Eritrea-Ethiopia War

[NovaKart]

I was wondering what the causes were for the independence war of Eritrea. It looks like the Tigray and Amhara people have a lot in common and Tigray people are in high positions in the government and always have been. Was it just the influence of Italy during the colonial period or what? What were the causes of the war and the negative feeling in Eritrea towards being a part of Ethiopia?

 

[innonimatu]

Haven't paid much attention to that portion of the world, but I thought that religious differences were the excuse for it? Those religious differences are centuries old there, with Eritrea having been conquered by arabs coming from Egypt via Sudan, whyle the ethiopian highlands resisted.

 

[NovaKart]

According to statistics 63% of the population is Christian and 37% Muslim,so it seems doubtful that had much to do with it. From what I read on another forum, it seemed like Eritrea was treated very badly by the Ethiopian government, but now its government has made it like the North Korea of Africa. I'm going to Ethiopia tomorrow so I was interested to find out about it.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

I don't know much about this, but I seem to remember that in the 80s the Tigray and Amharic rebels were usually portrayed as separate armies. So in '91 Addis Ababa would have had to fight a war to take it back.

Perhaps the new Ethiopian leadership was just giddy with victory and feeling full of love for their neighbour after 30 years of savagery?

 

[Lord Baal]

I've made something of a habit of periodically checking on that region since I was in primary school, based almost solely on the fact that I bought a new atlas every year as a kid, and that region - as well as the Morocco/ Spanish Sahara area on the other side of Africa - tended to change from year-to-year. As a kid, I couldn't understand this, so I looked into it. No sources for any of this, I'm afraid, it's just what I've picked up from over a decade of casually viewing the events from a distance.

Eritrea is wealthier - or at least, it should be, based on the infrastructure and its access to sea-borne trade - than Ethiopia, and certain Eritrean elites latched onto some slight differences, which admittedly were exaggerated by the period of Italian colonial rule, to push for independence. That's really it, when it comes to the reasons for independence. Ethiopia didn't really treat Eritrea that badly, but it did use a lot of Eritrea's wealth to benefit the rest of the country. Obviously, as the wealthiest area of Ethiopia, Eritrea had a lot to lose from this. This is similar to Slovenia and Croatia were essentially paying for the development of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia. Now, granted, an Eritrean independence movement has existed since the period of colonial rule, and it hoped for independence rather than re-incorporation into Ethiopia at the end of WWII, but that movement largely died off until the Somalian invasion of Ethiopia brought a lot of local and regional issues to a head.

To achieve independence, the Eritrean elites ended up giving the military far more power than they should, and after the war the conservative elements of the army - primarily Muslim, but religion doesn't have nearly as much to do with the situation in Eritrea as people think - basically took over. They started by clamping down on a few basic liberties, such as freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, to maintain power, which is the usual despotic fare you'd expect from any country. Eventually, though, they really started to push this quasi-totalitarian agenda, probably because they were doing such a bad job of running the economy - not to mention getting their arses kicked by literally all of their neighbours, including Somalia, which doesn't even have a central government, in border disputes, most of which Eritrea started - that they needed to keep their people in line. If the economy had picked up, as it should have given Eritrea's position and potential wealth, they wouldn't have needed to resort to such draconian methods. Though how much the Orwellian vision of the Eritrean government is caused by the economic issues, and how much of it is the cause of the economic issues, is open for debate.

 

[innonimatu]

Oh, now I get the "North Korea of Africa" line. Thanks.

 

[Lord Baal]

Oh, now I get the "North Korea of Africa" line. Thanks.

Yeah, check the Wiki page on Eritrea out. They even have a list of "approved religions" for people to follow. If you follow any other religion you're committing a crime.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Yeah, I've thumbed through the Eritrea wiki entry before, and it is really a bizarre place.

North Korea of Africa totally fits.

 

[r16]

it also helped that the both sides had close relations from 1970s and 80s with the "Liberation Movement" types in the Soviet security establishment . Assuming they would have access to a Russia that would want to come back and the side that wasn't fast enough would suffer , both sides rapidly re-armed as far as they could and it appears both sides had "advisors" . And some fan fiction as well . Some splendid story of an Ethiopian female Su-27 pilot who discovers the Eritrean MiG-29 she's chasing is piloted by her flight instructor , an Ukranian who was advising the Ethiopians some months ago and they do have some chat over the radio , before shooting him down . Turns out her reported name -Aster- is not even encountered in Africa , or whatever .

 

[Masada]

Eritrea is awesome. If only because it managed to hold off a vastly superior Ethiopian army that had a colossal edge numerically and technologically by digging absolutely gigantic trench networks in the desert. There's a rumor that the whole 1999 conflict (which the article below talks about) was started because the Eritrean veterans of the first conflict thought the kids were getting soft and wanted to harden them up. From the little reading I've done, I would not be surprised if this was the case. The place is heavily militarized, a large chunk of the population served during the last war, and there's almost no opposition to the military running the show because a lot of people were soldiers and therefore profit - through pensions and access to patronage - from having the army run the show.

YOU know when you have reached the frontline by the musky smell of decomposition. A month after the battle, hundreds of Ethiopian corpses still lie unburied under the thorn trees, among the burnt-out tanks in front of the Eritrean trenches. “We have been too busy,” say the Eritreans, or “There are too many mines out there,” or even “The bodies are so many.”

The Eritreans claim to have killed 10,000 Ethiopians on this hot, dry plain in a battle that lasted for 60 hours between March 14th and March 16th. The Ethiopians attacked in waves of tanks and infantry on a four-kilometre (two-and-a-half-mile) front, crossing the Eritrean trenches. They were eventually repulsed in what must have been intense hand-to-hand fighting.

The Eritreans refuse, as always, to disclose their own casualty figures, claiming they were “very light”. But a nearby cemetery has more than 200 mounds of piled stones, and the Eritreans admit that these were not their only dead. Diplomats reckon that Eritrea has 180,000 soldiers at the front, and that 15,000-20,000 may have been killed. With a population of only 3.5m, Eritrea cannot afford heavy casualties or a long war of attrition against an enemy with nearly 20 times as many people.

Fighting began just under a year ago with a border clash at a disputed village, Badme, which the Eritreans seized. It stopped for six months as outsiders tried to make peace. But these initiatives failed and both sides used the pause to build up their armies. The war resumed in February when the Ethiopians launched a huge attack on Badme, forcing the Eritreans to retreat.

Both governments agree that the war, ostensibly over tiny disputed patches of land, is crazy. The Eritreans still hold some territory across the border at Bure and Zalambessa, but only for tactical reasons, they say. Ethiopia has demanded that they withdraw from these areas before talks can start. But this week, Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, agreed that a commitment to withdraw would do. Ethiopia, he said, would then declare a ceasefire.

The trouble is that the battle has become a trial of strength, firing nationalist fervour. After the defeat at Badme, Eritrean students went on strike, demanding to be sent to the front. Even so, the government is finding it hard to produce the troops to cover a 1,000km-border. Eritrean women are conscripted alongside men, and expected to fight if necessary. But, for the first time, the authorities are having to knock on doors to chase up draft dodgers.

The immediate result in Asmara, the capital, is a labour shortage. Businesses are being forced to close and there are fears that there may not be enough people to bring in the harvest later this year. Foreign investment has vanished. The Eritreans are used to a tough life—the country spent 30 years fighting for its independence from Ethiopia—but this war is stretching their resources to the limit, with military spending eating up about 20% of national income. Money has flowed out on weaponry, including six MiG-29 aircraft bought from Russia at an estimated $20m each. Two have already been lost.

Income has dropped because Ethiopia was Eritrea's largest export market. Revenue from the port at Assab, almost exclusively used by Ethiopia, has dried up. Eritrea has also had to house and feed 50,000 of its people deported by Ethiopia since the war started. Much of the war effort is financed by Eritreans living abroad who are anyhow expected to pay 2% of their income to the Eritrean government. Now they are being asked to contribute more. It is hoped that they will raise $400m this year.

Don't look at the figures, says President Issaias Afwerki, the man who led the Eritreans to their remarkable victory against the vast Soviet-backed army of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. “The human dimension is very important,” he says and points to the commitment and coherence of the Eritreans and what he sees as the inherent weakness of the Ethiopian government. Be that as it may, the fighting is not yet over. And that may be the real reason why the bodies at Tsorona have not been buried. If the Ethiopians attack again they will be forced to step over the corpses of their comrades to reach the Eritrean trenches.

http://www.economist.com/node/199150

 

[Tee Kay]

Haven't paid much attention to that portion of the world, but I thought that religious differences were the excuse for it? Those religious differences are centuries old there, with Eritrea having been conquered by arabs coming from Egypt via Sudan, whyle the ethiopian highlands resisted.

Both Ethiopia and the main Eritrean rebel force (and modern Eritrea) were/are Christian-dominated.

Eritrea is wealthier - or at least, it should be, based on the infrastructure and its access to sea-borne trade - than Ethiopia

Eritrea was in many ways Italy's Manchuria, except less successful (little natural resources + failed attempts at creating a large Italian settler population). And like Manchuria, it was systematically stripped of what industry it had by the Allies after the war (in this case, the British).

Ethiopia didn't really treat Eritrea that badly, but it did use a lot of Eritrea's wealth to benefit the rest of the country. Obviously, as the wealthiest area of Ethiopia, Eritrea had a lot to lose from this. This is similar to Slovenia and Croatia were essentially paying for the development of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia.

The SFRJ republics were self-governing, at least; Eritrea was not. Ethiopian rule over Eritrea began as a federal arrangement, then a protectorate arrangement, then outright annexation and suppression of any dissent (rest of Ethiopia got the same treatment, of course, but in Eritrea with its different history and a recent past of being autonomous it fuelled separatism)

after the war the conservative elements of the army - primarily Muslim, but religion doesn't have nearly as much to do with the situation in Eritrea as people think - basically took over.

The present dictatorship is in fact Christian-dominated, though as you said, religion is not the important factor here.

The Afewerki - Kim Il Sung comparison is pretty apt.