Lasting Peace Remains Elusive

The Eritrea-Ethiopia war--one of the world’s largest and deadliest in a particularly bloody decade--may now be sputtering to a halt. But fallout from the conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in only three weeks, will make it difficult to translate this pause into a lasting peace.

The Clinton administration’s early indecisiveness when fighting erupted on May 12 for the third time in two years did little to curb the intensity of the combat, which saw more than a quarter of a million heavily armed Ethiopian troops throw themselves at the less numerous Eritreans. Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s sophisticated air force bombed one of Eritrea’s ports as well as its capital.

It is time now for aggressive and sustained action to promote a durable--and fair--peace.

An Eritrean retreat last week from territory Ethiopia is claiming--the ostensible pretext for the outbreak of war--appeared to signal an end to the fighting. Now that Ethiopia has confirmed the withdrawal and announced the start of its own pullback, there is hope for a halt to the carnage. Yet the underlying conflict between these proud and prickly nations is far from resolved. Even a formal cease-fire is unlikely to bring stability to the volatile area, as other forces are in play that could keep the confrontation alive and set the stage for future fighting.

Despite a torrent of words about conflicting border claims, this war is in essence a continuation of the contest over control of Eritrea, a former Italian colony, and its valuable seacoast, which landlocked Ethiopia annexed in 1962. The Eritreans won their independence only seven years ago after a bitter, 30-year battle against successive U.S.- and Soviet-backed Ethiopian regimes. In the mid-1980s, war and drought in the region caused one of the worst famines ever seen in Africa.

Today, Ethiopia’s goal appears not to be the formal reconquest of Eritrea--a prolonged occupation would prove impossible--but the reduction of it to a vassal state and the securing of Ethiopia’s unfettered access to the Red Sea. Ethiopia’s invasion, coming as it did just before the onset of the summer rains, will severely curtail this year’s harvest, leaving hundreds of thousands of Eritreans at risk of starvation in the coming year.

After Ethiopia gained the upper hand militarily last week, its army pressed on in what its leaders described as an attempt to cripple Eritrea’s ability to retaliate in the future. Yet Eritrea’s carefully orchestrated withdrawals allowed it to resume offensive actions this week using small, guerrilla-style units across much of the contested country.

This week, Ethiopian field commanders started turning over control of occupied territory to Eritrean opposition groups they had earlier groomed for the role of surrogates. Meanwhile, as indirect talks got underway in Algiers, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi suggested that peace would come more easily with a change in government in Eritrea. This suggests darker motives for the Ethiopian invasion and means that a highly volatile situation easily could draw all factions into further fighting.

As the Ethiopians and Eritreans begin to hash out their differences under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity, they need first to accept the principle that military might cannot be the basis for resolving outstanding disputes. The U.S., the only country with leverage over both combatants, needs to place its full weight behind this basic tenet, threatening immediate and credible reprisals if violated.

Ethiopia now must be pressured to stop all offensive actions, not only by its forces but also by its Eritrean proxies, and to pull back its army to its borders. This would also give international aid agencies the opportunity to reach an estimated half a million civilian war victims who face a growing threat of famine because of the combined effects of war and persistent drought.

With such highly charged forces unleashed and so many lasting consequences on the horizon, it is urgent that international pressure be aimed not only at silencing the guns but on creating a situation where full disengagement takes place and long-festering disputes are resolved without one side or the other gaining from the mind-boggling bloodshed of these terrible three weeks.

Both sides need to disengage their forces while border claims are adjudicated by outside experts and a neutral third party is placed between them. There is no other way to settle this dispute that will not lead to renewed fighting.

The longer the conflict continues, the more likely it is that other regional conflicts will keep the region off-balance and open the door to a resumption of fighting once the pressure is off.