Eritrean War of Independence 1961-1993
The extinction of the federation consolidated internal and external
opposition to union. Four years earlier, in 1958, a number of Eritrean exiles
had founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM) in Cairo, under Hamid Idris
Awate's leadership. This organization, however, soon was neutralized. A new
faction, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), emerged in 1960. Initially a
Muslim movement, the ELF was nationalist rather than Marxist and received Iraqi
and Syrian support. As urban Christians joined, the ELF became more radical and
anticapitalist. Beginning in 1961, the ELF turned to armed struggle and by 1966
challenged imperial forces throughout Eritrea.
The rapid growth of the ELF also created internal divisions between urban
and rural elements, socialists and nationalists, and Christians and Muslims.
Although these divisions did not take any clear form, they were magnified as
the ELF extended its operations and won international publicity. In June 1970,
Osman Salah Sabbe, former head of the Muslim League, broke away from the ELF
and formed the Popular Liberation Forces (PLF), which led directly to the
founding of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) in early 1972. Both
organizations initially attracted a large number of urban, intellectual, and
leftist Christian youths and projected a strong socialist and nationalist
image. By 1975 the EPLF had more than 10,000 members in the field. However, the
growth of the EPLF was also accompanied by an intensification of internecine
Eritrean conflict, particularly between 1972 and 1974, when casualties were
well over 1,200. In 1976 Osman broke with the EPLF and formed the Eritrean
Liberation Front-Popular Liberation Front (ELF-PLF), a division that reflected
differences between combatants in Eritrea and representatives abroad as well as
personal rivalries and basic ideological differences, factors important in
earlier splits within the Eritrean separatist movement.
Encouraged by the imperial regime's collapse and attendant confusion, the
guerrillas extended their control over the whole region by 1977. Ethiopian
forces were largely confined to urban centers and controlled the major roads
only by day.
After 1974, insurgencies appeared in various parts of the country, the most
important of which were centered in Eritrea and Tigray. The Eritrean problem,
inherited from Haile Selassie's regime, was a matter of extensive debate within
the Derg. It was a dispute over policy toward Eritrea that resulted in the
death of the PMAC's first leader, General Aman, an Eritrean, on November 23,
1974, so-called "Bloody Saturday." Hereafter, the Derg decided to impose a
military settlement on the Eritean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean
People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Attempts to invade rebel-held Eritrea failed
repeatedly, and by mid-1978 the insurgent groups controlled most of the
countryside but not major towns such as Keren, Mitsiwa, Aseb, and a few other
places. Despite large commitments of arms and training from communist
countries, the Derg failed to suppress the Eritrean rebellion.
By the end of 1976, insurgencies existed in all of the country's fourteen
administrative regions (the provinces were officially changed to regions in
1974 after the revolution). In addition to the Eritrean secessionists, rebels
were highly active in Tigray, where the Tigray People's Liberation Front
(TPLF), formed in 1975, was demanding social justice and self-determination for
all Ethiopians. In the southern regions of Bale, Sidamo, and Arsi, the Oromo
Liberation Front (OLF) and the Somali Abo Liberation Front (SALF), active since
1975, had gained control of parts of the countryside, and the WSLF was active
in the Ogaden. Under Ali Mirah's leadership, the Afar Liberation Front (ALF)
began armed operations in March 1975, and in 1976 it coordinated some actions
with the EPLF and the TPLF.
Despite an influx of military aid from the Soviet Union and its allies after
1977, the government's counterinsurgency effort in Eritrea progressed
haltingly. After initial government successes in retaking territory around the
major towns and cities and along some of the principal roads in 1978 and 1979,
the conflict ebbed and flowed on an almost yearly basis. Annual campaigns by
the Ethiopian armed forces to dislodge the EPLF from positions around the
northern town of Nakfa failed repeatedly and proved costly to the government.
Eritrean and Tigrayan insurgents began to cooperate, the EPLF providing
training and equipment that helped build the TPLF into a full-fledged fighting
force. Between 1982 and 1985, the EPLF and the Derg held a series of talks to
resolve the Eritrean conflict, but to no avail. By the end of 1987, dissident
organizations in Eritrea and Tigray controlled at least 90 percent of both
regions.
In March 1988, the EPLF initiated one of its most successful military
campaigns by striking at Ethiopian army positions on the Nakfa front north of
the town of Afabet, where the Derg had established a base for a new attack
against the insurgents. In two days of fighting, the Eritrean rebels
annihilated three Ethiopian army divisions, killing or capturing at least
18,000 government troops and seizing large amounts of equipment, including
armor and artillery. Subsequently, the town of Afabet, with its military
stores, fell to the EPLF, which then threatened all remaining Ethiopian
military concentrations in northern Eritrea.
The Ethiopian army's defeat in Eritrea came after setbacks during the
preceding week in Tigray. Using the same tactics employed by the EPLF, the TPLF
preempted a pending Ethiopian offensive in Tigray with a series of attacks on
government positions there in early March. A government attack against central
Tigray failed disastrously, with four Ethiopian army divisions reportedly
destroyed and most of their equipment captured. In early April, the TPLF took
the town of Adigrat in northern Tigray, cutting the main road link between
Addis Ababa and Eritrea.
The March 1988 defeats of the Ethiopian army were catastrophic in terms of
their magnitude and crippling in their effect on government strategy in Eritrea
and Tigray. The capability of government forces in both regions collapsed as a
result. Subsequently, Ethiopian government control of Eritrea was limited to
the Keren-Asmera-Mitsiwa triangle and the port of Aseb to the southeast. The
TPLF's victories in Tigray ultimately led to its total conquest by the rebels
and the expansion of the insurgency into Gonder, Welo, and even parts of Shewa
the following year.
In 1960 Eritrean exiles in Cairo founded the Eritrean Liberation Front
(ELF). In contrast to the ELM, from the outset the ELF was bent on waging armed
struggle on behalf of Eritrean independence. The ELF was composed mainly of
Eritrean Muslims from the rural lowlands on the western edge of the territory.
In 1961 the ELF's political character was vague, but radical Arab states such
as Syria and Iraq sympathized with Eritrea as a predominantly Muslim region
struggling to escape oppression and imperial domination. These two countries
therefore supplied military and financial assistance to the ELF.
The ELF initiated military operations in 1961. These operations intensified
in response to the 1962 dissolution of the Eritrean-Ethiopian federation. The
ELF claimed that the process by which this act took place violated the Eritrean
federal constitution and denied the Eritrean people their right to
self-determination. By this time, the movement claimed to be multiethnic,
involving individuals from Eritrea's nine major ethnic groups.
The ELF's first several years of guerrilla activity in Eritrea were
characterized by poor preparation, poor leadership, and poor military
performance. By 1967, however, the ELF had gained considerable support among
peasants, particularly in Eritrea's north and west, and around the port city of
Mitsiwa. Haile Selassie attempted to calm the growing unrest by visiting
Eritrea and assuring its inhabitants that they would be treated as equals under
the new arrangements. Although he doled out offices, money, and titles in early
1967 in hopes of co-opting would-be Eritrean opponents, the resistance
intensified.
From the beginning, a serious problem confronting the ELF was the
development of a base of popular support and a cohesive military wing. The
front divided Eritrea into five military regions, giving regional commanders
considerable latitude in carrying out the struggle in their respective zones.
Perhaps just as debilitating were internal disputes over strategy and tactics.
These disagreements eventually led to the ELF's fragmentation and the founding
in 1972 of another group, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). The
leadership of this multiethnic movement came to be dominated by leftist,
Christian intellectuals who spoke Tigrinya, Eritrea's predominant language.
Sporadic armed conflict ensued between the two groups from 1972 to 1974, even
as they fought the Ethiopian forces. The various organizations, each waging a
separate campaign against the Haile Selassie regime, had become such a serious
threat that the emperor declared martial law in Eritrea and deployed half his
army to contain the struggle. But the Eritrean insurgents fiercely resisted. In
January 1974, the EPLF handed Haile Selassie's forces a crushing defeat at
Asmera, severely affecting the army's morale and exposing the crown's
ever-weakening position.
The rapid growth of the ELF also created internal divisions between urban
and rural elements, socialists and nationalists, and Christians and Muslims.
Although these divisions did not take any clear form, they were magnified as
the ELF extended its operations and won international publicity. In June 1970,
Osman Salah Sabbe, former head of the Muslim League, broke away from the ELF
and formed the Popular Liberation Forces (PLF), which led directly to the
founding of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) in early 1972. Both
organizations initially attracted a large number of urban, intellectual, and
leftist Christian youths and projected a strong socialist and nationalist
image... However, the growth of the EPLF was also accompanied by an
intensification of internecine Eritrean conflict, particularly between 1972 and
1974, when casualties were well over 1,200.
On 29 May 1991, ISAIAS Afworki, secretary general of the People's Front for
Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), which then served as the country's legislative
body, announced the formation of the Provisional Government in Eritrea (PGE) in
preparation for the 23-25 April 1993 referendum on independence from Ethiopia.
The referendum resulted in a landslide vote for independence, which became
effective on 24 May 1993.
References
How to Stop a War; Eritrea; Ethiopia - A Country Study.