The conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, virtually ignored by the national media, threatens to overturn one of the most successful liberation struggles.
Following a thirty-year guerrilla war, in 1993 the people of Eritrea voted, by a stunning 98.8 per cent vote, for independence from Ethiopia.
Two years earlier, an alliance between the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigre People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had overthrown the hated Mengistu regime in Ethiopia. Now these erstwhile allies are involved in a bitter military and diplomatic battle.
The conflict, which has lead to heavy fighting near the Red Sea port of Assab and Ethiopian air raids on the Eritrean capital, Asmara, is ostensibly a border dispute. Each side accuses the other of occupying several small disputed border areas, and disagrees about the interpretation of a UN ceasefire proposal.
However, the background to this war is far more significant, revolving around the legacy of the 19th century European carve-up of Africa, and the impact of the immiseration of the third world on these two impoverished countries.
Ethiopia was the only African country never colonised by Europe. An Italian attempt to occupy the country was defeated in 1895, while Mussolini’s annexation lasted only five years. Indeed, the Amhara rulers of the Abyssinian heartland used the period of the European "scramble for Africa" to carve out their own mini-empire, subjecting Tigrean, Oromo, Somali and other peoples.
Eritrea, which had been an Italian colony, was occupied by Britain in 1941.
In 1952, the UN made it an Ethiopian protectorate; by 1962, Haile Selassie had broken all of his commitments to regional autonomy, and fully absorbed Eritrea into the Ethiopian state.
Guerrilla war
The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), established in Cairo in 1958, launched a guerrilla war for independence. The EPLF was established as a Marxist split from the ELF in 1970, and soon became the dominant force in the liberation struggle.
In addition to a military struggle, the EPLF began to create the institutions of civil rule: in 1983, it claimed to have set up seven hospitals and over 100 secondary schools. It was also notable for the prominent rôle of women in its ranks - it has been estimated that one-third of EPLF fighters were women.
In Ethiopia, Haile Selassie was overthrown by the army in 1974. Within a short period, the pro-Soviet Mengistu Haile Mariam had assumed power, and Russian support – previously given to Eritreans (and Somalia) – switched to its new ally in Addis Ababa.
The arbitrary and brutal character of the Mengistu regime, its constant purges of opponents, and its continuing wars against the subject peoples of Ethiopia, led to the growth of domestic guerrilla struggles.
The most important of these was led by the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front, set up in the north-west of the country in 1976. The TPLF, which eventually formed an alliance with the EPLF, occupied Addis Ababa and drove out Mengistu in 1991.
Its leader, Meles Zenawi, became president of Ethiopia.
The new Ethiopian regime recognised Eritrean autonomy, and eventual independence. The alliance between the states was based on ideological agreement, common interest, and the close ethnic ties between the peoples (Zenawi’s mother is Eritrean, while the mother of Eritrean president Issaias Afewerki is Tigrean). However, this closeness masked diverging interests.
With Eritrean independence, Ethiopia had lost its outlet to the sea, while Eritrea, almost the poorest country in the world, depended on food from Ethiopia.
The two states shared a common currency until last year, when Eritrea issued its new nakfa. In response, Ethiopia tripled the price of maize exports to Eritrea. There were also disputes about harbour charges, which resulted in Ethiopia switching most of its export trade to neighbouring Djibouti.
Continuing unrest inside Ethiopia also lies behind the latest conflict.
Ethnic disputes continue, though at a much lower level than under the Haile Selassie and Mengistu regimes. The dominant Tigreans, like the Amhara, are a minority within Ethiopia (the largest community, the Oromo, form some 40% of the population but have never been politically or economically powerful).
According to Australian academic James Thompson, writing in Green Left Weekly, opponents of Zenawi within the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the successor to the TPLF, are exploiting Ethiopian and Tigrean nationalism, and opposition to Eritrean independence, in order to weaken Zenawi’s position.
This is a war in which socialists should not take sides. We must call for an immediate end to the fighting, and insist that issues at dispute between these two states led by successful national liberation movements should be resolved by peaceful means. We must oppose any foreign intervention.
Pressure
The US government is reported to be putting pressure on Eritrea to accept Ethiopian demands, while Sudan, under an Islamic fundamentalist regime, is interested in destabilising both of these avowedly secular regimes.
In addition, we must continue to call for an end to the burden of debt, under which Ethiopia in particular suffers. If this war escalates, all the people in the Horn of Africa will suffer; the only beneficiaries will be western arms traders and other exploiters, and local reactionaries.