In War-Torn Eritrea, Rebels Gain on an Ethiopian Regime Sustained by U.S. Aid

A few weeks ago I witnessed what may have been a turning point in the 27-year war for Eritrean independence--a war fought with growing intensity across the drought-stricken north of Ethiopia. As a result of what I saw and heard, then and afterwards, I also came to question U.S. policy for famine relief.

In a four-day battle, the guerrillas of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) destroyed three Ethiopian divisions around this garrison town in northern Eritrea, killing or capturing 18,000 soldiers, four Soviet officers, 50 tanks, 80 heavy guns, 200 trucks and immense quantities of ammunition and supplies. It was the most decisive victory for the rebels since they were forced to retreat from the towns of central Eritrea in 1978, following massive Soviet military intervention on the side of the Marxist Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

On the road to Afabet, the debris of war was everywhere: burned tanks and charred corpses; the smell of rotting flesh filled the air. At Ashirum pass we waited for hours while hundreds of young guerrillas cleared a path through the wreckage of an entire Ethiopian mechanized brigade, trapped and destroyed on the narrow road.

In the weeks since the Afabet battle in mid-March, the Ethiopian army abandoned all of northern and western Eritrea; to the south, in famine-ravaged Tigre province, Tigre guerrillas have also won decisive victories in recent weeks, leaving rebels in control of as much as 90% of the drought- and famine-stricken areas of northern Ethiopia.

These developments call into question the continuation of Western food-aid programs administered through the Ethiopian government. The government itself has forced the question by its announcement April 6 that it was withdrawing all foreign relief workers from Eritrea and Tigre, requesting foreign relief agencies to hand over their operations to a government commission.

The problem for Western famine-relief efforts is that the war and the famine in northern Ethiopia cannot be separated. The underlying cause of the famine is the war--particularly the tactics used by the Ethiopian government to suppress the rebels. Peasants’ food stocks are requisitioned and destroyed, their fields bombed and mined, their sons conscripted; or they flee to join the guerrillas and the land is not maintained, let alone improved.

For more than a decade the rebels have controlled most of the rural areas of Eritrea, where the famine victims live, but Western food aid continues to flow to the Ethiopian-controlled towns where much of it ends up on the black market or in government stores used to feed the military and their dependents. The EPLF has been unable to develop agricultural programs in the areas it controls because of the war, and peasants from rebel-held areas are afraid to go into the Ethiopian-controlled towns where they face arbitrary arrest, taxation, conscription and forced resettlement in southern Ethiopia.

Under such conditions many Eritreans choose to flee to the Sudan, where they live in refugee camps supported by the United Nations and Western relief agencies. Today as many as 700,000 Eritreans, out of a total population of more than 2 million (there has been no accurate census since 1947) live outside their country. Contrary to U.S. perceptions that most of these people are famine victims, however, they see themselves as the victims of war. In 14 months of work in a Sudan refugee camp, I never met an Eritrean who said he had come there because of famine--all cited “lack of security” or other war-related problems.

Clearly the war is the root of all the problems in Eritrea, including the famine, and the same is true for Tigre province to the south. As the liberation fronts in northern Ethiopia grow in strength, Americans must ask whether it really makes sense to continue to pour relief and economic development aid into the hands of Ethiopia’s Marxist government, which seems to rule by terrorizing its citizens and which has lost control over most of the population of its northern provinces.

What are the alternatives to this Stalinist-model police state and what kind of future do the Eritrean guerrillas envision if they win independence?

I visited the rebel-controlled area of Eritrea with these questions in mind. And I was surprised by what I found. In the rugged mountains of the Sahel, where the rebels have held out against eight massive Soviet-supported Ethiopian offensives since 1978, the EPLF is building a new nation. In contrast to the refugee camps where I had lived for the preceding year, the Eritreans in the Sahel were full of purpose, laughter and hope.

Instead of mouthing empty Marxist slogans, which I heard everywhere in Ethiopia, the EPLF is creating a society free from ethnic or religious discrimination (half of Eritrea is Muslim, the other half Christian). Men and women are treated equally--something unthinkable in traditional Eritrea. Everyone attends school; the educated teach the less-educated. After sixth grade the language of instruction is English, both to overcome Eritrea’s multilingual heritage and to “acquire modern technology and skills.” Modern technology is utilized efficiently, aid goes to the people it is intended to benefit with nothing wasted, the good of the community comes before individual desires.

Of course these ideals may only be sustainable in the current war situation, where everyone in the EPLF has committed his or her life to the cause of Eritrean independence. But the EPLF program for an independent Eritrea also reflects a mature political awareness.

The Marxist rhetoric of the EPLF’s early years is gone, along with the Ethiopian student movement that fostered it. In its place is a pragmatic commitment to democratic government and a mixed economy modeled on Western European social democracy. The one unchanged Eritrean ideal, however, is a commitment to creating an independent nation: Solutions such as “regional autonomy” are clearly unacceptable.

While most Americans have never heard of Eritrea, it was the United States, more than any other nation, that was responsible for federating this former Italian colony with Ethiopia after World War II. In order to maintain control of a U.S. strategic communications base in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, in 1952 the United States pressured its allies in the United Nations to vote to federate Eritrea with Haile Selassie’s Ethiopian Empire. As “rent” for this base we provided Ethiopia with the highest level of military aid given to any nation in sub-Saharan Africa.

After 1962, when Haile Selassie unilaterally annexed Eritrea and dismantled its autonomous institutions, much of this aid went to fight armed Eritrean rebels. U.S. aid to Ethiopia was withdrawn following the 1974 revolution which overthrew Haile Selassie; in the following two years the Eritreans, led by the EPLF, gained control of all Eritrea outside of Asmara and the seaports of Massawa and Assab. Just as independence seemed within reach, in 1978 the Soviet Union intervened on the side of Ethiopia’s new military government and the Eritreans were forced to withdraw into the northern mountains along the Sudanese border.

This history of superpower intervention makes the EPLF distrust both East and West, as well as the Arab nations that have sought to manipulate Eritrea’s Muslim population. The lack of external support has made the EPLF self-reliant--a definite virtue in today’s aid-dependent world. What little economic aid the EPLF receives--mostly from Western Europe--is used well. The camouflaged factories, hospitals and garages I saw in the valleys of the Sahel are among the most efficient in Africa. But self-reliance also means that as long as the Soviets support Ethiopia militarily, the EPLF must win on the battlefield--first to survive, then to attain its goal of independence. And as long as the war goes on, Eritreans and Ethiopians will suffer and die.

Is there anything the West can do to halt this cycle of violence? Clearly more arms will only increase the suffering. Certainly this is not our war and we should not get involved. Or are we already? Mixed among the crates of Soviet ammunition in the Ethiopian military stores at Afabet, I saw cases of food clearly marked “Gift of the People of the United States of America.”

There are no easy solutions to the Eritrean war, but it is time that Americans began to question U.S. policy in the region.