Independent at last
There can be no doubt about the popular support that exists for independence. In the referendum on self-determination of April 23-25, more than 90% voted in favour of an independent Eritrea. International observers, present during the poll, confirmed that voting had been fair.
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 this process, including the current general secretary of the EPLE, Issayas Afewerki.
These militants were largely Christian and were raised in the pro-Soviet school of
Marxism.
The Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF), which led the struggle for independence, is in charge of the government in Asmara and clearly has an enormous reserve of support. FRANÇOIS CAZALS — May 24, 1993
T HE referendum was the culmi-
nating point of one of the longest armed national liberation struggles in Africa. But Eritrean independence, officially proclaimed during ceremonies on May 24, has been a reality since the occupation of the Eritrean capital Asmara, in May 1991, by EPLF forces, at the same time that the regime of President Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in Ethiopia.
The independence of Eritrea closes a previously incomplete chapter of decolonisation in the region. A former Italian colony, dating from the time that Africa was divided up between the various colonial powers, Eritrea was taken from the Italians in 1941 after their defeat at the hands of the British in East Africa.
Britain held onto the territory until 1952. While the Western powers managed to come to an agreement on the fate of the other former Italian colonies in the region
— giving Libya and Somalia their independence — they couldn't do so for Eritrea, whose strategic position made it an object of great inter-imperialist wrangling. The American government set up a radio station near Asmara with the permission of the British, a station which later became the famous Kagnew listening station.
To find an acceptable solution for the big Western powers, the question of Eritrea's status was brought before the United Nations. But it was Washington's views which prevailed. The United States got along well with Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia, to which it gave military aid. They presented a motion before the UN to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia, a resolution passed in 1952. This was nothing more than the placing of Eritrea under Ethiopian tutelage with the support of the Americans. And in 1962, Haile Selassie unilaterally violated the UN resolution by carrying out an annexation of Eritrea, which he made Ethiopia's fourteenth province. In exchange for their diplomatic role in the annexation, the United States is given its listening station near Asmara.
The birth of the Eritrean liberation movement and the beginning of the armed struggle against Ethiopian domination date from the time of the annexation. The armed struggle broke out in the west of the country in 1961 under the leadership of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
This movement had been created earlier that year in Cairo by young Muslims who had emerged from the traditional political parties. The religious and ethnic diversity of Eritrea as well as its social stratification — relatively developed for the region at that time — formed the bases upon which the conflicts which soon struck nationalist
The leaders of the ELF, who found allies and friends in the Arab governments of the region, are largely Muslim. The religious character of the ELF developed to such a point that it became an obstacle to its growth among the Christian population in the central plains, the region with the greatest industrial potential. At the same time, the highly hierarchical internal regime of the ELF heightened the internal crisis, leading to a split into a number of rival fac-
After a series of twists and turns in the situation, the Popular Forces for the Liberation of Eritrea (PFLE) was born in 1972, which then gave birth to the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), now in power in Asmara.
This evolution reflected a political radicalisation of the nationalist movement. Many young ELF militants who studied in Beijing and Havana played a central role in
When this generation arrived at the head of the Eritrean national movement, the struggle for independence took on its own dynamics and broke from the previous ELF pattern of being manipulated by its Arab sponsors.
For the ELF, independence had to have a democratic and anti-feudal character. EPLF militants struck roots in the heart of the Eritrean population, the degree of their implantation changing from region to region, by seeking to always take up certain of the people's elementary social needs — the building of schools and rural hospitals. Propaganda in favour of agrarian reform seems to have played a key role in the ELF's subsequent preponderance over the rival factions of the ELF.
But the originality of the Eritrean national movement has to do with the religious and ethnic differences of Eritrean society itself. To begin with, this was the source of a fierce competition between the ELF and the ELF which spanned several years and even produced armed confrontations.
This 'war within the war' lasted 11 years, and the ELF took the military and political upper hand in the early 1980s. Several Arab states then tried to continue their support to certain factions of the ELF, but this only involved limited activities in the diaspora and in certain Eritrean refugee camps in Sudan. The Ethiopian authorities tried on several occasions to take advantage of these divisions; nevertheless, it was the Eritrean armed struggle which ended up undermining several governments in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
As such, the 1974 Ethiopian democratic revolution which overthrew the feudal regime of Emperor Haile Salassie was sparked by a mutiny of Ethiopian troops stationed in Asmara. However, the new military team around President Mengistu, in power after 1974, carried on the expansionist ideology of the previous regime.
The refusal of the Eritreans' (as well as the Tigreans' and the Oromo's) right to self-determination is a central component of the imperial ideology which characterises the nationalism of the Amhara elite, then in power in Addis Ababa.
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ERITREA
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 had maintained an active presence in the rural zones of the west of the country, a region with a Muslim majority.
At the same time, the EPLF helped the Ethiopian rebellion against the Mengistu regime in Tigre, a province neighbouring Eritrea. The EPLF collaborated with the
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Tigrean People's Liberation Front (TPLF) — previously pro-Albanian and now defenders of a neo-liberal orientation - which has been in power in Addis Ababa since May 1991.
In 1989, the command of the second Ethiopian army, surrounded for months in Asmara by the EPLF, wanted to negotiate a separate peace with the Eritrean rebels.
ETHIOPIA
It is very revealing that the reflex of the insurrectional forces of 1974 was to release Ethiopian prisoners from the jails while refusing to do the same for the imprisoned Eritrean nationalists. Even before the dictatorial Bonapartist regime of President Mengistu clearly demonstrated its contempt for the Ethiopian masses, its reactionary character in relation to the aspirations of the Eritrean people was clear enough.
As a consequence, Eritrean fighters decided to continue their armed struggle. The attitude of the Mengistu regime on the Eritrean question was a decisive test of its true nature, which was confirmed in the following years.
The Somalia-Ethiopia war of 1977 provoked a diplomatic realignment of the superpowers in the Horn of Africa — a realignment which heightened the international isolation of Eritrean nationalists.
Before 1977, they had been supported by the USSR and Cuba, as had been the supposedly "socialist" Somalian dictator Siad Barre. But when Somalia attacked Ethiopia to capture the Ogaden region, Washington supported Somalia whereas the USSR supported Ethiopia.
Soviet experts were expelled from Somalia, and replaced by US Marines who set up a base at Berbera. The Eastern Bloc provided elite units, officers and arms to the Ethiopian president in his war against Siad Barre. But once the war in Ogaden was over, Mengistu turned his forces against Eritrean independence forces. Indeed, the Eritreans had made headway, and by October 1977 they had liberated a large part of their country, including the main cities. All that remained was the capital and four other
The Ethiopian army was on the verge of defeat. In the beginning of 1978, the EPLF controlled 85% of the countryside, encircled 28
Dribou! the Ethiopian garrisons and controlled the road between Asmara and the port of Massawa. But the first major military offensive of the EPLF in 1977-78 was halted at Massawa with the massive arrival of arms and the involvement of Soviet military advisers. Soviet aid prevented Eritrean victory.
For their part, the Cubans, while taking their distance from the EPLE's struggle, refused to participate in battles against the Eritreans in the north. Havana felt that it was an internal Ethiopian matter. But the Cuban press continued to praise Mengistu, including for his military "successes" in Eritrea; and the Cuban military continued its aid to the Ethiopian army on the southern
The EPLF was forced to retreat. Its soldiers left newly occupied regions and dug in their heels in regions long under their control, in the west and north of the country. Lined up along the Sudanese border, they resisted several Ethiopian military offensives, including Operation Red Star, personally led by Mengistu himself in 1988
The Ethiopian peasantry, who in large measure make up Mengistu's army, paid a high price for the blindness of their leaders and their Soviet allies. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian soldiers, often lacking motivation and unprepared, perished in Eritrea. According to Ethiopian Army figures, between 150 and 200 thousand troops were lost from 1978 to 1984. Clearly, the Eritrean people also paid heavily for this murderous
But successive Ethiopian offensives did not manage to crush the Eritrean resistance. Soon the EPLF regained the initiative and went on the offensive, and in 1982-83 recaptured lost territory. The Eritrean side was bolstered by the fact that the Eritrean civil war came to a definite end in 1981 when the EPLF dispersed ELF forces who
This, in any case, was the accusation made by Mengistu when he tried and then executed 12 superior officers. This decapitation of a section of the Ethiopian military command contributed greatly to Mengistu's isolation even within the country's military hierarchy, his only source of support
After the collapse of the Mengistu regime in May 1991, the new Ethiopian government, made up of former comrades in arms of the ELF, understood that the only way to put an end to the war in Eritrea was to accept the inevitability of independence, even if this meant that Ethiopia would lose its coastal territory.
The new authorities in Addis Ababa really had no other choice, given the streng th of the Eritrean army which had occupied the whole of Eritrea. The leadership of the ELF set up a provisional government in Asmara and new trade agreements were made with the new Ethiopian government — in order to ensure the passage of Ethiopian merchandise through the Eritrean port of Assab and to determine the conditions of Ethiopia's use of the refinery at Assab.
The provisional Eritrean government is totally dominated by the EPLF, whose leaders have maintained their rather ascetic living habits and a secret and rigid internal functioning, conditioned by their military traditions. Ministers are not paid and don't enjoy any great comforts. Their soldiers have not yet been demobilized, and are working on reconstruction projects. Signs of social differentiation within the leadership of the EPLF have not yet appeared
The country is small and does not have any great resources apart from oil, for which there is an ongoing search in the Red Sea. The greater part of the Eritrean industrial apparatus, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, has since disappeared - dismantled and taken back to Ethiopia or destroyed during the war. There will be great difficul ty in sparking an economic revival, and the reintegration of hundreds of thousands of exiles will be a formidable task. Even if the new goverment does not face any embargo
International Viewpoint #246 June 1993 from Western countries, it has already fallen prey to the economic and financial intervention of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The first victorious national liberation struggle since the fall of the Berlin Wall, independent Eritrea must face a new international situation characterised by the end of the East-West conflict. Just ten years ago, given the prevailing circumstances of the time, the emergence of the new Eritrean state would have quickly become an international issue given its strategic position on the Red Sea.
Today, the event has almost passed unnoticed. However, the stakes of Eritrean independence are not negligible and go well beyond the borders of this new small African state. To be sure, Eritrean independence the EPLF's militarist tradition and its approach to internal debate have not prepared its leadership to manage a pluralistic political conversion to economic liberalism does not imply an immediate abanpast anti-democratic practices. In this area, their ability to establish good rela-
Issayas Afewerki will not alter the global relationship of forces, but it is going to provoke a redistribution of diplomatic cards in the region. This is due not only to the country's location in the Horn of Africa, where the EPLF's army of 100 thousand men makes it one of the most powerful military forces in the region - but also due to its relationship with the Arab world.
On the diplomatic level, the leadership of the EPLF is ready to pursue a policy of 'realpolitik' which would reassure Washington. It is for this reason that Asmara has already responded positively to Israel's diplomatic advances — while at the same time maintaining good relations with
The diplomatic and economic rapprochement between Tel Aviv and Asmara has greatly displeased Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, which has recently expelled EPLF representatives. And this in spite of the fact that the Eritreans have taken care to announce that they will not undertake any military cooperation with Israel nor allow any foreign bases onto their soil.
Eritrea, like Ethiopia, is a country inhabited by Christians — a religious community on which Israel hopes to rely in its struggle to ensure that "the Red Sea does not become an Arab lake". The same geostrategic reasons which led Israel to aid Mengistu's Ethiopian regime now propel its leaders into discussions with the majority Christian leaders of the EPLF.
Internally, the EPLF undeniably enjoys popular support. Most of the ELF factions have come around to support it, except one which is active in the Eritrean diaspora in Europe. The small fundamentalist group, the Eritrean Jihad, only has roots among certain refugees in Sudan and has not yet managed to make any significant inroads into the Muslim populations in the west of the country.
Nevertheless, there is reason to fear that peoples along the Red Sea coast will be a decisive test.
For the moment, Asmara's leaders have promised multi-partyism and democratic elections. But the president of the provisional government, Issayas Afewerki, has said that this will not be for several years. Yet between now and then important debates on questions of orientation — such as agrarian reform, industrial development, privatisation and regional political representation -merit the greatest possible freedom of preliminary discussion.
The major part of the stakes in independent Eritrea are in the socio-economic field. The EPLF leadership is aware of this and has refused, for the moment, to implement the wish list of the United States in the area of economic reforms - even though Washington conditioned its aid on the creation of a liberal regime for the private sector and foreign investors.
While accepting the capitalist model, the EPLF leaders want to give the state some kind of economic role and hope to proceed cautiously with the question of property. A total liberalisation of the economy would have deep-going social repercussions, leading particularly to the concentration of the best lands and companies in the hands of the wealthiest layers — which probably means Christians from the diaspora who have accumulated their capital abroad
The political cost of such an orientation for the EPLF would be very high. The Muslim populations in the west of the country, who in the past were the base of Eritrean movements opposed to the EPLF, would react quickly to anything which appeared to be creating a 'new bourgeoisie' in the highlands. And certain political groups hostile to the EPLF are on the lookout for this kind of development to revive their opposition heavily tainted by Islamic fundamentalism.
Independence does not have the same meaning for the whole Eritrean people. In the rural and pastoral areas of the lowlands, the mainly Muslim population are waiting to see if the new authorities will improve their lives and help to reintegrate the hundreds of thousands of refugees returning from Sudan.
On the Red Sea coast, the Afars, whose irredentism is currently dormant, will judge the EPLF based on the degree of commercial and administrative autonomy it alots them, and based on its attitude towards the Afars rebellion of the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD) in neighbouring Djibouti
As opposed to what newly independent countries like Angola and Mozambique had to endure, Eritrea is not the target of Western ostracism and attacks. The referendum on self-determination did not take place before the World Bank and a pool of donators set up a programme of economic restructuring of more than $100m.
Clearly, this aid is not free. The price to pay is the acceptance of a programme of economic liberalisation as prescribed by the technocrats of the IMF and World Bank — whose consequences will be accelerated social stratification in Eritrea.
Eritrea's ability to resist these pressures is very limited. For now, its resistance has been limited to slowing the rhythm of the privatisation of enterprises nationalised by the previous regime, maintaining certain price controls to avoid an inflationary spiral, and pursuing property reform in a very prudent manner.
But even when taken in small doses, the potions of liberalism can still be very bitter indeed.*
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