An African war over 'nothing'; Puzzling conflict over land pits
determined Eritrea against neighboring Ethiopia
George Bloch; SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
TSORONA, Eritrea - "We are paying for our nationhood with our sacrifices
and our martyrdom," said Hussein Mohammed Suraj, a 24-year-old Eritrean
soldier on the Tsorona front. "This is a glory. We do not call it death."
His sentiment is common among the 250,000 Eritrean troops dug in along the
frontier with Ethiopia. But little more than a football field away, their
opponents may be about to test them with a new offensive.
Eritrea and Ethiopia are entangled in a war over a handful of contested
territorial enclaves. The conflict is one of the world's most difficult to
explain.
Their dispute - which both agree is not worth a war to resolve - has
resisted every attempt at mediation, and has become a test of wills
between Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi.
The stakes are highest for Eritrea, a poor nation of 3.5 million people
bordering the Red Sea that has to support 250,000 people displaced by the
fighting and an additional 60,000 Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia.
The war is biting deeply into the government's coffers. In desperation,
the government has turned to Eritreans abroad, whom it compels to pay as
much as 10 percent of their income to support the war effort.
ERITREA REMAINS DETERMINED
Vastly outnumbered by the armies of its former lead trade partner,
Eritrea's determination to resist remains inexplicable for many.
"International commentators have gleefully remarked that the war is about
nothing," said East African expert Gilbert Khadiagala of the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies. "But that is not true. Borders
are important for states like Eritrea, trying to establish their political
identities."
Independent since 1994, Eritrea has proved to be a difficult neighbor. The
presence of Sudan-backed Islamic guerillas in the north of the country
prompted Mr. Isaias to vow to overthrow the Khartoum government of Lt.
Gen. Omar Bashir in 1995.
Territorial disputes, meanwhile, sparked armed confrontation with Djibouti
in 1996, and with Yemen over several remote islands in the Red Sea in
1995-96.
But these conflicts are dwarfed by the war with Ethiopia. Largely in
defense of territory seized at the war's outset, Eritrean troops have
fought off human waves of poorly trained Ethiopian troops for days at a
time.
Estimates of the total number killed so far, while uncertain, hover around
50,000.
"They are stupid because they think they are 60 million and we are only 3
million ," said Aman Ahmed, 21, an Eritrean machine-gunner.
RECRUITING BY PRESS GANGS
Desperate for troops, however, Eritrea has largely used up its own
reserves of manpower. Military police press gangs are ubiquitous in
Asmara, the capital, and exit visas are no longer available for men under
age 40.
"There is not much they can do," said a Western diplomat in Eritrea,
"except wait for the next attack."
Ironically, the two warring national leaders had once been close friends.
With Eritrea a part of Ethiopia since 1952, Mr. Isaias and Mr. Meles had
been allied guerilla commanders in the struggle to overthrow the dictator
Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
Eritrea, a province of Ethiopia for most of the 20th century, declared its
independence in 1993 and the two countries separated amicably.
Determined to pursue responsible development policies and fight
corruption, the two were hailed by President Clinton as exemplars of a
"new generation" of African leaders during his landmark 1998 tour of the
continent.
But even as the two basked in the glow of this international prestige, a
series of disputes emerged to poison their friendship.
"There was an intentional unwillingness to build a relationship on
institutions rather than personalities," said Terry Lyons, a
conflict-mediation specialist at George Mason University. "Whenever anyone
pointed this out, the response was, 'Oh, Isaias and Meles call each other
on the phone every week.' "
COLONIAL FRONTIER AT ISSUE
Eritrea and Ethiopia - then called Abyssinia - had been Italian
possessions from 1890 to 1942. Foremost among their present disputes is
the exact demarcation of the vaguely defined Eritrean colonial frontier.
Confident that their differences could be easily resolved, the two
governments neglected to do so.
Meanwhile, a number of other issues emerged to undermine their friendship.
Most contentious were the monetary and trade disputes stemming from their
separation. As a former province, Eritrea profited from its privileged
position in the Ethiopian market with policies like advantageous exchange
rates intended to attract hard currency.
Convinced that this was happening at its expense, Ethiopia sought to
heighten the economic barriers that separated them. For instance, when
Eritrea launched its own currency - the nakfa - in November 1997, Ethiopia
demanded that cross-border transactions henceforth be carried out in
scarce dollars.
Similarly, their divergent political efforts to overcome ethnic conflict
fanned security fears in the two capitals.
Under Mr. Meles, Ethiopia fashioned itself into a noisy federation of
ethnic states, while Eritrea created a tightly controlled one-party system
that forbade ethnic political organizations.
A 1998 CLASH NEAR BADME
Tensions between the two neighbors undermined the trust they had in one
another so much that the smallest incident could spark a serious crisis.
The inevitable finally occurred on May 6, 1998, when an Eritrean patrol
clashed with Ethiopian militiamen near the disputed town of Badme.
Angered by the deaths of four of its troops in this incident, Eritrea
occupied the district on May 12. Since then, the war has spiraled
inexorably out of control.
An initial flurry of air attacks was stopped by personal phone calls from
Mr. Clinton to the leaders of both countries on June 14. But poor pilot
training had already resulted in disaster when an Eritrean aircraft
accidentally struck a school in Mekelle on June 5, killing 44 children and
injuring many more.
"Blood begets blood," said a Western diplomat in Asmara quoted in
Britain's Guardian newspaper at the time.
After six months spent re-arming, Ethiopia broke the calm in February 1999
with an offensive to retake Badme.
Startled, Mr. Isaias hastened to announce his acceptance of a peace plan
from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that he had previously
resisted.
Formulated in the war's early days by a team of U.S. and Rwandan diplomats
and subsequently adopted by the OAU, the plan calls for the return of all
seized territories prior to a final border demarcation.
ETHIOPIA ON THE OFFENSIVE
Riding the momentum of its success at Badme, Ethiopia continued the
offensive with an attack in March last year near the sleepy town of
Tsorona - which, while not in disputed territory, lay along the easiest
route to Asmara.
Aware that retreat could mean defeat in the war, the Eritreans resisted
three days of attacks, killing thousands.
Now Ethiopia is the party dragging its feet. It refuses to accept
technical arrangements for the implementation of the OAU plan because of
language it says rewards Eritrean aggression.
"This is a completely unpredictable government in Eritrea," said Berhane
Gebre Christos, the Ethiopian ambassador to the United States. "Eritrea
cannot commit aggression and get away with it. Eritrea has to leave
Ethiopian territory. And then if it has claims, it has deal with them
through peaceful, legal means."
Meanwhile, the conflict seems set to continue.
GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) An Eritrean soldier positions his machine-gun
toward the Ethiopian border near Tsorona. The two neighbors on the Horn of
Africa were once friendly.; B) Thousands of Eritrean men, such as this
soldier on the front lines, are being pressed into military service as
their country wages war against Ethiopia over disputed territory., Both By
Eros Hoagland/Special to The Washington Times ; Map (color), SEASON OF
WAR, By The Washington Times