The Eritrean War of Independence was a conflict fought between the Ethiopian government and
Eritrean separatists, both before and during the Ethiopian Civil War.
The war started when Eritrea's autonomy within Ethiopia, where troops were already stationed,
was revoked.
Eritrea had become part of Ethiopia after World War II, when both territories were liberated
from Italian occupation.
Ethiopia claimed that Eritrea was part of their country.
Ethiopia's wishes were fulfilled after the United Nations General Assembly federated
Eritrea to Ethiopia as a province as early as 1950.
Following the Marxist–Leninist coup in Ethiopia in 1974 which toppled its ancient monarchy,
the Derg enjoyed Soviet support until the end of the 1980s, when glasnost and perestroika
started to affect Moscow's foreign policies, resulting in a withdrawal of help.
The war went on for 30 years until 1991, when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF)
defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic
Front (EPRDF), with the help of the EPLF, took control of Ethiopia and removed the Marxist–Leninist
People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.
In April 1993, in a referendum supported by Ethiopia, the Eritrean people voted almost
unanimously in favour of independence.
Formal international recognition of an independent, sovereign Eritrea followed later the same
year.
The two main rebel groups, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the EPLF, fought the two Eritrean
Civil Wars during the war of liberation.
== Background == The Italians colonised Eritrea in 1890.
In 1936, Italy invaded Ethiopia and declared it part of their colonial empire, which they
called Italian East Africa.
Italian Somaliland was also part of that entity.
There was a unified Italian administration.
Conquered by the Allies in 1941, Italian East Africa was sub-divided.
Ethiopia reoccupied its formerly Italian occupied lands in 1941.
Italian Somaliland remained under Italian rule until 1960 but as a United Nations protectorate,
not a colony, when it united with British Somaliland, also granted independence in 1960,
to form the independent state of Somalia.
Eritrea was made a British Protectorate from the end of World War II until 1951.
However, there was debate as to what should happen with Eritrea after the British left.
The British proposed that Eritrea be divided along religious lines with the Christians
to Ethiopia and the Muslims to Sudan.
This, however, caused great controversy.
Then, in 1952, the UN decided to federate Eritrea to Ethiopia, hoping to reconcile Ethiopian
claims of sovereignty and Eritrean aspirations for independence.
About nine years later, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie dissolved the federation and
annexed Eritrea, triggering a thirty-year armed struggle in Eritrea.
== Revolution == During the 1960s, the Eritrean independence
struggle was led by the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
The independence struggle can properly be understood as the resistance to the annexation
of Eritrea by Ethiopia long after the Italians left the territory.
Additionally, one may consider the actions of the Ethiopian Monarchy against Muslims
in the Eritrean government as a contributing factor to the revolution.
At first, this group factionalized the liberation movement along ethnic and geographic lines.
The initial four zonal commands of the ELF were all lowland areas and primarily Muslim.
Few Christians joined the organization in the beginning, fearing Muslim domination.After
growing disenfranchisement with Ethiopian occupation, highland Christians began joining
the ELF.
Typically these Christians were part of the upper class or university-educated.
This growing influx of Christian volunteers prompted the opening of the fifth (highland
Christian) command.
Internal struggles within the ELF command coupled with sectarian violence among the
various zonal groups splintered the organization.
The war started on 1 September 1961 when Hamid Idris Awate and his companions fired the first
shots against the occupying Ethiopian Army and police.
In 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia unilaterally dissolved the federation and
the Eritrean parliament and annexed the country.
== War (1961–1991) == In 1970 members of the group had a falling
out, and several different groups broke away from the ELF.
During this time, the ELF and the groups that later joined together to form the Eritrean
People's Liberation Front (EPLF) fought a bitter civil war.
The two organizations were forced by popular will to reconcile in 1974 and participated
in joint operations against Ethiopia.
In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie was ousted in a coup.
The new Ethiopian government, called the Derg, was a Marxist military junta, which eventually
came to be controlled by strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The new Derg regime took an additional three to four years to get complete control of both
Ethiopia, Eritrea, and parts of Somalia.
With this change of government and eventually widely known recognition, Ethiopia became
directly under the influence of the Soviet Union.
Many of the groups that splintered from the ELF joined together in 1977 and formed the
EPLF.
By the late 1970s, the EPLF had become the dominant armed Eritrean group fighting against
the Ethiopian government.
The leader of the umbrella organization was Secretary-General of the EPLF Ramadan Mohammed
Nour, while the Assistant Secretary-General was Isaias Afewerki.
Much of the equipment used to combat Ethiopia was captured from the Ethiopian Army.
During this time, the Derg could not control the population by force alone.
To supplement its garrisons, forces were sent on missions to instill fear in the population.
An illustrative example of this policy was the village of Basik Dera in northern Eritrea.
On 17 November 1970, the entire village was rounded up into the local mosque and the mosque's
doors were locked.
The building was then razed and the survivors were shot.
Similar massacres took place in primarily Muslim parts of Eritrea, including the villages
of She'eb, Hirgigo, Elabared, and the town of Om Hajer; massacres also took place in
predominately Christian areas as well.
The advent of these brutal killings of civilians regardless of race, religion, or class was
the final straw for many Eritreans who were not involved in the war, and at this point
many either fled the country or went to the front lines.
By 1977, the EPLF was poised to drive the Ethiopians out of Eritrea, by utilizing a
simultaneous military offensive from the east by Somalia to siphon off Ethiopian military
resources.
The Somali invasion surprised many experts in the west due to the initial successes,
however the Soviet Union, Cuba and Yemen came to the government's aid allowing them to prevent
the Somalis from coming to the capital.
This turnaround was possible thanks mainly to a massive airlift of Soviet arms, the deployment
of 18,000 Cubans and two Yemeni brigades to reinforce Harar.
After that, using the considerable manpower and military hardware available from the Somali
campaign, the Ethiopian Army regained the initiative and forced the EPLF to retreat
to the bush.
This was most notable in the Battle of Barentu and the Battle of Massawa.
Between 1978 and 1986, the Derg launched eight major offensives against the independence
movements, and all failed to crush the guerrilla movement.
In 1988, with the Battle of Afabet, the EPLF captured Afabet and its surroundings, then
headquarters of the Ethiopian Army in northeastern Eritrea, prompting the Ethiopian Army to withdraw
from its garrisons in Eritrea's western lowlands.
EPLF fighters then moved into position around Keren, Eritrea's second-largest city.
Meanwhile, other dissident movements were making headway throughout Ethiopia.
Throughout the conflict Ethiopia used "anti-personnel gas", napalm, and other incendiary devices.
At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union informed Mengistu that it would not be renewing
its defence and cooperation agreement.
With the cessation of Soviet support and supplies, the Ethiopian Army's morale plummeted, and
the EPLF, along with other Ethiopian rebel forces, began to advance on Ethiopian positions.
The joint effort to overthrow the Mengistu, Marxist regime was a joint effort of mostly
EPLF forces, united with other Ethiopian faction groups (primarily consisting of tribal liberation
fronts, for example the Oromo Liberation Front, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front – who
were jointly in battles against the ELF and other key battles where many Tigrayans were
lost in the Eritrean Civil Wars – and the EPRDF, a conglomerate of the current TPLF
regime and the marxist Oromo People's Democratic Organization who became prominent for recruiting
Derg defects as the EPLF and EPRDF occupied parts of the provinces of Wollo and Shewa
in Ethiopia).
== Peace talks == The former President of the United States,
Jimmy Carter, with the help of some U.S. government officials and United Nation officials, attempted
to mediate in peace talks with the EPLF, hosted by the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta,
Georgia in September 1989.
Ashagre Yigletu, Deputy Prime Minister of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
(PDRE), helped negotiate and signed a November 1989 peace deal with the EPLF in Nairobi,
along with Jimmy Carter and Al-Amin Mohamed Seid.
However, soon after the deal was signed, hostilities resumed.
Yigletu also led the Ethiopian government delegations in peace talks with the TPLF leader
Meles Zenawi in November 1989 and March 1990 in Rome.
He also attempted again to lead the Ethiopian delegation in peace talks with the EPLF in
Washington, D.C. until March 1991.
== Recognition ==
After the end of the Cold War, the United States played a facilitative role in the peace
talks in Washington, D.C. during the months leading up to the May 1991 fall of the Mengistu
regime.
In mid-May, Mengistu resigned as head of the Ethiopian government and went into exile in
Zimbabwe, leaving a caretaker government in Addis Ababa.
A high-level U.S. delegation was present in Addis Ababa for the 1–5 July 1991 conference
that established a transitional government in Ethiopia.
Having defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, the EPLF attended as an observer and held
talks with the new transitional government regarding Eritrea's relationship to Ethiopia.
The outcome of those talks was an agreement in which the Ethiopians recognized the right
of the Eritreans to hold a referendum on independence.
The referendum was held in April 1993 and the Eritrean people voted almost unanimously
in favour of independence, with the integrity of the referendum being verified by the UN
Observer Mission to Verify the Referendum in Eritrea (UNOVER).
On 28 May 1993, the United Nations formally admitted Eritrea to its membership.
Below are the results from the referendum:
== See also == Eritrean Civil Wars
List of massacres committed during the Eritrean War of Independence
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Bibliography ===
== Further reading == Country profile: Eritrea BBC 4 November 2005
Ethiopia Eritrea Independence War 1961–1993 Eritrean War for Independence