The following text is excerpted from a 4-page
briefing paper published today by the
Foreign Policy in Focus project:
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/index.html

Please send any comments or questions to: ircalb@swcp.com

*** WAR BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA ***
By Patrick Gilkes and Martin Plaut

(Excerpted from a new FPIF policy brief, posted at
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol5/v5n25eritethiop.html)

Even by the shocking standards of recent African conflicts, the war in
the Horn of Africa is truly appalling. As many as 100,000 people have
been killed in the intermittent, but savage fighting; up to one million
people have been driven into exile or internal displacement; hundreds of
millions of dollars have been diverted from development into arms
procurement.

The recent conflict has been widely regarded to be concerning slices of
disputed land along the thousand-kilometer-long border created, but
never properly demarcated, over a century ago by the Ethiopian Empire
and Italy. The war's origins can also be traced back to the differences
between the Eritrean and Ethiopian leadership that emerged in the 1980s.
Although both drew support from the same ethnic group, from similar
peasant societies, and from Marxist ideology, they differed in their
objectives. The EPLF was determined that Eritrea would be liberated from
Ethiopian rule as a single, united state, despite its being composed of
nine linguistic groups and two major religions--Islam and Christianity.
The TPLF, in contrast, fought for the rights of the Tigrayan people, and
its first manifesto called for an independent Tigrayan state. It was
with some reluctance that the TPLF was persuaded to fight for the
overthrow of the Ethiopian regime.

When both movements took power in 1991, they pursued divergent agendas
on the national question. The Eritreans, who legitimized their
independence with a 1993 referendum, retained the EPLF's unitary
perspective, attempting to balance ethnic, religious, and linguistic
differences. The Tigrayans, intent on bolstering Tigrayan nationalism,
developed a federal structure for the Ethiopian State founded on
ethnicity. Provincial boundaries were redrawn to reflect ethnic
divisions.

Soon the two movements' aims collided. The EPLF began a policy of rapid
economic growth, and the enterprises they established came into direct
competition with developments across the border. In 1997, Eritrea issued
its own currency, and this disrupted trade with Ethiopia.
Internationally, Eritrea asserted its national identity so forcefully
that it soon had diplomatic incidents and military confrontations with
neighboring Sudan, Djibouti, and Yemen. To the Tigrayans, now in power
in Ethiopia, as to Eritrea's other neighbors, Asmara appeared arrogant,
assertive, and uncooperative.

The Eritreans came to regard the TPLF in much the same light. Tigrayan
hard-liners first expanded the borders of their home province to
incorporate areas that were traditionally inhabited by other ethnic
groups within Ethiopia, particularly the Amhara. Then, in 1997, they
published a map of Ethiopia that incorporated large sections of Eritrea
within Tigray.

A border commission between the two countries, established in November
1997, met only once and had made no progress before the conflict
erupted. Tragically, when fighting began in May 1998 with the killing of
several Eritreans, an Eritrean delegation was in Addis Ababa for the
commission's second meeting. When news reached Asmara, the Eritrean
authorities reacted by sending heavily armed reinforcements to the flash
point. Despite phone calls between the two leaders, the crisis could not
be resolved. As the fighting escalated, Eritrea took over three areas of
previously Ethiopian-administered territory.

In February 1999, Ethiopia seized back the border area of Badme, setting
off five months of fierce fighting. In May 2000, following the breakdown
of talks, Ethiopia launched a series of attacks to recover the rest of
the areas seized in 1998. In June 2000, under pressure from the U.S. and
the international community, both sides reluctantly accepted
Organization of African Unity (OAU) peace proposals. These provide for a
25-kilometer-wide security zone to facilitate Eritrean withdrawal from
the previous border, the insertion of a UN force, and the demarcation of
the border.

The U.S. almost completely failed to understand the concerns of either
Eritrea or Ethiopia and made little attempt to try. Rather, U.S. policy
in the Horn of Africa, since Eritrean independence in 1993, has been
built around two specific points. One is the desirability of keeping the
Eritrean coastline out of Arab hands in order to satisfy Israeli
concerns over Arab control of the Red Sea. Recently, the U.S. has been
annoyed by Eritrean efforts to acquire Libyan support and by its
(failed) efforts to join the Arab League. Whether or not Libya has "come
in from the cold," the U.S. remains reluctant to accept any role for it
in northeast Africa.

The second element of U.S. policy has been the effort to isolate,
contain, and if possible overthrow the National Islamic Front (NIF)
government in Khartoum. Indeed, as soon as Washington had defined Sudan
as a terrorist state, U.S. regional policy concentrated on orchestrating
an anti-Sudan coalition of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda, all three of
which had their own reasons for the containment of Sudan. This policy
collapsed when Eritrea and Ethiopia went to war, and each began bidding
for Sudanese support. However, State Department policymakers remain
firmly convinced of the primary need to contain Sudan. All U.S. efforts
at facilitating mediation between Ethiopia and Eritrea have to be seen
in this light.

No real effort has been made to produce new policy guidelines, even
after the 1999 political changes in Sudan, which limited the influence
of the more radical Islamic fundamentalists within the regime. U.S.
activities plausibly suggest drift, misconception, and a failure of
policy. Israeli interests in the Red Sea and concerns over Sudanese
"terrorism" may be policy issues in themselves, but they do not provide
any realistic basis for understanding the Ethiopian-Eritrean war, or the
regional concerns of Ethiopia and Eritrea, or even the wider issues,
including security, political, and humanitarian concerns.

Washington has also failed to understand the delicate relationship
between Ethiopia's controversial experiment in ethnic federalism and
Eritrea's need for both national assertion and national sovereignty with
clearly defined and indisputable borders. U.S. policies have taken no
notice of the divergence of Eritrean and Ethiopian approaches to
democracy, government, and state building, or to the inevitable
competition for hegemonic control within the former Ethiopian polity.

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