people have been engaged in an armed struggle for independence for 23 years, the longest war in Africa.
Eritrea has a coastline along the Red Sea. It lies across the sea from Saudi Arabia and has borders with the Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti. At its south end, it is close to the Indian Ocean. It is these strategic interests that have led first to the US, then the Soviet Union, backing Ethiopia's war against the Eritreans. the majority Ethiopian, and has majority Ethiopian, displaced over three-quarters million Eritreans.
It was after the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal, which made the Red Sea of such importance to rival imperialist powels, that the modern history of Eritrea began. were established in Aden, and encouraged Italian imperialist interests to counter the French in Djibouti. In the 1880's the Italians ousted the Egyptians from Eritrea, had their occupation recognised by the Ethiopian emperor in an 1889 1890 had declared their territory a - they then gave it its present colony name, which means 'red'.
They broke the treaty, tried to expand further into Ethiopia. were defeated in 1896 by the Ethiopians in the historic Battle of Adowa, and forced to retreat to their new colопу.
This is seen as the start of a process which created political unit, as the colonialists built roads, two railways, two ports (which even today are woe ony Eritrea or Ethiopia), towns, and joined together the nomadic desert west with the settled peasant highlands.
In 1941, the Italians were defeated by the british Lne resistance movement. A typical example of British trickery towards the people they now controlled was the different leaflets distributed British intelligence during World War II. In one leaflet the Eritrean soldiers were urged to desert the Italians and join the British, and were given promises that they would be allowed to choose which form of Le! wanted.
Another leaflet, distributed this ume to tne civillan populanon, written by Haile Selassie They were told that Selassie had come the independence Ethiopia, including Eritrea, people henceforth will dwell under the shade of the Ethiopian flag'. Until his overthrow in 1974, mained unbending in his attitude to Eritrea as an integral part of the Ethipian empire. Many Eritreans increasingly saw it as another power seeking to regain its former colony.
A British military administration of Eritrea existed from 1941-49, and British interests Global role By 1949 the four Allies - Britain, USSR, US and France — had failed reach agreement future. Thereafter the US began to take over from Britain in playing a global anti-communist role, including within Africa and the Middle East.
Selassie granted the US a communications facility in the Eritrean capital Asmara in exchange for lending for a stable, unified, firmly anti-Soviet Ethiopia under its wing.
Within 10 years, with the US and other Western powers sitting back doing nothing Selassie managed to whip up sectional in terests in Eritrea, violate civil and political rights, crack down on opposition, then ban all parties except the Unionists. Finally he engineered a puppet assembly dissolve itself and integrate fully in Ethiopia. By September 1962 This was done The opposition Eritrea, aless y the 1950s, refused to die.
struggle began.
The history of the Eritrean liberaof a The British treaty, and by They factories and parts. of by government was himself.
of 'whose Selassie repredominated.
Eritrea's tion only port war between were look- Eritrean Liberation Ine Eritrean Eritrea. had civilian population was voted CLO Eritrea and religious for the fighters, to this within field, and unity of the forces. suppressed in The armed for freedom.
ABOVE: Freedom fighters in Shael province, Eritrea movement is complicated. them because of often-shifting supfrom various foreign states but also because of the bitterness and civil the movements themselves. During the 1960s and '70s there were three main groups: the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), the Front-Peoples Liberation Forces (ELF-PLF), People's Front (EPLF), which is now the only movement with military forces inside The EPLF was born out of opposition within the ELF in the late '60s to their leadership, the way the treated, the socially divisive way in which the guerrillas were organised by regional origin. Three groups ture. united under the slogans: democracy leadership in the Both fronts were committed to a national democratic revolution, with peasants and workers as the vanguard both had opposition groupings within THE ETHIOPIAN famine continues to grab the headlines. But behind the starvation lies Africa's longest struggle for national independence. PAUL HIGHFIELD looks at the roots of Eritrea's fight which, commentators state, were liquidated the respective fronts; EPLF has transform the söcial structure, sweep away old barriers and alter political consciousness. The ELF has in the main conserved traditional social and political patterns.
Civil war In spite of the ELF declaring civil war on the EPLF, the two fronts at various stages moved slowly towards and by 1977-78 over 80 per cent of the ter ritory was under trirea forces. The EPLF offered o arrange a cease fire if a free referen dum were held to decide Eritrea's furSince 1974 the Ethiopians had been under a new military regime, the Derg; they were now led by Colonel Mengistu and heavily supported by the Soviet Union, East Germany, and to a lesser extent Cuba (which had previously supported in principle the BELOW: mass exodus of Eritreans Eritrean cause). Mengistu refused to listen and launched a major oftensive in 1979 The USSR has used the region to experiment with horrific including cluster bombs, bombs, napalm, Ethiopian specialist Were it not for USSR support, the TONILCON gained full liberation.
started dealing separately with the Derg, whilst simultaneously attacking EPLF positions, land reform programme. Various at tempts at negotiated settlements failed, Operation Red 100,000 troops, to try and eradicate the Eritreans. It failed. spite of Soviet military officers in the field and the best Soviet weapons. 1982 the EPLF had pushed back the ELF into the them leaving it the only with South Yemen Derg, the Eritreans The support the Eritreans have received at different periods is largely the result of whether or not the counconcerned supports Ethiopia rather than any full-hearted suppor for Eritrean self-determination. The US and Britain, want a stable, unified Ethiopian regime for strategic and security reasons. Now that the USSR has use of the two Eritrean ports of Assab and Massawa for its navy, and thus a route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, so does the Soviet Union.
Until 1975, the PLO, Libya and backed the ELF, but then switched their support to the whilst Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states continued to back Indeed, the Morning Star in its 5 November editorial goes so far as to state that the Eritrean cause is reactionary largely because of the sources of its support. This is plainly absurd.