The Eritrean Revolution: Geography To Its Rescue

The barbarian enemy humiliatingly defeated…”

A line from the national anthem

An essay of a similar nature was written under the title; “Revisiting ‘Against All Odds’,” at this website, and that would have been the end of it. It did not, however, for an abrasive reply has lately been posted challenging it [1]. What provoked the reaction were primarily those articles about the role of child soldiers, the meaning of martyrdom, and the common practice of forced recruitment during the ghedli period. The burden of the concept of being “liberated” internalized among many Eritreans is not a light matter. While an increasing number of them are now admitting the tyrannical nature of the regime, they have not yet been able to question the Olympian like status of the struggle and its leaders. This legend seems to have left them in paralysis. Hence, an examination of the very exceptional exogenous factors that helped the very idea of Eritrea may debunk the myth of the armed rebellion and may also hopefully jolt the consciousness of its hapless subjects into a more combative spirit.

Not less important is the climate of denial to the “terrible toll” of ghedli on the peasant masses and the rank and file fighters of the fronts [2]. To the litany of problems witnessed during the independence war, the refrain has been: How then did little Eritrea defeat the mightiest army in sub-Sahara Africa? The conditionals always retorted by the same lot go as follows: if it were not for ghedli tsegatat; if it were not for its voluntary army; if it were not for its just cause; if it were not for the domestic political harmony … the cause could have been aborted decades ago. This subject is a hornet’s nest that both the regime and the opposition furiously defend. It is also a totem pole that both love to dance in a circle, and therefore needs to be addressed.

Only the amateur historian or the incurious nationalist would be appeased by the assertion above. The Horn of Africa is a complex region that has been confounding many of its observers for quite some time. What is instead needed is a close look into the intricate features and political actors that were paramount in the long duration of the conflict. Most importantly, “victory” in itself can not exclude the absence of massive repression and lethal fissures within the ghedli realm. History is full of these examples.

The success of the secession venture in Eritrea was indeed an exception in Africa. What made it singular was also none other than the rare opportunity of an important geographic location. According to Krzysztof Trzecinski geographic locations in Africa had, beside other political and economic reasons, played as factors facilitating or hindering attempts of secessionist movements [3]. Africa, argues the author, has been susceptible to such phenomenon for its lack of institutions to peacefully resolve them once they are ignited and its meager military and other resources that limit its reach to the peripheral parts of the nation state. Though lacking the democratic institutions, the latter reason does not clearly apply to Ethiopia. For it had fought ruthlessly and tenaciously with all types of armed organizations for decades, including an invasion from Somalia, at the risk of enormous economic, social and political cost. The Ethiopian state was not the typical sub-African state, and Trzecinski was clearly misinformed.

His daring examination of this subject is, however, commendable largely because it remains a yet to be fully researched area and first of its kind. It is nonetheless disappointing when he fails to identify the deciding factor for the victory in the case of Eritrea. His study is therefore inconclusive. Understandably, a canvass like study of a vast and complex continent is often poorly understood and ends in some instances inconclusively [4]. This is not to deny, however, the importance of the enabling factors in this original study.

Here are the factors identified by Trzecinski as facilitating or hindering secession in Africa: (a) existence of other state or states bordering the seceding region; (b) insular location such as the features of an island; (c ) sea access or lack thereof, as well length of the coastline; (d) peripheral location (at the edge of the parent state); (e) specific shape of the country; (f) proximity of another state or states largely separating the seceding region; (g) proximity of another state completely separating the seceding region from the parent state; (h) existence of a natural boundary e.g. mountain range or rivers [5].

A quick appraisal of the above clearly shows that Eritrea was well endowed with Trzeciniski factors for launching a breakaway state. But two stand out in their relevance to our analysis: insular location such as the features of an island and proximity of another state or states largely separating the seceding region. It is obvious that Eritrea lacked the features of an island that is a body of water separating it from the parent state. But even this shortcoming was resolved in the long see-sawing war when the rebellion in Tigray almost completely isolated it and severed the tethers of the Ethiopian regime. There is an irony to this. It was the first large buffer zone that came to its aid. Of the other enabling factors that served the armed Eritrean organizations well was the proximity to the huge landmass of a neighboring African country. Below, let’s look at these two determining factors.

Disturbed Exterior

With few exceptions, Sudan was indispensable as access to arms, food supply, place of refugee, and even troop deployment purposes etc. for the fronts. It was also a place of refuge for the losing organization during the civil war among the liberation fronts. The amalgam of armed groups that later merged to build the EPLF had briefly stayed at Gereger, Sudan; located North West of Karora in 1972. Almost 17 years later, the same organization exploited the long south eastern border of the Sudan to launch a surprise attack in the Wellega province of Ethiopia. The famously territorial EPLF did not bother to respect the sovereign land of the Sudan. EPLF’s incursions presaged, one might say, the ongoing behavior of the Lord Resistance Army. Nor did various Sudanese regimes take any serious measure save the one at Gereger to stop this squatter-like guerrilla settlement. In its size and messiness, Sudan has the features of the Congo Kinshasa, where a medley of military organizations operates in broad daylight.

In the mid 80s, in the northern plains of the Sahel, the EPLF defeated a sizable mechanized Ethiopian force of the Wekaw Ez. Emboldened with this victory, it used the tanks captured and successfully attacked Tessenei, and Barentu respectively. It used the Sudanese plains as a corridor to transfer it newly captured tanks from Sahel to the Western lowlands; hence, the surprise element.. Alarmed by the situation, the Derg withdrew some 30,000 of its army from the Ogaden region, and doggedly fought the EPLF fighters around the southwestern lowlands. Its swift military victories were reversed and a sizable part of its army was trapped. [6].

Completely cut off from their dejen in Sahel, “The EPLF fighters scattered” recounted Resoum Kidane. It was the most humiliating military defeat in EPLF’s history, he further remarked. “Allah made the Sudan, and Allah laughed” goes the joke meant to highlight the anarchic nature of this sprawling country. The Sudan, the largest country in the African continent came to their rescue, and not through design or military intervention. It was rather the brazen violation of its huge territory by the desperate army of the EPLF as a bridge to the base in Sahel [7]. In contrast, the Biafra rebellion was crushed rapidly in 1970 partly for the absence of an escape corridor to its army, which was also split into two disconnected enclaves.

Map source: Resoum Kidane (ehrea.org)

Without this escape route, the fate of the EPLF would have been different. But it had an asset that any of its contemporary armed groups in Africa would envy. This episode was largely ignored in EPLF history and predictably was not accorded the status of the “Long March of 1978” or the conveniently called starategicawi mezla’k. Despite this stark truth, the myth of the small but “indefatigable” Eritrea has endured for decades, notwithstanding the now growing setbacks of the regime. It has captured the minds of both the public at home, Eritreans in the Diaspora and many interested observers of the region. It has also fettered the minds of many ordinary people leaving them mute and incoherent.

An Island In The Making

Before I talk about the Eritrea island in the making, let’s digress briefly to describe a parallel African episode with a real island.

Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands under PAIGC and the respected Amilcar Cabral became the first to negotiate independence from the coup leaders in Portugal, followed by the rest in southern Africa. Cabral was soon assassinated, and the political malaise in his country has worsened since then to the sorrow of many progressive people. In such context, the news about the dismemberment of Cape Verde Islands in the mid 70s remained unnoticed among the still interested public. Cape Verde’s abrupt dissociation felt as if it wasn’t a part of the parent state of Guinea-Bissau at any time. It was lucky to go scot-free without the given horrible civil wars that became endemic in the continent.

Its insularity, that is the body of water surrounding it, had certainly safeguarded it from any attempt to prevent it from breaking away, assuming there was the political will in the parent state in the mainland. Troubled Guinea-Bissau has now an admiral for its navy, and may be there only for symbolic use. Whatever the navy’s merit in the past, it did not seem to have deterred the venture for a separate nationhood by Cape Verde Islands. Insularity of a different sort also played a deciding factor in the long sustained military duel in the extreme corner of the Sahel belt, which is Eritrea.

In the Eritrean case, it was the proximity to a rebellious region that is the Weyane province of Ethiopia that crucially enabled the long winded struggle of the EPLF. Had it not been for this strategic location, the Derg or its any other successor regime might have been able to slug it out for many years. Military defeats alone, restricted to the war theater in Eritrea, will not have stopped Ethiopia from pursuing its war policy. Its size was capable of absorbing the stupendous shock. This point may not be palatable to Clapham, who blames the economic failure which manifested the 1984/85 famine [8]. Strangely, he does not discuss the “economy” of the insurgent groups, and the riddle remains unsolved.

Obsessed with the need for a vital sea access, and the national pride associated with it, the parent state’s military planners made a major blunder in disproportionately deploying their resources in Eritrea. The dread of landlocked Ethiopia left its massive army and other assets in Eritrea fatally ignoring the danger of a cordon from the south – that is, Tigray. This political decision appears to have been made at a tremendous cost to the military’s final existence. Ethiopia’s naval power, though big by sub-Sahara standards, did not play a deciding factor during the final phase of the conflict. In the military debacle that followed, the long Red Sea coastline became a useless asset, and an encumbrance too, while the military condition in rebellious Tigray became too late to reverse. As the popular Amharic saying puts it, “dar yeneberew mehal sihon mehalu dar yehonal.”

The construct of the formidable, efficient and peasant backed popular organization of the EPLF needs, therefore, an examination. What the organization achieved may not even be described as a pyrrhic victory, as some writers have at various times strongly argued. The trajectory to a defeated, traumatized and exhausted public was a possible scenario if not for the role of rebellion in the province of the parent state. The defeat, though very traumatic to the masses, may also have perhaps led for a political environment certainly different from the sore of the present “siege state.”

The switch of military opportunity for Eritrea in the second Ethio-Eritrean war was very profound.

Disturbed Interior

After launching a surprise attack, Eritrea took Badme and won several battles mostly limited to the border areas. A brief stalemate followed before Ethiopia launched several offensives and not only took Badme and Zalambessa towns, but also penetrated deep into the interior of Eritrea. This narration is largely accepted by most observers except the regime and its supporters. But the military causes for the Eritrean military debacle was attributed by the observers to primarily the change in the kind of warfare, that is, the guerrilla war that was “indispensable” for the EPLF. It allegedly got less useful, when faced with a conventional warfare. This wisdom has been uncontested so far.

This explanation is erroneous for it is constructed on the premise that the EPLF won the war of independence essentially through guerrilla war. An unbiased observer would, however, disagree. The EPLF obtained victory in Eritrea primarily because in the war against the Goliath, that is, Ethiopia, there were also other Davids, such as the TPLF in the rural regions and the EPRP in most major towns. Then there was the Ogaden crisis, which now and then flared into a full-fledged war with neighboring Somalia and Ogadeni insurgents. In short, the interior was in turbulence. All these were important centrifugal forces that brought down the Empire to Eritrea’s advantage. It was fighting the most uncontested revolution of its type in Africa. In contrast, the Biafran and the Tamil Tigers’ causes, though fiercely and tenaciously fought, were finally defeated and humiliated. To their peril, the bigger realms of their respective places – Nigeria and Sri Lanka – remained calm throughout their uprisings.

Among many reasons for the failure of the two examples mentioned above, the most plausible one was the inordinate absence of any discernable revolt in the interior of their respective countries. Ojukwu, the leader of the breakaway Igbos, “pinned his hopes for Biafra’s survival on domestic disorders in Nigeria.[9]” His calculation did not materialize, however, when a mass famine enveloped his landlocked and agriculturally ruined enclave. It soon led to an ignominious defeat, and the complete setting of the Half of the Yellow Sun (the Biafran flag.) Likewise, the Tamils were also pushed relentlessly out of most of the small landmass of the Island of Ceylon to a tiny sliver of lagoon until they met their ignominious end. Remarkably, the geographic advantage of a long coastline, which they had exploited for some period, did not salvage them in the end.

Last but not least, tiny Spanish Sahara has also been left in a limbo. In spite of the unanimous diplomatic support from the African continent for the cause, its people have been left as permanent refugees. This small desert enclave also lost the war partly due to the relative quiet in the Kingdom of Morocco.

In all of the examples mentioned above, there was neither urban unrest nor a rebellion in the rural regions, nor a border war with a neighbor country. Ethiopia, on the other hand, had its hands full of this long lasting calamities and threats.

Let us now sum up. Significant though access to sea and other geographic factors were in the three failed projects mentioned above, they lacked the most salient element that manifested in the Eritrean independence war; that is, proximity of a rebellious region to completely separate them. Through an accident in history, Eritrea acquired this rare opportunity, save for the narrow, hot and very inhospitable corridor of the Afar region. Although this is the hard fact, the role of other rebellions in Ethiopia is rarely mentioned; it is only described as a sideshow and as an afterthought.

Infrequently, and as if to contradict themselves, the regime’s opinion makers do not forget to mention their eminent role as the hub of the various armed Ethiopian opposition groups, that have since been estranged. The writers from the opposition corner often taut the same unsubstantiated self reliance claims of the regime, unaware of the damage to their politics. Deluded, they are completely unaware of its relevance to their enemy state. In defense of what they consider sacred and sacrosanct, they often get in a defensive mood leaving rational thinking in the cold.

Disengaged Interior

The protracted armed conflict in Eritrea and, more ominously, the total retreat from the region of Tigray led to a coup attempt against the Derg. It remained to be a bad sign for the regime. More significantly, the people in the Amhara regions had been less enthusiastic, and were war-weary despite the desperate call of the regime for “Ye Debrebrehan Hizb hoy.” Though, the TPLF and its allied groups attribute their rapid spread to the traditional Amhara regions and other ethnic groups to their indomitable political and military work, its veracity is very dubious. The Amhara peasants and others like the Oromo further south and west did not suddenly embrace their political program; they were certainly cynical and indifferent to the fate of the regime that was both highly extractive and indifferent to their ordinary needs. Military factors alone cannot account for the rapid dissolution of the Derg forces. It was rather the exit of the Ethiopian masses from politics that essentially turned the fortunes of the Derg. This fact largely explains the initial precarious political position of the TPLF led forces and their deference to the “big brother” EPLF.

This political reality again explains the largely peaceful and orderly political atmosphere that prevailed in Addis Ababa and many other major towns in 1991. During the final hours of the Derg, some observers expected complete anarchy. It did not occur, and therefore credited the absence of civil war and massacres within the dense and sprawling city of Addis Ababa to the alleged “civilized nature” of the people in this region. They were not mindful that Mengistu’s subjects in Addis were neither docile and quaking creatures nor ardent supporters of the Derg but people long in grief. During the Red Terror days, this city had displayed the corpse of countless victims neatly piled in the streets, not unlike the bundle of eucalyptus wood for sale. They were also not passive creatures. To the dismay of the regime, some were boldly listening to other news outlets such as the BBC and heaving ridicule on its official claims. True, the insurgents were in many cases seen with suspicious eyes or utmost tolerated. Addis was not, however, the typical last stronghold of a regime under siege.

It is a rule of thumb to say that almost every country has several myths that are seriously cherished, tolerated or occasionally laughed about at least by some portions of its subjects. Eritrea has a handful of its own, and some of them are still potent; but the one constructed around the goal of independence will remain destructive unless the public urgently places it in its discourse. The purpose of this essay is to discuss a particular legend: the myth of defeating almost single-handedly Ethiopia’s great army in Black Africa, which left Eritrea independent and brought a change of regime in Ethiopia. It has to this day been placed at the top of the totem pole of the nationalist historiography.

To postulate that the same Ethiopia was essential for the victory of the EPLF may appear peculiar and devoid of any common sense, but oddly enough the phenomenon of a successful break away nation as Eritrea largely occurred through the agency of none other than of Ethiopia’s medley of armed political organizations. In other words, it was self-inflicted. This may explain for the success of the single instance of armed rebellion for a separate sovereignty in the entire continent. The ones that were attempted in the few places in Africa as described before were either brutally crushed or left the combatants and the public who aspired for it exhausted and weak.

End Of A Cycle

In contrast, the odds that were good for Eritrea then became absent in the 1998-2000 war, and brutally exposed the chink in its legendary armor. For public consumption purposes, the Eritrean dictator and his cronies often dismissed the Weyane led Ethiopia and frequently boasted about the military “might” and “wisdom” of the new nation. The propaganda worked, leaving both the public and some observers outside in awe when Eritrea initially scored some victories. The tactical advantage of its surprise attack and an army that was in constant drilling was soon to fade. The climate suddenly changed.

After several butting-heads at the border regions, the Eritrean Defense Forces buckled and survived the war only to be a menace to the old gebar. Let alone advance deep into the Ethiopian interior and topple the regime there, its army could not protect its allegedly well defended positions in the contested zones. The strategic location that is the proximity to the rebellious region of Tigray that was an invaluable asset during the independence war turned into a serious liability during the second Ethio-Eritrea war.

The TPLF led regime with nothing serious to worry about in its hinterland absorbed the few initial military setbacks; and led by a collective leadership, as remarked once by a writer, drastically reversed the briefly observed stalemate. The impact of this engagement on the poorly led army in Eritrea was disarray and panic. The leadership under Isaias behaved shamelessly. Who can possibly forget Isaias Afwerki’s desperate midnight call to the United Nations Security Council. Desperate to save his power and organization intact, Isaias and his clique had even seriously entertained the option of a long retreat to the old mountain fastness of the Sahel. This scenario also included the more ominous forced evacuation of the public evoking the habit of the infamous Tamil Tigers.

In summation, the Eritrea instigated war and its renowned “inventiveness”, and “stamina’ was entirely spent right on its door steps, forcing it to slink away deep into its own interior. What was an asset, that is the rebellion in Tigray during the independence war, suddenly turned into a formidable adversary, and the famous wefri seger DOB became no more except around distant Somalia.

For the regime supporters, and others who have entrusted the hallowed cause of sovereignty on the regime, the advice is: they have simply no warranty to claim. The caboodle was simply a highly risky gamble resting on the strategic bless of being located adjacent to a mutinous Ethiopian province. What else then explains the concerted and expensive effort of the regime in harboring Ethiopian rebels of all types for more than a decade? It is not an aberrant behavior, but a wish to revert to the old proven weapon: an Ethiopia with a disturbed interior.

Embedded deep in the psyche of the EPLF is the critical role of the centrifugal forces that served it well in the fight with the Derg. The centrifugal forces had always been the nightmare of the King of Kings of Ethiopia; Isaias’ harping for that kind of regime is perfectly rational. To contemplate Eritrea as a spoiler state without this historical background is foolhardiness and wrong.

Myths have often caused catastrophes. The behavior of militarist Japan before the Second World War is often attributed to its defeat of the massive Kublai’s invasion fleet several hundreds of years ago. The myth of the lone Eritrea against a regional heavyweight, and super powers has also done its incalculable damage. As famously put by the anonymous character in Michela Wrong’s book on Eritrea, our honest reassessment of this legend may lead to a “normal” Eritrea.

The irony in the whole construct of the history of Eritrea’s independence war was the disproportionate attention to the “curse” of its strategic location in the Red Sea waterways, leaving it to be the unfortunate “pawn of the superpowers.” The extraordinary bless from its rare, and precious location, which is the landmass in the south, has been deliberately ignored or only described as a sideshow. In truth, the “odds” of Eritrea becoming the “white tiger” among all the other aborted rebellions in Africa was, to the contrary wisdom, good. Its contrary is also true.

Sans Ethiopia, neither Eritrea’s de jure, nor de facto independence was possible. Until the gold bonanza, absent Ethiopia’s hinterland, Djibouti’s economic growth rate will remain beating Eritrea’s much boasted Warsay-Yikealo based economy. What explains the narrative of Eritrea’s “exceptionality” is none other than the exploit of a precious geographic forte that other African rebellions did not possess. Without doubt, the major deciding yikealo factor can be ascribed to: location, location, location.

1 Woldeab Idris, 2010; Philosophical Enkillil, awate.com

2 Mkandawire, T. 2002. “The Terrible Toll of Post-colonial ‘rebel movements’ in Africa: Towards an explanation of the Violence against the Peasantry.” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol 40, 2.

3 Trzcinski, Krzysztof. 2004. “The Significance of Geographic Location for the Success of Territorial Secession. African Example.” Miscellanea Geographica, Vol. 11.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Resoum, Kidane. The Mysterious Death of Ibrahim Afa.

7 Ibid.

8 Clapham, Christopher. 2000. “War and State Formation in Ethiopia and Eritrea.”

9 Time, January 26, 1970. World: The Secession That Failed.