Ethiopia-Eritrea: On the brink

Your Proximities deep dive

Hello everyone.

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Firstly, I’d like to welcome all the new paid subscribers who availed of the flash sale last week. You will now be able to read Saturday pieces in full and not just a preview. And you have access to more than 25 archived deep dives here.

Now, to this week’s deep dive.

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I’ve visited the heavily-fortified border area between Ethiopia and Eritrea several times, reporting from refugee camps on tightly-controlled tours but also, after shaking my Ethiopian government minders, chatting to people in cafes, bars, restaurants and shops, which was more enlightening.

The main thing I remember is this. Everybody - everybody - was tired of war.

At that time, in the mid-2000s, memories of the ruinous conflict Ethiopia and Eritrea fought from May 1998 to June 2000 were fresh. The war, which erupted over who owned the disputed town of Badme, killed at least 80,000 people, with some estimates running into the hundreds of thousands. About 600,000 were forced to flee their homes and I met many who were among them.

They told me that, when the war ended, some of them found that family members were on one side of the border, while they were on the other.

In 2007, a man named Mullu Berhane, who I spoke to in the frontier town of Shere, told me he hadn’t seen his father since the war ended.

“Only a river separated his village from Ethiopia and we used to visit each other. But with the war, everything stopped,” he said. “Maybe he’s dead, I don’t know.”

In 2020, another war began on the Ethiopian side of the border that lasted until 2022. Again, far too many people died. I will explain in more detail below.

For a couple of weeks now, the war drums have been beating again, with convincing reports - and footage - suggesting the Ethiopian government is moving heavy military equipment to the border area, with very significant deployments of troops to the region reported today.

And, last weekend, ominous words from Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, speaking at the annual African Union summit in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia, he said, must have access to the sea in order for the region to see peace. The problem? Ethiopia is landlocked. And where is the coastline? Yes, it’s in Eritrea.

Let’s jump into a Q&A.

Until next weekend,

Barry.

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I’ve heard Eritrea was once part of Ethiopia? What’s the history there?

As with most things, I could go back deep in time here. But for the sake of our Q&A remaining brief, I’ll start in 1962 when Eritrea was annexed by Ethiopia. Before that, it had been in a federation with Ethiopia from 1950 and, before that, under Italian occupation. Ethiopia’s annexation set alight an already burgeoning independence movement and a three-decade armed struggle.

In 1991, rebels in Ethiopia toppled longtime President Mengistu Hailemariam, a particularly brutal autocrat. The Eritrean insurgents had allied with them as they fought to overthrow Mengistu, and so their Ethiopian comrades promised to give them independence now that they were in power, which they did in 1993.

So, if they were allies, what happened?

They remained friendly for years but relations unraveled in 1998 when fighting erupted, as I mentioned above, over the town of Badme. It led to a devastating war that was to last two years, with about half a million troops estimated to have fought on the front lines. By 2000, the Eritreans were largely defeated, Ethiopia declared an end to the war, and both sides agreed to the setting up of an independent commission to adjudicate on the border regions.

Though the fighting had ended, the neighbors remained in a formal state of war, with all travel and communications forbidden, even mail.

That persisted until 2018 when a new president, Abiy Ahmed, came to power in Ethiopia and offered an olive branch to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The two reestablished diplomatic relations. For his part, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which now looks to have been an absurdly premature decision.

There were many immediate benefits, though. Families, such as those I met in the mid-2000s, were finally reunited. I do fear, though, it was too late for Mullu.

But now you’re saying they might go to war again?