Eritrea, Africa's Longest War

Description

In Eritrea, beside the Red Sea, Africa’s longest war is in its twenty-first year. Thousands of military casualties have been suffered by both sides in the conflict: the Eritrean liberation fronts and the armed forces first of Haile Selassie and now of Ethiopia’s Marxist government. Over half a million people have become refugees or been displaced in Eritrea and Sudan. Eritrea was created as a political unit when the Italians established a colony there at the end of the 19th century. After World War 2, the United Nations declared the colony an ‘autonomous unit’ within the Ethiopian Empire. The autonomy was subverted and Eritrea became a province of the Empire. In the early 1960s the Eritreans took up arms and after gaining control of the countryside captured several big towns in 1976. David Pool shows how Eritrea has always been a victim of more powerful states. Ottoman, Egyptian, Italian, British and Ethiopian armies have marched across Eritrea’s soil. In the 1950s and 1960s, the USA supported the feudal regime. Since the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia, the Soviet Union has provided arms, advisors and political backing, enabling the Ethiopians to retake the towns in 1978. Neither side now seems capable of military victory. The liberation fronts are committed to self-determination. The Ethiopian government remains committed to a military solution. The Eritrean people continue to suffer.