—the larger country with more economic opportunities. When the war began, the Ethiopian government became distrustful of Eritreans living within its borders and began to round them up and forcibly expel them, often without even allowing them to gather up other family members. Approximately fifty-five thousand Eritreans living in Ethiopia have been so expelled. Other Eritreans left voluntarily to avoid being forcibly removed. While the expulsion of citizens has primarily affected Eritreans, an estimated three hundred fifty thousand Ethiopians have been moved from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where most of the fighting has occurred. During the first year of the war, the Eritrean army bombed towns in Tigray and terrorized the local population. The Ethiopian air force also bombed civilian areas until an agreement between the two sides was reached to stop the air war. The on-again, off-again nature of the fighting discouraged Ethiopians from returning to their homes. The failure of peace talks, and the development of new fronts in the fighting has also discouraged local residents from returning to the areas under dispute or near the disputed areas. Historical Background In 1974 the Ethiopian Revolution ended the longest ruling monarchy in African history. Haile Selassie, the well-known emperor and statesman, was deposed in a revolution caused by inequality and lack of development and democracy within Ethiopia. The Marxist government that took over power was called the Dergue, which is the Amharic word for committee. (Amharic is the language of Ethiopia.) But what was supposed to be a committee quickly turned into a dictatorship under the control of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Shortly after the revolution, Mengistu began to purge the country of dissent in what was called the "Red Terror." Many young people died, others fled the country or joined armed opposition groups in the countryside. Opposition to the state was already going on in the northern province of Eritrea, where fighting dated back to 1961. In 1961 the Ethiopian state abolished any autonomy held by the Eritrean region. Though it was at one point part of the Ethiopian empire, the Italian colonization of Eritrea from 1869 until 1941 gave it a distinctly different history than the rest of the Ethiopian state, which had never been colonized. When Italy was defeated in World War II, it was forced to give up its colonies. A United Nations commission decided what should be done with the Italian colonies in Africa: Eritrea, Libya and Italian Somaliland. It was determined that Eritrea should be united with Ethiopia, but that it should be allowed to keep its own laws, flag and language. Eritrea, therefore, had some autonomy from 1952 until 1961, when Haile Selassie decided to end what Eritrean autonomy existed. In 1961 Eritrea was stripped of its distinctive government and became simply another province of Ethiopia. It was at that time that fighting began between Eritreans who supported complete independence from Ethiopia and the Ethiopian state. Armed opposition to the Ethiopian state continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Opposition to the Ethiopian government grew during the Ethiopian famine that occurred in 1985. The government was thought to have responded too slowly and to have favored certain regions with food aid. By the late 1980s, the Ethiopian state was threatened by organized rebel groups throughout the countryside. These groups were organized along ethnic lines with the Oromo supporting the Oromo Liberation Front, the Tigrayans supporting the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Eritreans supporting the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). These rebel groups began to coordinate their offensive actions in the late 1980s, a strategy that proved very successful. The TPLF began reaching out to other ethnic groups to form an umbrella organization called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF included groups representing most of the major ethnicities in Ethiopia apart from the Eritreans. Eritreans were not included because it was accepted by the EPRDF that Eritrean independence would become inevitable should the Ethiopian government be overthrown. In 1999 as a result of coordinating efforts among the rebel groups, as well as the weakness of the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian state underwent a "second revolution." Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe where he now lives in exile and the EPRDF took over the capital city of Addis Ababa. The Eritreans established an independent state in the north, which became officially independent after a 1993 United Nations sponsored referendum. The separation was accomplished in a friendly manner with Ethiopia taking complete responsibility for the foreign debt and the Eritreans being left with substantial resources and control over the port of Assab. The leaders of the two countries knew each other and had cooperated with one another in the overthrow of the previous state. Both countries realized that the border between them had not been properly demarcated and it was assumed that Eritrea's boundaries would be the boundaries it had prior to its incorporation into the Ethiopian state in 1952.

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